The roots of Sim II

[Caldis]

I think the binary opposition between Gam/Nar and Sim is that of Self and Other, with "Self" meaning here the player. when a player has an internal priority of addressing a Premise (even one the player is has not fully verbalized) or makes decisions based on risking esteem to face a challenge, the player is prioritizing Self over Other. if, on the other hand, the player is more concerned with how the imaginary constructs of the character and setting fit together, worries about inconsistancies and gameworld plausibility, and so on, that is prioritizing Other over Self. I feel this is the fundamental difference between Exploration (imagining the Other) and Simulationism (focusing on the Other over internal concerns.)

does this answer the question?

I dont think it really does.

You've explained Sim but not why it would draw so much attention.  Why would it be the predominant style of play and rules systems?  Why would a lack of interest in self cause such a stir?

I also question whether there really is a prioritization of the 'other', isnt it just a prioritization of ones vision of the other which is inherently about the self?  Unless you are talking about the character rather than the player when describing self and other.


In either case I think Mike makes a strong point about the roots of gaming being sim based which leads to the strong sim based influence in rules systems.  Narrative and Game being more developed tastes had to  work their goals and rules systems that help achieve their goals into the already developed sim based structure.

[John Kim]

John, Chris, Jason, I won't defend positions number one and number two, because I'm trying to get people to disprove them. It's like you guys aren't reading the rest of the post. Or are you just trying to play devil's advocate here?

Just a quick disclaimer here, Mike.  You asked people to "thoroughly denounce" #1 and #2.  I was just following your instructions.  

It's simply a matter of the choices made in play to maintain what is unique to roleplaying. I can tell a story, but that doesn't allow me to really Explore in RPG terms. I can play a game, but that doesn't allow me to Explore, either. Only in RPGs can we Explore. And when I'm doing so, I'm boldly saying, "This is neither a game, nor a story! This is a RPG and it kicks the asses of the other two because it has something that they don't, and can never have!"

Wow.  Speaking as a Threefold-Simulationist-advocate, I couldn't agree more with the sentiment here.  This is certainly the force behind many rgfa simulationists: that simulation has its own emotional power which is fundamentally different than reading a book or watching a movie.  

Looking at Ron's latest definition for Narrativism, that it's about players feeling an emotional investment in what the character is doing...how isn't that absolutely all of roleplaying? When do I make a decision that says, "Hoo, don't want to be too emotional here." Nobody does that. What they may do is say at times, "Well, to be certain that there's a proper emotional payoff when the proper moment does arrive, I'll support the exploration here."  

Hmm.  It seems to me entirely possible that players could be turned off by a game because it is "too heavy" for them or "too personal".  This would be calling for a reduction in emotion.  That's what I've roughly taken GNS Simulationism to be -- more of an intellectual or aesthetic artistic endeavor.  These are still emotional in a sense, but they are a different flavor of emotions than forcefully probing moral questions.

[Silmenume]

For the sake of argument let's say that exploring is experiencing.  Experiencing the act of creating and experiencing the results of said creations.

The fact that Exploration employs the tools of story creation suggests that Exploration is about stories, in the case of RPG's acts of creation that can be reviewed as (fictional) stories.  The question becomes what is meant by story.  I am not interested in the form of story, but rather what stories mean to its listeners.  We like stories not because they are "stories" but ultimately because what effect they have on us as consumers.

When I say, "Wow!  That was a great story," I'm a really saying that the events that were related to me resonated in my psyche and really moved me.  I was not only involved but also engaged emotionally in a powerful way.  Engaged emotionally does not automatically denote weepy melodramatic soap operas.  Whatever was contained within really made my bell ring – and that is an emotive response.  Pure and simple.  It does not matter what emotions were engaged, it's just that they were engaged effectively and in a satisfying manner.

Now we look at Sim.  Sim via its priority on the act of Exploration, places its premium on the explored elements – story elements.  The thing is that Sim is a creative and not (typically) a consuming process.  At some level there has to be player input or there is no game, even if the input's effect on the events is negligible.  Thus in Sim we are not consuming a pre-created and closed story, but rather employing those explored elements in such a way that in the end look like a story.  We know in Sim that story creation as a goal is not a priority.  The question then becomes why are we employ these inherently emotion provoking elements?  The answer lies in the question.  Because they are emotion provoking.  The exploratory elements are tools used to create or alter our emotions.  This does not mean we cannot learn factual things, but emotions are always present.  Even the employment RPG's to "see what happens" or to "run an experiment" carries an emotive payoff in the form of satisfaction or disappointment.

Look at Gamism.  It addresses the question of victory, but that begs the question of why?  Why engage in a contest?  Because the chase and the kill are viscerally powerful to those who engage in it.  Gamism at its extreme is raw emotion payoff.  Intellect is employed, but emotions drive and are the reward.

