GNS- Questioning Gamist

[Drew Stevens]

Hooray for random shower tangential thoughts!

Verification: The primary Gamist goal for playing a game is they want to Win.  They are playing to try and beat someone, either the GM's challenges or the other players (or sometimes both).

Question 1: Are roleplaying games even a good venue for this style of game?  Take System Matters to it's logical extreme- the best system for informing a gamist style of play has very little resemblence to any roleplaying game that I'm aware of- Diablo comes to mind as the 'Gamist vs GM', for example (where the programmer takes the role of the GM), while Chess or Go are the primary examples for the 'Gamist vs Gamist'.  What do traditional roleplaying games offer to the Gamist over these other forms?

Question 2:  More specifically, what does roleplaying offer the Gamist that wargames don't?  Wargames are a close kin to roleplaying games, and seem like, again, a more pure form of Gamist style play than traditional roleplaying games.

[quozl]

I'm not a GNS expert and I'm not even sure if the definition you used for Gamist is the "correct" one but I'll try to answer your questions.

I love wargames and I love RPGs.  In my youth, I remember thinking of RPGs as sort of a "war of wills" and I think Donjon captures this masterfully.  You can make stuff up and the GM can make stuff up and the Gamist would try to outdo the others, sort of like Aladdin trying to outsmart the genie in the magic lamp.  Does that make sense?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

As you might imagine, this issue is occupying a lot of my attention as I prep the big Gamism essay.

I'll start here by saying, Exploration must be acknowledged. It is not the exclusive province of Simulationist play (a common misconception lately). It is the province of role-playing in general.

Therefore, if we are talking about a group putting imaginative time and enthusiasm into imagining (a) characters (b) in a setting (c) dealing with a situation (d) via a system of rules (e) all colorfully ... then Gamism is one way to do this. If we're talking about other venues for what looks like Gamist play (e.g. poker night), then poof, we're out of the RPG discussion.

Winning, Challenge, Striving, Competition, Struggle, and more have all been proposed as terms for what's happening either internally or socially among the players, as well as for what's happening among the characters. And here's where things get bollixed up. Sometimes, people are very concerned with in-game [fill-in favorite term], as when characters are openly "after" the same things and have conflicts of interest. Other times, we are talking about metagame [fill-in favorite term], as when the real people have Stakes in mind, among one another or against a designated Stakes-setter (e.g. a module or person), informing the play.

The latter, ultimately, is what defines Gamist play ... but the severity of the [fill-in favorite term] and the degree to which it's reflected or involved with the Explorative content, are highly variable. Much, much more variable than people who only see Gamist play as "disruptive" have ever imagined, in my opinion.

Therefore, I think that trying to farm Gamist play out of role-playing by saying, "It's so much better served by wargaming or poker night," is misguided. We are still talking about people who love Exploration in exactly the (a)-(e) form listed above. But the degrees of the Exploration, its strong focus on Situation as such, and the aesthetic goals at hand are so different for this mode of play (usually), that non-Gamist folks are usually thrown way off by its presence ... and commit synecdoche almost routinely by considering Gamist play to be "not really, you know, what role-playing does best, or is for."

The main reason people say this a lot, though, is that Gamist play is The Big Memetic Gorilla of the hobby. I'll hold off on discussing this for now, though, because I'm still developing the argument and don't want to misrepresent it with brief paraphrases.

Best,
Ron

[Drew Stevens]

Aiy.  I didn't mean to come across as 'Gamist has no place in the roleplaying hobby, and Gamist goals are incompatible with roleplaying'.  More that either my understanding or the definition of Gamist seemed incomplete, because other hobbies allow for Gamist style play (as I understood it) better than roleplaying does, and Gamist style play continues to be very popular.

[Valamir]

Ahh, but Drew, those other hobbies are missing Exploration.  As Ron notes Exploration makes up ALL roleplaying.

Consider:

Ex = Excharacter + Exsetting + Exsituation + Exsystem + Excolor

Soc = Social Interaction among Players

Gamism is thus: Soc + Ex + G
Narrativism is thus: Soc + Ex + N
Simulationism is thus: Soc + Ex

E is what makes Roleplaying, Roleplaying.  

A player looking for Soc + Ex + G isn't going to have that desire fulfilled by poker (or another hobby) which is Soc + G, but sans Ex.

[Drew Stevens]

Mm.  Wait a moment again.

If Exploration becomes the crucial component of Gamist style play, then how does a game like Diablo not better serve Gamist goals?

And if Socialization is equally important, then how does EverQuest not?

