Front-loaded relationship-driven Nar/Sim overlap

[AnyaTheBlue]

I'm really out of it, and I've been posting like a fiend today, so I probably should wait till the morning before replying.

But I'm going to throw caution to the wind and try to make two very small points briefly (Ha!).

Anya, I think you might be a little tied up in your association of rules and Sim play.  They do go together nicely, but I can explore small-town relationships without any relationship mechanics in place.  It also isn't necessary for it to be an accurate model.  They key is simply a prioritization of exploration.

You might be right in that I'm misunderstanding.

I guess I'm looking at Sim and thinking Genre Fiend.  If we aren't simulating the genre (either through mechanics, or through social contract metagame enforced faithfulness to the conventions of the genre) then Fun Is Not Being Had Correctly.  I take Exploration here to mean Exploration of the 'imaginary head-space' details of the Genre Simulation.

By Nar play with an Exploration focus, I'm talking about Story and Plot being more important than Genre Convention/Genre Simulation, but that Exploration is still happening with regard to the 'imaginary head-space' details of the Narrative Structure.

In the first case, I'm thinking about focusing on the Genre and the Genre Conventions (or Setting Conventions, or whatever -- whatever the mechanics and/or players have deemed worthy of Simulating) and Exploring being specifically Exploring those details and their consequences faithfully and in an internally consistent manner.  Simple Example:  Playing DC Heroes, and one person has Superman, with another guy playing Batman by choice and not worrying about game balance between them.  Simulating the genre is more important than gamist 'game balance' concerns.

In the latter case, I'm thinking about focussing on the details of consciously constructed Narrative, Symbolism, and Story, and exploring the ways in which that can and does happen.  Both things I see as Exploring.  Simple Example:  Playing any FRP where two characters play star-crossed lovers, and the implications of trust, betrayal, and intrigue which devolve from that condition and the drama that can be brought out of that condition are the focus of play.  Evoking a story is more important than gamist 'game balance' or Simulationist historic, economic, or genre conventions.

Again, this may not be valid usage of the Forge jargon.  :/

When I play, I like the intellectual meat introduced by deep moral or thematic issues.  However, my real priority is on standard Sim issues: a focus on Exploration and the internal consistency of "the Dream."  I am actually bothered by the thought that someone might stop in the middle of a session and think "What can I do that will help this story have them x?"  However, I'm not bothered by the idea that a GM might create a campaign while thinking "Let's set something up that will cause players to explore the way religion affects the relationships in a previously-stable and isolated environment."

Thus, the GM has front-loaded Nar elements into the campaign.  They're going to come up, one way or the other, unless players refuse to play in the given campaign.

I guess my take on this is that it depends on where 'authorship' and 'direction' for the game lie.

Is the GM always free to fix a gam/nar/sim priority into an RPG?  Shouldn't that be part of the social contract?

When I GM, I usually let the game and the players set the gamist priorities (although sometimes I'll make it clear as GM that there is a gamist element to my GMing, and provide the players the opportunity to Step On Up in response, if they want to), and handle the sim/nar balance to taste based on my own personal preferences and what I can discern from the players.  I usually don't decide on a specific focus until actual play is in progress, and I usually shift pretty fluidly back and forth between Nar and Sim.

I like the term "front-loaded Nar/Sim" because it describes the fact that you get Nar play thanks to the initial situation, despite a general commitment to Sim ideals throughout play.    The GM is probably the only person aware of the Nar elements.  Even in a strictly behavioral approach, I like this term better because, the commitment to consistently (simulate? --Dana) always overrides commitment to theme.  In other words, if you have a choice between a cool story and playing your character well, I'll fully expect you to play the character and forget story.

Again, I may be misunderstanding Forge jargon, but I don't think I've ever see it quite work this way in practice.

