Risk in Sim play.

[timfire]

Hey Timothy, I think for Nar the comparative risk is that the player will be unable to make the thematic statements they desire. Your TROS character dies a meaningless death, you get the wrong epilogue for your MLWM minion, everyone challenges away your idea in Universalis.

I may be the one that's off, but right now I just don't see this. Or at least, I don't see how this could be considered functional.

You're insinuating that a Nar player would risk his ability to address premise? Why would a Nar player risk the very thing he finds fun? Or let me put it another way, why would another player/GM attempt try to limit the player's fun?

Your examples above, why would a TROS player put his character in a situation that might result in a meaningless death? The whole point of TROS is you *only* do things that are important to your character.  (I'm sure that type of thing does happen, but who would consider it a good thing?) While I've never played MLwM, it sounds like it would be fairly easy to engineer a certain epilogue if the player really wanted to.

That's my understanding of Bangs, the GM is effectively yelling "What matters? Quick! Right now! What matters?!" The players face the risk that "Despite all the investment* I have made in trying to make this thematic statement, I may never get to see it in the SIS".

A Bang is the GM asking the players "What Matters?" But they shouldn't block the statement the player wants to make. If anything, a Bang should strengthen the statement the player is trying to make. The only time I could see a bang blocking a thematic statement is when the player is trying to uphold dual, opposing statements, in which case the bang forces the player to decide which is more important.

I think it's a demand to "Show us what matters..."

Ahhh, but that's not what you said earlier. You said "Show us ... how far will you commit to your agenda before backing off?"

"efore backing off" is a challenge. It implies that someone is purposely trying to break the player. That's competition.
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What's everyone else's thoughts on these ideas?

[ErrathofKosh]

I think the discussion is blurred by the types of risks that one takes in roleplaying.  The big two are: social and in-game.

Certainly G players gain satisfaction in a challenge well met because it advances their status socially.  But, they also revel in avoiding the price of failure for their character.  Thus, they have risk at both levels.  If I, the G player, don't overcome a challenge through my own bad planning, I lose socially and in game.

In S and N, this is less than clear.  In N, if I fail to address the Premise, where is the in-game risk? My character doesn't neccessarily suffer consequences for failing to address the Premise (though he could).  In S, where is the social risk in character failure.  If my character dies, I accept it as what is supposed to happen.  But, the other players don't look at me and say, "dude, you suck!"

I would propose that in S, the social risks are all about envisioning at least similar Dreams.  If one player isn't onto the premise of the group Dream, they lose socially.  

I have difficulty with N, but I think the in-game risk is the character's relevance.  If a character dies, but adds to the theme, no risk for N player.  However, if the character no longer makes valid points in the story, the player really loses them.

Such are my thoughts.

Cheers
Jonathan

Oh and Marco, you're right, what I'm talking about is not limited to a single CA, just the example is.

[Bill Cook]

A lot of the threads trying to divine Sim have clouded my head a bit.

This discussion keeps bringing to mind a bit of unsatisfying play in my group's first TROS campaign. I created a character that was trying to force his view of justice onto reality by robbing a man of priveleges he didn't deserve. I had an elaborate plan layed out to bring him to his ruin.

By the second session, I became frustrated by stuttering at the stage of Intent, inability to escape troupe play, inability to frame outside the clock face, etc, and I took the lead, explicitly wrote my declarations as Initiation, fired off every SA and stormed his estate. And poof, nothing happened. I had my character retire to his apartment and stare at shadows.

(I realize now that I was crying out for a Bang; and that my Seneschal was going the "discover the back-story plot twists" route, to which my agenda was only peripherally related.)

My behavior made everyone uncomfortable. I moped through the second session; my Seneschal made a plan to kill off my character, unbeknownst to me. Mercy for the group? Vindictiveness? Maybe. I give him the benefit of the doubt.

