Understanding: the "it" of Simulationism

[Mike Holmes]

It's "congruent" in that nobody who's looking for support of any mode will complain about it. Unless, interestingly, they were "purely" narrativist or gamist. In which case, they'd say that this play is completely ancillary. Like theories of directing movies that bemoan the scene where the guy drives up, gets out of the car, and walks inside the building. To those people, you're not "really playing" then. Because to them the exploration elements are useless. They really want to play a game or write a novel.

To the extent that's true, Zilch is more closely related to exploration and sim that any other mode.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

Walt, that's getting close. "Split sim" how?

Well, that's an interesting question. It's not so much splitting Sim as an end in itself, but rather as a consequence of splitting Exploration, in such a way as to clearly distinguish between the exploration that's inherent in all role playing and the exploration that's "exploration squared" in Agenda Theory Simulationism. The same problem you're wrestling with, it seems.

My earlier attempt to do that was in terms of creative vs. noncreative. This ran afoul of a problem: for some, "creative" contribution to the shared imagined space seemed to automatically imply overt director-stance proclamations out of the blue (leading to the conclusion that the distinction was only a stance issue), while others seemed to construe any player expression about the shared imagined space (including, presumably, "my character crosses the street") as exhibiting creativity (leading to the conclusion that non-creative exploration can only occur outside of role playing).

So, now I'm looking for another way to express the distinction. I'm currently considering putting it in terms of the expected vs. the unexpected. This seems whimsical at first, but it actually, to me, seems to tie in with a lot of fundamental concepts involved in role playing:

- A player's decision can only reveal anything I didn't already know or believe about that player's Agenda if it is unexpected. Think about it.

- A while ago I observed that Creative Agenda only seems meaningful when it is contingent or "at risk" -- that is, I can only Step On Up when there is risk that I will not succeed; creating Story Now requires enough expressive freedom to allow the possibility of creating a poor story; and in my Sim experiences the most interesting exploration has occurred when the safety nets preventing the breaking of fidelity or internal consistency have been thinnest -- not because breaking fidelity/consistency is a good thing, but because the explored elements are more interesting if the participants have authority powerful enough that they could break it if misused. That is, precisely, the power to introduce the unexpected.

- The introduction of the unexpected is one of the strongest reasons for creating a shared imagined space with other participants, rather than to just imagine and create (write, etc.) by myself. It's logical therefore that who does what that's unexpected in play will be particularly important when I'm judging whether the experience was rewarding to me.

Zilchplay is then, very fundamentally, role playing without doing anything unexpected. (Unexpected by whom? The other participants. In a traditionally structured game, it's far more likely that the GM is expected to surprise the players but not vice versa. It's still zilchplay for the players if they're the only ones being surprised during play. A zilchplaying GM might be possible but is certainly much rarer. But I believe this is consistent with reality; I think more GMs have non-zilchplay (especially Sim) creative agendas than players do.)

Zilchplay is irrellevant to both my model and the original one in one way. Because in both models the only thing that creates an agenda or an annoyance, are those moments that aren't zilchplay.

Very true. In fact, if you call the zilchplay moments "not role playing," then the whole idea drops out of the frame and leaves the original theory, which applies to role playing only, untouched. However, zilchplay is not "not role playing" in the same way that deciding on pizza toppings is "not role playing." Zilchplay is a form of imagining of character, system, etc., it is an activity with intrisic aesthetic appeal for many, and it is role playing by most people's understanding.

So, the hypothesis is that zilchplay IS exploration. The moments that create Agenda -- let's say, the moments that create your Agenda  -- are the moments when you do something unexpected to the shared imagined space and the other players react to it. So you can envision a ground state of ongoing zilchplay. Against that background there might occur moments that reveal or define Agenda: making a decison that addresses Premise (which by definition cannot be a foregone conclusion, and is therefore not expected), rising to a challenge (a challenge has no Step On Up if the manner of addressing it is fixed -- win or lose, there's little social esteem at stake in going through the motions, so it's what unexpected actions are taken that's key), or acting to add unexpected creation or discovery to the shared imagined space. So you have a baseline of exploration/zilchplay, plus some combination of Agenda-expressing moments that add either Step On Up, Story Now, or More Exploration. That's GNS, pretty much as we know it, except that the Z in there should be acknowledged.

