Beeg Horseshoe Theory Revisited

[Bankuei]

Hi Mike,

I was referrring to Fidelity to the rules "as written"(interpreted however the group may after that point).  Hence, "Ignor the rules" is permission given to Drift, permission to drop Fidelity a notch to fulfill other goals.  Does that make sense to you?

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

I was referrring to Fidelity to the rules "as written"(interpreted however the group may after that point).  Hence, "Ignor the rules" is permission given to Drift, permission to drop Fidelity a notch to fulfill other goals.  Does that make sense to you?

Only somewhat.

Fidelity is adherence to the agreed to nature of the exploration via decisions in play and thier perception. So, "ignore the rules" is just a text saying something. If all the players agree as to what that means, and play by what they agree that means, then there's plenty of Fidelity going on.

Note how for "freeformers" the system is to encourage players not to stomp on each other's narration, for example. That's not particularly supportive, in my view, but if a player adheres to this principle, and explores appropriately, then the result certainly passes that group's Fidelty test.

Remember the Fidelity bar cam be set low and still result in funcitonal play.

Mike

[C. Edwards]

Hey Mike,

You guys have taken this beyond me. I'm not sure what Fidelity to System is, actually. I know that it's not using the rules as intended. That can't be right. It can be using the rules to evoke that which the game seeks to evoke, namely some sense of the world as arbitrary.

Thanks to the Fidelity vs. Integrity thread this is how I'm seeing it. Basically, I would say that System integrity is being preserved in every instance that use of that System would reduce the integrity of one of the other 4 elements from the player's point of view and the player adheres to the System regardless. 'Fudging' a roll because the result would cause an adept character to look inept would be sacrificing System integrity for Character integrity. This assumes that this particular brand of 'fudging' hasn't been formalized among the group. If it does become formalized it then becomes System.

Does that make any sense?

-Chris

[M. J. Young]

Pickett could refuse to charge, but he wouldn't.

I think that's the difference between fidelity and simulationism. The former considers all the options that are possible, given what is known about the world, the situation, and the character, but does not decide which to do solely on that basis. The latter chooses which option to take based on a defined metagame priority, the desire to be as true as possible to the elements without outside interference. In the same way that gamism encourages a player to choose an action from among the possible which furthers success and narrativism encourages a player to choose, again from among the possible, to develop theme, simulationism looks at the possibles and chooses the most probable, regardless of whether it leads to success or failure, whether it tells a better or worse story. It is a metagame priority which directs choice in exactly the same way as the other two metagame priorities: determining which of the possible actions the character will do.

There seeoms to be some confusion between the amount of something and the prioritization of something....as I understand it, the prioritization referred to in GNS is always the relative variety. What is prioritized is what gets served when push comes to shove. In other words, it's the pushing and shoving, not the absolute amount of effort expended, that reveals priorities.

Simulationism is not fidelity.
Simulationism is not high fidelity.
Simulationism is (to a first approximation) the prioritization of fidelity.

Exactly. Simulationism can have a low detail setting and a lite system with lots of unanswered bits of reality, but whatever is established, we remain faithful to that and don't let other interests interfere.

M.J. wants three independent dimensions,...

which, I think, has been misunderstood in that which follows.

My notion of a three-dimensional approach is that you've got the GNS plane bisected by the Fidelity axis perpendicular to it. Actually, following your line, it would suggest we actually need a four-dimensional array--the x, y, and z axes representing G, N, and S, with the w axis representing Fidelity in relation to all three.

However, I'm not sure I agree with that; I don't think you really have "amounts" of G, N, or S in that sense. But that's about hybridization, and how it might be accomplished, and I think that we're too far even from a definition of hybridization to be able to intelligently address that aspect.*

The question here is not whether the game has high or low fidelity, but whether when the rubber meets the road it is strategy, theme, or integrity that is the deciding factor in player decisions.

