GNS Sim

[Ron Edwards]

I lied. I couldn't stand it. I posted the Sim thing in What do we mean by Creative Agenda?

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hi Ron,

I'm not particularly heavily invested in Virtuality--the reason it keeps cropping up is that whether or not it's a technique seems to be in some dispute and it's a handy way of distinguishing "what it would be like to be there" vs. "what will keep the game most interesting."

I did follow your post about the "point" of Sim with a great deal of interest when it was first posted. The Ron I'm interested in talking to is the "how you'd say it now."

I'd like to ask you some further questions about it since some things about how the "point" is used are not clear to me.

Would that be okay?

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Yes, excellent. I'm oriented now.

Um, everyone's good with the idea that an aesthetic (as an agenda or prioritized principle) is a very broad thing, right?

And that if it's used as a connector of Social Contract right on down to Ephemera, among the group, that it will look different in every different group, or across one group's game, right?

And finally, that although Techniques in isolation cannot be called Creative Agendas, it won't be shocking or surprising that some distinctive combinations of Techniques will do very nicely for particular Creative Agendas, right?

This is a big deal because internal cause is still going to be a serious and important topic in discussing Simulationist play. But I'll betcha there's going to be a quagmire to flail around in when we get there.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Okay--I have some questions and scenarios that I'd like you to comment on/answer. This is all as honest as I can possibly be. I'm sure I am confusing intent and internal cause and all that. That's why I'm asking.

1. Remember my not-Nar Nazi game? The GM is Narrativist (meaning that is style of play would produce functional Narrativism with the players) he and sends the Super Hero PC's to go rescue a turn-coat Nazi doctor and get his research notes. Along the way they find evidence he is a monster who will escape justice if they take him (and his files) back to the allies--but he'll help their cause in the war. This sets up a premise question of what's more important (Justice, Fidelity, etc.) that will be answered one way or another by the protagonists (the PC's) during play.

The PC's, in my hypothetical, go on the mission--get the files, resuce the doctor--but do not emotionally engage with the moral question of should we/shouldn't we.

Play is functional (everyone has fun, even the GM).

Question: is this Sim because, while the GM didn't inhibit any input, the players are intuited to have had a "point" of "We're Allied Super Heroes" which precludes questioning the mission? This seems to me it may be the case, but how do you know it was the case if no input is ever excluded from play. Nothing is bounced back.

Is the play simply indeterminate--no matter how long it lasted?

The general case of this is the game where no input is rejected in a game but no one emotionally engages. It can't be Nar. It doesn't seem challenge focused--but it's hard to say what the "point" was.

Can Sim be Sim without one being able to articulte the point?

2. Why can't Gamist play coexist with a "point" that dictates "what goes in"? It seems to me that a Knights of the Round Table could both limit input and still be Gamist. I may be forced to play my knight's, oh, say, code of honor--but I still have to win all my fights to get the rep-from my friends.

In this case it seems that a single agent (the GM) could impose the limiting factor and the rest of the group could provide the cheering-section.

In fact, that seems pretty standard to me.

Thanks,
-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

We gotta talk about this right now, before it becomes a big hassle. You seem really focused on "rejecting or limiting input" as an issue, and as I tried to reply, I could not understand what the hell you were talking about.

So I just reviewed my discussion of Sim. Now I get it. You are seeing that my phrase confirmation of input is my stated key to Sim, thus concluding that rejection of input must be not-Sim. Marco - let's nail this now - this conclusion is mistaken. Please don't latch onto it; let it go. Let's start over. All role-playing requires input, and ...

- Gamist play uses that input to construct Challenge, and then to construct the output about "who wins."

- Narrativist play uses that input to construct Premise, and then to construct the output about Theme.

- Simulationist play uses that input to construct the Dream, and then to construct the output, which might be described as "our confirmed, spruced-up, strengthened Dream."

Don't focus on the input as a defining factor for Sim; that makes no sense. Focus on the Confirmation as the point.

Perhaps a good way to look at it is that if we all play a Star Trek derived Sim game together, we will all end up being better Star Trek fans. Much in the same way that one becomes a "better fan" by writing fanfic that other fans really like. We have confirmed and developed our original enjoyment of X into a particularly skillful and enjoyable social enjoyment of X.

But it has to be X; it can't be my co-opted or "stolen" version of X. It has to respect X as it came to us. What aspect of X gets respected (or protected!) varies a great deal.

One by one, I guess ...

