Normally when I am working on Distant Horizons I do not think too much about Creative Agendas, I just try to make the game so it match my vision for it. But I can not help to think, that what I am trying to do with Distant Horizons, is to make a game that both support the Sim and Nar CA. I am not an expert in GNS, but I feel that I have a good understanding of how to structure rules that support Gam and Nar. On the other hand I am a bit lost when it comes to how to structure rules for Sim play.

So I am interested to hear if there is someone who has some idea of how I could structure rules and game procedures to support better Sim play in Distant Horizons (or maybe just how it could be done for rpgs in general).

Here is a short description of Distant Horizon (from a earlier thread about Distant Horizons)

Distant Horizons is a game about adventuring and exploring. It is about people who are going out into the world to discover new things, to see places only very few (if any) have seen before, and to overcome the challenges they have to face during their travelings. But it is also about people who can not find themselves at home anywhere, and about how they change as an effect of what they experience in the world around them. And it is the question: at the end of their journey, can they find a place they can feel at home.

The characters are people who for some reason or other have left their home, or have never had a home,  and therefor is in a state of searching which make them ever restless. They may not really know what they are searching for, but if they keep looking they hope they will some day find it.

The setting of the game is not well defined, but it have to be a world with a lot of unexplored areas, the characters then can get an opportunity to explore. I normally imagine the setting as an fairytale like fantasy world, but I really want the group to define their own basic ideas for the world they want to explore.

The game center around what I call the exploration map. This is a map which shows the basic features of the world (or lands) the characters are going to explore. In the beginning of the game the map should be mostly empty, and it will then be filled out during the game as the characters travels around to new places. The players will draw the new places on the map as the characters explores them.

Hey, this seems like a pretty interesting game. It also seems like it's not so much a hybrid N/S as low-burn narrativistic, sort of like they recommend playing 3:16: I could easily imagine going into this in a relaxed manner, doing all sorts of little adventures and just having the reward cycles be relatively long - the turning points of the experience would be when my character decides to stay, decides to leave, decides to stay but has to leave, decides to leave by has to stay... so effectively each location-based bit is an extended build-up for the premise-based choices. Pretty solid narrativism, that.

That being said, you could well make a simulationistic game out of this sort of thing as well. One approach I've found fruitful in understanding simulationistic play is the simile of the slot machine: many simulationistic games provide enjoyment by allowing a player to slot in a character (coin) into a situation (slot-machine) and then utilize a set of rules (hit the button) to see what happens in the fiction (wait for the slots to stop). The enjoyment comes from seeing how the semi-controllable process provides new variant outcomes. (Note that there is similar forms of fortune-based gamism, too. The difference is mainly in whether the player is invested in enjoying the process or winning the prize.)

For example, the Finnish adventure roleplaying game called Praedor does this slot machine simulationism really well: the players each create for themselves a colorful praedor, a ruins-robbing adventurer, with all sorts of fancy background descriptors, problems, a social class and so on. Then they're all sent into Borvaria, a magical hell that few return from. The enjoyment of playing the game in this simulationistic manner (it's an awfully incoherent game that supports gamism well, too) comes from seeing how the pansy nobleman and the cynical, alcoholic, one-armed veteran praedor fare when they try to pry valuable jewels from the heads of god-idols or whatnot while avoiding monsters. The game works essentially like a pinball machine: the pay-off comes from operating the Borvaria world-machine and then seeing that oh, fancy that, the ponce came out with a bag of gold while the veteran lost another arm.

Another useful simile for simulationistic games comes from adventure computer games - certain sorts of participationist simulationistic games work by offering the player side of the equation a very computer-gamey play environment. By this I mean that instead of really controlling the flow of play, the player controls the focus of his own attendance: the GM really has most of the power in which scenes get played, what happens to the characters and so on, but the player has complete control over how slow or fast the game proceeds. This is exactly like Lucasarts/Sierra -style adventure games from the '80s and '90s: the player essentially has no control over anything, except that he can decide which room in the game the character goes to, and he can click on things in the game to read closer descriptions of them. And what's best, the GM can adapt to your meanderings, so instead of hitting a wall by going in the wrong direction, you can develop the essentially linear play experience to emphasize the things you find interesting. The point is that the player controls his audience experience, but not really the events of play.

