Gamism is not competition.

[contracycle]

make a lot of sense. But translate that attention to the mechanical and statistical issues of play into a closed-ended, four or five session scenario, and isn't it then apparent that competition is really a part of Gamism?

How so?

[Paul Czege]

Hey Gareth,

In that upon completion of the scenario the character creation choices and in-game actions of each individual player shake out as having been more or less effective, and more or less interesting than the choices and actions of the others, and the scenario ends with some characters having floated to the top in terms of overall impact on the scenario.

Paul

[jburneko]

At times like this I wish TrizzlWizzl was still reading and posting to this site.  He's like the physical incarnation of Gamism.  He'd have a lot to say about all this.  But for now I'm just going to offer up something he once said to me, paraphrased since I can't find the email the exact words are in:

"A good RPG will feel like a sporting event.  The players are one team.  The NPCs/Monsters/Traps/Puzzles/Whathaveyou are the other team.  The GM acts as referee only arbitrating the rules between the two sides.  The tougher the challenge for the players, the sweeter the victory for the players."

His words, paraphrased.  That sounds an awful lot like competition to me.  At minimum it's about players using the game mechanics to their fullest to overcome the challenges set forth by the scenario.

In any event I know what Gamist behavior looks and feels like.  And I think that all of us do.  The question is whether Ron captures that in his essay or not.  I think he does.

I think that "Players vs. Scenario" or more appropriately "Players vs. Scenario Designer as presented by GM" is the most common form of Gamism.  What I think people are missing is that Ron's goal in general is to push the bounds of Roleplaying as far out as humanly possible.  He admits that Gamism is an underexplored form of roleplaying.  Therefore to say, "Players vs. Players" or "Players vs. GM" is invalid because that's not the way RPGs work is ludicrous.  Maybe they're not the way RPGs work NOW and maybe they're not the way you like to play RPGs BUT that doesn't mean that an RPG couldn't work this way.

Take a look at Rune.  Granted, I haven't read the game thouroughly but my understanding is that it is very Gamist.  Yet all the players take turns acting as GM and all the players are competing against each other but still working as a team.  The CHARACTERS are all working together against a common enemy however the PLAYERS are competing for the most "Glory In Battle." Edited Note: This INCLUDES the GM.  I believe the GM recieves points for how challenging his scenario or element of a scenario is.  The more challenging the more points the GM scores.  To prevent the GM from simply slapping down a killer encounter I believe the GM recieves points only for each character brought to the brink of death, not for any characters actually killed.  If anyone knows Rune better than I do please correct me if I have misrepresented the point of the game.

Jesse

[ This Message was edited by: jburneko on 2001-11-29 13:28 ]

[Mads Jakobsen]

"The GM acts as referee only arbitrating the rules between the two sides. "

So he is not competing. A gamist GM is not Gamist.

"What I think people are missing is that Ron's goal in general is to push the bounds of Roleplaying as far out as humanly possible" + " Maybe they're not the way RPGs work NOW and maybe they're not the way you like to play RPGs BUT that doesn't mean that an RPG couldn't work this way. "

GNS AND OTHER MATTERS OF ROLE-PLAYING THEORY is in fact a view into the future, and not at all about present roleplaying. Well, Ron could have mentioned that in the introduction, instead of all that other stuff that gives the impression the essay is about helping present day roleplayers deal with present day RPG dysfunctions. Guess that was a smokescreen. Your hear that Ron, you lurker you? We have seen through your smokescreen! Ron! RONNNN!

Rune? Sounds fun. Wonder how big a percentage of gamist play that game.

Seriously though. I'm not saying there is no gamist who compete against each other, or against their GM. I'm sure there is. I am saying that they are a minority. And I am saying that since gamist by the thousands play without competing against each other, neither the gamist = competition got to go, or else we have to clear a home for these people in the narrativist or simulationist niches. If they  fall outside the GNS model, then the GNS model falls as well.

MJ

[Gordon C. Landis]

Great discussions here, folks - I'm enjoying it bunches.  Let me pick a quote and add my thoughts from there.

"But the PLAYER is not competing with the scenario, the CHARACTER is. The player is getting their jollies from the process and the vicarious experince of the challenge, but is NOT motivated by "competition". Once again, competition with inanimate objects is meaningless; objects cannot experience rivalry, have no goals, have no motivations."

