As sometimes happens to me, I was asked a question in a thread, and I started to draft my answer, and then discovered that the thread had been closed since the question was asked. So here I've got an answer without the context of the question. Let me attempt to create the context.

In What GNS is about {LONG} I wrote: I think that if the referee is trying to create theme, he is playing narrativist. If the players are playing simulationist, you've got dysfunction. If you don't have dysfunction, it's because the game is narrativist and the players want to be in the passive mode throughout, supporting the one player who is addressing theme.

Marco then wrote: I want to check you (and Ron) on this to make sure I understand it.

In this case, these "Sim players" are, for example, complete genre-fiends who will never step outside of genre no matter what happens in the game--and that genre always dictates the choices of their characters--it isn't a genre where a character can make a surprising choice, for example (or have counter-genre pieces wrapped up in it like Unforgiven in the Western tradition).

The GM, in this case, is functional Narrativist--and therefore isn't shutting down people's input--so the gating factor must be coming from the other players (or internally), right?

What I'm having a hard time imagining is what happens when the GM says "This is a Modern-day magic game using the Hero System" and it's his own made-up world and there's no defined genre or conventions.

How do these guys stick to Sim?

What's that look like if they can't appeal to genre?

By functional Narrativist GM I mean a GM who has Narrativist interests and would run a functional game for a bunch of Narrativists. I don't think "playing bass" is necessarily a good description--but maybe--I'm not too clear on the analogy.

My example was a bunch of WW-II supers being sent to "bring in" a Nazi doctor who had agreed to s and, during the adventure, discovering that he is a monster who will escape justice if they complete their mission (he'll assist the allies but live out his life comfortably).

I'm not sure what Gareth would have happen with his Simulationists in this context or what the problems would be.

If the players play from Actor Stance, I can't see why the GM would be frustrated unless there is zero emotional reaction to the atrocities (in which case, the players are either not playing Actor stance or have created characters who are so hardened they display no emotion). In the latter case this is, as I observed, lack of emotional engagement. In the former case (hard characters) that's not incompatible with Narrativism-Actor Stance so it seems a non-issue.

Basically if the players and characters are un-moved by the situation then it doesn't have any impact, raise any questions in the player's minds, or whatever--but hey, it fits all the other aspects of Narrativism.

I think what Gareth is putting up is a situation where the players decide their characters aren't going on that mission.

I think this is some kind of different case than my example. If the Sim-players are dedicated to free-play and don't ever want to be acted on by the world (i.e. play characters in the army with a commanding officer) then how'd they get into the game in the first place?

-Marco

So let me look at your example from a couple of angles.

First, to clarify the example, the referee through a non-player character assigns the player characters to a mission in which they're to retrieve a Nazi scientist from behind enemy lines because he wants to defect. They're playing some sort of combat missions team, so this fits perfectly with who they're supposed to be.

After the mission has begun, the referee litters the path they take with clear evidence that this guy they are rescuing is thoroughly bad, or at least very much responsible for a lot of war crimes for which he's not going to be punished, thanks to their assistance. The referee wants to introduce the premise of whether they should complete their mission or not.

It is reasonably suggested that if these guys are playing simulationist, they might complete their mission and they might not, and that the referee might take this as addressing his premise. That means that narrativism has happened even though the players never intended to address premise--they merely intended to do what their characters would do in that situation, and this is what came out.

I'm going to pull out the simulationists for a moment and replace them with gamists. So now we have a group of players whose mission is to get this guy out. The referee starts presenting with them all kinds of reasons why this mission might not be morally right, because this guy might be one of the worst villains around. How does this impact them? I'd say it annoys them. It says, "In order to get the glory you want from success, you've got to do something that isn't really such a good thing as was presented to you." It also takes up game time. They would be quite happy to figure out how to get around that machine gun nest, take out that sniper, avoid the advancing fourth column in the south--undertake challenges along the way to the really big point of the quest. They aren't interested in dealing with the angst of whether they're doing the right thing. That's not what the game is supposed to be about.

Now, if you have virtualist play, and the players start grooving on (don't we have a less dated phrase for that?) the angsty tension about whether they're doing the right thing, you've got a bunch of narrativists who like heavy immersion and heavy internal causality and so get their opportunities to address premise through front-loaded narrativism. Maybe they get the guy and maybe they don't; probably they do, because from one perspective that's who they are supposed to be--but in the process they tell him that they're doing it because these are their orders, and they're not particularly happy about it and don't like what he's done or the deal he's gotten. They aren't really simulationists; they're narrativists with a strong commitment to tight credibility and in-game causality.

