What GNS is about [LONG]

[John Kim]

At least in part, this is because both 'why do they game?' and 'what they do while gaming that they enjoy?' can be, at some levels, answered the same way.  But that doesn't explain all the ambiguity -- and when I asked a question that distinguished between the two usages, both Valamir and Ron seemed to unequivocally state that 'why they game' was the real question.

This all related back to contracycle's question about what the similarities and differences are between GDS-G and GNS-G, which I'm still thinking about.

Well, I think that "why they game" is a very important and interesting question -- which the rgfa Threefold never delved very far into (IMO).  I also think that it is a big question which any three (or even six) labels aren't going to get very far in answering.  Still, you have to start somewhere.  

The question of rgfa Threefold Gamism vs GNS Gamism is an interesting one.  In theory, rgfa Gamism is defined in terms of making decisions which will test player skill, while GNS Gamism is more about seeking social esteem through risk (i.e. "Step on Up").  In practice, rgfa Gamism was used to denote many mysteries, puzzles, and problem-solving adventures; while GNS Gamism usually refers to more game-mechanical tactical games.  I think it's the divergent cases which are interesting here:  i.e. testing skill without social approval, or conversely seeking social approval without objective test of skill or in-game challenge.  

Right but the important distinction to make is that the player is doing this in the game.  If the player values creating theme then he does not care if the game is creating theme, he cares whether he is able to create theme in the game.  It's like baseball when your 6 years old and you get stuck in right field, nobody hits the ball there so the game isnt all that exciting at least until you get to bat and you can actually play.  That's why I disagree with the idea that a game with theme is a creative agenda.  The agenda is to create theme not to partake in a game that has theme.  

I think you're preaching to the choir here.  As far as I can tell, everyone agrees that player empowerment/involvement is important.  That's why it is explicitly treated as an axis in the 3D model, and why it is essential to having a Creative Agenda at all in Ralph's model.

[Bill Cook]

This is kind of an interesting thread. Just catching the last page here.

I'm reminded of two kinds of impressions when playing games: (1) how much it matters to have an impact on what's going on and (2) how much it matters that what the rules cover be present and relevant. I think the gamers Lee is describing are chasing these ends. When the path to impact competes with the game rules, one of the two is going to go right out the window. And people will do just the craziest things.

I remember agreeing to learn Civilization by playing it. We made a night of reading those damn, confusing rules. I mean, the learning process was the game. The play was irrelevant, really. My turns went quickly because I chose from a list of options to learn how that option made impact. My pace drew some curious looks, as if to accuse me of flippancy; but then, I knew where the game was.

This reminds me of how a game is the understanding between players and nothing more (IMO). That's why disenfranchising a player by moving his marker or rattling off the round procedure without providing time for your opponent's understanding will so wound one; it suggests that a fellow's part holds no esteem with another.

I'm reminded of how I became obsessed with thawing out ice planets in Starfarers of Catan or learning to use spider mines in Starcraft: Broodwars. Those have got to be some of the weakest paths to impact the games support. Everyone knows you build two colonies, upgrade to a starport and establish two trading outposts; or for Stacraft, that you bunker in and build 12 battle cruisers. There's your impact, baby.

But it seems like, once you get locked onto (1), the rules go out the window; and for (2), you may go down in flames, but your charred skull will still somehow seem to be smiling.

I feel this so strongly, I almost think you can't go wrong (assuming that the game design offers no competition between rules and impact) by designing a campaign to tour . .  or you could even say, exhaust . . the system. Imagine a concession vendor approaches you at a baseball game. On her shirt is written "SYSTEM." "What'll it be?" she asks. "One of everything," you answer. "And do you want relish and mustard on your hot dog?" she asks. "Oh, yes. I want to try it all," you reply. There you go: the perfect campaign.

[Caldis]

I think you're preaching to the choir here.  As far as I can tell, everyone agrees that player empowerment/involvement is important.  That's why it is explicitly treated as an axis in the 3D model, and why it is essential to having a Creative Agenda at all in Ralph's model.

I'm not just saying that player empowerment is important, I'm saying that player empowerment is what creative agenda under GNS is all about.  I'm saying that GNS has the empowerment issue covered and that is what it was designed to cover.  I'm saying that creative agenda is a personal goal for player involvement in the game and that other concerns like GDS and whether a recognizable story come from the game should be considered as something seperate.  They are a different layer of the big model.

Ralph's model is defined by how players approach conflict.  In it's latest version he seems to have disavowed narrativism as a creative agenda and reverted to theme as the agenda and narrativism as only a technique.  The problem with this is that when the player approaches conflict with the goal of creating theme but has no power to do so then he does not create theme and his goal remains unmet.  If he is content to let the gm create theme then he is simply experiencing the situation which is what simulationism is all about.  (Note: I disagree with Ralph's definition of simulationism as 'what if' as well, but that's a side issue.)