I just disagree with this understanding of competition, and what others have expressed elsewhere.  Referee's aren't part of a competition?  In animate object can't be competed with?  I've competed with many an inanimate object in my day.  At the risk of bringing in non-RPG analogies, cracks and vaugue nubbly protrusions of rock in a cliff may not ACTUALLY think, but I sure ascribed some dastardly motivations to them when I was trying to climb 'em.  Same thing for, say, TSR's Tomb of Horrors module - it was out to get me, I swear it was! (and it WAS - I mean, it was designed with that in mind)  The GM, as the scenario's representative/referee, was something like a climbing partner - I couldn't do it without him, but he is in many ways irrelevant to my competitive experience (if he does his job well).

However, saying "in Gamism you get your enjoyment out of the process and the experience (vicarious or otherwise) of the challenge" is also a good description.

As others have said, the GNS essay might better capture the spirit of Gamism if it were to either a) emphasize what is NOT a required component of "competition" (all the negative win/lose, us vs. them stuff), or b) use a different term/language (challenge?).  The all-important "etc." and the not-first-mentioned "GM as referee between players and scenario" do NOT get enough attention as things currently stand.  Someone *could* blink and miss the reference to their (good, functional, and rewarding to them) play style.  Some of that blinking may say as much about the reader as it does about the writting (e.g., they may be letting their traumatic experiences with out-to-kill-me GM's get to them), but that doesn't change the reality that lots of folks seem to have missed what's "really" meant by Gamism.

It is important though (someone has pointed to this already) NOT to limit Gamism to ONLY this most-common form.  Rune is a very good (only?) example of an explicit win/lose RPG design that seems to be fully functional.  It fits in the Gamism category of GNS.  So would a non-functional "GM gets his jollies killing PCs" session - the fact that Gamism CAN accomodate those kind of explicit win/lose and negative win/lose forms doesn't mean it is limited to them.

That said, there IS something (I think) about win/lose (in the broadest sense) that's fundamental to the GNS distinction of Gamism, even in a non-disfunctional form.  It's that "objective" in the "striving for an objective" definition - at some level, you can't have a challenge without a scoreboard to judge the challenge upon.  That scoreboard may be entirely internal - a "good Game-with-a-capitol-G" as judged by those participating - but I think the GNS claim is that it is a required, inevitable part of Gamism.  Again, we can get into tricky linguistic issues, beacuse "scoreboard" leads to "bad win/lose" leads to "I'm not an immature/munchkin/assasin-playing/I've-gotta-WIN dweeb!", so care needs to be taken.  But the issue is important - ignoring it probably wouldn't help.  

Paul's comments about short/medium term vs. campaign play point out (to me) that the details of the "scoreboard" may well change based on this scope-of-play preference, but I'm not seeing (at the moment) a *fundamental* difference between a Gamist scenario and a Gamist campaign.

[sigh] As usual, longer than I thought.  Time to get back to work . . .

Gordon

[Ron Edwards]

I hear you fine, Mad.

What I don't hear is an argument. I hear lots of cries of "rubbish" and similar. I also hear some attempts at provocation, which are mildly amusing.

For the record, so far, I have identified no less than four points of clarification to make, which I think will go a long way toward resolving the point at hand.

As a preview: a GM who acts as an impartial referee over competing players is still participating in a competitive event, in a focused and designated way. To claim that such a Gamist exercise is not competitive because the referee is not a player, is invalid.

A further preview: all sporting-competition is a sub-set of cooperation regarding the parameters of play. To suggest that the two words represent some form of dichotomy is invalid. Thus the cooperative act of role-playing may serve quite well as a competitive arena.

Since I feel no urgency about any of this, I'd rather continue to learn from the ongoing discussion. Both you and Gareth provide plenty of food for thought, at least in terms of how my points can be clarified, and possibly in terms of amending some of my points as well.

Again, all: please remain courteous and - please - acknowledge one another's valid points, as you go. The Forge is about building arguments, not about riding wave-fronts of contention.

Signing off for at least two full days on this thread,
Best,
Ron

[jburneko]

Hello Again,

Alright let's take a look at: "Player vs. The Scenario."  This is the most prevelant form of Gamism.  So let's break down the Gamist definition and apply it to this one specific example.  I think this will clear up the confusion.

The contention is that Gamism is about competition between real living Humans.  

Argument 1) "The Scenario" is not a person therefore the players can not be competing against it.  

This falls under Conta's video game example.  When playing a video game the players are competing with the game.  If you need a human entity then it is clear to see that the player is competing against the video game *designer* vicariously through the electronic medium.  Same goes for RPGs.  The players, in a gamist driven session, are competing against the SCENARIO DESIGNER vicariously through the scenario itself.  The GM can be thought of as the computer on which the scenario is running.