Or maybe I'm not grokking Exploration- time to re-read some essays. ;)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Mm.  Wait a moment again.

If Exploration becomes the crucial component of Gamist style play, then how does a game like Diablo not better serve Gamist goals?

And if Socialization is equally important, then how does EverQuest not?

Or maybe I'm not grokking Exploration- time to re-read some essays. ;)

For me, personally, the fact that both Diabalo and EverQuest are computer games is a separating factor. The computer opens a pandora's box of difference IMO.

[Walt Freitag]

Mm. Wait a moment again.

If Exploration becomes the crucial component of Gamist style play, then how does a game like Diablo not better serve Gamist goals?

And if Socialization is equally important, then how does EverQuest not?

Remove the word "better" from the proposition, and the answer is, they do serve Gamist goals (and not only Gamist goals, in my opinion).

"Better" is very questionable, though, and even "just as well" or "nearly as well" would be problematic. Exploration isn't just sightseeing. The quality of socializing isn't a direct function of group size. Is a thousand other players connected by text chat online comparably social to five around a table? Is real-time 3D graphics but highly constrained decision-making comparably explorative to unconstrained player engagement with an imagined world with no visuals? Which is better, oranges or IBMs?

- Walt

[ethan_greer]

Gamism is thus: Soc + Ex + G
Narrativism is thus: Soc + Ex + N
Simulationism is thus: Soc + Ex

So, doesn't that make a "Gamist game" (standard disclaimer applies) a hybrid Sim/Gamist, and a Narativist game a hybrid Sim/Narativist?

[Mike Holmes]

Question of priority. It's a hybrid if both are prioritized. But as they are described as Gamism and Narrativism here, we must assume that those sorts of decisions are being prioritized and hence the descriptions are not hybrid.

All play has exploration; that's the point here. It's only Sim if the exploration is prioritized above the other two.

Mike

[Drew Stevens]

Mm...

See, this is where the confusion starts to really set in for me.

All games have Exploration and Socialization.  But, the way you've just described them, Gamist and Narrativist games have additional elements added in (prioritized, whatever).

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the styles of game are based around what is being explored (Who wins for Gamist, What Happens for Simulationist and Why for Narrativist, to make a crude and oversimple sketch).

[Mike Holmes]

The problem when you do this is that people forget that the exploration angle is common to all RPGs. And then arises the misconception that the originator of this thread made.

Oh, look. :-)

Basically the difference between Gamism in chess and Gamism in RPGs is that in an RPG, you can step off the board. You can explore other tactical options than the chess board might present. You can, in fact, look at any element of the shared imaginative environment in any way you can imagine. To be Gamism, you're still doing this for the reasons that Ron points out. But you do it while exploring.

As Walt said, this makes RPGs a substantively different Gamist experience.

Mike

[lumpley]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the styles of game are based around what is being explored (Who wins for Gamist, What Happens for Simulationist and Why for Narrativist, to make a crude and oversimple sketch).

I think that Valamir's and Mike's use of Exploration (correct me as applicable, of course) is limited to: Character, Setting, System, Situation, and Color.  All rpgs have Soc + Ex:C,S,S,S,C.

Those five are what What Happens is made of.

In Simulationism, all you've got is What Happens.  In Narrativism and Gamism, you've got What Happens + So What.

-Vincent

[Drew Stevens]

Except Narrativism can chuck What Happens.

Sorcerer and Sword has a great little idea for running a game out of chronological order- the first game is when the Barbarian becomes the king, the second is when he first enters the city, and the later games are in the interm.  Great for a narratative, but unworkable from either a Simulationist or Gamist POV (I think), because Causality is getting all kinds of ignored in favor of a good story.

Mm.  I suppose the idea of Gamism and Narrativism being 'added elements' just doesn't really fit with my idea of GNS (horribly and woeful heretic though I be).  It seems like Simulationist play also involves something more than just Exploration- that there is an 'added element' of Simulation as well.  Probally just the CS geek in me :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Drew,

Gotta be quick, so let me know if I'm not making sense.

1. Narrativism can't chuck "so what." It can construct it a little differently, that's all.

Or to put it another way, Pulp Fiction is presented out-of-order, but constructing its linear story is not a problem - and the story is linear, and causal. But I argue that its out-of-order presentation enhances and expresses its point better than the linear presentation would.

2. The added element in Simulationist play is what you might call the "enthusiasm" factor, or perhaps, shared joy in "the dream." It is, if you will, Exploration in its most social and focused form.

Best,
Ron