Bag of Questions and a Dilemma

[Bill Cook]

Some questions.  (This starts out RPG Theory and turns GNS.  Wasn't sure where to post it.)

I've been trying to find a comprehensive glossary of terms and acronyms with no luck.  I noticed the promise of such in the title of the principal simulationist article but found that to be incomplete.  (e.g. What the heck is SAN?)  

(1) Am I just missing it?  I apologize if this is the millionth irritating request for the same thing.

Over the years, I've written 2 significant versions of what the Forge would term a fantasy heartbreaker.  (I guess we've all got a D&D rehash buried in the closet.)  As fate would have it, I'm in the throes of reacting to the Hubris Story Engine, working on a 3rd version of my game.  (I swallowed the whole thing except (1) chaos and (2) resolving an entire combat sequence with one roll.  Then I found this forum, and now my head's awhirl.)

(2) Is there a Forge way to summarize the features below?  Is it misguided to be conformist in that regard?

Dual mode: scene-based (features intrigue) and round-based (features combat.)[/list:u]

Wide range of combat scale.
Non-damage effects.  (e.g. Stun.)

. . . scales up to . . .

Standard combat.  (e.g. matched numbers, 4-10 member party, no setting or formation considerations.)

. . . scales up to . . .

Dizzying spatial aspects across huge numbers of mixed units.  (All without miniatures, grids or tracking of matching.)[/list:u]

Dual genre (Fantasy and Sci-Fi) core rules.[/list:u]

Absence of any game world.[/list:u]

Blasé human-centric.  (i.e. low demi-human, magic, alien, time travel, etc.)[/list:u]

Level playing field by the numbers.  (i.e. emphasis on matched chances for advantage between player characters and others.) [/list:u]

Heroic advantage through expense of magical mana (to fuel spell effects) and plot achievement rewards.  Advantage comes in 2 forms: improving chances and canceling threats. [/list:u]

High integration of discrete ratings of compact ranges. [/list:u]

Character generation by capture of individual pseudo-genre concept (expansion card) and motivation abstract (driver) which is then named and located for world integration (protocol.) [/list:u]

Suspension of resolution allowing capture of timing aspect for effects. [/list:u][/size]

Some things make sense to me (e.g. fortune-based resolution: "Oh, he means rolling dice.")  Other things are less clear (e.g. dial: "Zah?")  I read some post that said something like "Can we please have an explicit premise?" in regards to an RPG explaining itself.  

(3) Accepting that this is a valuable prerequisite to publication, how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

And I guess I'm just airing my thoughts at this point.  But . . .

When I first read the GNS, my initial impression was: Gamism (Oh, that's combat,) Narrativism (Oh, that's playing out the story) and Simulationism (Oh, that's design and reffing.)  Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but

never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.)  Well, how can you win?  They're all good for something.  Why can't I make a 5-color deck?

I mean, to me, you ought to go nuts assuring exquisite system complexity to express the range of your choice for capture.  (Not complication, not self-indulgent design-as-exploration.)  Then you do your character, world and story build (again, seeking integration.)  Finally, you run the thing like roundtable story-boarding, and who knows what the Hell will happen!  But the effect is that a story arises that everyone moves and is moved by.  I find it desirable that the system, character and plot mechanics should disappear, and I assert a path of rich relevance and interconnection as a effective method for achieving that end.  (And, I admit, excellent training.)

That last bit's not really a question.  I don't mean to broach a tone of "my way is best, after all," I'm just expressing my ideal and my frustration with accepting that 3's a crowd.  If I had to favor one, it would be Simulationism, but I'm having trouble feeling guilty about needing to exclude the others.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

(1) A Glossary is at the end of the Simulationsit and Gamist essays.

SAN is SANity for the Call of Cthulhu game IIRC

(2) Not to my knowledge. Others may know better.

(3) This depends on many factors. This is a big ol' thread by itself.

Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.)  Well, how can you win?  They're all good for something.  Why can't I make a 5-color deck?

This is a common misconception. All three are present in every game just only one is focused or prioritized above the others. Asking how to make a game that prioritizes all three is sort of like asking why you can't write a piece of music that plays all of the notes of the scale at once or mixing all of the paints on the palette until it becomes a dull greyish brown.