Look at Narrativism.  It addresses (difficult) questions about us a humans and our condition - premises.  These questions are interesting precisely because they are difficult to answer.  Nevertheless they ultimately respond to or impact emotions – "human conundrums and passions."  The emotive reward I do not believe is as charged or as raw as Gamism, but they tend to be of a more profound and deeper nature.

Here's the kicker though, I believe that Sim can encompass the raw energy of Gamism without being Gamist and be as thoughtful about the human condition as Narrativism without being Narrativist.  Imagine a game that has the heart pumping adrenaline kick of Gamism and the heart wrenching character-revealing power of Narrativism.  Now that would be a kick-ass game.  It draws gamers and non-gamers like flies.  Why?  For the same reason that movies draw people in, because it is interesting and emotionally charged.

There seems to be reticence at this site to recognize or give legitimacy to exploring character while in Sim.  Much lightning has been thrown regarding the idea of Sim as exploring geography/setting, but bring up the idea of exploring character and suddenly you're either playing abashed Narrativist or that scary word – Immersionist.  Sim can thrive on premise (or maybe premise laden bangs might be a better phrase), not because we are interested in creating a story or creating a theme, but for the very same reasons that a particular premise is interesting to Nar players it would be interesting for Sim players to struggle through (experience), dealing with that conundrum and its attendant passions.  "Is the life of a friend worth the safety of a community?"  I don't know, and as a Sim player I literally don't want the question stated/voiced overtly or participate mindfully in any way in the creation of that premise, nor am I particularly motivated by the thought of the answer, but I am highly intrigued by how I would struggle my through a situation that arose along those lines.  That would be a challenging and emotionally charged situation that would be fascinating to work my way through.  As a Sim player I am interested in the process, not the answer.

Life is emotion.  The strength and endurance of a memory is strongly tied to its emotional intensity.  A teacher tells you something about some 16th century king in France and its probably quickly forgotten, but live through a major earthquake and that memory is going to stay with you for a very long time. Emotions profoundly color memory and are essential in establishing meaning.  Studies also show that emotions are used to make snap judgments when there isn't enough time to think a situation through logically.  Knock out or severely flatten someone's affect and their personality evaporates and they lose motivation.  We spend buckets of money and consume huge amounts of entertainment, which is an emotion feeding exercise.  We are emotion junkies.  Its all just a matter of what form that stimulus comes in.  

We love stories precisely because they are emotively engaging.  Sim is or can engage those emotions directly.  It has all the parts necessary in the Explored elements, it just that Sim lacks structure.  Sim (published) games are all about the clay and the tools that shape the clay, but say absolutely nothing about how to use them to create engaging things.  Both Gamist and Narrativist go about to a greater or lesser degree suggesting or telling the players what they are trying to do and to some degree how to go about doing it.  Some of it is implied, some overt.  Sim games need the same elements to be engaging, it's just that nothing ever gets said about them.  The difference between Sim and Narrativism is that Nar is about creating a story via premise; Sim (when it is character or situation based – and the two can never be separate) is about living the story via the situation created by bangs or premise like conundrums.  Is this the only way to play Sim, absolutely not.  But what happens when all 4 Exploratory elements are employed effectively?  Is this a way to open Sim up to lots of players and the public at large, yes.  I've seen it and it is absolutely amazing.  Its just hard because Sim (historically) has been so obsessed with rules that exploration techniques and theory are left completely unrealized.
Thus it might be said that historically Sim failed and Gamism and Narrativism succeeded precisely because they provided what was lacking in Sim.  A direction and focus that does make it much easier for those emotive rewards to be gained.  Sim has been largely left behind precisely because it failed to effectively employ/direct the very things which it has been endowed with, the narrative elements and the creativity of its players.

Sim is not just the rejection of Gamist or Narrativist leanings, it is a mode unto itself that offers that which cannot be offered by Gamist or Narrativist games alone.  The exploratory elements are the building blocks of story.  Gamism emphasizes the conflict portion of story.  Narrativism emphasizes the character portion of story.  Simulationism can be character and conflict, but historically it typically failed badly.  Sim thus became a collection of niche interests and it is partly for this reason that Sim is so hard to quantify.

I am so all over the map on this I don't know if I said anything worthwhile.  I hope there is something that helps.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Walt Freitag]

Mike,

Try this:

Creative Agenda is all about what the participants are expressing themselves about through play. The game is a conversation the players are having. Creative Agenda asks, what is that conversation about?

If it's about the participants' own ability to play effectively or some other aspect of their own adaptedness (e.g. their ability to learn detailed systems, or their ability to creatively improvise) then it's Gamist.