On the other hand, you could have virtualist play, and the players are just as disinterested in all this "this is the bad guy" stuff that's coming down the pike. O.K., they feel, you've made your point, sometimes the stuff we do isn't pretty and isn't perfect, but it's what we do. They get the guy out, because that's what they do, that's what they're paid to do. They don't worry about whether it was the right thing to do--like good soldiers, they know that they can only see a small part of the picture, and their superiors are the ones who decide whether this was morally right or morally ambiguous or whatever it was. As players, they are there to experience what it's like to do this, not to address moral ideas.

I'm not very focused today; I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote:
It is reasonably suggested that if these guys are playing simulationist, they might complete their mission and they might not, and that the referee might take this as addressing his premise. That means that narrativism has happened even though the players never intended to address premise--they merely intended to do what their characters would do in that situation, and this is what came out.

I'm going to pull out the simulationists for a moment and replace them with gamists. So now we have a group of players whose mission is to get this guy out. The referee starts presenting with them all kinds of reasons why this mission might not be morally right, because this guy might be one of the worst villains around. How does this impact them? I'd say it annoys them. It says, "In order to get the glory you want from success, you've got to do something that isn't really such a good thing as was presented to you." It also takes up game time. They would be quite happy to figure out how to get around that machine gun nest, take out that sniper, avoid the advancing fourth column in the south--undertake challenges along the way to the really big point of the quest. They aren't interested in dealing with the angst of whether they're doing the right thing. That's not what the game is supposed to be about.

Now, if you have virtualist play, and the players start grooving on (don't we have a less dated phrase for that?) the angsty tension about whether they're doing the right thing, you've got a bunch of narrativists who like heavy immersion and heavy internal causality and so get their opportunities to address premise through front-loaded narrativism. Maybe they get the guy and maybe they don't; probably they do, because from one perspective that's who they are supposed to be--but in the process they tell him that they're doing it because these are their orders, and they're not particularly happy about it and don't like what he's done or the deal he's gotten. They aren't really simulationists; they're narrativists with a strong commitment to tight credibility and in-game causality.

On the other hand, you could have virtualist play, and the players are just as disinterested in all this "this is the bad guy" stuff that's coming down the pike. O.K., they feel, you've made your point, sometimes the stuff we do isn't pretty and isn't perfect, but it's what we do. They get the guy out, because that's what they do, that's what they're paid to do. They don't worry about whether it was the right thing to do--like good soldiers, they know that they can only see a small part of the picture, and their superiors are the ones who decide whether this was morally right or morally ambiguous or whatever it was. As players, they are there to experience what it's like to do this, not to address moral ideas.

I'm not very focused today; I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

Hiya,

I'm pretty sure we're all hugging at this point.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm pretty sure we're all hugging at this point.

There's a good deal of agreement.

But ...

Having applied both the 3D model and attempted to apply GNS analysis to the last game I played in and the last game I ran, I believe that something that's very important is the GM's methodolgy vs. the player's expectations of the GM's methodology.

While these can be expressed as techniques, I think they can also be expressed as "requirements"--or even "agendas" and I think the 3D model has some insights there (concerning centralization) that get close to what I am seeing.

So I agree with Gordon: the Nar GM/Sim-players (and I'm not sure how to interpert such a thing) is still something I think needs more time--as soon as I can figure out how to phrase the questions.

-Marco

Hi Marco,

Wouldn't stuff like that (expectations) be part of the Social Contract, right at its crucial content of "let's play this particular game"?

I'm not saying this to write it off as a discussion topic - far from it. I would very much like to discuss it, but it seems to me that we oughta start at that level rather than focus on Techniques. We'll get to Techniques by "following the CA arrow" from outer to inner, I think.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Marco,

Wouldn't stuff like that (expectations) be part of the Social Contract, right at its crucial content of "let's play this particular game"?

I'm not saying this to write it off as a discussion topic - far from it. I would very much like to discuss it, but it seems to me that we oughta start at that level rather than focus on Techniques. We'll get to Techniques by "following the CA arrow" from outer to inner, I think.

Best,
Ron

Hiya,

I really don't know what to make of talking about this stuff when the terms Virtuality and Dramatism get mixed into Big Model constructions. It seems to me that many of your concerns in the second part of your part result from trying to match these terms in there, and I guess I don't see any need to do that.

