the Gamist Hard Question.

[anonymouse]

(side note 1: 'NIMBY' probably should've gone in the Glossary. the only reason I recognised it was from reading SimCity manuals over the years)
(side note 2: how long has the article been up? hope I'm not rehashing. . .)


Q: Why is role-playing your chosen venue as a social hobby?

A: I'll cop to the "safer" theory. I think this is because it becomes a shared thing; the effect of losing is.. really mitigated, perhaps?.. while winning is multiplied a little, a greater sense of accomplishment. This can be done with any number of traditional games, of course, but I find my preference is roleplaying games. I like..  mm. Having a character, and all the RPG trappings that go with one. I'm not going to analyse the preference itself further than that, because I'm not entirely convinced there's anything deeper to analyse.

This ("safer competition") probably has something to do with where the Step On Up/Challenge dials are located, but since the only examples presented are the extremes, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out just where I've decided to set mine.

To volunteer an answer to, "Why Gamist play?", I'd say it is almost entirely based on the fact that before I was introduced to roleplaying games "proper", I first found the old Sierra On-Line (and later LucasArts) adventure games, a lot of console RPGs, and the Lone Wolf series of books. My all-time favourite series of games is the Quest for Glory series, from Sierra On-Line (now just Sierra), which blended standard Simulationist elements (Health, Mana, a bunch of Attributes/Skills) into the adventure game standard. If I'd wound up exposed to some other style of roleplaying game first, I'd probably have gone a different route; the above all profoundly influenced my hobby development.

The main thrust is what I want out of a game. Simulationist play dovetails pretty nicely with this (as explored in the essay). For Narrativist yearnings, though, I'm more interested in being passive than active.

Mm! I like well-defined lines. The lines can shift and move about, can change shape and size, but I like being able to see where those lines are. I've found a lot of Narrativist play lends itself towards more indistinct lines. If that makes any sense at all.

[edit] So it's not about being passive/active. It's about being able to move the lines where I want. Gamist-centric games tend towards good line definition, and good line control. Or it seems like it would, in theory. [/edit]

So. That's my answer, off-the-cuff, if Ron (or anyone else) is interested in particular answers/discussion. 'pologies for the somewhat streamed content of the post. ;)

[Alan]

Mm! I like well-defined lines. The lines can shift and move about, can change shape and size, but I like being able to see where those lines are. I've found a lot of Narrativist play lends itself towards more indistinct lines. If that makes any sense at all.

Um.  No, not really.  

Can you say more about what you mean by well-defined lines.  Lines of what?  Lines between what and what?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Let's set aside the discussion of distinct/indistinct lines in Narrativist play, because most Narrativist play out there is covert and opportunistic, I think. Those of us who've emerged from the closet tend to be a bit fanatical about statements like that. I'd prefer to stick to the real topic that I see here, which is Gamist play.

Based on private messages and e-mails, I think some people are seeing the Hard Questions as critiques of the mode of play, which they're not. They are critiques of dysfunctional social approaches to those modes of play, especially approaches which are not going to yield a lot of satisfaction.

So I'm not really very interested in folks' responses to the Hard Questions if the response is aimed at helping me understand why you like this mode of play. I think I understand that just fine. It's when the question hits you  that I'm interested.

Anonymouse, the part of your post that interests me is why you find role-playing to offer a distinct context of mitigated losing. Can you describe that, perhaps with comparisons with other types of games or activities?

Best,
Ron

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I think this is because it becomes a shared thing; the effect of losing is.. really mitigated, perhaps?.. while winning is multiplied a little, a greater sense of accomplishment.

This sounds to me like participationism is going on a bit at your game table, but we'll need the examples and clairification to be certain.

PS Vas es das NIMBY?

- never played any Sim game (not to be confused with Simulationist, but, you know, um, aw heck...)

[Lxndr]

Not In My Back Yard.

It's a term that, far as I know, has been used for those people who say, "We need more prisons.  But not here!  Somewhere else!  We need more nuclear power.  But don't build the plant here!"

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

NIMBY is a political term from U.S. history, an acronym for "Not In My Back Yard." It characterizes those who support a particular policy unless it affects them directly. In other words, a white person who is all for desegregation except when it affects zoning and educational affairs for him, personally, is a NIMBY. Today, it often is applied to environmental policies, in that a person might be all for conservationist programs except insofar as they affect his or her own job.

What are they teaching in schools? Never mind. I digress.

In my essay, I'm using the term to describe a certain approach toward Gamist play: people who (having been exposed to GNS especially) say they think Gamist play is all right for someone else, but would howl with indignation were it to be expressed at their table.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

Mm! I like well-defined lines. The lines can shift and move about, can change shape and size, but I like being able to see where those lines are. ... If that makes any sense at all.

I cut out the part about narrativism.  I don't think anonymouse was referring to narrativism per se.  I think he was referring to some element of all role-playing.  But I'm not sure what.

Anonymouse, Can you say more about what you mean by well-defined lines.  Lines of what?  Lines between what and what?

[contracycle]

I'll take a sally at lines; at least I can say what jumped out at mne.