Mike's 3d model has a similar problem.  A theme game with high GM control can not have a player freely creating theme.  Therefore theme can not be said to be his creative agenda, it's not what he's trying to create.  

These models both work to a certain extent to categorize different types of games but they've left behind what GNS was about and that is what the player is empowered to do in the game.

[Marco]

Mike's 3d model has a similar problem.  A theme game with high GM control can not have a player freely creating theme.  Therefore theme can not be said to be his creative agenda, it's not what he's trying to create.

These models both work to a certain extent to categorize different types of games but they've left behind what GNS was about and that is what the player is empowered to do in the game.

(Emphasis added)

Creation of theme (Player Input: Theme) isn't all or nothing. There are degrees. Only in a hypothetical game of absolute GM power does the player create "zero theme" in the sense you mean it--and you might find that players who enjoy those games don't agree with your analysis:

Player: "You know that kid out playing baseball at 6 AM? Yeah--notice how if that kid is the GM there ain't a game going on either. Oh, and if the rest of the team is in the bleachers (just being an audience)? There still isn't a game happening."

Now, I happen to agree with you--I don't find the players 0, GM 100 particularly functional as an RPG set up.

But I don't think that once that's out in the open very many other people do either. If my enjoyment all based on the illusion that I can create theme (or step-on-up, or whatever) then the dynamic is about some sort of denial and not a standard getting-your-needs-met interaction.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Oh my God. Marco, that hit me right in the "got it" button. I'm gonna quote that in an essay. Don't know in what yet, but I will.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hello,

Oh my God. Marco, that hit me right in the "got it" button. I'm gonna quote that in an essay. Don't know in what yet, but I will.

Best,
Ron

:-D

-Marco

[M. J. Young]

Only in a hypothetical game of absolute GM power does the player create "zero theme" in the sense you mean it....

Actually, I was in that hypothetical game for quite a while. It took a while to realize it. Before I realized it, it felt tremendously exciting. After I realized it, I felt more manipulated than anything else.

--M. J. Young

[Caldis]

Creation of theme (Player Input: Theme) isn't all or nothing. There are degrees. Only in a hypothetical game of absolute GM power does the player create "zero theme" in the sense you mean it--and you might find that players who enjoy those games don't agree with your analysis:

I'll agree with this entirely, which might seem a little illogical but I'll try and clarify.  I do not view creative agenda as a set point but as a sliding scale, much like where the discussion of the 3d model turned when considering centralized vs decentralized.   People's preferences are not for one agenda to the exclusion of the other two but for one over the other two.  Sometimes play will be driven by one agenda and at other times by another whichever one takes precedence and drives the game forward is where I would label the game on the scale of GNS.  

If the players are creating theme often in the game and that is what the game is based around then it's narrativist, if most of the time they are watching the gm create theme while they are allowed to experience the dream then it's simulationist.  

The important point is that it's what the players are doing that determines whether a creative agenda is being realized or not.  If their input into theme is limited then creating theme cant really be their priority if they are happy with the play.

[M. J. Young]

The problem I have here is that the referee is a player. We drive that point home in every other context; we seem to ignore it here. Obviously, even in illusionism and participationism, someone is contributing to the shared imagined space, and if creation of theme through address of premise is the goal of that contribution, the fact that everyone else is boxed out of making any contribution they wish to make doesn't make it not narrativist; it makes it not functional.

--M. J. Young

[Valamir]

I believe Ron calls that sort of GM Typhoid Mary as an example of just that...dysfunctional Narrativist play.

[Caldis]

The problem I have here is that the referee is a player. We drive that point home in every other context; we seem to ignore it here. Obviously, even in illusionism and participationism, someone is contributing to the shared imagined space, and if creation of theme through address of premise is the goal of that contribution, the fact that everyone else is boxed out of making any contribution they wish to make doesn't make it not narrativist; it makes it not functional.

--M. J. Young

Right it's not functional if the players goal is to create theme.  If they are unable to create theme and are ok with it then it is functional simulationism and thus no disfunction.  The gm may have a different goal than the players he may be a narrativist trying to create theme but the game will be primarily simulationist because the majority of the play has the players living out the dream.

[M. J. Young]

Right it's not functional if the players goal is to create theme.  If they are unable to create theme and are ok with it then it is functional simulationism and thus no disfunction.  The gm may have a different goal than the players he may be a narrativist trying to create theme but the game will be primarily simulationist because the majority of the play has the players living out the dream.

I think we're talking about three different things here.[list=1][*]The referee is trying to address theme, but he's shutting out the efforts of the players to do so as well, vacating their input so as to make the statement he wants to make.[*]The referee is trying to address theme, and the players have consented to go along for the ride because they are interested in the theme he is creating and thus are audience for his story.[*]The referee is trying to address theme, but the players don't care, as long as they can experience the world in which his story is told.[/list:o]
These are all problematic.