At the start of the third session, someone knocked on my character's apartment door. I stepped outside to find a basket . . . with a head in it! It belonged to the man I sought to destroy! I had two reactions: on the one hand, I was glad to finally be part of my story; on the other, it was based entirely around tearing this man to pieces, . . . and now he was dead! So what the hell was I supposed to do?

I don't know if you'd call our play Sim or Nar, but if game play was a VCR, I'd be pressing rewind and then start making objections. I guess you could say my Seneschal put my Dream at risk.

[Tony Irwin]

You're insinuating that a Nar player would risk his ability to address premise? Why would a Nar player risk the very thing he finds fun?...

Hey Timothy I think that's visible in Universalis (and other resource based Nar games) - the player risks more and more coins (more and more of his ability to make any thematic statements at all) on one particular outcome. Why's he doing it? If he fails then he won't have the coins he needs to address premise any more. I think its because he belives in this particular thematic statement more than any other he could make. It's worth the risk, and he wants to show how important it is by taking on risk.

...Or let me put it another way, why would another player/GM attempt try to limit the player's fun?

I think because it forces that player to really focus on the fun and value it more. Nar games that employ a reroll mechanic might illustrate what I think I see here...

Dying Earth, Paladin, and Trollbabe use a series of rerolls to decide outcomes (with Trollbabe I'm referring to the list of 6 items and events you can cross off to ask for a reroll). When a player is unsatisfied with an outcome (because it doesn't reflect the thematic statement he wants to see) he spends resource to initiate a reroll. Each time the player scores off the point and picks up the dice they are facing tremendous risk: "Despite all the investment I've put in seeing one outcome, it may still never happen. What I wanted to say about the premise may never get said".

At each step the player has to ask themselves "How much does this really matter? How badly do I really want it? Would I prefer to save my resource so that I can make different thematic statements later on in the game?" I really do see that as the player being asked "How far will you go before you back off? You've that said "X matters", if you really believe that then you'll prove it by accepting these risks."

I don't see that as limiting someone's fun - just forcing them to clarify and focus on what it is they really find fun. "You can only make one thematic statement - will you risk all your other ideas just to make that one happen? Prove to us how commited you are."  Its tough, demanding, and very personal just like Gamism is tough, demanding and very personal. The thing is its about you making a moral statement to your own satisfaction, not you demonstrating guts and smarts to others' satisfaction.

Your examples above, why would a TROS player put his character in a situation that might result in a meaningless death? The whole point of TROS is you *only* do things that are important to your character.  (I'm sure that type of thing does happen, but who would consider it a good thing?)

Have you ever had the experience when your character seems to die almost by accident, everyone looks at the dice glumly and says "That was wrong". It's not a case of "He died for what he believed in", he just plain died. Theme creation got aborted before it could even begin. Every time you go into a fight in TROS you're being told "Is this worth it? Is this what matters? It better be because this may be your last chance to fight for something". I'll risk my character dying before his time, dying before I really get to say what I wanted to say through him, if there's a chance that by winning the fight it will help me to say more. This helps me to really clarify what's important and go after the theme that counts instead of bouncing around a dozen ideas. Like you said it gets to the point in TROS where you only do things that are important to your character - I think its risk that helps you to focus on what those things are.

While I've never played MLwM, it sounds like it would be fairly easy to engineer a certain epilogue if the player really wanted to.

Again, I think its risk that motivates the player to do that. "If you don't work for a certain one, then there's a risk you'll get one that says the opposite of what you had in mind". Risk is waking the player up and forcing them to really get to the roots of what specifically they want to say. Then, by aiming for a certain epilogue, the player is sacrificing their ability to obtain the others. The more like it seems you'll attain X, the less likely you'll attain Y.

I think it's a demand to "Show us what matters...(talking about bangs)"

Ahhh, but that's not what you said earlier. You said "Show us ... how far will you commit to your agenda before backing off?"

"Before backing off" is a challenge. It implies that someone is purposely trying to break the player. That's competition.