If it's about an issue of emotional import to the players, using the imagined Elements as a medium or a symbolic language or a metaphor for doing so, then it's Narrativist.

If it's about the imagined elements themselves, a process of conveying their ideas about the imagined setting, characters, situation, (evolution of situation via) system, and/or color, then it's Simulationist.

Simulationism is therefore unique in a beeg horseshoe kind of way, but the distinction isn't the big deal you make it out to be. In all three cases, imagined elements are the language or ostensible subject matter of the conversation, but only in Simualtionism are they also the main import of the conversation, what the conversation is about.

Note that this "self-expression interpretation" of Creative Agenda doesn't remove all ambiguities. But, I believe, it reveals those ambiguities for what they are: controversies of interpreting the meaning of discourse. For instance, an observer can be uncertain about whether a game is Sim or Nar just as a reader can be uncertain about whether Moby Dick is "really about" whaling or salvation. Arguments about whether a player is exhibiting intrusive Gamist behavior in an otherwise Sim or Narr game parallel arguments by critics over whether or not a novelist is "just showing off" by including material that reveals impressive knowledge or insight or cleverness but is only tangentially related to the needs of the plot or the apparent message of the book.

If one believes that all discourse is laden with hidden meaning that overshadows the ostensible subject matter, so that for example when we discuss the plot twists in the latest episode of Angel we're really finding outlets for furtively discussing our own mortality ("or else why would such fantasy even hold our interest?") or we're really just interested in preening by showing off our own ability to engage in the discussion, then one would also conclude (as some have) that Simulationist play doesn't exist.

I don't hold that view; I believe I'm quite capable of getting together with some friends and talking about dungeons and dragons by playing Dungeons & Dragons, and it doesn't take a lot of effort (though it might take at least some tacit agreement) to refrain from talking about my own adaptive traits or embedded issues of deep emotional import in the process. Given the power and flexibility of metaphor, I don't think I can ever prove that when I play Simulationist I'm not really playing with a muted Gamist or Narrativist Creative Agenda, just as I can't prove to a die-hard Freudian that the whole enterprise isn't a form of surrogate sex by means of imagined phallic dragons in imagined vagina-like dungeons. As with all forms of self-expression, I rely on my audience to exercise some common sense and reason in interpreting my meaning.

- Walt

[Sean]

Hey, just a couple of comments on this.

1) I think that Sim play can, and in my experience playing my old namesake (Calithena) often did, revolve around Exploration of Character. My GM for most of her adventures is heavily Nar-oriented, and he put a lot of time into setting up the game in ways which would make for good story, but I as player was not for the most part participating in those choices qua moral or story-creating choices in any relevant way. In other words: he gave me situations with premise-addressing choices, and I made my decisions not by addressing that premise but by exploring the character. I've often made decisions myself as GM which indicated Nar preferences on my part, but when I was playing Calithena I often just spent my time wondering what she would do. (This infuriated poor Del, the GM in question, who often had to sit for a half-hour or longer waiting for me to figure it out.) Sometimes this was immersionist, but sometimes I was just exploring my idea of her and trying to figure out how she would react. Again, in most of those games most of the time, it was the GM providing the Premise which my decisions were addressing, but I wasn't deciding in order to address premise - I was deciding as part of my imaginative exploration of the character. I felt a moral responsibility to my character to get her decisions right.

(I've characterized a situation where I was playing Sim and my GM was playing Nar - a two player game, with tons of intense backwork on both of our part in between sessions. This connects to something about which I've been meaning to write here, namely that my former belief that drifting play is 'easier' or 'more natural' than many Forge luminaries suggest stems in part from the fact that a large fraction of my most interesting and intense RPG experiences have been one on one, either with me as GM or as player. It's easier for two people to get on the same page for drift than a greater number, especially if they love each other and are sensitive to each others' current needs. What I didn't realize is how exceptional these gaming situations were and how different they were from the larger group play that characterizes another large subset of my and virtually all of many people's gaming experiences. I didn't realize that I was two different gamers in the two different contexts.)


2. I think ultimately the question of whether Sim is a distinct mode in the absolute sense depends on whether you think curiosity is a genuine, independent form of human motivation, or whether it is always either sublimated desire of some kind, whether sublimated competitive/acquisitive desire or sublimated moral and/or narrative interest. This question goes way beyond anything we're likely to settle here, certainly anything we're likely to settle on the basis of gaming experience alone. In the meantime, I think as a matter of practical analysis I'm pretty happy with Ron's and M.J.'s observation that RPGs are finite time activities and that time spent on focused exploration (where you have a choice) is not time spent on competition or addressing Premise, ergo a separate, behaviorally identifiable mode.

