Cut: Realized this should be here... not RPG Theory...



As I've attempted to plow through the varioud GNS articles and the like, I find my non-academic brain needing some clarification. (I have to look up words like brachiate and ontogeny, y'see.) To try and understand the differences between G and N and S, I thought I attempt some simple examples to see if I'm "getting it." Input requested.

Example: Character movement abilities

Take a game where three characters all need to rush downtown to stop a large monster from eating the Levec Lincoln Tower.

Char A) has normal human running

Char B) has a souped up sports car.

Char C) has the inate power of flight.

All three leave at the same time, rushing to the scene... (now we get into the differentiation of GN & S)

Simulationist = Each movement ability has a specific rate, based off of a core rule that establishes cause and effect. Char A spent least amount of points and moves the slowest, Char B has more speed through a vehicle, and Char C spent a lot of points and has the fastest most reliable mode. To this end, staying strictly Simulationist, Char C arrives on the scene much faster, likely long engaged in the battle with the monster before Char B comes screeching up in his Silver-mobile! Char A, huffing along the jogging trail, may never even make it to the scene before the battle is complete. They just aren't fast enough.

Narrativist = It just doesn't matter HOW each character gets there, because the metagame issue, very much at hand, is "Let's tell a story about fighting a monster trying to destroy a city!" Therefore, there might be a brief description of each character, running, driving or flying to the scene, but this is passed over and the game really starts with all three characters engaging the monster (and only if the player and others agree that it is humorous and makes a good story, would the fact that Char A most likely comes trudging up after the battle is all over, even be discussed.)

Gamist = I'm not sure. Having abandoned the D&D style a long time ago, I'm not sure how this would play out, unless a party of generic character types, each with a list of attributes that fills a necessary niche for successful completion of a goal, opened a door to find themselves transported downtown and looking up at a large monster eating a building. (This is tongue in cheek, mind you.)

Anyway... do I have this right? Would this be a good "simple" way to separate the 3 types (at their extremes, of course. I understand that most games have varying levels of all three.)

Thanks,
Neil

Hi Neil,

Boy, this reminds me of conversations with M.J. Young years ago at the Gaming Outpost ...

Anyway, the trouble with your examples is that GNS won't mean a thing in answering your question. What you're asking about is the Technique called Scene Framing. And Techniques do not correspond, 1:1, to Creative Agendas.

The issue of "when do they arrive" may be very important or very unimportant to the priorities of play, regardless of which (G, N, or S) Agenda is top dog. Or to put it another way, you'd have to tell me more about the conflict and what specific sort of G, N, or S is under way. And you'd also have to tell me a lot more about the people playing and how they're interacting.

I really don't intend to be frustrating. But in essence, you've asked a question about how certain imaginary events are established into play, and that is strictly a [System [Techniques]] issue.

Group #1 says, "You all arrive at once," and they do. Case closed.

Group #2 says, "You hear about this at 12 noon. Check your movement rates and the city-travel speed adjustment chart, and tell me when you get there."

Group #3 says, "Roll for your [travel ability]; whoever fails gets there later than everyone else."

But that variety, as well as the myriad of other options, tells us nothing about the actual GNS agenda at work with that group.

Yes, whatever Techniques are chosen (i.e., however the group agrees about how the characters all arrive, and when) should be in accord with whatever GNS goal the participants have. But given what you've said, that's all I can say.

Best,
Ron

Hello Neil,

Welcome!

I can understand that Ron's articles can be a little dense. I eat GNS stuff for breakfast and I had to tackle the three most recent essays in chunks spread out over a few days. However, they are totally worth the effort of muddling through, if you haven't already done so.

Now for your question. You're off base. The main problem being that looking at a single situation and then asking how would a GN or S focused game tackle this situation is not the best way to understand the three modes. On the microcosom scale of individual gameplay moments the three modes of play can look quite similar because they are all built on the same social foundation of Exploration, which is just basically "imagining stuff happening."

I think one the hardest things for people to grasp with GNS is the group-social dynamic and reinforcement. It wasn't until Ron published his Gamism essay that this really began to sink in for me. When Joe throws up his arms and cheers what is he cheering about? When Mary gets a wry little smile on her face and nods knowingly what is she nodding and smiling about? These cues are far more telling about a groups' Creative Agenda (GNS preference) than any examination of a single moment of "how was this handled?"

Now for the three modes themselves.

1) Gamism is based on winning and losing. But that's a lot more subtle than people think. Have you ever seen someone show a friend a character sheet with this kind of wicked grin on his face? The friend then starts reading over the character sheet and then this slow kind of "oh shit" look spreads across his face. You know damn well that the first player has built some kind of power-house character with some awesome and clever combination of rules and the second player is admiring his handy work. That's a component of Gamism. Social-ego has to be on the line somewhere. This isn't threatening or malicious it's all part of the fun. Even in a classic party oriented dungeon crawl it's all about "go team, go!" or "man, I can't believe that dragon HOSED us what the hell were we thinking?"

2) Simulationism is about enjoying Exploration matching up with a set of pre-agreed upon expectations. Be that "reality" or "genre conventions" or "character type" or what have you. Ever seen lots of discussions about superhero rpgs? People are often concerned with system details that will ensure the PCs lose in the begining but triumph in the end. That's because they're concerned with getting play to match their expections of how a superhero story "should" flow. A swashbuckling story ends in a duel because that's how swashbuckling stories end. Captain Kirk gets the woman and does the right thing because that's what Captain Kirk does. And so on.

