Is S out of balance with G/N?

[JMendes]

Hi, :)

I especially await Rob's unveiling of The Million Worlds, which may be the first Simulationist RPG that employs overt Director Stance. He's working out the reward system on Indie Design right now, and I highly recommend taking a look.

Hmmm... Care to point me towards the thread in question? Thanks.

Cheers,

J.

[MK Snyder]

Buried in one of my ramblings above, I suggested, "Or be rewarded not with points, but with Godlike Powers to create new outcomes for events, the privilege of adding to the world?"

This would mean, of course, that the practice of groups composing home versions of things...monsters, locations, rules fixes...would have to be treated as a privilege administrated by the GM.

This could work--as the players most likely to be offering their efforts to the group in this fashion are most likely the ones who enjoy sim/narr play.

[MK Snyder]

And hereit is.

I'm happy.

[JMendes]

Hullo, :)

Ok, I read the TMW:COTEC thread and it officially flew over my head, i.e., I was thoroughly unable to visualize where exactly he is going with that stuff.

Also, I couldn't distinguish between game and meta-game. Seems to me the whole thing is about meta-game. Plus, I have no clue whether them mechanics are going to facilitate sim, nar or gam.

Ok, let me restate this: eh... huh? :)

Also, to MK:

Or be rewarded not with points, but with Godlike Powers to create new outcomes for events, the privilege of adding to the world?

This would mean, of course, that the practice of groups composing home versions of things...monsters, locations, rules fixes...would have to be treated as a privilege administrated by the GM.

This could work--as the players most likely to be offering their efforts to the group in this fashion are most likely the ones who enjoy sim/narr play.

One minor quibble is that your Godlike Powers can easily be called Godlike Points. ;)

More seriously, I can see narrativists going for this, as they would have criteria for using said points, namely that premise thingie, but somehow it doesn't quite appeal to my sim sense. Of course, YMMV.

My problem with your suggestion is that this doesn't seem to adress my main difficulty, namely, that the intended reward would have to effectively increase the player's capacity to explore, much as XPs increase the player's capacity to overcome and 'story points' increase the player's capacity to address premise. Nevertheless, it is a good start and it did not go unnoticed. :)

So... I will continue searching for that ever elusive metagame sim reward... and will report back whatever I come up with. Of course, MK, you or anyone else can jump in with further thoughts.

Cheers,

J.

P.S. Should I start a thread about this in RPG Theory, or does this definitely belong here?

[MK Snyder]

J.,

as "explore" is very specifically defined in Ron's essay, can you clarify your use of it in your post?

I might agree with you...or not!

[RobMuadib]

Hullo, :)

Ok, I read the TMW:COTEC thread and it officially flew over my head, i.e., I was thoroughly unable to visualize where exactly he is going with that stuff.

Also, I couldn't distinguish between game and meta-game. Seems to me the whole thing is about meta-game. Plus, I have no clue whether them mechanics are going to facilitate sim, nar or gam.

Ok, let me restate this: eh... huh? :)

J Mendes

Hey, since you happen to be talking about my favorite concept at the moment thought I would weigh in with some of my ideas about rewarding Sim play.

Ok, to me personally, the fun of Sim play is getting to explore the game reality involving the cool toys you like. Like say you like the idea of Mecha and Mecha Combat.

So how to provide for and reward this.

Well at the top level, my game is about collaborating to create a shared world, via the mechanism of Nomenar, or chips. Meaning, that you have a number of chips, that by bidding, you can exert control of the game reality. So in, the case of our mecha dude above, during the Genesis Session, he could bid Nomenar so that the world they are creating has Mecha. (Assuming no one challenges this, and he is not outvoted. he gets to have Mecha in the world. Play is shared after all.)

Now, the second thing my game does is reward players for using the detailed Design Architecture to design Game Entities that are used in the shared Narrative. (Which amounts to facilitating Exploration of Setting and System, since the rules are detailed and realistic.)

