Alternative Definitions: Desire, Outcome, Play, Story

[Gordon C. Landis]

So my contention is that wargames don't produce story.

Here's a snippet from something I wrote in an old, old thread (May 2001).  As an old thread, I'm sure there are abandoned lines of thinking represented, but it seems to hit on this whole "story" question.  The first bit is from a post by Ron, I'm pretty sure.

>I also think that you've stated one of the reasons why
>some prominent GO contributors insist that they are
>Narrativist (usually in addition to  Simulationist) - they
>mistake DELIVERING a story to their players for
>CREATING a story WITH their players.

I've always had difficulty with the (mis?)intrepretation of Narativist=story-focused and others=NOT story-focused, because I can see even the most, say, Simulationist (by conventional evaluation) game as story-focused.

I'm thinking WAY back, to my junior high school wargaming days, before we ordered the D&D box out of the back of S&T or The General or whatever it was. And for me (*not* all wargame players I knew then or have known since would agree), the BEST thing about wargames was when there was a cool story that "happened" while playing. Like, the one and only unit that could possibly stop the infantry assault happened to be the one unit you hadn't done anything with that turn. I thought this was so cool I'd actually work on making such things happen, even if it wasn't neccessarily the best game strategy - always use the same group of combat engineers in an assault, so that they got "veteran" status and I could call 'em the "Fightin' 52nd" or whatever, and now they're more likely to "happen" into a good story situation (desperate assualt on the enemy fortification - SUCCESFUL assualt preferred, both in story and gamist terms here :smile: - though if you fail, you might end up with a "Charge of the Light Brigade" story, which was cool too).

Call that an Author stance, but tightly restricted, and we LIKED it that way . . . but I wander.

In addition to explaining why I got hooked on D&D and play far more RPGs than wargames in the years since, I think this might relate to the relationship between simulation/rules and story that Ron alludes to. Somehow, it was IMPORTANT that the unit was just the same as any other at the start - it got no special treatment, except maybe the (entirely within the rules) decisions I made regarding it. The goal is the story, but if you get there without going through (in this case) a rigorous simulation, the story doesn't feel as . . authentic? good? right?

I'm not exactly sure how I'd update my thinking nowadays, but . . . I'd continue to maintain a wargame isn't *entirely* story-less, unless you're going to put a very restrictive definition on story.

Of course, story is an incredibly problematic word.  Sigh.

Gordon

EDIT - a typo that entirely messed-up which "first bit"  I was attributing to Ron.

[Blake Hutchins]

Hello Bruce,

Where in the name of heaven have I said war stories aren't stories?  Unless you mean the kind of "war stories" when one person tells another about his game, as opposed to the Black Hawk Down style of story.  If that's what you're saying I'm saying, then yeah, I have a narrower definition of story than you do for purposes of this discussion - but remember, we were talking about creating story in roleplaying games.  Suddenly it's about anything someone casts as a story.

If I understand you correctly, a "war story" about a game of Parcheesi or softball would qualify as a bona fide story.  Maybe I'm on the wrong foot here.  If everything put into a narrative framework after the fact becomes a story, then the definition of story in the first place becomes a species of tautology, doesn't it?  Sort of like saying "everything is art."  The philosopher in me says, "Cool."  The lawyer in me says, "Hey, that's useless for purposes of arriving at anything concrete on this thread."  Storytelling can be a much broader activity than roleplaying games, of course.  I recognize that.  When you take things out of the context of RPGs or writing short stories, novels, or screenplays, I would call a fish story or a war story a "story."  I've read plenty of vignettes, for that matter, and I don't think they're stories either.

It looks as though some of us are applying a very broad definition of story whereas others are using a narrower definition.  I don't see that as reification; that's a term that applies equally well to the tastes of the broad definition camp.

And I guess I'm now outright baffled at the continuing assertions that I'm opposed to dungeon crawls.   I don't disagree with you about dungeon crawls permitting non-combat dimensions - but that's not how they're designed.  If your contention is that there are groups who make great stories and have marvelous roleplaying experiences with dungeon crawl playing, then... OK.  I'm not ruling that out, and I'm not saying it's better or worse play than the approach I take in my games.  I think the thrust of the rules, however, drives toward wargaming and a persistent tactical stance.  Groups that produce non-tactical play under those circumstances, are, in my opinion, engaged in GNS drift (not to open another can of worms, but there it is).