So are the players in competition with another human being?  Yes, they are competing with the scenario designer.  The enjoyment of the game comes from overcoming the challenges set forth by the scenario designer in his scenario.  As my good friend TrizzlWizzle has pointed out the GM in this capacity is acting as pure referee.

Argument 2) If the GM is purely a referee then he is not competing and is therefore not a Gamist.

Whoa!  Hold on there partner.  To qualify to be a gamist you need only to hold Gamist principles as your priority of play or speicifcially to make decisions that adhere to gamist principles.  If a Gamist GM is doing a good job then he is fascilitating fair competition between the players and the challenges set forth by the scenario designer.  The GM may not be *IN* competition but he is most certainly *INVOLVED* in competition.  Most importantly his job is to fascilitate fair competition.

So is the Gamist GM who acts only as a refree still a Gamist GM?  Absolutely.  Yes, he is not IN competition, but he is fascilitating competition in some capacity.  That is, he makes decisions based on Gamist priorities therefore he is still a Gamist.

Again, these arguments apply ONLY to the "Player vs. Scenario" case.

I hate to keep using my friend TrizzlWizzle as an example but he's the most direct observable gamist I know.  In some of his more stubborn moments he's gone so far as accuse my heavily Narrativist sessions and my girlfriend's heavily Simulationist sessions of not even being GAMES at all simply because there are no objectively defined challenges with objectively defined methods for over coming them.

I hope this makes things clearer.

Jesse

[contracycle]

So are the players in competition with another human being?  Yes, they are competing with the scenario designer.  The enjoyment of the game comes from overcoming

You have not established that.  Or more precisely, what you HAVE established applies to all players regardless of their stylistic preference, if they are playing an established scenario.  By definition and dramatic necessity, some conflict will be inherent in this scenario at the character level.

To say that it is ABOUT competition in the minds of the participants is not supported.  Exactly the same behaviour would occur in players who had no inteerst in competing with a scenario designer by proxy.  I am suffering sleep deprivation from playing Civilisation at the moment; am I competing with the coders of Firaxis games at any point?  No, they are my allies in a pleasurable pastime - they are more analogous with a GM as facilitator of game play than analogous to a competitor or opponent.  I am not competing with the designer, I am "competing" with the bastard Romans.  Who are not alive any more than rocks.

Argument 2) If the GM is purely a referee then he is not competing and is therefore not a Gamist.

The GM may be gamist, the game may even be competitive (for the sake of argument) but a REFEREE by nature is not an opponent.  If you are having an adversarial relationship with a referee you in deep doo doo.  Thus, even a gamist referee is not playing in a gamist style if that as defined by the presence of competition; the referee is not competing.

Whoa!  Hold on there partner.  To qualify to be a gamist you need only to hold Gamist principles as your priority of play or speicifcially to make decisions that adhere to gamist principles.  If a Gamist GM is doing a good job then he is fascilitating fair competition between the players and the challenges set forth by the scenario designer.  The GM may not be *IN* competition but he is most certainly *INVOLVED* in competition.  Most importantly his job is to fascilitate fair competition.

So is the Gamist GM who acts only as a refree still a Gamist GM?  Absolutely.  Yes, he is not IN competition, but he is fascilitating competition in some capacity.  That is, he makes decisions based on Gamist priorities therefore he is still a Gamist.

Again, these arguments apply ONLY to the "Player vs. Scenario" case.

I hate to keep using my friend TrizzlWizzle as an example but he's the most direct observable gamist I know.  In some of his more stubborn moments he's gone so far as accuse my heavily Narrativist sessions and my girlfriend's heavily Simulationist sessions of not even being GAMES at all simply because there are no objectively defined challenges with objectively defined methods for over coming them.

I hope this makes things clearer.

Jesse
[/quote]

[contracycle]

It is important though (someone has pointed to this already) NOT to limit Gamism to ONLY this most-common form.  Rune is a very good (only?) example of an explicit win/lose RPG design that seems to be fully functional.  It

I would be interested to see how many gamists are playing it too.  I have a copy and it does nothing for me; the idea is, well, clever, but not very appealing except perhaps in a very narrow sense of gamism; it does not have enough explorative depth for me to get excited about it.

As as been said again and again, nobody is objecting to competition being a component of gamist behaviour, but I don't think the SET should be described according to the properties of only one of its elements.  I see a set of gamist behaviours which includes competitionism, which includes "personal testing" for want of a better term, and perhaps some other stuff.  If Rune works (which it does not for me) then it does so by appealing to a subset of gamists only, IMO.

