Understanding: the "it" of Simulationism

[Mike Holmes]

Jay, that's always been part of the model, as I understand it. Agenda only becomes notable in certain circumstances.


Caldis, you're reading my mind. I'm not even sure that MJ's examples would ammount to "Instances of Play" to Ron. They're more the elements that add to the mix, as I see it.


Sean, simulationism is only "pure" in the sense that nothing has been added to the base element. Any attempt by anyone to see some pro-sim agenda here is doomed to failure, because I play with plenty of narrativism, and, some would say, a potentially dangerous amount of competitive gamism. Note my ideas about how to "game" My Life With Master, a game which others would call purely narrativist.

What I want to see, laid bare, is people think in terms of hybrid models. I don't want them to say anymore "Is my game Sim or Nar?" when it's plainly supportive of both in some ways. That is, Ron is right that there's a priority somewhere, but it doesn't negate the importance of the "supporting" modes of play. Meaning that no mode can be ghetoized as a retreat from another when in fact, they aren't in that the other mode is actually "back-supported" by the first.

I'm glad that you see this as also positivist, Sean, when there is the negativist part of my argument that still says that GNS is all about establishing coherence (or more extrememly as I say avoiding the incoherence of players pissing each other off).

the Social Contract to Explore is already a Creative Agenda

I think that's just Ron's arrow right there passing from Social Contract, through Exploration, to Creative Agenda. You're just seeing the link. In that way my model doesn't contradict Ron's (in fact, I maintain that my model doesn't do much if any damage to Ron's model, it's about perspective).

Those folks who seem to not have a CA either are playing incoherently (and here's where the term really makes sense), or they're playing under the CA of another player (the GM likely), and just don't realize it.


Rob, it's a common problem that people want GNS to solve every problem. It doesn't, it only provides a foundation at the level between exploration and technique to provide a coherent method of play to players as regards certain issues. In some ways, this is extremely limited, and pushing the theory to be something more than that is likely to make it useless for the small area for which it's already useful. If you want a theory that does more, you'll have to expand it yourself (see Itse's post for an example of a stab at this).


MJ, the only place where I think we disagree is that the something special is something other than Exploration. People may note that in my work with Jack in defining RPGs, that I came up with an idea that RPGs are precisely separable from RPGs in the notion (note not the actuality, but the notion) that players have that elements in the game can do "anything" that seems plausible. That the meechanics of the game ought not constrain the elements to behaving in certain manners, but be tools to allow the participants to adjudicate any action that can be produced in the imagination of the players. This is exploration. This is what defines RPGs. This is what's unique to RPGs, and so precious to me, personally, and, I'd argue, anyone who plays RPGs. And it's what's being promoted when we play "sim". That is, if Sim means anything, it's that we're ensuring that exploration is not lost in the quest for one of the two other modes.

And, as such, since it's defining, I'd say that this is, to an extent, present in all RPG play. I submit that, as soon as you aren't doing this, you'll know in a big way. There's that moment playing a really gamist game of D&D, where it "reverts" to being just a boardgame (note that I think this is rare, but happens).

If this is so important, then why must there be "something more"? I posit that all the discovery stuff that you're pointing out can all be generalized to the idea of exploration.


Emily, when you cross out of ziilchplay is, to an extent, dependent on the individuals playing. That is, for one person, something is more "identifiably" gamist or whatever than it is to another. So, just as with all issues of Creative Agenda, this is something that can only be identified locally - there is no magic answer, "this is it!"


Jason, you're making my arguments for me by pointing out what can't exist. Again, like MJ, I think that you're just failing to see that "it" is just exploration, and therefore why the relationship is special.


Walt, I think you're explaining a phenomenon, but not one that's important to GNS per se, but more Creative Agenda overall. That is the GNS portion of CA is about coherence. So, unless you can show that this is a point of potential conflict, I think you're describing a subset of a mode - as you say splitting Sim. This doesn't create another mode, however, it just further subdivides one that already exists in a manner that it needs to exists for the model.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

One of the most important passages in "GNS and related matters of role-playing theory" is this:

For a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism.

Mike, you're working from the idea that reinforcing these "little" GNSes is a great and powerful thing, and that trying to cull them (in terms of play or design) is a bad idea. I tend to agree with you.

The only difference - and frankly, it's a tiny and terminological difference, which I have no intention of trying to resolve - is that I tend not to call them by GNS categories at all. You would like to do so, I think - revising my harsh "is not" statements in the quotes to "is too, but not problematically." This goes back to our general tastes in that I prefer to think about large-scale trends and you prefer to think about atomic causal units, and again, I don't really see it as a major issue.

