Risk in Sim play.

[Tony Irwin]

I was hoping people could help me understand the role of risk in sim play.

I really like recent definitions I've seen of how risk is used in gamist play: the depth of risk the player takes on lets them demonstrate guts. The preparations the player makes for dealing with risk lets them demonstrate smarts.

Can anyone help me understand the role that risk performs in sim play?

Cheers,

Tony

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tony,

The way I've been seeing it for a long time (and clearly this is a controversial topic), Simulationist play is based primarily on celebration of a shared imagined set of events. What makes it difficult to understand is that these events can range so widely, which (to me) doesn't matter, as the essential priority seems the same to me as I gaze over the diversity.

That's why I'm glad you asked this question, because it helps me articulate one of the "sameness" things. I don't think actual-person risk plays much role in Simulationist play in comparison with Gamist or Narrativist. It is ... well, "comfortable" in a way that the other two potentially are not, even when it's procedurally and intellectually demanding.

Some social or aesthetic risks are possible in Simulationist play, certainly. Here are the ones I can think of immediately.

1. Not getting the genre at hand. People who are enjoying a setting with a great deal of commitment to its (for instance) historical integrity are not going to like playing with someone who doesn't grasp that commitment.

Although this effect can be annoying in any sort of play which places some emphasis on its setting-integrity, I think it's more of a deal-breaker in Simulationist play.

2. Not depicting one's character well to a minimal degree that's set by the group.

3. In some forms of Simulationist play, inadvertently not cooperating with the story-goals of whoever is making a story happen (usually the GM).

In all the above, I'm not talking about a player who doesn't want to cooperate or participate in the celebration, but rather who demonstrates his or her incompetence at it. That's the risk: being seen as a poor contributor.

Bear in mind that the Simulationist concept is a bit of a controversy at the moment. I think a number of people would consider my #1-2 to be applicable to any play with a heavy emphasis on setting/character, period, and my #3 to be a dysfunctional situation from the get-go and not Sim.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Simulationist play is based primarily on celebration of a shared imagined set of events.

Controversal indeed.  My problem with this approach to Simulationism is it is functionally identical to Exploration.  I fail to see how all roleplaying does not involve a celebration of a shared imagined set of events.  

3. In some forms of Simulationist play, inadvertently not cooperating with the story-goals of whoever is making a story happen (usually the GM).


Bear in mind that the Simulationist concept is a bit of a controversy at the moment. I think a number of people would consider <snip>  my #3 to be a dysfunctional situation from the get-go and not Sim.

Actually I think this highlights the other key area of controversy.  #3 would not be dysfunctional play, it would be a key goal of Sim play (and not inadvertantly either).  The idea that there is some person with story-goals that the other players are supposed to cooperate with to make happen has been clogging up the works for a long time.  "Story" in sim play is whatever sequence of events actually wound up happening through play.  This is diametrically opposed to the idea of the GM having story-goals that the players are supposed to cooperate to achieve.  


So with that said in the interest of disclosing the different perspective, my take on risk in Sim winds up not being that far off from Ron's.

Risk in a sim game is pushed down to the level of the characters.  It is the characters who are at risk.  It is they who may experience either success or failure.  Ideally, in sim play, the players don't care which.  They are there to "find out what happens" and if "what happens" happens to be that the characters fail, that is acceptable.  Players may root for their characters to succeed.  Indeed much of the adversity in Sim play is predicated on the players doing a good job at portraying their character's desire to succeed and the GMs doing a good job at portraying an enemy's desire to see them fail.  But ultimately the player's don't want their characters to succeed badly enough to be willing to violate the integrity of the simulation to make that happen.  In other words, no fudging, no illusionary technique, no Deus ex Machina to save the day.  That would be worse than character failure to sim play.

In this case the choice is between the lesser of two evils.  One evil is having a campaign that ends poorly with the heroes meeting unheroic ends where not even the tragic elements are satisfying.  The other evil is when, to avoid the first evil, the players/GM violate the sanctity of the sim to prevent such an unsatisfying end.

