Elucidating GNS via microcosm situations?

[arxhon]

This might not be the appropriate forum for this, but i'm asking about GNS so....

I was running a game of WFRP last year (ducks hurled refuse from the Nar-gang), and i was just thinking about it, and where some of the things i had done in that game would fit into the Grand Unified Theory of Gaming.

Situation 1: The party (2 elves and a dwarf) were involved in a small mass battle to save a village from a goblin horde. Details not important, except for the end, when i had determined that an old sergeant of the Imperial Army had died during the battle.

The dwarf player asked "Does he have a blunderbuss?" Without even thinking about it, i said "Yes. Yes, he does". The player was insanely happy (i guess he wanted one pretty bad, he used it at every opportunity).

Situation 2: The same party, now somewhat tougher, were dealing with cultists of Khaine who had assassinated a member of one of the noble families of Nuln, and tracked some down to a warehouse.

A fight broke out, of course. One of the elves started it by yanking a chair from under a cultist, sending him sprawling, and smashed it over the cultist's back. He then disarmed another as the cultist drew his sword, with the broken hunk of chair (still in hand) as his second attack that round. The elf player then asked me, "Can i grab his sword before it falls to the floor?"

Thinking quickly, I said "Ummmm...you can try, make an Initiative test to grab it." He was a quick little bugger, (I around 70), and the roll was passed easily.

So he snagged the sword and cut the guy down the next round (quite messily). That whole bit with the chair and the sword grab was one of the best combat scenes i'd seen in ages.

Now....
I hadn't planned on there being a blunderbuss before the dwarf player asked, but i gave him one for kicks.

There are no rules for "disarm someone with a broken chair and snag his weapon". I could have said "that would count as an attack/action, you've had 2 this round, so sorry, no.", but i allowed the player to pull off some really neat ninja-style stuff with an easy roll and some cool ideas.

I'm still struggling a bit grokking GNS (especially Sim and Nar, Gamist i think i've got figured out) and i'm looking for correlations to things i've done in the past to help me understand.

What would you guys call these decisions? Drift (highly unlikely)? Hybrid Sim-Nar? Unconsciously (on all parts) changing the player's Stance? Just plain ol' good GMing?

Ron, I realize that the theory isn't supposed to be applied to specific moments in time/play, but  overall play instead; think of these as microcosmic examples, like a globe is a representation of the world.

[clehrich]

Geez, that's either a very hard question or a very simple one.  Assuming that one can set aside the "not a single moment" part of the theory, my inclination would be to call this "plain old good GMing."  But that's not quite fair.  There are some styles of Sim gaming, for example, which would argue that the rules need to "play out" the situation, that the GM should just be impartial.  But this doesn't entirely answer the question: did you choose to give the guy a blunderbuss because you thought it plausible, or for fun-value?

Again, there are some Gamist takes which would argue that without the player having stated his desire in advance, the answer to his question should be "no, you don't have a blunderbuss."  This rewards players for thinking ahead tactically, you see, and for recognizing in advance the need to clarify potential power-elements.

As to Narrativism, there the whole "not a single moment" thing becomes a real problem.  I could sort of see the whole situation with the elf as a Nar situation, but your choice cannot in and of itself be a Nar choice; to say so would require that Nar be defined as players and GMs choosing to have fun gaming, which is such a skewed definition as to boil down to "Nar is fun gaming; everything else sucks."

Myself, I don't see that, in the vast majority of games, these two pieces could be classified definitively.  There are some camps within any given GNS perspective that would actually exclude such choices, but they are within the minority (theoretically, at least) within the taxon.  In general terms, I think this game could quite plausibly have been any of the above.  Somebody's going to say "No, but GNS is for games that don't work, for finding problems," and I think that's useful but limited here.  

I guess it looks to me like you wanted to have a good, fun game that would fit well into the universe, wouldn't unduly reward or punish players for reasonable actions, and that you didn't want to be fanatical about pre-planning or the rules' being comprehensive.  So, faced with one tricky situation or another, you knocked together whatever seemed appropriate at the time, within the framework of the game mechanics and the setting.  By itself, that's a kind of definition of good gaming, not of a GNS priority.

[arxhon]

did you choose to give the guy a blunderbuss because you thought it plausible, or for fun-value?

