Simplistic GNS examples...

[RDU Neil]

Cut:  Realized this should be here... not RPG Theory...



As I've attempted to plow through the varioud GNS articles and the like, I find my non-academic brain needing some clarification. (I have to look up words like brachiate and ontogeny, y'see.) To try and understand the differences between G and N and S, I thought I attempt some simple examples to see if I'm "getting it." Input requested.

Example: Character movement abilities

Take a game where three characters all need to rush downtown to stop a large monster from eating the Levec Lincoln Tower.

Char A) has normal human running

Char B) has a souped up sports car.

Char C) has the inate power of flight.

All three leave at the same time, rushing to the scene... (now we get into the differentiation of GN & S)

Simulationist = Each movement ability has a specific rate, based off of a core rule that establishes cause and effect. Char A spent least amount of points and moves the slowest, Char B has more speed through a vehicle, and Char C spent a lot of points and has the fastest most reliable mode. To this end, staying strictly Simulationist, Char C arrives on the scene much faster, likely long engaged in the battle with the monster before Char B comes screeching up in his Silver-mobile! Char A, huffing along the jogging trail, may never even make it to the scene before the battle is complete. They just aren't fast enough.

Narrativist = It just doesn't matter HOW each character gets there, because the metagame issue, very much at hand, is "Let's tell a story about fighting a monster trying to destroy a city!" Therefore, there might be a brief description of each character, running, driving or flying to the scene, but this is passed over and the game really starts with all three characters engaging the monster (and only if the player and others agree that it is humorous and makes a good story, would the fact that Char A most likely comes trudging up after the battle is all over, even be discussed.)

Gamist = I'm not sure. Having abandoned the D&D style a long time ago, I'm not sure how this would play out, unless a party of generic character types, each with a list of attributes that fills a necessary niche for successful completion of a goal, opened a door to find themselves transported downtown and looking up at a large monster eating a building. (This is tongue in cheek, mind you.)

Anyway... do I have this right? Would this be a good "simple" way to separate the 3 types (at their extremes, of course. I understand that most games have varying levels of all three.)

Thanks,
Neil

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Neil,

Boy, this reminds me of conversations with M.J. Young years ago at the Gaming Outpost ...

Anyway, the trouble with your examples is that GNS won't mean a thing in answering your question. What you're asking about is the Technique called Scene Framing. And Techniques do not correspond, 1:1, to Creative Agendas.

The issue of "when do they arrive" may be very important or very unimportant to the priorities of play, regardless of which (G, N, or S) Agenda is top dog. Or to put it another way, you'd have to tell me more about the conflict and what specific sort of G, N, or S is under way. And you'd also have to tell me a lot more about the people playing and how they're interacting.

I really don't intend to be frustrating. But in essence, you've asked a question about how certain imaginary events are established into play, and that is strictly a [System [Techniques]] issue.

Group #1 says, "You all arrive at once," and they do. Case closed.

Group #2 says, "You hear about this at 12 noon. Check your movement rates and the city-travel speed adjustment chart, and tell me when you get there."

Group #3 says, "Roll for your [travel ability]; whoever fails gets there later than everyone else."

But that variety, as well as the myriad of other options, tells us nothing about the actual GNS agenda at work with that group.

Yes, whatever Techniques are chosen (i.e., however the group agrees about how the characters all arrive, and when) should be in accord with whatever GNS goal the participants have. But given what you've said, that's all I can say.

Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hello Neil,

Welcome!

I can understand that Ron's articles can be a little dense.  I eat GNS stuff for breakfast and I had to tackle the three most recent essays in chunks spread out over a few days.  However, they are totally worth the effort of muddling through, if you haven't already done so.

Now for your question.  You're off base.  The main problem being that looking at a single situation and then asking how would a GN or S focused game tackle this situation is not the best way to understand the three modes.  On the microcosom scale of individual gameplay moments the three modes of play can look quite similar because they are all built on the same social foundation of Exploration, which is just basically "imagining stuff happening."