3) Narrativism is about tackling a real-world problematic human issue called a Premise. It's about getting everyone at the table fired about some aspect of some moral or ethical dilemma with NO preconcieved ideas about what the answer "should" be. Then everyone is thrown headlong into characters and situations that embody this problem and wrestle with it through out play. In a game I'm running now one PC has two children in someone elses care because her husband was abusive and she's been driven insane. Last session it became necessary to decide who the children were with and she ran out some prosibilities but then finally said with great excitement, "It's my Mother-In-Law!" And another player pointed at her and said with equal excitement, 'YES!" Why? Because we recognize that the Daughter-In-Law/Mother-In-Law conflict as being engaging and we want to see how it plays out here.

Does any of this make more sense?

Jesse

I guess I'm trying to get derive some "behavioral tendencies" that would be indicative of each Creative Agenda. I'm a firm believer that only in demonstrable behaviors can any system or attitude or creative desire be examined or fulfilled.

To that end...

Are you saying that the Technique of Scene Framing would be the behavior that only ONE of the CAs would choose? (I don't think you are saying that.)

Or...

Are you saying that each CA...G, N or S... would Scene Frame, but would do it in a very different way. This second is what I'm getting at.

My examples were generalities, rather than behaviors. I appologize.

Try this: Group 1: Each player is expected to match their characters behavior to an incremental time frame that all must adhere to, and to this extent, the events play out "by the rules." Char C arrives first, having faster movement power, and therefore must act alone (or decide not to act) because the core system says that the others are not there yet. This is an example of Simulationist behavior.

Group 2: The group as a whole decides that worrying about the exact amount of time it takes for each character to arrive is unimportant and skips to the "Story now" which is all characters arriving on the scene in such a way that every character has a chance to be "involved in the story." This is Narrativist type behavior.

Group 3: Well, you stated it perfectly. Roll for your travel ability... a game stat with no "reality" measure that a Simulationist would want. It is about rolling the dice, not really simulating the urgent travel to a dangerous encounter... nor is it about the immediacy of telling dramatic stories together. To this point, the character with the best "travel ability" wins.

In the end... is it possible to give "behavioral tendencies" for each CA... and if not, what is the use of the GNS model. Yes, it may allow me to understand why a group is "not on the same page" but if it doesn't give guidance for "changing behavior" to help drive one CA over another, then how is it helpful?

Thanks,
Neil

In the end... is it possible to give "behavioral tendencies" for each CA...

As a management trainer, we often work with people on Facilitation and Presentation.

A good example for differentiating them can be given as a difference in "behavior" when presented with the same situation.

A participant asks a question.

The presenter answers the questions themselves, as they are the expert in the situation.

The facilitator says, "What do you all think?" and turns the question into a group discussion, perhaps offering her own opinion... but as partner, not "the expert."

Both are acceptable, but serve different needs in different situations.


What I'm looking for is something similar with the CAs G, N and S.

When presented with the same situation... how does the Gamist behavior differ from the Narrativist behavior from the Simulationist behavior.

Is this even possible to answer? If not, then I'm REALLY confused.

Neil

Welcome to the Forge, Neil! (I'm sure others have already said that, but I haven't until now.)

You wrote: When presented with the same situation... how does the Gamist behavior differ from the Narrativist behavior from the Simulationist behavior.

Is this even possible to answer? If not, then I'm REALLY confused.

I don't know that I can add to what these gentlemen have said; but perhaps I can provide a different angle from which to see it.

When I was writing Verse Three, Chapter One, I created a game world in which the character finds himself on a spaceship, and gradually comes to understand that the ship and its crew are in some sense rebel pirates fighting against an oppressive interstellar empire (more like Blake's 7 than anything else). In the book, the character started to wrestle with ethical concerns. At one point he is wondering whether the people he has killed in this fight were really bad people, or just ordinary people trying to get by in a bad situation who wound up in the wrong place? Then he turns his attention to wondering whether, as a trained fighter whose hope in life is to prove himself a brave warrior, he should even have such concerns. Had this become the focus of play in a game, it would have been very much narrativist. He still fought the federation soldiers and worked with the rebels; he still learned about the space ship and its systems; he still was involved in aspects of the story that could be considered gamist or simulationist--but when he turned the focus of the story on these moral questions, he framed everything that happened within a narrativist context.

I liked the world, so I extrapolated the salient features for use in games. I ran it some time back for a girl whose response to the situation was to see how she fit in. I big Star Trek/B5 fan, for her this world became what would it be like to be part of a spaceship crew? She learned some skills, helped with their missions, learned to use their weapons, thought about whether there was any way she could get home to her family--but this was, it seems, simulationist play, entirely about being there and discovering what it's like to be there.

I used the same world again this weekend for demos at a convention. At the morning session, I dropped a guy into this whom I had really just met. He seemed to be settling into the ship member routine, although he had several times indicated an interest in trading whatever he could (which was mostly his promise to get out of their hair) for some of their technology, and particularly their weapons. Then, near the end of play, he surprised me by attempting to capture the ship and take it with him. As he was killed, his friend who was also at the table (but in a different game world) started telling him what an idiot he was--not that he had "ruined the game", but that he had gone about it all wrong. The idea here was that he could have captured the ship, and boy wouldn't that have been impressive, but he just didn't think it through well enough to succeed at it. These guys were gamist players. Whoever gets the most toys wins. They were showing off for each other, trying to build great tales of their successes they could tell again.