However, if your assertion is essentially, "Hell, any group can take whatever rules there are, good, bad, or ugly, and produce functional, satisfying play with story," then it looks like you're ultimately saying system doesn't matter.  I may be way off on this, but that's what it looks like.

I'll amend some of my assertion about wargames, as Gordon's post reminded me of White Bear, Red Moon and Nomad Gods, the old Glorantha board games.  Those produced a bit more of a story feel while we played, because all the pieces on the board were integrated into a mythology that was laid out in detail in the rulebook.  So you didn't just conjure a fire spirit, you allied with Oakfed or Pole Star, and your tribe, whether it was the Sable Deer or the Morokanth, had some kind of story behind it.  I still don't think of those games as stories, but I can certainly remember grafting a much richer context onto my pieces.

In the end, guys, we may have to agree to disagree about the scope of the definition of story.  As Gordon said, the term can be pretty slippery.

Best,

Blake

[Johannes]

Zamiel wrote:

Yes, but doesn't that then directly point to this as, not only a false, but unduly pejorative stance as regards "dungeon crawling?"
---snip---
After all, traditionally, crawling dungeons is done for the express purpose of creating truth-value changes in the world. My character gains a new toy. My character gains a level. My character kills the monster. My character stops the Big Bad. All of these are very completely and directly changes in the truth-values in a character's experience and PoV. In fact, that change in innate status is why people pursue them.

First let me make it clear that I'm not stating any preference here. I was also not saying that some kind of game could not create a story. Did you note the words felt and story-like? Story is a prototype. There is no story just stuff that is more story-like than other stuff.

Now you start on the wrong track from the begining. Creating changes in the thruth-values of the world leads to an event in that world. That is event-matter or whatever. However not all events affect the character's inner worlds to any significant degree. There's an universe between gaining the knowledge of a leaf falling and having an existential crisis because of it. Yes, both are changes in the inner worlds of the character but it takes delibarate belligerence towards the theory to say that they are the same thing.

Because the change in the inner world in your typical RPG is produced in the concretization it is very subjective and therefore anybody can say that any event was plot-functional. Many times I would say that they are lying for the sake of the argument but that's not the point. The point is that some event structures are more productive in provoking a change in inner worlds than others. The second point is that we feel some constructs to be more story-like than others and this theory is very good at explaining why.

I personally find it bizarre that people are so entrenched in the pavlovian idea that things that cannot be measured or verified by tests are not useful or important. The use of positivist methods was dropped in all humanities just because it did not get the discussion anywhere.

The above story-discourse-concretization taxonomy (herte I am using the word story again in the narratological sense) illustrates this neatly. The measurer would say that only discourse is relevant to any discussion because the others are "subjective". However discourse without story and concretization is not discourse at all - it becomes nonsense without the referential and denotational dimension provided by the other two. Language is not just a configuration of sounds - it is a configuration of reference and meaning also.

[Bruce Baugh]

Blake, I'm saying that rules simply don't tell the whole story about how people actually do play roleplayng games. I'm saying that in my experience, professional and personal, characterization and considerations not well addressed at all in the rules do in fact loom large in many D&D campaigns. Likewise with Rifts and other games where the overwhelming focus of the rules is matters of tactical efficiency. (I'd also say that in many cases, games which give substantial space to personality, genre, and the like end up being played with minimal characterization and lots of what amounts to wargaming.)

It's good when rules support things the designers are interested in, and good when designers try things I want to play, he said with total objectivity. :) But we can't just look at the rules to assess how games work in practice, and my concern as a designer and writer is in what people actually do and why they do it. This is particularly true in cases where I find what the rules detail not very interesting; I have to make extra effort to overcome my own prejudices.