But that may be because of my specific background and relationship to gaming in general.  For me, the social contract is actually the central and overarching focus of the whole thing and always has been.  Gaming, for me, is all about bringing together a group of people and getting them to imagine and create together.  The social contract is what allows that to happen.  So I focus on managing the contract so that everybody in the game, including me, is getting at least some of their specific, generally incompatible, priorities on the GNS triangle met.  Instead of setting the GNS agenda, I make negotiating it and/or discovering it for a given gaming group my priority and, once I have a handle on what it is, I try and hit that note as much as I can.

In terms of my earlier Nar vs. Sim Exploration, one of my priorities as GM is to Explore the social contract 'head-space' and boundaries of my players (which I generally have at least an idea of before starting to play) as an adjunct of and facilitator for focusing the games into areas they will be comfortable with and find fun.  It's a component of the metagame that is largely internal to the person doing it, although players can do this just as well as GMs can, and work at feeding group members in-game events and actions which allow them to get their personal needs met.

I'm not perfect, so obviously this doesn't always work.  But it's what I'm aiming for.  Even as a player, I try to enjoy giving the other players what they need, and take responsibility for finding my own fun within the constraints of the system, the other players, and the GM's priorities.

I think this is a core part of the "System Doesn't Matter" arguments.  GMs and players who do a lot of the above (without discussing it consciously) are usually the same GMs and players who can 'make any game good'.  What they are doing is not making the game good so much as they are changing the game, sometimes on the fly, so that things fall out in ways that the players will enjoy.

Of course, I agree with Ron that System Does Matter.  You can either fight the system or the system can facilitate you.

This ends up driving the Search for the Holy Grail system that happens to hit the specific GNS needs of a given play group/GM combo.

Either the group finds a balance with one another and a game (either through house rules or just plain finding a game that works for them), or the group composition changes to match the game being played.

The only real remaining option is for the players and the GM to all be aware of these interactions, and make conscious attempts to work with the system and be concsious of what their personal tastes and goals are, and everybody tries to enjoy the games for what they are -- which means consciously trying out 'unfamiliar' and 'unnatural' stances and priorities as a Social Contract/Metagame level Exploration of RPGs and actually making that variety be a focus and goal of the group dynamic and play.


Right.  Niiiice and brief. =)

[Gordon C. Landis]

Justin (and everyone, really),

Story Now means the answer to the theme MUST be created by the players during play.  Ron's "What's not front-loaded" paragraph of his assesment is, it seems to me, critical - without that, it's not Nar.  When you say "Sim players couldn't care less about the theme," you fall back into the intention/behaviorist thing - for this purpose (and I'm speaking ONLY of this purpose) it doesn't matter what I, or you, or they may think they care about.  The question is, what are they doing?

Exploring/developing theme (via whatever means - "in-character" thinking, subtle or nor subtle rewriting, whatever) in play?  Nar.  Reveling in the Dream, marveling at the implications of how character and situation intersect (to the exclusion of whatever thematic interpretations might be possible)?  Sim.

So I see "Narrativism with strong Explorative foundation" (Story Now priority with a heavy emphasis on some particular Dream elements) as the full description.  When a particular kind of play style (e.g., "in-character") is an important part of the Explorative foundation, these folks are getting awful close to the Impossible Thing (hope folks understand that reference - a search on that phrase will turn up more threads than you want to read, I'm sure).

So the question comes up, how are you going to do that?  That's where "front loaded" comes into it, maybe - part of a technique to make acheiving the goal possible.  That's where intentions become important/relevant, too - establishing that the intended priority for play is Nar, and that the intended means to get there is GM-loaded situation, with the players creating theme-ready characters but not directly interacting with theme during play (I think not interacting with theme AT ALL gets us into The Impossible Thing category, so to be clear - I'm not talking about that).  My experience is that when the players know ("consciously" or not) that Story Now is the Priority of play, this front-loading can work.