So say our Mecha fan goes home after the Genesis Session, where the additional details of the world were hashed out. Well our Mecha guy, lets call him Mecha-Ike, is happy cause there are mechs. So he goes home, whips out the detailed Vehicle design rules and whips up some mechs.

He gets together With Rob, who is acting as the Setting Guide to coordinate with the other players. Rob looks over the Mecha, determines that they fit the Setting Tenets the players decided on fine (Therefore not requiring a Challenge by Mecha-Ike to have his stuff accepted into the game.) He figures out the Royalty for each Mecha, then makes copies available to the other players.

So that saturday they play a game in the world they designed. Bob is acting as the Rules Guide, since he knows the rules well, and earns extra Nomenar for doing this. Play proceeds with Rob starting out as the Narrative Guide, While setting up the Narrative, he empties his pot, Opening the Narrative Guide role up for bid. , Bob decides its time for some Mecha Action, so he bids enough to win the Narrative Guide Position.

He then decides to instigate some Mecha Combat with the Main characters against the Imperial Assualt Force (Nobody challenges this, as it fits in the Narrative so far). He pays the Nomenar to set this up, Earning additional Nomenar as royalties, since his Mecha Designed have been used in the Narrative, and bam, Mecha-Ike gets to play out some detailed Mecha combat, instant sim joy.

So what do these points do, they reward Mecha-Ike for creating Game Entites for the players to Interact with, i.e. to explore within the setting. What else do they do, they give Mecha-Ike the Authority to direct play towards Sim play that he enjoys. Mainly the exploration of System with regards to Mecha combat.

Now what makes this work is that my Game supports Simulationist Play as it's number one priority.

How does it do this, first, it features a detailed realistic resolution system, detailed character creation, etc. A Traditional Sim Design. Second, It makes Narrativist fiat, that is, Deciding Outcomes by Fiat, Prohibitively expensive, without the consent of the players.

Instead, it is designed such that Players can exert authorial control over characters by using hero points to alter the odds in their favor. That is, they can weight things toward what they want, but they can't ignore the System.. Which is to say, NO one has the ready means to abrogate the system, and anyone who tries is likely to be challenged, through the Nomenar mechanic. This is assuming the players wanted to use the detailed system to resolve things. (Which is kinda what the whole game presumes.)

Restated, Sim players are rewarded by being able to create the Sim Entites that interest them, and guide play to engage in exploration of those entites. What else could you want.

The other thing is that Narrativism is not a Priority in my design. You would have to abrogate or abbreviate large parts of the detailed system, and spend lots of Nomenar to get the other players to accept the Narrative Expecations, Narrative Roles that addres whatever premise you dreamed up.

However, you would be fighting the system which is focused on detailed realistic resolution, that is simulation by way of exploration of system. And you would have to repeal or change the means to Narrate Outcomes by fiat. The system, by default, only supports the narration of Outcomes that are supported by Character or Entity abilities, and even then it is geared to be expensive. Restated, Narrativism is NOT a priority in the system.

It depends on how you allow the use of Authorial/Directorial power in the system. Narrativism relies on being able to Narrate Outcomes that address and support premise. MY system does not provide for this, it does provides for the introduction of Game Entities and situations to a Narrative, which supports sim and exploration. There are no "Premise" based mechanics. No Humanity, etc, nothing to track or guage how your character is meeting the Premise. It is meant ot handle how your character interacts with the world as represented by game entities. i.e, pure sim.

My system supports gamism as a secondary priority, since it features detailed resolution systems, detailed character ability, resources that you can use to improve characters, and a means to establish "scenarios" that provide a gamist challenge.

anyway, that should better illuminate for you how my design will support and reward simulationist play.

HTH

Rob Muadib

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

as "explore" is very specifically defined in Ron's essay, can you clarify your use of it in your post?

My use of 'explore' in my post means exactly the same as it means in Ron's essay. Namely, the figuring and playing out of cause and effect relationships with regards to system, setting, character, situation or color. Well, maybe not color. I still can't quite understand color exploration. But definitely all the others.