(Personally amusing aside, which I can neither endorse nor entirely disavow: just now I can't help recalling Plato's tripartite division of souls, with the ideal state composed of a herd of desire-pursuing Gamists policed by the thumotic, morally committed Narrativists and ultimately ruled over by the philosopher-king Simulationists. These were divisions within the individual soul as well; everyone had all three, but categorizing persons depended on which mode was dominant within their soul.)

[Jason Lee]

Hey Silmenume (Jay?),

Yeah you're saying something worthwhile, it just looks like you're talking about Nar instead of Sim ;).

I haven't made it all the way through the Nar essay yet, so I don't know if this big important thing is addressed...

I believe that understanding the entire definition of both Sim and Nar depends upon the conotations you apply to the following phrase:  'moral or ethical question'.  How you interpret this little bit pulled from a source outside RPG's, from dramatic theory, determines how big Sim and Nar are.

Some of us are of the opinion Sim play is a rare form of play with Nar being about as common as Gam as is worth measuring.  Others are of the opinion that Sim is a huge percentage of play, and Nar is this little weird Forge-game thing.

So, the difference, I guess, is whether or not it's a 'moral or ethical question' or a 'MORAL OR ETHICAL QUESTION'.

The following excerpt is taken from Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern:


Theme

When literary critics use this term, they generally mean the idea or point of a work.  Writers are often made uncomfortable by questions like, "What is the theme of your novel?"  It seems reductive, like someone asking, "What's the bottom line on this thing?"  Writers hope that people will read and think about their work, understanding it through experience.  Some writers respond evasively to questions about theme, saying things like, "It's just a story," or, as Mark Twain wrote in his notice preceeding The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will be shot."

Other writers are more intellectual in their inspiration and more analytical about their creation.  They clearly have a theme in mind, and their work is an exploration of a particular idea.  Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre used their fiction to discuss philosophical issues.  Margaret Atwood and Robert Coover are explicity interested in political themes.

If you want to explore philosophical, psychological, or social ideas in your fiction, think of theme as akin to character, setting, or imagery.  Themes, like characters, can advance the plot, contribute to the tension, be attacked, and suffer ironic fates.  John Barth made his themes the central characters in the End of the Road and Giles Goat-Boy.  Aesthetic ideas almost talk to each other in Julian Barne's Flaubert's Parrot.  Saul Bellow's characters embody themes.

Though many writers like to think of themselves as primarily storytellers, yarn spinners, and fabulists, themes and ideas are inevitable.  Every work raises questions, examines possibilities, and imagines the consequences of actions.  You can't avoid meaning even if you want to.


I know he's not talking about RPGs, so a smidge of stretching applies.  Whether or not there's a bit of mistaking the part for the whole in how people react to Nar, or how Ron has interpreted Premise I don't know.

Nar doesn't have to be wham-bam, in your face, here's the damn PREMISE.  How forceful/mutatable you interpret the definition of Premise will greatly effect the scope that both Nar and Sim cover.

As we unearthed in the second beeg horseshoe thread listed above, 'moral or ethical question', is really just a GNS defense mechanism against having to argue about what the word 'story' means (leading me away from the 'Ron is mistaking the part for the whole' idea).  Nar is about story, it just isn't worded as such.

[Gordon C. Landis]

This may be repeating myself, but - Mike, no one can fully "denounce" 1 and 2.  They are quite plausible explanations that to my mind hold some grains of truth within 'em.  But my recommendation is to abandon any inclination to denounce or be offended by them, and rather simply realize they are only PART of the story.  Because what can be "denounced" is that 1 and/or 2 are the totality of sources for Sim - or even (depending upon opinion, somewhat) particularly important things about it.  In other words, the key thing to remember about 1 and 2 is "true, but don't go and get all synecdoceous [sorry, I couln't resist] with that."  Equally "denounceable" things can be said about the source of Nar and Game (the Hard Questions in each of Ron's essays are all about this, IMO - I see ALL those questions as equally challenging).

The other Sim parts/sources/reasons-why-it's-cool - hopefully I spoke to that some in my first post.  I particularly like the way Walt spoke to it, and the way your second post did.  The only bit I see as problematic in your second post is the claim that Sim only lives in a "crisis" and play in general then marches back towards story and victory.  I mean, you are (IMO) correct that story and victory are always THERE in all game play, just like Exploration is always there, but remember that Creative Agenda is all about priority.  Sim means we don't much CARE about story and victory, though they can be there and maybe sometimes we can even use 'em in the service of our Sim.

