Horror: Simulationism and Narrativism

[Paul Czege]

Hey bodhi,

I've decided for myself that the best chance my game has of capturing a sense of wonder, is to reward the players for trying to instill a sense of wonder in the other players.

I think you've hit the nail exactly on the head with this observation. I couldn't agree more. There have been a number of discussions on The Forge recently about creating horror for players. The traditional perspective, that I disagree with, is that you create a sense of horror for a player by doing horrible shit to the character. In my experience, it doesn't work.

And I think wonderment and horror are near synchronous. It doesn't happen from the GM inflicting wondrous and surreal descriptions and happenings on the characters. I wrote about how I think Narrativist horror works to one of those threads:

"My experiences with traditional horror RPG's have never really scared me the way horror fiction and movies sometimes do. And for a long time I figured it was just the GM having lesser horror skills than directors and published authors. I don't think that anymore. For me, a lot of the emotional intensity of a horror novel or movie comes from relating to the protagonist's reaction to the situation. And in an RPG, that aspect of the story isn't delivered to me. I have to create it. Narrativist horror succeeds because authorial power allows each player to expose his own personal fears in the game. It creates a synergy among participants, almost an emotional communication of synchronous feelings of vulnerability, of hopes and fears. That's what horror is to me."

I think a play group creates wonderment the same way, through emotional communication of vulnerability, hopes, and fears via distributed Authorial power.

Paul

p.s. Check out http://indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1382">this thread for the discussion of horror I quoted from.

[Mike Holmes]

There have been a number of discussions on The Forge recently about creating horror for players. The traditional perspective, that I disagree with, is that you create a sense of horror for a player by doing horrible shit to the character. In my experience, it doesn't work.

This is just to say that I for one do not agree. I will not get into a debate about which is better. I will say that I think that either Sim or Narr, Actor or Author is capable of delivering wonder or horror for individual players.

Just cause it doesn't work for some doesn't mean it won't work for all.

Mike

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike,

Upon rereading my post, I'm thinking it came across a bit harsh. And I hadn't intended it to be. So, I apologize. No hard feelings?

And how about it...an actual play example of Sim horror or wonderment to discuss? I've played Sim, but actual horror and wonderment weren't part of the experience, despite the efforts of the GM. So I feel like I need an example of how it might work.

Paul

[contracycle]

Well, my easiest example would be a CoC game in which the horror arose from straight sim.  The GM had a picture which detailed a villain with tentacles concealed beneath his jacket.  We were shown the picture, but we didn't notice.  Sessions later, we were shown the picture again, as a prompt - and that was a horrifying moment.  It was exactly one of those events in which you find your prior understanding of the world crumbling (it helped that I had little to no familiarity with the setting).  But then if thats true then.. and then.. Oh god...

Now I want an example of narrativist horror, rather than assertions than it is the One True Way.

[Mike Holmes]

And how about it...an actual play example of Sim horror or wonderment to discuss? I've played Sim, but actual horror and wonderment weren't part of the experience, despite the efforts of the GM. So I feel like I need an example of how it might work.

No hard feelings at all Paul.

But Gareth beat me to the punch. I've had plenty of horrific moments in CoC, Chill, and other non horror games to boot. I love CoC. I want to fail a San check right now.

Actually, one of the most horrific moments was playing UA with none other than Mr. Stolze as GM. Probably not a fair comparison as the guy could probably scare the crap out of people with no system at all. But it was done entirely Sim, and it was horrific. I use this example a lot, so perhaps you may have heard it, but I'll not spoil the adventure (it's a published and easy to run one, no less). Anyone who want's specifics can PM me.

It will have to suffice to say that I and two other players at one point were so stunned by what happened in the game that our jaws went agape. Literally. I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere else in an RPG or movie with anyone. I only noticed moments later when I closed my mouth that it had fallen open. It was a thing of Simulationist beauty. I wasn't even in the scene.

I don't know if you'd have been affected by it as I was, Paul. Perhaps you just don't respond to the same stimuli. That's what makes us individuals. Also, consider that your Sim experiences might just not have been as good as mine. I might just be lucky.

Was I trembling with fear? No. I don't believe that any game experience can actually do that to me, just as I never actually tremble during movies or when reading scary literature. As long as I'm safe in my knowledge that it's just a fiction, I can't be too scared. So no amount Narrativism can overcome that. So, for me it's all the same N, or S.