... but that said, I don't see why your #2 gets pegged as Narrativist play. Creative Agenda labels describe play, not maybe-play, so describing it as an approach in which something might not happen isn't going to work. The question for me is what happened.

Also, I've never claimed that identifying one's CA-preference as simply "Narrativist" (for instance) is sufficient to describe one's actual play to another person. My only claim has been that differences at the grossest levels of CA tend to cause interpersonal conflict and to endanger the Social Contract of play.

Ever since the "GNS and other matters" essay, my entire purpose has been to talk about the diversity of Techniques and Ephemera which help to serve coherent play, and (in my view) the heightened chance for fun. Therefore your comment that saying "I'm Narrativist" isn't enough gets a big nod from me - and no perceived challenge to the concept.

Although all of the above seems contentious when I read it over, I still think we are agreeing on the basics. What's difficult isn't reaching the agreement, it's recognizing it when it happens.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hiya,

I really don't know what to make of talking about this stuff when the terms Virtuality and Dramatism get mixed into Big Model constructions. It seems to me that many of your concerns in the second part of your part result from trying to match these terms in there, and I guess I don't see any need to do that.

Best,
Ron

Marco let me suggest the possibility that the 3D model gets you closer because it weds the creative agendum to a specific technique that matters to you.

If someone tells you that they are a Republican, that tells you quite a bit about his political views. However, it doesn't tell you whether he is specifically for or against abortion legislation, or how he stands on a balanced budget proposal, or what he would do about homosexual marriage, even though these are all issues on which the Republican party has some strong positions. What you really know is that this person is overall more conservative than not, and finds that the Republican party supports his position on those issues which he thinks are important, such that he is more likely to get what he wants from a Republican government than from a Democratic one.

The analogy isn't all that good, but it certainly is the case that saying "I like to deal with moral, ethical, and personal issues within the context of broad distribution of credibility" says more about you than "I like to deal with moral, ethical, and personal issues" does by itself. For that matter, saying, "I like a challenge, and I hate standard fantasy" or "I'm really into immersion and like to focus on who these characters are and where and how they live" both give you more information than an agendum alone.

The difference is that the creative agendum touches something fundamental in our approach to games. It, and it alone, is the answer to "what do you find to be fun in your games"; everything else is the answer to "what do you find to be the best way to generate that". Credibility distribution may very well be important to how you generate fun, but it is a means of creating the kind of game that meets your agendum--it gives you the opportunity to prove your ability, or to discover something new, or to consider serious issues. It is that inner something, whether respect or curiosity or moral, that really pushes your buttons. The other stuff is all how to set things up so that you can get those button pushes.

So sure, if there are techniques that matter to you, you want to include those. Frankly, I'm not at all sure whether stance is terribly important to me when I play, and I can handle a wide range of credibility distribution as long as I understand what it is and have some control over the shared imagined space. Personally, dice are a strong preference of mine--I like fortune in my games, no matter which side of the screen I occupy. I would play a karma or drama based game if invited, probably, but it's not something to which I would be committed. That suggests that it's important to my agendum that fortune be a significant component--but it isn't really part of my agendum; it's because I find that the unexpected enhances play in whatever agendum I happen to be pursuing at the moment, and it's rare for players to be able to provide that as effectively as randomizers.

So yes, techniques may be important to how you play; but agendum is more fundamental than that.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: Marco let me suggest the possibility that the 3D model gets you closer because it weds the creative agendum to a specific technique that matters to you.

[snip]

So yes, techniques may be important to how you play; but agendum is more fundamental than that.

--M. J. Young

Marco wrote:

M. J. Young wrote: So yes, techniques may be important to how you play; but agendum is more fundamental than that.....

(Emphasis added)....

But the last quote--the bolded bit--is, I think, an area I have some contention with.

Agendas don't exist without techniques. I've seen nothing that suggests to me that intra-ca incompatability is more fundamental from inter-ca incompatibility.

If anything, my experience is the opposite: I require GNS CA's to be present in order for me to keep playing--but on a case-by-case basis techniques are the driving force.

M. J. Young wrote: The difference is that the creative agendum touches something fundamental in our approach to games. It, and it alone, is the answer to "what do you find to be fun in your games"; everything else is the answer to "what do you find to be the best way to generate that". Credibility distribution may very well be important to how you generate fun, but it is a means of creating the kind of game that meets your agendum--it gives you the opportunity to prove your ability, or to discover something new, or to consider serious issues. It is that inner something, whether respect or curiosity or moral, that really pushes your buttons. The other stuff is all how to set things up so that you can get those button pushes.

