Gamism: Exploration and Competition

[Emily Care]

Here's my check, Ron:

I can see all manner of ways in which the credibility is established - from simple positive social reinforcement... to gestures of respect...

I'm in agreement with Nathan. Applause doesn't establish credibility, it is an acknowledgement that credibility has been masterfully established. I don't believe we can identify what you're talking about with credibility.

Reinforcement sounds like the right term. Or acknowledgement.   The reward given to someone for successfully navigating a challenge to the credibility of their assertion in the case of gamism, for creating a satisfying sequence of events that explores a theme for narrativism, or that expresses verisimilitude to source material for sim.

If so, then the GNS breakdown would go like this:

- Gamism: reinforcing both the uber-cooperative and locally-possibly-competitive standards for what is at risk, and concerning what (in-play)

- Narrativism: reinforcing player authority over character protagonism (in the group-appreciative sense which Paul likes to talk about), which translates absolutely directly to producing Theme out of Premise

- Simulationism: reinforcing the internal causality of the in-game events, again, as communicated among the group for shared appreciative purposes

Are you saying the various styles function by encouraging participants to gain credibility in a given fashion?  I'm not clear from your examples.  See mine above.

In your T&T game, for example, you said that one of the victory conditions for the GM is to kill the characters. The players, obviously, want their characters to live. This whole thing is just one big load of Lumpley Principle Credibility. You're trying to get  the credibility to establish that the characters in the shared reality are dead. The players are trying to get the credibility to keep them alive. Weapons, Items, Spells, Money, Monsters, Traps, Characters, and so on are all just expressions of Credibility as far as Gamism is concerned.

This is so great. <grin>

Let's see. the items, spells etc. are all in-game elements that are used as vehicles for making credible statements.  They themselves are credible expressions of someone's creative interaction with the world.  

A participant who owns a Witch has the right to make statements about what the Witch does in the world including summoning Monsters, making Money, setting Traps etc.  All gaming GNS and other limits the amount/number/type of credible statements any participant can make.  Each of the styles encourages you to make certain types and discourages you from making others (through system, social contract, social pressure, etc)

The imagined reality is the arena for the contest that decides the stakes, right? That means that the players win or lose by  manipulating the imagined reality. But manipulating the imagined reality is all Lumpley Principle. That's what credibility is all about - deciding which player gets to manipulate the imagined reality, and how much he can do.

Credibility is, I think, simply what makes an assertion true in the shared game world or as part of the whole gaming experience.  How you decide whether something is credible or not is outside of the purview of the term. According to the Lumpley Principle, concensus determines whether something is credible, and group concensus may allocate the right to make that determination to a player, or mechanics etc.

Authority, as MJ, I believe, mentioned, is one term that's been kicked  around to talk about the apportionment of the power to make credible statements.  (ie the gm has much authority with respect to world, npc etc., the player generally has authority with respect to their character.)

This whole thing is just one big load of Lumpley Principle Credibility.

Yup. All of it.

--EC

[lumpley]

(Hi Em!)

I check with Ron, fully.

I'd say it like this: Being credible makes you more credible.  You say something cool, the group makes it true, the group also applauds you, next time you say something the group remembers applauding you last time and is more likely to make it true this time, round and round it goes.  This happens at a subtle level, way more subtle than the level of the game mechanics.  It's made up of eye contact, body language, little noises, interruptions of various sorts, all the ways people respond to each other in conversation.

But this subtle, conversational, interpersonal level, it's the level where decisions about when to use the mechanics and how to treat their results get made.  Game mechanical credibility, like character effectiveness or access to director stance or whatever, is a manifestation of social, group approval-type credibility.  Without the latter you can't ever get the former.  

But I'm not positive who I'm agreeing and disagreeing with, or whether I'm just restating the common foundation and missing the contested point entirely.  Nathan, are you saying that in Gamism, winning means increasing your personal credibility?  Ron, are you?  Emily?