That said, there IS something (I think) about win/lose (in the broadest sense) that's fundamental to the GNS distinction of Gamism, even in a non-disfunctional form.  It's that "objective" in the "striving for an objective" definition - at some level, you can't have a challenge without a scoreboard to judge the challenge upon.  That

Thta is the CLAIM, yes.  Whether the claim is true is the matter at hand.

scoreboard may be entirely internal - a "good Game-with-a-capitol-G" as judged by those participating - but I think the GNS claim is that it is a required, inevitable part of Gamism.  Again, we can get into tricky linguistic issues,

Wherein lies the problem.  I do not think that the claim has been even remotely demonstrated, except inasmuch as we go through torturous rationalisations to conflate a passive object with a resisting opponent.  If, instead, the presence of a scoreboard were removed from the definition of gamism, and located in an element called compitionism which is a member of set Gamism, then I'd be a happy camper.

[greyorm]

...if they are playing an established scenario. By definition and dramatic necessity, some conflict will be inherent in this scenario at the character level...

And that was my point, folks.
After all, there is already competition in both narrative and simulation, not necessarily among players, or even between player-and-GM, but among the characters invovled in the scenarios (and that includes both PCs, NPCs, and the world at large).

So how to reconcile this with Gamism in the context of the current discussion?

Then again, I have a vague feeling there's some amount of hair-splitting for the sake of hair-splitting going on here, amidst which the larger picture is being lost.


_________________
Rev. Ravenscrye Grey Daegmorgan
   --http://www.daegmorgan.net

[ This Message was edited by: greyorm on 2001-12-01 12:43 ]

[Tor Erickson]

Hi Contracycle,
 
If competitionism is only one aspect of Gamism, then what other aspects are there?  I can see how Gamism can have many subservient aspects that reinforce the overall feel of competition (any of the explorative elements from "GNS and Other Matters"), but are there really any other overarching goals?  I ask in genuine curiosity, because whenever I think of other goals they either end up sounding like different forms of competition or like Narrativism or Simulationism.

Tor

[Mads Jakobsen]

To Rons
Of Content: No arguments? Who am I arguing with here anyway? You try arguing with "What Ron Really Means" and "What Trizziwizzle would have said where he here" and see if any clear thoughts crystallizes.

Of Form: I said rubbish because it was a short, precise statement and I did not even know if the subject were being contested (se above about the fog of debate), so why waste time on it.  

Of Claims: "To claim that such a Gamist exercise is not competitive because the referee is not a player, is invalid." Good thing nobody made that claim, then. I think.

Enough bitterness, and on to:

Items of general concern

"...his job is to fascilitate fair competition..."

Some gamist groups no doubt look to the GM for "fairness" and "balance". But a game does not have to be fair to be fun, and what is fair anyway, speaking in terms of RPG theory? I doubt fairness exists other than a feeling, leaving the gamist GM with a tiny role, theoretically speaking. Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I feel sorry for the poor gamist GM, who is not competing himself and so now becoming a part of the wallpaper. Define his role for pity's sake!    

Cooperating about competing? Obviously true for functional competitive gamist play. But as Tor kind of asked, is that all there is to gamist play?

Errr...

Maybe I should make it easy on myself, me being just a mildly amusing guy who does not seem to have English as my native language, and go on the defense (it works for others {insert disarmingly cute Smily})...

Could somebody please demonstrate that a gamist player, who does not feel that he is competing as his primary RPG activity, is in fact competing as his primary RPG activity. And this is perhaps the most important part: demonstrate it in such a way that the gamist player is himself convinced?

MJ
   

[jburneko]

On 2001-11-30 20:21, Mads Jakobsen wrote:

Could somebody please demonstrate that a gamist player, who does not feel that he is competing as his primary RPG activity, is in fact competing as his primary RPG activity. And this is perhaps the most important part: demonstrate it in such a way that the gamist player is himself convinced?

Oh, boy.  I hate coming down to fundamentals like this because it feels like I'm insulting the person I'm talking to and I really really hate feeling like that.  I sincerely apologize in advance if what I'm about to say feels like I'm being condecending or talking down to the person and that is NOT my intent.

Here's the key: It does not matter what a person CALLS themselves.  What matters is their observable behavior.  The GNS model is based on cataloguing observable behaviors.  You might say you are a Gamist however if we all come over to your house and all your actual play behavior coinsides with the definition of Simulationism then acording to the GNS model you are a simulationist, no matter how much you want to call yourself a Gamist.