--M. J. Young

*On hybrids: late last week I sent this to Chris Lehrich as part of a response on GNS:

In regard to hybrids, I think there are three different notions that get mixed together.[list=1][*]Uncommitted games. I think Multiverser falls into this category--the core engine is simulationist enough to run everything, but flexible enough that referees can raise or lower the level of simulation to fit what's necessary at the moment. That is, I can use a running skill success roll either to determine exactly how fast you ran or to determine whether you ran "fast enough" in this situation. Meanwhile, referees and players can bring issues and challenges (that is, narrativist and gamist concerns) into play through world and scenario choices--but referees do not have the power to force players into gamist or narrativist play. Players are free to play as they wish, sufficiently isolated from each other's goals that they won't interfere with each other, and able to shift in response to the game if they desire--or not if they prefer. Some of it requires that the referee respond to the player's desires; but then, part of the mechanics in the game is "does the character have things go the way he wants, and to what degree", so that's also built in.[*]Driftable games. I don't mean this in the sense that you can force a game to be whatever you want by ignoring parts of it; I mean that people are trying to build games that provide specific support for two or three styles, so that players can make it support the one they want. We encountered this on a recent thread, in which someone tried to toss together a game that would let players decide through character generation whether they were going for gamist, narrativist, or simulationist advancement by how they built the character. I found this implausible, and following John Kim's comments said that character generation was not a sufficient foundation for that, as the game engine itself was going to matter greatly. But there are games which move easily between two agendae, as long as everyone goes with them.[*]Focused Concept games. This is a game in which your creative agenda becomes in some sense irrelevant. I think I recently suggested a Viet Nam game, in which you're a member of a platoon. If the platoon is under fire, it doesn't much matter whether you're a gamist, narrativist, or simulationist--you're going to defend yourself and try to fight back. The gamist does it because he likes the challenge; the simulationist because it seems like what he would do; the narrativist because it's the color of the story against which the issues are played out. For very different reasons, they all do the same thing. Thus the player styles are not in conflict at that moment. However, I argue that the focus of such a game has to be so narrow that it will ultimately be dissatisfying to everyone one way or another. The gamist can't win the Viet Nam war. The narrativist can't do anything about his questions of the morality of the conflict. The simulationist can't focus on the experience of living in the southeast Asian jungle. Their priorities only align while in the very narrow area delineated by the concept; the closer they get to what they want to do, the more it falls apart. I don't think you can do this kind of hybrid beyond very narrow concepts (the Netrunner card game was suggested in this context, and I pointed out that the narrowness of the concept was the only reason it worked). Thus I think this is a pipe dream. Yet usually when people speak of hybrids, they're trying to do this: create a game in which gamist, narrativist, and simulationist players all in the same scenario will all make non-conflicting choices because their different goals lead to the same decisions. I think you and I are both on the same page here, thanks to our theology backgrounds. I frequently tell people that theology is everything: that what you really believe will ultimately determine what you actually do. You can't have players with entirely different agendae coming to the same conclusions on the best way to reach those different goals. It's the error of Jefferson (was it called the Marketplace of Ideas? I'm not remembering it right now), that if rational men discussed all the options we would ultimately all agree on the best way to reach the best world--it only works if we've already agreed in every detail about the best world, because otherwise we're all trying to get somewhere else. That's the problem with hybrids of this sort: if we're all trying to travel together and reach different places, we fight. It doesn't happen in Multiverser, because we don't have to travel together (Have fun stormin' the castle!). Other games let players drift between goals as play progresses. But you can't do what is sought here.[/list:o]

To add something to that (what, in case it wasn't long enough?), we all agree that it's possible to play a game in which conflicting priorities lead to identical choices. The question is whether when you do so you're actually choosing from more than one priority--and the answer seems to be probably not. You're choosing to do That Thing because it is the best gamist choice; the fact that it is also the best narrativist choice is irrelevant to your decision, but is what makes coherent play.

Also, I think that hybrid design and hybrid play are two entirely different beasts, and shouldn't be confused. I haven't seen TROS, but from what I've read of it, it always strikes me that it prioritizes narrativism in a way that overrides any commitment to simulationism entirely; what is cited as simulationist mechanics is nothing more than an attempt to create integrity in the setting, against which the real decisions are made. Those decisions, in TROS, appear to be narrativist, from all accounts, not simulationist. Maybe it is hybrid design, in the sense that it provides support for simulationist decision making but lets it be overridden by narrativist decision making; but I'm not really clear that this is hybrid. After all, that sounds to me like it means the game maintains its reality as long as narrativist decisions don't conflict with simulationist ones, but when they do the game clearly supports narrativist preferences.

But I haven't seen it, so I'm talking from what I've heard.

[Valamir]

I'm finding large parts of this thread rather suspect.