Now you can play music using all of the notes or paint using all colors, but youn don't paint them all at the same time. Art critics can tell you that a well-composed piece will favor particular colors or chords.

So it is with GNS all three are present in one form or another, but it's a matter of which is the focus of play.

[Andrew Martin]

...how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

Did you know that when a system engine is played, the behaviour of the players and their characters creates a world (or genre)? That's why there's no such thing as a "generic" RPG or "world-less" system engine, even though they are advertised, purchased and played by lots of people.

Once you've designed your system engine, the behaviour of the players using that system mixed with the group's social contract will create a set of behaviours. As to whether or not, those behaviours are desirable is another matter...

...I find it desirable that the system, character and plot mechanics should disappear

I used to think the same myself, even writing one or two RPGs with "invisible" systems. There's threads on RPG.net about "invisible" RPGs. I feel it's due to a reaction against complex and overly-complex RPG designs that don't actually do what they advertise or exhort players to do.

It's actually better to pick a GNS mode and design with that mode as a goal, while ignoring the other two goals. What I found I'm looking for in RPGs is simplicity, which is significantly different from simplistic. And simplicity is found by sticking to one goal.

I feel that complex and overly-complex RPG systems "meander" between GNS goals, hoping to fulfill all of them, but succeeding at none of them or at most, occasionally at one.

I hope that helps!

[Alan]

Hi and welcome to the Forge!

Much of the jargon from your quotes in #2 only have meaning in context of their posts.  Can you include post links?

For other terminology, there's a good glossary at the end of "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" and also "Gamism: Step on Up." found in the articles section:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/

Those two essays will also help clarify what the three GNS preferences are.  They are expressions of preferences as expressed by instances of play.  A player that finds most reward in meeting challenges or competing is said to have gamist preferences; one who prioritizes the maintenance of some illusion of "reallity" (however that is defined in the game) has simulationist preferences; one who most likes to develop some thematic element and wrestle with it has narrativist preferences.  It's important to separate GNS preferences from the people, as the people can demonstrate all three kinds of behavior - it's about which they find most rewarding.

Anyway, if you haven't already, read "Simulationism: the right to dream."

[Bill Cook]

This is a common misconception. All three are present in every game just only one is focused or prioritized above the others. Asking how to make a game that prioritizes all three is sort of like asking why you can't write a piece of music that plays all of the notes of the scale at once or mixing all of the paints on the palette until it becomes a dull greyish brown.

Thanks.  I feel better.

Did you know that when a system engine is played, the behaviour of the players and their characters creates a world (or genre)? That's why there's no such thing as a "generic" RPG or "world-less" system engine, even though they are advertised, purchased and played by lots of people.

Once you've designed your system engine, the behaviour of the players using that system mixed with the group's social contract will create a set of behaviours. As to whether or not, those behaviours are desirable is another matter...

But it seems like a matter of semantics.  And I failed to mention my full view: the system would be useless without some world idea and some story idea to reveal some character ideas.  To me, they're like blocks.  i.e. system + world + story + characters = game experience.  But I find design (though I think of it more as writing for non-system) of others before the system is complete to be unsatisfying.  I guess I just take a modular approach.

To clarify, though my design adheres to support of fantasy and sci-fi genres (with varying degrees of premise-like qualification,) when I say world-less I intend setting-less.  i.e. I'm not writing lists of planet systems by name and orbit or charts that express a range of possible alien culture, but I'm sure that a storyline may include ice moons and space bugs.  But not so sure that I can boldly say, "Space Bug Zapper: A Game of Colonizing Ice Moons."

I feel it's due to a reaction against complex and overly-complex RPG designs that don't actually do what they advertise or exhort players to do.

Ron is spot on about paying to suck.  It's like the evolution of TV remotes.  It reminds me of when Rimmer meets Legion and starts pulling a magician's handkerchief of wire out of his light drive while mumbling, "Yes, . . .  yes, . . ."

I seek to express an aesthetic of play more than tout a design feature.  So maybe that element of my ideal is another mark for training.  But surely some designs better lend themselves to internalization than others.  I just want to design and play games that are easier to swallow.  And that digest well.

