Setting Design Technique: N or S

[Ben Lehman]

So, as I further try to get a handle on these terms, I'm going to ask about the way that I tend to design settings for RPGs.

I will note that this is all for the purposes of play -- I am not intending to publish any of this for public consumption.

Most of my settings start off very much the way Ron describes doing things in Sorcerer and Sword -- I only sketch out what I need to play the game in which I am playing (usually a village, or a few details of a city) and the rest developes through play.  "Right," one thinks, "Narrativist setting design in action."

However, I run many recurring games in the same world, often in the same locations.  Further, I run all of my RPGs "for keeps--" anything that happens in the gameworld is persistent throughout all instances of that gameworld.  For instance, in a one-shot, some players killed a particularly nasty brainsucking cultist by the name of Waterhouse after catching him devouring the minds of their girlfriends.  In another game (run with a different group of people across the country) a group of PCs investigating a different set of murders stumbled across the Waterhouse case and actually ended up tracking down the mentally absent girls in an insane asylum and attempting to communicate with them before realizing that they were on the wrong track.

So, after having run about 7 or 8 different games (of varying length) in this world, I have a nice stable of recurring NPCs, and generally know the political situations, tensions, and situations of the main city, as well as some outlying country areas.

So the world is persistent, and increasingly preset.  Very Sim.

So where are we?  Is this setting starting as Nar and becoming increasingly Sim as the world gels?

Thoughts?

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  In my own particular case, there is screaming Premise imbedded in the setting, so it can always be used for Nar.  But I think that this is an important issue because I think that, in general, this is the way that most gamers develop their homebrew settings -- and thus is very important for understanding  Nar tendencies in classical Sim play.

P.P.S.  I am also laying the foundation for a theory of standard dysfunctional play in which the GM is attempting to play narrativist and the players are attempting to play gamist.  I played a few campaigns with a GM who expected this sort of play, and managed to twist my normally narrativist play group into gamists just through that expectation.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

I think you're mixing a variable into your understanding of Narrativism vs. Simulationism that's really got you stuck.

That variable is "mutability" of the setting or anything else that's established in play.

And you know? That doesn't have anything to do with N vs. S. Your statement:

I only sketch out what I need to play the game in which I am playing (usually a village, or a few details of a city) and the rest developes through play. "Right," one thinks, "Narrativist setting design in action."

... is all kerflooey. No, one doesn't think that. I could create the most niggling and "complete" and nailed-down setting ever, mapped to the last horse-trough, and proceed to play as Narrativist as anyone. I could use that precise method you describe, and play Simulationist as anyone.

Narrativist play is about being committed to producing themes. I don't care how you do it - with tons of improvisation, or tons of establish-this. With tons of out-of-character analytical discussion, or with exclusively in-character "by the gut" play.

The setting creation material in Sorcerer & Sword concerns that particular set of literature, and how those authors created their settings. If you 'port it into role-playing, it works. That's all I'm saying in that book, regarding that particular technique. What makes the book as a whole a Narrativist manual is focusing on how to make sword-and-sorcery emotionally gripping and focused on the issues embodied (very much em-"bodied") in the protagonists.

I am saying that making a distinction between create-as-you-go and create-beforehand, in reference to setting, is completely irrelevant when talking about N vs. S play. Or, if it's relevant, then it is only so in combination with a wide variety of other features of the game/play in question.

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Hi Ben,

I think you're mixing a variable into your understanding of Narrativism vs. Simulationism that's really got you stuck.

BL>  Okay.  That makes sense.  Sweet.