Of course, as play progresses you sometimes need to "re-load."  Which some folks find offensive - they might be better off pursing what I'll call Simulationism with a strong Nar interest  - Prioritized exploration of some particular Dream elements with a strong interest in Story Now.   The priority vs. element/interest distinction I tried to make in my earlier post, which may not actually work in GNS as it now stands.

Summary - maybe we need to split the "front-loaded" part out of the literal play priority people are speaking of here, and make it part of one technique for acheiving that priority.  So I'm left with Ron's name and/or my rewrite of it as the label John is looking for.  I'm no help on the system question (I'm thinking on it, though), and I take the "front-loaded" phrase and point to it as a useful technique in pursing this kind of play - a technique that he is already well-aware of and quite accomplished with.

Less help than I'd hoped to be,

Gordon

[Marco]

I've gotta go back and read this thread *very* carefully. Very. It's *intriguing.*

But from what I've gleaned so far, I have a few comments.

1. Ron's comment about searching for the right system to produce themed story is a good one. And really, a lot of Narrativist systems sort of do (really 'assist with' but if they're strongly focused it can be, I think, harder to avoid hitting theme than not) just *that*.

2. Knowing your players. I agree with John that in some cases it might not be necessary--although I *suspect* that in the case of the Convention Game there are some fairly strong campaign-created motivations present (I could be wrong about this--but for, what?, 4-hour games? I would *suspect* there's some pretty obvious problems to be solved or whatever). Having a good extant motivation (and a willing participant) is a good substitute to having insight as to what *really* interests someone.

But mostly: I suspect that a lot of my success with themed games (I identify greatly with how John runs his games) has come from creating situations that I know will enthuse my players (well, almost all the time. I don't hit a home-run everytime I run a game).

And that's important: if I can present player X with a situation with no planned resolution--but lots of interesting possibilities that I know the player will find *irrestible* to get deeply involved in then for all practical purposes (in a sense) I might as well be railroading.

Since I suspect the way I said that is objectionable, let me try another way: if, in the town scenario, the players decided to just "dibble" (I don't know exactly what that means--but it sounds right) then 1 of 2 things will happen:

a) not a whole hell of a lot.
b) some agent already in motion in the game will act on them.

In the case of a) they may be bored. In the case of b) it's (IMO) legitimate (assuming that the acting agent is consistent with the world and the method of acting isn't in violation of social contract--i.e. they aren't "captured without any dice rolls and thrown in the dungeon by the captain of the guard") but is pretty sub-optimal (IMO).

But if the GM is pretty darn sure that they *will* get involved then the eventualities of a) or b) are far less problematic for the group. Part of that is knowing the players (or, hell, at least the skill of 'reading' a new player accurately).

3. I use JAGS for that mode of play (who knew). Before that, I used GURPS. Before that: Hero. Before that a bunch of different things (and I'm playing in an AD&D3e game and just ran Savage Worlds--and someone wants me to run Little Fears so that's not *all* I do).

But one of the reasons that I chose the generic systems is because what I'm running rarely lines up with a published world/genre. Something like Unknown Armies would suit me (I think) pretty well--but essentially I'd just be using its engine as a generic system--and at that point I might as well go with something that has out-of-genre flexibility should I want it.

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Lots of stuff to respond to in this thread. I'm going to try to make some general points, rather than comb through individual ones. If you really want my feedback on a specific point, please let me know.

1. Gordon's first post in this thread is key. It is 100% consistent with a section of my GNS essay which, I suspect, very few people manage to process:

For a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism. The primary and not to be compromised goal is what it is for a given instance of play. The actual time or activity of an "instance" is necessarily left ambiguous.

Over a greater period of time, across many instances of play, some people tend to cluster their decisions and interests around one of the three goals. Other people vary across the goals, but even they admit that they stay focused, or prioritize, for a given instance.

Whoa - so how do you "know" whether you're playing Narrativist with a strong tendency to "go Sim" every so often (but not overwhelmingly in terms of first priority), or whether you're playing Simulationist with a strong tendency for Narrativist moments to crop up every so often?

