Simulationism is problematic. I don't think that I'm saying anything shocking there. There is little agreement on what it actually is, which I posit is due to the fact that there are some priorities out there that players have that they want to assign to simulationism in order that it seem more accesible as a mode of play. Rather that the definition of simulationism as "priority on exploration" somehow doesn't manage to cover what they see as actually occuring behind the scenes. Partly, it seems to me, because it's a behavioral observation, and doesn't get to the goals behind the activity.

I could go on and on (and in fact have before) about why I think these additions aren't really useful, but I'd rather try a new rout to understanding some of these issues. So let's set simulationism aside for a moment, and discuss related player motives and behaviors. Keep that in mind as you read. I'm not trying to define simulationism here (in fact, pretty much everything that I'm about to discuss is, to me, ancillary to the definition of simulationism), but instead to look at things that may be related to it.

(This is also probably related in some way to some people's understanding of the term Immersion, but I'm going to avoid that even more pointedly).

Objective World Description
To start, I specifically want to look at one behavior that is very easy to identify as to it's goal. I'm going to call it "Objective World Description" or OWD for short. Basically this is when a player (using the broad meaning of the term that includes GMs) looks to agreed to materials to find out how to define what exists in the world, and any reasonable extrapolations of actions within it that occur from such description. The example that I often use for this is the fork in the road. If the players go left, do they get to some location that is on a map or that some note says is along that road? Or does the GM just make up what's down the road to the left (potentially putting down there the same thing that he'd put if they'd gone right)? If a player slaps a noble that's written down in the canon as being a coward, does he have the character slink off, or does the GM change the nature of the noble on the spot to make him only seem cowardly and have him fight here?

It seems to me that OWD description stems from a desire to have the world of play have what I refer to often as "objective reality." Think of it this way - when you're playing a CRPG, in almost all cases, the world is set up before hand. So as you travel through it, it has a seeming "reality" to it that you discover as you go. That is, there's something pre-existing that you're uncovering as you go along. As such, maneuvering your character through the landscape has some of the feeling of exploring in the real world. That there objectively is some reality over that hill, and that you'll discover it if you (or your avatar) goes over the hill. There's an excitement that comes along with this sort of discovery, for some players.

Surprise is not enough. That is, if the GM is making it all up as you go along, and it's obvious, then the feeling that you're discovering an objective reality does not happen, even if you don't know what it is that's over the hill before you get there. That's not to say that you can't get something from these surprises. Just that it's not the same sort of thrill that exists in searching an objectively pre-set reality.

Now, the problem with tabletop RPGs is that it's very hard to enumerate the entire world. But don't think that people haven't tried. Take a look at Harn. It's quite possible that there are entries for every single human being on the continent described, including what they do for a living (I'm not sure of the actual state, but this certainly seems the goal of products like Encyclopedia Harnica).

CRPGs have to limit the world in some ways, because the machine is only so good at filling in the blanks. With a GM, however, responsible for filling in the blanks, you can theoretically drill down into any level of the reality that you want to examine. So, in fact, unless you have the players agreeing to never ask any question about anything but what's likely enumerated, there will be occasions where the GM is making things up.

Now, HWD is often accompanied by the GM faking it in these circumstances. That is, he makes up the information, but presents it exactly as he would any other information so the players don't know that it's made up on the spot. So that the appearance of the whole world being pre-existing continues. In other play, some GMs will admit that they're being extemporaneous, but get back to HWD as soon as they can. In some cases GMs will even show materials to "prove" that they're only working from HWD ("See, just like it says right here").

The point is that perfection is not expected. Even if we can't have an entirely objective world in play, players can still appeal to the idea of objectivity to the extent possible. There's value for these players to a world that's only somewhat objective.

I don't know just how common this is, actually, but I know it's not ficituous, because I myself am at least a minority of one in finding OWD to have a certain kick to it. In fact it's the problem of OWD that I find most troublesome in design. I've largely given up on it of late, but not without remorse.

Channeling Character
A similar behavior to OWD is channeling a character. When channeling a character a player does what some authors do, and create a mental construct of the character in their minds. The process by which this is done is murky, but it will suffice to say that they succeed in doing so at least to all appearances. Once this happens, the player feels that the character has it's own motives in making decisions. I think that this has some of the same kick as OWD does for the player using the method. That is, the character seems more "real" to the player, or simply has a quality that's missing from a character for whom the player is making the decisons using the character as a tool to maneuver in the game.

Interestingly, players using this will often say things like, "I wish that my character would do X, but they want to do Y." This seems scitzophrenic enough to observers that it's easy to put this off as some sort of mental abnormality of thought process. But what's really going on is that the player is seeking a certain feeling from the process that can't be gotten by using the "I'll have the character do this" reasoning. That is, the loss of "control" is less important to the player than the feeling of reality created.

The Problem of Outiside Perception
There's a commonality to methods like this in that, in each case, the appearance of player will in making determinations of what exists, or what happens in the SIS is minimized. Or the attempt to make the appearance go away is minimized. Here's the thing about these methods, for a player who does not share them, they seem exceptionally problematic. Because they do have the downside that other player motives have to be discarded in order to make them work. Sure it might be more interesting if they went to the dungeon down the right path, and not down the road to town on the left...but OWD says that they went to the town. So what harm could there be in changing things?

Well, the "harm" is in the destruction of the feeling of objective reality to the characters and places in the game. If you don't understand that feeling (and many players simply don't), then it's easy to call these behaviors dysfunctional and point to a common motive in avoiding incoherence. That is, Beeg Horseshoe says that sim is a retreat from visible player motives because incoherence in them causes problems.

And, indeed, if player motive is visible, these sorts of problems are easier to handle. Rather gam-nar incoherence can be avoided entirely if agenda is made clear, and there are other benefits to players discussing their motives in terms of effective play. So to a player used to these benefits, and who doesn't understand the benefits of the objective world techniques, hiding this way seems like it must only be some bad tactic to avoid discussing other agenda issues.

But it's not (neccessarily, some people may be using it for the wrong reasons). There is definitely something being sought here. RPGs have value as simulative activites. And enforcement of in-game causality and objective reality is part of this.