I think they're aggressively insisting that the player demonstrate "What matters". Just as the the gamist GM insists that the player demonstrates "I rock". I agree that those are both challenging and demanding statements to make to people at the gaming table. I don't see either them as really being competitive. I'm challenging your ideas and you're challenging mine in this thread, but its not because I want to break you, its actually because I want to learn from you. This discussion is challenging and demanding, yes, but its about sharing something with each other not about competing with each other. I think even gamism is a sharing discussion about "This is how good I am" in that sense. The GM poses challenge to help the player talk about themselves and how much they rock. The GM and players have invited you over because they want to see you rock (in functional play). They make that happen by challenging you and seeing how you deal with risk.

Timothy thanks for all your responses!

Tony

[Tony Irwin]

I don't know if you'd call our play Sim or Nar, but if game play was a VCR, I'd be pressing rewind and then start making objections. I guess you could say my Seneschal put my Dream at risk.

Thanks for posting Bill. What I'm especially looking for is how players in sim play respond to risk. Because it looks like you were going all out narrativist, and it looks like everyone playing had an unhappy time, it can't help me in this case. Do you have any examples of when everyone was playing sim, and everyone was loving it? I'm trying to see if there's times when the GM can say "I'll wreck the dream if you don't do something right now", and it energises all the players into play that was even more fun than it was before.

Cheers!

Tony

[Marco]

Tony,

All wrecking the dream is in-game challenge the way you're putting it (and I think it's a reasonable way to put it)--it's just high stakes adversity. Sauron is going to march on the world: well, roleplaying one of Sauron's flunkies would suck (and you'd probably be dead anyway)--so you have to do something.

Interperting in-game adversity as meta-game adversity (I think I'm misusing 'Forge' adversity in one case there) is, IMO, reasonable since, you know, that's how I see it ... mostly.

There is something about the case where the player wants to see the character fail but has the character try his hardest to succeed that I think isn't fully encapsulated there.

But for the most part, I would say that any in-game adversity is, in my case at least, precieved as meta-game adveristy (i.e. if this isn't checked the game will become not-fun for me).

-Marco

[Tony Irwin]

I think the discussion is blurred by the types of risks that one takes in roleplaying.  The big two are: social and in-game.

Certainly G players gain satisfaction in a challenge well met because it advances their status socially.  But, they also revel in avoiding the price of failure for their character.  Thus, they have risk at both levels.  If I, the G player, don't overcome a challenge through my own bad planning, I lose socially and in game.

In S and N, this is less than clear.  In N, if I fail to address the Premise, where is the in-game risk? My character doesn't neccessarily suffer consequences for failing to address the Premise (though he could).

Hey Jonathon, I see the N risk as a personal risk. The real life player is unhappy because they were unable to address Premise the way they wanted. I think gamism is personal in that sense too - the real life player is unhappy because they were unable to wow their mates. I suppose that one's personal risk based on social esteem.

In S, where is the social risk in character failure.  If my character dies, I accept it as what is supposed to happen.  But, the other players don't look at me and say, "dude, you suck!"

For S, I see it as a deeply personal risk. The real life human player is miserable because Exploration has come to an end and they were unable to make the SIS look like their dream. In this way I think that all three agendas pose very real, deeply personal, human risk to the real life players, but gamism has the biggest social element.

What do you make of that? Seem valid? It acknowledges that there are of course social elements to N and S, but G is the social one. N and S still involve risks taken by real life people, just got more to do with how you feel about things than with what your peer group feels about things.

Cheers,

Tony

[ErrathofKosh]

Whoo Hoo!!! My 100th post...

Yeah, I could agree with that.  However, I tend to think that the social risk for N players is higher than that for S players.  Maybe that's a perception based on historical "storytelling games," where players are assumed to be mature enough to play "for the good of the story."  

