Ron's Essay

[james_west]

I've been busy - hadn't got around to reading Ron's essay before now. So, my take on it:

First, it's marvelously well written - very rigorous. Even if you don't agree with parts of it, it is, at least to me, very clear what his position is. In fact, he's taken marvelous effort to avoid having those tedious terminology debates which I, at least, find so painful.

Next - I don't know if it's just because it's been percolating in my brain for so long, or reading this essay, but it's clear to me that one of my early posts at this site (theoretical game spaces) is pretty much completely missing the point. It is clear, from reading this article, that the only time at which GNS -really- applies is at the instant of any specific decision in actual play. Game design can facilitate making that decision one way or another, and you can have a tendency to make decisions in the same direction at all times, but what it boils down to is, at the point of a specific decision, which of the three is your priority.

This means that any discussions of a particular game being 20% narrativist, 10% gamist, and 70% simulationist are missing the point as well; you can't serve two masters. One of the three, at any specific decision making point, has to be your highest priority. It is tautologically impossible to have two highest priorities.

However, I return to the point that GNS only actually happens at decision making points in play. Which means that, while game design can facilitate decisions in one direction or another, I think that perhaps it is not quite so critical as Edwards frequently espouses.

For instance, in another thread Edwards says something which implies to me that his players have a tendency to slide along in essentially simulationist mode for a while, before becoming comfortable enough with the characters/setting/etc to take a more aggressive role in directing story. I find this to be a common phenomenon myself; it takes players a bit to become comfortable enough with the game that they're willing to take the sort of aggressive, story-creation responsibilities that are the hallmark of narrativism.

What this means, of course, is that it's pretty natural to slide back and forth between narrativism and simulationism. Which is not at all in conflict with the whole GNS thing since, as I keep saying, the proper time to apply the system is at the instant a decision is made. Which does not neccesarily imply anything about the way you make the next decision.

Of course, if you're too arbitrary or abrupt in how you change, you'll confuse heck out of your players, and they won't have fun. But it seems that once you've got a little practice at it, it's really not too big a deal for players to spend a fair amount of time "in the passenger seat" as it were, and only occasionally pushing their story priorities in any sense that is easily distinguishable from the way they behave in simulationism.

To attempt to be more concrete about it; a simulationist game is often driven by the GM's ideas about story. Narrativist games tend to be driven by the players' attempts to address their thematic concerns. However, after the players have established the conflicts, they can spend most of their time dealing with them in exactly the same way that they would deal with GM provided conflicts in a more simulationist game.

So my point is that I suspect that this is all rather more fluid in practice than was, at least to me, implied by the essay. Of course, since it wasn't explicitly stated, it's entirely possible that it was just me projecting it.

- James

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

And welcome back!! (This is your second post since you returned, but the first thread, so it's a good place for the welcome banner.)

To the potentially confused: james_west is one person, and James V. West is another; the latter is the author of The Pool and The Questing Beast, ie, Random Order Creations.

Thanks for the kind comments about the essay, and, to your possible surprise, I agree with you about the fluidity of the modes, from game to game, from instance to instance. It's probably not surprising that I think those "instances" are fairly broad in time, or rather, that a cluster of them in a game session tend to "clump up" in GNS terms.

As for the widespread perception that I take a hard-line about "one mode per person, one mode per game," this is as good a time as any to reveal my deeper view. I suggest that the hard-line as exists in my essay (which does not match the rigid one in quotes in the previous sentence) is a necessary one for the unhappy role-player.

Many unhappy role-players are prone to fall into the "catch-as-catch-can" trap, which is to say, "if we all just show up and play and try to get along, everything will be fine." Others are prone to fall into the "show up and let the GM sort it out" trap, which tends to be more stable for longer, but ultimately to fizzle when anything else fun or time-consuming presents itself.

Thus the essay has a certain scruff-of-the-neck quality, which the reader enters into once they get past the idea that "you're in Ron's head now." We'll talk about Gamism now. We'll talk about Simulationism now. Etc.

But a closer look at the essay will show, I think, that this hard-line is a matter of reading and consideration of the terms, not a prescription for the behavior of role-playing itself. In those terms, I agree with exactly what James is saying - nothing in the essay says anything about how much time a person necessarily must spend doing G, N, or S. It seems to me that once a person grasps the functional framework for expressing his or her goals in role-playing per se, that having different goals for different times/games is now possible, whereas before it was a muddled mess, in terms of behavior and fun.

[I should be clear here: any functional framework will do. If some of the other "boxes" models currently being presented have a similar self-help effect for others, then insert them in place of "GNS" above and I'm just as happy. I happen to think the GNS one works real well, but that doesn't mean we have to stop there.]

Which brings us to design ... just how "one mode per game" am I, anyway? Two points apply here.

1) It's not a matter of "one mode" in some sense of purity. It's a matter of coherence - can role-playing goals be met with the bloody thing? (Considering that it probably cost money, I think that if it takes tons of extra work and retrofitting to work at this most basic level, then failure after a certain degree is tantamount to swindling.)

