Struggle in RPGs

[Ian Charvill]

Following up from Pete's line of thought, and some of the comments Ben's been making.

An Egrian Premise (reformulated as a question as per narrativism) seems to be to merely be an interest question about the human condition.  What would you do for love?  Is revenge more important than peace?  What would you do for $1000000?

Now, as per Pete and Ben, theme is going to emerge in pretty much any sim game - certainly any successful game - simply by dint of them dealing with interesting characters doing interesting things.  And a lot of sim players want theme, and are really glad when it arrives - because it's something of a mark of a successful game.  To my mind, that does not make them closet narrativists.

Dig, I like vanilla ice cream.  I like strawberries.  Give me a choice and I'll take a bowl of vanilla ice cream over a bowl of strawberries any day of the week.  Now, offer me a bowl of strawberries and ice cream, and I'd be the happiest little bunny in the world.

Too, I like making stuff up.  I like making stuff up more than I like questions about the human condition.  But if I can make stuff up that also provokes questions about the human condition, then I'm happiest of all.

I suspect with narrativists that it's the other way round: they want the theme and if they can get the sim stuff, wonderful, but if not they'll just take the theme.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm not quite sure how this came to be a Narrativism thread, but all right.

Yesterday, I received this message from a private correspondent:

In your Simulationism essay, you have this: "'Story,' in this context, refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of recognizing and enjoying the genre during play."

Is this the key to distinguishing the abovementioned play modes? My intepretation of this statement is that in Simulationist gaming, a long and complex story might come about and be part of play, but only for the express purpose of bringing about all the appropriate genre elements in the game as part of the internal consistency of the Dream. i.e., A Sim game Colored with elements from Chinese wuxia movies might have a multilayered story involving class conflict, people being trapped by their social position, repressed romance, heavy action, a sorcerer and his eunuch henchmen - but these are all trappings of the genre. So, their inclusion in the game, part and parcel as they are to the Dream, isn't Narrativist because no one is creating a theme that /isn't already there/. In other words, it's just played out as the Situation part of the Exploration; because the dream calls for it, there just so happens to be a kind of intricacy involved.

In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless of the genre or setting used. So, to sum up, themes in Nar play are /created/ by the participants and that's the point; themes in Sim play are already present in the Dream, /reinforced/ by the play, and kind of a
by-product.

Am I on this now?

In a word, Yes.

I've quoted this here because (a) it's not me saying it, it's him, and maybe that helps people process it better; and (b) it's what I've been saying.

I shall clarify further that the players in the sort of Simulationist play being described are certainly enjoying the themes present in the subject matter. They aren't oblivious to them or anything like that. But they are not making them; they are invoking known quantities.

Best,
Ron

[Landon Darkwood]

Hi all,

I know I'm usually a lurker, but I'm going to try and provide some play examples from my own group that might help. It'll dovetail back into Struggle at some point, I promise. :) This may be long, though.

One of the gaming groups I'm in plays Shadowrun. Now, Shadowrun is primarily a Gamist venture (note: the working shorthand is in operation - it's a game that facilitates Gamist tendencies), but it's getting Drifted, and we don't mind. In play, what's been getting maximal social reinforcement (Ron, that's such a cool phrase - keep it) has been the themes developing in play between long, roleplayed out interactions between the PCs. We have to be the slowest-moving Shadowrun group in history, by our own design. The characters are a preppy mage just out of college trying to get out from under Daddy's heel (me, Nick Colby), a Trinity-like Physical Adept (Roxy), and a former corporate stooge gone to Shadowrunning because he had an affair with someone (Gus).

In play, there's been continued tension between these characters regarding their attitude toward "professionalism". Nick tries to maintain an absolute emotional separation between business and pleasure, which has caused him to spurn some of Roxy's advances, and that has given rise to an overtly aggressive attitude on the job (he's overcompensating). Gus thinks Nick knows what he's doing, because Nick has an attitude, and follows him around because he wants to be a "cool, professional Shadowrunner" like Nick is. Roxy thinks Nick is just fooling himself about his emotional detachment, and wants to crack his shell so that she can make some kind of connection to Nick and perhaps keep Gus from following Nick into anything too stupid. Romantic tension has emerged between Roxy and each character by now, because we've been continually under fire together.

The emerging themes have been, "What does being a professional Shadowrunner mean?" "What is the cost of emotional detachment?" "Is love worth the risk of loss?" None of these things were part of the GM's game... he just preps the missions and waits for us to catch up, essentially.

So there's Narrativism without anything funky, with the themes emerging mostly through the Character part of Exploration, player-created, and not a for-granted part of the Dream. In the players' eyes, the other elements also influence the themes we're making; without the Situation of the missions, we'd have no reason to develop these relationships, and without the Setting + Color, the whole "professional Shadowrunner" angle wouldn't exist.

Now, to contrast that, one of my other groups ran a James Bond RPG game. The story revolved around the pursuit of a chemical weapon that ultimately was found to be in use by an alliance between young Yakuza and Chinese Tongs to oust the older, troublesome Yakuza bosses so that the younger Yaks could take over. The characters were a Delta Force operative (me, Alex Wilkins), a CIA analyst (Mr. James), and a near-retirement MI6 operative (Langworthy).

This game ended up as what stands, for me, as a primary mental reference for what Simulationist play is. What was being reinforced in play, mostly, was "being in a Bond movie." The story was fairly convoluted, involving travel to several locals in the Middle and Far East, us penetrating the group of involved lackeys before reaching the masterminds, high action, car chases, gambling, fast women, a Jai-alai match between me and one of the villains (I won), etc. If there was a theme present, we weren't reinforcing it consciously; indeed, we weren't paying attention to it much at all because we were reinforcing the Bond Dream. There was plenty of competitively witty banter between the characters and some implicit commentary on life under the mantle of the secret agent, but it was all par for the course - that's what those types of Characters do in that Dream. We killed the bad guys at the end because that's what Bond does, etc. In that game, no one made any effort to contribute anything thematically to the game that wasn't already there (not even the GM), and there was no social reward on the player level for overcoming challenges because it was just seen as intrinsic to the Bond movie. At the end of it all, we had these memories of our Bond movie, and that was cool.

Bringing these examples together, what's come to define Simulationism in my mind is this notion of "Exploring what's already there" - whether "what's already there" is as concrete as Setting and how one interacts with it, or as nebulous as casting everything with the appropriate Color, what matters is that the point of play is about enjoying what's in your playground for its own sake. The moment you try, as a player or GM, to "make a point" with your Exploration that is outside part and parcel of the Dream, you're making Nar play decisions, perhaps whether you realize it or not. And that goal, too, is different from wanting to create something to put in the Dream, which is still Simulationism because you only put the new jungle gym in the playground so that you can swing from it or for the sheer joy of looking at it and saying, "I made that. I Dreamed this."

So, Struggle, as it was being defined by the original poster, can be a facet of all three modes, internal or external, material or otherwise. I don't think it's really suggestive of any one mode or another. If overcoming Struggle is what one comes to the table for, it's Gamist. I mean, if you wanted to, you could take the Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel and 'Step On Up' with them, much as they translate to mechanical competence, if you really wanted to. If Struggle naturally evolves as a result of in-game causality in the Dream, standing as a by-product of the nature of the Dream, it's Sim. If Struggle is the means by which the players/GM create and address themes in play, and is purposefully introduced for that reason, it's Nar. I'm not sure that said Struggle needs to take place along moral/ethical lines, though, just for Narrativism to be at work.

Okay, done. :)


-Landon Darkwood