In the Window, for instance, violating any of the Three Precepts is a violation of the explicit social contract.  IME, these types of games, in general, specify certain points of the social contract that generally not present in S play.  But that's based on my experience, so take it with a grain of salt...

Cheers
Jonathan

[Tony Irwin]

Yeah, I could agree with that.  However, I tend to think that the social risk for N players is higher than that for S players.  Maybe that's a perception based on historical "storytelling games," where players are assumed to be mature enough to play "for the good of the story."  

Cheers
Jonathan

Ok, well what do you view as the risk for the S player? And is it comparable to the risks faced by N and G. Does it motivate and drive the players in the same way?

I think that risk is, the risk that your dream will be left behind. That the SIS won't resemble your dream for it.

Marco gave a great example above for Lord of the Rings. Sauron's forces are mustering and about to sweep across the land. Every player now faces the risk "Soon Middle Earth won't look anything like I want it to". Do you think that for the S player that's comparative personal risk to that which G and N players face? Or is S more relaxed and safer than N & G (Still possesing personal risk but not in the same electrifying way)?

Tony

[Tony Irwin]

Tony,

All wrecking the dream is in-game challenge the way you're putting it (and I think it's a reasonable way to put it)--it's just high stakes adversity. Sauron is going to march on the world: well, roleplaying one of Sauron's flunkies would suck (and you'd probably be dead anyway)--so you have to do something.

Yeah I guess that's adversity to the player, if that's their dream. If your dream is simply "The SIS is a place where my character behaves realistically in every situation" then that isn't actually the GM threatening your dream, its just character adversity, and the player will just keep ticking on enjoying the game. Maybe its because of heavy actor stance sim play that people don't perceive personal risk hitting sim players? But yeah, if your dream is tied up in setting and its "A place where I can see hobbits having jolly birthday parties, and visit elven kingdoms that are hidden everywhere" then yeah the GM is touching a sore spot. I sit bolt upright because my dream is about to get wrecked. Do you see that personal response as being comparable in its intensity to that which N and G players experience over theme and esteem?

For risk there needs to be stakes, and there needs to be a pay off. I'd see the stakes as being the SIS's semblance to the dream. Pay off is that SIS more resembles the dream than ever before. I'll risk my stakes for the pay off. The stakes for me there are setting - I don't want ME to look that way, that game's not fun for me.  But what's the pay off? The SIS already looks like my dream - I've having perfect fun in my perfect game already, leave me alone! I guess there's only a pay off if you've still got some dream yet to enter the SIS. Perhaps if my vision for ME also includes "but there's danger and adventures too". What the GM is doing could wreck my dream, but I'll accept that risk because it's the only way I can bring more of it into play. The GM is asking "How much do you love your dream, will you risk it all just to make it happen?"

Does that gel with how you view things? I fear I'm developing my own definition of Sim to suit myself here. But I think there's some interesting stuff in the idea that in-game challenge doesn't shake up heavy actor stance - they already have their dream in play and so don't have any thing to gain or lose from big changes to the setting or new situations.

Tony

[Tony Irwin]

Tony,

All wrecking the dream is in-game challenge the way you're putting it (and I think it's a reasonable way to put it)--it's just high stakes adversity. Sauron is going to march on the world: well, roleplaying one of Sauron's flunkies would suck (and you'd probably be dead anyway)--so you have to do something.

Sorry I forgot to reply to a bit I in your post that I wanted to talk about. Yeah, I've been trying to think of dream-threats that aren't in-game challenge. If you play Universalis sim then the challenge mechanic is very interactions between the players without going through the SIS. I think that's a threat to the dream that isn't in-game challenge. I pay a coin to say "and they use their disciplines to fight crime", and you pay a coin to challenge that. You're threatening my dream and forcing me to decide which parts of my dream I love most and most want to see in the SIS.