1. Remember my not-Nar Nazi game? [details snipped] This sets up a premise question of what's more important (Justice, Fidelity, etc.) that will be answered one way or another by the protagonists (the PC's) during play.

The PC's, in my hypothetical, go on the mission--get the files, resuce the doctor--but do not emotionally engage with the moral question of should we/shouldn't we.

Play is functional (everyone has fun, even the GM).

Gotta say: when the players (I presume you mean the players, not PCs actually) don't get engaged in it, what do they do? I mean, they do state their characters' actions, they do roll the dice, they do imagine stuff together. What's fun about it, as evidenced by their interaction? They're certainly not sitting there like window-dummies, rolling dice and staring straight ahead.

So we gotta talk about what they do, how they interact with each other. When you say they play non-Narrativist, I buy that, because you say No Premise. But I can't say Sim or not-Sim when all that remains is a descriptive nothin'.

Question: is this Sim because, while the GM didn't inhibit any input, the players are intuited to have had a "point" of "We're Allied Super Heroes" which precludes questioning the mission? This seems to me it may be the case, but how do you know it was the case if no input is ever excluded from play. Nothing is bounced back.

Um. I agree with you that it may be the case, but am confused about answering the question for exactly the same reason you're uncertain. I don't understand at all what you mean by "no input is ever excluded from play. Nothing is bounced back."

Is the play simply indeterminate--no matter how long it lasted?

Forgive my dogmatism in saying that no play is indeterminate. To risk getting off-topic for a minute, I consider Zilchplay to be ... well, a bunch of guys sitting around in the room, and nothing going on that particularly needs to be called role-playing.

I'm saying that I cannot tell what this group is doing, because there's no information about what they're doing.

Can Sim be Sim without one being able to articulte the point?

I think that the point of an instance of Sim play (shall we call it the Confirmation? I still like "the Dream") doesn't have to be articulated any more than the Win conditions of Step On Up do, or the specific dichotomy or conundrum of Premise do. We are talking about very basic "why I care about this fictional thing" processes which people do in their heads, often without ever articulating them.

2. Why can't Gamist play coexist with a "point" that dictates "what goes in"? It seems to me that a Knights of the Round Table could both limit input and still be Gamist. I may be forced to play my knight's, oh, say, code of honor--but I still have to win all my fights to get the rep-from my friends.

In this case it seems that a single agent (the GM) could impose the limiting factor and the rest of the group could provide the cheering-section.

I hope that my point about "limiting input" being irrelevant takes care of this question.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hello,

We gotta talk about this right now, before it becomes a big hassle. You seem really focused on "rejecting or limiting input" as an issue, and as I tried to reply, I could not understand what the hell you were talking about.

So I just reviewed my discussion of Sim. Now I get it. You are seeing that my phrase confirmation of input is my stated key to Sim, thus concluding that rejection of input must be not-Sim. Marco - let's nail this now - this conclusion is mistaken. Please don't latch onto it; let it go. Let's start over. All role-playing requires input, and ...

- Gamist play uses that input to construct Challenge, and then to construct the output about "who wins."

- Narrativist play uses that input to construct Premise, and then to construct the output about Theme.

- Simulationist play uses that input to construct the Dream, and then to construct the output, which might be described as "our confirmed, spruced-up, strengthened Dream."

(Emphasis added)

Actually, I concluded that rejection of player-input (the refusal of confirmation) was one of the key visible tells of Sim.

I think what confused me was when you said this in the original post: "Narrativist play, like Gamist play, is not confirmatory of anything that "goes in.""

As to The Dream, I'm not sure exactly what that is. I realize we are "strengthening it"--but I don't know what it is.

The examples don't seem to be helping me either. Maybe we can clarify with my WW-II supers game.

You ask what the players were doing that was fun. In the closest thing I've played to this scenario (Vietnam game--no supers--sent to "rescue" an American movie star 'Hanoi Sally') I think that there was:

1. An enjoyment of the GM's versimilitude of depecting Vietnam.
2. An enjoyment of playing in character.
3. An enjoyment of problem solving, some excitment from combat, etc. (but there wasn't, IMO, much social emphasis on it or cred being handed out).

Now, this is all easily depicted and identified as Sim--but these factors would all be potential points of enjoyment for a Narrativist game as well.

What would make the game Narrativist, to my understanding, would be the addition of:

4. The players having serious misgivings about performing their mission and making a decision about whether to do it or not.

(and you might or might not have players enjoying 1-3 for the Nar game but whether people did or didn't wouldn't have bearing on the Nar-ness of the game, I would think).

