I said this somewhere else:

After setup, what a game's rules do is control how you resolve one situation into the next. If you're designing a Narrativist game, what you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players. Every new situation should be a step upward in that conflict, toward a climax and resolution. Your rules need to provoke the players, collaboratively, into escalating the conflict, until it can't escalate no more.

Hi Vincent,

Works for me.

I was under the impression that I provided a very elaborate set of historical Situation options/combinations for both Gamist and Narrativist play in the respective essays.

Best,
Ron

Hm, I expect that you did. Poor internalization on my part, then. Research time for me.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote: What about Simulationist play?

It's a requirement of Exploration that each situation follows, in-game causally, from the previous. (Thus in Gamist and Narrativist play, escalating isn't enough - each sitch has to plausibly escalate, because of the underlying foundation of Exploration.) Is plausibility enough for Simulationism? Is there anything built on the foundation?

It seems to me that there may be a big difference at this level between "pastiche" Sim and "what would happen if..." Sim. In pastiche Sim, Situation should progress along formula lines. In what would happen if... Sim, there'd be no such constraint. Does that seem reasonable?

That seems like a big conflation of layers to me, John. I'm satisfied that rgfa-Sim is an approach to techniques, not a CA a'tall. An rgfa-Sim game might have player-authored rising conflict between fit characters across a moral line, in other words, or it might not - depending on decisions made outside the bounds of rgfa-Sim. What it will have is unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality. All technique things, not CA things.

Which means that, yes, if you're playing an rgfa-Sim game Sim, it'll be what would happen if..., not pastiche. (If you're playing an rgfa-Sim game Narrativist, it'll be the sort of Narrativist game with unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and an A-B-C approach to time and causality. Naturally enough.)

Meanwhile, what's the difference between "plausible" and "following from internal cause"? They're synonymous as I used them. It's an Exploration-level concern, not a CA-level concern. Gamist and Narrativist games don't get a free pass on a sloppy in-game.

Does a "what would happen if..." game design need to direct the resolution of Situation to Situation in any way, beyond simply ensuring that nobody violates in-game causality?

-Vincent

Vincent, I see an enormous difference between "plausible" and "following from internal cause," the latter being a subset of the former. The difference tends to be muted when talking about the direct effects of player-character actions, because such effects have a built-in expected cause (the player-character actions themselves) and are unlikely to appear plausible if they don't follow causally. But when you consider events created in Director stance, especially by the GM but also possibly by a player using narration rights, it's easy to have events that are plausible but not following from causes that are part of the shared imagined space. A coincidental meeting between a player-character and an NPC, a storm during a sea voyage, a letter sent to a player-character that gets delayed in the mail: Unless the shared imagined space contains some sort of internal ongoing model of the movements of NPCs, the interaction of weather systems, or the efficiency of the operation of the postal service, these events cannot be said to "follow from internal cause." But they are plausible in that they can reasonably be explained as the effects of hypothetical causes from outside the explored (shared) portion of the imagined space. (If expressed, these hypothetical causes do become part of the shared imagined space: "Hmm, must have fallen behind the bin at the post office." But they are not usually expressed.)

I don't know enough about Threefold to tell whether the absence of "plausible but not following from internal cause" statements is necessarily a characteristic of Threefold Sim. But limiting events to "following from internal cause" is an observable Sim technique, though probably rarely perfectly observed by gamemasters.

- Walt

Vincent, although off the top of my head I haven't fit it to your formula, isn't a good part of what happens in simulationist play characterized by rising involvement? This then leads to greater knowledge, and the rest should be the same.

--M. J. Young

Walt: that's really interesting. Mustn't everything, every single thing in a game, depend originally, if you track it backward, on a hypothetical cause unestablished within the SIS? So then the difference between "internally caused" and "plausible but not following from a previously-established cause" becomes a matter of degree: how long ago, how many causal steps backward, did we invent this?

Very interesting.

It also suggests a second matter of degree: how many of the things that happen are merely plausible, vs. how many follow from previously-established causes?

I'd put those as tolerances at the Exploration level. Your group at play is going to require this proportion of internally caused results to plausible results overall, with it requiring this many causal steps to establish something as internal. They'll vary from group to group and game to game, not CA to CA. Am I making sense?

MJ: Maybe, probably. Let me think about how that would look in my little scheme.