Most of what the characters did in all three cases was very similar. They all met the crew and interacted with them. They all learned to use the weapons and found opportunities to use them. They all explored how things worked on the ship. Most of what the mechanics did was very similar in all three cases. It determined success and failure of their efforts in much the same way (although in the book I didn't roll, but rather attempted to provide the feel as if I had done so). The scenario was the same, even to going through the same events in the same order. The characters were the same, although details were added with each game (and possibly some lost) as the players asked different questions about the characters. What was different was that the character in the book made this a story about his own courage and values, and the moral implications of what he was choosing; the girl on the forum made it an exploration of an experience she could never have in real life but which excited her interests; and the guy at the convention used it to try to strut his stuff, to do something really impressive by outplaying the scenario.

Techniques are subservient to this.

Scene framing isn't really "a technique"; it's a name for a category of play organization which represents many styles and techniques. All it means is that someone decides where/when/how the scene starts and where/when/how it ends. There is a tendency for narrativist games to focus on starting and ending scenes with the relevant action (you're in the restaurant with your new girlfriend when suddenly your ex walks over and throws a drink in your face....so then she storms out, leaving you standing there with the crowd staring at you. The next day....), simulationist games to start with entrances and end with exits (you walk into the restaurant, and the maitre d' asks if you have a reservation....having paid your bill, you leave the building), and gamist games to resemble simulationist approaches superficially, but more quickly get to the challenge (you walk into the restaurant with your new girlfriend, and spy your ex sitting at a table with a hulking brute of a man who could probably rip you in half....smiling at the unconscious brute, you take the arm of your girlfriend, and tip the maitre d' on the way out). However, this is tendency, not definition. There is no reason for any play style to be locked into particular approaches to scene framing; it is merely that some scene framing styles are more conducive to some aspects of creative agenda.

Does that help?

--M. J. Young

Thanks to all who posted. This did a great deal to explain the concepts behind GNS. It makes sense that my behavioral question was not appropriate... or answerable by this model.

I would also say that the most important facet of this whole model is that "story" is (or can be) created by ALL of these CAs. It confused me at first, because the term Narrativist seemed to indicate the creation of a story... seeming to indicate the others did not. That was clarified in Ron's Narrativist essay... Story vs "Story Now"

With that clear, I can at least understand that I am very much a Pure System Simulationist... and even called my style of role playing "simulating" before I ever heard of GNS. Guess I was somewhat on the same track.

Anyway, all these examples really do help for my personal understanding. (I was very unclear about how Narrativist was so overtly "moral" in it's mode. Isn't it possible to have a non GM, group "story now" game that doesn't really beat you over the head with ethical or moral questions? I guess not.)

The struggle now will be to make this meaningful to my play group, who will likely never read, nor care to, any of this theory. (Except Nuadha, who has posted here.)l

Thanks again.

Hey Neil. Sorry to focus straight in on a parenthetical, but.

You wrote: I was very unclear about how Narrativist was so overtly "moral" in it's mode. Isn't it possible to have a non GM, group "story now" game that doesn't really beat you over the head with ethical or moral questions? I guess not.

There is one behavior that does tend to stick out as an indicator of mode in a way. It's the social reward behavior. Really this is sorta secondary behavior because it's predicated on having some behavior of the appropriate sort to encourage. But essentially, if the player is giving you a pat on the back because you as a player came up with some interesting tactic that won a political engagement, then he's supporting the Gamist CA. I think that these are the most visible behaviors, and would be perfect indicators if it weren't for the fact that you still have to determine what the nature is of the action being rewarded. Sometimes it's pretty clear, however.

Mike

So, if you get a pat on the back for good tactics, maybe you're playing Gamist. If you get a pat on the back for facilitating exploration of theme, maybe you're playing Narativist. And if you get a pat on the back for effectively employing explorative detail, maybe you're playing Simulationist.

Interesting. It strikes me that this is an important observation, and I have no idea why. And that's why I rarely post to theory threads...

So is it, then, that the three groups may have all reacted to the situation in the same way, but it is in how they do it and what aspects they focus on that makes the difference? As I would have guessed from my limited understanding of GNS, the gamist bunch would have been competing to see who could get to the monster first, or at least focused on supporting team tactics to defeat the monster enemy and "win." The Narrativist bunch would have rushed off while reflecting on what moral and personal issues are involved (does the monster have rights? Is it true that if you battle with monsters you will become a monster?).

Sim is where I get confused. I think I am a simulationsist, but I seem to take a narrtivist route to get there. It seems to me that there are 2 kinds of Sim (maybe the beeg horseshoe is more of a beeg doughnut). In one, the characters would rush to fight the monster, checking all the modifications, rolling for red lights and car malfunctions, and trying to make the chase as realistic as possible. The other kind seems to take a more cinematic approach. To simulate an over-the-top action movie, they would have the cars doing all kinds of stunts on the way to the monster, crash into a sidewalk fruit stand, spout one-liners and kill the monster as he falls screaming off the top of a building. Or is this a kind of Narrativism? Am I wrong in considering a game that simulates the lack of "realism" in a particular genre as a form of Sim?

Hello,

It's an important observation because that's precisely why GNS is a useful diagnostic tool for gaming dysfunction. If two players are high fiving each other after some moment of play and a third player across the table is rolling his eyes and given them dirty looks there's a problem. What are the two players high fiving each other so excited about? What normally gets the person rolling his eyes just as excited as them? Are they compatible? If not then perhaps its time to split the group.

