Musings on the 'Gamism: Step on up' essay

[Callan S.]

This is just a post with some meandering thoughts on the 'Gamism: Step on up'. Just exploring some tangents to it, to round out the whole affair for me. So here are some quotes…and forgive me capitalising/shouting words occasionally.

Competition is best understood as a productive add-on to Gamist play. Such play is fundamentally cooperative, but may include competition. That's not a contradiction: I'm using exactly the same logic as might be found at the poker and basketball games. You can't compete, socially, without an agreed-upon venue. If the cooperation's details are acceptable to everyone, then the competition within it can be quite fierce.

Does it also mean that once the area's of cooperation are agreed on, players potentially will also define their own areas of competition. Eg, if it's agreed on that the cleric cooperates to heal others, but there's nothing said about trying to get the most kills at all costs, the player of the cleric might define his winning by getting kills in any which way.  EVEN though when he's healing other's he's effectively helping increase their chances to beat his kill count.

What I'm saying is, once you have the areas of cooperation mapped out, is the rest often considered 'up for grabs' as to how much competition each player decides to apply his fellows.

I'm thinking most people would say yes (yes its up for grabs, but of course they might not decide to apply pressure to fellows), but I still wanted to ask in order to frame the question.

From the introduction to RuneQuest, second edition (The Chaosium, 1978, 1979, 1980; specific author for this text unknown; game authors are Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James):
The title of the game, RuneQuest, describes its goal. The player creates one or more characters, known as adventurers, and playes them in various scenarios, designed by a Referee. The Adventurer has the use of combat, magic, and other skills, and treasure. The Referee has the use of assorted monsters, traps, and his own wicked imagination to keep the Adventurer from his goal within the rules of the game. A surviving Adventurer gains experience in fighting, magic, and other skills, as well as money to purchase further training.
Now all that's pretty Gamist stuff of a late 1970s vintage, right? Get this, which follows immediately:
The adventurer progresses in this way until he is so proficient that he comes to the attention of the High Priests, sages, and gods. At this point he has the option to join a Rune Cult. Joining such a cult gives him many advantages, not the least of which is aid from the god of the cult.

Acquiring a Rune by joining such a cult is the goal of the game, for only in gathering a Rune may a character take the next step, up into the ranks of Hero, and perhaps Superhero.
All right, that bit about joining cults still seems kind of Gamist, right? About getting more effective and so on? Great ... except that the GM controls the High Priests and sages. Why would he, whose job was just stated to be to "keep the Adventurer from his goal," have them recognize the Adventurer in the first place? Either they do, and the GM must abandon the stated goal, or they don't, and that whole paragraph becomes gibberish.

Can I ask this…if the author is shaky on how this competition between players and the GM works (I hope competition is the right word), then how much will newer gamers be or even older gamers who haven't thought much about it.

See, I think there's a hell of a lot of illusion out there with a lot of gamers (perhaps mostly the newer ones) that somehow that rules book the GM wields makes it just like the board games or war games they migrated from. They haven't realised that the GM, unless limited by rules (those which most RPG's very much don't have and only some like Kobolds or T&T do have (from what the essay leads me to believe)), the GM can drop a million elephants on you at any time. I get the feeling the misconceptions that its wits against wits, when really its player wits against a GM who is effectively is just toying with them. I think if these people knew this at the start of their RP career, that that rules book doesn't really do anything to aid a 'wit Vs wit' game, they'd go running!

Although I will say that unwritten social contract can push 'wit Vs wit' play.
Eg the players have beaten the bad guys small army, but the GM pulls out some more elephants/reinforcements. The players call him on how much that couldn't happen for factors X, Y and Z. They say it sucks.

BUT that is the social contract inserting a 'wit Vs wit' style of play (like that which rune quest suggests it has in it). It's the social contract saying it sucks, not the system. social contract is a creation of the group, it's nothing to do with the book! But really, at least in my opinion, from most of the roleplay books I've read, there's that same mistaken implication that it is 'wit Vs wit', with similar wording to that of the rune quest quote. I so want to call BS on that! ALL it does is suggest to player and GM's is that that is how it works. BUT it doesn't work that way, all the suggestion does is form a shaky social contract which to vary degrees, enforces this type of 'wit Vs wit' play.

And that social contract ONLY forms because if the game play becomes 'unfair' or whatever quality they previously read that the system supposedly has, they assume that the player or GM is doing something wrong in terms of the system. Actually, most of the time (especially for the GM), its probably quite all right by the system, or even encouraged. However, it is actually violating the social contract…the one no one realises is there because they think the system is regulating them.

I hope I got my point across about this, because its confusing enough here, let alone when it happens. And as that rune quest example shows, even the authors just get lost too.