The only other things I can think of are research mechanics for spells and gizmos. I don't have those books with me down here in London but Conspiracy X had a big research element (in fact I think you could "research" martial art combos and have your character learn new moves that way), also in Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies I'm sure the techie character could research and build gizmos. The player has a chance to change setting or character without a lot of situation involved (it all happens between game sessions so kind of out of game), and for the Sim player its the big chance to make the SIS more like your dream. But there's the risk that the result won't be like your dream (or at least you've squandered this opportunity and will have to wait for the next one. I understand one edition of Traveller also had planet creation rules that were part of play rather than preparation for play, but I don't know how they work.

Any more examples? I'm stumped

[ErrathofKosh]

As I stated over in this thread, I think the risk that S players run is the acceptance of their contributions to the Dream.

Example:

I have a character who badly wants to forge a magical sword.  He has taken months in prep and is now in the forging process.  I roll the dice and dammit! I fail...  

Whether I used strategy or not (I probably did, because he prepared for some months), if all I care about is that my character failed and doesn't get his magic sword, then I have S motives.  If I worry now that my character won't be able to use the sword as an advantage in my upcoming fight, then I've G motives.

To highlight this difference even more...

Suppose the system allows my character to make the magic sword, but all it's good for is Color.  The sword burns brightly and makes devastating attacks, but I could get the same result (damage-wise) from buying a well made sword without the months of prep!  Now, unless the sword gives me some advantage that a well made store bought sword cannot, my reasons for making it are pure S.

The goal and satisfaction of Sim play is creation.  And revelling in that creation.  

There, I've said it! - God is a Simulationist. :) (That last was intended as humor, please don't consider it to be inflammatory...)

Cheers
Jonathan

[Tony Irwin]

I have a character who badly wants to forge a magical sword.  He has taken months in prep and is now in the forging process.  I roll the dice and dammit! I fail...  

I think it all depends on do you, want to have a character who owns a magical sword? If so, then in my view you failed to bring your dream into the SIS. You looked at the SIS after the change and the SIS doesn't resemble your dream "A place where heroes wield magical swords" any more now than it did before.

1st question: Is this as deeply personal an issue to you as play can be for Gamists and Narrativists? Is there real personal loss here to you as a human being?

2nd question: What were your stakes? What was it that you as player already possessed and enjoyed and don't want to part with, but then said "This is what I stand to lose if the sword deal doesn't work out"

Cheers!

Tony

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edit
3rd question: Did you as a real human person get a kick out of this? Win or lose, did something happen when you picked up those dice that wouldn't have happened if you had just said. "My character makes a magic sword today" and the GM says "Ok, its +2". Did you enjoy the risk?

[Walt Freitag]

The risk in Simulationist play is that the outcome won't be as you expect or hope it will be.

A vacuous statement, perhaps. After all, the risk in all modes of role-playing is that the outcome won't be as you expect or hope it will be. In fact, all risk in all endeavors is that the outcome won't be as you expect or hope it will be. That's just the definition, more or less, of "risk" itself.

But still, stating the obvious is better than overlooking it.

The thing is, I've never met one of these Sim players described in the course of the recent raft of Sim threads -- these mysterious folks who are indifferent to the outcome, more specifically to what happens to their characters, as long as the agreed-upon constraints and procedures are observed in determining it. Some players are more patient than others about accepting temporarily unhappy circumstances or turns of events for shorter or longer periods in the hope or expectation of eventual turns for the better. Some players are more mature or stoic than others about accepting ultimately unhappy outcomes. But I've never met one who didn't, generally speaking, prefer character success over character failure, prefer that the player-characters succeed in rescuing the hostages rather than seeing the hostages killed, prefer that a player-character become wealthy rather than broke, influential rather than marginalized, respected rather than mocked, and healthy rather than sick. There can be, and often are, narrow exceptions, such as a character with a "chronically broke" concept -- but even then that character's player still prefers the character to be successful in achieving objectives, healthy, respected, etc.