Now, these are only a couple of behaviors and attendant goals that I could associate with simulationism, there are many, many more. Which is to say that likely some simulationism happens that doesn't include either of the things I mention above. But I think that by dissociating these behaviors and goals from the definitional discussion of simulationism that we can discuss them on their own. Because they are concepts that probably should be discussed, and do certainly become part of actual creative agendas in play.

And, further, I hope that other similar concepts can be discussed on their own as well. This will hopefully be a starting point. I haven't been involved too deeply in the discussion of some of these things, of late, so I hope that I'm not just reiterating something that somebody else has said. If so, please just link me to the appropriate discussion. But I think that these things are very worthwhile to look into.

Mike

Can I upbring some other behaviors/motivations, or do you want to just stick with these two for the moment?

Heya,

I've come to understand Simulationism in my own mind as a priority on the concept "to be like something else" in the game.  For instance, for games like Star Wars, Call of Cthullu, and MERP the priority was "to be like the settings from the fictional source texts."  For games with combat systems like Rolemaster or TRoS the priorty is what it is "to be like in a real fight."  For a game like ADnD2, the priority would be what it is "to be like a (insert class) in a fantasy setting like (insert module like FR, DS, or Ravenloft)." 

The 'rush' experienced by Gamists when they Step on Up or for Narrativists when the address Premise and learn something about themselves, is vaguely analagous to the rush Sim players feel when they think they've done a good job at "being like something else."  The priority, in my mind, is to try to re-live or re-experience something else that has happen or been created, and the closer they emulate it the better.

My gaming priorities don't line up with Sim all that well, so I may not be the best to comment.  However, this is the path I have taken to help myself learn just what Sim means.  Hope this adds to the discussion!

Peace,

-Troy

The harm in changing things in an Objective World Description is that it makes players feel their choices were pointless. "I took the left fork, but you were gonna put the castle wherever I went. Why even bother having me choose?"

Indeed, why bother? In a Nar game, you wouldn't bother. Get to the Bang; the fork in the road is a needless distraction. In a Gamist game, you probably wouldn't bother either. Get to the Challenge. Wandering around on the wrong road doesn't get to encounters where I can Step On Up, so can we just skip it? Unless there are wandering monster tables...

Well, Troy kinda brought up what I wanted to, so...

It's just like in that movie, wha'cha'callit!
Sometimes, I encounter play that is filled with references to TV, movies, or other shared images/experiences. Here's an exaggereated example:

GM: You walk into coffee shop, it's bright and clean, and there's some chatty suburban soccer Mom drinking her Mondo-Vanilla-Mint-Frampachinatto. Suddenly, the barista starts screaming and shifting shape, like something out of the X-files...

Player: I pull my guns out of my long black trenchcoat and start running along the walls, while shooting at the creature.

GM: The barista turns and looks at you, and you realize its the woman from the record store!

Player: The one that looked like Drew Barrymore?!?

GM: That's the one!

Sure, go ahead and come up with others if you like. Though I would like to discuss the one's I pointed out some, too. Perhaps other threads can split off of this.

So, Troy, what you and Tim seem to be talking about could be termed Genre Emulation? Or does it go beyond that to Pastiche? I see all the "just like in..." references to be social reinforcement for this sort of activity. Is that about right? Yeah, this is not what sim is, but it's also related, I think. Though it could also be related to narrativism in some ways, I think.

Adam, your point seems to address what I'm talking about, but I'm not sure that I get what you're tryihng to say. That is, you seem to be pointing out the value of such play to a simulationism prefering player, but then you're saying that the decision isn't important to other modes? Is that it?

Mike

I'm not entirely sure how this might apply to the discussion of behaviors and motivations, but I think I know exactly where such an exchange as Tim made might be rooted.

Basically, we have the SIS.. In what I've come to believe is Sim play, there is a big emphasis on the SHARED portion being as strong as possible, so as to create as close as possible to one single experience for all players, so that we don't get such mood breaking things as "Wait, wait.. I thought she had brunette hair!" and "what do you mean you run along the walls?" We've all seen Drew Barrymore, so we know what this mutating barista looks like, and we've all seen the Matrix, so we know what a man in a long black trenchcoat looks like while running along the walls shooting. We don't have to stop to explain or describe further, because we've all got the pictures laid out in front of us.

This same reason is why miniatures can be used to support non-gamist play, and why character pictures are frequently prevalent among Sim-play groups. If I'm not imagining your Paladin as a fiery redhead, then we're not sharing the same imaginative space, and dissonance is bound to occur eventually. The deep simulation players want to avoid that as much as possible.

From the title "Simulationism Aside," I take it that we should even really be discussing Simulationism at all, yet, until you want to bring the discussion back around there. What you're describing may or may not have some relationship to Sim, but that can be determined later. Before us we have these schools of techniques.

I agree with your analysis that both OBW and Channeling Character both involve minimizing the appearance of external influence. Might the ideal union of these techniques be described as "There Are No Players"? The players (GM included) strive to convince themselves in play that their only relationship to the Shared Imagined Space is that of observer.

Self Defined goals?
This seems to be a really big deal in [some] Sim play, at a much greater level of emphasis than in Narr and Gam designs. I would say that it is often tied into some important core source material, however, creating a "bungee" affect where Sim players leap out into atomic Narr or Gam play, but then return to the Sim core.

This is somewhat different than the reverse situation, where Narr or Gam motivated players demand a certain level of verite to setting or causality.

Heya,

So, Troy, what you and Tim seem to be talking about could be termed Genre Emulation? Or does it go beyond that to Pastiche? I see all the "just like in..." references to be social reinforcement for this sort of activity. Is that about right? Yeah, this is not what sim is, but it's also related, I think. Though it could also be related to narrativism in some ways, I think.

Hi Troy,

You're right, it isn't inclusive enough. If genre emulation is the overriding priority, then it's Sim, but if it's Sim, there are lots of ways to play that aren't genre emulation.

And just to be terribly confusing, genre emulation as a supportive technique can be found in many G and N applications.

Best,
Ron

Mike wrote:
So let's set simulationism aside for a moment, and discuss related player motives and behaviors. Keep that in mind as you read. I'm not trying to define simulationism here (in fact, pretty much everything that I'm about to discuss is, to me, ancillary to the definition of simulationism), but instead to look at things that may be related to it.

(This is also probably related in some way to some people's understanding of the term Immersion, but I'm going to avoid that even more pointedly).