It's like looking at your bathroom sink.  One knob hot.  One knob cold.  There's the soap.  Wash your hands.  Splash your face.  Ah, refreshing . . .  But if you look under your sink, there's tubes and wierd stuff that runs back behind the wall.  You can trace the pipes to something called a boiler.  It has a thermostat who's setting impacts your electric bill.  And so on.  As a builder, I'll suffer whatever installation is necessary when the house is going up to achieve function: in this case, hot and cold.  

My point is, at time of play, I just want the user experience.  As a designer, I don't find compexity in itself undesirable, so long as it supports my agenda for capturing a specific list of game effects.  In short, I find a game that facilitates preparation through excellent layout and internal consistency so as to limit external reference and create a unity of subject and delivery to be ideal.

Much of the jargon from your quotes in #2 only have meaning in context of their posts. Can you include post links?

Sorry, no such posts.  I guess I was trying to get a feel for how to translate into Forge jargon.

Thx all for glossary references.

[Alan]

But it seems like a matter of semantics.  And I failed to mention my full view: the system would be useless without some world idea and some story idea to reveal some character ideas.  To me, they're like blocks.  i.e. system + world + story + characters = game experience.  

I think you're getting at this, which is a version of Ron's Venn diagram:


[Social Contract: the group agreement & interaction

   [Exploration of shared fantasy:
   Character, Setting, Situation, System, and Color

        [GNS preferences

              [Rules, written and unwritten

                    [techniques: game mechanics

                          [Stances: how the player makes a single decision

                                                              ]]]]]]

Each inside element only exists within the context of the larger ones.  For a role-playing experince to occure, you need them all.

[ethan_greer]

Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.)  Well, how can you win?  They're all good for something.  Why can't I make a 5-color deck?

This is a common misconception. All three are present in every game just only one is focused or prioritized above the others. Asking how to make a game that prioritizes all three is sort of like asking why you can't write a piece of music that plays all of the notes of the scale at once or mixing all of the paints on the palette until it becomes a dull greyish brown.

Just to add a few more points to this, when you see people here referring to "Narrativist games" or "Simulationist games," that's sort of a shorthand for saying, "this game's mechanics tend to reward/focus on Narrativist decisions being made in play."

Similarly, when you see people referring to players as being Gamist or Narrativist, that simply means that the player tends to make decisions in play from a Narrativist (or Gamist or Sim) perspective.  However, the most Gamist player around will still make decisions for Simulationist or Narrativist reasons from time to time during play.  GNS categorization is simply a shorthand for measuring and quantifying the tendencies of games and players.  At least, that's how I look at it.

And, when a game is referred to as being incoherent, that simply means that through its unfocused catch-all mechanics, the game tends towards dysfunctional play when player priorities of Gam/Nar/Sim are at odds.  A game that is branded as "incoherent" can support the most unbelievably rich role-playing experience imaginable if it is being played by a group or players who share the exact same (or at least very similar) GNS priorities.  Since it rarely happens that players are so compatible, so-called incoherent games are typically problematic during actual play.

Hope that helps!
-e.

[Garbanzo]

bcook-

And, back to premise.

Way back a while ago, there was this term, premise, and another term, Premise.  This pair was frequently a bugbear in discussions, and not the kind you get XP for.

Premise (that is, premise) has been replaced by the term Creative Agenda.
Basically, the Creative Agenda of the game is just What's Going On.  The answer to "Why should I play your game - what's it good for?"  

So the Creative Agenda of that game DND: Making coolly powerful characters by running around and killing monsters.  If the game is any good, it'll be superlative at 1) making characters coolly powerful and 2) killing monsters.

The Creative Agenda of GURPS: A modular system to "realistically" replicate any setting you can think of.

The Creative Agenda of YourGame ought to be exactly why I should bother learning the rules and playing it.

Meanwhile, Premise is now a term that applies only to Narrativist games.  It is the theme-like question that all play revolves around.
So, frex, Sorcerer has a Creative Agenda of playing Powerful Dudes teetering on the edge of Self-Ruin and a default Premise of "How far will you go to get what you want?"

That's my take on the terms, anyway.
Er, so, could we please have an explicit Creative Agenda for your game?

