Sitch -> Sitch in Gamism & Sim

[lumpley]

I said this somewhere else:

After setup, what a game's rules do is control how you resolve one situation into the next. If you're designing a Narrativist game, what you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players. Every new situation should be a step upward in that conflict, toward a climax and resolution. Your rules need to provoke the players, collaboratively, into escalating the conflict, until it can't escalate no more.

How do Situations work in Gamist and Simulationist play?

I imagine that in Gamist play, there's a similar escalation, but the line across which the conflict happens isn't moral, it's ... strategic, is that the word to use?  Each move in a chess game is an escalation, an aggression that your opponent can't ignore.

So if you're designing a Gamist game, you need rules that make the flow of situation to situation into a) rising conflict b) across a strategic line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players.  Am I talking out of my butt here?

What about Simulationist play?  

It's a requirement of Exploration that each situation follows, in-game causally, from the previous.  (Thus in Gamist and Narrativist play, escalating isn't enough - each sitch has to plausibly escalate, because of the underlying foundation of Exploration.)  Is plausibility enough for Simulationism?  Is there anything built on the foundation?

It seems to me that there may be a big difference at this level between "pastiche" Sim and "what would happen if..." Sim.  In pastiche Sim, Situation should progress along formula lines.  In what would happen if... Sim, there'd be no such constraint.  Does that seem reasonable?

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Vincent,

Works for me.

I was under the impression that I provided a very elaborate set of historical Situation options/combinations for both Gamist and Narrativist play in the respective essays.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

Hm, I expect that you did.  Poor internalization on my part, then.  Research time for me.

-Vincent

[John Kim]

What about Simulationist play?  

It's a requirement of Exploration that each situation follows, in-game causally, from the previous.  (Thus in Gamist and Narrativist play, escalating isn't enough - each sitch has to plausibly escalate, because of the underlying foundation of Exploration.)  Is plausibility enough for Simulationism?  Is there anything built on the foundation?

It seems to me that there may be a big difference at this level between "pastiche" Sim and "what would happen if..." Sim.  In pastiche Sim, Situation should progress along formula lines.  In what would happen if... Sim, there'd be no such constraint.  Does that seem reasonable?

That's a good characterization about the different "types" of Sim ("pastiche" vs "what would happen if...").  

The "what would happen if..." seems to be rgfa Threefold Simulationism -- which is really a different category from GNS Simulationism.  cf. http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/   The relation of this to GNS should really be discussed more, I think.  For Threefold Simulationism, plausibility is not sufficient.  It has to follow from internal cause.  A drama-based decision can be retroactively justified with some inserted piece to make it plausible -- but that is not Threefold Simulationist.  

On the other hand, "pastiche" is more characteristic of GNS Simulationism.  It doesn't require following internal cause at all, and in fact tends to resist doing so.  Instead, the situations should progress in rising character conflict according to genre.  (Note that this suggests character conflict, which is not the same as moral conflict and engagement of the player.)

[lumpley]

That seems like a big conflation of layers to me, John.  I'm satisfied that rgfa-Sim is an approach to techniques, not a CA a'tall.  An rgfa-Sim game might have player-authored rising conflict between fit characters across a moral line, in other words, or it might not - depending on decisions made outside the bounds of rgfa-Sim.  What it will have is unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality.  All technique things, not CA things.

Which means that, yes, if you're playing an rgfa-Sim game Sim, it'll be what would happen if..., not pastiche.  (If you're playing an rgfa-Sim game Narrativist, it'll be the sort of Narrativist game with unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and an A-B-C approach to time and causality.  Naturally enough.)

Meanwhile, what's the difference between "plausible" and "following from internal cause"?  They're synonymous as I used them.  It's an Exploration-level concern, not a CA-level concern.  Gamist and Narrativist games don't get a free pass on a sloppy in-game.

Does a "what would happen if..." game design need to direct the resolution of Situation to Situation in any way, beyond simply ensuring that nobody violates in-game causality?