Marco wrote: Well, yes--clearly I like the 3D model because it says something that makes sense to me. Right now, in the Big Model, I don't have non-contentious clear language to easily duscuss my preferences of tecniques (although some of that is coming about). So I'm not of the opinion that it is at odds with the big model. I think both models can serve both purposes. But some stuff needs to be hammerd out under the Big Model for that to be clear to me (i.e. what Ralph has been saying makes a lot of sense--but it isn't canonical).

M. J. Young wrote:
One way is to say that your agendum is the basis on which you select your techniques; it is the controlling factor in the process. So if your agendum is narrativist, and you find that it is easiest for you to create theme in a highly immersive strongly centralized game, then you are selecting those techniques because your perception is that they fulfill your agendum.

Does that help?

--M. J. Young

Well, there are two very challenging posts here; I hope I can do them justice.

I'll grant John that "more fundamental" is a bad way to describe what I mean; I'm not sure I have a better way. However, I think I can get to the difference easily enough. Here are some examples; they're stated in the first person, but please understand that these are examples, not statements o my personal preferences, and they may conflict.

• I like games in which dice are used to determine outcomes.• I like games in which I play my character as closely as possible to what he would really do.• I like games in which I have a lot of credibility to create things in the shared imagined space.• I like games in which character players always speak in the first person.• I like games in which the referee has a solid plan for what's supposed to happen.


I would classify all of those things as techniques. You might bicker about how you use them, or whether they really provide the kind of play you want. You might want to clarify exactly what each of them means. However, these are how you do it.

Now compare that to these.

• I like games in which I get to show off how skilled I am at beating the odds.• I like games in which a personally moving story is created.• I like games in which I am discovering something I might not be able to learn in real life.


These are statements, roughly, of agenda. The reason I know that they're not techniques is that they don't tell me how to do anything. They are actually all outcome oriented--this is what I want to have happen in the game.

That means that your techniques are selected based on your agendum; you decide whether you want centralized credibility or first person identification or planned adventures because those techniques are means to an end, and the end is that thing that you want to get from the game, that thing you want as the outcome, the agendum.

I certainly agree that there are other potential incompatibilities between gamers. I know people who don't like sci-fi, for example, and so wouldn't play in a Star Frontiers game. I happen to have very much enjoyed my Star Frontiers adventures, and would love to pick up where we left off someday. This, though, doesn't seem to be about what you want from the game; it's about how you get what you want. That's the difference I see.

Marco, as far as the question of whether centralized or decentralized credibility is definitional of narrativism, I think we just had this discussion on another thread, where I argued that this was clearly an error in the way this was generally considered. Techniques which provide broad distribution of credibility tend to be narrativist-facilitating, but they aren't vital to it. Ron agreed that you could have narrativist play in a tightly centralized game, as long as the players have some input into the important decisions in creating theme. I proposed that once the game is so tightly centralized that only the referee has any control over whatever matters, it doesn't cease to be narrativist, but it does cease to be functional. Simulationism may best be able to survive in very limited credibility distribution situations, but if you reach the point that only the referee's decisions matter, then you've reached the point at which the referee is playing alone and the so-called players are in essence watching.

It was also suggested that the distinction Ron intended was not as much whether the players or the referee create the theme, but whether the theme is created through play or devised before play and dictated into it. I have said before that I think this distinction untenable. Whether I as a game participant decide what I'm going to do right now during the game, or whether I think about it during the pizza break and then do it when the game resumes, or stay up the night before planning what I want to do, or write up my perfect idea for what's going to happen in the next game session that might because of circumstances be three years from now, whatever is put into the shared imagined space is current at the moment it is introduced. If the referee is imposing a pre-ordained theme and boxing out all efforts to tinker with it, he is still playing narrativist, and it is a dysfunctional narrativist game in which all participants but one have been rendered powerless (whether or not they are aware of this).

I would say that as long as all participants are engaged with theme emerging from premise it is narrativist play, and as long as all participants have some ability to impact the content of the shared imagined space and are satisfied with the amount of credibility they are able to exercise, it is functional play. Thus centralized credibility in the creation of theme would, as I see it, be narrativist, as long as everyone is on the same page.

I agree with Ralph that to date narrativism has been misunderstood as specifically involving a technique, and that understanding of it has to be revised in that regard. Narrativism is about being engaged with theme emerging from premise through exploration. Credibility distribution can be important in facilitating that, but it's not central to the definition.

I hope that's an acceptable answer. At the moment it's the best I've got.