-Matt

[Bill Cook]

And, when a game is referred to as being incoherent, that simply means that through its unfocused catch-all mechanics, the game tends towards dysfunctional play when player priorities of Gam/Nar/Sim are at odds. A game that is branded as "incoherent" can support the most unbelievably rich role-playing experience imaginable if it is being played by a group or players who share the exact same (or at least very similar) GNS priorities. Since it rarely happens that players are so compatible, so-called incoherent games are typically problematic during actual play.

There's a lot of wisdom in seeking consensus.  I don't agree that players must have like tendencies to role-play together.  In fact, I prefer a mix.  But I agree that they must share a range of overlap in their goals for gaming.  (Expecting commonality to be overt and necesseray as a precedent to game play may be a bit rigid.)

I guess Drift is a product of the hierarchical nature of consensus.  (i.e. "I don't understand what the rules mean, either.  So how are we going to handle these types of situations, going forward?")

It seems like you're suggesting that good design decides GNS at odds.  Which I find meaningful.

Garbanzo:

Thx for introducing me to that term, creative agenda.

Meanwhile, Premise is now a term that applies only to Narrativist games.

Can't agree.  The GNS article says:

Developing Premise into practical form
Again, all three modes are social applications of the foundational act of role-playing, which is Exploration. Taking that into a social, role-playing circumstance, the people get more concrete about a shared Premise, and thus their decisions acquire a GNS focus of some kind. To play successfully, the members of the role-playing group must be, at the very least, willing to acknowledge and support the focused Premise as perceived by one another.

Er, so, could we please have an explicit Creative Agenda for your game?

I suppose I would have to reduce that features list I provided in my initial post.  That says it best, in full.  But in brief, it's close to a knock off of the GURPS premise.  Something like: "Capturing fine to gross combat details across a wide range of scale; character-integration and a story-driven exploration of premise."

[jburneko]

Can't agree.  The GNS article says:

Hello,

I thought I'd just jump in to clear this little bit up.  After the GNS article was written there was a LOT of debate about the extention of the word premise to cover all three modes (since it ORIGNALLY only pertained to Narrativism).  I was one of the supporters for restricting Premise to Narrativism and use some other term for what Ron was calling premise for the three modes in general.

Ron eventually agreed and replaced premise with the the term Creative Agenda and the Creative Agenda of Narrativism became "to address a Premise," like ti was before.  I am a big supporter of the term Creative Agenda because it covers the conecpt much better than premise.

So why didn't Ron update the article?

Ron isn't fond of revising already published and presented work.  The GNS Article represents the state of the art of theory at the time of publication ONLY.  It has since been superseeded by much discussion here in the forums and by the two newer essays that focus on Simulationism and Gamism (with a third on Narrativism on the way), just as the original System Does Matter article was superseeded by the GNS article.  You will note that the word, "premise" is not used in the Simulationism and Gamism essays the way it is used in the GNS article.

This is not to say the whole of the essay is obsolete but rather to say that many of the concepts and ideas have since been revised and clearified to strengthen the theory as a whole.  This historical archiving of the development of the theory goes A LONG LONG way to counter the argument that Ron's ideas can not be influenced by intelligent debate.

Just thought I'd clear that up.

Jesse

P.S. Here is the direct quote from the glossary of the Gamism essay about the relationship between Creative Agenda and premise.

"Creative agenda
the aesthetic priorities and any matters of imaginative interest regarding role-playing; replaces all uses of "premise" in the original essay aside from the specific creative agenda of Narrativist play (for which the term "Premise" is retained); Step On Up, The Right to Dream, and Story Now represent the creative agendas, respectively, of Gamist, Simulationist, and Narrativist play."

[Bill Cook]

Well, Hell.

I get the difference and the argument and benefit of Ron's view.  I'm just collapsing under restrictions against using what are considered meaningless terms.  (e.g. story, plot, genre.)

Anyway, it's a compact, procedural rules set for exploring fantasy and sci-fi pulps that feature scaling combat and interplay of character motivation as revealled through the pursuit of a related purpose.