I should restate some of those prejudices here. I find the GNS and related taxonomy profoundly uninteresting - it doesn't seem to correspond to anything I care about very much as a player or author or designer. I also find it very much unnecessarily heavy in jargon. In posts like the one at the start of this thread, I am quite deliberately out to assemble a collection of obsrevations that do correspond with what I see about how gamers at large play and what I find of personal and professonal concern, and to do so with an absolute bare minimum of jargon. "Can I persuade people to accept these terms?" is a perennial concern of mine, since just as I write my games to be played, I do my theorizing to get used as widely as possible. I am in this sense very much a populist.

(Someone can point out that the theorizing I'm dismissing does lead to games I praise and like. It's true, too. Nor do I have a good answer beyond the true but not terribly helpful insight that inspiration turns up in the darnedest places. I also hedge my bets in part by identifying what I consider my own conceptual blind spots, and distinguishing between "what I find of value to me" and "what I assert is of any value to anyone".)

[John Kim]

The point is that some event structures are more productive in provoking a change in inner worlds than others. The second point is that we feel some constructs to be more story-like than others and this theory is very good at explaining why.  

I think it is much more useful to speak in terms of what sort of stories you are emulating, or which qualities of the story you would like to emphasize -- rather than a binary story-like / not-story-like distinction.  

For example, my current campaign emulates the Icelandic historical sagas such as the Laxdaela saga.  These are fanciful tales but about real people.  They were mostly written in the 13th century, usually about events in the early history of Iceland, circa 1000 A.D.  There is a huge difference between these, say, and a modern dramatic movie.  I have a sneaking suspicion that some things which are generalized as being "more story-like" would make my campaign less like the sagas which I am emulating.  For example, there are certainly rich inner worlds in the sagas which are touched on, but it is comparatively distant from the reader.

[Bruce Baugh]

Very vigorous nods of agreement and shouts of "What he said!", with pointing at John's post there. "What kind of story is this?" is a crucially important question, and "What kind of story do I want?" can take the game off in a mess o' different directions.

[Blake Hutchins]

Hi Bruce,

We're in complete agreement about the statement that rules do not cover all the personality and characteristic aspects of play - the whole messy and wonderful human dimension - and that these aspects absolutely loom large in how a game unfolds.  Likewise we agree enthusiastically on John's last comment about "what kind of story are you trying to emulate?" - which, incidentally, may also reconcile our use of different definitions of "story."

I find the GNS theory a useful diagnostic tool, but I certainly don't expect it to work for everyone, and I don't need or seek any agreement on its validity from anyone.  If it's not your cuppa, that's fine by me.

Thanks for the responses.  I've enjoyed the exchange.  Most salutary to scrub the rust off the gray matter.

Best,

Blake

[Matt Snyder]

Bruce,

I recognize that you're not particularly invested nor interested in many of the specific theories presented here on the Forge (GNS, stances, etc.)

So, it's with that respect (and respect to you and your obviously though-out opinions), and with the acknowledgement that I'm far, far from the resident expert on these that I offer up my comments.

Blake, I'm saying that rules simply don't tell the whole story about how people actually do play roleplayng games. I'm saying that in my experience, professional and personal, characterization and considerations not well addressed at all in the rules do in fact loom large in many D&D campaigns. Likewise with Rifts and other games where the overwhelming focus of the rules is matters of tactical efficiency. (I'd also say that in many cases, games which give substantial space to personality, genre, and the like end up being played with minimal characterization and lots of what amounts to wargaming.)

Ron himself will be the first one jumping up and down screaming to agree with you. I merely offer up the observation, rather than criticism, that none of the specific theories commonly discussed here on the Forge dispute this fact in any way. The "largest" understanding one accepts in working through something like GNS is that the gaming group operates under social contract, an agreement -- often unstated -- at how they as  group interact among one another and what the collective notion of "what gaming is" as a group. This does not dispute GNS, but rather assumes a role that completely envelops GNS.

Further, I think Blake rightly brought up the issue of Drift. Drift is basically the idea that a gaming group can take a game like D&D and drag it into another "camp" or style of play, rules not withstanding, often because they assume that's how the game "should be played."

When I read your comment above, I immediately see issues of Social Contract and Drift.