Jesse

I ~think~ I understand . . .

Two questions :

Is it possible for one to be simultaneously S and N? In both games in which I play and games which I run, I am interested in both the experiencing of the character and his/her world and in ethical questions.

Forgive my inexperience with the G approach, but the only gamists I recall ever meeting have been male twinks/munchkins/power gamers into "nerd machismo" -- bragging about their character's hypermasculinity because they have none of their own -- the sort of people I avoid in all aspects of life and not simply RPGing. (Yes, I know there are dysfunctional sorts of S and N as well.) If the G approach is popular, I'm certain there must be other sorts. Could someone please enlighten me on this by providing me with examples of gamism which do not involve nerd machismo?

Doctor Xero

Hello,

I'll field the Doc's questions. But I caution everyone to start considering that this thread is beginning to sprout little spawn, sticking off its body and independently waving their own limbs ...

1. S and N together are often uncomfortable pals, just as S and G together can also be difficult. There are very specific sections in the essays Simulationism: the Right to Dream and Narrativism: Story Now which deal with this issue in detail.

I suggest that what you describe may be Narrativist play with a strong Explorative chassis, and perhaps not S at all. Or rather, since I don't play with you guys, what I'm saying is that such play is a possible explanation based on your description.

2. I also draw a distinction between Gamist play as a general category and a version of Gamist play called the Hard Core. The latter tends toward throwing the Explorative chassis to the winds and revelling in power-tripping one another, and I will agree with you about them, speaking personally - in fact, your phrases echo precisely what I use to say about Gamists in general as well.

However, there's a difference between a power-tripper who cannot bear to lose and a competitive sportsman. Speaking judgmentally, real competitors do not need either to brag or to whine, nor constantly to Calvinball the rules. I submit that most role-players who prefer this sort of play are not especially public about it, and also that since they probably have the highest satisfaction-rate in the entire hobby, are rarely found on the internet talking about play. It's ruthless, strategic, demanding, imaginative, highly social, and rewarding - very much like people who enjoy pickup basketball among a neighborhood community, with "imaginative" perhaps replacing "athletic."

I've tried to enjoy this form of play quite a bit over the last year, especially with Tunnels & Trolls, and I think it works very well. If designers would turn their attention to designs of this sort without the hobbyist trappings of guys-in-armor and monsters-to-fight, I submit that a mainstream breakout game would be in their hands.

Best,
Ron

Xero, ever play a good game of chess against a fun opponent? Just convert that sort of competition over to RPGs as the format, and you have an example of one small sort of functional Gamism. Very simply, to these gamists, it might be something akin to a complex board game to be won or lost either to the GM or to each other.

Again, that's just one small example. But it's fully functional and quite common. Arguably, gamism is the most supported and played mode, given that D&D tends to produce this sort of play.

Scourge, the basic theory says that Mode is defined as what you're prioritizing. So Narrativist doesn't mean that you don't do anything that's supportive of exploration. It just means that when there's a potential conflict that you'll tend to select the choice that makes it obvious that you have the narrativist priority. So, if your goal is narrativist, no amount of sticking to detail or anything can be considered sim play in the process.

OTOH, I do believe that one can be closer to a balance and that something approaching Hybrid modes is possible. To be very precise that's to say that I think my mode of play is like yours, and I understand what you're getting at. It's precisely describing this sort of phenomenon that makes me go through all the Beeg Horesehoe theory gyrations.

Mike

Ron Edwards wrote: there's a difference between a power-tripper who cannot bear to lose and a competitive sportsman. Speaking judgmentally, real competitors do not need either to brag or to whine, nor constantly to Calvinball the rules.

Mike Holmes wrote: Xero, ever play a good game of chess against a fun opponent? Just convert that sort of competition over to RPGs as the format, and you have an example of one small sort of functional Gamism. Very simply, to these gamists, it might be something akin to a complex board game to be won or lost either to the GM or to each other.

Xero my friend (not that I know who you are, but I feel friendly toward you at the moment) I think we are cut of the same cloth.

My gaming experience almost completely mirrors yours, and I have long taken steps to distance myself from Gamist (especially Hard Core, as Ron describes them) players.

I am also a Simulationist, in that my priority is always, first and foremost, that during a scene, the players and GM "feel like they are there." I want a car chase to "feel breathtaking" to the players, because they are tense with every swirve and intersection. I want a fist fight to reflect (genre wise, or realistically depending on the game) actually being in a fight, where every second a decision must be made quickly, and instinctively, and each swing is a unique blow that would have a unique effect depending where it might hit.

I want a player to "feel like he is flying a Mach 2" if that is what his character is doing at that time.

To me, nothing has every made me feel better as a GM, than a couple of weeks ago when a new player to my group really experienced his first, detailed, intricate, flavorful, intense combats... and right in the middle he just crows "Holy Crap! Champions combats are so COOL!" because the description and system support for intricate maneuvers made the scene so visible... tactile even.

BUT... while this may be my main priority... the campaign I have run for 17 years has always had a Narrativist theme. From the beginning, the supers campaign was not about emulating genre, but about asking the questing "If you have power greater than your fellow man... what do you do with it? Can you remain part of society, or can you care about those to whom you are godlike, in comparison?" It has been a question of what is ethical and moral... and when does a level of inate personal power change your ethics and morals... or does it?