[M. J. Young]

...how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

You seem to be having a lot of trouble with Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism; your oversimplifications are really just, how can I put this? Wrong. Gamism is not combat, and much combat is not gamist. Narrativism is not just any story, but particular kinds of story-oriented goals, and the mere fact that after the game you can tell the "story" of what happened does not remotely mean that it was narrativist. Simulationism has nothing more to do with design and reffing than the other two do, and there is a great deal to be said for gamist design and gamist reffing, and narrativist design and narrativist reffing. Toss out those ideas entirely, and let's try to get something a bit more solid here.

Gamism, narrativism, and simulationism are play styles; they are characterized and identified by the kinds of choices made and, in a loose sense, the motivation behind those choices.

Gamists make choices which are geared to beat the game, to impress people with their prowess (at whatever skills are needed in this particular game). Combat can be gamist, if the point is to use all of your resources to win (even if something isn't realistic in some sense); but puzzle solving, riddle challenges, and even competetive story building can all be gamist activities.

Narrativists make choices which are geared to address what is usually called premise, or narrativist premise, but which might be better understood as issues. Combat can be part of the narrativist game, provided it is more about the issues than about the victories. For example, in Camelot everything ends in a great war. Who wins? We don't really know. What happens to Arthur, to Mordred, to Lancelot, to the other knights we've come to know? No one tells us. That's not what the war is about. The story is about Arthur, Gueneviere, and Lancelot, a triangle; it's about Arthur being torn between his love for Gueneviere and Lancelot and his vision of an England ruled by laws instead of fear. Does he destroy England to save the queen, or destroy the queen to save England? In the end, he can do nothing; in trying somehow to save both, he loses both. The war, in the end of Camelot, is not a gamist contest to see who wins, but a narrativist outcome of the real struggle in the hearts and lives of the major players.

Simulationists make choices strictly to maintain the coherence of the world. In a narrativist game, the referee might say, "Your illegitimate son by your cousin Morgana, Mordred, whom you've never mentioned and not really considered in all this time that you've been king has just showed up seeking audience with your majesty," and the narrativist player would say, "Kewl, this should create real tensions in the castle. What is my wife going to say to this suddenly revealed secret from my past, and just in the middle of all those tensions of my suspicions about her and Lancelot." The simulationist player would likely say, "I'm sorry, there's nothing on my sheet suggesting that I've got an illegitimate son, or ever had any improper relationship with my cousin or anyone else. In fact, I don't even have a cousin. This is breaking the agreed reality." There might be combat in a simulationist game, but it's fought because it's part of the world. The player characters might win or lose, and that's the point--would they win or lose, and what consequences would come from that? Maybe we want them to win; but a loss by the characters is not a loss for the players; it's only the new development in the continuing exploration of the world.

The problem is that when the player makes those in-game decisions that are important to him, he will make them based on the style he prefers.* He can't decide whether to charge into this fight based on multiple goals, because those goals will not always be in agreement. Sometimes the best narrativist story is to lose, and the best gamist story is to win, and the best simulationist story is to fight and see what happens. You can't really want all three at once, usually.

The application of this to game design is what leads to talk of gamist, narrativist, and simulationist design (and I recommend my own http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/23/">Applied Theory in the library here to help get some understanding of that). You're not really trying to build a game that "is gamist" because a game can't really make gamist decisions. What it can do is reward or penalize gamist decisions. It can do the same for narrativist and simulationist decisions.

In Parchesi, the object is to get around the board as fast as possible. In Monopoly, the object is to buy as much good property as possible and develop it intelligently. There are advantages to getting low rolls in Monopoly at certain times of the game and in certain places on the board, because it's not how quickly you get back to Go but how well you invest your money. You could certainly play Monopoly with an attitude of "get around the board as fast as possible" (although there's not much you can do to facilitate that), but the game doesn't reward that attitude.

In the same way, Multiverser doesn't reward amassing treasure or killing monsters. If you kill the monster, that's it's own reward--you survived, maybe you saved the village, or whatever, but this does not make you better at anything. Money is so unreal in that game; tomorrow you might be somewhere where none of your precious dollars are worth more than firestarter, and gold like yours is cheap, but people will pay dearly for rice cake. If you want to go kill monsters and collect treasure, that's fine; but the system doesn't encourage it in any way.