As an example of this sort of simulationism, consider Dread (the Jenga one): the GM has an explicit plot flowchart and the characters are half pre-created to slot into the story, so one might question what the role of the players in the process are. The simple answer is that the players are interactive audience who determine the exact contents of the performance piece. They can ask questions and situate their characters to get different details out of the experience: the difference between getting a short description and a long one is in asking the GM to tell more. The difference between getting the evisceration scene now and getting it later is in letting your character go out alone and failing your Jenga pull. The difference between an event being significant or insignificant is in having your character freak out over it instead of ignoring it.

A third sort of simulationism is based on explicit, shared setting appreciation. This is probably not very relevant for you here, but it's a very common style of game design historically. The idea in that sort of game is to enjoy interacting with other people with the same interests - it's fun to have a geek-off with the other fans of the property and build something together simply by utilizing your respective knowledges of the setting. It resembles Capoeira a lot, as both practices depend on the practitioners knowing the common rules and playing by them - a capoeirista could easily hurt his sparring partner or himself if both dancers didn't know what they're doing and know how to answer the moves the other is making.

An example of this sort of thing is Planescape, which I'm choosing because I've been idly reading through the Planescape books from the '90s lately. Most of the Planescape materials are simply setting fiction written with the intent of familiarizing the players more and more deeply with the workings of the game setting, the city of Sigil. The materials are explicitly written from the viewpoint of the player who wants to play his character better by knowing more about the environment his character operates in. Sure, there is a bunch of adventure hooks and such scattered all over, but most of the time the environment is given statistics based on in-setting logic, not any sort of adventuring viewpoint.

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Is this sort of discussion useful, or should we look closer into specific techniques of play that are used in simulationistic games? What sort of simulationistic processes are you seeing in Distant Horizons? Any guesses about the reward cycles the game sets up?

It also seems like it's not so much a hybrid N/S as low-burn narrativistic.

Freaky how similar the goals you describe are to my game in development, Eleanor's Dream. It's about adventuring in the dreamland and growing up, and has all this stuff about interactions with the denizens strengthening relationships and so on. It's also interesting that I thought of my game as a sim/nar hybrid until I discussed it at length with Ron Edwards in Stockholm, at which point he basically said that he wasn't seeing any sim elements in it. I had to reluctantly agree; although I was putting a lot of attention into

Also consider Trollbabe here, it's a finished game with some very similar aesthetics and goals.

Anyway, concrete technique: if you want the players to pay attention to the weather and the season, have these matters influence the situation; perhaps the length of day, rain and sleet affect the safety and comforts of travel. If you want strange customs and cultural details to be created and used, formalize it and provide some small benefits for being considerate of the cultural mores of others. In general, if you want the players to focus on some particular facet of the setting, provide rules that allow the players (not necessarily characters) to interact with the setting in those terms. The weather only matters in a rpg if it influences the situation elements of play in a concrete manner.

Also note that there is no general "exploring the setting" in a comprehensive manner, there are only different ways the setting manifests itself in playing through rpg situations, and those setting profiles are what the players can explore and interact with. So by choosing the procedures play goes through you also choose the sort of setting exploration the players do.

Also, about reward cycles: all enjoyable games, by definition, have some sort of payoffs and expectations thereof (the reward cycle is composed of players knowingly striving towards some sort of payoff). They are not necessarily mechanical, and often have nothing to do with making your character more powerful.

Anders,

Most of my past play experience has been in Sim games, and I am currently trying to design one.  Let me just open this post by saying that I do not intend to speak for Simulationism The CA, but rather for the subset of it that I particularly enjoy.

The point of playing is to contribute meaningfully, moment to moment.  For me this means:

1) Permission to contribute -- narration techniques and responsibilities are clear.  Everyone at the table has participation options that are sufficient for fun.  I know what I can say.  I know when I can open my mouth, and this is frequently enough (for me, nearly constantly) to keep me engaged.  (My personal taste is to provide tons of color for every place & event imagined.  In-game developments come slower in real-time, but are more vivid.)

2) Inspiration to contribute -- characters, locales, brainstorms, mad libs, lists of setting cultural customs, requirments, rules for interacting with other players' statements, and on and on and on.  This game uses different colored dice to prompt specifics in narrating task resolution.  This game generates colors and words pre-play to be picked at random during play and applied to setting description.

3) Having my contribution valued -- thus, "meaningful."  It's easy to observe the opposite -- one player says something that they find entertaining (e.g. character speech revealing backstory) and the other players zone out and wait till it's over.  When contributions are valued, it often goes unremarked, with play remembered mostly as "smooth" and "flowing" and "just plain fun."  Reward systems, appreciation tokens, group buy-in to a theme (a la Eero's Capoeira), explicit in-game or metagame goals, inspiration (as #2 above) provided along very specific lines, etc.  This is the one I find hardest to engineer -- in my gaming, this has usually been resolved 100% socially, with no reference to rules or texts.