So the confirming of points 1-3 doesn't seem like the determining factor would be the lack or existence of point #4.

I concluded that the way to know the game was "Run in a Simulationist fashion" would be if a player decided not to rescue her and the GM came down on them for playing out of character or otherwise being a problem player (rejecting input).

But in absence of that tell, then it seems to me the determant point would be the player's emotional envolvement in some sort of human-experience issue going on in the game (if the rescue went bad and the game came to a nail-biting conclusion about survival vs. leaving live wounded behind, that would still qualify as Nar--even though the GM didn't "put that in.")

-Marco

[Walt Freitag]

Edit: Marco, it seems I'm kind of breaking into this important dialog you're having with Ron here, in order to respond to your comments and questions earlier in the thread. I'll leave it to your judgment whether this remains relevant right here or should be taken to a new thread.

I like Walt's formulation. I like it a lot. I want to look closely at it.

Good. I want to really put it through the wringer. I think it could be a helpful and slightly new way of understanding CA, while keeping it as general as the Big Model intends, avoiding the over-specificity or synechdoche of trying to "pin down" CA too closely, that Ron has been pointing out. Also, by making it clear what the model doesn't speak about, it might point the way to additions to the model that would cover such things as the interaction of individual desires like challenge and outcome aesthetics with the Social Contract. But first it has to prove valid and useful.

If we define GNS Sim as "What I want from other people, including the GM, is the unexpected elements they bring to the table" is that:

a) incompatible with a personal goal of, say, Narrativism: if I am grooving on the human-experience stuff implicit in the situation and taking non-forced action to address it, does that work still work and count as GNS Sim if the players aren't giving me social positive reinforcement for such play? Is that a legitimate way to look at it? In this case I want other people to add unexpected stuff to the game--and I don't really care if they're engaged by my answer of the premise question--I'm going to do that anyway.

No. "What I want most from other players, including the GM, is the unexpected elements they introduce into the SIS" (note all the wording changes) is, in my view, the nature (the definition? ... that I'm not so sure of) of GNS Sim. The CA "ism" types remain, as always, a matter of priority, not inclusion/exclusion of any particular thing. The word "most" is critical.

I would also suggest that "the unexpected decisions/actions the players, including the GM, want each other to bring into play" is the nature (definition?) of Creative Agenda in general. Which is very very close to saying that CA is what we communicate through play, and the type of CA (which "ism") is what we communicate about. (This is basic information theory. Communication of information occurs only to the extent that the next symbol in the message stream cannot be predicted.)

b) Is it possible to want Sim-input from some players and not others (for example: I'm okay with Sim-input from the other players--but I want thematic approval from the GM).

Sure. But I think that to really get a handle on asymmetrical play (or for that matter incoherent play, beyond simply identifying it as incoherent), we have to look just a bit outside the "social contract" box in the Big Model, to take those individual drives into account. A transactional model would fir more naturally here.

c) Is the division between Sim and Nar (absent railroading or force or whatever) that the "unexpected stuff" I get from other players doesn't engage me emotionally?

Hell no. I've always thought any distinction based on absolute degree of emotional engagement is a theory quagmire. If the "unexpected stuff" about the SIS is what I want most from other players, why could I not be emotionally engaged in it?

Note that judging prsence/absence or degree of emotional engagement isn't the same as judging what a player is most emotionally engaged in, which is a legitimate aspect of perceiving Creative Agenda. So if, for instance, someone appears to be more emotionally engaged in the meaning of events or things (intruduced by others or themselves) in the SIS with respect to a Premise rather than in their meaning with respect to the SIS itself, then I'd likely call it Narrativism.

If it does--if some player's "unexpected input" just happens to interest me because of it's relation to premise--then have we crossed over into Nar play?

I'd say yes... but it doesn't really "just happen" singificantly often because we're talking about something expressive that comes from the player, not results of game mechanical happenstance or routine boilerplate play. One of the benefits of focusing on CA as what participants get/expect from one another, as opposed to what they get/expect from play in general, is that the first viewpoint helps filter out a lot of stuff that "just happens" (including some otherwise really important events of play such as results of die rolls) as not particularly relevant to CA.

I think that separating out what I called Personal Agenda from Social Agenda would be very helpful in both my understanding of these things and in explaining/defining them.

Quite possibly. Just keep in mind that Personal Agenda isn't a component of Creative Agenda in the Big Model. CA in the Big Model and what you call Social Agenda are basically the same thing, because CA is entirely inside the Social Contract box.

- Walt