Mike wrote: Objective World Description
To start, I specifically want to look at one behavior that is very easy to identify as to it's goal. I'm going to call it "Objective World Description" or OWD for short. Basically this is when a player (using the broad meaning of the term that includes GMs) looks to agreed to materials to find out how to define what exists in the world, and any reasonable extrapolations of actions within it that occur from such description.

Mike wrote: Channeling Character
A similar behavior to OWD is channeling a character. When channeling a character a player does what some authors do, and create a mental construct of the character in their minds. The process by which this is done is murky, but it will suffice to say that they succeed in doing so at least to all appearances. Once this happens, the player feels that the character has it's own motives in making decisions. I think that this has some of the same kick as OWD does for the player using the method. That is, the character seems more "real" to the player, or simply has a quality that's missing from a character for whom the player is making the decisons using the character as a tool to maneuver in the game.

Mike wrote: Interestingly, players using this will often say things like, "I wish that my character would do X, but they want to do Y." This seems scitzophrenic enough to observers that it's easy to put this off as some sort of mental abnormality of thought process. But what's really going on is that the player is seeking a certain feeling from the process that can't be gotten by using the "I'll have the character do this" reasoning. That is, the loss of "control" is less important to the player than the feeling of reality created.

First, Ron's got the subject matter here, and is showing the way in a Taoist manner. And, Adam, you have the idea precisely. I don't even know that we have to get "back around" to simulationism's definition at all, however. I think these things are interesting to discuss on their own.

So, Lance, when you say "In what I've come to believe is Sim play..." an interpretation of that which I would agree with is, "In some games that I've played which I think are Sim, XYZ tends to happen." That is the "SIS Matching" efforts that you describe are yet another technique or goal that might be strongly linked to simulationism, but otherwise in no way definitive of simulationism.

Part of the point of this thread is that no technique, XY or Z, is definitive of simulationism. Nor is any goal. Only by dissociating them from any notion that they might be definitional can we discuss them sensibly.

So, on to details: Adam, yes, I think that the two things I mention are part of the "There are no players" ideal, which I think is also one possible definition of Immersion (though, I said I would avoid that, too, didn't I). But, yes, I think that the specific goal there is to make the world feel real by trying to block out as many real world elements of play as possible. To that extent, the SIS Matching that Lance brings up can be useful. However for some groups the idea of using real world references will actually be counterproductive, no? Yes it's a very powerful way to create matchings of imagined material, but it neccessarily brings in narration of the real world.

The Turku school, for example, would be appalled, I'd think. That is, playing a LARP, if you stopped and said, "Imagine me dressed like Neo from the Matrix" that might be grounds for ejection from the game (OK, I kid, but you get the idea). So the goals here can be widely disparate.

Bob, yep, that's another goal, basically eliminating the appearance of GM influence by having the players be the drivers of all play, the GM "just playing the world." Related to Open Sim play. The idea being to obtain the ideal of the objective world, by making sure that the invisible hand of the GM is not only invisible, but actually pretty much inactive. Again, so that it's like the CRPG, where it's merely player choice driving where the character goes and what he does. There's the sticky question of whether or not putting "interesting stuff" in play is kosher or not, however. If I put in an NPC that has a need for doughty adventurers, is that manipulating the environment with drama in mind? Even if it's up to the PCs to find this NPC?

There's simply no getting around the fact that the GM has actually created the world, at least in some measure. All of the objectivity goals are, again, neccessarily imperfect. Again, the tough question there is whether or not that imperfection automatically leads to problems in play.

I think that genre has two parts to it, how well it's emulated (fecundity), and how well it's employed. I think that you can have a really Lovecraftian story created that would be dread dull to have played out. So there's at least two, and probably more, aesthetic qualities we're looking for here.

Note, interestingly, how emulation of somthing like Lovecraft might actually run somewhat counter to the idea of an objective world. Just like refering to the Matrix may break the illusion, noting that something matches literary convention could have the same effect. The "perfect simulation" seems to me to likely be dull, since nobody is actively creating drama, so as to avoid the appearance of outside interference in the objective world. This is, of course, what leads to illusionism as a technique. Trying to make it all look like it's just "player run's character, GM runs world" while moving behind the scenes to create drama.

Jukka, oh man, that's another forbidden term, sorry. Suspension of disbelief discussions are hereby banished to some other thread, if not off of The Forge completely. OK, that's over-reacting, and I appreciate what you're saying. I just don't want any part of this thread to break down into looking at the definitions of any of these (three now) problematic terms.

Problems arise when the simulation is not so good; when things work differently that how you, as a player, imagine them working without a proper explanation. You have to spend energy on validating things (if this thing didn't work as it was supposed to work, and the effect was not properly explained, what else works differently?).

I support Jukka on everything in his post - what I've read is very similar to my own thoughts. But I'm not sure how this relates to the topic, so

About the question - what relates to sim - it seems to me, that _believing_ in objectivity of game world and of characters' decisions (as part of it) is the key, which implies that players agree to ignore inevitable elements of subjective inside the game world.

So if there is a difference between sim and illusionism and participationism, from such point of view, it is in ignoring only unconscious (sim) or also conscious (ill. and part.) subjectivity of players (including GM).

Do I get it wrong that Mike is talking about "testing" the game - are it's world definitions objective enough?

I usually prefer not thinking about this objectivity assuming it's enough. When something really breaks this assumption, what Jukka described as "spending energy" happens and if energy is not enough - game seems not to be functionall anymore.

A short disclaimer; I'm relying heavily on my own perceptions on plays I've witnessed as a player (including GMing). I can't really claim on being objective, since what I'm describing here is my take on the things roleplaying culture around me (that would be; the clique of Nordic Arthaus roleplaying I identify with) is doing. It is, at best, a very narrow approach on Simulationism as I understand the term. I'm relying heavily on it because I find it hard to explain things without examples rooted on my own experiences. If I'm going completely off the track, feel free to slap me.

Mike wrote: Jukka, oh man, that's another forbidden term, sorry. Suspension of disbelief discussions are hereby banished to some other thread, if not off of The Forge completely. OK, that's over-reacting, and I appreciate what you're saying. I just don't want any part of this thread to break down into looking at the definitions of any of these (three now) problematic terms.