So, moment to moment... I want a consistent, causal SIMULATION of an internally consistent and causal world that the players and GM explore and develop over time... and often the question of "power" is lost in the exhiliration of the moment... but it always comes back in the long run. There is almost always a moment when the players start to say, "Oh my god... what have we done? What might we do? What will happen now?" because the use of their power changes things and effects the world, and repercussions are important.

See... I can't break the S from the N (and now I'm going to get it confused with the MBTI Sensing and Intuation dichotomy... damn) because I don't think I could properly explore from an Nar perspective, if there wasn't a verisimilitude created by a strong Sym (consistent cause & effect) game play.

Anyway... that's my .02 on a thread that has drifted quite a bit... but hey that doesn't bother me, even though I guess it's against the rules here.

Xero, Neil, you guys are portraying yourselves as if your experiences are far different than ours. Realize that GNS exists because of the sorts of issues that you guys are talking about. Of course we've all encountered powergamers, etc. Where did we say that we didn't?

GNS doesn't say anything about the proportion of players who play a mode coherently or not. It just describes the coherent mode, and what incoherence looks like. In other words, everything that you've been saying is simply support for GNS. GNS is there to fix the precise problems that you've encountered.

As to your personal experiences. I can say that I have seen coherent Gamist play. So we have differing annecdotal evidence. Which doesn't mean much at all, either way. My experience could be atypical, yours could be atypical. Who knows.

But even if my experiences are atypical, and coherent gamism is less common than I think (and I already think it's uncommon), that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as coherent gamist play.

So nothing you guys are saying is contradicting anything anybody else is saying. All I'm hearing are typical experiences, support for GNS, and some mention of personal preferences. Nothing at all controversial here at all.

Mike

Andrew Norris wrote: Frustration ensues, even though neither of you are wrong, but there's a disconnect between modes of play there. You're not sure why he's wanting to break immersion so blatantly, and he's not sure why you won't let him do this cool scene he'd like to have happen.

Yep, this is often refered to as the Role-playing vs. Roll-playing dichotomy. And yes, it's classic GNS. Even without the rancor, play during these times was rife with these problems. I personally was looking for more in the way of in-character play in the late 70's, and can even remember wondering why my players were so "bad" at RPGs. I litterally thought that they lacked some talent for it that I had. Only decades later did I realize that they were persuing a legitimate reading of the rules we were playing by. That it was the system, not the players, that was to blame for this specific problem.

Mike

I think Andrew Norris' post that Doctor Xero refers to is pretty appropriate to this subject. I'll include the full quote:

Andrew Norris wrote: Let's take a hypothetical example. We'll say you, Neil, have a player with Narrativist leanings, and wants to be able to set up scenes in which his character could explore a moral premise. Maybe they'll propose, during the game, a scene between two NPCs that leads to a crisis, and have his character walk in on the scene at that moment.

Now that's Narrativism in Author stance, but from what you've said, you might very well describe that as "talking about roleplaying" -- not playing at all. My guess would be that you'd be unlikely to take this player's suggestion. Frustration ensues, even though neither of you are wrong, but there's a disconnect between modes of play there. You're not sure why he's wanting to break immersion so blatantly, and he's not sure why you won't let him do this cool scene he'd like to have happen.

The GNS model doesn't fix that kind of situation at all, but it makes it pretty explicit where the disconnect lies.

For some reason, I don't see a post from Andrew Norris here... and he seems to be referring to something I said in another thread, not this one. (You guys are quoting something I just don't see.)

Anyway... reading AN's full quote, here is what I would say.

I have a "chit" system in place that if you have drawn certain chits, you can spend them to shift scenes or act "in character" but outside the normal rules limitations... essentially allowing the players to give input and mini-GM, but at a limited amount. They are not equal to the GM... DURING THE GAME.

Now... anytime before or after the game, I'm totally up for "I'd like this scene to happen... and my character would really like to pursue X, Y & Z for the sake of theme or story." We have those conversations all the time, and then I take their suggestions and work them in to the presentation as I feel appropriate to the current causal/appropriate/plausible events.

So, yeah, I'd think it odd if players were to speak out of character a lot during a game... but they can do the same "in game." If one wants to talk to an NPC, then have them describe "In the few moments before we leave, I grab my cell and call Frank. If he answers, I ask if he is available to meet me for dinner. We need to talk about his sister."

That kind of thing happens all the time... I just ask that they keep it "in character" and reasonable/plausible for the current storyline/events going on in the game. I ask that they do it in character, and only step OOC if they need to explain "character intent" not player intent.

Ah HA! That's it. I don't have a problem with a player setting a scene or driving the game from an Actor stance (if I'm using that correctly) but players engaging in the Director stance should do that before and after the actual game play.

Does that make sense?

(And where is Andrew Norris' post that I could read it fully?)

Sorry. Doctor Xero put in a "cross-posted" note with his post, but I think it's bad etiquette. I would say one should post on one thread or the other, and then put a note in the other thread pointing to where you continue discussion.

Andrew Norris' post was in an "RPG Theory" thread. Here is a link: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=105461&highlight=#105461

John, I think perhaps that games that use those techniques are presented as examples because they are more obvious and easier to see; the techniques facilitate the play mode, but are not synonymous with it. The best counter example (if I understand correctly) is Donjon, which is heavy with director stance but strongly gamist. Donjon isn't generally cited as an example of gamist play precisely because despite being gamist it uses director stance techniques which are more common to narrativist play--so if you are not more familiar with the game you're likely to be confused by the description.

There are narrativist games that do not have strong use of these techniques, but they are easily drifted, so they don't serve well as examples.