The term Fidelity was not used because there was a particular meaning to be ascribed to it.  The term fidelity was used as an alternative to calling the second axis simulationism, simply to avoid confusion.

That people have then taken a word that was chosen for no better reason than a lack of a better idea at the time, and spun it into 5 pages of stuff...makes me highly skeptical of the whole thing.  I mean its one thing if someone had developed these concepts and then hunted for a word to encapsulate them...but its something else entirely when a throw away term is inflated to these proportions.

The second axis should have just remained "Simulation" and then this entire derailment would never have occured.

[Walt Freitag]

Tying Fidelity back into the five elements of exploration is the right way to go, if any connection between fidelity and GNS Simulationism is to be maintained. (M. J,'s new theory won't need to do this, I suppose, because it puts fidelity on its own dimension orthogonal to everyting else including Simulationism -- a point that I did indeed fail to appreciate in recent posts.)

I agree that "fidelity to a set of rules" doesn't seem to have much meaning, yet if we're talking about the fidelity associated with exploration of system, it's where we end up. "Fidelity to (a) system" is tricky, kind of like "sticking to (a) diet." You can break a diet or fail to adhere to a system, but in the end you can't not have a diet (whatever you do in fact eat, is it) and you can't not have a system (however you do in fact play, is it). So the problem is what sort of fidelity goes along with "exploration of system." It appears that it could indeed be fidelity to a particular system (that is, not breaking or ignoring its rules, for instance), or it could be fidelity to some underlying principle by which a de facto system is being decided through play (the rough equivalent of "consistency" in exploration of, say, setting in no-myth play). The first possibility sounds much easier to achieve and more likely to be a real priority of real-world play, than the second.

The problem with saying that any magnitude of fidelity is compatible with any magnitude of Gamism or Narrativism is that it overlooks the signficant constraints on what kinds of fidelity (what elements of exploration the fidelity is being applied to) are compatible. "High fidelity to system" is not only compatible with high Gamism, it's all but required for it, but the same cannot be said for e.g. "high fidelity to character."

Indeed, the constraints on "what kind of fidelity" is compatible look a lot like congruence constraints, and adding the "high-fi high-Gamism" and "high-fi high Narrativism" corners seems to come about by spinning congruence scenarios(1) rather than expanding the "natural" GNS space -- whatever the hell that distinction means. Congruence is permeating this whole thread. M. J.'s Vietnam example under "Focused Concept" games is an elegant summary of (at least one type of) applied congruence including its important downsides. I agree with his points in full, though I might be more charitable and say "your creative agenda is served by default" rather than "your creative agenda becomes in some sense irrelevant" -- though the latter is just as valid a way to say it.

- Walt

(1) Which is not to say that such congruence scenarios don't occur in actual play. I believe they're common and that they underlie some of the skepticism toward GNS. At a first glance, it's easy to come to the conclusion that one's own group is "beating" the GNS coherence principles by simultaneously playing multiple modes without obvious incoherence symptoms -- and overlook the signficant compromises in scope of exploration that are being made to achieve that functionality.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree, Ralph. The tems should be interchangable. I prefer Fidlity because in terms of adding a magnitude to the term it sounds more sensible. That is, High Sim doesn't sound right. Sim is an absolute priority as are all the GNS modes. Fidelity is that measure that indicates the striving for Sim.

Walt said it:

Simulationism is (to a first approximation) the prioritization of fidelity.

MJ, so they are only different in terms of what structures they describe, but not in terms of what they produce. Hence Challenge is the magnitude of your Gamism Vector, and Theme is the magnitude of your Narrativism vector. There's no need for a fourth vector.

The question is whether when you do so you're actually choosing from more than one priority--and the answer seems to be probably not. You're choosing to do That Thing because it is the best gamist choice; the fact that it is also the best narrativist choice is irrelevant to your decision, but is what makes coherent play.

I totally disagree. The reason I put Challenge and Theme on the same axis is that I tend to agree that on that count you probably only consider one option or the other. Or that, at least perceptually this seems to be the case. But in terms of Fidelity, players seem to follow this mental process to my mind:

1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it does what I want on the Conflict axis.

or

1. Here's a number of ways that I can get what I want out of my Conflict axis.
2. Of those this one is best because it's most believable.

In point of fact, this all usually occurs under the "not on purpose" idea, meaning the player considers this all but subconsciously. In actual fact, I think a lot of rationalization occurs.