I've expressed my understanding of this in the past by saying little-s-sim, little-g-game, and little-n-nar are always present in every game, and GNS asks "which one does this actual instance of play capitalize?"  Going capital-S doesn't mean you have to retreat from addressing a premise/engaging with a challenge, it means you advance towards a different goal.  The goal of discovering/creating more Explorative material.  Which, yes, you COULD then use to address a premise.  Or not.  As long as you stay at "not", you're prioritizing Sim.  With pride and dignity.  We are emotionally invested in the creation/discovery (I disagree with your summary that Ron makes emotional connection with character a unique feature of Nar) as a thing/process itself, not for what it brings to bear on problematic human issues and/or our ability to meet challenges.

As I said in my other post, I think there's an interesting question as to what it means if as a *result* of Sim play - but emphatically *outside* of play - folks DO consider the Premise/Challenge implications of that play.  But that may not be relevant to your thread . . . hope my other stuff here was,

Gordon

[talysman]

You've explained Sim but not why it would draw so much attention.  Why would it be the predominant style of play and rules systems?  Why would a lack of interest in self cause such a stir?

I also question whether there really is a prioritization of the 'other', isnt it just a prioritization of ones vision of the other which is inherently about the self?  Unless you are talking about the character rather than the player when describing self and other.

I knew it was a mistake to say Self and Other, drawing in the philosophical connotations of those terms. I wasn't making a philosophical statement; sorry about introducing that confusion. let's call it Personal and Impersonal instead. all I was saying was that you can either be focused on inner desires (Personal) or on something external (Impersonal). if you have a "vision of the other which is inherently about the self", you have Sim in support of Gam or Nar, with Sim in a definite subordinate role -- which is not what Mike was talking about. he was talking about pure Sim as a distinct mode and where it stands in relation to the other two.

as for why Sim would be the predominate form -- is it? there have abeen a couple threads already after Ron's Nar essay that suggest that maybe a lot of people "playing Sim" were really playing Vanilla Nar with a heavy Sim underchassis, while others may have gone the Gam/Sim route instead. pure Sim may be rarer than we think.

now, there has been a definite Sim bias in game texts, which may need explaining. here is my theories of how it happened, based on my understanding of rpg history and social tendencies of gamers.

the first few rpgs were, of course, an outgrowth of wargaming, which I think itends towards a Gam/Sim hybrid. Mike suggested this as well. wargaming is mostly about the fun of the challenge and Step On Up, but there is a widespread love of inserting what pure Gamists would call irrelevant color. I think you can see this influence in white-box D&D texts: it's mainly intended to be a series of outdoor battles and underground Battleship-like maze puzzles connected together, but there are a few irrelevant details tossed in ... and early Dragon magazine articles expanded on this, inventing new spells or dungeon-stocking charts that had no direct Gamist purpose. each succeeding suppliment or edition becomes more and more detailed in the Sim underbody.

combine this with a lot of young male players with a technical or engineering bent. it's said that men tend to relate to other men in terms of external topics, like cars, sports, or machines, instead of in terms of feelings and relationships; that may all be a bunch of simlisitic claptrap, but I think most young technically-inclined males fit that stereotype very well. so what you get is a bunch of teen boys and colleg-age guys, some of whom have yet to learn to socialize, because nerdiness in the '70s and earlier was considered a social stigma; these guys learn to relate to each other through an external, impersonal topic, the world of the rpg, and begin inventing new material for these rpgs as a way to contribute to the "conversation".

consider also that the rpg community begins to fragment early on because of the diversity of play techniques. the most obvious split is between those who use minis and those who don't. I think the mini crowd remained more truly Sim/Gam, but those who played entirely on paper started to dislike the way combat tended to work and started simplifying it at first, then later becoming bored with the endless dungeon crawls (which aren't as much fun with simplified combat.) the GMs in particular may have been the most bored of all, so they started thinking of inserting plot-elements into the dungeon, thus drifting the game towards either Sim/Nar or a pure Sim Illusionist technique.

because of power and dysfunction issues, I have the feeling there were a lot of GMs who were too afraid to try any non-Force techniques that would have been necessary for Nar drift, so I think Illusionism came to be more common than Nar or Sim/Nar -- especially since a pure Sim Illusionist style needs a heck of a lot more background material than a more open true Nar game -- which means that most of the market for game products was for background materials intended for Sim games.

this does not mean that Sim dominated actual play, only that it dominated the market. there was simply more to be said about playing Illusionist rpgs, and enough Illusionist GMs with a never-ending need for material that it was somewhat lucrative to focus on Sim material.

that takes us up to the '80s, more or less. I'm not sure about how the history developed after that, but I suspect that a couple of games in the late '80s and early '90s accidentally broke the Sim text chokehold on the market, opening the way for more experimental system.