Neil, there is a lot of talk around here about hybrid design; what is confusing is that people assume this means there is such a thing as hybrid play. Now, it has yet to be agreed whether there really is such a thing as hybrid design--a game design which promotes multiple agenda without creating incoherence--but hybrid play as such is not possible.

The problem with this idea that "I play narrativist with a heavy underpinning of sim" (that's a paraphrase) is that it misunderstands the core notion of what an agendum is. You can't have an agendum as support for another agendum; you're either trying primarily to do A or to do B (or to do C). You can't be trying primarily to do A and B, because you have to choose one over the other.

Hybrid design would mean that if we were playing the game and chose N the game would support us, or if we chose S the game would support us (in a theoretically N/S hybrid). In extreme cases, it would mean that if you chose N and I chose S, we could play together like this without conflict because the narrativist and simulationist choices would be compatible with each other. My example of a three-way hybrid system is a game in which the players are all members of a platoon in Viet Nam: gamist, narrativist, and simulationist choices are all going to be close enough that as long as the game system does not oppose any agendum players could pursue conflicting agenda without creating incoherent play beyond possibly some boredom (as one player wants to take time to dictate his letter home, another wants to prepare for the next fight, and a third wants to make sure they portray the problems of trying to keep watch and get sleep in the jungle).

However, hybrid design doesn't mean you're going to have multiple agenda yourself; it only means that whichever agendum you do have the game supports. If you are playing simulationist, you are there to learn about things, to understand situations, settings, characters, the elements of exploration. As Ralph said somewhere, if the rules say that you can survive jumping off a fifty-foot cliff, that means this is the physics of this world, and exploring system means discovering that the physics of the game world are different from those of the real world. You're there to learn about these things, to experience them. If you are playing narrativist, you are there to create theme from premise, to provide answers to moral and ethical and personal questions.

You're confusing one of the techniques of game play with one of the agenda. Verisimilitude, in-game causality, consistency, realism, genre emulation--whatever you want to call it--is not about agendum. It's about technique.

Now, I haven't seen your games; but from your statements, I suspect you are playing narrativist within a system that demands high levels of verisimilitude and in-game causality, and demands actor stance of its players most of the time. Those are techniques, a framework within which the roleplaying occurs. The question is, are you primarily about looking at issues and wrestling with hard questions, or are you primarily about discovering this other reality? You can't be primarily about both.

The other possibility is that you have drift; this is possible, but thus far I think it's generally a slow process. I see a lot of drift in Multiverser play, but it's usually either that each player is in a different agendum and the game accommodates them individually, or that a player's agendum shifts to fit a new universe as he becomes aclimated to the change in setting.

Does this help at all?

Some discussion of techniques supporting different agenda is in my article Applied Theory in the articles section here.

--M. J. Young

Hey, guys. Sorry for the confusion. (By the way, feel free to just call me Andrew! I'm still getting used to the use of real names here. Two years of running games online means I constantly expect to hear myself called "SweeneyTodd".)

I'm going to summarize what I said in the other thread in context here. Neil's comment was that he was trying to see how GNS was prescriptive in describing how people should change their behavior.

My response was essentially that GNS as a model is wholly prescriptive, and not descriptive. Here's the full text. (I think John quoted *most* of it above -- if he included it all, I will be happy to edit this out.)

From what I've seen of GNS's use to help dysfunctional games, it is descriptive rather than prescriptive. You don't do anything because the model tells you to. Rather, the model may help you understand why two good friends who game together might experience deep frustration during the actual act of play (because their Creative Agenda priority is different but they don't realize it.)

Let's take a hypothetical example. We'll say you, Neil, have a player with Narrativist leanings, and wants to be able to set up scenes in which his character could explore a moral premise. Maybe they'll propose, during the game, a scene between two NPCs that leads to a crisis, and have his character walk in on the scene at that moment.

Now that's Narrativism in Author stance, but from what you've said, you might very well describe that as "talking about roleplaying" -- not playing at all. My guess would be that you'd be unlikely to take this player's suggestion. Frustration ensues, even though neither of you are wrong, but there's a disconnect between modes of play there. You're not sure why he's wanting to break immersion so blatantly, and he's not sure why you won't let him do this cool scene he'd like to have happen.

The GNS model doesn't fix that kind of situation at all, but it makes it pretty explicit where the disconnect lies. That, hopefully, means it's easier to discuss and iron out between the human beings involved.

... in responding. I was on vacation. Florida Keys, and no thought of GNS at all.

Anyway... I wanted to respond to M.J. Young's quote

The question is, are you primarily about looking at issues and wrestling with hard questions, or are you primarily about discovering this other reality? You can't be primarily about both.

No one can tell you which you prefer. Only you can judge that.

But I can point out some of the stumbling blocks you're having.

You see this:

But these questions can't have any meaning or impact if the world doesn't have a deep, causal reality of the utmost consistency

what I really get my jones on, is "feeling like I'm there!"

but it CAN NOT come alive unless there is a consistent, ethical, social backdrop that gives meaning to my character's actions.

what do you do? How do you represent humans meeting aliens? What does alien mean? What does human mean? How does living in deep space change humans? How does contact with aliens change humanity?

... what you are saying is that it doesn't matter what I DO... or what SYSTEM I play... or what the RESULT/OUTCOME is of the game...

... GNS only is concerned with what I WANTED to be the focus of the game. It's only about the focus of my desire in the game.


What use is that? I don't need a model and a lot of esoteric, academic speech to sum up the phrase "People want different things when they game, so talk with the group about what you want."