1. This is the first thing that comes to mind.
2. It happens to seem to me to fit both axes.

But in fact, the process doesn't matter. It's the perception of the process. It's my contention that problems with the perception of the decision making process occur along the two axes described. That is players think in terms of, and vocalize their dissapointment with, either a decision being too lacking in Fidelity, or the decision being far away from desired on the Conflict axis.

Player priorities and decision making processes don't really matter in terms of Incoherence. It's the perception of how they are expressed in play that causes problems. Where the magnitude of the priorities has to be considered is in design, where you try to take those player vectors and turn them into palatable output via system.

TROS does a good job of handling these priorites by using Congruence, or separating the points of decsion making into particular points on the map. Using the model I think we can map out well where each element of TROS exists in what it supports, and you can see how it avoids Incoherency and where incoherency may occur.

Note how the Narrativist elements get Drifted out occasionally because people feel that in use they lack Fidelity to what they see as the Explorative elements that are important. "It's just not realistic that Vauknir becomes a better swordsman because his son is in danger" (note how the player isn't concerned with it being "too much Narrativism").

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Walt,

I've never understood System as one of the five elements. If system is the means by which we determine what happens in-game, then it's all of play, and encompasses the other elements. So if the system says that color shall be thus and such, and the GM is responsible for seeing that it occurs, color is part of the system.

OTOH, I can see exploration of Mechanics, which is what I assumed was what Ron meant before he rightly defined System in it's larger role.

Ron can you clarify once again what you mean by Exploration of System?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Mike,

Rolling to hit is a great example of Exploration of System. We have turned to some methodology in order to imagine what is happening in the game world. This methodology necessarily includes all the formal mechanics, but "formal" is often locally defined. In the case of rolling to hit, that local definition just means, "follow the written rule." Most of the time, I think, we can stick with this simple understanding.

However, that simple understanding isn't sufficient. For instance, a rule or method might be in the book, but the group ignores it (e.g. weapon's Speed Factor or whatever the hell it was called in my old AD&D books). That omission is part of System for that group. Similarly, just deciding that "he hits," without rolling or using other formal indicators, is System too, insofar as someone is designated as The Buck-Stopper (the guy who decides).

To say that System therefore applies to all moments of play is perfectly correct. I should also say that System can be highly, highly prioritized, and that's often the case when it's formalized through text, and when, for that group, that text's integrity is a big reason for why they're using it. As you know, GURPS included this idea as a big part of its marketing strategy back in the 80s, and JAGS, EABA, and Pocket Universe all provide (in my view) an improved and even more committed version of this strategy.

Does that help?

Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

Wrote the post quoted below about Exploration of System, then saw Ron's post in preview.

So I can only ask, does that mean all consensual use of System is exploration of System?

Gah. Wouldn't that make any functional play in any system Simulationist? In The Pool, I might know the perfect Premise-addressing thing to narrate, but the die roll says I don't get to narrate; using ( = exploring?) the system apparently has priority.

- Walt

All right, Mike, you got me. Every time I see the list of five elements I'm singing the "one of these things is not like the others" song.

But I assumed that this was one of those things that was debated way before my time on other now-inaccessible fora, probably fought over tooth and nail, and who wants to go back there and hash it all out again?

To be honest, I don't think changing it to "exploration of mechanics" helps in any fundamental way. It's still like including "adjust the telescope" in a catalog of viewable astronomical objects.

Problem is, as a real-world observed behavior, this is a no-brainer. I've seen and done plenty of play that only seems describable as Exploration of System. Sometimes in overall Gamist contexts (by experimenting with the system, I hope to discover more effective strategies) and sometimes in overall Sim contexts (I just want to see what happens if the system is operated in a certain way). Sometimes I visualise the outcome in terms of the imagined game space. ("Lookit that! A low-level magic-user in the Hackmaster wurld could earn 50 GP per day by buying used books which are very cheap, using the Erase spell to erase the pages, and reselling the blank paper which is very expensive. I wonder if that means there are sweatshops devoted to this odd activity.") And sometimes I don't. (Hmm, for every 10 points I put into stat X, I get back 9 points in figured stats. Let's see what my defense rating would look like if I maxed stat X.)