I think one the hardest things for people to grasp with GNS is the group-social dynamic and reinforcement.  It wasn't until Ron published his Gamism essay that this really began to sink in for me.  When Joe throws up his arms and cheers what is he cheering about?  When Mary gets a wry little smile on her face and nods knowingly what is she nodding and smiling about?  These cues are far more telling about a groups' Creative Agenda (GNS preference) than any examination of a single moment of "how was this handled?"

Now for the three modes themselves.

1) Gamism is based on winning and losing.  But that's a lot more subtle than people think.  Have you ever seen someone show a friend a character sheet with this kind of wicked grin on his face?  The friend then starts reading over the character sheet and then this slow kind of "oh shit" look spreads across his face.  You know damn well that the first player has built some kind of power-house character with some awesome and clever combination of rules and the second player is admiring his handy work.  That's a component of Gamism.  Social-ego has to be on the line somewhere.  This isn't threatening or malicious it's all part of the fun.  Even in a classic party oriented dungeon crawl it's all about "go team, go!" or "man, I can't believe that dragon HOSED us what the hell were we thinking?"

2) Simulationism is about enjoying Exploration matching up with a set of pre-agreed upon expectations.  Be that "reality" or "genre conventions" or "character type" or what have you.  Ever seen lots of discussions about superhero rpgs?  People are often concerned with system details that will ensure the PCs lose in the begining but triumph in the end.  That's because they're concerned with getting play to match their expections of how a superhero story "should" flow.  A swashbuckling story ends in a duel because that's how swashbuckling stories end.  Captain Kirk gets the woman and does the right thing because that's what Captain Kirk does.  And so on.

3) Narrativism is about tackling a real-world problematic human issue called a Premise.  It's about getting everyone at the table fired about some aspect of some moral or ethical dilemma with NO preconcieved ideas about what the answer "should" be.  Then everyone is thrown headlong into characters and situations that embody this problem and wrestle with it through out play.  In a game I'm running now one PC has two children in someone elses care because her husband was abusive and she's been driven insane.  Last session it became necessary to decide who the children were with and she ran out some prosibilities but then finally said with great excitement, "It's my Mother-In-Law!"  And another player pointed at her and said with equal excitement, 'YES!"  Why?  Because we recognize that the Daughter-In-Law/Mother-In-Law conflict as being engaging and we want to see how it plays out here.

Does any of this make more sense?

Jesse

[RDU Neil]

I guess I'm trying to get derive some "behavioral tendencies" that would be indicative of each Creative Agenda.  I'm a firm believer that only in demonstrable behaviors can any system or attitude or creative desire be examined or fulfilled.

To that end...

Are you saying that the Technique of Scene Framing would be the behavior that only ONE of the CAs would choose?  (I don't think you are saying that.)

Or...

Are you saying that each CA...G, N or S... would Scene Frame, but would do it in a very different way.   This second is what I'm getting at.

My examples were generalities, rather than behaviors.  I appologize.  

Try this:  Group 1: Each player is expected to match their characters behavior to an incremental time frame that all must adhere to, and to this extent, the events play out "by the rules."  Char C arrives first, having faster movement power, and therefore must act alone (or decide not to act) because the core system says that the others are not there yet.  This is an example of Simulationist behavior.

Group 2:  The group as a whole decides that worrying about the exact amount of time it takes for each character to arrive is unimportant and skips to the "Story now" which is all characters arriving on the scene in such a way that every character has a chance to be "involved in the story."  This is Narrativist type behavior.

Group 3:  Well, you stated it perfectly.  Roll for your travel ability... a game stat with no "reality" measure that a Simulationist would want.  It is about rolling the dice, not really simulating the urgent travel to a dangerous encounter... nor is it about the immediacy of telling dramatic stories together.  To this point, the character with the best "travel ability" wins.