GNS comes across as much to dense and detailed to be boiled down to that. If it is to be of any use, it should proscribe actions and behavior to take, once you have determined Nar or Sim or Gam play.

It's like a reduction of analysis past the Exploration point is kind of ridiculous, since everything I care about you say exists above the CA level in this theory. By your statement GNS is irrelevant to my gaming experience. The game could take place IDENTICALLY... but if I was thinking "I want to question the meaning of humanity" then I was NAR... and if I was thinking "I really want to make sure this experience is internally consistent and causal" then I was SIM.

That makes GNS kind of pointless unless one of these is significantly stronger in desire than the other. To me NEITHER is stronger... I want them both, equally... and get satisfaction of desires only if BOTH are met... and neither will be met equally in any given game. One will always end up... resulting in... a stronger experience.

How you can disconnect a Creative Agenda from the result of the game played... well that just makes no sense to me.

Ralph is exactly on target.

You speak of the importance of a solid underlying reality; but that's not simulationism. It is certainly useful (I won't even say necessary) for simulationism, but it is equally useful for gamism and narrativism.

For example, let's imagine a gamist player who knows the enemy is coming so he takes the high ground, sets up some defenses, and prepares his missile weapons, in full expectation that it will be easier for him to shoot down on his opponents than for them to shoot up at him. If the game supports that, he's happy; if it doesn't, he's not happy--but it has nothing to do with "simulationist tendencies". It has to do with an expectation that the system will model reality in a manner which supports the expected outcomes of his choices.

So, too, you're clearly thinking that having the reality seem real makes it simulationist. What makes it simulationist isn't that the reality seems real, or that the seeming reality of the world is something you want, but that you, as a player, are invested in exploring that reality. Is your interest really involved in what is cold, harsh space with sub-light travel limitations and rationally practical weapons (based on current science) really like? Is meeting the aliens just one of the factors here, just another part of being in space?[code]We diverted to pass through a hydrogen cloud, so we could scoop more fuel for the engines. It was a gamble, as it was going to cost a lot of energy to slow down from 87% light speed and set the directional vector appropriately, but it looks like it paid off, as we gathered enough to compensate for the expense several times over.

It appears that this system may be inhabited. The captain is trying to decide whether to reverse engines, slingshot around the star to absorb our momentum, and try to achieve orbit around the fourth planet, from which radio signals appear to be emanating. This isn't supposed to be an exploratory mission, but the possibility that there actually is someone else out here has got all of us excited. Decrypt haven't yet unraveled what is being sent, but they insist it is neither random nor repetitive, and appears to be an intelligently organized signal.

It would certainly delay our arrival at the colony; but then, three generations have already passed away while we've been in time distort, and another generation or two either way isn't going to be a big deal.[/code]
Simulationism is about those choices, deciding whether to explore the possibility of alien life or continue to the colony, paying attention to whether changing course an near light speed to pick up more fuel is worth the effort--the nature of the world, itself, the inhabitants, the physics, the knowledge, the flavor, the elements of exploration, is the focus of play. Sure, those kinds of things are present in other forms of play, but they're not the focus of what we're doing--they're the support structure.

Similarly, "feeling like I'm there" is common in one approach to simulationist play (although "watching it all from a godlike position outside it" is equally simulationist), but it's not definitive of simulationism nor exclusive to it. You can play gamist in pawn stance, moving your character around like he's a playing piece on a chessboard as you try to figure out how to beat the challenge, and even sacrifice him with no more thought than you would a knight to bring the king into checkmate. You can play gamist with the feeling that that adversary is going to kill you in a moment if you don't think of how to do this, and you can consider whether you're willing to sacrifice yourself to save the others, so that your side can win the game.

Example: there's a great board game making the convention rounds; if you can sit in on a game, do so. It's called Vanished Planet, and it's one of the best cooperative board games out there. Players play against the game, all together. More than once in games I've played, one of the players has sacrificed his world so that another player could finish a final quest which defeats the entity. You can do that with a casual detached attitude, or you can be very involved in being your people, watching your world consumed by the adversary, feeling like you have been destroyed--but you're still playing gamist here, regardless of the level of immersion, because you're trying to win the game.

Immersion is a red herring. It means nothing in GNS.

Ralph is also correct that narrativism is not proved by the presence after the fact of theme. The question is whether in play the players are addressing premise--is this game about exploring those moral issues? Their presence in play does not make it narrativist; it is the prioritizing of them as the important aspect that makes it so.

This is (as is often the case) longer than I intended; I hope it clarifies the matter some.

--M. J. Young

Taking your very usefull example of an s-f game, I agree that I think I'm Sim because those are the very questions I find important in the game... but they are not so dispassionate. There are moral/ethical elements of these choices. How will the decision be made? Is the ship a democracy, or does the captain just decide? What happens if the captain goes against the desires of the crew? Would it be moral to risk the crew on first contact? Would it be immoral to ignore humanities chance at first contact?

Those are ethical/moral questions that are important to the game world, and to some extent the real world. It is not only important WHAT you decide to do, but WHY.

If you could give me the SAME example written to describe NAR play... maybe that would help.

I cross-posted with Neil; I hope I can address his new comments.

First, you're still confusing the desire for a consistent underlying reality with simulationism. Simulationism does not require such a consistent underlying reality. You can have a simulationist approach to a cartoon world, or a simulationist surrealism. These are uncommon, but they are not inconsistent with simulationism. Similarly, consistent underlying reality is not exclusive to simulationism. You can have it as foundational for gamist or narrativist play. Whether you want high detail and strong causality in the world is a red herring; it's a separate question from what your creative agenda is.