But if Z is Simulationism, then we have the horseshoe. That is, a baseline of exploration/Simulationism, with Agenda-expressing moments that add either Step On Up, Story Now, or More Simulationism. Sim becomes universal; the other Agendas become "Sim plus." That's the beeg horseshoe.

(Note: One big pitfall in this whole concept is the distinction between the unexpected and the unpredictable -- to wit, dice rolls. My current thinking is that randomness doesn't amount to unexected-ness: I might be surprised by a roll of 01 on d100, but the 1 in 100 chance of that result isn't unexpected. But that doesn't really resolve the issue.)

So, sans that, the original model says that Sim is a moment where you could have promoted gamism or narrativism, but you didn't. That's a negative view, however.

I don't think the original model really says that. As I currently understand it, Sim is where you groove on the exploration a whole bunch. And the whole idea of the significance of "moments" is pretty much discounted.

The problem is categorizing zilchplay as Sim (it's still "grooving on exploration" in a very passive way), which makes everything else look like Sim+, which leads to the confusion.

If you had a moment where you could go gamist, and did, then how would you know it? I mean, play can be congruent (zilchplay is), so if you're playing such that sim and gam are both supported, then you don't really know the priority at that point. Right? It can only be that you don't support sim, when it becomes obvious that you're playing gamist, right?

But what does that mean?

The previously quoted paragraph sends you off the rails; this is where the fiery crash ensues. Zilchplay is indeed congruent (indeed, a question I expect to wrestle with in the future is whether congruent play must be zilchplay). But in my version, you can recognize Sim when you see non-zilchplay (or approximately, players doing the unexpected) that is not Gamist or Narrativist (or approximately, players doing the unexpected to enhance exploration). I'm trying to define zilchplay as something observable other than the lack of an agenda per se (which would make it all circular, zilchplay isn't sim because it isn't sim) which is why I've been mulling the whole doing-only-the-expected idea.

If sim is just more exploration, and gamism and narativism have exploration, then how can you fail to support sim when playing in these forms? Where would the conflict come in? Because you're not supporting that "extra" exploration that makes it "squared"? I'm not buying it.

Because of where you're putting the constraints on where players inject their signal (or noise). Focusing on a Premise is a severe constraint on one's doing many types of unexpected things in or to the shared imagined space. (Otherise, why not just run away from Master and see whether the castle next door has a better working environment?)

No, I agree with MJ that when you do gamism or narrativism that you're not doing something, something that's unique to sim. He wants to call it discovery, but I don't think that we need another term. I think that it's exploration. That you when you're playing gamist, or narrativist, you're not exploring. You're dropping that exploratory feel. Else you're playing congruently, and there's no conflict at all.

I agree with this, I just used different terms. I keep the broad meaning of "exploring" but make a subset of exporation (zilchplay) irrelevant to distinguishing between agendas. Exploration-squared is player engagement with exploration such that players are sufficiently involved to make unexpected decisions in its pursuit.

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

I think we're mostly saying the same things. I agree that Sim can only be detected in cases where gamism and narrativism are rejected (and that those also share the same qualities). My point you quoted was just to say that the other modes are the same in this way, to prove that there must be something special to sim (exploration).

So your split theory is that Sim is about encountering (creating, or discovering another's creation) of something unexpected? How must that neccessarily conflict with narrativism and gamism? If it's only "the unexpected that is also exploration" then I'm failing to see it as independent of exploration, or, indeed by the definition of exploration, of any other form of play. If it's unexpected sim stuff, you're creating a tautology.

What am I missing?

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

On another thread, Sean wrote:

3) The 'Freitag theory', also discussed in the other thread: GNSZ, where people just play without any particular agenda in addition to the other three modes. This seems like implausible psychology to me, since surely you're trying to get something out of your play, no matter how incoherent, attenuated, or just plain weak your desires are, but who knows...

The distinction I'm trying to make is not what the player is getting out of their play, it's what they're putting into it.

Zilchplay has an agenda; it's being told a story while engaging in manipluation of some arcana that makes it appear and feel that you're doing something of greater import than that. (The folks schooled in Ritual Discourse should find that pretty familiar ground.)