My response: is it really so crucial that you "know"? The ideas are intended to provide you with a vocabulary, and if the elements of the vocabulary are working to the extent that the immediately-above paragraph makes sense, then all is well.

[My current series of essays (G and S down, N on the way) presents a more structured framework for how the modes tend to interact, so I'm not suggesting that N with underlying S is "the same" as S with underlying G, for instance. But this issue is not to the point for this thread.]

2. John, your latest post indicates to me that you are looking for a specific name for your described play. I am reluctant to do so. My suggested description ("Narrativism with a strong Explorative foundation") is accurate, but not defining, and I suspect you're looking for a defining feature that can be named. I don't think I'm going to be helpful here.

My preference would be to refer people to these examples of play as baseline Narrativism, and to consider procedurally extreme versions (we used to call them "pervy") to be ... um, well, I can't come up with a better description than "procedurally extreme."

And I very much appreciate your acknowledging my points about the commonality of this sort of play. Marco, this goes for you too, because I think you probably understand the do-si-do in that "Whoa" paragraph above better than anyone.

3. Ben, I've noted above and in a couple of other recent posts that people are very frequently mistaking the presence of powerful Exploration in their games to be Simulationism. I can't put it any clearer than this:

Just because a group engages in very powerful, committed Exploration during play does not make their play Simulationist. Simulationist play is defined by the absence of Story Now or Step On Up, such that Exploration by itself is the priority of play. That's why it's called "the right to Dream."

And yes, this means that Simulationism is "different" from the other two. They are not three "ways," they are two "ways" on a chassis, and the chassis by itself (or amped up as such, more accurately). I've written extensively about this topic. I've also provided some recent comments about the "reality" of this mode of play in the related threads. Also, Dana's (AnyatheBlue) points about the issue in this thread largely spot on to me.

4. Oh yeah - Dana - if you would, consider checking out some stuff in my GNS essay about the use of "story" as a term. To say "Narrativism is about making the story," or similar, turns out to be fairly ineffective as a description. I suggest focusing on the issue of Premise (a la Lajos Egri) instead.

Best,
Ron

[GreatWolf]

Hey Seth, can I cue the "Exploration/Dream" diatribe? Way back when, during various GNS controversy discussions at the Gaming Outpost, I endured my share of people rhapsodizing about how pure, and how glorious, role-playing without reference to (as I now call them) Step On Up and Story Now is, and how beknighted and indeed selfish I am to inflict these two priorities onto others. Seth did a nice job of explaining all of this while struggling not to kill me through resentful thought-waves at the same time.

Just found this.....

Sure, go right ahead.  ;-)  For those of you who don't know, Ron and I went around and around on this for a while.  We're all happy now, but this was a big deal at the time.

(For the record, I found Ron's Sim essay to do an excellent job of capturing what Simulationism is and explaining why someone would enjoy it.)

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

[John Kim]

Summary - maybe we need to split the "front-loaded" part out of the literal play priority people are speaking of here, and make it part of one technique for acheiving that priority.  So I'm left with Ron's name and/or my rewrite of it as the label John is looking for.  

Well, my question was about "front-loaded" play, not about all possible play.  If you want to start a more general talk about Sim vs Nar, I would say that needs to go into a different thread.  The topic here is specific to front-loaded play.  You could say that there are two subtypes: front-loaded Sim and front-loaded Nar, and we can talk about observable differences between the two.  

When you say "Sim players couldn't care less about the theme," you fall back into the intention/behaviorist thing - for this purpose (and I'm speaking ONLY of this purpose) it doesn't matter what I, or you, or they may think they care about.  The question is, what are they doing?

Exploring/developing theme (via whatever means - "in-character" thinking, subtle or nor subtle rewriting, whatever) in play?  Nar.  Reveling in the Dream, marveling at the implications of how character and situation intersect (to the exclusion of whatever thematic interpretations might be possible)?  Sim.  