-Vincent

[Walt Freitag]

Vincent, I see an enormous difference between "plausible" and "following from internal cause," the latter being a subset of the former. The difference tends to be muted when talking about the direct effects of player-character actions, because such effects have a built-in expected cause (the player-character actions themselves) and are unlikely to appear plausible if they don't follow causally. But when you consider events created in Director stance, especially by the GM but also possibly by a player using narration rights, it's easy to have events that are plausible but not following from causes that are part of the shared imagined space. A coincidental meeting between a player-character and an NPC, a storm during a sea voyage, a letter sent to a player-character that gets delayed in the mail: Unless the shared imagined space contains some sort of internal ongoing model of the movements of NPCs, the interaction of weather systems, or the efficiency of the operation of the postal service, these events cannot be said to "follow from internal cause." But they are plausible in that they can reasonably be explained as the effects of hypothetical causes from outside the explored (shared) portion of the imagined space. (If expressed, these hypothetical causes do become part of the shared imagined space: "Hmm, must have fallen behind the bin at the post office." But they are not usually expressed.)

I don't know enough about Threefold to tell whether the absence of "plausible but not following from internal cause" statements is necessarily a characteristic of Threefold Sim. But limiting events to "following from internal cause" is an observable Sim technique, though probably rarely perfectly observed by gamemasters.

- Walt

[M. J. Young]

Vincent, although off the top of my head I haven't fit it to your formula, isn't a good part of what happens in simulationist play characterized by rising involvement? This then leads to greater knowledge, and the rest should be the same.

--M. J. Young

[lumpley]

Walt: that's really interesting.  Mustn't everything, every single thing in a game, depend originally, if you track it backward, on a hypothetical cause unestablished within the SIS?  So then the difference between "internally caused" and "plausible but not following from a previously-established cause" becomes a matter of degree: how long ago, how many causal steps backward, did we invent this?

Very interesting.

It also suggests a second matter of degree: how many of the things that happen are merely plausible, vs. how many follow from previously-established causes?

I'd put those as tolerances at the Exploration level.  Your group at play is going to require this proportion of internally caused results to plausible results overall, with it requiring this many causal steps to establish something as internal.  They'll vary from group to group and game to game, not CA to CA.  Am I making sense?

MJ: Maybe, probably.  Let me think about how that would look in my little scheme.

Meanwhile: "Big idea" Sim, right?  As opposed to "pastiche" and "what would happen if..." Sim.  A big idea Sim game resolves Sitch into Sitch in such a way that it brings us back always to the big idea, emphasizes and reinforces always the big idea.  That's certainly how puppies works in play: wherever you go, whatever you do, you want more Evil.  The game in action pushes you to kill puppies for satan, like ringin' a bell.  Can somebody confirm that that's how, oh, Vampire: the Masquerade or some other (more coherent) high-concept Sim game works?

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Vincent,

It's certainly how Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon work, with the High Concept being composed of the literary themes, terms, and images of the sources material. Everyone works hard to continue to reinforce them, as well as to revel in them.

As for Vampire, I don't consider it a good example of High Concept Simulationist design, and frankly, I think its play reflects more of how the local group chooses to Drift it rather than anything particularly identifiable, especially in combinations of Techniques, in the design itself.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

M.J.: by "rising involvement" do you mean that the players become increasingly empowered to contribute to the construction of the in-game, that the characters become increasingly central to what's going on in the in-game, or something else?

Less immediately, my thinking is that in roleplaying, knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by creating it, not discovering it, because there's nothing there to be discovered.  Am I, consequently, missing your meaning?

It wouldn't surprise me if you've answered these before.  I'm of course happy to be pointed to threads or essays, no need to go over it again.

Ron:  Sure.  Gotcha.

-Vincent

[John Kim]

I don't know enough about Threefold to tell whether the absence of "plausible but not following from internal cause" statements is necessarily a characteristic of Threefold Sim. But limiting events to "following from internal cause" is an observable Sim technique, though probably rarely perfectly observed by gamemasters.  

What we came to agree about Threefold Sim is that it is more limited than "plausible" but not entirely limited to "following from internal cause".  The definition that we came up with on rgfa is avoiding meta-game influence.  I could split this into three levels:

1) Plausible but dramatically-determined
This includes much director-stance stuff.  So you can decide on a result based on drama, and then come up with an explanation to make it plausible.  Over time the dramatic pattern is visible, though.  If the GM consistently makes dramatic determinations, the players can see in the results cues for what the GM thinks the story should be like.  

2) Plausible and arbitrarily-determined
This may include new creation, but it is extrapolated from existing facts and has no dramatic pattern to it.  So it does not inject any drama into the situation (on average) but instead is background.  So a person the PCs meet may have some quirks, but he is not tailored to further "the story".  The players cannot pick up from resolution cues about intended story direction.  

3) Follows Internal Cause
This strictly is determined from already-determined elements and/or logical extrapolation from them.  

So Threefold Simulationism is restricted to #2 and #3.  And yes, pure Threefold Sim is a pretty rare style -- but influence of it is common.