Ok, I read the TMW:COTEC thread and it officially flew over my head, i.e., I was thoroughly unable to visualize where exactly he is going with that stuff.

Also, I couldn't distinguish between game and meta-game. Seems to me the whole thing is about meta-game. Plus, I have no clue whether them mechanics are going to facilitate sim, nar or gam.

Ok, to me personally, the fun of Sim play is getting to explore the game reality involving the cool toys you like. Like say you like the idea of Mecha and Mecha Combat.

So how to provide for and reward this.

Ah, ok, I'm beginning to see where you're going with this. The reason I wasn't following it is that my mind is not yet geared towards that sort of collaborative gaming.

Also, I think I understand how your system provides sim rewards. However, those rewards don't quite go towards rewarding good sim play. Or rather, somehow, it isn't quite what I'm looking for. The point of contention for me is that last sentence I quoted: 'So how to provide for...'

I have no desire to provide for. The setting is the setting. If we choose to explore setting, then I want to:

a) Identify good setting exploration play on the part of the player;
b) Have a metagame reward that increases the player's ability to explore the setting.

In my mind, increasing the ability to explore the setting does not equate to having the ability to modify it.

Likewise, substitute character, system or situation for setting above. Like I said, what I am after may very well be theoretically impossible. But I'm willing to search for it anyway.

Anyway, thanks for the insight and detailed explanation of your game.

Cheers,

J.

[Mike Holmes]

I still can't quite understand color exploration. But definitely all the others.

Nobody does, really, as no game centers around this sort of exploration. Color is, or has been, the red-headed stepshild of the bunch, and maybe for good reason. I mean it's color, after all.

But on the small scale we see it all the time. In Sci-Fi, for instance, messing around with technological devices to see what you can get them to do is exploration of color. Forays off into having a sword created just so for your knight might be color. Though these also might be exploration of System depending on how the system handles thse things. Buying tapestries for the Great Hall is, however, almost certainly soley exploration of Color. As would be long segments pouring over the stories told by such tapestries.

People have theorized about creating whole games that emphasize exploring color, but to date I've not seen any effective ones. SLA Industries comes close.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

MK, your suggested rewrite has gone straight into the notes file, where it encountered a bunch of already-existing, similar siblings. Thanks!

J., you might be in for some research. Reading just one recent TMW thread is definitely not going to be enough. Rob has posted a lot of great stuff about his game project, starting quite a while ago, as well as his more concrete recent posts. It's gruntwork, I know, but using the Forge's neat "print version" feature for all of his work on this project to date might pay off well.

Finally, regarding the Color issue, note that I have never suggested that any game exists entirely without one of the five elements of play. They are always, always there. Therefore Color cannot be Explored in isolation any more than any of the others, which is to say, it's impossible.

Can one play in such a fashion as to Explore Color more than any other element? Probably. A game text written to facilitate this may fall into the trap of being, itself, so Colorful that real play doesn't happen. I'd be fascinated if someone were to present a game text that effectively, consistently facilitated Exploring Color as a first priority in play itself. I do think it's possible (just remember that Character, Setting, Situation, and System are not being excluded in doing so).

Best,
Ron

[MK Snyder]

Hey, :)

as "explore" is very specifically defined in Ron's essay, can you clarify your use of it in your post?

My use of 'explore' in my post means exactly the same as it means in Ron's essay. Namely, the figuring and playing out of cause and effect relationships with regards to system, setting, character, situation or color. Well, maybe not color. I still can't quite understand color exploration. But definitely all the others.
......

In my mind, increasing the ability to explore the setting does not equate to having the ability to modify it.

Likewise, substitute character, system or situation for setting above. Like I said, what I am after may very well be theoretically impossible. But I'm willing to search for it anyway.

Anyway, thanks for the insight and detailed explanation of your game.

Cheers,

J.

Ah, I did not read Ron's definition of "explore" as quite implying the same thing.

"The best term for the imagination in action, or perhaps for the attention given the imagined elements, is Exploration."