Mike wrote: The "Beeg Horseshoe" side of me wants to say that what you're describing as "not so good" play of this sort is actually "incoherence." That is, I see this sort of thing become problematic to handle only if/when there's a suspicion of players playing using gamism. The "extra effort" explanation really being a smoke screen for the acutal problem. But I could be wrong.

Mike wrote: Or, from a more charitable reading, we see a general problem with two common goals in play. One to allow players control over their characters, and the other to have exciting play. The two are far from mutually exclusive. But the question is who is being denied player input into the process. If the GM denies input to the players, in order to get drama, they rebel and defy drama in order to maintain control. If the players deny the GM control (it happens), then the GM may feel that he's being denied his creative due. And if both sides deny the power to the other, then nobody can make drama. Why do they deny each other the power? Well, charitably, because visibility of input destroys the objective world feeling. Less charitably, because the one side doesn't trust the other to create drama in a way that allows them to participate.

Mike wrote: This is where you get illusionism, even potentially player illusionism. The one side takes control from the other, and hides behind the "it's what would happen" explanation in each case, and makes it look like the other side still has control. Thus everyone is theoretically satisfied, up until the point where the illusion breaks down.

The only other sim related option is to say that it's OK not to have drama.

Sorry for the rambling here, I'm just showing the relationship of these techniques to some of the sub-agendas of simulationism.

Heya,

And just to be terribly confusing, genre emulation as a supportive technique can be found in many G and N applications.

Having always found Simulationism confusing (except to the degree enlightened by Kat Miller's "Play House" metaphor), I am struck by Mike's thought on "objective world" and Ron-and-Troy's on "genre emulation" as a goal-in-itself (as opposed to a supporting Technique to generate Color): Here we have two "Simulationist" objectives that seem at odds with each other and potentially painfully incompatible.

The "Objective World" players -- or you might call them the "logical extrapolation" players -- take a certain set of precepts ("a world just like ours, except that magic works, by these rules...") or a certain set of fictional sources treated as "observational data" and then see "what happens if..." If the result is very different in tone from the source material, so be it; if the known starting point produces surprising results, so much the better. The aim of the exercise is to fill in the blanks left by the original source, or to extrapolate more imagined reality from the given starting point, in a way that respects the initial "facts" and follows logically from them; just imitating events from the canon sources would be a disappointment to such players, because that's already been done.

The "genre emulation" players -- or you might call them "look and feel" players -- don't start with just a set of precepts, but always with a certain set of fictional sources, and they don't treat these sources as "data," but as an aesthetic standard to emulate. If implausible cause-and-effect reasoning is necessary to replicate the tone of the source material, so be it (viz. "saving the appearances" in Ptolemaic astronomy); if different starting points all produce results similar to the original source, so much the better. The aim of the exercise is to imitate events from the canon sources; extrapolating into what happened "behind the scenes" in the original source (the "underbelly campaign") or creating a result with a starkling different tone from the source would be a disappointment to such players, because it departs from what they enjoyed in the original.

SPOILERS ahead, like any of you hasn't seen the original Star Wars films:

To take a stark "actual play" example of how these goals could clash, consider Curtis Saxton's astounding and slightly scary Star Wars Technical Commentaries, particularly The Endor Holocaust, where he argues, with impressive (to me) physics knowledge, that the destruction of a Death Star battlestation in low orbit over the forest moon of Endor would have caused nuclear winter and wiped out all the fuzzy little Ewoks soon after the end of the movie.

For an "objective world" / "logical extrapolation" player, this "Endor Holocaust" idea is dynamite: it follows logically from crucially important canon events and would have tremendous consequences to extrapolate and explore, enough to start a campaign in itself.

For a "genre emulation" / "look and feel" player, the "Endor Holocaust" idea is horrible: it brutally departs from the optimistic tone and the "good guys do good things" morality of the original source, enough to bring a campaign to a crashing halt by itself.

And if you have both types of player in the same game when you present an "Endor Holocaust" scenario, the resulting misery looks an awful lot like Incoherence.

I can't say this with any confidence -- I'm no theorist, and more importantly, I lack 'actual play" experience with coherent Simulationists -- but I'd suggest the possibility that these "goals" might be two separate and mutually incompatible Creative Agendas previously lumped together under "Simulationism."

Could it be that the major motivation of Sim play and game design is to cover up the fact that adults are enjoying "Play Pretend" by disquising the activity with tomes of rules?

I'm only half joking about that.

jmac wrote:
About the question - what relates to sim - it seems to me, that _believing_ in objectivity of game world and of characters' decisions (as part of it) is the key, which implies that players agree to ignore inevitable elements of subjective inside the game world.

So if there is a difference between sim and illusionism and participationism, from such point of view, it is in ignoring only unconscious (sim) or also conscious (ill. and part.) subjectivity of players (including GM).

Do I get it wrong that Mike is talking about "testing" the game - are it's world definitions objective enough?

I usually prefer not thinking about this objectivity assuming it's enough. When something really breaks this assumption, what Jukka described as "spending energy" happens and if energy is not enough - game seems not to be functionall anymore.

Having cross posted the above, I'll risk posting again.

Sydney, I think it's not really surprising that there are sub-modes that are entirely disparate. Take the difference between hardcore gamism and gentleman gamism. Especially the difference between play that allows pawn stance, and that which does not. No room for these gamism types to play together. Vanilla vs Pervy narrativism, same thing.

Bob, if we start from an assumption of dysfunction, and discover dysfunction, that's circular logic. Prove that's why play is this way.

Mike

Jumping back to the original comment, what you call Channeling Character sounds like a good description of the group I play with.  We generally try to be flexible about it ("My character wouldn't do X, but it seems like the game would be more interesting that way...could you do Y, so that he'll do X in response?"), but there's certainly a sense that the character is an independantly simulated person with their own wants, motivations, and behaviors.

I think the description as "exploration of character" is actually fairly apt here.  The interest is in asking questions like "what would this person do when faced with this situation?" or "how does this person resolve this aspect of their life?"  (Indeed, we occassionally play mini-games in which we take characters from different games and throw them into some setting to see what happens and how they interact, often inspired by a "Wouldn't it be neat if this character of mine could talk to that character of yours?")

