Things NOT GNS (including g, n, and s)

[Gordon C. Landis]

This seemed best as a new post, though it is directly spawned by Clarifying Simulationism and similiar recent threads.  Let me start with three fairly simple statements that people will have to understand and agree with for the rest of what I say to make sense:

1) G, N and S are identified as the Big Three Priorities of play in an RPG.

2) One thing that Priority means is that they are, over time, mutually exclusive - as Priorities.

3) That does NOT mean that they are absent as aspects of play - indeed, the Dream MUST be present as (at least) an aspect of play in all games.  There's also the hybrid issue, which, as I understand it, lets you sorta-Prioritize one mode in service of another, truly Prioritized mode.  I'm not sure how that's different from saying the play *is* the truly Prioritized mode with lots of aspects of another present (as aspects), but  . . . I don't think that's an important distinction for *this* post.

The fact is (best as I can tell) Story Now, The Dream, and Step on Up occur not only as Priorities, but also as aspects of play - The Dream as a matter of definition, and Story Now and Step on Up as (I'd argue) basically unavoidable aspects of being human and socializing.  Being present as an aspect of play can mean a lot, or a little - but even if it means a lot (say, Step on Up matters because we expect all players to develop skills and get real good at the game), they can be there without being a Priority.

And they aren't the ONLY things that exist as aspects of play within GNS, but aren't Priorities (as I think Ron and others have said).  I think a lot of the issues about Dream-Prioritizing play of late have collapsed an important issue - "active" vs. "passive" approach - in with a GNS Priority, and it just doesn't belong there.

I'll get to that specific in a bit, but I want to stress this (already existing, by my reading) idea that there are important things about roleplaying - important preferences that players have, that determine weather or not play is enjoyable for them, things that may have important implications for GNS Priorities - that aren't actually in the same domain as the GNS Priorities themselves.  Call them small-p-priorities, desired game styles (but don't confuse that with GNS mode) - I'm not sure what to call 'em, and I think it would be good to be able to identify them a bit more clearly.  But for purposes here - Not-GNS is the key.  Sometimes it's easy to notice them - "I like to play elves" is clearly independent of GNS.  Others we've gotten clear about, but might be a bit tricky - "I like to use x Stance a lot" sometimes needs to be clarified as independent of GNS, because (e.g.) there are some interesting implications of Director stance in Nar play.

With Sim, here's where I think the problem may come from: "active" (for which some people read creative, inventive, and etc.) Sim play may seem like contradiction.  Sim is defined as the Priority which elevates Exploration, and does NOT Prioritize the "creation" of themes in play (nor Step on Up, but that doesn't seem hard for people to grasp right now).  "Active" Sim, it may thus seem, needs to be a different thing from "passive" Sim.

But my thought is that active and passive don't exist in the same realm as GNS at all, and that GNS holds the idea that any play can be utterly devoid of creation/invention (Exploration) to be a definitional absurdity.  Exploration is creative/inventive, and is required for play.

What we do have, though, are varying degrees of engagement by particular players with that creation/invention process.  This is what I'd call (for lack of other terms at the moment) active vs. passive.  So that some players (as opposed, or in addition, to play as a whole) might be particularly passive as regards Exploration, but the inventiveness/creation have to exist.  In an extreme form, the GM might even be fairly passive - e.g., maybe, highly scripted and adhered-to metaplot, where there's a lot of inventiveness/creation inserted by the designer(s).  But (and here's where I worry about the terms) even "passive" play requires a certain minimum engagement by the participants during actual play - the insertion of creation/invention by designer, GM, and/or other players can only go so far.  Even a "passive" participant is Exploring, just not as "actively" as others might.

So, we will have highly active Sim play, where all/most the participants are expressing thoughts about the implications of the setting, working through what the (in-game) logical consequences of actions might be, assiting each other with what is or isn't period/setting appropriate, and etc. - Prioritizing that activity over any G or N that might show up as aspects of their play.  (Note:  All the above can happen either "in-character" or not, per taste.  Another element independent of GNS - but not without implications to it.)  A more passive Sim group might simply look to the GM for such answers, or to an established setting-book, without much debate or discussion.  Still - they are Prioritizing The Dream over any aspects of Story Now or Step on Up.

That's how I see it.  In addition to clarifications/challenges to this understanding, this thread might be a good place for other areas that are similarly indepentent of GNS (but often collapsed), or extensions of the active and passive language to other modes - can there be active vs. passive Exploration happening in Nar?  Sure, I'd say.  But can there be active vs. passive Nar itself, or would this scale be best reserved for Exploration itself?  Meaning it is particularly important for Sim, relevant to all play through the required existence of Exploration, but not an attribute of G, N or even S itself - "active Sim" becomes shorthand for "active-Exploration Sim."