Mike, the split theory (which is rough and unfinished, remember) is that Sim is about making unexpected (to others) changes in the shared imagined space (not necessarily the setting, of course; most usually, the situation). "Encountering" or discovering another's creation of the unexpected doesn't count, otherwise watching a movie (if you hadn't seen it before) would be Sim.

I don't think that must necessarily conflict with Nar and Gam. And "doing the unexpected that is also exploration" is distinct from exploration in general because (and only because) of the "doing" part. However, you are correct about the related point: I haven't shown that this activity as thus described is unique to Simulationism, and in fact I don't think it is. This leaves us with a still-negative Sim: "doing the unexpected in exploration that is not Gam or Nar."

The only way I know to remove the negative altogether is to look past the player's act and infer its purpose or, if that is too ineffable a concept, its meaning when interpreted as self-expression. If the unexpected action is about addressing a Premise, it's Narrativist behavior, even if as a side effect it changes/adds-to the shared imagined space. If the unexpected action is about changing or adding to the shared imagined space, it's Simulationist. If the action is not unexpected, if it's prescribed or formulaic or otherwise already known in advance, then it cannot really be about anything (even if it has the effect in play of changing or adding to the shared imagined space); i.e. it's zilchplay.

Of course, what any single player action is "about" is going to be impossible to intepret, just as you can't tell what an essay is about by looking at any single word (or even, most likely, any one entire sentence or pargraph) out of context. That's why, I believe, current Agenda theory doesn't describe Agenda as being discernable or applicable on the scale if individual player actions or moments in play.

- Walt

[Jason Lee]

I was going to post this right after M.J. popped up this thread, but I was busy and tired.  Shame on me.  I'm going to try to be concise, but I hope my point doesn't become unclear in the process.

I think M.J.'s "it" is the only viable definition, from our current options, that makes sense in the model.

Defining Sim in reference to Exploration isn't going to work.  Exploration Squared, More Exploration, or Exploration Whatever leads us into a circular definition of Sim.  By roleplaying you're Exploring, within that layer rests Creative Agenda - the purpose behind your Exploration.  The purpose behind Exploration can't be Exploration, it's tautological.  

A negative definition of Sim, the priority that isn't Nar/Gam, isn't going to work either.  Doing nothing isn't a goal (Yes, we could argue the details of this, but I hope you take my meaning.  M.J. has already hit this one, so I'm just repeating.).

This is in addition to the arguements that these both bring up about quantity of Exploration.  As if roleplaying is five subroutines you have to distribute processing power across, and that if you could just cut mental resources from Creative Agenda you could pump more into Exploration.  This hinges upon viewing the mental process of roleplaying in a way that I think is incorrect - viewing the actual mental process in the same five little chunks the model groups roleplaying elements into.

Either definition leads to a need to fix Sim; such as with the Beeg Horseshoe Theory, or by being more radical and declaring it doesn't exist.

This "it" has to be able to stand independently within the [Creative Agenda] layer as a clearly conflicting priority.  Is Discovery/Understanding/Knowledge "it"?  I don't know - I don't see Discovery consistently conflicting with theme or challenge, but I'm willing to accept that it's the language and not the concept that's failing.  I remain open-minded, but skeptical, that this "it" exists.  This seems to tie into the fundamental nature of human curiosity.  

M.J., I think you're on the right track and I want to be on that train with you, but I'm uncertain I'll get off at the same stop.

[Emily Care]

Walt,

What I'm hearing is that zilchplay is exploration without intent, so to speak. Or role-playing that neither engages nor expresses any creative agenda and is in fact reactive to the catalyzing input of another player's expression of their creative agenda, though it may not appear to be so.  

Sounds good, and I'd love to see sim split up into something managable that people could agree exists. But can play really be unmotivated? In the model, as soon as two or three come together and play, you've got creative agenda.  You're positing a world where (perhaps) the most common situation is a game where one person (the gm) has a CA, and most others (the players) don't have one, or at least may get on just fine without one. That's a very different world than the one that gns has been thought to inhabit.