In the end... is it possible to give "behavioral tendencies" for each CA... and if not, what is the use of the GNS model.  Yes, it may allow me to understand why a group is "not on the same page" but if it doesn't give guidance for "changing behavior" to help drive one CA over another, then how is it helpful?

Thanks,
Neil

[Valamir]

In the end... is it possible to give "behavioral tendencies" for each CA...

Yes, but only in combination and patterns.  Your examples are attempting to map a single technique 1:1 to GNS and this can't be done.  

But yes, using certain combinations of these techniques consistantly over time can be a good indicator of CA.

We've only just begun to scratch the surface of this idea, so no, there aren't any lists of example combinations at this point...and may never be.

[RDU Neil]

As a management trainer, we often work with people on Facilitation and Presentation.

A good example for differentiating them can be given as a difference in "behavior" when presented with the same situation.

A participant asks a question.

The presenter answers the questions themselves, as they are the expert in the situation.

The facilitator says, "What do you all think?" and turns the question into a group discussion, perhaps offering her own opinion... but as partner, not "the expert."

Both are acceptable, but serve different needs in different situations.


What I'm looking for is something similar with the CAs G, N and S.

When presented with the same situation... how does the Gamist behavior differ from the Narrativist behavior from the Simulationist behavior.

Is this even possible to answer?  If not, then I'm REALLY confused.

Neil

[lumpley]

Welcome to the Forge, Neil!  (I'm sure others have already said that, but I haven't until now.)

When presented with the same situation... how does the Gamist behavior differ from the Narrativist behavior from the Simulationist behavior.

Is this even possible to answer? If not, then I'm REALLY confused.

It's not possible to answer at that scale.  It's possible to answer over the course of a session or sessions.

Narrativist play (for instance) is play in which the players comment via play on moral issues.  Your Group 2 example doesn't reveal anything about what moral issues might or might not be present, nor who if anybody comments on them.  That group might be playing straightforward genre-emulation Sim, or Gamism where "who arrives where, when" isn't part of the challenge or stakes.

The bad news is, there aren't any simplistic GNS examples.  When you're talking about GNS, you're talking about the emotional investment and long-term decision-making of the players themselves, and it's complicated stuff.  It doesn't reduce to the level you're asking about.

Now, if you want to talk about how GNS-specific games have historically approached scene framing, IIEE and resolution at large, we can do that - but it's the sum of the techniques over time that support a specific CA, not any one applied once.  If you want to talk about what a game's rules have to do, over time, to support a given CA - as in my post in context and G/N/S in game design - we can probably do that too.  That'd be good stuff, I think.

-Vincent

[M. J. Young]

I don't know that I can add to what these gentlemen have said; but perhaps I can provide a different angle from which to see it.

When I was writing Verse Three, Chapter One, I created a game world in which the character finds himself on a spaceship, and gradually comes to understand that the ship and its crew are in some sense rebel pirates fighting against an oppressive interstellar empire (more like Blake's 7 than anything else). In the book, the character started to wrestle with ethical concerns. At one point he is wondering whether the people he has killed in this fight were really bad people, or just ordinary people trying to get by in a bad situation who wound up in the wrong place? Then he turns his attention to wondering whether, as a trained fighter whose hope in life is to prove himself a brave warrior, he should even have such concerns. Had this become the focus of play in a game, it would have been very much narrativist. He still fought the federation soldiers and worked with the rebels; he still learned about the space ship and its systems; he still was involved in aspects of the story that could be considered gamist or simulationist--but when he turned the focus of the story on these moral questions, he framed everything that happened within a narrativist context.

I liked the world, so I extrapolated the salient features for use in games. I ran it some time back for a girl whose response to the situation was to see how she fit in. I big Star Trek/B5 fan, for her this world became what would it be like to be part of a spaceship crew? She learned some skills, helped with their missions, learned to use their weapons, thought about whether there was any way she could get home to her family--but this was, it seems, simulationist play, entirely about being there and discovering what it's like to be there.