So, if you want to structure rules and procedures to support Sim play, that's what I'd shoot for: Clarify who can say what and when, inspire contributions appropriate to your vision of Distant Horizons, and provide some context for group agreement on when someone's made a good contribution.

Having read your game description, I know what would hook me: the desire to find out "What's out there?"  A map is an awesome opportunity to snare curiosity and set up a nice cycle of questions and answers.  I recently discussed doing that in my game here.  So, my attempts to inspire and validate contributions would be based on strong, colorful, inquisitive interactions with the new and mysterious.

"Utilise the story elements the players have provided themselves" sounds great.  That's one of my favorite ways to have my contributions validated.  What kinds of story elements do you want them to provide?  How will you help or inspire them to do this?  How will the GM then utilise these in such a way that the players know it?

Hope this was useful,
-David

P.S. Eero, the structure of the story progression made me see Eleanor's Dream as "probably Nar", but I'd happily use the dreamer-dreamworld interaction as the basis for some good Sim.  :)

"Utilise the story elements the players have provided themselves" sounds great.  That's one of my favorite ways to have my contributions validated.  What kinds of story elements do you want them to provide?  How will you help or inspire them to do this?  How will the GM then utilise these in such a way that the players know it?

You can probably find a playtest document for Eleanor from the game design forum here if you search last year's worth or so of my posts - I introduced the project in length here at some point. Since then I've let the game rest for nearly a year, and am only now going back to it with reneved strength. Ideally it'll be finished this coming spring; I kinda want to get the grant money I've been promised for getting the game done, so I have an ulterior motive for getting the game done this side of the singularity.

More about the rest later...

Anders,

That sounds like a fun dynamic.  I definitely see enough potential to give it a shot! 

I bet its smoothness will depend in part on how you organize play phases -- "When we stop portraying our characters and write down story elements," for example.

I think one key to eliciting usable contributions will be constructing prompts.  That is, when it's time for me to contribute a story element, what am I referring to?
- other people's elements, already introduced
- other people's elements, not yet introduced
- the needs of the story (as I see them) right now
- the needs of the story (as I see them) long term
- what logically makes sense to me, based on what's been established in the fiction
- a specific genre
- a written suggestion
- a written requirement

And on and on, or combinations, etc.  I think it might be useful to get everyone on the same page about some things, and maybe divide responsibilities for other things.  Like, maybe you've got some list of story elements that includes "antagonist", and if no one happens to volunteer one by a certain point, you assign "come up with an antagonist" to someone.

As for getting on the same page, this thread has some good examples of the kind of stuff I like to consider.

As for rewarding people for contributing or using story elements, I can't think of an elegant way to do it, but I agree that encouraging strong interaction with the environment is ideal.  My inclination would to be to either reference very specific, limited-use character strengths ("good at climbing wet trees"), or find specific ways to interface with one of a very small number of broad things that define a character ("outdoorsy").  As for how to reference them, maybe descriptive character elements could produce prompts for story elements?  Like, when I write, "good at climbing wet trees" on my character sheet, I also write "something wet and tall" on a scrap of paper for the Story Element Springboard pile?

Feel free to redirect me if I've missed something important in focusing on these details...
-David

I bet its smoothness will depend in part on how you organize play phases -- "When we stop portraying our characters and write down story elements," for example.

As for getting on the same page, this thread has some good examples of the kind of stuff I like to consider.

I'll come back later and give this a more thorough look.  For now, I just want to address one thing:

Anders wrote:
Do you think that this will be a problem when trying to get the feeling of simulationism? Do you feel you need to have a proper emulation of the setting physics?

Oh, also, I lump any consequences of action into Functional Conceits -- not just physical, but moral and metaphysical when applicable.  "Karma always comes back to bite you," if that's what really happens in play, would qualify.

Ok good. So by Functional Conceit you do not mean something that should necessarily be emulated in the mechanics, but more a agreement between the players to keep the believability of the fiction. Like the agreement to keep in genre (If you have decided on playing a serious social drama, you do not make a silly character that are only good for slapstick humor).

But, yes, if you have a game where the player are going to contribute to the setting and the story, it is necessary to have a good common understanding of how the fiction works. I expect that in Distant Horizons there is a phase before the actual game start, where the group talk about the basic concepts of the setting, so they can better agree on what is right for the setting when they are in the game.