I'm posting this to show everyone that Mike and I tend to agree about these things, even if we also tend to communicate about them differently and for slightly different purposes.

I also think that the M.J./Mike dialogue about the "something else" of Simulationism is worth considering, and understanding where everyone's coming from. I tend to go a little more toward M.J. - that Exploration alone is not actually role-playing at all and that Simulationist play does something with Exploration ... in fact, I was under the impression that my term "the Dream" indicated as much.

But again, I am not speaking as GNS-meister but as a fully equal (and possibly fully-equally-clueless) member of the dialogues. I don't really feel the need to convince anyone of my particular point of view on the issue.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, we're on the same page. The only problem that I have with the "little g" sort of description is that it's hard to discuss. I'd like it to have it's own terminological set.

Any ideas anyone?

Mike

[Jason Lee]

Jason, you're making my arguments for me by pointing out what can't exist. Again, like MJ, I think that you're just failing to see that "it" is just exploration, and therefore why the relationship is special.

Oh, I don't mind if I'm making your point for you.  I'm just trying to point out the challenges defining "it" needs to overcome.  If "it" exists, then the independent GNS priority model holds.  If "it" doesn't exist, then The Beeg Horseshoe or some other fix for Sim is needed.

I'm on the fence as far as "it" goes.  I don't think I've seen "it", nor seen evidence against it (at least so much as I could identify it).

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jason,

It seems to me that you might be reading too much into the idea of the "independence" concept. I deliberately left the cognitive or creative interrelationships among GNS  priorities untouched in my first big essay, and my subsequent three essays have focused on how they have been observed to inter-related in practice, historically.

How they really interrelate in terms of baseline concepts and potential has always been left blank. For example, I never proposed nor supported the idea of a "triangle" or indeed any sort of "space" they occupy as zones or points or anything else.

So it's not like there's an existing physical/spatial model for them that Mike is proposing an alternative to. Because I say they are distinct in observation (see my quote above) does not mean I think they are three independent zones or points in some weird sort of psychological-axes space.

Best,
Ron

[Jason Lee]

[snip]

So it's not like there's an existing physical/spatial model for them that Mike is proposing an alternative to. Because I say they are distinct in observation (see my quote above) does not mean I think they are three independent zones or points in some weird sort of psychological-axes space.

Yeah, I suppose I need to clarify.  There are a lot of subtly different viewpoints of how GNS should work at play here.  By "independent GNS priority model" I mean what M.J. is driving at.  I think the distinction has to do with whether or not you believe hybrid play exists.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jason,

I found these a bit ago:
Hybrids - looking for an understanding of has a little bit of my more recent thoughts in there.
Decision merging: an approach to hybridization demonstrates that odd little "how Mike" and "how Ron" think about the same thing
Can a game designer work for all three (G/N/S)? has more to do with customizing a game through play, without necessarily devaluing the other modes of play

I dunno if they'll be interesting, but who knows, they might help someone see how this comes up every so often.

Regarding hybrid play, I think that I see the term a little differently from the way Mike does. I think he's talking about the "little g, little s, little n" that can crop up in the way I quoted my essay about above. Whereas I see those as "fuzz blips" which aren't really worthy of a GNS name (although I could be wrong about that), and hybrid play as whole shifts among the group, 'way up there in the model, to play This Way for Now, as a supportive mode for another mode which is When We Get Back To It, in which those shifts are playing a specific facilitative role toward that second (main) one.

Best,
Ron

[Jason Lee]

Regarding hybrid play, I think that I see the term a little differently from the way Mike does. I think he's talking about the "little g, little s, little n" that can crop up in the way I quoted my essay about above. Whereas I see those as "fuzz blips" which aren't really worthy of a GNS name (although I could be wrong about that), and hybrid play as whole shifts among the group, 'way up there in the model, to play This Way for Now, as a supportive mode for another mode which is When We Get Back To It, in which those shifts are playing a specific facilitative role toward that second (main) one.

Yeah, I follow.  You could take it a step further and decide those shifts are irrelevant in the same fashion as little gns, and hence drop the idea of hybrid play.  It looks like the spectrum of atomic decisions -> instance of play (gns -> GNS -> G-N-S).

Can "it" (Discovery/Understanding/Knowledge) be viewed over an instance of play?  I think so.  

Does it conflict with theme/challenge?  I don't know.

[Caldis]

This talk of hybrids reminds me of a situation I've watched develop over the past few months.  I play regularly in a gurps game run by a professor at the local university.  He was running this game and playing in a 3rd edition d&d game.  