When do you cross out of zilchplay? Is that a personal decision? Is it based on the other players' interest in what you do? If not, how do we discern whether an action is "expected" or not?  A player may put a lot of care and thought and hold attachment to an action that another would judge to be formulaic.  This reminds me of the concept of pastiche, also. How attached to the concept of expected/unexpected are you? Do you see zilchplay as being limited to actions that seem formulaic?

Just trying to get clearer. Hope it's of use.

And cruciel: I agree. Perhaps that's a good approach--determining exactly what the point of conflict is between sim and other priorities.  If it isn't versimilitude (either to a source or to continuity within the game world), since that underscores everything, what else is it that we mean by sim?

I'm starting to wonder if we're boxing ourselves in by thinking in the same categories over and over.

Regards,
Emily

[Jason Lee]

And cruciel: I agree. Perhaps that's a good approach--determining exactly what the point of conflict is between sim and other priorities.  If it isn't versimilitude (either to a source or to continuity within the game world), since that underscores everything, what else is it that we mean by sim?

Heh, thanks.  Yeah, "it" can't be defined by verisimilitude/causality/integrity either.  Symptoms of Sim play sure, but not unique.

I'm starting to wonder if we're boxing ourselves in by thinking in the same categories over and over.

A new form of Gamer-behavior-by-habit?  Maybe.  Though, prolly not so long as we keep prodding at the walls of the box like this.

[M. J. Young]

Thanks for the input, Walt. I am going to have to consider your Zilchplay category; my initial reaction is that it never adds up to an "instance of play" until something is prioritized, but that sounds silly. More to the point, I'm not persuaded that your characterization of module play goes that direction--you wind up with "let's prioritize exploring what this module is about", and whether it's setting or situation or system (or even character, as in the characters presented in the module) you're focused on exploring some aspect of the shared imaginary space provided by the module that wasn't there without it. This might be "vanilla simulationism"; I'm not sure yet.

So, sans that, the original model says that Sim is a moment where you could have promoted gamism or narrativism, but you didn't. That's a negative view, however.

Yes, and one I'm rejecting.

Let me pull some actual play examples, stripped to some bare bones, from Multiverser.

[*]The character has learned of the existence of the spiders in the glass city. He knows that many others have faced these creatures and died merely trying to escape, but he's got the information that has been gathered about them. He wants to fight one of the spiders, and defeat it. So he arms himself, heads to the glass city, and attacks a spider. I know he's playing gamist, not because he's not playing narrativist or simulationist, but because he is prioritizing the challenge of fighting the spiders.

[*]The character has met other versers, and been told he will never go home again; his status as an unaging immortal has been described to him, as well as the process of dying and coming to life in new worlds perpetually. Stunned by this, the character begins trying to think of ways he could send a message home. He asks questions about telepathy, about the rumored scriff mail, about any technique that might make it possible to contact his loved ones and let them know he is all right. He struggles with coming to terms with his new identity, whether to embrace what he has been told or reject it. You can't go home again, he has been told, but what does that mean to him? I know he's playing narrativist, not because he isn't playing gamist or simulationist, but because he is prioritizing the issue of who he is if he has been forever exiled from his home and family.

[*]The character has discovered the mobile home, a converted truck with a gasoline engine for the electrical generator and a diesel engine for mobility. He needs fuel for it. Remembering that most gasoline engines can be adjusted to run on alcohol, and that alcohol is created by the action of yeast on sugars, he gathers a large amount of the sweet grass, mixes it with some water, adds a bit of yeast, and attempts to ferment and distil fuel. It works; he winds up with a black tarry substance which he discards. This substance hardens to something very rock-like; he realizes he has a building material. He starts to build walls to protect his area against the more dangerous creatures that roam the plain; he builds machines to make cloth, rope, and paper from the fibers of the plants; he builds a kiln to make pottery from the clay-like soil, and a water tower so he can pump water to it and have water pressure here--gradually he builds a city. Studying the native creatures, he realizes one of these has a high concentration of sulphur in its system, an element he has not seen since his arrival. Contriving a way to dig below the water table, he proceeds to search for this and other materials which might be useful in his quest to understand the world in which he is stranded. I know that he is playing simulationist, not because he is not playing gamist or narrativist, but because he is prioritizing efforts to understand and use the world around him.