FWIW, I think that the ability to be scared regularly in a RPG like Cthulhu requires a willingness, nay, a desire on the part of the player to be scared. The same, in fact, I think goes for reading HP Lovecraft. If you don't want to be scared by it, you probably won't be. If you are engaged in the activity as an opponent to it in which your goal is to see if you can get through it without being scared, then you'll win. And have no fun doing it. My suggestion, just be scared.

Same goes for wonderment. I think the "loss of wonderment" that so many claim to have experienced, is not because RPGs have lost anything. I think they're almost all improvements on early games, since I first felt wonder in D&D. I think that for the most part players are just older, more experienced, and, unfortunately jaded. We're adults now, and not allowed to feel wonderment at such slight provocation as a written description of the entrance of a dungeon. So no system is going to suddenly just be able to deliver wonderment due to a good design, IMO. Or rather almost any can with the right attitude.

The simple secret is letting go. Invest a little in scaring yourself or indulging in whatever mental flights it requires. If you really want these things. I bet kids have no problem whatsoever. I could scare kids to death with the right CoC adventure.

Just how I see it.

Mike

[hardcoremoose]

Mike,

Your argument almost seems like a plea for authorial power, which, in my opinion, is the most likely tool to help players get to where you suggest they should be.  It's like permission to let go, to dig deep, and to get invested in what's going on.  Now, before I go any further, I don't want to make the mistake of linking authorial power and narrativism - I'm just saying that games where authorial power is discouraged often set up the contentious relationship between players and GM that you describe, where the GM's job is to scare the players, and the players instinct is to hold out as long as they can ('cause that's what their characters would do), where a game with explicit authorial power is like an invitation to the player to join in on the fun (whether that fun be the producing of scares or wonder, or something else entirely).  Am I over generalizing?  Probably, but I think you see what I'm saying.

And since Gareth requested it, here's an example of narrativist horror (although proving that it's narrativist and not just great character sim is hard, just as Gareth's example doesn't explicitly prove it was sim.  As with his example, you'll all have to take my word for it).

Last summer, during the Sorcerer game I ran, Matt Gwinn authored one of the most disturbing scenes I've ever witnessed.  It involved Matt's Character, Wilcox, a sort of well meaning but lovelorn loser, whose search for a soulmate was complicated by some intense fetishism (mostly voyeurism, but an appreciation for underage girls was there too).  Wilcox, in a moment of unusual heroism, went toe-to-toe with some nasty demonic thugs, saving the life of 15-year old Lara Bion (an important NPC attached to another player character).  Rather than taking Lara to the authorities or to the other PCs, Wilcox fled with her to his apartment, the one place he felt safe.

Wilcox was a still photographer for a major studio, and Matt described his apartment as a ratty little dive, dimly lit, the walls festooned with photographs of celebrities and none-celebrities alike, all in comprising positions, all totally unaware they were being photographed.  As it turns out, when one your Demons is a camera, it's easy to get these kinds of pictures.  Pretty creepy.

And then there was Lara.  Scared, vulnerable, clinging to Wilcox.  For the first time in his life, Wilcox felt needed by a female.  And he took advantage of it.  Just prior to that, Wilcox - badly in need of some patching up - summoned a Demon, whose only request in exchange for Binding was that he got to watch.  It was scary because the Demon, like all the rest of us, knew exactly what was going to happen.  He didn't tell Wilcox to do it, he just asked if he could watch.

Shortly thereafter I pulled the veil on that particular scene.  It was intense enough, and it stuck with me on the ride home that night.  To this day the images are etched indelibly in my mind.  Scary stuff, sort of like a car wreck.  I don't know about the others, and I don't know about Matt, but it creeped me out, and I was the guy running the show.

How was it narrativist?  Well, it's hard to explain.  It was a combination of the game's mechanics, some explicit authorial power, the use of Kickers, deliberate attention paid to our premise, and the engagement of the whole group as an audience (which began several sessions prior to this scene, when our group chargen session established up front that each of the players would be interested in each of the characters' stories).  The result was that Matt was empowered to draw us into his story, if only for a bit, and it was pretty damn unsettling.

Okay, that's it for now.  I hope some of this made sense.