I don't see how these are observably different.  You describe Sim as being an issue of perception, not of action.  So I can take in-character actions which subconsciously develop theme and also marvel at the implications of character and situation.  The former describes the result of my actions in terms of narrative analysis, the latter describes how I consciously perceive them.  

As a simple check:  how would you characterize play in the Shadows in the Fog game that you played in?  I realize that you can't be definitive after one session, but you should be able to point to some behaviors or suggest what you would look for in the session.  Tor seemed to think it was primarily Sim.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi John,

Appologies if the Sim vs. Nar stuff distracts from the purpose of the thread - my problem is that I think "front-loaded Nar/Sim" is pretty much a meaningless label within GNS, whereas (unlike Justin) I find "Nar with heavy emphasis on particular Explored elements" to be quite reasonable (per Ron's post above).  Front-loading the Nar may be one way to allow for the heavy emphasis on particular Explored elements to occur and for theme to still be created, but that doesn't turn the play into Sim.  The play would turn into Sim if the heavy emphasis on particular Explored elements was allowed to trump the Nar prep.  At which point, the prep is only "Nar" in the sense that there was some interest expressed in Story Now, but since it wasn't prioritized, play as a whole (for that foggily-defined "instance") wasn't Nar.

You ask a good question about observable differences, and examples are always tricky.  The cop-out is that with enough play time, in actual practice it becomes pretty easy to observe the cues - play becomes focused on the cascading implications of particular decisions/events, with no need or interest in connecting that to a theme.  Or something that's a bit less-than-perfectly connected to in-game causality is allowed to slide, because someone thinks it will illuminate their thematic reaction to play.

Shadows in the Fog - I'm not sure.  Tentatively, and allowing for the important caveats about limited time, a fair amount of available time spent on prep rather play, general "I don't know these people very well" issues, and (VERY importantly, I think) a "playtest" rather than "play" focus . . . I think the priority of play was Sim, with that interest in Story Now floating around but not prioritized.  I think that means a Nar prioritization could occur as play progresses.  I found it interesting that while the Shadows rules try to provide a lot of during-play (NOT front-loaded, or, not JUST front-loaded) Nar support via some different kinds of mechanics,  many folks in the group seemed reluctant to use those as fully as the rules text seemed (to me) to indicate is preferred.

Still, I can point to some very Story Now-compatible choices by various players.  It's the element vs. priority question, and if Story Now only pops out when it's convienent, and (more importantly) is stiffled by a commitment to pure Exploration, then it's not a priority.  That session of Shadows seemed to lean towards the pure Exploration.

Then again, I find that some time spent in pure Exploration can help stir-up the stuff needed to get our teeth into Story Now - that is, in some ways Explorative play can be "prep" for Nar.  So - a very tentative Sim read from me.

Gordon

[Marco]

I actually think the "why's it matter?" question is brilliant.

The idea that play should be that quantifiable that close to the line has always struck me as bogus (I thought I was in the minority in thinking that--but it looks like maybe not). Sure, if there were a meter that would ping when there was an according-to-God instance of Narrativist play or Sim play or whatever, then yes, you'd see a winner. But if the split was 49/51 then I don't think any human alive could *know* they had the correct answer from watching.*

I've yet to see the real value in analysis of play at the table (I'm not saying there is none--just that I don't see it--on the other hand, I see all kinds of value in analysis of one's own intentions and how well those are borne out by System which, appearently, I'm alone in). But still the not-so-new idea that play can and will be some kind of split should lead directly to the idea that when you're on the line it can get blury.

Not only do I see no problem with that, I think it's one of the clearest and most powerful statements in a thread that's full of 'em.

-Marco
* And I think observer bias is at least as bad as denial on the part of a player as to what his/her true intent is so I don't see anything more objective about one mode than the other. I'm damn sure I'm in the minority there.

[Mike Holmes]

Um, it doesn't matter. As has been said a jillion times, the only time GNS does matter is when it is observable that there's a problematic difference in play styles. If the differences aren't observable, then there's no problem, right?