I used the same world again this weekend for demos at a convention. At the morning session, I dropped a guy into this whom I had really just met. He seemed to be settling into the ship member routine, although he had several times indicated an interest in trading whatever he could (which was mostly his promise to get out of their hair) for some of their technology, and particularly their weapons. Then, near the end of play, he surprised me by attempting to capture the ship and take it with him. As he was killed, his friend who was also at the table (but in a different game world) started telling him what an idiot he was--not that he had "ruined the game", but that he had gone about it all wrong. The idea here was that he could have captured the ship, and boy wouldn't that have been impressive, but he just didn't think it through well enough to succeed at it. These guys were gamist players. Whoever gets the most toys wins. They were showing off for each other, trying to build great tales of their successes they could tell again.

Most of what the characters did in all three cases was very similar. They all met the crew and interacted with them. They all learned to use the weapons and found opportunities to use them. They all explored how things worked on the ship. Most of what the mechanics did was very similar in all three cases. It determined success and failure of their efforts in much the same way (although in the book I didn't roll, but rather attempted to provide the feel as if I had done so). The scenario was the same, even to going through the same events in the same order. The characters were the same, although details were added with each game (and possibly some lost) as the players asked different questions about the characters. What was different was that the character in the book made this a story about his own courage and values, and the moral implications of what he was choosing; the girl on the forum made it an exploration of an experience she could never have in real life but which excited her interests; and the guy at the convention used it to try to strut his stuff, to do something really impressive by outplaying the scenario.

Techniques are subservient to this.

Scene framing isn't really "a technique"; it's a name for a category of play organization which represents many styles and techniques. All it means is that someone decides where/when/how the scene starts and where/when/how it ends. There is a tendency for narrativist games to focus on starting and ending scenes with the relevant action (you're in the restaurant with your new girlfriend when suddenly your ex walks over and throws a drink in your face....so then she storms out, leaving you standing there with the crowd staring at you. The next day....), simulationist games to start with entrances and end with exits (you walk into the restaurant, and the maitre d' asks if you have a reservation....having paid your bill, you leave the building), and gamist games to resemble simulationist approaches superficially, but more quickly get to the challenge (you walk into the restaurant with your new girlfriend, and spy your ex sitting at a table with a hulking brute of a man who could probably rip you in half....smiling at the unconscious brute, you take the arm of your girlfriend, and tip the maitre d' on the way out). However, this is tendency, not definition. There is no reason for any play style to be locked into particular approaches to scene framing; it is merely that some scene framing styles are more conducive to some aspects of creative agenda.

Does that help?

--M. J. Young

[RDU Neil]

Thanks to all who posted.  This did a great deal to explain the concepts behind GNS.  It makes sense that my behavioral question was not appropriate... or answerable by this model.

I would also say that the most important facet of this whole model is that "story" is (or can be) created by ALL of these CAs.  It confused me at first, because the term Narrativist seemed to indicate the creation of a story... seeming to indicate the others did not.  That was clarified in Ron's Narrativist essay... Story vs "Story Now"

With that clear, I can at least understand that I am very much a Pure System Simulationist... and even called my style of role playing "simulating" before I ever heard of GNS.  Guess I was somewhat on the same track.

Anyway, all these examples really do help for my personal understanding. (I was very unclear about how Narrativist was so overtly "moral" in it's mode.   Isn't it possible to have a non GM, group "story now" game that doesn't really beat you over the head with ethical or moral questions?  I guess not.)

The struggle now will be to make this meaningful to my play group, who will likely never read, nor care to, any of this theory.  (Except Nuadha, who has posted here.)l

Thanks again.

[lumpley]

Hey Neil.  Sorry to focus straight in on a parenthetical, but.