Meanwhile: "Big idea" Sim, right? As opposed to "pastiche" and "what would happen if..." Sim. A big idea Sim game resolves Sitch into Sitch in such a way that it brings us back always to the big idea, emphasizes and reinforces always the big idea. That's certainly how puppies works in play: wherever you go, whatever you do, you want more Evil. The game in action pushes you to kill puppies for satan, like ringin' a bell. Can somebody confirm that that's how, oh, Vampire: the Masquerade or some other (more coherent) high-concept Sim game works?

-Vincent

Hi Vincent,

It's certainly how Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon work, with the High Concept being composed of the literary themes, terms, and images of the sources material. Everyone works hard to continue to reinforce them, as well as to revel in them.

As for Vampire, I don't consider it a good example of High Concept Simulationist design, and frankly, I think its play reflects more of how the local group chooses to Drift it rather than anything particularly identifiable, especially in combinations of Techniques, in the design itself.

Best,
Ron

M.J.: by "rising involvement" do you mean that the players become increasingly empowered to contribute to the construction of the in-game, that the characters become increasingly central to what's going on in the in-game, or something else?

Less immediately, my thinking is that in roleplaying, knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by creating it, not discovering it, because there's nothing there to be discovered. Am I, consequently, missing your meaning?

It wouldn't surprise me if you've answered these before. I'm of course happy to be pointed to threads or essays, no need to go over it again.

Ron: Sure. Gotcha.

-Vincent

Walt Freitag wrote: I don't know enough about Threefold to tell whether the absence of "plausible but not following from internal cause" statements is necessarily a characteristic of Threefold Sim. But limiting events to "following from internal cause" is an observable Sim technique, though probably rarely perfectly observed by gamemasters.

John, do you see any contradiction between your #2 + #3 and my "unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality"? I don't but I'd probably miss it if there were any.

Is anything in your #2 + #3 incompatible with Narrativism's demand that situations escalate? Again I don't see anything but I'd probably miss it.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote: John, do you see any contradiction between your #2 + #3 and my "unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution, and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality"? I don't but I'd probably miss it if there were any.

lumpley wrote: Is anything in your #2 + #3 incompatible with Narrativism's demand that situations escalate? Again I don't see anything but I'd probably miss it.

Excellent! Tricky is doable.

I left "strong constraints" unspecified, because what do I know. You've specified them to, at least, "no metagame influence over outcomes." So now we can read it as:

"Unforgiving standards for plausibility, strong constraints on some elements of resolution (including allowing no metagame influence over outcomes), and a literal-minded A-B-C approach to time and causality."

Seem good?

Also, you wrote: If Narrativism does demand that situations escalate, then following pure Threefold Simulationism means you have limited techniques to fulfill that. You can control what level of abstraction to resolve at (or equivalently what scene to cut to), but you can't modify the in-game results of situations based on wanting the situation to escalate.

Vincent 'lumpley' Baker wrote: M.J.: by "rising involvement" do you mean that the players become increasingly empowered to contribute to the construction of the in-game, that the characters become increasingly central to what's going on in the in-game, or something else?

Vincent then wrote: Less immediately, my thinking is that in roleplaying, knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by creating it, not discovering it, because there's nothing there to be discovered. Am I, consequently, missing your meaning?

M.J., while I think that yes, immersion (or whatever) can go up and down, I'm not sure that the resolution of Situation to Situation can take care of it. I get the kind where Sitch -> Sitch opens more doors, but not the kind where Sitch -> Sitch creates more "being there." "Being there" in that kind of game is supposed to peak early and then pretty well sustain, isn't it?

(If you read my "knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by creating it" to include this case: "knowledge is creation: your group achieves greater knowledge about your in-game by [the GM, a member of your group] creating it," I think you'll find I'm talking about the majority of play.)

-Vincent

lumpley wrote: I get the kind where Sitch -> Sitch opens more doors, but not the kind where Sitch -> Sitch creates more "being there." "Being there" in that kind of game is supposed to peak early and then pretty well sustain, isn't it?

M.J., cool. That's just what I was asking and it sounds to me like we agree.

I may drop another post in here reflecting on Sitch in Ron's essays, when I get the oppontunity, but meanwhile I'm satisfied.

-Vincent