[*]The character arrives at the city known as Umak Tek, where a few versers (and no one else) live. He selects one of the empty houses and places his things there, gets his meals with the others, and hangs out doing nothing all day. He's not prioritizing anything. I know that he's not really into playing the game; he's waiting for me to tell him what he's supposed to be doing, and that's not my job. The game doesn't really start until I find a way to hook him into prioritizing one of the three agenda--zilchplay does not produce an instance of play, it is nothing. It doesn't become an instance of play until the player wants something and acts in a way that will produce it.[/list:u]

If sim is just more exploration, and gamism and narativism have exploration, then how can you fail to support sim when playing in these forms? Where would the conflict come in? Because you're not supporting that "extra" exploration that makes it "squared"? I'm not buying it.

Maybe Simulationism is more than one thing. Let's look at it this way.

[*]When you are exploring premise, that's narrativism.[*]When you are exploring challenge, that's gamism.[*]When you are exploring character, that's simulationism.[*]When you are exploring system, that's simulationism.[*]When you are exploring setting, that's simulationism.[*]When you are exploring situation, that's simulationism.[*]When you are exploring color, that's simulationism.[/list:u]But as I write that, I realize that this is not true; you can explore all those "simulationism" things as gamist or narrativist aspects; but you are then exploring X in support of challenge or exploring X in support of premise. In simulationism, you are exploring X in support of discovery.

No, I agree with MJ that when you do gamism or narrativism that you're not doing something, something that's unique to sim. He wants to call it discovery, but I don't think that we need another term....

Ron does have his "Dream" thing - is that the same as your "discovery" MJ? Interesting that nobody has brought that up so far. I too find it lacking in describing what's going on in RPGs.

I don't think we need another term, really; I think we need to clarify and understand what it is that simulationists are prioritizing. We've got a lot of words we throw around to talk about what gamists are prioritizing, and a few that describe narrativist priorities, but with simulationism we just sort of say, "Um, yeah--exploring to, I don't know, to explore." We are exploring to prioritize something, and that something is discovery, or knowledge, or understanding--it's very much in that vein. We want to learn something, so we explore to discover it.

The Dream probably is what I mean. I think "the dream" may be a bit more tied to immersionism (at least in its flavor) than I expect--there are people whose simulationist experience is enhanced by immersion, but there are those whose simulationist experience is enhanced by pawn stance ("I'll get my guy to do this, and that will reveal something else I want to know; sure, that doesn't sound so much like something he would do, but it gets the information.") But yes, I'd say that Discovery is an effort to find a more concrete word to describe The Dream. In a recent thread, I stumbled on Glory as a better word to describe what it was that gamists were seeking; I don't find Step On Up to mean much to me as a phrase, personally, but it brings out that Challenge is not entirely adequate (although good). Glory is what gamists are after, I think; Discovery is what simulationists are after. I'm not trying to add to terminology, exactly, but to identify this thing that keeps eluding us.

Anyhow, either I'm with MJ that if exploration underlies all play that there's something unique to sim that is supported by it that's not being identified, and being put off as exploration squared.

That's where I think we need to be. It does exist, as they say. As C. S. Lewis once said, the feeling is very specific; it's the language that's vague. We're looking for the right words to identify something in which we are engaged, because it is part of the nature of our thought processes that words focus concepts for us, and without them our concepts tend to be nebulous, and our expressions thereof moreso.

Are we closer?

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

Just noting that I cross-posted with the last three posts, which were all good; I'll be thinking about them.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

Wouldn't you know, everytime these boards get hot on Sim, I start work again with 15 hour days and can't get involved!

Fascinating reading all!

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Rob Carriere]

If it's not pissing off the simulationist, then it's functionally hybrid. By definition.

Aha!  Suddenly I understand where I was missing your point.  I agree, pure X-mode means that Y and Z fans willed be pissed for any permutation of X, Y, Z. But what if I want to be able to characterize hybrid play? The way the silly thing I keep in my head works, that's how I get the categories to `click', by exploring their boundaries. The problem I have with getting GNS straightened out in my head is that `piss-off' tests get less and less reliable as you get closer to the boundary between the modes.

I realize that a major force behind GNS is the diagnosis of dysfunction, and to that purpose the `piss-off' tests will work fine, of course. That just doesn't help me very much...