See that's the thing. I hadn't really thought it through. Nothing inside me screamed "Noooooo! That's /gonna wreck game balance/be non-sensical/a stupid idea." So i said yes. In retrospect, you could say in answer to the question: "Both.", because neither plausibility nor fun-value seemed threatened by the decision, and fun-value could be increased by the decision (as it turned out, it was). Same for the sword deal, only I had the player roll for success, rather than simply fiat the whole thing.

What i'm trying to get at is "if these situations were generally how the game was played all the time, where would this fall, if anywhere?" For example, economists create models of economies to understand the theory behind economics better. Think of it in those terms. These are models of overall game play.

"

"Nar is fun gaming; everything else sucks."

I see this attitude sometimes anyway, but cordially disagree with it. Example: i hate hockey, but others consider it fun. Dopesn't mean i'm wrong, doesn't mean they are wrong. Differences of opinion.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Here's what's up: you're not discussing strict GNS issues at all. One of the first things we have to establish in this conversation is that not every last shred of detail in a gaming session can (or is supposed to be) tag-able as G, N, or S.

Based on your description, here's what you did.

1. Bringing the blunderbuss into existence in the game is called Director Stance. You and the player colluded successfully on an instance of Director Stance. That's all there is to it; such a thing, in itself, is not G, N, or S. All Stances may be observed during any mode of play.

2. Using the initiative roll is inventing System to cover an unspecified area of the rules. This, itself, is also not G, N, or S. People do this all the time, in any mode of play.

**
Now for the side issue. Chris has muddied the waters of the discussion by asking you to express your motive while performing these acts, and you (inadvertently) have muddied it further by answering, "I don't know." This is the problem with motive-driven arguments; we are never going to isolate the "little why" in a person's head for the moment of play. You say you did it "unconsciously," and I accept that - because ultimately all behavior is like that.

So please, folks, chuck that "but why did you do it that way" line of questioning straight out the window. It will only, ever cloud the discussion.
**

Arxhon, I really want to know whether my points are getting through. You are not providing GNS-type material to discuss; you're talking about techniques, Stances, and similar stuff. Your post puzzles me a little, because in a way, you're saying, "I know GNS is supposed to be about bigger instances than these, but give me GNS for them anyway." All I can say is, No. What you're presenting isn't a GNS issue, or rather, they certainly apply to whatever GNS-approach you and the group was enjoying, but we aren't working with enough information to talk about that.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

This is just plain and simple GM technique.  The only thing we can identify for certain is that you maintained a degree of plausibility sufficient for your group (presumeably it is reasonable for an Imperial Sergeant to be armed with a blunderbuss, etc.), and that you're capable of thinking on your feet to address surprising actions by players.  Both plausibility and GM flexibility are admirable, useful, and positive traits in any G N S mode.  There are absolutely no G N S requirements about strictly adhering to written rules being Sim or fudging and winging rules being Nar.  None, whatsoever, at all.  Nor is there any Rules light vs heavy requirement  (nor BTW is there any Forge bias, narrativist or otherwise, against Warhammer Fantasy, many of us like that game just fine)

"Nar is fun gaming; everything else sucks."  
I see this attitude sometimes anyway, but cordially disagree with it.

You won't see that attitude getting any credible air time here on the Forge.

[Mike Holmes]

"Nar is fun gaming; everything else sucks."  
I see this attitude sometimes anyway, but cordially disagree with it.

You won't see that attitude getting any credible air time here on the Forge.

People are misreading Chris. What he was saying is that to call the example Narrativist, and then to reduce things absurdly, that the above statement is the absurd result of the argument. He's showing why the example can't indicate Narrativism (and really why any of the others as well). And incidentally why the statement that everyone is misreading cannot be the opinion of anyone who understands GNS.

Mike

[arxhon]

Wow. Really informative posts guys. Thanks. :-)

I see what is going on now and understand what I'm doing. Now i understand stances.

You won't see that attitude getting any credible air time here on the Forge.

To be honest, I haven't seen that attitude on The Forge. That other place....sometimes.

"I know GNS is supposed to be about bigger instances than these, but give me GNS for them anyway." All I can say is, No.

Fair enough. If you can't, you can't.