Mike

[Marco]

I haven't seen any real lip-service paid to the idea that it'd be hard to tell. When John asked what's my style, if the answer was "somewhere between sim and nar--and even if I was there it might be hard to tell" I missed it.

The fact that John is doing something I really identify wiht that *might* be sim or might be nar is, to me, pretty enlightening (especially since the answer is that it could go back and forth over time and--if that's not all that uncommon then just chalk it up to another casualty of really bad short-hand).

(Also: I realize no one has said they couldn't tell--Ron said "why's it matter?" but still, I found it enlightning. I suspect that one's ability to be certain about these things--especially in borderline cases is directly porportional to their degree of observer bias).

I also think it's cool that at least one other person finds a universal system valuable for this kind of play.

-Marco

[AnyaTheBlue]

Well, my question was about "front-loaded" play, not about all possible play. If you want to start a more general talk about Sim vs Nar, I would say that needs to go into a different thread. The topic here is specific to front-loaded play. You could say that there are two subtypes: front-loaded Sim and front-loaded Nar, and we can talk about observable differences between the two.

What exactly is being 'front-loaded'?  How is that front loading happening, and what is the purpose?

I think (and I might be wrong) that the front-loading you are describing is trying to do two things:

1) Establish (or encourage) a particular balance of GNS elements for the game

2) Establish (or encourage) a particular Premise.

Your contention seems to be that it's Front-Loaded Sim, with the front loading being to encourage Nar-drifted play in a Sim Focussed group.

At least, I think that's your contention.

I guess my sense of all this is that it isn't sim for two reasons.

First, what are you simming?  For 'true sim', for me, you have to either have rules which put a priority on Simulating certain 'realistic' or 'specific' behaviors, and doing that stuff is a big part of the game, OR not having rules to do that, but a lot of attention spent on doing it anyway, from the players and GM.

What has been described in both the Extra Credit example and the Mission From God example doesn't, to my eye, meet that criteria, even though the latter has got what you described as a system (a relationship map) for 'simulating' the various townspeople and NPCs.

For me, that's not a 'simulating' tool or mechanic, it's a descriptive one.  It describes the starting conditions of the NPC relationships, and it tracks how those relationships evolve over time.  But it doesn't sound like it simulates those interactions, nor does it sound like it enforces any particular set of outcomes or preferences any particular sets of outcomes or types of interactions.  How does it act as a simulation?

Second, the gameplay examples are driven by the players and the GM (through the NPCs, primarily) Exploring the setting and Premise, but without a specific commitment of either rules or meta-game Social Contract on either the players or GMs part to focus on simulating specific things beyond just "Be your guys".

"Be your guys" alone doesn't make Sim for me, unless you tack on "And by Be Your Guys, We agree to mean you really ought to consider the following list of things that your play should accurately reflect and include".  Since I don't get that from the examples, it looks like Nar to me, with a focus on Exploring the (complicated, structured, Narrative) Premise.

Sorry, that might be a terminology slip.  I'm seeing the Simulationist "Focus on Exploring Premise" to mean that the accuracy and details of the simulation (whether brought about through play or mechanics) as the primary point of play.  Doesn't necessarily matter if we get killed off, or tortured, or whatever, since that's what happened during the Inquisition, and the game really ought to reflect those historical realities.  The specific events are important only insofar as they accurately capture the essence of whatever we are trying to simulate.  Not any old interesting event will do -- only those which are 'realistic' in relation to what we are trying, as a group, to Simulate.

On the other hand, IMHO Exploring the Premise when you have a strong Narrative bent involves exploring the Narrative Consequences of the Situation.  The situation in the Mission From God example is a corrupt town with new missionaries on the side of right.  The Narrative Consequences of that situation are the various incidences political infighting, discovery of and rooting out of corruption, making enemies, and whatnot.  You aren't trying to simulate events inside some specific constraints, you are trying to instead evoke a set of interesting events, but exactly what those events are isn't quite as important as the fact that they happen.