However, this is all generally done (again, in my group) with a strong narrativist underpining.  Watching the characters interact is a big part of the game, but the real payoff is seeing the characters make choices that address a premise.  The point of paying attention to careful simulation of a character is so that, when they do reach a bang, there's a coherent character who can make a meaningful choice, shaped by what's happened to them (whether or not the player thinks this is the right one).  (I've been debating to myself for a few weeks how to classify this style of play, but my general conclusion has been that it's narrativist play with strong simulationist support.  But I could be completely wrong.)

(As one more aside, I agree that playing pretend is a big element of it, although these days my group isn't trying all that hard to cover it up.)

Henry

Bob, if we start from an assumption of dysfunction, and discover dysfunction, that's circular logic. Prove that's why play is this way.

Mike wrote:
Sydney, I think it's not really surprising that there are sub-modes that are entirely disparate....

Hi, all. I'd like to jump back to the subject of genre emulation for a minute.

Our group does "Just like in that movie..." constantly. Sometimes we're trying to evoke a theme or mood, say "This argument goes just like the one John Cusak has with Minnie Driver in Grosse Point Blank."

Most of the time, though, it's an effective shorthand. We can take a character, say "Think X from his/her role in Y", and it saves us having to go into detailed description. I usually load up an appropriate photo and display that before the game.  I find that especially useful, because detailed Exploration in terms of "What does this guy look like" bores the hell out of me.

I think I'm saying that "Just like in that movie..." is sometimes nothing like genre emulation.

komradebob wrote:
Could it be that the major motivation of Sim play and game design is to cover up the fact that adults are enjoying "Play Pretend" by disquising the activity with tomes of rules?

Mike wrote: Jukka, you're making tons of sense, and I think you understand the theory quite well. But what you're doing here is standing on the verge of betraying the entire nordic scene for one giant heap of dysfunction. That is, I could interpret what you're saying as most of the urge to play sim as a rejection of gamism such that it might breed Pawn stance (implausible play). Note, too, that I've never seen implausible narrativism play - the notion that players "force" their characters to do implausible things to make play "interesting" is absurd because, thematically, implausble things aren't interesting. I suppose a person could play a very post-modern game in which plausibility were cast aside to creat post-modern themes (and actually the game Court of Nine Chambers might actually intend that), but I've never seen it once in play.

Mike wrote: Anyhow, we're getting into definitions of illusionism and simulationism which, again, I want to avoid (my fault from starting to slip back that way). So if you want to continue this line of thought, please start a new thread and let me know so I can come over.  :-)

Mike wrote:
Bob, yep, that's another goal, basically eliminating the appearance of GM influence by having the players be the drivers of all play, the GM "just playing the world." Related to Open Sim play. The idea being to obtain the ideal of the objective world, by making sure that the invisible hand of the GM is not only invisible, but actually pretty much inactive. Again, so that it's like the CRPG, where it's merely player choice driving where the character goes and what he does. There's the sticky question of whether or not putting "interesting stuff" in play is kosher or not, however. If I put in an NPC that has a need for doughty adventurers, is that manipulating the environment with drama in mind? Even if it's up to the PCs to find this NPC?

Heya,

Andrew Wrote:

I think I'm saying that "Just like in that movie..." is sometimes nothing like genre emulation.

Hi Troy,

You're right, it [Genre Emulation] isn't inclusive enough. If genre emulation is the overriding priority, then it's Sim, but if it's Sim, there are lots of ways to play that aren't genre emulation.

And just to be terribly confusing, genre emulation as a supportive technique can be found in many G and N applications.

Sorry for that "irrefragable", Mike. I'm using a dictionary quite often - not always sure what words people really use ;-)

Are those problems with ignoring the subjective significant in this topic, should we talk about them here or elsewhere?

I can't actually agree that "objective world" and "genre emulation" are qualitatively different.

It seems to me that exploring objective world is just emulation of a particular genre (like "realism" or something).
From certain point of view the difference is in quantity of deviation allowed from original material - static media or group stereotypes alone.

Other difference must be priority of genre...?

And again I feel very familiar with what are you saying, Jukka!
I want to comment this example with running away from threat or staying. It really seems right to run if character is a coward, but there are situations when ingame motives to stay are present and character is a coward and what would she do is not clear. What motives are used when "objective" stuff can't give you a clear answer?
Drama driven?
Dice?
Player's personal motives? (you know, player owns her character in some way)
Maybe genre elements have to show themselves in such situations? (I choose this one)

Heya,

It seems to me that exploring objective world is just emulation of a particular genre (like "realism" or something).

Troy, genre here is used as thing to be emulated in "genre emulation".

I have no intent on discussing any term. My proposion is to determine meaning of a word (even (potential) term) by context it is usen in.

Well in the interests of Mike's original call for other styles roughly within Sim:

Fire and Forget Play - Players construct characters (or potentially other explorable elements) with a particular goal (usually a series of situations or a particular long term goal) in mind and attempt to play them wholly consistently, and yet achieve that goal. Sometimes this is successful, and often it is not. This is essentially exploration of the character construction mechanics of the RPG.

Game-Focused Play - Players seek to use certain subsystems frequently, slowly refining their tactics. Their fundamental goal is to better understand and use those subsystems. This is simple exploration of the play mechanics of the RPG.

(While both of these styles refer to mechanics, these need not be explicit mechanics. They are perfectly valid approaches to "rules-light" and "freeform" types of RPGs, if anything they become more distinctive when applied to those types of games.)

What is interesting about these two styles is that if they were subordinate to "step on up", they would find themselves as Gamist styles, but inherently they possess no requirement for the social structure of "step on up". Instead, they focus on procedural exploration, rather than objective world, genre emulation, and character channelling which focus primarily on declarative knowledge exploration.

I do not think it is an accident that Sim seems to contain nearly every category of play that focuses primarily on the declarative or procedural learning via play. That may be a less trivializing way to say that these styles are in essence playing pretend, or it may imply something deeper, take your pick.

  - Mendel S.

Whoa, lots to respond to. Meaning we're looking very much like we need other threads at this point.

Bob (and those responding to Bob's line of reasoning), you're making an interesting point. But it's about the sort of stuff that I really wanted to avoid in this thread. So start a new thread linking back to this one, and we can go on with that discussion with what might become a very long thread on it's own.

Sydney, same reply as to Bob above. I'd love to talk sub-modes of sim, or whether these represent something more like their own modes, but not here. Start a new thread. Very important.