SR
---

[Sean]

That's interesting, Walt. What you describe sounds like low-protagonism exploration. And I suppose what's being debated here, again, is whether

a) low-protagonism (or just low-engagement more generally) exploration is just a mild form of Sim (traditional GNS), or

b) whether all RPGs start out tacking towards this goal, while some choose to go full speed ahead on it, and others tack towards Gam or Nar instead (Mike's rewrite of Beeg Horseshoe, which posits the underlying reality of gaming as a sort of low-grade exploration with elements of all three, and the question is which you want to focus and why), or

c) whether this sort of play shouldn't count as Sim (because there's no 'squared' in the exploration) and rather should be regarded as its own distinct mode (Freitag).


(b) could be made consistent with (c) if we wanted to give the modes a 'hard' reading. On the other hand, I'm trying to push Mike (and at least some of the things he's said imply this, though others may not) towards a softer reading: what he's saying is something like 'RPGing starts out essentially Sim, with elements of the other two modes, and then, if you want, you can really focus on one of those elements to make your gameplay more intense'. In other words, Mike's emphasizing the choice to intensify your gaming as a positive rather than warning abuot the dangers of incoherence as a negative. (There's also this stuff in what he writes about Sim being the 'purest mode' or whatever, but I don't really care about that. Plus even if he's right that all RPing starts out Sim, it's still a genetic fallacy to suppose that that's thereby 'pure' in any positive sense. All meat starts out uncooked.)


I'm trying to look at this thing in terms of the Big Model, where people form a Social Contract to Explore and within that develop a Creative Agenda that they want to pursue (and which, on Ron's view, actually drives their gaming decisions).

Insofar as I see Mike as saying anything different than what I think I've seen Ron saying, it seems to be something like this: the Social Contract to Explore is already a Creative Agenda, whether known to the agents involved or not (who of course can also not be aware that they're forming a social contract or reflected on the fact that what they're doing in a general way is exploration of shared imaginative space, blah blah blah). So that when you set out in a group to Explore there's already a creative agenda involved in some sense, from the very beginning. You might discover more what that agenda is through play, just like you might realize things about the social contract in play, or you might develop your understanding of the possibilities of exploration through play.

Now you might note that some role-players don't seem very clued in about the possibilities of play, or basically just want someone else to tell them a story, or never really get intense or focus on anything. Is this a separate mode? Partly the dispute here is terminological, but: if I understand what Mike's saying right, it can't be a genuinely separate mode on his view. On the other hand, there is room for Z within traditional GNS, but it's a weird sort of room: the players are deviating from Z every time they make any decision which affects game-play. So it has to be full-on GM storytelling plus lots of illusionism. And even then, I suppose, we have to ask about the GMs desires: he doesn't seem to be playing Z, and his desires seem to be dictating what the group's doing. So the game as a whole still seems like it can't be Z: it's just the GM's creative agenda being 'shared' or 'enforced' on the rest of the group.

OK, so these are some of my thoughts on that.

[Caldis]

The character has discovered the mobile home, a converted truck with a gasoline engine for the electrical generator and a diesel engine for mobility. He needs fuel for it. Remembering that most gasoline engines can be adjusted to run on alcohol, and that alcohol is created by the action of yeast on sugars, he gathers a large amount of the sweet grass, mixes it with some water, adds a bit of yeast, and attempts to ferment and distil fuel. It works; he winds up with a black tarry substance which he discards. This substance hardens to something very rock-like; he realizes he has a building material. He starts to build walls to protect his area against the more dangerous creatures that roam the plain; he builds machines to make cloth, rope, and paper from the fibers of the plants; he builds a kiln to make pottery from the clay-like soil, and a water tower so he can pump water to it and have water pressure here--gradually he builds a city. Studying the native creatures, he realizes one of these has a high concentration of sulphur in its system, an element he has not seen since his arrival. Contriving a way to dig below the water table, he proceeds to search for this and other materials which might be useful in his quest to understand the world in which he is stranded. I know that he is playing simulationist, not because he is not playing gamist or narrativist, but because he is prioritizing efforts to understand and use the world around him.
--M. J. Young

Can he not also be "stepping on up" to the challenge of surving the foreign landscape?     Can he not also be trying to survive so he can address the issue present in your example of the narrativist?