The only way out I can see is to declare such activities "not role playing" in the same manner that collimating the telescope isn't astronomical observing and "exploration of what kind of pizza we're going to order" is not role playing. A good case could be made for it, but it might be a rather unpopular position. (Also, I doubt my examples from the preceding paragraph are representative of all Exploration of System play; there are probably cases that are more resistant to being classified as "not role playing.")

[John Kim]

Rolling to hit is a great example of Exploration of System. We have turned to some methodology in order to imagine what is happening in the game world. This methodology necessarily includes all the formal mechanics, but "formal" is often locally defined.
...
To say that System therefore applies to all moments of play is perfectly correct. I should also say that System can be highly, highly prioritized, and that's often the case when it's formalized through text, and when, for that group, that text's integrity is a big reason for why they're using it.

This doesn't seem right to me.  "Exploration" to me implies learning.  Thus, for example, if a D&D group goes through a dungeon module, they are exploring setting.  However, if after they complete the module, they play it again, there is much less exploration going on.  If they keep playing through that module twelve more times, there is really no exploration left.  

Now, I can see some games being exploration of system, like say Rolemaster or Champions.  Through play, you learn nuances of the complex system which you didn't before.  However, I don't think that simply using the system constitutes exploration.  For example, a hit roll in Call of Cthulhu is very cut and dried.  After your first game (at most) of CoC, there is no longer any exploration of system in rolling for your attack.

[M. J. Young]

Mike, I'm beginning to think you've never played a character who is not you with pointy ears or something; I know that's not true. I must not be understanding something here.

The question is whether when you do so you're actually choosing from more than one priority....

I totally disagree. The reason I put Challenge and Theme on the same axis is that I tend to agree that on that count you probably only consider one option or the other. Or that, at least perceptually this seems to be the case. But in terms of Fidelity, players seem to follow this mental process to my mind...

1. This is the first thing that comes to mind.
2. It happens to seem to me to fit both axes.

I've run a lot of fighter-type characters who are, by the book, fearless. When I run them, I'm always conflicted--there is a tension between the best tactical choice for the character and what the character would in fact choose to do. Tell me that it makes tactical sense for a cavalier to ignore all the infantrymen, wade into the middle of the battle where he's surrounded, and attack the most powerful enemy on the field one-on-one, when there's a ten-level disparity between them; yet that is what the character would do. A missile weapon is a vital piece of tactical equipment for a fighter, but a kensai will not use one, ever. I have more than once had my tactical insights quashed by my recognition that this, although logically completely possible, was not something the character would be willing to do. I once had a lawful good fourth level fighter type agree to lead a mission

[*]about twelve miles deep into the underdark[*]to the home of the chaotic evil drow[*]in the middle of a war between drow factions[*]with a party of maybe a dozen characters none of whom were as high a level as he.[/list:u]Why? Because a drow princess he had (rather inadvertently) rescued from slavers asked him to take her home, and he felt honor-bound to respect that request. I was sure he was going to be slaughtered before he got a hundred yards below the surface, but I knew that he had no fear and would neither see this as too dangerous nor renege on his commitment. I wanted any reason at all for that mission to be aborted, but I had simulationist priorities for my character, and would not let him do what made the most tactical sense or the best story--only what he would most likely do in that situation.

I've already agreed that fidelity is a concern that is considered; I just disagree that it replaces simulationism. It is independent of simulationism. That is, as surely as we can see

1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is tactically the best choice.[/list:u]and
1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it drives the core theme into sharp relief.[/list:u]we can also see
1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is the thing that my character would most likely do, since he is unaware of my concerns for story or success.[/list:u]
You're ignoring that this is actually a real player priority which

[*]conflicts with both gamist and narrativist priorities in the same way that they conflict with each other and[*]is actually independent of the commitment to fidelity within the game generally.[/list:u]
You've recognized an important aspect to play, that of fidelity to the reality portrayed; but then you've tried to have that consume something that is different in kind from it, the metagame priority of maintaining integrity. You keep insisting that players always act from gamist or narrativist priorities to some degree, when repeatedly it has been seen that sometimes they act not from a lack of either of these but from a positive affirmation of the values of verisimilitude and integrity.

The question here is not whether the game has high or low fidelity, but whether when the rubber meets the road it is strategy, theme, or integrity that is the deciding factor in player decisions.