The risk, then, that is faced by the players in all sim play is the risk of an unsatisfying climax.  Related to this is the risk as a player of not being able to handle that (perhaps due to caring about the character more than the integrity of the sim) and resorting to unnacceptable techniques to stave off unsatisfying ends.

[Marco]

Risk in a sim game is pushed down to the level of the characters.  It is the characters who are at risk.  It is they who may experience either success or failure.  Ideally, in sim play, the players don't care which.  They are there to "find out what happens" and if "what happens" happens to be that the characters fail, that is acceptable.  Players may root for their characters to succeed.  Indeed much of the adversity in Sim play is predicated on the players doing a good job at portraying their character's desire to succeed and the GMs doing a good job at portraying an enemy's desire to see them fail.  But ultimately the player's don't want their characters to succeed badly enough to be willing to violate the integrity of the simulation to make that happen.  In other words, no fudging, no illusionary technique, no Deus ex Machina to save the day.  That would be worse than character failure to sim play.

I (as stated recently) agree with this take on Sim.

I believe much of the "desire to succeed" comes from the level of immersion or suspension of disbelief and  how strongly the player relates to his or her character.

If the level is low then it's a scientific experiment.

If the level is high then it's a fundamental strong urge to succeed while staying in character.

If the level is high and the character is relevant in some way to the player then one finds an in and out of game emotional response to the situation (I think this may approach the boundary to Narrativism since I think relationship to the character comes from relating to human-experience stuff that etither a real person or even an imaginary one is going through).

But all of this is subordinate to keeping in Actor Stance (which may or may not be the perfect term--but is as close as I can come here)--without Actor stance the situation's relevance loses power (IMO).

-Marco

[Tony Irwin]

The risk, then, that is faced by the players in all sim play is the risk of an unsatisfying climax.

Ralph, do you view the definition of satisfying/unsatisfying as being group driven? So that sim play is driven by real people appreciating and celebrating each other's contributions in the same way that narrativist and gamist are? The risk isn't "bad dream/good dream", but "I make our dream bad/I make our dream good"?

Thanks Ron, and Ralph, I really appreciate your answers.

Tony

[Tony Irwin]

I believe much of the "desire to succeed" comes from the level of immersion or suspension of disbelief and  how strongly the player relates to his or her character.

If the level is low then it's a scientific experiment.

If the level is high then it's a fundamental strong urge to succeed while staying in character.

If the level is high and the character is relevant in some way to the player then one finds an in and out of game emotional response to the situation (I think this may approach the boundary to Narrativism since I think relationship to the character comes from relating to human-experience stuff that etither a real person or even an imaginary one is going through).

Thanks Marco. Would you say then that all sim play enjoys experiencing or "apprehending" risk? Players may differ in the extent to which they desire certain outcomes (and that desire is rooted in character identification, not on winning kudos from other players, or on making a thematic statement) but at some level they all want to experience risk?

[ErrathofKosh]

What Ron said...

However, I'd sum up all the statements with:

The risk for the player is generated by how well he explores the "main subject of exploration" as defined by the group.

Of course, this statement is tru for Narrativist and Gamist CA's as well, so I'll narrow it down for Simulationist goals. In my view (which is controversial and carries less weight than the other posters here), a CA is defined by what it explores.  Since Sim focuses on exploring a particular part of the game (setting, character, situation, even system), players risk not being in line with exploring that particular part of the game.  Thus, I have played in a group where the healer Jedi character wanted to go explore the healing properties of plants on Hou'din, while the rest of us were trying to solve the mysteries of the cloaking device.  She annoyed the most of us, but we attributed it to her being a "so-so" roleplayer.  This comes back to what Ron said...

In all the above, I'm not talking about a player who doesn't want to cooperate or participate in the celebration, but rather who demonstrates his or her incompetence at it. That's the risk: being seen as a poor contributor.

In Nar and Gam, the same holds true.  In Gam I'm exploring Challenge.  If I do it poorly or take on a different challenge than I should, I risk being a poor contributor.  In Nar, the Premise is the subject of exploration.  Again, doing it poorly will bring down wrath upon my head....

