Up-front Gamism.

[anonymouse]

From M.Holmes's seventh rant, Raven quoth:

Something occurs to me about a design element no one else has mentioned, but which you bring up numerous times: the players never know what the GM has up his sleeves in terms of resources, so it makes for unsatisfying Gamist play -- the challenge isn't up front, or rather, the use of tactics are purely shots in the dark for an overall strategy.

This is.. I need to go over the "the Whole Theory" thread and get my terms straight, but I'd say this is due in parts to Actor Stance, Simulationism, and maybe Illusionism (the GM is doing the story, you just sit down and play your part). And it's definitely not the sole province of unsatisfying Gamist sessions.

From my MUSH days, we'd call this mixing In Character and Out of Character information, and not trusting the players to keep the two seperate and stay in Actor mode. Similar situation pops up in LARPs, maybe?

Mind you, lots of "regular" games still have some sort of "hidden" element (Chance cards in the oft-mentioned Monopoly, or wossname cards in Catan; "fog of war" in RTS computer games, and so on), but this is usually to the benefit of play in this games. You get a pretty good idea of what might be hidden, maybe sort those into broad categories, and pursue a strategy (with a couple of back-ups) based on that. But you know the exact limit of what -can- be there, whereas with our sort of games, the GM has the power to make up a new card as you're drawing it.

Due to the nature of tabletop roleplaying, I think this is a pretty astute observation, and I'm kind of surprised I sort of tackled this unconsciously with MARKED; the GM has a set number of dice to use per session, and one of the ways to "win" a session is to completely exhaust the GM's pool. You even get a bonus reward if you manage it. I think it's a totally cool (for sure) way to go about getting the challenge up front.

But, yeah. I think this stems mostly from a tradition of "GM is running the game," and, "Well, my character wouldn't know how many soldiers there are, so I shouldn't either."

[xiombarg]

From my MUSH days, we'd call this mixing In Character and Out of Character information, and not trusting the players to keep the two seperate and stay in Actor mode. Similar situation pops up in LARPs, maybe?

Quick aside: The answer to the question above is "yes". Arguments about OOC and IC information have been very common in the LARPs I have been in, though in many cases it's a sign of Gamist/Narrativist/Simulationist clash.

[Mike Holmes]

I sorta agree. That is, one way to give a player more tactical options is to let them in on OOC knowledge. But that's not the only way. Lest somebody think that I'm militating against immerson or something, I think that there are as many or more ways to make a game with little player OOC knowledge tactically challenging.

Read your Game Theory!

One element of games is Hidden Knowledge. This means knowledge that the player knows exists, but isn't certain as to the nature of. Estimation becomes the key here. In fact, OOC estimation of the GM's plot is usually the source of strategy in most RPGs, and it's the fact that there's no good way to estimate this that's the problem. To the extent that there is a way to estimate, it's that the GM will make things "near". Which gives rise to dominant strategies (meaning only one, meanining less for the players to do, less challenge). A good game has Hidden Knowledge with partial data.

So, immersion, in making some things hidden, can actually increase tactical choices by making multiple tactics seem plausible. If you give a player all the data, then dominiant strategies will tend to arise denying opportunities for challenge. Use "immersion" where applicable to inject that challenge back in.

Mike