In taking this idea to design, my mind kind of balks at the tricky mix of Exploration and Competition, and how to keep them from being at cross-purposes. It is really hard to conceive of Gamist reward mechanisms that are both consistently satisfying across long-term play and meaningful at the Step On Up level. Abstract victory points are arguably quite weak; "you win" means nothing if it, well, doesn't do anything.

I snip this paragraph here because I want to disagree. I really don't think victory points or huzzah points or whatever that don't have a practical use are 'weak'. I'm assuming 'do' in 'doesn't do anything' means a practical use in the game, ie it has a game effect. I really feel that the player level should be considered as well…
"I've got a golden doohickey! The only one anyone found in that whole campaign"
"What does it do?"
"Nothing"
"What use is it then?"
"Its use is that you don't have one, chump!" ;)

Much like old piece of crap plastic Italian toys (I wish I still had the link) can auction for appalling amounts of money, rarity and perhaps oddity add value to it from a player perspective. Although I will say, just as I've said above about systems not limiting the number of elephants a GM can drop on players, its even clearer in those that the GM can mint unlimited numbers of golden doohickeys, thus destroying their value . Or conversely, the GM is so tight it's perceived you can only get a golden doohickey by sucking up to him. Its nothing to brag about, it just proves you’re a suck. It's not rare, any suck could get it.

I'll add that the perception of  practical use being needed is simply one to avoid the problem above. Bah, I say! Something like 'only one golden doohickey can be given out in a campaign' sorts that out. Even if its perceived that it was won by suck up rather than wits, its still valuable as no other suck can have it now! :)

Reward systems remain the current most challenging sector of game design, for many reasons, not the least of which is no clear idea of for how long or at what scale "successful play" should be rated. I look forward to experimentation and debate that can help resolve some of the issues for Gamist play.

Rewarding player or character? I'd contend the character needs none given to him (what he needs to keep going/extend his strategies to keep going blurs between reward and necessary to game at all. A character still having his life (because of healing, etc) is less a reward and more something that keeps everything flowing.

The player does, certainly. Extensions of character resources to allow greater strategising is one reward for the player. But that's sort of double dipping, giving both character and player something. It also means reward gets chocked, eventually, as the limits of strategy/limits of the system are finally reached here and there by having so many resources (more resources wont mean going past those limmits, thus no more reward). Still, with the urge for the reward to be practical, I guess that's basically it.

In spite of all the textual rejection, I also think that the dearth of texts reveals nothing about the commonality of Gamist play - I suspect that Drift has kept Gamist play alive and quite active, even in the absence of coherent games to use it for, especially for AD&D2, Champions, Amber, and Vampire (see the GNS section below). Discussing why such an overt, accessible, and functional brand of play did not act as a solid demand on the marketplace of game design must await more discussion of game-industry economics.

As I said before, although the design isn't coherent for gamist play in something like AD&D, I believe its text tend to suggest it is. Thus the players believe it's there, sort of creating that unwritten social contract version which sort of does make it so and also…eliminating a market. There is no market when the market is satisfied with another product, even if that product doesn't really satisfy them. I'm not sure about games like vampire, whether their texts suggest they really are a gamist game. I get the feeling that sometimes a system just has to have dice and numbers and lots of people will think it will satisfy gamist requirements. Or perhaps they push a gamist style, even though the GM is playing in another style. When he's playing in another style, he'll limit the number of elephants he'll drop (to maintain what he's doing, so as to not screw up narration or exploration), thus inadvertently creating a gamist environment.


Anyway, to wrap up I wanted to write about some 'style of game' thoughts I had. Here's the list, which is brief (just throwing around ideas, not terribly fleshed out).

Style types
Race: Accumulate the most gold, the most points or the most gear, whatever is considered your win condition. But don't get in each others way. It's a matter of exploiting the environment the most efficiently.

Sideswiping: Same as race, but now you can do things like kill steal…which is only a side swipe because no one wants the monster around. Taking more bits of treasure than deserved is similar. You might even charge for healing services, if only a little. Tactical options are increased on race, though, as you can do more when the option of getting in your friends way a little is there.

T-boning: You don't give healing at all now, unless its advantagious (lots of money). Adhering your friend to the floor so you can take the monster and perhaps all his treasure is okay.

Head on: You actually fight each other. That's it. The environment is exploited for how it can help to kill the other player. It's pretty much like chess.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Callan,

Great post!

Does it also mean that once the area's of cooperation are agreed on, players potentially will also define their own areas of competition. ...

What I'm saying is, once you have the areas of cooperation mapped out, is the rest often considered 'up for grabs' as to how much competition each player decides to apply his fellows.

I think so. Although it might work the other way around socially and causally; in other words, "we want to compete like X, so we have to cooperate about Y in order to do it."