Or maybe I'm on the wrong path somewhere.  Let me know . . .

Gordon

[pete_darby]

Initial response: yes, and incredibly well said.

The active/passive thing got me thinking about an aggresively passive Sim player, often seen in licensed background games. If it didn't exist in Tolkien, it shouldn't be in Middle Earth, for example. It's one of the opposites to the no-myth game.

But this post got me thinking in terms of setting as part of system, and the lightbulb moment was the realisation that this is another Lumpley principle issue. A passive sim player prioritizes the system over player interpolations.

So I'm proposing that another dimension, independent of GNS preferences, is degree of application of the Lumpley principle in it's negative form, where it overrides system. But I can't think of a catchy name for it. Lumpliness? Fiedlity? Systemation?

And pasive nar and passive gam do seem like contradicitons, but every time I've said something like that, someone's pointe dme to a game where my "impossible thing" exists.

[Ian Charvill]

The thing is, 'passive' sim is only passive in the sense of inventing new elements during play - it need not be 'passive' in any other sense.  It seems almost like the style is being characterised by sitting around staring at the scenery with a wide-mouthed, blissed-out expression on their face.

I would guess people who play this style will tell you that's a long way from the truth.  I'm guessing in terms of character-character interaction, literal going-places, seeing-things exploration and character-situation interaction huge amounts of activity would be seen.

I would propose High-Invention/Low-Invention as adjectives here, with the recognition that Invention here refers to acts carried out during actual play.

[Wormwood]

Gordon,

Well, the conclusions you make are clear, assuming we accept your assumptions. Personally I find mutually exclusive priorities to be a significant stumbling block on this matter. It's a hard thing to show, and I've seen very little evidence to suggest that it is the case, and much more to suggest the opposite.

In addition I must also agree with the other posters, that "passive" Sim is still a priority. If it were up to me I'd refer to them as inventive and immersive Sim, making them different lobes of the Simulation mode. To my mind these subpriorities provide enough conflict to tend to separate in play (although not always).

As far as describing what isn't in GNS, it always seemed the problem first comes in describing what exactly is in the GNS in the sense you are using it. Is it the full mode description, i.e. a detailed creative agenda, or is it simply pick G,N, or S which best applies. Obviously the later will leave out a lot more, but is that even remotely descriptive of this level of the theory?

Personally, I am storngly in favor of detailed creative agendas, and  eventually characterizing the topology of the GNS space. While building multiple layers outside of GNS is one valid approach, it seems best that internal structure be considered internal to the GNS layer.

As such, I would suggest a structure which is perhaps close to what you meant by active and passive: inward-looking versus out-ward looking. In particular this is where players first look for information to make decision. Hence immersive sim and high-challenge gamism are both in-ward looking, while high-step on up and inventive sim are more out-ward looking. I believe a similiar structure does exist in narrativism, but lack good names for those structures. This distinction can be rephrased as the ratio of attention to the game over that to the meta-game.  (Note, attention is potentially distinct from importance in this case.)

I hope that is food for thought,

  -Mendel S.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'm with Ian on this one.

Best,
Ron

[AnyaTheBlue]

I agree with Ian and Gordon, too.  Active/passive have too many judgemental connotations.  Likewise, I don't think Immersion is really accurate.

But on the Mutual Exclusionary nature of G, N, and S, I have a slightly different opinion.

I think each person, individually, is going to have preferences, personal priorities if you will, about which G, N, and S modes they enjoy, and which stances they enjoy using in each of those modes.

The mutual exclusivity comes in as part of the social contract.  "Well, I like to play X way, but you're the GM, so I'll play in Y manner for this game, but next week I'll GM System Q, which we will play in manner X."  You have to be willing to adopt the priority of the current game (as in, game session we are sitting down to play, as opposed to game in the D&D or Clue sense) as part of the social contract.

If you don't (and it does happen), you get dysfunctional play.  People aren't happy, they annoy one another, sabotage each other's fun, and generally the game self destructs because people have the feeling that others in the game "aren't playing right".  The real problem is that they haven't mutually agreed upon a Creative Agenda for play, and they are stepping on each other's modes of play in attempting to impose their own on the game as a whole without mediating the attempt with any meta-game Social Contract level communication.

But it can certainly be that you have players with a strong Gam preference playing in a Sim game, and choosing to prioritize the Sim play, but at the same time enjoying the Gam elements more than the Sim elements.