2) The answer must be relative to existing games. If we look across existing games, I think that the vast majority of them are incoherent, largely due to crazy-quilt design: unconsidered combinations of imitated sections.

So my take on design is that coherent combinations of G, N, or S are possible - but we don't see them, and I strongly doubt that unconsidered, imitative design is going to produce them. In my view, the default coherent design is "the [G, N, or S]-facilitating game." Possibilities beyond that - remaining coherent but combining and changing among GNS - are legion, and they are also largely unknown. I see hints, and the recent discussion of Transition is a big leap forward in my view, but so far, not much concrete.

Best,
Ron

[Le Joueur]

Next - It is clear, from reading this article, that the only time at which GNS -really- applies is at the instant of any specific decision in actual play. Game design can facilitate making that decision one way or another, and you can have a tendency to make decisions in the same direction at all times, but what it boils down to is, at the point of a specific decision, which of the three is your priority.

This means that any discussions of a particular game being 20% narrativist, 10% gamist, and 70% simulationist are missing the point as well; you can't serve two masters. One of the three, at any specific decision making point, has to be your highest priority. It is tautologically impossible to have two highest priorities.

However, I return to the point that GNS only actually happens at decision making points in play. Which means that, while game design can facilitate decisions in one direction or another, I think that perhaps it is not quite so critical as Edwards frequently espouses.

You mean as he writes elsewhere, right?  One of the misinterpretations I've seen going around is that GNS game design is critical or must be focused in order for a game to work at all.  Sorry guys, but I don't think that's what is actually being said.

Take the argument over The Window.  Ron simply said, GNS focus or no, he was not able to play the game literally the way it was written.  Immediately people jumped on him for saying it was terribly broken, dysfunctional, or bad; none of these are what he said.  Something similar is what goes on between Ron's essay and his 'System matters' article.

When I came to these pieces, I had already come to the conclusion that, as a publisher, the only thing I could do was provide a design.  I cannot make people play a certain way.  I cannot tell them what to do.  What I can do is put something out there.  What I got from 'System Matters' was that I should make that product the best I could.  A person should be able to play it without having to change it in any way.  I think the argument that otherwise is lazy design, is a sound one.  (Asking someone to customize my product - without showing them how - expects too much, I think.)

The discussions around the GNS have always taken a similar turn, except that the 'usual suspects' are so close to this idea that it is only rarely specifically mentioned.  All the talk of 'focused design' and design for a 'specific mode of play' are inclusive of the fact that it is simply so that the game does not contradict itself (or require sophisticated customization).  But then you already knew that.  Any TLA¹ theory worth its weight in paper should allow that.

With that in mind, I think Ron's apparent remarks on the 'critical' nature of design facilitation of GNS focus should be taken as highly relative.  In general, focus, GNS or otherwise, is not terribly critical.  But when you are producing the design, what else can you focus on?  Presentation?  Layout?  Artwork?  Fonts?  Relatively speaking, in terms of the text itself, is there even a second or third concern other than 'focus?'  The body of the work, before you make it all pretty, pretty much hinges on its focus of design.  Without some kind of focus, the final product will no doubt suffer.  Thus focus is critical, at that level.

In another thread Edwards says something which implies to me that his players have a tendency to slide along in essentially Simulationist mode for a while, before becoming comfortable enough with the characters/setting/etc to take a more aggressive role in directing story. I find this to be a common phenomenon myself; it takes players a bit to become comfortable enough with the game that they're willing to take the sort of aggressive, story-creation responsibilities that are the hallmark of Narrativism.

What this means, of course, is that it's pretty natural to slide back and forth between Narrativism and Simulationism. Which is not at all in conflict with the whole GNS thing since, as I keep saying, the proper time to apply the system is at the instant a decision is made. Which does not neccesarily imply anything about the way you make the next decision.

Of course, if you're too arbitrary or abrupt in how you change, you'll confuse heck out of your players, and they won't have fun. But it seems that once you've got a little practice at it, it's really not too big a deal for players to spend a fair amount of time "in the passenger seat" as it were, and only occasionally pushing their story priorities in any sense that is easily distinguishable from the way they behave in simulationism.

To attempt to be more concrete about it; a Simulationist game is often driven by the GM's ideas about story. Narrativist games tend to be driven by the players' attempts to address their thematic concerns. However, after the players have established the conflicts, they can spend most of their time dealing with them in exactly the same way that they would deal with GM provided conflicts in a more simulationist game.

So my point is that I suspect that this is all rather more fluid in practice than was, at least to me, implied by the essay. Of course, since it wasn't explicitly stated, it's entirely possible that it was just me projecting it.

I came to this forum with these ideas running around in my mind in some vague fashion.  After nearly a year discussing these theories, practices, and nomenclatures, I finally crystalized my thoughts; this 'fluid practice' would be 'Drift' or Transition.  This far in the game, I have to say that if this is 'how people play' (including the designers themselves), then all the systems that focus on Narrativism alone aren't consistent with their use.