Now, you say you're not interested in GNS, and that's perfectly fine. However, I must suggest that it at the very least appears  that your gaming experiences are predominantly Simulationist ones, whether by design or drift. (I may be off this mark, and likely you've diverse tastes like many folks do. I myself enjoy Narrativist and Simulationist games very much.)

Your definition of story, for example, does not allow for the Narrativist school of design. Story Now, as Ron describes it even in his Sorcerer books, does not jive with your "data pool" concept, nor does it appear to allow for collective participants to create Right Now a story (rather than individuals walking away from the data pool with their own personal, incidental and unique interpretations). Mike Holmes has already made this observation in this thread. Further, Narrativism does not "disallow" personal and individual interpretations after-the-fact, something Ron Edwards and I spoke about fairly recently.

But what gravely concerns me is that your apparent disinterest for things GNS (or perhaps simply G and N?) makes some assumptions about "What mainstream gaming is" or "What the people I've seen gaming do" and so on. I think it's extremely dubious, particularly in a hobby in which people neither report their biases or even recognize their actual gaming preferences in a coherent way, to assume that gaming or story "is" something while discounting other practices as uninteresting or a priori the "fringe" of gaming.

In other words, I see your arguments putting forth, I think unintentionally, the notion that "The 'majority' of gamers play This Way (i.e. are Simulationists), and I'm catering to that popular audience and building them a language."

I simply don't think we know that. I don't think there is any indication of "what gaming is" such that we can create an understanding of popularity or majority. Further, my own biases are screaming, raging, and kicking against those assumptions because they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As in "Well, gamers are this way, so we'll make games and lexicons this way." I'd much rather see us breaking and challenging, in a rewarding and engaing way, those assumptions.

Very vigorous nods of agreement and shouts of "What he said!", with pointing at John's post there. "What kind of story is this?" is a crucially important question, and "What kind of story do I want?" can take the game off in a mess o' different directions.

Finally, can you explain this statement a bit more. What do you mean here, especially by asking "What kind of story is this?" and "What kind of story do I want?" Maybe some examples, even from your own work, would help me recognize why this resonates so much with you? John's post and your response put put more fuel on the fire for my reading of your preferences and ambitions (as a gamer AND a designer) as strongly Simulationist ones. I'm asking because I want to make sure I'm not mis-reading. Such a position is, if I haven't made clear already, perfectly valid! It's simply that I don't want, nor do I believe, that the position to be the "default" one among the bulk of gamers.

[Valamir]

Matt, this post should be saved and enshrined somewhere.

[Bruce Baugh]

Matt, I don't want to get snarky about this. I fear it'll come off sounding worse than I intend it - it would sound better even on the phone, let alone in person, where you could get the context for it. That said...

Yes, I do think I'm better informed about what gamers at large are up to. I was very fortunate to connect with the amateur press scene literally the same time I bought my first RPG, back in 1977, and I've been doing this professionally for most of a decade. I have the benefit of feedback from my own customers and also of public and private exchanges with other folks in the business and with intelligent observers outside da biz (the occasional academic studying the field, and so on). I can draw on sales data, the accounts of good retailers, convention-related data, and whole mess of personal interactions. I try never to claim more certainty than I have, but I do believe that I have more grist for the mill than most people commenting on games.

If it were up to it me, a lot of the information that is now private would be public. I wish a lot more retailers, distributors, and publishers followed the practice of discussing their sales in public. Simply doing that would upset a lot of assumptions as radically as the arrival of SoundScan data did for the record business - there are games nobody outside their communities of players thinks much of which sell very well, and there are highly touted games which are rapidly converging with the upper end of PDF sales despite all the noise. I also wish there were more good analytical studies of what gamers say when given the opportunity to have their say for a careful recover. However, there it is; some data's locked up and some is just scattered.

(Note that I do not claim to have a better understanding of all parts of gaming. There are areas from d20 publishing to, well, here, that I'm very much unfamiliar with. I know some things, guess some, and have no clue about some. Sometimes I'm happy even to know in general terms what it is I don't know.)