[M. J. Young]

"I know GNS is supposed to be about bigger instances than these, but give me GNS for them anyway." All I can say is, No.

Fair enough. If you can't, you can't.

I thought it might help if you saw why you can't.

In situation one, the player controlling the dwarf character asks if there's a blunderbuss, and you decide that there is. Is that gamist, narrativist, or simulationist?

[*]Somewhere in your mind, you considered the setting. The fallen man is an old sergeant, and many of these old sergeants have such guns. You might include a die roll to determine it, or you might decide that the sense of the thing means yes, there's going to be such a weapon here. The decision seems to be simulationist. The determining factors are whether this is consistent with the setting and promotes exploration.
[*]Somewhere in the back of your mind, you're wondering whether giving the dwarf a blunderbuss is going to unbalance the game, making one character too powerful. You decide that it's a good move on his part to claim the weapon, it's not inconsistent with the known facts of the world, and it strengthens the character enough but not too much. In this sense, it seems like a gamist decision.
[*]Somewhere in the back of your mind, you're looking at the issues and the story, and it occurs to you that having a blunderbuss in the hands of the dwarf strengthens his ability to advance the story and opens new possibilities for conflict and interest. He's a stronger character in a character sense (not a competitive sense) for having it, and that's a good thing. You seem to have made a narrativist decision.[/list:u]
In fact, you thought none of these things. You're looking at the action and wondering what kind of decision it is. Isolated like this, it could be any of the above. It could be none of the above. You can't know from that.

Situation two involves allowing the character an "extra" action because it seems appropriate.

[*]Perhaps it was only that it seemed unrealistic to say no, that is, it seemed a very reasonable action to attempt under the circumstances. Perhaps you were only thinking about how this fit as part of the total picture, the world being explored.
[*]Perhaps it was a question of whether this advantage to the player was too much, or whether it unbalanced the game, or whether if you allowed this you were going to have to allow other similar actions in order to be fair--certainly gamist concerns.
[*]Perhaps you wanted to make the story itself better, not in terms of "kewl action bits" but in terms of enhancing the identities of the characters in ways that would help them come to terms with the issues behind it all.[/list:u]
Again, you don't have any idea why you did it. You did it because it felt right.


Within the context of play, these decisions could be gamist, narrativist, or simulationist. In fact, even if you were overall running a narrativist game, you might have made this particular decision based on concerns which on the surface at least appear to be simulationist or gamist. "Whether it seems realistic or appropriate" may be a simulationist concern, but gamists and narrativists can't escape that question either.

You might have made those decisions because they fit with the sort of play you prefer; they don't tell much about the sort of play you prefer, except that you don't mind creating detail on the fly to fit the situation.

GNS is an odd creature, because somehow it's the sum of parts that can't be taken individually which create a whole which isn't fully homogenous, and yet when we look at it in its totality, it seems to be one or the other overall. That's probably one of the toughest obstacles to overcome in grasping it.

I hope that I've expressed this well; I've had several major interruptions and upsets here on the home front, and so I've been a bit distracted. Overall, the point is that the particular actions described could be anything. I would have guessed situation one to show a tendency toward simulationism (it seems like it's appropriate to the setting, so we'll include it) and situation two to be gamist (this would be a cool way to run this fight scene, so if he can make the roll we'll let him have the move), but even there you can see that two events in the same game seem to be pointing in different directions, so you can't take them in isolation--it is the totality of play over an extended period, not the isolated instances themselves, that form the data for such a decision.

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

I'm actually at odds with Ron on this particular point. But not because it can't make sense as he describes it. To use the Assimove method of describing the concept of psychohistory, you see, it's like Brownian motion. If you look at an individual molecule of water in a bowl, it's nearly impossible to determine what that molecule will do. But take a whole bowlfull of water molecules, and there are lots of useful generalizations that we can say about it that are very likely to be accurate.

Thus, the concept is that looking at individual decisions doesn't yield much in the way of predictive ability in GNS. Only looking at whole sessions full of decisions get's you there.

My contention has been that this ignores the fact that to get to a bowl that you do have all the individual molecules, and that there are some important things you can say about them. But that's another debate, perhaps.

Mike

[clehrich]

Argh.  How very annoying.

Geez, that's either a very hard question or a very simple one. Assuming that one can set aside the "not a single moment" part of the theory....

