Gamism and Director Stance

[Sir Thomas]

Just wondering, can Gamism and Director Stance be successfully combined?
I think Rune might be like this, but from my readings on these forums, it seems that the Director stance is more in the realm of Narrativism, and that gamism mainly supports the author stance.

[jdagna]

As I understand it, Donjon uses a Director stance (by allowing players to establish facts through their successes) while promoting Gamist values (particularly in a GM as adversary of players approach where the fact mechanic actually balances GM and player power).

I think any of the stances can be used successfully in any mode of play even if there are some combinations that get used more often.

[Mike Holmes]

Justin's right. One of the major considerations in which modes a game supports is what areas the rules give the player power. So, if I have Director stance power to resolve the situations that are meant to provide challnge, then there's not much challenge, is there. So your typical metagame mechanic where you get to declare a resolution is often not conducive to Gamism.

But if Director stance has little to nothing to with interfering with the challenge, then it works fine for Gamism. In Donjon, for example, the Director stance is only useful for either creating challenges ("Ragnar hears four goblins behind the door.") or for simply creating color ("The treasure that our loot rolls discovered turns out to include a magic sword.") There have been some discussions that the Donjon rules might not be precisely clear on this matter, in fact. But the discussion of the clarification was clear that the powers that the rules give you are never to be used to eliminate challenge.

Yes, Rune is a very different example. Nobody questions GM use of director stance in Gamist designs. It's plain that one can use director stance to create challenging situations, and then to rely on other stances to play out the conflicts. Well, Rune simply makes that concrete, and rotates the GM duties. So no surprise that it works. And no surprise that a player can do the same thing.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Took me a while to get to this, for no good reason.

My game Elfs is built to facilitate Gamist play using a lot of Director Stance. One way to build a character includes a high score in Dumb Luck, which by definition separates the character's intended action (Actor Stance) from an alternative, compatible outcome stated by the player (usually requiring Director Stance). Neither, both, or the non-Actor outcome(s) may occur.

Best,
Ron