[M. J. Young]

(I've characterized a situation where I was playing Sim and my GM was playing Nar - a two player game, with tons of intense backwork on both of our part in between sessions. This connects to something about which I've been meaning to write here, namely that my former belief that drifting play is 'easier' or 'more natural' than many Forge luminaries suggest stems in part from the fact that a large fraction of my most interesting and intense RPG experiences have been one on one, either with me as GM or as player. It's easier for two people to get on the same page for drift than a greater number, especially if they love each other and are sensitive to each others' current needs. What I didn't realize is how exceptional these gaming situations were and how different they were from the larger group play that characterizes another large subset of my and virtually all of many people's gaming experiences....)

Interestingly, this is I think why Multiverser is so easy to drift: to a large degree it is designed to be parallel gaming, a half dozen players each playing his own game with the referee, sometimes coming together if they want to do so and the referee likes the idea, but otherwise each working with the referee to define the nature of his own adventures the way he prefers them.

So there's a lot to your one-on-one drift idea, although it works that way if the game is engineered to give the players independence from each other's choices.

When literary critics use this term [Theme--ed.], they generally mean the idea or point of a work. Writers are often made uncomfortable by questions like, "What is the theme of your novel?" It seems reductive, like someone asking, "What's the bottom line on this thing?" Writers hope that people will read and think about their work, understanding it through experience. Some writers respond evasively to questions about theme, saying things like, "It's just a story," or, as Mark Twain wrote in his notice preceeding The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot will be shot."

I can relate to that; I wrote Verse Three, Chapter One (which incidentally is being offered, along with all Valdron/Multiverser products, at an unprecedented discount at the moment--details on our http://www.gamingoutpost.com/forums/index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowThread&threadID=79216&messageID=79216&forumID=83&CustomSS=0&login=">Gaming Outpost Forum), went through several rewrites, a very lengthy interactive editing process, went to press, and was marketed and reviewed, and I had no idea that there was a theme in it--it was an adventure story. Yet as I looked back on it with some light thrown on by Aristotle's Poetics, I realized that I had made choices in the story which I knew had to be a certain way, all of which built toward the themes I had not consciously chosen. In particular, the entire first book (of what was already designated as first in a series) was really about one of the three characters, and I instinctively knew that that character had to be alone at the final climactic battle because this book was about that character--and further that that character would drop out of the second book (and return in the third) because that story had been told, and there wasn't really anything to say until a new story started (the seeds for which I had planted, but which needed a break before it started). At the same time, I started crafting the major incidents in a different character's life that would span the first three books in one story, but that story also had a theme--a different theme, in which the first character played a supporting role. However, I didn't see the theme I'd created around that character (nor the them I'd created that held the second book together, which focused on yet another character and relegated everyone else to supporting roles) until long after the first draft was finished.

Someone once asked Charles Schulz about the meanings in the Peanuts cartoon strips, and he responded by citing First Corinthians: to some is given the ability to speak in other languages, and to others the power to interpret what those languages mean. I think that we writers are often blind to what we're saying until long after we've said it, and it can be annoying when someone comes along and interprets something we wrote in an unanticipated way. The immediate reaction tends to be, "I didn't say that!--er, did I?"

Theme often emerges from choices, because somehow we have a sense of it.

That doesn't mean simulationism isn't a valid distinct priority (it is definitely about discovery--and Jay is correct that it is perfectly valid to discover aspects about Character, but Mike is correct that his description really does sound like narrativism).

I know I didn't address the questions (what were they again), but I hope this contributes something useful to the discussion.

--M. J. Young

[Asrogoth]

Well, I thought I might as well jump in somewhere and get some more posts under my belt, but I wanted to wait until I found something I felt I might be able to contribute to or at least seek to set forth my own meager ramblings.

On that note:

Mike,

It seems as though what you're saying is that Sim is the actual parent of all role-playing.  Now, I know that Ron's premise in the Creative Agenda/GNS is that there are three distinct styles of play.  The Creative Agenda flows out of the Social Contract to "Explore".  Role-playing games are all defined by "Exploration" and must fall within this category before being labelled in the Creative Agenda as "Gamist, Narrativist or Simulationist."

Are you suggesting that the "Explore" is actually Sim-gaming and subsequently that Sim is the curve in the BEEG HORSESHOE that keeps the whole shoe together?  (i.e. Gamism and Narrativism draw themselves out of Sim in order to define their "uniqueness", but that they owe their "existence" to the "exploration" of Sim.)

What I'm postulating/thinking you're saying is that Gamist and Narrativist forms of play depend on Sim play in order to function -- they must have some form of exploratory in order to be RPGs, otherwise Gamism would revert to Chess/Checkers/etc, and Narrativism would become camp-fire stories and the like?

Just curious...

[Mike Holmes]

I haven't had time to read and respond to all this (too busy playing) but I wanted to say that I will eventually.