The cleric issue is kind of specialized. A lot of AD&D play that I recall from the late 1970s (actually the "melange" play armed with or without the hardback Player's Manual) involved cleric-players who wanted to lower the degree of inter-personal competition a little ... perhaps being more team-oriented toward the whole endeavor. This also makes sense in that the "cleric as a class" evolved considerably during the hard-core tourney phase of D&D's development, when whole teams competed against whole teams side-by-side at tables, to see who could run the same dungeon better.

Can I ask this...if the author is shaky on how this competition between players and the GM works (I hope competition is the right word), then how much will newer gamers be or even older gamers who haven't thought much about it.

I'm with you on your implied answer, I think - they'll be really confused. With the important exception of the group who already have worked out exactly the Step On Up and competition context for themselves, and bring it to this new game. For them, all such text is just "blah blah" and they adapt whatever the new game offers in terms of Exploration and System to their preferred approach.

Your other comments spinning off the RuneQuest text make a whole lot of sense to me.

It's the social contract saying it sucks, not the system. social contract is a creation of the group, it's nothing to do with the book! But really, at least in my opinion, from most of the roleplay books I've read, there's that same mistaken implication that it is 'wit Vs wit', with similar wording to that of the rune quest quote. I so want to call BS on that! ALL it does is suggest to player and GM's is that that is how it works. BUT it doesn't work that way, all the suggestion does is form a shaky social contract which to vary degrees, enforces this type of 'wit Vs wit' play.

And that social contract ONLY forms because if the game play becomes 'unfair' or whatever quality they previously read that the system supposedly has, they assume that the player or GM is doing something wrong in terms of the system. Actually, most of the time (especially for the GM), its probably quite all right by the system, or even encouraged. However, it is actually violating the social contract...the one no one realises is there because they think the system is regulating them.

Agreed. All of this is consistent with a point I've made many times, that people turn to "rules" in order to enforce their preferred System for whatever is happening in-game at the moment, and they do that in order to resolve higher-level disputes, whether Creative Agenda or Social Contract. And that this particular "upstream" attempt to fix disputes is very, very badly mistaken from the start.

That's an interesting point about abstract victory points, and you present some good examples to support it. I'll buy that.

About rewarding character vs. player, my call about reward systems in role-playing is that they all involve rewarding the player (real person) in terms of Creative Agenda (yes, that specifically), and that anything which rewards/improves a character is merely a subset of that process. I perceive your point to agree with this principle, but check me on that.

Regarding your four styles, which I perceive to be gradations among the "red dials"  I talk about in the essay, I suggest that Tunnels & Trolls offers many mechanisms for a group both to arrive at a particular point on this spectrum as it suits them, and to change to different points as play progresses. The ongoing negotiation about that - or lack thereof, for some groups - is a key aspect of playing this game. The best example (beyond the treasure/healing stuff you're talking about) is the relationship between rogues and player-character wizards.

Robin Laws' points about thieves and paladins as in-built mechanisms for intra-party conflict in D&D are well worth checking out too. I'm not sure whether there's any direct link to that discussion on-line, but we can talk about it more if you'd like.

Best,
Ron

[Silmenume]

I really don't think victory points or huzzah points or whatever that don't have a practical use are 'weak'. I'm assuming 'do' in 'doesn't do anything' means a practical use in the game, ie it has a game effect. I really feel that the player level should be considered as well...

"I've got a golden doohickey! The only one anyone found in that whole campaign"
"What does it do?"
"Nothing"
"What use is it then?"
"Its use is that you don't have one, chump!" ;)

As this thread has been fallow for a little while and thus I believe I would not be destroying any momentum, I would like to insert this one quick observation.  The above quote is a perfect example of the idea that roleplay is essentially a meaning creation process.  What was implied as something that did absolutely nothing or stated another way something that was utterly useless in the SIS, this "golden doohickey" is given great meaning by the inventive player.  This meaning creation act could have happened at the moment of possession during the game or could have happened anytime after the game had ended when the idea occurred to the possessing player.  Its vibrant, alive, raw chest thumping in the best Gamism has to offer!  

I'm not Gamist in the least, I just don't have the chops for it, but the energy in that fictional exchange brought a smile to my face in the pure élan of it all.  This meaning does not require any other player to share it, one could be self-satisfied, but its value grows as more players buy into the meaning.  I don't know, but I find it absolutely fascinating that meaning creation, which occurs at the player level, can continue to grow and prosper, sometimes in profound ways, long after the fact creation process has ended... and its absolutely central to what we do in roleplay!

At the time of the battle of Thermopylae, the Persians just could not fathom that it was only accolades and not great wealth or power that the Greek athletes at the Olympic games competed so aggressively for.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume