I was just thinking about a way to explain the GNS way and I came with this (if it's been already discussed please... feel free to crucify me!!!):

Can the GNS move with the age and the experience in rpg of the players?!?!

I remember when I was younger that the only thing that was important was the hack's slash thing. You know: I'm the stronger, I'm the toughest. I will beat anything! No fencies, just throw dices and keep cut heads!! I was a gamist (if I really understant the model).

Now, I grew and I took experience. Now, I enjoy more a good story with some actions than a lot of action with a poor story. I think that I'm now with the narrativist side.

Now, can we think about the GNS model about a "generation" model?!! Is it a good way to think about it?! Can it explain some things?!?! What do you think about it?!

Can older players enjoy a rpg session with younger players??!

Patrick

Patrick (Butch)--

The only problem with that model is that many would infer (even if it weren't inplied) that narrativism is "more mature" & therefore "better than" gamism or simulationism, which is dangerous ground to tread on. Plus, gamism doesn't equal "hack & slash" anymore than narrativism equals "poncy dramatics".


Anyway, I don't think it's true. Back in the day, when I first started playing RPGs, I got in on the hack & slash action as much as anyone did. But what I really wanted to be doing was create cool stories. I was incredibly dissatisfied with RPGs for a really long time. Narrativism has pretty much been all I've ever wanted to do.

Patrick -

I agree with Josh in that I don't think you can draw a timeline and place different modes of play along it in a generalized fashion for everyone. In addition to the generality of that, you start down the slippery path of calling one type of game more mature than another.

I will say, though, that, for a lot of people, their interests in RPGs change over time in definite "phases." I started out, like most people, with the hack-and-slash factor (Rolemaster for me). Over time, I moved from that to deep character exploration, including a lot of really intense and weird immersion stuff - Simulationism to the extreme. (This phase, for me, and for a lot of other people, usually includes the whole "system doesn't matter" diatribe, and a weird amorous love for Fudge or The Window.)

I finally moved out of that (and just to suck up, I'll admit that it was Sorcerer that drug me out of that quagmire) and on to more Narrativist-oriented games, which I've been enjoying. Strangely, though, my interests have fallen back into the game-with-a-capital-G sort of Games - not necessarily in the vein of silly hack-and-slash anymore, but games based in friendly mental and social competition between players. Donjon, Pantheon, Universalis (which I haven't played yet), and The Pool (in my opinion) provide this sort of game experience, where we compete via resource allocation and wagering for the control of the story.

Take all that as you will, I suppose.

Clinton R Nixon wrote: oriented games, which I've been enjoying. Strangely, though, my interests have fallen back into the game-with-a-capital-G sort of Games - not necessarily in the vein of silly hack-and-slash anymore, but games based in friendly mental and social competition between players.

cept that I don't see that there's any real order to it. Gamist to Sim to Narrativist has more to do with the progression of the industry and what games were available than any actual player lifecycle. It really only applies to those of us who were weaned on AD&D, "moved up" to a more realistic system like Rune Quest or Chivalry and Sorcery, or GURPs, and then discovered these "new school" ideas.

For people who are "non gamers" who are introduced first to these "new school" games, such a cycle wouldn't remotely apply.

I, too, don't exactly see any sort of "forward progression" from one node to the next. (Though I have heard this idea presented before, have considered it, and ultimately didn't agree with it.)

Two things:

When I played AD&D back in the day, we barely used the rules, as GM I kept the power level no higher than 4th level so the game couldn't be about manipulating the lego blocks of the game elements, and we just wanted character and story. This was high school. Other people the same age wanted something else. I just don't see a correlation between age.