- Anders

Anders,

That example with the mansion might come in handy for later mechanics discussion, but right now all I care about is how "mansion with dangerous magic item" becomes a cool Story Element.  As a player, how is this any more rewarding for me than if I just went up to the GM before the game and said, "I want more magic loot, and today I'm in the mood to break into a mansion"?

My gut says that equating individual Story Elements with missions is bad.

I'd be more interested if (1) I contributed "dangerous magic item", someone else contributed "haunted mansion", a third person contributed "vengeful widow", and then (2) in playing through other scenarios aimed largely at other story elements (e.g. "evil ninja prince" and "elf enslavement plot"), we encountered connections to those ("ah, the dangerous magic item once belonged to the prince we just killed, and was somehow connected to his plot"), and only after all that (3) we came across a mansion and entered it to discover that it was haunted by that vengeful widow we've heard about, guarding that magic item we've also heard about.

Those types of developments and interrelations may not be what you're going for, but I think you need some stronger interaction with the Story Elements than "okay, now we do this one".

Anders wrote:
I have an idea for how to organize the story of the game into phases:

* Planning to explore a new place (the players here create story element for the new place they want to explore).

Anders wrote:
* Travelling to that place (The player can use travelling time to strengthen their relationship to various story elements).
* Exploring the place, and the problems they find there (the players here use the various story element in conflicts and adventuring)
* Resting after an exhausting adventure (The players can get rid of their characters' stress and finalize troubled relationship with elements)

I'd be more interested if (1) I contributed "dangerous magic item", someone else contributed "haunted mansion", a third person contributed "vengeful widow", and then (2) in playing through other scenarios aimed largely at other story elements (e.g. "evil ninja prince" and "elf enslavement plot"), we encountered connections to those ("ah, the dangerous magic item once belonged to the prince we just killed, and was somehow connected to his plot"), and only after all that (3) we came across a mansion and entered it to discover that it was haunted by that vengeful widow we've heard about, guarding that magic item we've also heard about.

Perhaps what I just proposed is to take the point of the Travelling phase and mesh it with the Exploring phase.  So you'd eliminate the Traveling phase, and the Exploring phase in cycle #1 doubles as "strengthening relationships to various story elements" for the elements in cycle #2 (or #3, or #4, etc.).  I think this would give more bang per play time... unless you have some really cool idea for the experience of playing through the Travelling phase.

Anders wrote:
could I ask you to describe a small actual play example where you experienced this, and what happened at the table that brought this into play?

Nice example.

I have tried to collect my thoughts a bit, and using some of your ideas, I have have made some bullet points that describe how I think Story Elements should work:

* The players and GM should before the game, talk about what are allowed in the fiction of the game, so everyone know what genre-rules they are working with.

* The player should be able to create some story elements that is used in the next part of the story. They should not specify how the story elements should be used, just that these are the things that they want to see in the next "story".

* The GM will also create some story element, both to fill out gaps, but also to have some surprises ready.

* The GM should create situations by connecting these elements to make something interesting. He should be especially careful to get the players' story elements into the mix.

* The players will then explore these elements (and thereby the situation), and in this process add extra aspects to the different elements which makes them more interesting.

* Maybe the player can in some ways make stronger connections between their character and story elements they feel are important to the character, and thereby focus their character's story in on these elements.

* After the situation has been fully explored (or solved), the element used should be kept save, so they can be dragged into future stories in the game. It can both be the GM and the players who pull in old elements (for the players to do it their character should have a strong connection to that element).

* The process where the players create new elements should be repeated periodically throughout the game.

Does this seem right to you?

I am not sure about the specific rules details yet. But in believe that I could get a procedure like this to work in the game, and I also think it will fit to what I want with Distant Horizons.

I will think some more about it, and see if I can come back with some more concrete stuff later.

- Anders

That strikes me as a good list to generally aim for, and maybe to refer to when making some design decisions. 

It definitely does NOT look like a "do this and play will be great" instructive list.  So I'm curious to see where you go from here.

I can pick through the list and ask "How?" in many places if that would be useful to you.  I'm not sure what the next stage of your process is.

Anders wrote:
* The player should be able to create some story elements that is used in the next part of the story. They should not specify how the story elements should be used, just that these are the things that they want to see in the next "story".

Anders wrote:
* The players and GM should before the game, talk about what are allowed in the fiction of the game, so everyone know what genre-rules they are working with.

Anders wrote:
* The players will then explore these elements (and thereby the situation), and in this process add extra aspects to the different elements which makes them more interesting.