Quickly, Asrogoth, the current theory says that Simulationism is simply prioritizing Exploration over Narrativism or Gamism over the long haul. Read the Beeg Horseshoe thread to get the idea of what the model "looks" like.

Mike

[Caldis]

Hey, just a couple of comments on this.

1) I think that Sim play can, and in my experience playing my old namesake (Calithena) often did, revolve around Exploration of Character. My GM for most of her adventures is heavily Nar-oriented, and he put a lot of time into setting up the game in ways which would make for good story, but I as player was not for the most part participating in those choices qua moral or story-creating choices in any relevant way. In other words: he gave me situations with premise-addressing choices, and I made my decisions not by addressing that premise but by exploring the character. I've often made decisions myself as GM which indicated Nar preferences on my part, but when I was playing Calithena I often just spent my time wondering what she would do. (This infuriated poor Del, the GM in question, who often had to sit for a half-hour or longer waiting for me to figure it out.) Sometimes this was immersionist, but sometimes I was just exploring my idea of her and trying to figure out how she would react. Again, in most of those games most of the time, it was the GM providing the Premise which my decisions were addressing, but I wasn't deciding in order to address premise - I was deciding as part of my imaginative exploration of the character. I felt a moral responsibility to my character to get her decisions right.

I agree with the others who said Jay's description was of narrativism rather than sim but I also think this example is by defintition more narrativist than sim.  You state that your choices were not designed to address premise rather to explore the character yet you created the character and gave her the moral outlook that drives her choices.  The very fact that you have choices that address her morals and that you chose based on her nature would seem to mean that you are making statements about the premise, you created your premise statement at character creation.  Of course I could just be missing your point, maybe an example of how the conflicting creative agendas came in to play would help?

On a broader level I think that from what I've seen in the narrativism essay and in the discussion taking place on these boards I'd have to state that the only valid form of Simulationism is Illusionism.

If Narrativism encompasses any rpg where the players are empowered to make the story building decisions that create both theme and premise, and that theme and premise arise naturally without concious effort to build them then there is no room in sim for empowered players.  The only venue for sim players is a type of game where they get a rush of excitement like being on a roller coaster, they dont control the twists turns or when the machine stops they're just along for the ride.

[Sean]

[I think this stuff, discussing my example, is veering towards off topic for this thread. So maybe Caldis' last post and this one should be a new thread. Moderator call, I suppose.]

Hey Caldis,

If I had to characterize the sessions in question, which occurred mostly in junior high school and early in high school, I would say that Del was 'playing Nar'; that we were 'playing Nar'; but that I was 'playing Sim'. And that all three of these things were observable in our play, on the basis of the decisions we made. Del's Nar trumped my Sim in our games as characteristic of play as a whole during that period because he knew me and my character so well as to essentially create choices which were theme-laden whether I knew it or not, or cared, or was trying to address things at a moral or story level.

So I'd accept that we were playing Nar, but I still wouldn't say that I was, because at that time I still was under the delusion that 'making story' was the GM's business and that I was supposed to 'play my character'.

I disagree strenuously with your characterization of my play as Nar merely because I created the character and gave her the moral outlook that drove her choices. First of all, lots of characters played by and in hard-core Gamist RPGing have a moral outlook which drives their choices, ditto with Sim. The question is: what are you doing with that moral outlook and how does it affect play? Here are some examples of how I think of it:

In predominantly Gamist play, it only comes up for extra characterization and color, and to influence decisions that are relatively neutral tactically (e.g. "My father was murdered by orcs, so I go after the orcs instead of the goblins", where you're just confronted by an tactically indistinguishable mass of humanoids.)

In predominantly Simulationist play, you use the character's moral outlook as a beacon to tell you what you would do in that situation. Not: what do I want to do? (except in the sense that you want to do what you would do) or: "what would drive the story forward best here?" but: what would my guy do.  This is exactly how I addressed Calithena's crises in junior high, and that's why I think I was playing Sim. I was not trying to create her story, or use her character to address the hard moral choices that Del was offering me: what I did was to think long and hard about what she was like until it seemed like I knew what sort of decision she 'had to make' because of 'who she was'.

In more Narrativist play I think there's often more of a tendency to find out 'who someone is' by seeing what they do and how they answer the question implicit in their Premise. Or if you want to forget the moral stuff, there's more of a tendency to say: hey, how can I make a cool story with this character, not, hey, what would this character do in this situation?

Now, ok, exploration of character of some kind will come up in play in all three modes, etc. etc. But the question is, when the hard decisions come up - when you have a choice between the different priorities, or when you're bummed out at the way something has gone to the point where you're considering fudging rolls, or when your players' actions (or your actions) have the chance of taking the game in two radically different directions, which way do you go?

