Ported GNS Thread from Sorcerer

[Valamir]

As Ron pointed out one of the threads over in the Sorcerer forum evolved into a GNS discussion and by rights should be over here.  So since Gordon made some comments I wanted to add to, I figured I'd bring 'em on over.

As Ben says, if what you're primarily interested in is competition/challenge, then the label most folks here are going to give to the "stuff you like" is Gamism.

Quite so.  Everyone one of the concerns Alex listed were vintage Gamism.  Which is a style that could use a lot greater representation here.  Especially more traditional Gamism.  Alot of the example of Gamism we see here tend to be pretty leading edge stuff like Pantheon.  I'd love to see some threads started on some true old school Gamist concerns.

Even Donjon isn't really old school gamism, being intentionally designed to be new school with some familiar old school trappings.

As far as "since every time I suggest that I have already TRIED Narrativist play and thought it fell rather short people say 'Oh, that couldn't possibly have been narrativist play' or 'you must have been playing with a lousy group'", certainly either of those claims are possible, but based on everything in your posts so far, the most important is probably much simpler - you don't LIKE Narrativism.

That is certainly possible and completely ok, as Gordon mentioned.

But I'd like Alex to consider another possibility.  That you've never really tried Narrativist play.  Given your crossing of the terms Simulationist and Gamist earlier I'd say the possibility is pretty good that whatever game(s) you've played that had the narrativism label applied to them, there's a good chance that they WEREN'T, in fact Narrative.

Forge members have spent many many hours and literally thousands of posts (here and in other venues) exploring and defining the lexicon of terms that are used here.  Given that you're new to the Forge you probably haven't been exposed to these terms in the way they are used here.  I submit that since Ron Edwards et.al. was primarily responsible for developing the idea of Narrativist play as distinct and seperate from what had previously been called Dramatism, or Story Telling, that you would be well served by relying on how it is described in his essay rather than how it has been described (and likely misdescribed) in other venues.

Now, as far as your Cover solution goes . . . first off, realize that the problem you point to is NOT a problem if you're playing Nar-focused Sorceror, because it doesn't care about "unfair advantage". The third-grade prodigy and the FBI agent have equivalent story-influence - the prodigy uses his Cover to reveal a contact that already knows everything the agent is investigating to discover. The doctor adds some details to his background - say, served in the National Guard to pay for Med school - and voila, he can use a firearm.

Thats an important point Gordon is making.  Narrativist play isn't "not balanced" its just "story balanced" as opposed to "game mechanic balanced".


With all that said running Sorcerer as a Gamist Game certainly isn't out of the question.  As I mentioned in the other thread being a somewhat transitional design, means there are enough traditional elements to draw upon.

[joshua neff]

I think Clinton & Mearls need to get in on this. They both know Sorcerer & they both know gamism.

I think Sorcerer could work really well for gamist play. I don't even think Cover would need to be retooled. As Alex has already mentioned, if you take the set-up of a bunch of arrogant, aggressive sorcerers each with a demon & set them to compete against each other (or rather, the players of the sorcerers competing against each other), you could have a really smart game. Much like Tweet suggests for Over the Edge, keep players in the dark about the other PCs, with lots of note passing.