My $0.02...

Cheers
Jonathan

Edited to note the cross-post with Tony...

[Valamir]

I think both of those risks are present Tony.  There is the standard Peer Pressure risk that is present in all social activity as to whether you as a participant are going to let the group down because you're not good enough at the activity to do it as well as your peers.  The risk of "I made the dream bad".

But I think there is also the "bad dream" risk where at the end of a campaign, the players look around the table at each other and say  "man...that was really lame", "yeah, 6 months of weekly sessions and it ends like that?...that sucks."

In other words the players successfully remained committed to the ideal of "what happens", but in the end "what happened" stunk.

Dedicated sim players pick themselves up, brush themselves off and say, "oh well, what should be play next".

Others become disillusioned with the outcome and go in quest of techniques to help ensure that the next time they dedicate 6 months to a campaign the ending doesn't suck.  

I don't think its any great speculation given the roots of roleplaying in wargaming to suggest that that was precisely the route that was taken historically as players less dedicated to the Sim aspects of roleplaying got involved in the hobby.

A common sim response to the risk of the sucky ending is to reduce that risk by front loading situation.  The more compelling the initial situation, the less likely the ending is to suck.  

I'll further note,  that rewinding an unsatisfactory ending to a prior decision point and running it through again would also be completely conceivable as a valid sim solution...one that is very true to the roots of sim where gamers would take a given scenario and rerun it multiple times with different parameters (i.e. "what if this time, the German tanks weren't running low on fuel, would the 101st still hold out?").  While I don't have any significant anecdotal evidence to support groups doing this commonly, it would be a conceivable response to unsatisfying game endings that wouldn't necessarily violate sim sensibilities.


I'll also tangentally caveat the rather definitive statement I made above of

no fudging, no illusionary technique, no Deus ex Machina to save the day. That would be worse than character failure to sim play

An exception to this is when the players agree that the game mechanics have let them down.  At such times it is quite common in sim play to see the players work what might be painted as fudging or illusionary techniques in order to fix the game.  In other words, saving the simulation by fudging through bad mechanics.  I would imagine that the very first RPG house rules were invented for just such purposes.

Its actually a beautiful example of system in action where the players are taking back the credibility they'd previously given to the game rules and negotiating out a new outcome independent of those rules.

[Marco]

Thanks Marco. Would you say then that all sim play enjoys experiencing or "apprehending" risk? Players may differ in the extent to which they desire certain outcomes (and that desire is rooted in character identification, not on winning kudos from other players, or on making a thematic statement) but at some level they all want to experience risk?

Maybe. Ralph said in another thread that he "didn't understand Sim"--and I agree with that. Where Ron sees sameness, I see (presently) two very different incompatible agendas.

What I mainly see is this: the term Simulationist came about because people were doing what-if in contrast to story-first. I'm not sure that either of these deal directly with player-risk.

On the other hand, in the Actor-Stance/Author-Stance Narrativism thread between Vincent and Nathan I don't see how, if you're in Author-stance, you are consciously assuming risk for the premise-addressing-quality of your play even though both agreed that Actor-Stance-Narrativism was valid and Ron didn't object.

But I do know this: identification with the PC in what-if play certainly means that I usually *feel* that risk in the game to my character is interperted as risk to me (this is combat, life-and-death style risk).

-Marco

[ErrathofKosh]

I'll further note,  that rewinding an unsatisfactory ending to a prior decision point and running it through again would also be completely conceivable as a valid sim solution...one that is very true to the roots of sim where gamers would take a given scenario and rerun it multiple times with different parameters (i.e. "what if this time, the German tanks weren't running low on fuel, would the 101st still hold out?").  While I don't have any significant anecdotal evidence to support groups doing this commonly, it would be a conceivable response to unsatisfying game endings that wouldn't necessarily violate sim sensibilities.

While I have yet to see this down on a large scale, it happens on a smaller one quite frequently.

