Is my game G, N or S ?

[Philippe Tromeur]

I'm sorry if I didn't get this G/N/S thing, but I'm wondering where is exactly the frontier between Narrativism and Gamism, especially concerning my little game "Wuthering Heights"

Here is the idea :
1/ The rules are not supposed to simulate how "reality" works, they're made to push the PC's going over-the-top. Then the mechanics are clearly not Simulationist.
2/ The rules encourages erratic behaviour, and the "counters" (Rage, Despair) guide the players and the director to judge what is the most dramatic way to play in a given situation. You might say the game is Narrativist.
3/ The rules are designed so that the characters are really complete losers, and the players are generally happy to destroy them. "Winning" in the game is generally synonymous with the character dead or insane after having completely spoiled a situation and build it into a complete dead-end. In the French version of the game, I've made a comparison between the RPG and Tamagotchi (for character management) and the game of Go (the end situation is mostly always a dead-end). Rage and Despair are, like hit points, levels and Sanity, a way to judge how much your character is "winning" the game. The game is very Gamist.

Is this (guiding persona's behaviour with the rules, in a game where behaviour is the key element) a Gamist or Narrativist attitude, or a mix of the 2 ?

[Mytholder]

Probably a mix of the two, although personally I try not to say catagorically that a game *is* G or N or S or whatever. D&D *supports* Gamist play.
(it's a semantic dodge, to some extent, but it keeps me comfortable.)
I suspect that such a game could be enjoyed by either a narrativist or gamist player, but they'd end up pushing it towards their preferred style. The same thing happens in Pantheon....

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Funny you should ask this since I brought up a similar question in the "can a N become a G" or whatever the subject line is thread.

Ron seems to say no, but he's waiting to finish his thought on gamist understanding. I guess we'll have to be patient on this.

[Ron Edwards]

Philippe,

Gamism doesn't apply - you are confounding "success" with "winning." Winning is something that happens in a competitive context, and that's not occurring in Wuthering Heights.

I see the game as a functional combination of Simulationism and Narrativism (much as Pantheon is a functional combination of Narrativism and Gamism). On the one hand, genre faithfulness overrides nearly any other consideration during play, up to and including the urge for the story to be good. On the other hand, story is definitely generated out of whole cloth during play.

It's a very functional combination, since the primary concern is parody. (I'm beginning to think that the functional 2-part GNS combinations are all funny ...)

Best,
Ron