To put it another way, I like Pizza.  But it doesn't mean I want to eat it Pizza for every meal of the day, every day of the week.

Likewise, if I'm at a buffet where the main meal is, I dunno, chicken, but there is some pizza available as an appetizer or something, there's nothing stopping me from taking part in the (chicken-prioritized) buffet, while at the same time relishing the Pizza as the best part of the meal.

That's how I see it, anyway.  

(Edit: add bit about Pizza)

[jdagna]

I would propose High-Invention/Low-Invention as adjectives here, with the recognition that Invention here refers to acts carried out during actual play.

I like this terminology a lot better myself, though I'm not convinced invention is as simple as a linear scale.  I've been biting my tongue on the whole invention issue so far, but it seems to me like invention is always happening in every game and is hardly worth bringing up at all.*

Even if you take a Star Wars group who are absolutely committed to the movies as canon, what happens when they want to go into the bathroom of the Mos Eisley cantina?  We didn't see a bathroom in the movie - does that mean it isn't there?  In fact, we didn't see any bathrooms in any of the movies.  The player has essentially invented something by asking about the bathroom, and the GM further invents it by describing where it is and what it looks like.  

This example is about as "Low-invention" as you can get.  Calling it passive would just beg for misunderstandings since both the players and GM took active roles - they just settled for a conservative invention.

* This said with the possible exception that you could argue Competition and Step On Up are present in every game.  However, they define Gamism.  Invention does not define Sim.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Hi all, and thanks -

The judgemental connotations of active/passive *are* hard to ignore, so I've no attachment there.  I'll try high-invention/low-invention for a bit and see how that works - it feels like there's something missing in those words that active/passive has, and I'm not sure low-invention really removes a possible pejorative implication, but - perhaps an improvement.

I certainly agree with Ian that there is a lot of stuff going on in low-invention Sim play.  My main point is that characterizing the difference between low-invention and high-invention play (of any stripe - and yeah, I think we can have a range of invention for G and N too) is a matter of the invention variable, not the GNS variables.  There's a little awkward overlap because "invention" is similar to the "creation" of themed story in N, and a baseline of invention is required for any play, per Exploration (low-invention can never be no-invention).  But I don't think that awkwardness puts the invention variable into the same Priority category as G, N and S.

If that's clear, then my main goal for the post is accomplished.  Someone might claim that it's clear, but wrong - that it is more useful to include invention up at the GNS-Priority level somehow.  So far, I'm not seeing anyone in this thread who's doing that.

The mutually exclusive isuue - can be pursed in depth in another thread, if desired (though if that happens a search for old threads on the subject is probably wise).  Here I'll just note that "exclusive as Priorities[/]" is NOT the same as entirely exclusive, and that's always been the key to me in accepting the exclusivity parts of GNS.

Gordon

(One clarification - as Ron has mentioned before, both "GNS the Priorities" and "GNS the entire theory - including social contract and etc." share the name "GNS."  When I say invention isn't a GNS issue, I mean it's not a GNS-as-Priority issue, not that it's not a GNS-as-theory issue)

[M. J. Young]

Gordon, thanks for clarifying what I tried to say about half way through the Clarifying Simulationism thread.

I think one thing that is missed in this whole "passive and active sim are not the same priority" is that the referee is one of the players and in creating and presenting the world, he too is playing simulationist. It's not a matter of whether there's any active play happening; it's whether the credibility to create is broadly or narrowly apportioned.

It's already pretty well established, I think, that several stances can and do coexist in coherent play, either as different players take different stances or as players shift stances to meet goals during play. There's no reason why the credibility to create can't be similarly apportioned in different ways during play. Looking at games like WTF (which I'll confess I only know from forum comments) in which there are multiple referees and one player, we can see that apportionment of credibility is pretty much independent of group GNS priorities--someone has to have it, and whether that's one person or every person or somewhere between the extremes isn't particularly relevant to what we're doing, only to how we're doing it.

--M. J. Young

[Walt Freitag]

Credibility can be broadly or narrowly apportioned, and someone has to have it, but that doesn't mean someone has to be inventing. Credibility is required to invent, but it doesn't have to be used for that purpose. It can be used instead to introduce elements into the shared imagined space without inventing them, from pre-made plans, from source materials, or from the output of mechanics.

Thus we can have high-inventive players and a high-inventive GM, low-inventive players and a high-inventive GM, low-inventive players and a low-inventive GM, or high-inventive players and a low-inventive GM. (In that last case, for instance, the GM may be acting as a neutral impartial referee for the players' inventive agenda). And the players don't have to be on the same page with each other invention-wise either; there could be some high-inventive and some low-inventive players.