The reason he started up this game was because he wasnt satisfied with the other, he stuck with it for awhile but eventually it just became not worthwhile for him and several of the other players in that group.  In discussing it with him he stated the reason for leaving was that it was pretty much hack and slash nothing more, not much story holding it together.  The game focused on lengthy planning sessions trying to figure out how best to overcome the enemies the gm had planned for the week, followed by the actual battle and afterwards the gm would go over what their best plan of attack would have been.

So it clearly sounded like it was a conflict between gamist and simulationist preferences but here's the funny thing, I've played in his game for a solid year now and find his games to be fairly gamist.  He has a detailed world built up and it retains a sense of consistency but the point of the game seems to be about the challenges.  Usually a mystery to figure out or a task to overcome with limitless solutions and generally a big combat scene that is incredibly tactically challenging.

It's obvious his prefences lie somewhere within the sim/game mix which would normally be considered a hybrid, or maybe he's a gamist using sim for support.  If restricted to choosing one mode as his preffered I would have to say gamism.  The interesting point to me is that he had a conflict with a mode of play that was the same as his own for reasons that were outside of his preference.  It seems to me that Mike's model solves the conundrum, sim was present in both but his gm only addressed it at a superficial level whereas his desire was more in the mid range.

[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?

I knew as I was writing that Sim example that it was subject to a lot of interpretation. Thing is, that player who really threw himself into discovering the world was me--I've watched others do it since, but I was the first one, and I was the one who ripped the world apart looking for all those things. The world is particularly alien, and periodically we get someone into it who wants to explore it just to know all its nuances and secrets (and in my games there are some that have yet to be discovered by any player).

Sure, you can explore the world as a support mode for doing the other things; but then, you can worry about your family as a support mode for the other things, and you can face the challenges as a support mode for the other things.

I did go to the glass city, and I found a way to neutralize the danger of the spiders, not because I had any interest in beating the spiders but because I wanted to know what was in the city. I disassembled one of the spiders to see how it worked, not because I was searching for its weaknesses or wanting to know how to beat it, but because I believed that the spiders held clues to the nature of the universe and I wanted to understand it all.

I also gave thought to the fact that I was cut off from my family forever; this was not narrativist play, but background consideration for understanding how my character would react to his situation.

If Mike is arguing that there's a bit of simulationist-like conduct supporting narrativism and gamism, I'm ready to agree; I expect he will also concede that there is a bit of narrativist-like conduct supporting simulationism and gamism, and a bit of gamist-like conduct supporting simulationism and narrativism. The question is not whether we're involved in forms of play that look like each other. The question is whether our reason for playing is primarily one or another of the three big aspects.

As Ron says, only one of the three things can be most important to you over a period of play; the others are just things you do because they support what you want to do.

So it clearly sounded like it was a conflict between gamist and simulationist preferences but here's the funny thing, I've played in his game for a solid year now and find his games to be fairly gamist. He has a detailed world built up and it retains a sense of consistency but the point of the game seems to be about the challenges. Usually a mystery to figure out or a task to overcome with limitless solutions and generally a big combat scene that is incredibly tactically challenging.

What it sounds like is conflict that is not strictly between modes. It's perfectly reasonable and common for gamists to disagree about how to play.

Not so long ago I posted an article, Game Ideas Unlimited: Challenge, in which I suggested that one of the important aspects of designing and running gamist games was setting the level of challenge to the preferences of the players. It's quite possible for someone who likes gamism generally to dislike any particular gamist game because the challenge is wrong for him. No one likes to play the game you can't win, and very few like to play the game you can't lose--but where that line appears is going to be very much dependent on the nature of the challenge and the level of the challenge, as against the skill and preferences of the player. Some who like very difficult puzzles don't like even simple combat so much; some who love tactically challenging combat hate puzzles. GNS doesn't say that there won't be discord between people in the same agendum; it says that there will be discord between people with conflicting agenda.

It's not the same thing.

--M. J. Young

[Silmenume]

Hey Sean,

I did not realize, that even after my disclaimer, that the phrase, "Beer and Pretzels," would be controversial.  I will refrain from the use of that particular phrase in the future.  But before I leap away from that topic, I think it is interesting to note that your definition of "Beer and Pretzels" also encompasses the idea of low intensity, which was exactly what I was aiming at.

One more point and then onto the meat of my post.  I am confused by your assertion that you think that I am using "Sim" as kind of term of praise.  The thought never entered my mind so I am not sure where it is in my post.  It is either not there and you misinterpreted me, by which remedy let me assure you that I am not intentionally using "Sim" as a kind of term of praise or it is in my post and I too self-blind to see it and I request that you point it out to me so that I may better police my own postings so as to avoid this error in the future.  Thank you!

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.

I don't have any issues with games with 'weak attention to Creative Agenda' or perhaps what I think is a better term, 'weak expression of Creative Agenda' on any level.  I don't think I made any value judgment about such games other than to say they are difficult to quantify behaviorally in regards to the diagnostic portion of the model.  I think it is interesting to note the idea that as intensity of engagement decreases the greater the probability that multiple modes of play can exist side by side as the players just aren't all that fired up so the annoyance factor isn't that likely to be an issue either.

Jay, that's always been part of the model, as I understand it. Agenda only becomes notable in certain circumstances.

There's something very important in the above quote.  One of the main arguments that has been promulgated in these threads recently is that whenever G/N isn't being addressed we are immediately defaulting into Sim.  The above clearly implies that Agenda is NOT always notable.  If that above is true then there are times or instances of play that are not Agenda identified.  For lack of a better term those interstitial moments of play have been referred to as "Zilchplay."  Maybe this particular argument is circular, but something is amiss.

I think there are some conflicting ideas about what Exploration means in roleplay.  As roleplay is a creation enterprise, we have more when we are done than when we started, and that the basis of roleplay is Exploration, I believe that Exploration must, by extention, be a creation activity.  If you're not creating you're not roleplaying.  I know the word create has all sorts of built in explodo buttons but hang with me for a moment.  Any player action that makes it into the SIS is a creative in that something new, that which was not there before, has been added to SIS.  However just because something was added to the SIS does not mean the goal/agenda of a CA have been added to.  In other words if the action taken by a player does not add to the body of material that is building towards the goal of CA then that act is not CA specific, it is Zilchplay.

In Gamism the player is taking steps, adding to the body of actions that will hopefully bring said player ultimately to victory.
In Narrativism the player is taking steps, adding to the body of actions that will hopefully bring said player ultimately to theme/story.
In Simulationism the player is directly adding new pieces to the body of the Explorative elements.

A player merely walking around is himself not directly adding to the Explorative Elements.  The DM who in response to the stated players stated intent of walking around adds to the SIS by describing setting, but the player has not.  Zilchplay.

Thus if a player adds to the Explorative Elements directly, if this is his goal and this is what he is jazzed about, then said player is playing Sim.  This can happen under two circumstances.  When a player has a choice about an action that will prioritize one agenda over another, or vitally important to the idea of Sim as a stand-alone agenda, when the player steps out of Zilchplay and directly into Sim.

To employ the much used example, said character walks across the street.  Zilchplay.  However the player could while walking across the street stop, go to a knee, pickup a handful of earth and say, "This is good soil.  I will build my farm here one day."  The player in this example was not under pressure to avoid Gam or Nar choices, but freely of his own creative inclination created an opportunity where none existed before to add to the Explorative Elements.  He chose to play Sim as an Agenda.  Like Walt said earlier, this creative bit must be "unexpected" or new to the circumstances.

So in order to see Creative Agenda in operation, something new/unexpected must be "created" and it must address the goals of that Agenda.

I believe the additive goal of Simulationism is adding to the Explorative Elements.  The players are collaborating in the creation, maintenance, and social reward delivery for living the Dream.

Aure Entaluva,

Silmenume

[Caldis]

GNS doesn't say that there won't be discord between people in the same agendum; it says that there will be discord between people with conflicting agenda.

It's not the same thing.

--M. J. Young

Oh I agree with that entirely however the point I was trying to make is that his disagreement didn't depend on the type of challenge at all or even the level of the challenge it was the lack of something else that was his problem with the game, not a disagreement on what type of game to play but the missing elements that are associated with sim.

Maybe it's just a different way of looking at the same thing but for me it makes more sense to view the different modes as a horseshoe or maybe even an arc is better. At one end you have a preference for gamism, where characters are little more than chess pieces, as you slowly increase the amount of simulation you throw into the game the arc rises to the mid point where there is no more game going on it's all about the sim.  The sim adds more questions about characters their settings leading to emotions and morals which begins the downward slide to Narrativism which is all about creating stories with premise.

[Sean]

Thanks to all for an illuminating discussion.