In the first case, everyone is narrativist, and everyone is trying to address theme, but one player (the referee) is abusing his credibility to shut out the inputs of all the others. This would be the Typhoid Mary dysfunctional narrativist case.

The third case may also be dysfunctional, because one player (the referee) is addressing theme, but the others aren't involved in that at all, being interested in exploring the world and discovering what happens within it. At some level, the referee is wasting their time with his story. Although it might "work" with minimal group tension, it falls into the category of dysfunctional play precisely because two agenda are being pursued simultaneously by different participants, and that means they must conflict.

The second case is the most problematic, though. I think we all agree that every creative agendum involves both active and passive modes; I think we can safely say that all participants must be "audience" or passive mode at least part of the time, while the others take center stage. It has been suggested that it's entirely possible for a participant to be in passive mode for the entire game--the gamist example of the player whose efforts are always to make his girlfriend's character look good, instead of taking the glory for himself. If that's so, and what we really have is one player (the referee) creating theme and all the other players in passive mode, don't we really have a form of tightly centralized narrativist play? It's all about the theme being created; the problem traditionally is that only one person is creating it--but the others don't want to create anything here, so they aren't having their input vacated, they just aren't offering any input!

I think that if the referee is trying to create theme, he is playing narrativist. If the players are playing simulationist, you've got dysfunction. If you don't have dysfunction, it's because the game is narrativist and the players want to be in the passive mode throughout, supporting the one player who is addressing theme.

Maybe it's like a baseball game. Everything depends on the pitcher, really. He wants to pitch a no hitter. If someone manages to hit one of his pitches, the fielders and basemen will attempt to get that man out before he gets to base, but they're still all focused on the pitcher's efforts to get a no-hitter.

Maybe that's a weak example; but I think trying to push "referee addresses premise and no one else contributes to it" into "always simulationist" is a mistake relative to both narrativism and simulationism. At least, it's not so simple as that.

--M. J. Young

[Marco]

I think that if the referee is trying to create theme, he is playing narrativist. If the players are playing simulationist, you've got dysfunction. If you don't have dysfunction, it's because the game is narrativist and the players want to be in the passive mode throughout, supporting the one player who is addressing theme.

--M. J. Young

I want to check you (and Ron) on this to make sure I understand it.

In this case, these "Sim players" are, for example, complete genre-fiends who will never step outside of genre no matter what happens in the game--and that genre always dictates the choices of their characters--it isn't a genre where a character can make a surprising choice, for example (or have counter-genre pieces wrapped up in it like Unforgiven in the Western tradition).

The GM, in this case, is functional Narrativist--and therefore isn't shutting down people's input--so the gating factor must be coming from the other players (or internally), right?

What I'm having a hard time imagining is what happens when the GM says "This is a Modern-day magic game using the Hero System" and it's his own made-up world and there's no defined genre or conventions.

How do these guys stick to Sim?

What's that look like if they can't appeal to genre?

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

That's a good question. In my experience, anyway, play either acquires references to genre through various players' insisting on it in some way, or the group finds some gimmick to focus on, for System to hang its hook on.

Such a gimmick is sometimes the in-game justification of how powers work, with attendant system reinforcement - in fact, the Godlike text presents an excellent example of turning to focus on such a thing in the absence of a comic to go by.

Yeah, I know I just used a game text when we should be talking about play. Tricky stuff, this game-talk. Anyway, also, I should point out that Godlike could have focused on war-story genre, but it didn't and went with its emphasis on power-metaphysics and alternate-history due to power-metaphysics instead.

Anyway, those are merely two observations of groups I was in or saw back in my Champions days, in which they got together to play "superheroes" but didn't manage to reference particular comics or trope-groups within that category. A third possibility, the depressing one, is that the Wolverine character just kills everything and everybody and the group (the real people) stop playing ...

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hi Marco,

That's a good question. In my experience, anyway, play either acquires references to genre through various players' insisting on it in some way, or the group finds some gimmick to focus on, for System to hang its hook on.

Such a gimmick is sometimes the in-game justification of how powers work, with attendant system reinforcement - in fact, the Godlike text presents an excellent example of turning to focus on such a thing in the absence of a comic to go by.

I'm still lagging here--how does "how powers work" (even a focus there) interfere with premise ("You can't date the princess--you have Quantum Flight!" ??)

I'm not sayin' it doesn't--I'm just not gettin' it (maybe because I don't have Godlike).

A third possibility, the depressing one, is that the Wolverine character just kills everything and everybody and the group (the real people) stop playing ...

Best,
Ron

Yeah, well ... that always happens sooner or later with Wolverine.

-Marco (who knows from experience)