And this could shift during play, though I don't believe it does so as much as people claim it does.

In any case, this is no different from other aspects of creative agenda, which can also be different for different participants at different times.

- Walt

[pete_darby]

I have only a really minor problem with inventive and non-inventive, or high and low inventive, and that's that it still sounds pretty negative about the guys not inventing.

How about revelatory for the style of play that concentrates on finding out or exploring already established details, and inventive for creating new details? Or is that too obfuscatory?

[Valamir]

Of course if it was split off and put in the Exploration box where it belongs, we'd already have a name for it.  It would called Exploratory ;-)

[Gordon C. Landis]

Ralph -

I'm not sure exactly what "it" is in your post - the active/passive, low/high-invention, revelatory/inventive thing?

If so . . . what you're saying (with a smile, but I'm taking it seriously) is, let's go back to G/E/N.  Because (and this is me making up an argument) while E is fundamental to all roleplaying (not just E-prioritizing roleplaying), G and N are also fundamental (to "human nature," I guess), and so they all belong in the same group.  Instead of saying Simulation-Prioritizing play, we say Exploration-Prioritizing play, and we functionally mean EXACTLY the same thing.

My guess is GNS (and Ron) would argue that because G and N MUST have E going on (whereas E/S only MUST have G and N floating around in social sphere somehow), it's actually more confusing to say E-Prioritizing than S-Prioritizing.

There's also the problem is that by-the-dictionary exploration has conotations that jargon-Exploration doesn't - but that happens with all jargon terms, I guess.

Well - I'd go look up Ron's response to the Scarlet Jester's GENder, but GO isn't exactly search-friendly any more.  There's things I like about saying E-Priority rather than S-Priority, but if all we're discussing is which word to use to describe a mostly-agreed on "same thing," is it worth it?

Gordon

[Valamir]

"It" was referring to peter's post where he was expressing disatisfaction with "Invention" as a term and throwing out Revelatory and such.

It was only slightly tongue in cheek.

I believe that while Exploration is part and parcel of all roleplaying, that there is a fundamental difference between play that stops there and play that goes on to add other things (G N & S Creative Agendas).

I think most folks have agreed with this.  The remaining disagreement seems to be whether to simply acknowledge the difference and leave it in side of Simulationism; or whether to split them off.

Ron threw out the idea of mammals earlier and that Sim is like Mammals with all kinds of different mammals within it.

Ok...except I see it more like Sim is reptiles and we're still stuck back in the classification that had dinosaurs and reptiles combined together.  Now we know better.  Now we know that dinosaurs are not simply a different type of reptile...they are their own unique category.  Like wise, Sim1 is not simply a different type of sim...I think it is its own unique category.

In fact, WAY back at the beginning of this round of threads someone suggested expanding GNS to 4 rather than 3 to account for this other category.  That was when I said that I don't think its a 4th GNS division, I think the division is more fundamental than that.

G N & S all accept Exploration as their foundation and go on to add other agendas to it.  Sim 1 is unique in that it actively refuses to recognize any other agenda being added to the act of Exploration.  It is pure unadulterated Exploration...which is why I put it back in the level outside of GNS, the level of Exploration.

But I've made that arguement several times already.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Ralph,

So - Sim1 rejects Prioritization?  Not Explore as a Priority, just Explore? That doesn't make any sense to me - if Explore is something you do (as a group), it's not a "just" any more.  I think the lack of any agenda beyond Exploration (including the agenda of Prioritizing the Exploration) is . . . unlikely.  Maybe impossible.  

I'd say rejection of a game-derived Priority leads to the functional prioritization of some other factor - raw socialization, meeting folks, scamming for chicks/dudes, whatever.  Obviously, that's not what Sim1 players are doing - their enjoyment is focused on the game itself, somehow.  I do agree that we miss something if we can't talk about that huge divide between Sim1 and Sim2.  Which is why I said (or meant to imply) "passive" actually means "minimally active," and why I'd say Invention runs from low to high rather than from none to high (or all).

That may be where we agree to disagree.  We agree the issue of describing the wide variance between Sim1 and Sim2 exists.  I'm thinking at the moment that describing the difference as a variance in how much invention is desired works, and the idea that Sim1 is somehow ZERO invention or not having any Priority doesn't really fit into the general context of existing theory.  You think that Sim1 is so different, it should cause the context of the existing theory to change - if that's what it takes to get it into its' own category.

If that's right - agree to disagree it is.  For now, anyway.

Gordon