Games like Sorcerer and Legends of Alyria have mechanics focused on making the players think about the issues and advance the moral story. You really can't play these games with a great deal of strategizing in combat--in Alyria, you could have the power to knock down the walls of the city with your mind, but it doesn't give you any advantage in the die roll that's going to determine whether you managed to stop the guy who's after you. Conflicts are resolved by personal inner strengths, not by powers or abilities. The greatest swordsman in the world could lose to a woman who has the strength of will to stare him down and leave him embarrassed.

So a gamist, narrativist, or simulationist game is one that rewards the players for making choices which promote that kind of play overall, and sometimes penalizes them for making choices which go against that intent.

But to get back to your question,

how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

it's not really so hard as all this. As one who created something of a "world-less system engine", I've had to come to this answer myself; you get there by asking a different question.

Why are you creating this game at all, in the first place? After all, at some level it takes great hubris to look at all the hundreds of role playing games, and to say not only that none of them do what you want very well, but that you could do it better. If you didn't think that, you probably wouldn't be trying to design your game. So, what is it that you are trying to do? What is it that all these other games have failed to accomplish that you think you know how to fix? What flash of insight on how to make games work has brought you here?

Now, that might not be your premise; but it's probably pretty closely related to your premise. You might not be able to express it in GNS terms right away, but the terms in which you can express it will help you focus your design on what you're really after.

For example, we created Multiverser because we wanted a game in which:

[*]Death had consequences, but wasn't the end of the game;[*]Players could use the same characters in all different kinds of worlds, as a continuing story;[*]Equipment and skills learned in one world would have value in other, even very different, worlds;[*]Notwithstanding this, worlds would have an integrity that couldn't be spoiled by the players. We wanted our wizards to be wizards even in science fiction settings, but not to be so powerful that it no longer felt like sci-fi; we wanted our high-tech characters to have some use of their technology in fantasy worlds, but not destroy the fantasy.[*]We wanted every imaginable world to be possible.[/list:u]
It turns out that those are rather simulationist design goals. It might be "vanilla sim", because it's easily drifted to gamism and narrativism--so easy, in fact, that a player can drift it through his own actions in nearly any world; so easy that the referee can design a world that will tend to drift it gamist or narrativist, and the player can drift it right back. When we wrote it (published 1997) there wasn't this terminology; perhaps if we'd had it some things would have been clearer, and some things would have been more confused. Maybe we'd have given up, unwilling to publish the game that wasn't all things to all people as we'd hoped. But looking back, I can see that those principles formed our premise, and our design goals: you have been thrown into the multiverse, and any time you are killed you will return in a new universe facing new adventures; the worlds will be different, but you will remain you.

So, why are you designing this game? What are you trying to do that no one has successfully done the way you want it yet? Figure out that part, and you're probably pretty close to the premise.

--M. J. Young

...when the player makes those in-game decisions that are important to him, he will make them based on the style he prefers.*

I'm not sure, but I think I may be on to something here that helps resolve the whole mess of what decisions are meaningful in GNS analysis.

When I was in radio and still a bit wet behind the ears, I had the opportunity to interview a bunch of local politicians to get their views before an election. I asked them a bunch of questions about issues which were important to me, and, I thought, to my listeners. That's important in such situations; but I realized after the fact that there was something far more important that I should have been asking. My listeners needed to know what was important to the candidates. Sure, everyone will say he's in favor of lowering taxes; but what does he think is more important than lowering taxes? Strong military? Social service programs? Government salaries? When the guy is in office, he'll quite happily make decisions however it seems to work when his own values aren't at stake; it is when those values are challenged that it really matters what he thinks and believes.

So, too, in looking at decisions for GNS analysis of play, of course players are going to make some decisions which appear gamist, narrativist, or simulationist, all the time. They will make these decisions when it doesn't matter to their primary goal. It is only when that primary goal is implicated that they reveal their GNS preferences through their choices; otherwise, they fall back to whatever works.

This is why it seems like players are all three all the time. Of course gamist and narrativist players make simulationist-like choices when gamism or narrativism isn't in the picture; of course gamists and simulationists make story-driven choices when these aren't going to affect gamism or sim; and of course narrativists and simulationists make gamist choices when narr and sim would let them go either way. It's at those times when the thing that matters is at stake that the GNS goal is revealed.