That goes for ALL of us.  I like to call myself a Narrativist.  That matters ZERO.  If you all come over to my house and see that my play style doesn't match the definition of Narrativism then I'm NOT a Narrativist no matter how much I like calling myself that.

This goes for any academic field of study with precise definitions.  If a person goes into a psychologists office and says, "Doc, I have schizophrenia," then the doctor runs some tests and says, "Well, no you're depressed," that doesn't mean that the doctor is narrow minded and needs to broaden the defintion of schizophrenia to include this person who claims he is schizophrenic.

I know that I cite my friend TrizzlWizzl a lot and that may me look like a Hypocrite but I'm not.  TW doesn't call himself a gamist.  *I* call him a Gamist because his in play behaviors are consistent with the definition of Gamism.

Now, I don't know you and your in play behaviors.  There are three possible outcomes.  1) Your behaviors are consistent with our defenition of Gamism in which case we are only arguing over the semantics and linguistics of what it means to "compete."  2) Your behaviors are not consistent with Gamism but are consistent with some other definition with the GNS frame work in which case we have an ego problem in which you simply like to think of yourself as a Gamist when in fact acording to the GNS model you are something else or 3) Your behaviors are not consistent with Gamism but are also not consistent with any of the other defintions within the GNS model.

Only in that third and last case, academically speaking, do we actually have a problem.  In that third case we have found a set of behaviors that simply do not fit any where within the model.  NOW, we must figure out what is going on.  Either, these new 'alien' behaviors are SO different that we infact need a new catagory or they are very close to something we already have in which case perhaps we need to broaden the defintion.  This has already happened with Simulationism so I'm sure we're all willing to entertain the notion of it being required for the other two groups.

If you are concerned solely with your personal play style and would like to know where you fit in with things why don't we do this: Start a new thread.  In that thread give us as detailed an account as you can of your personal game preferences.  Which games do you enjoy playing and why?  What elements of a game give you then most enjoyment.  And so on.

Then we can conduct an objective analysis of your personal play style.  Hell, it may turn out that your play style is a pretty even blend of two or more styles and that's where the real confusion comes in.  How about that?

Jesse

[Mads Jakobsen]

"If you are concerned solely with your personal play style and would like to know where you fit in with things why don't we do this.."

I am not concerned with where exactly my gaming style fits in. Since you bring it up, it IS something I wonder about occasionally. But not in any urgent way. It should be enough to say that I am a gamist on occasion, for the sake of this discussion.

No, when I write "a gamist player who does not feel he is competing" I don't mean myself particularly, I really do mean "a gamist player who does not feel he is competing".


As to what a person is and what he calls himself: you are quite right, person A can be wrong about himself, and person B may be able to se this.

Firstly, this in it self proves nothing.

Secondly, person B has to prove to person A that his view of himself is flawed, otherwise nothing will happen.

Thirdly, we are on dangerous ground here, because it just might be that B's omniscience-which-he-just-can't-explain-to-stupid,-stupid-A is the real delusion. It certainly makes it very easy for B to be a great thinker without accomplishing anything, it is a part of least resistance so to speak.

So, I think Carthage should be destroyed and could somebody please demonstrate that a gamist player, who does not feel that he is competing as his primary RPG activity, is in fact competing as his primary RPG activity. And this is perhaps the most important part: demonstrate it in such a way that the gamist player is himself convinced?

Note the perhaps most important part.

MJ

[jburneko]

On 2001-12-01 17:18, Mads Jakobsen wrote:

So, I think Carthage should be destroyed and could somebody please demonstrate that a gamist player, who does not feel that he is competing as his primary RPG activity, is in fact competing as his primary RPG activity. And this is perhaps the most important part: demonstrate it in such a way that the gamist player is himself convinced?

Okay, I see what you're saying.  I'm going to interepret the phrase "a gamist player, who does not feel that he is competing" as "a person who's observable behaviors are consistant with the definition of gamism and does not personally feel that he is competing."

That is, from an objective point of view the player in question exhibits gamist behavior.  However, the player claims that he is not in competition.

In this case, I'm affraid that I, personally, would have to get into specific behaviors.  If such a person existed I would have to go over specific decisions and actions that the person has taken and then identify the source of competition.

Example:

Let's say this person says, "I just like customizing my character and finding neat combinations of abilities, skills, feats, etc that work well together."  This, in my opinion, is a behavior consistent with gamism.  This player is either competing with the scenario in that he enjoys building the most effective character to overcome the challenges presented before him.  Or if he's not really into the 'effectiveness' in play part then he is essencially competing with himself in an effort to find new and creative rule combinations.

I hope this helps.

Jesse