There has been, I believe, a tendency to see this widespread preference for character success as not particularly significant in Simulationism. It's been explained away in three ways in particular:

1. Preference for character success is caused by the action of reward mechanisms. Such reward mechanisms, in Sim, empower the player to do "more" Exploration. Character success is thus not itself an inherent part of a Sim Creative Agenda, but a mere means to that end, by virtue of reward mechanisms such as character advancement.

2. Preference for character success is caused by the infiltration of Gamist attitudes into play. Step On Up is in action; the player is seeing his or her own social esteem at stake in the character's happiness.

3. Since people ususally attempt to act to increase their own happiness, playing them as characters requires players to act that way too. But it's all just role-playing. The players don't actually care about character happiness, they just act like they do, for the sake of verisimilitude.

I can't prove that players have a prevailing preference for character happiness for reasons outside of these three factors. But there's every reason to expect them to. Watching a movie involves no stake in social esteem, reward mechanisms, or acting, but movie audiences still generally prefer happy endings to unhappy ones (even, notoriously often, at the cost of weakening the work's internal fidelity and/or literary merit). The same is true for audiences of all types of non-interactive fiction in all media. The reason appears to be emotional identification with the character, without requiring any other stakes or agendas.

Some will no doubt wish to dismiss this reasoning, as some have before, with the deeply insightful observation that "role playing games aren't movies." While that does help explain why my repeated attempts to thread a Player's Handbook into my 16mm film projector have been strangely unsuccessful, it's beside the point here. Whatever else role players might be or do, they are also, inevitably, the audience for the outcome of play. If people want to claim that Simulationist role players differ from all other audiences by not preferring, generally speaking, that the protagonists achieve success and happiness, the burden of explaining why that should be so should be on them. Especially because we might expect the emotional attachment to the character, in a role-playing game, in which the character was personally created by the player and is commonly spoken of (in first and second person phrasing) as if the player were the character, to be rather stronger than a moveigoer's emotional attachment to an arbitrary character just introduced a few minutes before.

Where there's a preference for some particular aspect of the outcome, there is a risk that the preference will not be met. Hence, for instance, Jonathan's "risk" that the character will not get a magical sword, and Marco's point, an elephant that's been stomping around in the room unnoticed for quite some time, that in-game adversity is perceived as meta-game adversity -- due to, I submit, emotional sympathy with the character, pure and simple. It doesn't have to be "deeply personal" in any way beyond that, in order to be real stakes for a real risk.

The preference for character happiness and the concomittant risk of character unhappiness is not specific to Simulationism. It can exist within, and potentially compete with, any Creative Agenda. I belive it might be valid to define the "hard core" of any agenda as play in which the "emotional concern for character happines" dial is way down. In hard-core Gamism, for instance, sacrificing a character in order to gain the resouces to create a better character can be seen as a valid and bold strategy. (In general, though, there are congruences in hard-core Gamism that make character happiness a priority even in the absence of any emotional sympathy with the character, with issues #1 and #2 above predominating.)  In hard-core Narrativism, as in hard-core literature in general, addressing the Premise is paramount and any concern for character happiness is likely to be seen as hackneyed or juvenlie. There are apparently styles of Simulationsim in which concern for character happiness is dialed way down too, such as "virtuality" and "purist-for-system Sim" in which the important thing is finding out "what if" in a clinically detached way, and high-concept Sim in which the genre/concept makes character happiness an impossibility or a moot point. But these cases are "hardcore" in a particular way. Regarding them as representative of all Sim leads to a rather distorted picture.

- Walt

[ErrathofKosh]

Ahhh...

Walt,

That's what I've been trying to say and not doing very well.  I make this statement:

The risk in Sim is predicated upon the extent to which your contributions to the SIS influence the Dream.

This includes your character's successes and failures as well as your own credibility to contribute to the SIS.  I think Sim satisfies some vicarious need to be whomever we have created as our character, and like Walt says, we enjoy victory more than defeat, even vicariously.