Jay, I like your phrase 'weak expression of creative agenda' better, because it avoids the cognitivist implications of 'attention'. Assuming that the players of a game (including the GM, if any) are doing things that reflect their desires for what they want to get out of the game, and assuming that it is meaningful to talk about human action in terms of belief/desire psychology (materialist and behaviorist skeptics are referred to Daniel Dennett's article "Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology" - he's on your side in terms of metaphysics, and he still thinks that what the cognoscenti call 'folk psychology' is a predictive theory of human action) regardless of consciously expressed motives etc., talking about this as expression of those desires seems to be a better way to put it all around.

The only reason I suggested that you were using Sim as a 'term of praise' is because you were distinguishing S from Z, as Walt seems to. We can drop the praiseworthy connotations of that for S, if there ever were any, which I'm happy to take your word that they're weren't, and just talk about whether this distinction exists. I apologize for the suggestion. As to 'beer and pretzels', we're all free to use the language the way we like, and I agree with you about the low-intensity connotation, but I do think this phrase almost always refers to low-intensity Gamism in my experience with it, and that I've generally used it that way.


Mike, I like your interpretation of my paraphrase of you as 'seeing Ron's arrow', and insofar as you're right that does serve to eliminate differences between you and Ron except on matters of emphasis. The fact that you and Ron both feel that those are the differences tends to bolster that impression.


I'm tending to look at it like this. People come to the table to explore; they make decisions which they at least like to pretend (even in Walt's example as he stated it) are influencing the shared imaginative space of the game. Actually, even in heavy Illusionist games, they are influencing it in some sense: something besides the players' decisions (say, one player, the GMs, decisions) are determining the outcomes, but the players are still determining, say, how they arrive at the predetermined outcomes.

The overall (little-g, little-s, little-n, and I think using different terms for these might potentially be more misleading, because the way you diagnose capital-letter GNS preferences in a player is to look at which of these decisions he or she (a) gets the most enjoyment out of and (b) makes most frequently) pattern of these decisions tells you something about the creative agenda preferences of the players. Some people may be happy to bop around with spontaneous decisions of different types.

On the other hand, frequently RPG groups get into trouble because there is a conflict between more strongly felt GNS preferences, which are neither stated well nor dealt with well, among the players. And also, there are a lot of really exceptional joys to be gotten out of RPGing with a creative agenda that focuses intensely on one mode of play, which are hard to get out of attenuated play. (And infact 'casual', attentuated play often seems to break down because one or two players get the bug of this more intense mode of play and others don't want to follow along.)


I think that if there's any phenomenon which mirrors what I take Walt and Jay to be pointing to here it's the happiness of some groups that play very attenuatedly, without intense focus on any decision type, to keep playing that way.


So at this point I'm sort of torn. On the one hand, I believe that people playing this way will probably be at least roughly diagnoseable with some kind of overall preference within any given game, G, N, or S. On the other hand, if they're happy with what they're doing, they might resist an intensification along any of those axes: they might make decisions not to explore intensely, or not to step on up, or not to get too hard-core into the story, because they just want to keep floating along. And in this sense, because they make negative decisions about the intensity of any of the three modes, it might make sense to talk about Z as a fourth preference - this one really defined negatively, as Sim should not be in my opinion. It's the creative agenda that says 'hey, let's not focus on any overall creative agenda, let's just bop around in the shared space and focus on whatever butters our muffin at the time, with the understanding that if your muffin gets too heavily buttered consistently in one direction you either need to lay off or find a new game'.

So: decisions in play are always understandable as little-g, little-s, or little-n, at least barring finding some new form of focus. And many games will have a creative agenda which involves focusing on one of these and making play more intense: the capital letter modes. On the other hand, there's also an overall creative agenda which is explicitly aimed against heavy focus, which we're calling "Zilchplay", but since that's negative and implies to me an absence of player desires, which is incoherent, I'd prefer C, "Casual Play", as the title, if this exists.

So I have two questions:

(a) For Walt and Jay: is this a reasonable way of thinking about what you have in mind? Would you accept this analysis? Any quibbles?

(b) For Mike, MJ, and Ron: would this way of looking at things be acceptable to you? If not, why not?

Of course, anyone else is welcome to join in on either or both questions too.

[Jason Lee]

Post moved to zilchplay thread.

[Jason Lee]

In Simulationism the player is directly adding new pieces to the body of the Explorative elements.

That's defining Sim in reference to Exploration, which is all sorts of fine and dandy if the Beeg Horseshoe is what you're after.  

The counter arguement is that Nar/Gam are also adding to the explored elements just as much, because Exploration and CA are part of the same whole.  Putting us back in the circle of doom, and needing some way to fix Sim (such as with the Beeg Horseshoe).