Again this comes back to the point of Simulationism not precluding something built on top of it.  What if the spiders from the glass city in your gamist example are the creatures with sulphur in their system in the sim example.  Does going out to kill them then become sim or is it gamist?  What if a situation develops every game session that is resolved by the challenge of combat, and if not the player gets bored, is it still sim or is it gamist?

Even in an old style dungeon hack adventure there are some elements of sim taking place,  they are just fewer and farther between than in most games, there is exploration of a limited setting .  

What I like about the Beeg Horseshoe theory is that it makes me see things as more natural, with preferences blending into one another rather than being three distinct boxes that play styles are thrown into.  Any overlap of the three boxes must create a new box called Hybrid.

[Silmenume]

Just a quick thought on 5 hours of sleep...

I posit that in very low intensity exploration it is virtually impossible to distinguish agenda precisely because those "agenda decisions/choices" are so infrequent and so low intensity and the social rewards and social reinforcements are so low key that distinguishing data points get lost in the background noise.

As player interests/motivations/drives (emotional investment?) become more focused or intense the "agenda decisions" become more pronounced and play (the exploration action) starts taking on notable CA characteristics.  Where is this transition from "zilchplay" to CA play takes places is a gray area, much the question posited in another post about when is a game "Narrativist" enough not to be considered "Simulationist" anymore.

This low intensity style of play (straight Exploration - not Sim) I would call, and I do not mean this with any negative connotations on any level, a "beer and pretzels" game.  In this style of game the social aspect is the highest reward and the game itself is more or less just an excuse for people to get together in some form of communal activity.  Something akin to penny ante poker.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Sean]

Ah - so it's back to the 'social' mode, now, is it?

I don't think 'beer and pretzels' should be used this way, FWIW. "Beer and pretzels" gaming has always pretty clearly denoted low-intensity Gamism in my lexicon. Tunnels and Trolls, OD&D & 1e, WFRP, and even Fantasy Trip all can be used to facilitate this in my experience. I believe there are mechanical features of 3e which tend to ramp up the Gamism out of the 'beer and pretzels' area, as I suspect (no play experience) would Rune. (Like, I might add, penny ante poker - though as with 3e you have to 'work against the system' here to keep it low-intensity, since the chief way to make poker more interesting is to bring more money into it. I made $50 + a week playing poker in high school, played even with some semipro gamblers in grad school, and have a friend who's played in the World Series twice and done OK, so I'm not just talking out of my ass  here - it's a common feature of casual poker games that they tend to get less and less casual as time goes on, which takes conscious effort on the part of most participants to avoid.)

But OK, that's an aside. Silmenume, you seem to be using "Sim" as a kind of term of praise, and I'm not sure that's where we should take it, though it does make your view line up with Walt's in an interesting way. As far as I can see, if a play-group makes decisions, those decisions involve some kind of goals, and though play can be arbitrarily weakly attenuated, we can characterize the direction those goals are taking the group, and since Z (straight exploration) is by definition directionless, whenever the group is doing anything at all that affects the game, they aren't really playing Z.

It is true that if what a group wants is low-intensity gaming, GNS may not be of much use to them. If they're happy just sort of wandering around, making decisions on the spur of the moment, etc., then maybe that's all there is to say about that. But I still think their play could be properly characterized in GNS terms, based on whatever decisions they were making. Maybe it's just important to remember that people can be happy with that, and that 'incoherence' or 'weak attention to Creative Agenda' is only a problem if a group wants to ramp up the intensity of their play in some way.

It's like this: if you see someone playing tennis badly, you ask them: don't you want to do better? Here, hold the racket like this. But then if they say: listen, thanks, man, but I just hack on the weekends, I don't really care about getting any better than I am, then in a sense that's OK, though we might wish they were more devoted to their chosen game. The thing is, since role-playing doesn't _have_ to involve 'winning' and 'losing', people playing low-intensity G, N, or S aren't necessarily 'playing badly' in the way that the tennis hacker is; they're just not interested in some of the deeper Step on Up/Dream/Story-Creating possibilities of what they're doing. They don't want to intensify or cohere whatever G, N, or S is already in their play. But that doesn't mean it's not there.