There still are players who drift, even between all three, and enjoy them. However, I think our analyses may be enhanced by recognition of this aspect, that before the question of what the player chooses "when it matters" is the question of "when does the player think it matters."

--M

[Bill Cook]

Yes, it's Bill.

Thx for your thoughtful explanation.  I was reading your Applied Theory article when I had my lightbulb moment.  That prompted my first post.

Gamism, narrativism, and simulationism are play styles; they are characterized and identified by the kinds of choices made and, in a loose sense, the motivation behind those choices.

Accepted.  I regressed in sharing my initial impressions.

So a gamist, narrativist, or simulationist game is one that rewards the players for making choices which promote that kind of play overall, and sometimes penalizes them for making choices which go against that intent.

I've been trying to understand this in terms of RPGs, and I'm just not that well read.  But I've always gained insight by drawing inferences from other kinds of games.

My impression, in terms of video games: Wing Commander promotes Gamist play, Dragon's Lair promotes Narrativist play and Prince of Persia promotes Simulationist play.

Why are you creating this game at all, in the first place?

Mostly for personal satisfaction.

So, what is it that you are trying to do? What is it that all these other games have failed to accomplish that you think you know how to fix? What flash of insight on how to make games work has brought you here?

Discrete set of play-based character qualities of high procedural relation.  Scale combat, reclaim spatial and capture timing.  Integrate characters as plot agents.  Human-centric, non-otherly focus.

About that non-otherly, it's why T2 doesn't work for me and why 12 Monkeys satisfies: both center around time travel, but the former devolves into inconsequential flare while the latter closes a circle of theme and achieves significance through sacrifice.

But looking back, I can see that those principles formed our premise, and our design goals: you have been thrown into the multiverse, and any time you are killed you will return in a new universe facing new adventures; the worlds will be different, but you will remain you.

That sounds cool.  I always figured that killing characters made the victory sweeter.  I remember once I ran a game in which 6 charcters entered a dragon's lair to slay it (and it was evil and green and breathed fire.)  2 were incinerated on the opening round with no chance to respond, and all the rest were slaughtered before they killed the beast, except a druid type.  And even he just got his ass kicked.

I thought it was a huge success.  The next time they ran into a sleeping dragon, they soiled their armor and tip-toed back the way they came.

Anyway, that's interesting that you were inspired to address death as renewal (possibly to alleviate a gamist's paranoia) in the context of a universal system.

[Bankuei]

Hi Bill,

I'd recommend leaving the GNS concepts alone for a while.  Many people immediately want to jump into them, but unless you're willing to really take some time and try to really grasp them, it's probably going to lead to more confusion than assistance for you.  This isn't a diss on you, or the GNS presentation, but most people have a very hard time distinguishing between behavioral patterns, emotions, "intent" and personal views, making GNS a difficult topic for most people to swallow.

What would probably be MUCH more useful to you in design, would be to check out a LOT of other games, and how they do it.  Some of your ideas, such as scaling combat, have been done in a lot of other games, including ones that also have the option for 1-roll/entire combat(Hero Wars/Quest, Trollbabe, the Pool, etc.)  This isn't for the purpose of stealing or copying ideas, but to save you much effort in the sense of re-inventing the wheel.

Probably if you want actual useful commentary, there's two things to do here, without having to get all GNS with it:

1) Share some of the mechanics to your game

There's quite a few excellent designers, and playtesters, who would be able to comment and give advice.  If you don't feel comfortable sharing your mechanics, I'm afraid not too much helpful advice can be given.  It's rather like a programmer asking for help, but not providing code, only vaporware specs.

2) Actual Play

By sharing even a "playtest" version of your system, folks who are interested can try it out, play it, and let you know how it runs.  Take a look over in our actual play section, which includes both published games, and games still in the making.  Plus, nothing stirs up interest as much as a positive playtest report by folks who have run with it.

Chris

[Andrew Martin]

As a designer, I don't find compexity in itself undesirable, so long as it supports my agenda for capturing a specific list of game effects.

Simplicity does everything that complexity can do, with none of the bad side effects of complexity. That why it's a really good idea to make things simple but not simplistic.