Hmm.  Another analogy.  In Nar play, the GM has an idea of a situation and/or a chain of events, and the players perturb that situation.  Play involves and revolves around the consequences of the perturbation.

In Sim play, the GM and players are collaborating to construct a faithful simulation of a plausible chain of events, for some more-or-less commonly understood definition of 'faithful simulation' and 'plausible chain of events'.

I wonder if that's a good parallel?  Nar is 'interesting', while Sim is 'plausible'?  Probably too vague.

As always, I could well not be using some of these terms as intended.  Please point that out if you see me doing it...

[Ben Lehman]

Whoa.  Just... whoa.  That's a lot of posts.

There is no way that I have the time to respond to all of these individually, much I would like to.  I'm going to go with a general review.

In general, I am perfectly happy to accept that front-loaded (such as my example) premise is still Nar play, and that front-loaded conflict (such as an Amber throne war) is still Gamist play, despite the fact that the play is actor-stance.  The description of two modes and a chassis fits quite well, and makes me happy.

Ron, can I have permission to post "No" and a link back to this thread every time someone claims that "actor stance is completely orthogonal to Narrativist goals?"  Because, you know, that would really make me happy.  It would make me even happier if everyone started doing it.  That, I think, was the largest stumbling block for me figuring out what this Narrativism thing was all about: "Gee, that sounds an awful lot like my playstyle, but I play strictly Actor stance, so it can't be..."  I say :-P

I think it really needs to be clarified whether GNS theory is a treatment method or an analytical theory.  It can be both, certainly, but in that case people need to stop saying "that case doesn't matter because it isn't dysfunctional."

I also think that the heavy Sim players who Ron talks about are lying.  Or, rather, that they are Ron are talking past each other.  I say this because I have played with a group of such players for the last 4 years or so.  These are people (myself included here) who go to weekend long LARPs strictly for the joy of staying in character for 80+ hours...  

(Let me tell you, it's pretty cool to dream in-character.)

We are not saying that they do not enjoy struggle (moral or material).  We are saying that they enjoy struggle as an in-character, rather than out-of-character, device.  Thus, by the definitions discussed in this thread, we are usually playing Narrativist or Gamist, and usually a combination of both.

A longer post of this last topic will be forthcoming, which may also include my theories on Gamist Sorcerer play.

yrs--
--Ben

[Lxndr]

Are you sure you're not misunderstanding the use of the term orthogonal?

My interpretation of "X Stance is orthogonal from Y mode of play" is someone saying "whether or not you play X stance is an entirely different axis from whether or not your mode of play is Y."

Because actor stance is completely orthogonal to narrativist goals, at least in my understanding of the terms.  It's at a 90 degree angle for them, a different axis, a separate decision from what Narrativist goals are.

Am I missing something, are you, or are we both?

[Ben Lehman]

Double post.
damn the back button!

[Ron Edwards]

Pending Ben's (probable) confirmation by that "orthogonal" he means "contradictory to,"

Ron, can I have permission to post "No" and a link back to this thread every time someone claims that "actor stance is completely orthogonal to Narrativist goals?" Because, you know, that would really make me happy.

Permission granted. Permission granted as well to sift some older threads and find statements by me to this effect - there're about a bezillion of them ...

I also think that the heavy Sim players who Ron talks about are lying.

Heh. When I suggested an interpretation even half as extreme as this, I was roundly denounced as a mean, insensitive, biased, anti-creative lout.

What's especially interesting is that the one person whose testimony outweighed all others in terms of establishing Simulationist play, in my mind, as an actual identifiable play mode (as opposed merely to a retreat from play modes) was Mike Holmes, who is now the Beeg Horseshoe's primary advocate ...

Anyway, all that is off the point. I am reasonably happy now to declare this thread closed.

Best,
Ron[/quote]