I will never say that the fact that an approach is unpopular means it's bad. I mean, two of my favorite RPGs ever are Everway and Over The Edge, just for starters. But I have personal benchmarks for what constitutes a viable audience, and I do have the missionary zeal to improve the masses' gaming. I like working, therefore, with popular setups and pushing them in various directions, getting the chance to introduce a whole mess of folks to unfamiliar concepts and (if I do it right) make it cool for them. This is certainly not the only way or reason to work. It's what I do, and it strongly influences what kinds of analysis I find interesting or useful.

[Matt Snyder]

Bruce, first off, you're not being snarky at all, nevermind that I purport to be a thick-skinned fellow.

I went back a read, and re-read your posts (and other) in this thread, really giving this some serious thought. My reply follows after I quote you from an earlier post below. I know I'm going to miss about 18 points, but hopefully we can keep discussing and walk away with something learned from one another.

The gaming public at large will continue to do so, for one thing, and I want to talk to gamers at large about what it is we do when we game.

If that's true, then why would you ignore the games Forge calls Narrativist, even if you don't care for the term? How can you examine what gamers think gaming is by ignoring a whole slew of games (for example, Hero Wars, later-era Tunnels & Trolls, Sorcerer, etc., all narrativist games)? Further, why do you assume that gamerdom will not talk about this, or rail against not using the word "story"? Because they're not interested? Because they're not Narrativst gamers, but rather folks who "just play D20"? Because they're not smart enough?

As far as I can see, you have only the evidence of anecdotal experience (you experience as a gamer, while diverse, is unique among gamers), and figures of retail sales, as opposed to, say, reams of actual, significant, unbiased survey data about why gamers do what they do.

(Using my own anecdotal evidence, I have seen numerous people come to the forge and say the equivalent of "Wow, I didn't know such games existed. Thanks for the cool site." Doesn't that indicate that many gamers are being sold short on their true desires? I'd like to think it does, but I'd put no money down on the wager. I just don't have enough data know.)

That is, if you assume only that popular, mainstream games like Storyteller and D&D and Rifts are what gaiming is, how can that really be an assessment of, well, what gaming is? Isn't that sample defined by economics and not necessarily by gaming?

That a two or three games sells to about 70-80% of the market does not indicate it de facto defines what gaming is. It defines what gaming sales are. It defines the bulk of gaming industry marketing. It defines who sees the games, and maybe who plays them, regardless of whether they'd actually be playing, say Sorcerer (Storytellers) or Riddle of Steel (D&D-ers) or Universalis (Rifters), but just don't know about those games. But it does not define gamers.

The point is that your experience is largely defined by gaming industry success (though certainly not exclusively!), and your position is one of a person whose quite literal meal ticket is riding on that success. Taken to one logical conclusion, it says that System Doesn't Matter.

Here's why: You are Green Ronin & White Wolf freelancer. You create D20 and Storyteller games, but have a diverse interest in gaming. You see something in a Narrativist game (say, confessionals in InSpectres) that applies generally to the genre you're working on in some new Storyteller game or supplement. So, you take the idea and try to ram it into the Storyteller system, an arguably staight-shootin' Simulationist game, one that creates data pools from which players walk away from and create their own stories or story interpretations.

But the problem is that Confessionals are designed around the idea of Story Now. There are a distinctly Narrative concept (or, that is, we'll assume so for purposes here). They just don't fit the simulationist game. But, you've got a deadline to fill, and WW sure as hell isn't going to let you turn Storyteller into a Narrativist game or let you create a new system.

So, System Doesn't Matter, or rather Only One System Matters. This is because of money. WW can't go out and create the most appropriate system for its diverse writers ideas and interests. It can only afford to propogate its flagship system, and tack onto the open gaming license, which is an even larger market base. The Forge, as a community, is STRONGLY opposed to this idea. If I'm going out on a limb there, then I and many others are strongly opposed to that idea. (EDIT: The thing we're opposed to is System Doesn't Matter, not open gaming or the Storyteller system outright.)

At that point you have a couple choices. You can forget about the neato idea, which stiffles the neato idea, and likely other neato ideas. Or you can try to include it anyway, which creates an incoherent game and further muddies the waters of "what gamers want" because the game confuses the hell out of game groups, some who see one thing and want that, some who want another. Saying that you know what "Storyteller players" want at that point becomes meaningless, because groups that play the same game have wildly different ideas about what gaming is. This may or may not be true of Storyteller players currently. I belive VERY strongly that this is true of the HUGE array of D&D players out there, who play the game because "they always have," and not because it's what best suits their interests.