-Vincent

[Ron Edwards]

Hi guys,

I can't see any point of contention at all, but maybe I'm just silly or something. In some ways, the very notion of credibility seems so fundamental to the existence of a Social Contract that it doesn't seem worth hammering so hard.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I think that you're agreeing with Ron. Not only that, but in a way I think that those were the most powerful definitions of the modes of play that I've ever seen. I like it a lot.

Mike

[Paganini]

Nathan, are you saying that in Gamism, winning means increasing your personal credibility?

Well... yeah... kind of... or at least using your credibility skillfully. Since Ron posted about Step On Up I've been thinking about it this way:

In Gamism, there's some sort of personal social element of prestiege at risk. These stakes are completely meta meta meta game. Winning increases this prestiege, losing decreases it.

Given this, there has to be some sort of in-game (meaning it exists within the shared reality) flag or breakpoint that determines when you've "won" or "lost" so that your prestiege can increase or decrease. Since the flag is in-game, the only way you can set or un-set it is by means of your credibility. So, you don't have to necessarily be increasing your credibility, but you do have to be doing *something* with it.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Nathan,

There's a whole section in the new essay called "About What" that addresses this in-game "thing" you're talking about. What's especially interesting is that it may or may not correspond with any kind of quantitative or explicit "win" mechanic.

Best,
Ron

[Emily Care]

Hello all, hi Vincent,

I see two things here:

your Standing: what gets risked with Step On Up

your Say: whether what you assert is credible

Using one word (credibility) just increases already existing confusion.  We all confuse these two, but they aren't the same, and one increasing needn't make the other go up or down.  Games where your say depends on your standing are often quite unpleasant.  And getting your say can most definitely decrease your standing.

yrs,
Em

[Ron Edwards]

Boink!

"Standing" and "Say." Straight into the lexicon.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

Heck yeah.

-Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

I think it all depends on what one means by an "in-game flag".

Certainly we're talking about decisions made by the player that cause in-game actions to occur. But the "win" conditions, what counts as a win, can be completely internal to the player; he has only to imagine that they matter in the social context, and may even see a win condition that other's may not. That is, it doesn't depend on whether anyone else sees the condition, it's only important that the player make the decision in relation to the condition.

In Gamism, there's some sort of personal social element of prestiege at risk. These stakes are completely meta meta meta game. Winning increases this prestiege, losing decreases it.

I do agree however with the above quote. If:

Social Contract -> GNS -> Play

then, Metagame is catering to GNS priorities, and the social priority of Gamism is therefore, as Nathan puts it, Meta-Meta-Game. You have to go one more layer out to find the source of the reward.

Nar and Sim also have social priorities, but they are "creating a story enjoyed by all" and "maintaining the simulation for all" as opposed to "increasing standing with respect to all".

Have we identified a "goal" level related to GNS here at the social level?

Note that a good definition of Munchkin or some such is achieving self-defined "win" conditions that don't actually increase standing in the group because other players don't share the same win conditions.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mike,

You wrote,

Have we identified a "goal" level related to GNS here at the social level?

Yes, but I also think it's not a discovery so much as a confirmation of the necessary "contact" among the levels. We know that Social Contract "touches" (or as you say, is related to) Exploration, and we know that Exploration "touches" GNS priorities - the Venn model is supposed to express those relationships.

It's a crucial kind of relationship/contact because of its distinct "feel" in both Gamist and Narrativist play; this distinctiveness is what produces that "two of these things are not like the others" perception regarding Simulationist play. In G and N play, the Say and the Standing issues are entwined with the in-game Explorative material, but they are not identified with them as in S play.

In G, that's why I'm introducing Step On Up as a "thing" of its own, a kind of literal quantity or set of interactions which characterize the "G" in a less abstract way.

In N, when that essay finally gets done, it'll be Story Now, with the emphasis on the "Now" (even if the story in question is slowly or subtly paced) - and again, with Say and Standing being focused directly on that set of in-play stuff.

So yeah, I'm with this thread. It's especially great to see everyone's different ways of expressing this issue and perhaps to cull the most effective terminology or explanations from it.

Best,
Ron