I consider creation to be a large part of exploration in an imagined environment. That is one of the large appeals of role-playing to me--that collaberative creation through discourse of an imagined environment has much of the same emotional resonance as the more passive discovery of exploring a physical environment.

Though, actually, when we explore our physical surroundings we are being creative with respect to our cognitive processes, but that's getting off the topic...

Generating information by positing events and discovering their resolution is a form of querying the environment. I think that's what has been isolated as the definition of simulationism. I personally think querying the environment as to detail, or working out other logical relations, is also part of the fun; and possibly also the subjective response of "feeling immersed".

Giving a player a "more immersive" reward isn't easy. Paying a great deal of attention to the quality of inventions, limiting them, and giving the players explicit powers of invention is a more implementable mechanic.

[Emily Care]

My problem with your suggestion is that this doesn't seem to adress my main difficulty, namely, that the intended reward would have to effectively increase the player's capacity to explore, much as XPs increase the player's capacity to overcome and 'story points' increase the player's capacity to address premise.

Given a traditional apportionment of directorial power (ie having a gm) metagame sim rewards seem quite easy to determine: just give the player "gm-like" powers, like the "godlike" powers talked about above, or even just allow the player in question to ask questions about world/char/etc. that need to be answered by the gm.  

I may be missing some aspect of your question; how are you defining metagame?

--Emily Care

[RobMuadib]

Hey, :)
Ah, ok, I'm beginning to see where you're going with this. The reason I wasn't following it is that my mind is not yet geared towards that sort of collaborative gaming.

Also, I think I understand how your system provides sim rewards. However, those rewards don't quite go towards rewarding good sim play. Or rather, somehow, it isn't quite what I'm looking for. The point of contention for me is that last sentence I quoted: 'So how to provide for...'

I have no desire to provide for. The setting is the setting. If we choose to explore setting, then I want to:

a) Identify good setting exploration play on the part of the player;
b) Have a metagame reward that increases the player's ability to explore the setting.

In my mind, increasing the ability to explore the setting does not equate to having the ability to modify it.

Anyway, thanks for the insight and detailed explanation of your game.

Cheers,

J.

J.

Ahh, I see you are thinking about monolithic predefined settings it would seem to me. I.E. the players don't so much make the setting, as explore a setting that is already provided, which is what many many modern games do, or an original one that is channeled soley through a GM.

I guess the only "reward" of exploration of setting play I see is something like in Ars Magica (which doesn't exactly reward the players so much as the character.) In Ars Magica, in between Narrative sessions, players can define what wizardly stuff there wizard did, in terms of researching magic, puttering around in the laboratory, talking with demons, etc.

So, in order to provide a "pro-active" reward, you would basically want to provide a means for the character to run "Montage" scenes, you know like in movies when they show characters doing alot of work, like a martial artist training for the big fight, which can be considered an exploration of martial arts type setting. Whereby the player is able to engage in the particular elements of setting that interest him, in a game focused way I guess.

So, the GM might help me setup and run through scenes where my wizard attempts to summon the Demon Pazzuzu to ask him what Linda Blair smells like on the inside, or whatever. The problem with such scenes is that they are often boring to other players, unless you can find some way to involve the players. Which is why such things often get glossed over into a few die rolls and narration. Which is also why they are usually handled as montages in movies. Otherwise you get Das Boot syndrome. (While one player might like the vicarious recreationalist feeling of sitting underwater in a tin can making nary a sound for hours on end, the others probably wont:) ).

HTH

[contracycle]

Given a traditional apportionment of directorial power (ie having a gm) metagame sim rewards seem quite easy to determine: just give the player "gm-like" powers, like the "godlike" powers talked about above, or even just allow the player in question to ask questions about world/char/etc. that need to be answered by the gm.  

I think that would kinda defeat the purpose; IMO this distinction between expoloration as creation and as "objective experience" is interesting.  I'm definately on the "objective experience" side of the fence; aquiring gm powers as currency would undermine the validity of the "objective experience".

