I've been off and on these boards for a while, generally watching from a distance. I've been thinking about my current RPG experiences, and in that context think I might have an answer to "why would anyone be simulationist?"

Short answer: wish fulfillment

Long answer: simulationism is a poor man's Virtual Reality. Why would anyone bother with VR? Two reasons: you can be anyone you want, and there's always something interesting going on. Simulationism allows you to recreate the world in your own image--give it a set of laws, populate it, sets its tone, etc. And then you get to explore it. The key is your world is interesting.

At their most extremes, neither gamism nor narritivism are really roleplaying. With gamism, you get to the point of pushing tokens around. With narritivism, you drop into group storytelling. But with simulationism, you can never push it "outside" of roleplaying, because at its core, that's what its about. Living the life of someone interesting in a place that is always interesting. It has nothing to do with "outcome" like gamism and narritivism do, but with the moment by moment experience.

Of course, what constitutes "interesting" is pretty much up to individual people. For some, its complete power-tripping; for example, D&D in most extreme form. For others (well, me) it's a sense of atmosphere or mystery (shall I introduce my favorite game Call of Cthulhu?). Ron's five (or six? I haven't read the essay in awhile) forms of simulationism are really just tools to get to each simulationist's form of "interesting."

Simulationism at its most extreme form doesn't need "story" to work. You could set up a series of encounters that keep players engaged. Believe me, this is completely viable--I've done it. It's D&D in its most basic form. In fact, some groups or more or less interested in these moment-by-moment encounters than in some overarching story goal. For some groups, I've had to remind people why they are doing what they are doing. I'd finally counter that this is why most commercial RPGs are simulationist. When people pick up an RPG, they are picking up VR--not a game, and not a story.

Hey,

I buy this. It's what Mike Holmes has been saying for a while. I tried to express that Simulationist play is a recognizable behavior, in addition to but distinct from "basic Exploration," in a key section of my essay.

Best,
Ron

Disclaimers: I've always tried to say "all roleplaying's great." I've always tried to distance myself from GNS so when people point to the Forge and say "it's all that GNS crap," people could point to me and say "What about that guy? He's an admin, and he doesn't talk about GNS."

Today, screw that. This is going to be brutal.

The reason the majority of people play simulationist games is because they've been told to. Outside our little cloistered game monastery here, there's a perceived pinnacle of roleplaying by most gamers. It's called immersion, and personally, I think it's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever heard.

Most gamers outside the Forge (that aren't hardcore gamists that are happy playing an RPG or Settlers of Catan as long as they have a chance to win) believe in this Holy Grail - that if they can, for one minute, truly perceive things as their character does, and forget that they're in their basement around a table, their gaming life will be awesome.

They're wrong, of course. It's a delusional idea - you are around a table playing a game. This idea, however, is extremely pervasive, and gets pushed on new gamers all the time. (This idea really grew up with White Wolf. Enough said on that.) It results in two types of games:

- Rules-heavy "realist" games. These games try to simulate reality down to the smallest detail. We're talking about GURPS, CORPS, Twilight: 2000, and a few others here. Armor-piercing rounds do more damage than normal bullets and all that jazz.
- Rules-light simulationist games. This is the more common variant these days. The mantra you'll hear here is that "rules get in the way of 'being' my character, man." Examples: Fudge, The Window.

Anyway, that's my explanation. I do believe there's a small amount of simulationists out there that are playing for other, more interesting reasons.

Clinton R Nixon wrote: It's called immersion, and personally, I think it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

Most gamers outside the Forge (that aren't hardcore gamists that are happy playing an RPG or Settlers of Catan as long as they have a chance to win) believe in this Holy Grail - that if they can, for one minute, truly perceive things as their character does, and forget that they're in their basement around a table, their gaming life will be awesome.

Oddly enough, I'm not a very immersive player. Maybe my VR example was a bad one. My idea was more that the players move about triggering interesting events and using their interesting abilities to navigate those events in a consistent and reliable manner.

I was actually thinking about things in more of a scenario-design perspective. I think a lot about scenario design since some comments by Mike Mearls about it have got me thinking. For me, there seems to be three major ways to design a scenario.

You could go with site-based scenarios: the dungeon. Move from room to room and see what's going on. This could be used for gamist games, but is most definitely simulationist.

Next is the cluepath. Follow the clues to move forward in the scenario toward the resolution. In Call of Cthulhu, the cluepath is the adventure, while in Feng Shui its the mechanism to move to the next fight. I think clue-paths can be narritivist, but only if they lack any real interactive choice--the danger with cluepath has always been boredom. In narritivism its not possible. If it's essential the character gets the next clue to move the story, the character gets it. In simulationism and gamist interpretations, the possibility of boredom is there. In gamist interpretations, the end result is failure. In simulationism, it just means things move along a pre-determined path, without the PCs input.