Any discussions of the term Genre Emulation should go to a new thread. For purposes of continuing with that here, people can use the term, and should just realize that it has whatever local meaning assigned to it in this thread. So if four people define it as a different tecnique or goal or whatever in four different ways, that's OK here. Just so long as they define their use or refer to somebody else's definition. I think there are possibly several things that could be called genre emulation that are germain to this discussion.

Andrew, is that non-genre emulation "sim related" or just discussion related to Genre Emulation. If the former, explain how, and it should stay. If the latter, then it should go in either the Genre Emulation thread, or it's own thread.

Ivan, the whole "ignoring the subjective" is pretty pertinent here in terms of it saying a lot about this stuff, but I think it's such a complex topic that it should have a thread of it's own as well.

Jukka, my fault on this one, I've allowed myself to get sucked into the whole "what's Nordic Sim?" discussion, which has become one about potential dysfunction. Let's move that to another thread, and hopefully we'll get some other people from the scene to post some rebuttals. Don't want that to become one sided.

For all of these new threads, feel free to post links in this thread saying "The subject X has been continued here {URL}." If you don't do that, or don't inform me (or anyone else involved in said disucssion) that you've started a new thread, don't be surprised if we miss them.

OK, on to some specifics that should stay here.

Henry, I think that part of the problem with identifying "channeling character" is precisely that I think that it's not simply exploration of character. That is, what you describe is exploration of character, and channeling is also exploration of character, I just think that the channeling goes beyond what you describe. Basically at the point you start any negotiations about potential options that the player has to play the character more interestingly, plausible selections, this shows player motive. Even if done internally, you're no longer channeling, but more overtly controling the character actions.

For instance, one of the things that seems interesting to me about people who really channel is that when if you ask them if they could have had the character to any other thing than what they had the character do, the answer is no. That is, for a channeller they percieve one and only one decision as the only decision the character could have made.

Now this is why it's so easy for people to call this "My Guy" play. Because, if you're not also channelling the character (and it's probably not possible to share a character this way), then as an observer you're likely to note all sorts of plausible routs that the character could have taken. So if you say, "Why didn't you fight the bad guy?" and the other person says, "Because the character just wouldn't do it" that sounds like the player is "hiding behind the character."

If, in fact, channeling is an honest activity, then what the player is really saying is, "If I made any other decision for the character, it wouldn't have seemed to me like it was coming from the character." In fact, I think that possibly the feeling that players have that there is only one possible thing that a character could have done in a particular situation is a strong part of what makes the character seem independently real to the channeller. If the player takes any time to weigh options in terms of what the player likes, then the player feels that they are creating the character, and the illusion of independence is broken.

Ivan, the one thing you're talking about that's still really on topic is the "I am the character" idea. This is, I think closely related to, if not the same thing as, channelling the character. The channelling player knows that he's creating an internal illusion - the player is not crazy thinking that the character is other than a fictional construct. But it's precisely the understanding of this illusion that makes the player feel that they have "become" the character. That is, the decisions made by the character might be quite uncharacteristic for the player. But rather than this creating a sense of separation from the character, the fact that the player can't discern his own motives in the process of creating the decision for the character, that instead it seems as if the character's decisions were coming from a thought process all of it's own inside the player's head, makes the player feel that he has "become" that other person. Yes, I am making the decisions, but I'm making them as my character would, not as I would. So I have become the character in some senses.

Again, I think this relates to the concept of Immersion (but, again, take it to another thread if you want to investigate this further).

Jukka, on the subject of plausibility. No, doing something plausible never itself makes for dysfunctional play, and I'm not sure how you get that idea. I've said over and over, that plausibility is a requirement for most styles of play, not just sim ones. In fact, I'd posit that plausibility is only not a complete requirement for Pawn Stance Gamism play. Or for the theoretical Post Modern Narrativism.

Where play becomes potentially dysfunctional is when a player decides from amongst several plausible actions to take ones that are only interesting to him. And further, this is only dysfunctional to the extent that the other players have agreed to try to be entertaining to each other. That is, if we've agreed to be entertaining in thematic ways to each other, then hiding in a closet to avoid a fear when the character could equally plausibly decide that today is the day that they face their fears, might be a dysfunctional choice.

Again, I don't want to get into how this relates to the Nordic scene any more here, all I'm saying is that I think that there are places where players seem to demand both the right to channel, and want drama, and that the combination seems pretty impossible. Standard sim/nar incoherence.

Gareth, the "set nature" of a CRPG as some pre-existing world, indeed the feeling that any fictional world has some objective reality is a fiction. This is a point that I keep trying to make, but somehow people keep missing. Yes, the "hand of the designer" is everpresent in a CRPG in a very limiting way. But since the designer is not present, and the world does not change to any human whim, it's a very good way of maintaining the illusion of an objectively real world. For some people. As Sydney points out, for some people it'll have completely the opposite effect.

But as annectodal evidence, it works very well for me. I can completely drop out of reality and into the world of a first person shooter, if I turn out the lights in the room. The sense that I'm in the game and discovering a real world becomes very, very intense. And that's in part because there's no human relating it to me, but just a direct sensory input. Again, it's the human doing the relating, and the visibility of them showing their motives in creation that damages this illusion. For some.

Mendel, haven't heard from you in a while, welcome back. :-)
I'm not particularly seeing the distinction you're making between Fire and Forget, and channeling, other than perhaps the agreement to only work the character through one pre-set motive. Not too different than the idea in LARP of agreeing to the fictional situation (or, indeed, in any RPG play of agreeing to situation). So what's unique about his that I'm not getting?

I agree that exploration of mechanics is a very sim related activity, but I've heard others say that it's Zilchplay, or even anti-sim play. I'd like to hear what people think about that. I think the argument is something like "since the mechanics can only be a metagame description of the world, examining the mechanics can't be exploration of the world itself." But I probably have that wrong in some way.

As to the closeness of these to gamism, this is a very interesting subject. One is tempted to say that a rejection of exploration of mechanics and system as sim is protecting against sim-gamism dysfunction. That is, I'd agree with Ron's assessment that when the opportunity for gamism is present, it's hard to resist, and may "take over." But I think that presumes mechanics that are predisposed to gamism, which has always historically been the case. The opposing argument is that it's not fear of gamism at all, here, but that you can't do anything at all but play a game with mechanics, so they're automatically gamism or at least distracting from sim. Or, again, something like that, which somebody else will have to explain in more correct detail.