Translation:

1. Gee, your question cannot really be answered in straight GNS terms
2. because it's not a GNS question,
3. but if you think it will be helpful to you to think of it in GNS-like terms,
4. then we'd have to set aside the part about scale
5. and GNS not being confined to single moments,
6. and assuming that that's going to be okay for the following discussion,
7. then....

In other words, just to be clear, given that this is not really a GNS question in the strict sense, upon what basis would we adjudicate a result?  Answer: motive.  Because it can't be based on anything else.  To shift over and say "no, we need lots of cases and a broad perspective" does not answer the question posed.  Your choices, if you want to respond to the question, seem to be limited to (1) considering GNS in altered but explicit terms, as I tried to do, or (2) explaining why it's a worthless question.

Incidentally, thanks, Mike, for correcting that little confusion about "Nar = good."

[Valamir]

My contention has been that this ignores the fact that to get to a bowl that you do have all the individual molecules, and that there are some important things you can say about them. But that's another debate, perhaps.

Mike

Couldn't agree more.

Brownian motion, eh?
I love a good analogy :-)

[arxhon]

M.J. Young,

You do a better job of explaining the central issues of GNS than the previous hundreds of words i've already read. Go figure.

What you're saying is:

Gamism=concern with character power, inter-character balance, and a sense of "winning", whether vs the gm or other players, and decisions that enforce these concerns.

Simulationism=concern with internal plausibility, consistency of setting and exploring that setting and decisions that enforce these concerns.


Narrativism=concern with advancing story and character identity and decisions that enforce these concerns.

Therefore, writ large (eliminating the scaling problem, which seems to hang a lot of people up, which i was trying to get at in the first place with my talk of "modeling"), emphasizing one of these things ('winning" vs "internal plausibility" vs "story/character") over others is symbolic of that particular style of play.

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Perhaps the problem most people have in grasping the most basic understanding of GNS is the lack of a relevant, concrete example (which M.J. Young seems to have provided). This is called "modeling the theory".

A good theory can be modelled. A poor one cannot. You cannot capture all of the elements and wierd ticks of the theory with a model, but you CAN explain enough of it so that people can get a grasp of it and be able to use it in at least a rudimentary fashion.

Mike Holmes wrote:

My contention has been that this ignores the fact that to get to a bowl that you do have all the individual molecules, and that there are some important things you can say about them. But that's another debate, perhaps.

Mike

I also agree with this statement. I also agree that this is another debate.

[Bob McNamee]

The other thing is...a GNS preference really only gets 'spotlit' when you get to a critical-type of game decision point.
A decision point where you would make a different decision if you preferred a different style of play.
There have been some really helpful threads on this in the past.

[M. J. Young]

Please correct me if i'm wrong.

I'm not going to correct you because I don't think you're wrong; however, I do think that some clarification may be in order, because there can be nuances that are confused due to the imprecisions of language.

You connect Narrativism with "concern with advancing story and character identity and decisions that enforce these concerns." That is not incorrect; but there are a couple of caveats.

The first is that "story" is an extremely vague word, to the point that a lot of people here shun it when discussing GNS. In a Narrativist sense, story means exploring an issue in a manner that leads toward a climax and ultimate resolution of some sort. It does not mean a string of adventure tales or a travelogue or a game experience you would repeat to your friends. It means something at least vaguely "literary".

The second is that "character identity" as protagonists, antagonists, people in a story is important in narrativism. However, you can explore character in a purely simulationist manner--play which is about exploring who this character is, how he thinks and reacts, what he does, and how that impacts his life. Just as you can explore a world, you can explore a character, and that's simulationist. Narrativist interest in character is much more about how character relates to the conflict in the story. That is, Hamlet and MacBeth and Romeo have the kind of character identity that matters to narrativists: who they are is integrally related to the conflict in the story. In literary terms, a "story" about some guy and what it's like to be him isn't a story at all--it's a character sketch, something writers create because when they write stories they have to include characters. But you can play a game that is nothing more than a character sketch, with no story at all. If it lacks the sort of conflict that arises out of premise, it's just exploration of character.

Identifying these things and distinguishing between them can be a bit tricky at times; that's just one more reason why no one likes to jump to conclusions about GNS based on limited examples.

--M. J. Young