Also, I think it's really a matter of personal preference -- some freaky thing called personallity. As I mentioned on a post once at RPG.net, some people love playing charades, and others don't. Is one supposed to mature into charades. I don't think so. My guess is though that the kind of people who like playing charades would grasp The Pool in 8.7 seconds flat, while someone who grew up playing hardcore AD&D would see such a game as something people had to get "really good at" to play. I think some people, either through temperament, training, the daemon they were born with at birth, the phase of their life their in, what have you, will simply "get" and be drawn to different kinds of games, with an emphasis on different kinds of fun. (As Valamir suggested above.)

This, Patrick, is why GNS focus is, in my view, very valuable. We may call all these games RPGs, but Squad Leader and Diplomacy are both boardgames -- but very different in construction and intent. Some people will like both, some will like one or the other. In the same way some RPGs are *very* different in construction than other RPGs -- and their focus allows *whatever* each person's tastes are to be very different.

Because -- and I think this may be difficult to swallow these days but I'll say it anyway -- different people have different tastes. Not better, not more mature. Just different.

But -- and this is the tricky part -- within each field of taste there are the connoisseurs, and they want the best example of that taste that can be found. If I play a Gamist Game, I fricking want to put the screws to the opponent to win and not have to have it explode in my face emotionally when he says, "But we're making a story!" And I'm making a story, I don't want to have to worry about some kind sucking everything off to the side as we spend 48 minutes battling a Black Dragon.

I would say, then, that no GNS style depends on maturity or development. I would say, though, that the ability to discern good games from bad, good design from sloppy design, the players you want to play with as opposed to the people who are just around, does depend on maturity and development -- or, in a word, taste.

(And though I've not seen that last word used in all the discussion all across all the debates of the RPG boards, I'd say that's the crux of so much of the panicked debating -- whether people are aware of it or not.)

Christopher

Actually, I agree with y'all that it isn't a cycle. I just thought it was a neat idea. ;-)

I don't think affiliation with GNS has anything to do with age, and I think that even functional players can approach different decisions/actions in the same game from different edges of the triangle, depending on external factors.... like a change in the game's mood, or their own.

There's a lot of pressure (not here at the Forge) to consider Narrativism more "adult" and story-games to be more "adult" than hack'n'slash but its just not true. Truly narrative games aren't mass market and therefore harder for a beginner to encounter than the mighty Sim games that are popular right now, which gives an illusion of this being true. However, I know many gamist- and simuluationist- bent players who are equal in age and wisdom to the average Narrativist.... and I know plenty of 14-15 year old Narrativist-oriented roleplayers who come into roleplaying through writing fantasy and sci-fi and animae-fan stories first and then discovering the joys of creating interactive characters.

My experience is that immersive fiction writers (writers who fall into the story as they write it) tend to be either narrativists or vanilla narrativists, but that's not always the case either.

Laurel

I think that what we have here is the mistaken association of the development of different types of game desings with the age of the people who played them when they came out. Originally you had mostly Gamist designs, and, no surprise, people played mostly Gamist. This was in the infancy of the industry when many of us got our start as youngsters. As we aged, many Sim designs emerged. And only recently hav NArrativist desings appeared.

So, I have followed that cycle, and I know other people have as well. But it has more to do with the fact that RPGs are less than 30 years old and the coincidence of the cycle of design than anything concious. As one person put it new folks can come in anywhere in the cycle right now, at any age.

This does relate to the interesting phenomenon that the "Gamer" population is aging. When RPGs were new, they could compete quite effectively with video games and the like. The younger generations aren't getting hooked on RPGs like we did (this is a simplification, but true). So gradualy the average age demographic gets older and older.

Fortunately, this also means more wealthy in general, and more capable. So the industry as a whole may have been said to have matured.

Mike

I think you're right on this one Mike: if we look back at the infancy of the industry, we were mostly gamist and as we aged new designs emerged ("aged" not necessarily more "mature").

But is it really a coincidence or is it the fact that the designer aged too and they wanted some new kinds of rpg?!? I don't know!

It's maybe me or the region I live in but I saw the same cycle going again and again: the youngster are "mostly" gamist and they tend to "change" when they grow up!

Patrick