Thanks, everyone, good discussion.
Mike

I'm going to try to respond coherently to a few points in Mike's last post...

First, an example of "Channeling Character" from my own experiences. I think maybe I've cited this one in past discussions, so bear with me if you've seen this before.

The character is Tiberius Darklaw, an ex-bounty hunter, utter fanatic about law and order who has crossed a line and become himself a vigilante. He's at least a little crazy at this point because he knows what he does is unlawful, even as he's enforcing law on others. He's vicious, brutal, and had been referred to at least once as "The dark knight of Dreven" by other players in the FFRP community. The only thing that keeps him from going over the edge is the woman who, despite his mysogyny and suspicions, wormed her way into his heart. After a night when he hurt her trying to be playful (something he's not good at) he went into a dark rage and disappeared for days, hunting the streets for criminals. Next she saw him, he was gaunt and seemed barely human. He did not want to be with her because he feared that he'd only harm her again. At one point, her frustration got the best of her, and she stabbed him twice in the back. The way I saw it, the only response he had available was to assume that his one reason for clinging to life and sanity wanted no more part of him, so he went, wounded, into the darkest, most crime-infested part of the city, and waged war on what he found there.. And died of it.

The whole experience really angered me, because I felt I had no choice, if I was to play the character. He would push himself until he died, because he saw the world in absolutes, and there was no middle ground.

And now, responding to another point Mike made:

Basically at the point you start any negotiations about potential options that the player has to play the character more interestingly, plausible selections, this shows player motive. Even if done internally, you're no longer channeling, but more overtly controling the character actions.

Mike wrote: Basically at the point you start any negotiations about potential options that the player has to play the character more interestingly, plausible selections, this shows player motive. Even if done internally, you're no longer channeling, but more overtly controling the character actions.

Mike wrote: If, in fact, channeling is an honest activity, then what the player is really saying is, "If I made any other decision for the character, it wouldn't have seemed to me like it was coming from the character." In fact, I think that possibly the feeling that players have that there is only one possible thing that a character could have done in a particular situation is a strong part of what makes the character seem independently real to the channeller. If the player takes any time to weigh options in terms of what the player likes, then the player feels that they are creating the character, and the illusion of independence is broken.

Mike wrote: Where play becomes potentially dysfunctional is when a player decides from amongst several plausible actions to take ones that are only interesting to him. And further, this is only dysfunctional to the extent that the other players have agreed to try to be entertaining to each other. That is, if we've agreed to be entertaining in thematic ways to each other, then hiding in a closet to avoid a fear when the character could equally plausibly decide that today is the day that they face their fears, might be a dysfunctional choice.

Mike wrote: Again, I don't want to get into how this relates to the Nordic scene any more here, all I'm saying is that I think that there are places where players seem to demand both the right to channel, and want drama, and that the combination seems pretty impossible. Standard sim/nar incoherence.

I agree, that It's hard to analyze the decision making of character - which are her and which - mine. But, especially in moments of low tension, why can't character hesitate?

Feelings, emotions are shared - I can't separate mine from character's - that's for sure. Maybe this is the reason for that, very familiar, "rush to be sure" habit, Jukka is talking about. Emotional decisions are more sure to be characters, because there is a little of players own emotions during such play.

And about dysfunction caused by selfish player-character decisions - isn't this issue of unmatched or incompatible scope?
(discussed in the topic here) http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17279.0

Mike wrote:
Simulationism is problematic. I don't think that I'm saying anything shocking there. There is little agreement on what it actually is, which I posit is due to the fact that there are some priorities out there that players have that they want to assign to simulationism in order that it seem more accesible as a mode of play. Rather that the definition of simulationism as "priority on exploration" somehow doesn't manage to cover what they see as actually occuring behind the scenes. Partly, it seems to me, because it's a behavioral observation, and doesn't get to the goals behind the activity.

I could go on and on (and in fact have before) about why I think these additions aren't really useful, but I'd rather try a new rout to understanding some of these issues. So let's set simulationism aside for a moment, and discuss related player motives and behaviors. Keep that in mind as you read. I'm not trying to define simulationism here (in fact, pretty much everything that I'm about to discuss is, to me, ancillary to the definition of simulationism), but instead to look at things that may be related to it.

(This is also probably related in some way to some people's understanding of the term Immersion, but I'm going to avoid that even more pointedly).

Marco wrote:
If I want the experience of "being" Will Riker (Star Trek), I want to "be" Will Riker doing something in an objective universe. For this experience to happen, I have to feel that the world is not being made-up on the fly. I need to feel that there are good and bad choices available to me. I have to feel that I can do things that may make the experience less interesting since I want to be empowered to (also) make the game more interesting (i.e. I do not need/want a guarantee that no matter what I do the world will warp itself to present more complexity. If I come up with a boringly expedient way to resolve a problem, I expect it to work as it would in an objective world and then we'll move on to the next one). Equally importantly, I want to do the sorts of things Will Riker usually does.

What kinds of things does he usually do? Well, let's see: he tackles a lot of moral and societal issues and makes a buncha decisions about them and takes actions on them (often from a position of high empowerment).

What kind of play would you generally call that?

Heya,

What kinds of things does he usually do? Well, let's see: he tackles a lot of moral and societal issues and makes a buncha decisions about them and takes actions on them (often from a position of high empowerment).

What kind of play would you generally call that?

I'm afraid to comment on this thread, and I'm afraid not to comment, and for the same reasons. I have a very clear idea in my own head what simulationism is and what motivates it. I don't want to make the thread about what simulationism is, but I don't want to watch a lot of floundering discussion that could be focused by a bit of input.

In any event, Mike wants to discuss what I think are properly techniques commonly associated with some popular forms of simulationist role playing, and I'm going to offer my two cents on each of them.

Why do some simulationists want objective world design?

If I'm in a simulationist mode, I want the feeling that I'm discovering something. That impression that this is "real" means that my choices matter to what I discover.

Remember, illusionist techniques are bad when they take from the player the power to make choices relevant to his creative agendum. Thus "no myth" and other create-on-the-fly strategies are a type of illusionism in this context. It means that I'm not really discovering what's there--you're making it up. If I choose the left fork, I want the possibility to exist that this leads somewhere other than the next scheduled encounter. I want there to be a world to discover, and not merely a travel guide to the highlights. In fact, if the left fork does lead to the next scheduled encounter, I want to believe that if I turned around and took the right fork, I would wind up somewhere else which would be interesting for a different reason.