The lines are the boundaries of the conflict, although some of them will also be breakpoints within the conflict.  They are the edge of the map; which does not limit your freedom so much as establish the arena, and thus liberate you from concern for anything outside.  The lines tell you what you can manipulate, and what you must manipulate, and what the opposition will be manipulating.

Thats what I saw in the anlaogy anyway.  Disagree freely.

[anonymouse]

First, thanks for the replies.

Second.. I'll jump in and ignore the whole Narrativist bit as well. I'm not sure where I was going with that, because what I meant and what came out are pretty different. And it's not really central to the Question anyway, so.. skip that. ;)

Third.. we can use 'Michael'. ;) I feel a bit silly with using a pseudonym in conversation, so I went ahead and tossed my name down there in the signature.

Alan,

Re: the lines.. I think contracycle summed it up pretty well, but it also falls into that above-mentioned incoherance of mine.

Ron,

Re: mitigating loss: I have fun winning or losing in an RPG. If I play go, or Magic, or StarCraft, I usually only have fun if I win, and get pretty annoyed when I lose. It may be the play environment that differs. Or, I could just be a wimp. ;p

I'm betting it also has something to do with.. and here's the thing, I agree that roleplaying games can ignore the "winning/losing" issue, the flag that nearly every game text Introduction waves, and I agree that it's pretty scarce in practice.

I think with an RPG, however, winning/losing is kind of swept up because you can just keep playing. If my Command Center gets overrun by a bunch of Hydralisks, or if I run out of mana and can't play that Fireball, that's it, game's over. Have to start a new one. And the new game is a decidedly seperate entity.

With roleplaying, you can just.. keep going. Yes, you can lose, but you can pick right back up again. When you stop, the engine only drops down into an idle, it doesn't completely turn off. Mostly this is true for "campaign"-style groups, where the players have characters that explore the same setting over many, many sessions.

Hmm.

I'm not sure I can give you a structured rational behind it right now; I'll think on it for a couple of days, and come back with something a bit more up to Forge standard quality.

[M. J. Young]

I may have something on the "mitigated loss" question; Michael, see if this rings true with you.

I just within the month posted http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=72867&publisherid=54849">Game Ideas Unlimited: Token (it's for GO subscribers only; incidentally, I've started running the old GIU articles at http://www.valdron.com/gameidea/ for those interested). The idea within it rang true with a lot of readers: that on the way to the ultimate confrontation in play there are small victories. I joke a bit about using Star Wars, and point out that destroying the death star in A New Hope really does nothing to unseat the emperor--but it sure feels good to have done it. When you get to the end of Return of the Jedi, you've got that ultimate confrontation with the emperor. What happens if you lose? For gamism to work, it must be possible that you would lose. So you get killed and the emperor escapes--but then, you did destroy the death star, rescue the princess, and unite the rebellion, and maybe you also destroyed this second death star as well, so you accomplished something, even if you didn't defeat the Big Boss of the Whole Game TM.

Several readers commented that this struck them as right, that they'd been in games in which they failed in the end but still had a great game because of the challenges they'd overcome on the way, the feeling that they almost made it.

I do see some of the same in old fighter-type video games. Players use to talk about beating this level or that level, reaching the boss at the end of the level, as stepping stones toward ultimately beating the BBotWG(TM), and whether or not they beat him, they still had fun working up to it and getting those victories along the way.

When your RPG character is killed in gamist play, if you can look back on his victories it doesn't sting so much as it does if he never succeeded at all. (Kind of like life, that, maybe.)

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Here's my thinking, some of which is only to say "Yeah" to M.J.'s post.

The first idea is that the relative importance of victories-about-what is totally social. In basketball game A, winning or losing the game as a whole is a big, big deal. In basketball game B, that's almost irrelevant; in fact, it may be completely irrelevant, compared with the question of who plays with the most skill. It's not part of "the rules of basketball" to say which is "right." Even if there were such a rule, it would be totally ignored as a rule, in favor of whatever this particular group of people want to do.

So in some Gamist play, the fate of the Rebellion or the Empire or whatever doesn't have to be a big deal at all, compared with (say) specific decisions during small-scale confrontations. Those decisions could be about anything: combat tactics, team-player vs. maverick type interactions, whatever. Situation is only Challenge if you Step On Up about it.

My second idea is that the "you can keep playing" concept is a very misty issue in role-playing, but also in other games. To go back to basketball, for some groups, there is one and only one championship game - that's it. For others, win-or-lose this weekend is not the issue, because the pickup games go on all summer long. Michael, when I was reading your post, I instantly thought of video games in which player-character death is no big deal at all ... fundamentally, all it means is that you have to pay a little bit more, or perhaps lose a bit of stored resources. The parallel with both frequent-resurrection AD&D (1978-79) and Magic: the Gathering seems pretty strong.

Anyway, I don't have much else to say, because the Hard Question stuff is intended to be personal, and ultimately anyone can conclude what they wish about it. But thanks, Michael - it's interesting to see how it strikes people.

Best,
Ron