Now, let's assume (as it seems may be) that what you're looking for is a narrativist game that has strong support for causality and immersive "being there" play. The "narrativist" part of that is what is most important in the creative agenda level of the theory. The rest of it is still part of the theory and important to play, but is not definitive of creative agendum. The narrativism aspect means that you want to be able to address moral, ethical, and personal questions through play.

That means you probably don't want to play Hackmaster. Hackmaster is designed to support gamist play, strong player-vs.-referee challenge. If you're trying to pursue questions like "what does human mean?" this game is going to get in your way. It relentlessly pushes you to answer the question, "can I beat the monster, and will it have enough treasure to push me up to the next level?" You might also have trouble with GURPS, where the emphasis on realism in some areas is so strong that unless you particularly want to address premise through character death you're going to find your efforts thwarted.

You want a game that uses techniques which support your play objectives.

The particular value of the creative agenda level of the theory is that a tremendous amount of player conflict arises here, because it is here that most people have objectives for play which they cannot easily articulate. It's relatively easy to say "I like the feeling of being my character, immersed in the world so I can taste it." It's a lot harder to say "I like being able to address moral and ethical questions through the events of play, and think that beating the villain should be incidental to that" versus "I want to beat the villain; if that raises moral and ethical questions, fine, we'll deal with those along the way, but ultimately we'll find a way to get around these so we can beat the villain". (This is much the same as the Prime Directive in the original Star Trek: it existed to create a greater challenge for the characters, something they had to work around to win the day. It didn't exist as a moral question to explore. Sure, the characters gave lip service to whether it was right to do what they wanted to do, given the Prime Directive, but ultimately they found a way to do it, because the point was to save the day, not discuss the morality of interfering in other cultures. They discussed it, but the answer was a foregone conclusion--they were going to find a way to win the day, and this was just another problem in the path, not the point of the story.)

So now we know that you want something with strong internal causality that supports immersion and does not interfere with a narrativist agenda.

I'm given to understand that The Riddle of Steel fits that description; I haven't read it, so I don't know. I would say that Multiverser can go that way, if the players are comfortable with it and premise is loaded through setting. I suspect that Universalis has the capability to be played thus (probably would have picked up a copy from Luke at Ubercon III if he'd had one, but he was out).

I'd also say that there isn't a lot of game development in this direction. there's a strong emphasis on light rules systems running concurrent with the rise in narrativist design. The two are not necessarily correlated, but occur together frequently because of emphasis on both concepts at the same moment in game development history.

I've been interrupted several times here, and have to run off again, so I hope this is coherent, and more that it is helpful.

--M. J. Young

RDU Neil wrote: ... what you are saying is that it doesn't matter what I DO... or what SYSTEM I play... or what the RESULT/OUTCOME is of the game...

... GNS only is concerned with what I WANTED to be the focus of the game. It's only about the focus of my desire in the game.

Again I have cross-posted with Neil, and I seem to be getting into a conversation here--well, I hope I can answer a bit more.

He wrote: Taking your very usefull example of an s-f game, I agree that I think I'm Sim because those are the very questions I find important in the game... but they are not so dispassionate. There are moral/ethical elements of these choices. How will the decision be made? Is the ship a democracy, or does the captain just decide? What happens if the captain goes against the desires of the crew? Would it be moral to risk the crew on first contact? Would it be immoral to ignore humanities chance at first contact?

Those are ethical/moral questions that are important to the game world, and to some extent the real world. It is not only important WHAT you decide to do, but WHY.

The struggle now will be to make this meaningful to my play group, who will likely never read, nor care to, any of this theory.

ALL that GNS looks at is what you DO when you play. It actually couldn't care less about what you "want" to be the focus (in an analytic sense - as a tool for getting the play you enjoy, what you "want" enters in, but that you want it means nothing in terms of looking at what actually happens). What did you demonstrate to be the focus - what did the PARTICIPANTS (players and GM), the real people, show to be the thing they cared about most?

It's like a reduction of analysis past the Exploration point is kind of ridiculous, since everything I care about you say exists above the CA level in this theory.

... isn't that just advice to watch a person's tells... like at a poker table?". Maybe that is overly simplistic.... but I got to start somewhere

Storn,

Just to reinforce what Raplh said - yup, it really is that simple! Of course, the implications get more complicated - GNS says things about what "categories" the tells fit into, and how those categories interact, but . . . fundamentally, as a tool to get peple to look for GNS in the "right" place, your poker/tells analogy is (it seems to me) GREAT - I'll be trying it out in my non-jargon GNS dicsussions.

Typical poker advice is "play the person, not the cards." But - the game is in the cards, right? You can't be playing the game unless you're playing the cards! Well, "tells" are ABOUT the person playing the game - that's why they're so valuable in playing the game. That's just like GNS - GNS is ABOUT the person playing the game, not about the charcaters in the game. Yet, it's (pardon the hyperbole) the absolute KEY to playing the RPG game, just like tells/playing the person are absolutely KEY to playing poker well.

(As you can tell, I like the analogy . . .)

Gordon

Hi there,

Storn, you wrote:

I guess my reaction to that is "why is GNS so tough to "get""... isn't that just advice to watch a person's tells... like at a poker table?". Maybe that is overly simplistic.... but I got to start somewhere.