My ability to discover the world is dependent on my impression that it is a world, something there to discover. Your decision to make it up as we go along undermines that. The more certain I am that this is already on paper somewhere, the more it feels like my choices are revealing new information about the world, and the less like you're spoon-feeding me whatever you want me to know next.

Why do some simulationists "channel" their characters?

The character is supposed to be a real person, even though I have created him. In play, I play that character as closely to what he "really would do" as I can. On one level, this reveals the character to me--as he moves through the world responding to things around him, I discover who he really is by following his personality wherever it leads. At the same time, I reveal him to the other players, so that they, too, can get to know this character.

In my old AD&D games we had a character category called "special character". The concept was that you could have a character who was part of the party but was included in play when you were not there. I, the referee, would play your character. Before I would allow a player to list his character as "special", he would have to have played him enough times in enough situations that I could begin to grasp who he was. In the same way that friends sometimes do caricatures of each other, I expected to be able to think and act like a character created by one of my players, because he had communicated to me what the character was like through the way he played it.

Thus there is a level of simulationist play that is about understanding how people think and act, and it is achieved by trying to play the character as accurately as possible.

Why do some simulationist players do genre emulation?

Sometimes it's really because they're frustrated narrativists, I think, and they believe that they'll get a story if they enforce genre conventions.

However, genre emulation is definitely in the simulationist camp in the sense that it is an effort to recreate an imagined reality from the inside. This is what it would be like to be a character in a hard-core private eye story, or a romance novel, or a space opera. It is not merely a change of setting and a channeling of character; it is a world in which the rules are bit different in ways that are not easy to define, but if we can make it happen we may well have begun to understand what those worlds are really like.

Why do simulationists want their individual perceptions of the imagined reality to match?

We are trying to become familiar with an imaginary world to such a degree that it will seem real. If the details one of us is imagining are out of synch with the others, that disrupts the reality to some degree, and makes it more difficult for us to get to know it.

The example of the flaming red hair is good, because it's entirely possible that I was told that but keep forgetting it, because my notion of "paladin" includes elements with which "flaming red hair" does not easily fit. Probably if flaming red hair is important to you, it's because it conveys something about this character that I'm missing in my perception (flamboyant, or emotional, or dynamic--all possible character traits for which red hair might be a cue). If I've missed that, possibly I don't understand the character, and that means our exploration of character is hampered by my failure to perceive this important aspect of yours.

Why do some simulationists manipulate game mechanics?

Mechanics frequently are game-world physics. Efforts to understand how the mechanics work in minute detail are the equivalent of doing science experiments to determine the rate of acceleration, effect of force, and similar aspects of the world. It's part of learning how the universe works.

It doesn't seem all that difficult to me; but then, Mike doesn't accept my definition of simulationism, despite that it provides the core motivation he says is absent from the agendum.

--M. J. Young

Mark wrote:

Marco wrote:
If I want the experience of "being" Will Riker (Star Trek), I want to "be" Will Riker doing something in an objective universe. For this experience to happen, I have to feel that the world is not being made-up on the fly. I need to feel that there are good and bad choices available to me. I have to feel that I can do things that may make the experience less interesting since I want to be empowered to (also) make the game more interesting (i.e. I do not need/want a guarantee that no matter what I do the world will warp itself to present more complexity. If I come up with a boringly expedient way to resolve a problem, I expect it to work as it would in an objective world and then we'll move on to the next one). Equally importantly, I want to do the sorts of things Will Riker usually does.

What kinds of things does he usually do? Well, let's see: he tackles a lot of moral and societal issues and makes a buncha decisions about them and takes actions on them (often from a position of high empowerment).

What kind of play would you generally call that?

Trick question. As presented, it's perfectly Sim-y. All the referents are internal. Just because the object of emulation is one that is Premise-drenched, doesn't make the Premise itself the point of play. For that, you need to go after the premise purposefully, and because of how you, the player, feel.

It's a cute hypothetical - you're playing a simulation of a narrativist WORLD.

komradebob wrote:

Mark wrote:
It's a cute hypothetical - you're playing a simulation of a narrativist WORLD.

While I understand the reasoning here, this is the sort of thing that inevitably gives me a swooning headache when discussing GNS. It gives me an even bigger headache when I try to consider High Concept Sim, something that as I understand it often comes with built-in premises that could be addressed, premises that indeed have no "right" answer.

It also brings up questions about games like PTA and possibly Universalis...

Mark wrote:
Trick question. As presented, it's perfectly Sim-y. All the referents are internal. Just because the object of emulation is one that is Premise-drenched, doesn't make the Premise itself the point of play. For that, you need to go after the premise purposefully, and because of how you, the player, feel.

It's a cute hypothetical - you're playing a simulation of a narrativist WORLD.

About Will Riker and 'contradiction'.
I'm not sure if there is a problem if I play Will Riker only 'cause I'm interested in his choices or way of life. If I consider my own motives - "exploring" his choices _above_ his (character's) own motives - this can be wrong, because, for instance, if other players still play "sim", they expect me to act as Will Riker, not as myself exploring Will's decisions. If everybody changed their "mode" and such behaviour is acepted - ther is no problem either (but I hardly imagine such situation).

M.J., there is logic in your big list of "Why"s - I can't object it, but I, personally, am not able to distinguish such motivations in myself.

I created "ignoring the subjective"
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17334.0

Bah.

This thread just went south, guys. I'm not interested in explaining how.

Closed now. If you want sub-threads, start'em where they'd work best: in actual play.

Best,
Ron

Merten wrote:
This, all the way to the My Guy play - I'm very much agreeing, both from the perspective of this is how I think channeling works and the perspective of how it could be thought as (and, potentially become) My Guy -play.

Okay, I think I understand you now - and disagree, to some extent. That is, if the players have not agreed to be entertaining to each other, then taking the action which seems to be only intresting to the player (however he's internally reasoning this) is not dysfunctional. If they have agreed on entertaining and collaborative play then I'm pretty much in agreement that yes, taking an action intresting to the player and not intresting to other can be considered dysfunctional.

Whoops, totally missed that Ron had closed the thread. Anyhow, looking forward to the subthreads.

Mike