That inconsistency, taken from 'System Matters' perspective, means that those designs obscure or 'get in the way' of their implementation and force 'Drift,' meaning, on the level that The Window has problems, they might too.  That in mind, I can see one of my unconscious design goals for Scattershot, what became known as Transition, was exactly the solution to the 'fluid practice' problem.

With Transition, you can begin playing a Scattershot in a Simulationist fashion, exactly as James suggests.  Once 'comfortable,' you can Transition to more Narrativist play also in the way suggested.  In keeping with the idea that 'System Matters,' I can see only this as a solution (but that's just me).  That's why I am so excited to be working on it.  It's not the end all, be all of gaming, but I like to think it's a novel solution to the ages old problem of 'fluid practice' when 'System Matters.'  (And I'd easily go so far as to say that there will be no way a Transitional game, like Scattershot, can perform well at, or even close, to the extremes of any of the GNS modes; it's a 'Jack of all Trades' thing.)

Fang Langford

¹ Three Letter Acronym - something not unusual in RPGs.

[Paul Czege]

Hey,

I just noticed that James wrote this:

...the only time at which GNS -really- applies is at the instant of any specific decision in actual play....it's pretty natural to slide back and forth between narrativism and simulationism....once you've got a little practice at it, it's really not too big a deal....I suspect that this is all rather more fluid in practice...

And that Fang wrote this:

...as a publisher, the only thing I could do was provide a design....What I got from 'System Matters' was that I should make that product the best I could. A person should be able to play it without having to change it in any way. I think the argument that otherwise is lazy design....this 'fluid practice' would be...Transition...I have to say that if this is 'how people play' (including the designers themselves), then all the systems that focus on Narrativism alone aren't consistent with their use.

And I have to say Fang, that you slipped a pretty powerful pro-Scattershot statement in there without much fanfare. The Window has been described as "abashedly" Narrativist because it only goes halfway toward its stated objective. It ditches things like traditional improvement mechanics. It ditches things that sometimes get in the way of Narrativism, allowing a sort-of informal Narrativism, but without providing mechanics that actually facilitate Narrativism. Everway is similarly abashed. And what I think you're saying Fang, is that a Narrativist system which merely allows for sort-of informal Simulationism might be abashedly functional, but is just as incomplete a design. When you put it that way, it's an interesting assertion.

Paul

[Le Joueur]

I just noticed that James wrote this:

...the only time at which GNS -really- applies is at the instant of any specific decision in actual play....it's pretty natural to slide back and forth between narrativism and simulationism....once you've got a little practice at it, it's really not too big a deal....I suspect that this is all rather more fluid in practice...

And that Fang wrote this:

...as a publisher, the only thing I could do was provide a design....What I got from 'System Matters' was that I should make that product the best I could. A person should be able to play it without having to change it in any way. I think the argument that otherwise is lazy design....this 'fluid practice' would be...Transition...I have to say that if this is 'how people play' (including the designers themselves), then all the systems that focus on Narrativism alone aren't consistent with their use.

And I have to say, that you slipped a pretty powerful pro-Scattershot statement in there without much fanfare.

Yeah. [Fang grins abashedly, like a schoolboy caught kissing a girl during class.] I did, didn't I?

The Window has been described as "abashedly" Narrativist because it only goes halfway toward its stated objective. It ditches things like traditional improvement mechanics. It ditches things that sometimes get in the way of Narrativism, allowing a sort-of informal Narrativism, but without providing mechanics that actually facilitate Narrativism. Everway is similarly abashed. And what I think you're saying, is that a Narrativist system which merely allows for sort-of informal Simulationism might be abashedly functional, but is just as incomplete a design. When you put it that way, it's an interesting assertion.

'Abashedly' functional as Simulationism, yes; no other comment on functionality is meant to be implied.  I certainly don't mean to say anything about 'completeness' (I couldn't even say what that word might mean here).  What I meant was, when a Narrativist game is used 'abashedly' Simulationist during the early part of play, it is during that time dysfunctional.  When a group picks up a Narrativist game and is good to go with their characters, et cetera, the game is most certainly functional.

Function in this usage has to do with 'square pegging' Narrativism while you set it up or become comfortable with it.  Perhaps overtly Narrativist systems might give 'the booster rockets' to get us into 'Narrativist orbit,' which then 'drop away.'  This would solve the 'abashedly functional' paradox (id est, how can it function as a Narrativist game if it has Simulationist rules?  Is this what's meant by El Dorado?  I have no idea.)

Fang Langford

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

My current game design has moved away from "push the envelope" (e.g. Elfs) and into "slip it to them gently" - to provide very solid Vanilla Narrativism, which is not just "Simulationist but, um, with story, kinda." Sorcerer, I think, moves from fairly accessible to the old-schooler (OK, not comforting, but accessible) to the terrifying abyss in the supplements. But now, I'm interested in game design in which plain and simple Narrativist decision-making is not hard, or frightening, or high-pressure. Just fun, and so basic to the rules that all you have to do is play. Of course, that play just open another door to more authoring, with each repetition.

In fact, I just finished the first complete draft, which means this topic really ought to go to Design. But I do think the main point is relevant here - focused and easy-access Vanilla, rather than mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone.

Best,
Ron