GNS and organization

[Buddha Nature]

I have just been accepted as the Games/Roleplaying/Free Systems editor for the Open Directory Project.  My question is do you think GNS categories could/would be helpful to people looking for games?  Currently there is either no divison of games, or they are divided along genre lines.  Specifically I think the Universal systems (of which the directory currently has 60+) could be broken down along GNS lines to help narrow searches.

What do people think about the above example and of GNS as an organizational tool as a whole?

-Shane

[Bob McNamee]

sounds useful...
especially the universals....
would save the downloading time...only to find a type I wasn't looking for.

Bob McNamee

[Zak Arntson]

The problem is that saying a game is G/N or S is shorthand for saying, "This game facilitates mostly G/N or S decisions during game play." There is also a vocal group (on rpg.net, at least) that would be turned off by seeing GNS distinction.

[Mike Holmes]

Worse, even if you were to decide well what systems support which mode best, you'll find that the split will be like 10% Gamist, 55% Simulationist, 5% Narrativist, and 30% too incoherent to peg.

What good is that?

Mike

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Hi Shane

I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with the rest who say that GNS would not be a helpful tool for you. It simply isn't that widely understood of accepted. Someday perhaps, but not now.

This means you're stuck with genre lines and then grouping them alphabetically. There are worse things, but not much.

You could try "realistic" "cinematic" and stuff like that, but I personally would advise against that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

In theory ... fantastic. In practice, at this time ... ouch.

The main conceptual problem is the whole "facilitates" concept, which is apparently a serious stumbling block for some folks. I've repeatedly tried to convince people that no, I don't have a little queep-machine which classifies either games are people necessarily. However, I can just see a hell of a lot of people thinking that that's exactly what categories in your database are doing.

The real practical problem is incoherence. So many games are incoherent, and the reasons for this are so multifaceted, that I think tons of games would be thrown into the "whatever" category. And that wouldn't be terribly useful.

I will say that I'm flattered and that I wish my notions could be of more help.

Best,
Ron

[Buddha Nature]

Yeah, I was mostly just testing the feeling in the air.  I don't think it would be great, but I am looking at like (due to my own finds as well) almost 80 games in the Universal section.  I can live with putting games into genre distinctions (which I hate) but to just toss The Pool in with 75 other "universal" games seems so rude =)

Any other ideas for catagorizing "universal" systems?

-Shane

[RobMuadib]

Yeah, I was mostly just testing the feeling in the air.  I don't think it would be great, but I am looking at like (due to my own finds as well) almost 80 games in the Universal section.  I can live with putting games into genre distinctions (which I hate) but to just toss The Pool in with 75 other "universal" games seems so rude =)

Any other ideas for catagorizing "universal" systems?

-Shane

Shane

I would say that Rules-Light, Rules Heavy, or Minimalist/Detailed might be a useful category to consider. Or perhaps a rating of Character creation depth/complexity and Combat/Action Resultion Depth/Complexity. Realistic or Cinematic might be useful, but this applies not only to combat deadliness but to Skill Use/Action Resolution, and even Character Creation. Then you get into a rather long checklist of qualities that give Universal games their feel unfortunately.

HTH,

Rob

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I can live with putting games into genre distinctions (which I hate) but to just toss The Pool in with 75 other "universal" games seems so rude =)

Any other ideas for catagorizing "universal" systems?

Well, for The Pool, you could always put it under The Questing Beast. The others will have to sink or swim for themselves, unfortunately. But I've seen some of them, so there you go.

[Bob McNamee]

would it be possible/useful to sort them by rules amount Heavy/Light etc and stances they promote? Actor,Author,Director

course thats probably just a slippery slope too....
hmm
Bob McNamee

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Using stance classifications might be even more difficult and inaccurate than GNS ones ... the GNS classifications would be, I think, not terribly wrong so much as hard to use or interpret. However, stance is by definition a labile, ephemeral element of play.

It's easy to see where a game does promote a specific stance - overt enjoinders to Actor stance, mechanics that by definition require Author or Director stance. However, when a game text is silent on the matter, it's not that no stance is being promoted, just that which one is left up to the persons in play (or more likely, assumed to be some particular combination).

What I'm saying is that identifying a "true positive" (e.g. Extreme Vengeance requires Director stance to use certain mechanics, which it does) is easy. But that doesn't mean that any and all games can be classified like this, for each and every mechanic or combination of them.

Best,
Ron

[Zak Arntson]

How to split up Universal games? Of the games you have listed, what kind of split would put it roughly in half? I think that would have the most utility.

[Ron Edwards]

Zak,

I can't really be reading what I'm reading ...

"... what kind of split would put it roughly in half?"

Are you suggesting that the category-variables be chosen in light of what quantitative distribution they will deliver?

That's hair-raising. Shane, please consider that such a choice of variables would be among the worst offenses against rigor.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Anyone who wants to dispute this point with me, contact me off-forum.

[Zak Arntson]

I'm thinking of utility + a programmer's sensibilities (I admit that a programmer's solution can be counter-intuitive and bad in the real world), and only for Universal systems because it sounds like a problem area. If you do a Rules-Light/Rules-Heavy split, and you have 10 games in one and 60 in another, your users are going to have trouble going through Rules-Heavy. Unless you further split up Rules-Heavy into sub-categories.

I've been mulling this (again Universal only) over, from rules-light/heavy, to 1-page/full, to partial/complete. They're all too vague. Even if the split was A-K, L-Z, it would be a little easier to navigate.

What about Freeform & Other (what would be the name for non-Freeform)?

Lastly, is this same issue a problem with the Forge's Resource Library? I get frustrated going through the pages of Free RPGs to find something interesting. Then again, I may be impatient.

(And Ron, I agree that a distribution split would be bad, but I see it as a last-resort rather than a never-do)

[Walt Freitag]

There are many easily stated (though not often easily determined) information items for universal RGS that I would find useful in selecting games of further interest, but would not be appropriate for grouping into categories. These include things like original edition publication date, number of editions, most recent edition publication date, core rules page count, number of requisites (character stats required of all characters, whether primary or derived), and resolution system granularity. The latter I express as the maximum probability that the minimum possible situational modifier will alter the outcome. It ranges from .01 for some d100 base systems, to 1.0 for karma-based systems. (It's N/A for most freeform systems, but that itself is useful information.) A d20 system is 0.05, 3d6 is 0.13, The Pool is 0.17, WoD Storyteller is 0.16, some dice pool systems are 0.5 or higher.

So to me, more useful than categories, would be a tablular display that I could sort by any of the above criteria.

Of the games you have listed, what kind of split would put it roughly in half? I think that would have the most utility.

That's hair-raising... please consider that such a choice of variables would be among the worst offenses against rigor

Heh, can you tell that one of these people is a programmer and one is a biologist? Ten points if you can guess which is which!

- Walt