In those games with Del, during the period in question, with the important points in the game, he almost always went Nar, and I almost always went Sim, in a way that would have broken a bigger game with people who weren't so close as we were and are. But it was definitely those experiences that made me think you could have coherent drift, because those games were really, really satisfying. But in retrospect I think it was the two-person format and our close friendship that really made this possible.

[Caldis]

If I had to characterize the sessions in question, which occurred mostly in junior high school and early in high school, I would say that Del was 'playing Nar'; that we were 'playing Nar'; but that I was 'playing Sim'. And that all three of these things were observable in our play, on the basis of the decisions we made. Del's Nar trumped my Sim in our games as characteristic of play as a whole during that period because he knew me and my character so well as to essentially create choices which were theme-laden whether I knew it or not, or cared, or was trying to address things at a moral or story level.

So I'd accept that we were playing Nar, but I still wouldn't say that I was, because at that time I still was under the delusion that 'making story' was the GM's business and that I was supposed to 'play my character'.

This seems to make Mike's original point.  When you say you thought your job was to play your character then it seems to me you lack a creative agenda, you werent trying to create something in the game you are simply experiencing it.  You didnt prefer to play simulationist, that is just what you thought rpg's were. I would assume over time your taste changed, that you no longer feel that way, story isnt the sole province of the GM?

As more developed tastes narrativism and gamism required further skills and understanding of the game to actively engage.  The skills necessary to be a gamist are wide spread since just about everyone has played some kind of game, to be a narrativist is harder since storytelling skills are not as wide spread.

I disagree strenuously with your characterization of my play as Nar merely because I created the character and gave her the moral outlook that drove her choices.

I withdraw the statement because it was definitely wrong, however I think creating the moral outlook of the characters is a training step towards narrativism.  I say this as someone who has struggled in developing the skills of narrativism.  I did not come into rpg's with any storytelling background but can easily now tell where my preference lies, and the many missteps I took along the path.

[Jason Lee]

On a broader level I think that from what I've seen in the narrativism essay and in the discussion taking place on these boards I'd have to state that the only valid form of Simulationism is Illusionism.

Someone will come along and tell you that Sim needs freedom.  It is the very freedom of choice in exploration that defines Sim.  Then someone will say that it is the very freedom of choice that defines Nar.  Then someone will say the same thing about Gam.

Then someone might ask, "I've seen so much Force, Illusionism in particular, in actual play.  Who's to blame?  If all these mode require freedom, where's the mode that requires force?  I see so damn much of it."

I think this is very much the 'moral or ethical question' / 'MORAL OR ETHICAL QUESTION' perception.  A hard and clear Premise is Force, "It's removing my freedom.  Sim grants me freedom from Premise.  Nar is Force."

Or contrarily, "To play Sim I cannot devote attention to theme or challenge.  Sim is an unatural way to play because someone must be trained to ignore their natural inclination toward challenge/theme.  Sim is Force."

I don't buy it.  Force is a Technique; it's a factor independent from Creative Agenda.  You can have Force in Nar/Sim/Gam, it doesn't break any of them anymore than personal preference defines, no mode is more dependent upon player freedom than another.  In my opinion Bangs are Force, a small dose of Illusionism.  Force can be good, when used to move things forward (Bangs).  Force can be bad when it removes desired player freedoms, regardless of mode (railroading).

Just a hunch, but that might be part of why people fight so hard to define their play as whatever mode seems least like Force to them.

*****

In predominantly Simulationist play, you use the character's moral outlook as a beacon to tell you what you would do in that situation. Not: what do I want to do? (except in the sense that you want to do what you would do) or: "what would drive the story forward best here?" but: what would my guy do. This is exactly how I addressed Calithena's crises in junior high, and that's why I think I was playing Sim. I was not trying to create her story, or use her character to address the hard moral choices that Del was offering me: what I did was to think long and hard about what she was like until it seemed like I knew what sort of decision she 'had to make' because of 'who she was'.

In more Narrativist play I think there's often more of a tendency to find out 'who someone is' by seeing what they do and how they answer the question implicit in their Premise. Or if you want to forget the moral stuff, there's more of a tendency to say: hey, how can I make a cool story with this character, not, hey, what would this character do in this situation?

I think Caldis is right here.  That attention to the morals of the character, adhering to the consistency of it, is what I'd call addressing theme (assuming she ever had to make decisions based upon her beliefs).

With the Nar play reference, maybe you are seeing the PREMISE as Force?  Your wording here sort of implies to me that the Premise is what makes the player's decisions in Nar play, not the player and not consistency.  In Nar play players can avoid/change/alter the Premise all they like without thinking about doing it, and consistency can still make decisions (it should for it to be any good, in my opinion).

That's what I'm reading between the lines.  Let me know if I'm off base here.