--M. J. Young

MJ,

It's an acceptable answer--certainly. What I'm not sure of is where it leaves us with respect to canonical GNS.

1. If Narrativism can be said to be similar to the 3D's Theme, which is expressed as degrees of player-input then, in fact, the 3D's mapping (although having only Cen/Decen might be seen as clunky) would seem to be a pretty valuable description of the phonomena.

2. I'm not sure GNS Sim is best described as play with an intent "to learn something." I'm interested in Ron's recent post that discusses Sim as having a "point" of gating factor for player input in effect (either from the GM or the players themselves)--but Ralph makes a fairly strong case for it being something like Virtuality.

3. You discuss Gamism in terms of proving oneself to others--and I agree that's pretty canonical GNS. But you also, once, discussed a possible imaginary audience that would step in to fufill the "others" role if it wasn't coming from the actual humans.

I don't know if that's canonical either. Can I be said to have Gamist play if the other players tolerate but do not give props for my victories?

Ron: these are questions I've got and your input would be welcome here. This might be best with another thread if you see fit. I wanna say that I don't consider this per-se challenges to the Big Model. I understand that some of what I've brought up here are special case edge conditions (the gamist one, especially). So this isn't meant as any kind of attack.

-Marco

M. J. Young wrote: I agree with Ralph that to date narrativism has been misunderstood as specifically involving a technique, and that understanding of it has to be revised in that regard. Narrativism is about being engaged with theme emerging from premise through exploration. Credibility distribution can be important in facilitating that, but it's not central to the definition.

Hi Marco,

I'm reading this thread with extreme interest! And if I may be so bold, your posts have become, for me, eagerly anticipated rather than dreaded/frustrating. Not that my approval is necessary or anything, but it seems a little feedback about that is at least possibly appropriate.

Anyway.

If I'm not mistaken, the 3D material isn't a challenge or a reconstruction of most of the Big Model to the extent that some are reading it. I used to draw all sorts of little representations in dialogues with Ralph which showed a baseline of Exploration (like a floor), then vertical bars that represented G, N, or S. Sometimes the floor would "extend up" into the base of the bars, sometimes not (depending on the given group). But one of my points with this was that the Sim bar was the same color as the floor, and the others were not.

That's not quite the same as the 3D stuff that Ralph is describing, but it shows, I hope, that we've been kicking around similar concepts about it for a while. And the visual representation of the Big Model per se is very much intended to draw that Techniques/Agenda distinction that he's making, so all of his points about that seem to be agreements to me.

The issue of Narrativism as a Techniques-set vs. an actual Agenda is the topic of a hell of a lot of interpersonal dialogue between Ralph and me right now, and both of us are actually revising our positions due to that.

I think that identifying any Techniques with an Agenda is a bad starting point, but that we should also be open to the idea that various Techniques combinations are going to vary in their reliable/fun support of different Agendas. That shouldn't be surprising.

Part of the issue is terminological - what word do we use for the relevant agenda, which then pulls in all the is-Sim-a-good-word stuff - and part of it is conceptual - what is that agenda which produces Theme, and is all play which produces Theme really alike in terms of aesthetic agenda.

As I say, both of us are really working hard to think about this stuff, and all the dialogue in this and related threads is helping a lot. Keeping the threads slow and avoiding having multiple-front threads to deal with is especially helpful too.

I'll stick with musing about your questions right here in this thread. "Musing" is definitely the right word, both in terms of not delivering The Anssssswer and in terms of opening myself up for inspiration.

1. If Narrativism can be said to be similar to the 3D's Theme, which is expressed as degrees of player-input then, in fact, the 3D's mapping (although having only Cen/Decen might be seen as clunky) would seem to be a pretty valuable description of the phonomena.

2. I'm not sure GNS Sim is best described as play with an intent "to learn something." I'm interested in Ron's recent post that discusses Sim as having a "point" of gating factor for player input in effect (either from the GM or the players themselves)--but Ralph makes a fairly strong case for it being something like Virtuality.

3. You discuss Gamism in terms of proving oneself to others--and I agree that's pretty canonical GNS. But you also, once, discussed a possible imaginary audience that would step in to fufill the "others" role if it wasn't coming from the actual humans.

I don't know if that's canonical either. Can I be said to have Gamist play if the other players tolerate but do not give props for my victories?

Hi Ron,

It works very well--I am going to consider each of the three and, one at a time (to help keep things reasonably paced), start threads about each of them to further explore them.

I too am very happy with the quality, tone, and content of these discussions. :-D

-Marco