I was very unclear about how Narrativist was so overtly "moral" in it's mode. Isn't it possible to have a non GM, group "story now" game that doesn't really beat you over the head with ethical or moral questions? I guess not.

Being beaten over the head actually blocks you from commenting on an ethical or moral question.  Narrativism isn't preaching.  A Narrativist game needn't be any more aggressive about its moral issues than a movie, say - did Die Hard or The Royal Tenenbaums beat us over the head?

So yeah, the answer is that if a group is co-authoring story now, it's examining moral issues, even if the players themselves don't really notice.  Just like a movie examines moral issues even when the audience - heck, even when the screenwriter - doesn't really notice.

-Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

There is one behavior that does tend to stick out as an indicator of mode in a way. It's the social reward behavior. Really this is sorta secondary behavior because it's predicated on having some behavior of the appropriate sort to encourage. But essentially, if the player is giving you a pat on the back because you as a player came up with some interesting tactic that won a political engagement, then he's supporting the Gamist CA. I think that these are the most visible behaviors, and would be perfect indicators if it weren't for the fact that you still have to determine what the nature is of the action being rewarded. Sometimes it's pretty clear, however.

Mike

[ethan_greer]

So, if you get a pat on the back for good tactics, maybe you're playing Gamist.  If you get a pat on the back for facilitating exploration of theme, maybe you're playing Narativist.  And if you get a pat on the back for effectively employing explorative detail, maybe you're playing Simulationist.

Interesting.  It strikes me that this is an important observation, and I have no idea why.  And that's why I rarely post to theory threads...

[Scourge108]

So is it, then, that the three groups may have all reacted to the situation in the same way, but it is in how they do it and what aspects they focus on that makes the difference?  As I would have guessed from my limited understanding of GNS, the gamist bunch would have been competing to see who could get to the monster first, or at least focused on supporting team tactics to defeat the monster enemy and "win."  The Narrativist bunch would have rushed off while reflecting on what moral and personal issues are involved (does the monster have rights?  Is it true that if you battle with monsters you will become a monster?).  

Sim is where I get confused.  I think I am a simulationsist, but I seem to take a narrtivist route to get there.  It seems to me that there are 2 kinds of Sim (maybe the beeg horseshoe is more of a beeg doughnut).  In one, the characters would rush to fight the monster, checking all the modifications, rolling for red lights and car malfunctions, and trying to make the chase as realistic as possible.  The other kind seems to take a more cinematic approach.  To simulate an over-the-top action movie, they would have the cars doing all kinds of stunts on the way to the monster, crash into a sidewalk fruit stand, spout one-liners and kill the monster as he falls screaming off the top of a building.  Or is this a kind of Narrativism?  Am I wrong in considering a game that simulates the lack of "realism" in a particular genre as a form of Sim?

[jburneko]

Hello,

It's an important observation because that's precisely why GNS is a useful diagnostic tool for gaming dysfunction.  If two players are high fiving each other after some moment of play and a third player across the table is rolling his eyes and given them dirty looks there's a problem.  What are the two players high fiving each other so excited about?  What normally gets the person rolling his eyes just as excited as them?  Are they compatible?  If not then perhaps its time to split the group.

Jesse

[Doctor Xero]

I ~think~ I understand . . .

Two questions :

Is it possible for one to be simultaneously S and N?  In both games in which I play and games which I run, I am interested in both the experiencing of the character and his/her world and in ethical questions.

Forgive my inexperience with the G approach, but the only gamists I recall ever meeting have been male twinks/munchkins/power gamers into "nerd machismo" -- bragging about their character's hypermasculinity because they have none of their own -- the sort of people I avoid in all aspects of life and not simply RPGing.  (Yes, I know there are dysfunctional sorts of S and N as well.)  If the G approach is popular, I'm certain there must be other sorts.  Could someone please enlighten me on this by providing me with examples of gamism which do not involve nerd machismo?

Doctor Xero