GNS recognizes that the three are constantly in conflict as player priorities. You're confusing a high level of commitment to fidelity as a prioritization of integrity; it is clear both that a game can have a high commitment to fidelity when all the decisions are gamist or narrativist, and that a game can have a low commitment to fidelity and still prioritize integrity.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I'm using the definition of Exploration from my essay. This seems to have tripped you up a few times already in discussion, John. It just means imagining stuff in the process of role-playing.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

MJ, it sounds to me like you're just saying that conflict between the priorities occurs. Which I agree with. And that there are more than one kind of Incoherency in Fidelity. Which I've agreed to in the other thread.

You keep insisting that players always act from gamist or narrativist priorities to some degree

No I haven't. I've in fact denied that more than once. What I've said is that players object to things on these two axes. Not that they make decsion on both axes. You have to get past that before we can continue to discuss this.


What I don't see is a need to address these two subsets of Fidelity as a separate priority. They seem totally the same to me from a point of view of what makes them problematic for players. And in fact, I think that players only rarely encounter the phenomenon where somebody disagrees with two different decisions aimed at High Fidelity, and disagree on the "what's to be explored" question. But even so, when that happens, the perceptual nature of the model takes this into account. That is, it's my claim that all decisions are problematic for either of those two basic reasons along any axis. That is either:

A. They think a decision is impropper because there is a disagreement on what's to be explored along that axis.

or

B. They think that a decision is impropper because there's a disagreement on what minimum level is supposed to be maintained along that axis.

Thus Fidelity isn't uniqe in having this problem. If we split Fidelity I'm sure that we'll be splitting the other two moments later.


Coherent design involves, I think, delivering both a message that tells the player what sort of events should occur, and for each, what levels of response is required along which axes.

Take TROS again. It says that in deciding who to fight, you ought to make very theme based decisions. But then, after begining to fight, it changes to a strong message that Challenge based decisions are what's required. The fact that the one reinforces the other is an example of mechanics pushing congruence. It does this by making combat the central action to be explored, and it does this all while saying that things need to be "realistic" or more appropriately based on game world physics that explain how characters interact in combat.

TROS isn't Narrativist other than the most gross of assessments. It's Theme leading to Challenge all while being Simultaneously HiFi.


Mike

[Jason Lee]

Funny thing about Exploration of System...I've got the same confusion over Situation (isn't all roleplaying about what happens?)  So, to answer my own question, and maybe yours:

I think what I've forgotten is that all Exploration elements are present in play, saying you are prioritizing System doesn't mean it's your singular focus (like GNS would be), but instead it is saying that the player is committing more attention to how it influences the events in the shared imaginary space.  For example, prioritizing Explore:System may be nothing more complicated than devoting more thought to how the movement rules work (System) than what the character looks like when running (Color).

*****

On Congruence:
All this approach is saying (in a round-about way) is that Sim/Nar Congruence and Sim/Gam Congruence is a valid single priority; and that Gam/Nar Congruence may occur, but the player is not prioritizing the Congruence, it just happened (or someone else, like the GM, engineered it to happen).  I suppose it is also implying (by the way it is organized) that some level of Sim Congruence is what most players desire.

*****

I'd just like to chime in with Mike and Ralph (which might illuminate this side of the arguement a little more) I've been using Integrity, Fidelity, Verisimilitude, prioritization of Exploration, and Simulationism interchangeably.  I don't know the perfect word for the concept, but all those words are addressing the same concept for me.

******

This may be the entire disagreement right here (well, my side of it anyway):

1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is the thing that my character would most likely do, since he is unaware of my concerns for story or success.

Let me add one more:

1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is the thing that my character would most likely do, because choosing my concerns for story or success would violate what my character would do.

You're ignoring that this is actually a real player priority which conflicts with both gamist and narrativist priorities in the same way that they conflict with each other and is actually independent of the commitment to fidelity within the game generally.

I guess my stance is that is doesn't conflict in the same way.

I would say the first one above was Hi-Fi|Neutral Conflict.  The player isn't prioritizing Fidelity over Challenge/Theme - he's prioritizing neither Challenge/Theme while prioritizing Fidelity.

The second choice is either Hi-Fi|Theme or Hi-Fi|Challenge, where Hi-Fi ranks above whatever the other priority is.  The player is prioritizing Fidelity over something else, but when he hits a point where he doesn't need to do that (Congruent decision point) we'll be able to identify whether Theme or Challenge is his subordinate priority.