Player Authorial Stance, N & S

[Emily Care]

This is a direct quote from the Simulationist Players section of the GNS FAQ:

>...the player is "inside" the character and >has complete and utter authority
>over "my guy" and what he does. The GM, by >contrast, has complete and utter authority
>over anything external to the PCs. Author >stance is often frowned upon, both during >play and in the game texts; Director stance >is unheard of.

It seems like this would only be true for simulationist players who were also committed to solely deeply immersive play.  

Simulationist play can also be extremely supportive of greater player authorial stance and narrative sharing.  

In the FAQ, narrativism is strongly associated with player authorial stance and simulationism is strongly disassociated. It seems to me that certain flavors of N and S are being used to exemplify the whole gamut.

Thoughts on this issue?

[Gordon C. Landis]

This is an excellent point.  Seems that a number of Simulationist-related threads right after the FAQ was posted touched on this.  My main thought is . . . we need a look at the revised FAQ before taking this too far.  I expect there'll be a lot of changes/clarifications.

Gordon C. Landis

[Ron Edwards]

And I cannot count the number of times I have stated:

"Stance is flexible. Players shift stance all the time during a session of play, often without thinking much about it. Although we OBSERVE Author/Director stance to be more common in Narrativist and Gamist play, and for mechanics supporting these stances to be found in combinations that support overall Narrativist or Gamist goals ... and although we OBSERVE the converse regarding Actor stance and Simulationist game design ... these are rough correlations and not 1:1 correspondences."

To repeat: stance shifts. It shifts within any style of play. The associations we observe (e.g. Actor being common in some forms of Simulationism) are not definitive, although they may be causal.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Hi Emily,

I have been an advocate recently for looking more closely at the concept of the use of authorial and directorial power in Simulationist games. I personally find some very fertile ground there. In fact I'm currently involved with a project that has a bit of this concept worked into it, and I'm very excited about it.

Yes, by definition, the "deep immersionists" eschew all but the actor stance. But as you point out, this is a small subset of the complete Simulationist set of methods.

Mike Holmes