- Scott

[Mike Holmes]

Your argument almost seems like a plea for authorial power, which, in my opinion, is the most likely tool to help players get to where you suggest they should be.  It's like permission to let go, to dig deep, and to get invested in what's going on.  Now, before I go any further, I don't want to make the mistake of linking authorial power and narrativism - I'm just saying that games where authorial power is discouraged often set up the contentious relationship between players and GM that you describe, where the GM's job is to scare the players, and the players instinct is to hold out as long as they can ('cause that's what their characters would do), where a game with explicit authorial power is like an invitation to the player to join in on the fun (whether that fun be the producing of scares or wonder, or something else entirely).  Am I over generalizing?  Probably, but I think you see what I'm saying.

Ah, the old Authorial power is more engaging argument.

I would call this a personal problem. In none of the Simulationist games that I play do I ever "contest the GM". That would be Gamist by definition. I work with the GM to create the sought for simulation. This is not to say that other players don't, but I am not they. So you must be generalizing.

I am just guessing, but it sounds to me like you and Paul have encountered a lot of "My Guy" syndrome in the past. Well, authorial power is one way past that. The other is simply playing in a mature non-dysfunctional fashion in adherence with regular Simulationist goals.

Let me be more explicit. I think that in many cases, and for many players (including usually myself) that Authorial power actually decreases enjoyment of such moments of horror and wonder. This is a personal preference, and I would not expect you to understand, necessarily. Nor should you expect me to feel just how you do. I don't reject your accounts of what styles evoke emotions in you (in fact I created a nararativist horror setting myself, I totally believe that it works for some), why do you reject my accounts of my emotions based soley on your experiences.

In any case, your arguments fail to address any of my other angles of discussion, or, more importantly, discuss directly in any way the feeling of wonder that we're supposed to be discussing as the topic of the thread. Who fights against the GM to avoid a sense of wonder? Nobody, they fight their own fear of encountering their own feelings.

That is what needs to be overcome. Got a mechanic for that?

Mike

[contracycle]

where a game with explicit authorial power is like an invitation to the player to join in on the fun (whether that fun be the producing of scares or wonder, or something else entirely).  Am I over generalizing?  Probably, but I think you see what I'm saying.

What I want to know is: how exactly do you see this authorial power being used?  What is the value that you claim it brings?  In what way is it USEFUL?  In other words: why do you think this?

And since Gareth requested it, here's an example of narrativist horror (although proving that it's narrativist and not just great character sim is hard, just as Gareth's example doesn't explicitly prove it was sim.  As with his example, you'll all have to take my word for it).

Actually, I chose that example becuase it could not have been anything but sim - our action as players was to look at a picture, everything else was totally IC simulationist.  In this regard, even if we had had authorial power, it would not have made any difference becuase the horror arose from the direct external experience.

How was it narrativist?  Well, it's hard to explain.  It was a combination of

I note that you have slipped from discussing AUTHORIALISM as distinct from narrativism to narrativism itself.  At what point in the above was authorial power exercised, and how did it contribute?

[Mike Holmes]

At what point in the above was authorial power exercised, and how did it contribute?

I'm going to take a guess and say that in their situation the enhancement brought on by the authorial power was essentially that the players created a scene that would have been omitted in Sim play, and was especially engaging to the players in question because it was designed by one of them. The idea being exactly that they did "do it to themselves" this player act of mental self-mutilation could potentially be horrific to the players experiencing it (though for me I find it usually to be more "icky" that horrific, and perhaps self-indulgent if not done well; I'm not into masochism).

Is that close Moose?

Note that I'd reject any idea that the situation provided by the players would be more engaging to each other than that provided by a GM a priori. Who is to say that a particular player will be able to create something superior to a particular GM. The only advantage the players have potentially, is numbers. This argument I buy. More people making stuff up means more potential opportunities for horror, wonder, whatever.

But I still contend that a player's willingness to engage has little to do with the mechanics in question except as they are attractive to that player specifically. In other words GNS incompatibility problems will, of course, make such feelings more difficult to elicit. But other than that, if playing in a preferred mode, the things that most makes a player unable to achieve these emotions are the player's own hang-ups about those emotions.

So play in your favorite mode. Then commit to the game. That's how to get to these emotional elements as a player (IMO).