OTOH, questions are very interesting.  It occurs to me that OOC knowledge of the game world is a different aspect of the metagame than GM power.  Through playing multiple characters, a player may well know more about the game world than the character does, but this is held at the same remove as the rest of the players knowledge.  But, that knowledge is current and useful, so you could add information to the players knowledge about the world without necessarily adding to the characters knowledge about the world.

Hmm.  This might lead to a scenario in which players ask questions to "solve the plot" and hence lead perhaps to kind of participationism? in which they are co-opted in "going with the flow" partly because, like a movie, the audience component is getting fed wider information than the characters direct experience.

[M. J. Young]

...historically, sim play has not had any metagame rewards. Question: is this possible?...
If sim play is about exploration, how about 'exploration points' that would somehow make you 'better at exploring'?

There is something inherently contradictory, at first glance, with the idea of a simulationist metagame reward. That is, how do you reward and encourage play which stays entirely within the world with something outside the natural world seems an oxymoron. But I don't think it impossible.

On the thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4075">GNS and Player Rewards I suggest a skeleton of a rewards system which could work as a metagame system, given certain assumptions.

In most worlds, most people find themselves locked in to very limited lives. Even at the time of the American Revolution, few people were ever more than fifty miles from their place of birth in their entire lives. We are more mobile today, but I'd wager there are a lot of people around here who have never flown anywhere, never been more than two states away, always had the same job or same kind of job in pretty much the same place--that is, they have explored very little of the real world. It seems likely that in the future very few people will have the opportunity to travel to other planets, and so on.

Thus if we assume that part of our model of simulationist play is that the player characters are locked into some limited situation at the beginning and are exploring that situation, and that we can identify a reasonable means of recognizing such play (half of the reward system is recognition of desired play; the other half is facilitation of desired play, as observed on the aforementioned thread, and more directly on the thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4111">Actor and Author Stance), we can then design a way of facilitating such play through the reward system.

However the points are accrued, they are then spent to improve the character's ability to explore the world. That is, perhaps he begins at a local job in a local town, and explores the area around the town. Then he gains and spends enough points to give himself the opportunity to get a new job, perhaps as an airline steward or a traveling salesman or something that gets him out of the town into the rest of the world. That may be too extreme a jump; and it may be that better levels are required to make it work. But let's face it: opportunities to get out of the present situation in life come to some people. It is not a violation of the simulation to decree that such an opportunity comes to the player character. The reward system could be designed to make it possible for the character to have these opportunities that don't come to everyone. Each level of opportunity would provide a greater ability to reach those areas of the scenario that have been out of reach (whether they are geographically more distant, or socially or legally isolated such as upper levels of society or corporate structure, or inner circles of military, government, or secret societies), along with a greater freedom to go and do what you desire (that is, both a pilot and a wealthy novelist may have the ability to travel to many places and spend time there, but the novelist probably has a lot more flexibiity in where he goes and how much time he spends), and maybe also the acquisition of skills necessary to the exploration (such as spelunking skills or SCUBA training as extreme examples).

The idea is metagame, in that from outside the world the player is deciding on the opportunities for exploration that would open up to the character; it is still simulationist, because the opportunities are of a sort that might open up to an individual within that world, but that they don't happen to everyone.

Does that work?

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

It will work for some, MJ.

I've been calling this idea Pseudo-In-Game for a while (Pseudo-Metageme sounds better but is almost a complete contradiction). That is, it's really metagame, but it has some sort of rationale that states that the empowering effect is actually part of the milieu in some fashion. Many games do this to some extent. The most common and obvious is "Karma" points. The idea being that the points in question are a reflection of the concept of Karma as it must exist in the game world, and that use of them is no more metagame than using up bullets. A transparent croc, but one which will assuage some.

On the other end of the spectrum you have rationales like yours that are more deeply embedded in the game world.

To make them Sim is actually the easy part, as all you have to do is, like your version, ensure that they can only be used to make Sim decisions (or ,more simply, do not promote adressing a premise). Such rules can border on the sort of vanilla Narrativism that both Ron and I like.

Mike