The key point I'm stressing here (perhaps repeatedly so, my brain's trying to keep up with my fingers): Professional publishers continue to benefit from a market of gamers because -- in part --  they alledge they "know what gamers want." In fact, they likely do know what some of them want, and are hitting home-runs. We can see this in looking at sales coupled with customer interaction (for example -- Green Ronin's Mutants & Masterminds sales and its d-groups). But there are other folks who are buying books, but are left sorely unsatisfied. I'm one of them (and again, that's only anecdotal and therefore perhaps too rhetorical).

So what I'm arguing is that gamers have no idea what they want, mainly because they've 1) have never critically considered why they like what they do and whether their purchases fit the bill OR (worse) 2) are patently unable to critically analyze why the heck the spend time on this hobby or even WORSE 3) because they have become so enamored of buying pretty books from legacy publishers that they've never thought otherwise. How on earth could the publishers know what they want, if they don't know themselves?

Or, in the worlds of my man Yogi Berra, "If people don't want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

(EDIT: And therefore, saying we know what the majority of gamers "are like" or knowing what the vast majority of games "want gaming to be like" is extremely dubious. It does not mean the entire business model of WWGS is flawed; it means knowing the hearts and minds of gamers -- rather than their wallets -- is nearly impossible.)

[Matt Snyder]

Bruce, I'd like to offer up another observation that helps explain where I'm coming from. In this discussion, I'm starting to see a conflict emerge between the "industry" and the "hobby." I see the hobby -- the thing that is "gaming" -- as a large thing. Within that large thing is nestled another thing that is the "industry."

Now, I've been on lost of email lists and d-groups in which people deeply involved in the industry decry any notion that the hobby is anything but an industry. They become offended when people seem to belittle their profession as "just a hobby" and also become incensed that the industry doesn't deliver to them a livable wage.

To which my reply is that no one deserves a paycheck (and, of course, you Bruce have not voiced this complaint here or elsewhere to my knowledge.). If you can earn one in an industry related to a hobby you love, great. But that industry, that thing that delivers your paycheck is not all of the thing that is the hobby.

What I'm getting at is this, Bruce. You're interested in the majority of gamers, by which I think you mean the bulk of the hobby that pays for product on which you work. You're interested in examining the hobby, sure, but you're also strongly interested in bettering and improving the industry. It is your paycheck first, your hobby second. Heck, it might even be your hobby first, your paycheck second. Regardless, to me it is my hobby first, and my paycheck not a whit.

I think this is the nature of some of our disconnect. I'm passionately interested in this hobby, and I've observed you are, too. You're presumably passionate about the industry, as well, and I am passionately disinterested for a whole range of reasons (not the least having dipped my toe in those cold, cold waters). I consider my games, which I do indeed sell, as a hobby, one that on occasion pays for itself. I couldn't care less what industry folks think about that consideration, and I don't care much even what friends here at the Forge think about it. It is what it is.

[Jason Lee]

Bruce,

Just a little big picture, which you may already see, but here I go.

Sometimes terms are used in discussion here absent of their clarifiers, sometimes because their clarifiers haven't been satisfactorily (is that a word?) defined yet.  You can see from this thread how Story is defined by some more narrowly than you think is functional.  That's because there is story (as you would define it - a replaying of important events in a pleasing order) which happens in roleplaying no matter what and could be considered outside of GNS.  Then there is Story, which based on context almost always means Narrativist story (play that actually creates a fictional narrative front, in addition to any story that can be crafted out of the events later).  Then you have a couple things that are not so clearly defined, Sim Story (what I took out of your definition, indentified as Sim by focusing on story in that manner) and Gamist Story (my definition would be the first person, non-character seperation - "I killed the blah, then I found the blah").

It reminds me a lot of Premise, which when stated without a clarifier almost always refers to Narrative Premise, even though Premise isn't unique to Narrativism (like Story).  Why I think this happens is because there isn't a lot of point to discussing Premise or Story in a general sense, everybody agrees it happens.