Mike

[Lance D. Allen]

I find, personally, that any intense roleplaying experience comes from near pure Actor Stance, with sojourns into total Immersion, when I can manage it. I have quivered with rage at a plot development which should strike me as a player as simply another complication, but which struck my character as a infuriating incident.
Probably, though, the most intense, scary RP experience I've had was in my friend's Star Wars campaign. We had decided to infiltrate the Black Ship, knowing that it would expect us, welcome us (as you welcome a morsel of your favorite dessert) and then attempt to consume us. Eric can set a scene, but for me, it was only partly his doing. I felt my character's instincts fighting, his killer animal instinct fighting with the Force-bred instinct against wanton violence. It scared me, because I'd managed to enter total Immersion at that point, and it scared the shyte out of Corwin. I know at least a few of the others who were present were also feeling that way, as well. It was an amazing story, with a lot of awesome RP. It boiled down to the Actor stance (though we wouldn't have known to call it that) and allowing us to feed off of each other's emotional input and output.
Thus, for myself at least, I think the most horrifying or wondrous experience would come from Actor Stance, rather than Author Stance, and from Immersion moreso than from setting up the scene.

[hardcoremoose]

I'll try to respond to this as best I can, but I'm gonna' miss a lot of good points, I just know it.

Mike,

I absolutely do not mean to devalue or marginalize your experiences with simulationist horror.  I've had plenty of decent experiences with simulationist horror in my time, me running the game, my friends in complete "my guy" mode.  My point was that, at that level, the games often became me against them - me trying to scare them, they being aware of my goals and working hard to short circuit them.  It's tough, but at my railroady best (and I mean functional railroading, as in everybody had a good time with it), I managed to evoke some fine emotional responses.

My point regarding authorial power has little to do with the fact that "we made it up".  That alone doesn't make something scary.  I look at it more in terms of emotional response.  As a GM in a sim horror game, I have to find a way to push my player's buttons.  If I know my players well, or if I get lucky, I can hit the emotional buttons that trigger fear.  You talk about functional players in a sim game working with the GM to be scared, i.e., they want to be scared, and that definitely makes things easier.  As I see it, and what prompted my previous comments, I see authorial power as a natural extension of this sort of  cooperation...it's the player saying "this scares me."

The scene from the Sorcerer game could have been done Sim.  It would have been up to me, the GM, to pick up on the cues and to create the situation, but having done that, the scene probably would have had similar impact.  But because Matt stepped up, I didn't have to struggle to find something suitably creepy to present as story content.  Maybe I'm just lazy.

A few final points...

What I'm reading with all this Actor Stance and Immersionist talk is that to experience "horror", the players need to feel like they are actually there, in the scene, and that authorial stance leaves them too far removed to "feel" it.  That's cool, I can understand that sentiment.  I doubt that Matt, as author of the scene I've been discussing, was as disturbed by it as I was.  Even so, I'm not talking about extreme narrativism or authorial power here - much of the scene above was done completely in-character, with the actual authoring taking place over a number of sessions (including our group character creation session).

And, in regards to that, I wonder if we're talking about the same feeling of horror here.  Are we talking chills-down-the-spine, cold sweat, teeth-chattering type fear, or a feeling of quiet dread that sits with you for hours afterward while you question your own belief system.  I'm talking about the latter.

Finally, I apologize for confusing narrativism with authorial power.  The terms are not interchangeable, and I've been doing that somewhat freely.  In all of my above posts, assume that when I am talking about narrativism, I am actually talking narrativism with the explicit use of authorial power, and when I mention simulationism, I'm talking about that with the explicit non-use of it.

Thanks,
Scott

[Matt Gwinn]

Hey Moose,
I hope this doesn't shoot down your argument too much, but the scariest moment I can recall in a game was the time you ran Ravenloft and ripped my half ogre's face off when he looked up inside the well canopy.  For some reason that particular campaign seemed scariest to me (from a character perspective) and I had no authorial power at all.  Hell, back then we didn't even know what authoroial power was.

On another note.  The scene you discused with Wilcox didn't bother me as much as it did you.  It was definetly a satisfying scene for me as a player and I think it defined my character's disfunction as well as I could expect.  What bothered me the most about the scene in question (and really the whole character concept) was my fear of the other players confusing me with my character.  At the time we didn't know each other all that well and that was definetly a concern of mine.

,Matt G.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I cannot, for the life of me, see that we are discussing nothing more than preferences about the following distinctions:

1) Scaring others vs. being scared oneself

2) Startlement over "dread realization"

3) Horror vs. terror as I described them in the Little Fears review

Mix and match your preferences across these variables. Suit to appropriate role-playing. Recognize that not all Simulationist horror is alike; ditto for Narrativist horror. Be done.

It seems to me as if this topic always goes into tailspins, every time, because it is that simple.

Best,
Ron