[lumpley]

John, do you see any contradiction between your #2 + #3 and my "unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality"?  I don't but I'd probably miss it if there were any.

Is anything in your #2 + #3 incompatible with Narrativism's demand that situations escalate?  Again I don't see anything but I'd probably miss it.

-Vincent

[John Kim]

John, do you see any contradiction between your #2 + #3 and my "unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality"?  I don't but I'd probably miss it if there were any.

I'm not sure, because I'm not clear what the "strong constraints" are.  Offhand, it seems like your characterization still allows for #1 -- i.e. meta-game thinking about what you would like to have happen and then arranging for this to fit within tight plausibility constraints.  

Is anything in your #2 + #3 incompatible with Narrativism's demand that situations escalate?  Again I don't see anything but I'd probably miss it.

I don't see any a priori incompatibility, but it seems at least tricky.  If Narrativism does demand that situations escalate, then following pure Threefold Simulationism means you have limited techniques to fulfill that.  You can control what level of abstraction to resolve at (or equivalently what scene to cut to), but you can't modify the in-game results of situations based on wanting the situation to escalate.  

On the other hand, in-game you will inherently have periods of escalation and periods of de-escalation.  So this can be handled by simply picking an escalating period, and whenever it stops escalating, that is the end of the sequence.

[lumpley]

Excellent!  Tricky is doable.

I left "strong constraints" unspecified, because what do I know.  You've specified them to, at least, "no metagame influence over outcomes."  So now we can read it as:

"Unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution (including allowing no metagame influence over outcomes), and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality."

Seem good?

If Narrativism does demand that situations escalate, then following pure Threefold Simulationism means you have limited techniques to fulfill that. You can control what level of abstraction to resolve at (or equivalently what scene to cut to), but you can't modify the in-game results of situations based on wanting the situation to escalate.

I'll suggest that Narrativist play does not, as a general rule, allow you to modify in-game results based on wanting the situation to escalate.  If particular in-game results can make a situation fail to escalate, it's not a solid Narrativist design.  So I don't think that's much of what'd make an rgfa-Sim Narrativist game tricky.

But that'd be better served in a "Sitch -> Sitch in Narrativism" thread or an "RGFA-Sim Narrativist Game Design" thread, so I'll stop there.

-Vincent

[M. J. Young]

M.J.: by "rising involvement" do you mean that the players become increasingly empowered to contribute to the construction of the in-game, that the characters become increasingly central to what's going on in the in-game, or something else?

I wanted to avoid the word immersion because it means so many different things to so many different people; but by involvement I mean immersion in a very broad sense.

For those for whom "being there" is critical to their sim play, this translates to what they usually mean by immersion: having the experience of being in the place and time they are exploring, being much more connected to the world.

For those who play in a "detached" or "observer" sim mode, where they're experimenting with it to see how it works (Ralph's recent comment about exploring system by experimenting with the physics of a world in which you can leap off a cliff and survive is very much along these lines), it is about finding more aspects to explore.

For a more middle-ground explorative sim, such as my suggested news team game, it's about having doors opened to reach new areas to explore.

Less immediately, my thinking is that in roleplaying, knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by creating it, not discovering it, because there's nothing there to be discovered. Am I, consequently, missing your meaning?

You can have this experience in sim; I think that an awful lot of sim play, though, assumes that the referee has something already there to explore. Certainly if you enter NagaWorld in Multiverser, the vast majority of what you explore will be uncovering the world as described in the book--you go in any direction, you will eventually find something that surprises you, something that simultaneously reveals new aspects of the world and raises new questions about it. Sure, referees and players are often adding to this, but in this case most of it "exists" in the sense that it's been created in advance (by the game designers, but it could as easily be by the referee) and is now being brought into the SIS through play.

Note my previous suggestion that the SIS contains information that is not known to all the players and yet is agreed to be present. In some more hardcore sim play, when the players come to the door, they don't know what's on the other side, but they have implicitly agreed that whatever is in the referee's notes is what is on the other side of that door--it exists in their shared imaginations as a blank with a value to be discovered, and opening the door is a means of communicating to them what they already agreed is there.

I agree that mutual creation is not entirely inimical to sim play; it's also rather rare, and most sim players will deny that it happens (and will attempt to characterize those moments when it does happen as actually being something else).

This of course is all in reference to CA sim.

Help?

I haven't finished reading the thread; I hope it hasn't been closed or something....

--M. J. Young