So...When someone says VtM is incoherent because it doesn't actually promote story, they mean it doesn't promote the narrow definition of Narrativist Story (when it creates Sim Story just fine, and is actually a rather coherent Sim Game).

And...When The Impossible Thing is impossible it's because the narrow Narrativist definition of story is read into the text.

I hope this makes sense.  When you take say, Gordon's, definition of story instead of yours and plug it into the VtM and Impossible Thing discussions maybe you can see what PoV some people took to the discussion.  You do not under any circumstances have to agree with it, but it might make a little sense why the arguement existed in the first place.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Umm . . . is it just me, or is this thread REALLY meandering?  Matt, I'm not sure why you think Bruce would "ignore the games Forge calls Narrativist" - I see no evidence that he is doing or would do such a thing.  In fact, I've seen him explictly say elsewhere that he LIKES those games, thinks more people should check 'em out, and etc. - he just doesn't care for the label.

And - I guess a shared understanding of where folks are at regarding the industry/hobby as a whole is a good thing, as it can/does inform the rest of a person's thinking.  I doubt we'll find a right answer, though.  For what it's worth, I have MAJOR respect for the way Matt is thinking about this, but I can totally understand what Bruce is saying, too.

I would like to see a little more exploration of the ideas/language Bruce proposed in his initial post - frankly, I haven't been able to figure out the uses/implications of his structure yet.  I'll re-read and see if something goes "a-ha!", but a return to that topic by others would also be cool by me :-)

Gordon

[Matt Snyder]

Umm . . . is it just me, or is this thread REALLY meandering?  Matt, I'm not sure why you think Bruce would "ignore the games Forge calls Narrativist" - I see no evidence that he is doing or would do such a thing.  In fact, I've seen him explictly say elsewhere that he LIKES those games, thinks more people should check 'em out, and etc. - he just doesn't care for the label.

And - I guess a shared understanding of where folks are at regarding the industry/hobby as a whole is a good thing, as it can/does inform the rest of a person's thinking.  I doubt we'll find a right answer, though.  For what it's worth, I have MAJOR respect for the way Matt is thinking about this, but I can totally understand what Bruce is saying, too.

I would like to see a little more exploration of the ideas/language Bruce proposed in his initial post - frankly, I haven't been able to figure out the uses/implications of his structure yet.  I'll re-read and see if something goes "a-ha!", but a return to that topic by others would also be cool by me :-)

Gordon

A fair point, Gordon, so I'll attempt to re-focus what I was originally getting at:

Bruce proposed some terms regarding story that he felt would better suit more mainstream gamers. His explanation of that included the notion of creating a pool of data via play from which players derive their interpretations individually and, hence, create story after the fact.

Mike Holmes pointed out (as did I later) that Narrativism creates Story Now, in contrast to what Bruce had proposed. I don't think Bruce has yet commented about this, from Mike's post or my first reply. Elsewhere, Bruce expressed a general disinterest in GNS, which is -- again -- his perogative.

It was from these events that I inferred that Bruce was largely ignoring narrativist games and play. Perhaps that assessment is inaccurate. I DO know that Bruce individually isn't totally opposed to Narrativist games -- the man bought Dust Devils! Hurray!

It is my reading of his posts that he's interested in building some terms and language with which to communicate among the "bulk" or majority of gamers, if you will. My point was that I didn't agree that this was necessary because we can't really know what the "bulk" of gamers is. Further, Bruce's stated definition did exclude Narrativist concepts of story, and therefore, by logic, those would not be communicated with the "bulk" of gamers, if in fact that "bulk" can be identified and communicated with.

In other words, I read it as him excluding a significant (if not economically popular) segment of "what gaming is" in order to reach a vague audience who are playing popular games. I see it as preaching to the choir, and not at all challenging the way gamers do what they do, or indeed rewarding them with something they never knew existed, largely because of economics.

So, Gordon, I guess this WAS my attempt to critique precisely Bruce's terms and the assumptions their based on. That it has veered into a critique of the industry, I did not expect.