Example:
My character and the bad guy are battling in a room full of flammable chemicals.  I'm wearing full body armor and he is not.  In the course of the fight he flips up my visor to punch me in the face.  A few minutes later I shoot a vial of chemicals, inducing a large explosion.  The GM says "dude your face is going to be goo!"  I reply with, "wait a minute, why is my mask open?"  He reminds me that the villian opened it.  I remind him that the rules state that my visor is locked during combat.  He says, "oh, in that case, excellent shot!"  We just changed the setting using system after the original decisions had been made.  No Actor Stance...

Thus, I averted my character's risk of becoming disfigured or killed.  I think that though this type of risk is common in Sim games, it is not absolutely neccessary.  The kind of risk I was not interested in is whether or not the story had a dramatic ending.  That's another motive that probably lies within another CA...

Cheers
Jonathan

[Valamir]

Ralph said in another thread that he "didn't understand Sim"--and I agree with that.

Come again?

Did you mean Ron here?

[Marco]

Ralph said in another thread that he "didn't understand Sim"--and I agree with that.

Come again?

Did you mean Ron here?

I meant when Mike said you "didn't understand sim" and were making your own version of the theory to explain it. That is, you didn't understand the conventional take on Sim being exploration-squared.

I may be miss-remembering. If I am, I apologize (I certainly did not mean that you "didn't understand simulationist play"--but rather than you felt the current theory-version didn't hold up).

-Marco

[Tony Irwin]

Since Sim focuses on exploring a particular part of the game (setting, character, situation, even system), players risk not being in line with exploring that particular part of the game.  Thus, I have played in a group where the healer Jedi character wanted to go explore the healing properties of plants on Hou'din, while the rest of us were trying to solve the mysteries of the cloaking device.  She annoyed the most of us, but we attributed it to her being a "so-so" roleplayer.  

Jonathon, thanks for replying. In Gamism, someone presents you with risk - purposefully gives you the chance to show you've got the goods to handle challenges. In Narrativism I suppose someone presents you with risk to give you the chance to prove that what you value really does matter.

In your opinion why would someone present a simulationist with risk? From your Star Wars example I guess maybe it was to say "Prove you're one of us! Prove you love Star Wars in the very particular way that we do". The player's choices proved they didn't. Do you see that as an accurate surmisal of what happened there?

[ErrathofKosh]

In a word... yes.

The group makes the statement (through action, not consciously) that we want our characters to develop in a certain way with certain goals in mind.  My character simply wants to defeat the Empire and any dark Jedi in the process.  (He's a Jedi.)  Another character wants revenge against the Imperials for killing his family...  Another just wants his life back.  (he's wanted by the Empire.)  But, the healer Jedi says, "I could give a hoot about fighting the Empire, and by in-game extension, finding the cloaking device, I want my character to become a very powerful healer."  
We say, "I can't believe she doesn't want to go after the cloaking device!"
She is not following the group consensus of "we want to go after the Empire!"


OTOH, my character can face risk in-game, but to a Sim player, that's part of the game.  In fact, in Gam and Nar games, characters face in-game risk and their players are quite happy as well.  All that matters is that the game provides Challenge, or addressing a Premise, etc.  Often this in-game risk looks the same no matter which CA the game is played with.

Cheers
Jonathan

[Tony Irwin]

Ralph if I get you right then a lot of good techniques for sim play are about diffusing or reducing the "bad dream" risk. Do you think there are conditions where sim players actively embrace that risk or at least somebody actively presents bad-dream risk to the players forcing them to deal with it?

Is it possible that good sim GMs present risk like this - genuinely threatening to sabotage the dream, forcing the players to "save the dream" and in doing so make it better. I know you played a lot of L5R (I'm guessing that like us you mainly drifted it into Nar though) did you ever have experiences where the GM purposefully presented situations where a likely outcome just "wasn't right" for the L5R dream? The players get all excited and united and put tremendous emotional investment in a particular outcome. Not because of its thematic significance, but because its right for L5R. Certain risks to the dream were tolerated and enjoyed.

On the other hand I can think of times I despised risk like that and used all the techniques you described to either diffuse the risk, or reverse the undesired outcomes. Do you have any thoughts on where the cut off point is? What decides the sim tolerance level for risk?