I think the next leap in scenario design is the relationship map. Instead of a set of places, or clues, instead you have the interactions of different NPCs, waiting for the PCs to trigger. Notice that I think this too is a simulationist design tool--it's an event waiting to be triggered by anyone. Sure it can be narritivist--but only if the PCs are intregal in the map itself.

In fact, I think that's really the breakpoint between simulationism and narritivism--how intregal are the PCs in the environment? A simulationist world is just like the real world--stuff happens with or without the PCs. If you design scenarios without considering your player's characters personalities and connections as being intregal to the plot then you're playing a simulationist game. But a narrativist must consider the PCs as characters--they are the protagonists after all.

Hello,

I really wish we could have one of these Simulationism discussions without people getting fired up in one direction or another.

I would like to interpose several assertions to see what people think.

1) Due to certain historical aspects of role-playing, Simulationist game design is disproportionately very common. No one knows whether this reflects actual play preferences among the population of gamers. I think that Clinton is right, and there are a lot of people out there whose preferences might include Gamist or Narrativist play, but who have been trained to Simulationist play via the prevalence of rules systems with that emphasis. Jesse's term "Simulationist-by-habit" is a useful one in this context, meaning, at odds with the person's actual preference (or range of preference).

2) "Immersion" is simply not going to be a helpful part of this discussion. It's been demonstrated to my satisfaction that the term has no useful generalizable definition. Some people use the term in their attempt to realize The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. Others use it as a synonym for Successful Exploration of Any Type. Still others use it as a combination of Actor Stance and In-character play. I really, really wish that it had not entered the present discussion.

Clinton's point becomes much more coherent and much less challenging if he had specified one or more of the three things that I laid out above. I suspect it was mainly the first version with a bit of the third. Since Mike's interpretation of "immersion" is very different, being more like the second I think, clearly, we have a total communication breakdown.

3) Mike, many role-playing texts and observable habits of play enforce various elements of point #2 above in no uncertain terms. I recognize that you are not playing in this fashion "by habit" or because rules tell you to, or because you prefer some kind of schizophrenic reality over the real one. But all Simulationist play is not "you," and I wish you wouldn't act on the need to defend all of it, using yourself and your preferences as a case study. Particularly when it is not being attacked.

Overall, on reflection, I have just realized that this is a Moderator post. I am cracking down very heavily (a) on people getting all heated up in any direction whenever Simulationism comes under a degree of analysis, and (b) on using terms like "immersion" that we all know are broken and lead to ridiculous exchanges in which people are arguing at cross-purposes.

Behave, or this thread gets locked.

Best,
Ron

Ron's totally right on the fact that I meant no offense to you, Mike - that's why I definitely left room for a small group of people (roughly equivalent to the same amount of people who actually play in a gamist or narrativist style) that play simulationist games for a reason, and truly enjoy it.

As for the immersion thing - I think dismissing it is a bad idea. I was pretty explicit about what I meant, but I'll define it again:

Playing in Actor Stance completely in-character (using no outside knowledge) to the point that you psychologically "become" your character.

The reason I think dismissing it is a bad idea is that:
a) It is a primary motivator for many people to play in a simulationist fashion.
b) It's also one of the biggest movements in roleplaying today, and invariably what I get when I ask people to play in a "story-oriented" fashion. (This is my code word, so that I don't have to say "narrativist" and get people all riled-up.)

Steve,

I think your VR analogy is a good one and needs to be preserved. The key issue is that causality in the "imaginary space" is to be taken as the top priority. In different applications, different things are considered causal, but the baseline principle remains unchanged.

Please, folks, drop the "immersion" issue in this thread. It really isn't helping. Go back, read Steve's first post, get a good grip on what he's saying, and stay on-topic.

Best,
Ron

I was not insulted, nor did I feel attacked.

I never challenged the idea that many people might be Sim-by-habit (I owuld mention that I think that many are also Gamist-by-habit, but that's another story). I am the first to say that everyone should try every style, and make an informed opinion. I also refuse to believe that I am unique (tempting though that may be) in my reasons for liking Simulationism. Therefor, there must be others who also like Simulationism for the reasons that I explained.

As for Immersion, I think that I can reasonably say that at a basic level it is merely operating in that VR or imaginary space as Ron put it. If you want to throw out the term Immersion, fine. There is still some feeling that I get when I am playing a character in that imaginary space. It is somewhat akin in a slight way to being in that space myself. As I've said, much like being in a FPS video game. Which makes the VR description apt, yes.

The idea of the virtual space, and the Mearls description of the Dungeon scenario design, are pretty much the same. That is, there are elements which exist effectively a priori (in illusionism they may only seem to have existed a priori) that the characters can encounter in whatever order the players desire, and can acomplish. By making decisions for the character that make sense for the character, one enhances the sense that the character is real in that space (and not just a pawn). I maintain that this sensation is what delivers the satisfaction of escapism to certain players, no matter how rare they might be.

That was all I was getting at; I just wanted to take this opportunity to describe an attraction to Simulationism that Clinton didn't seem to unserstand (turns out he gets it just fine). I didn't think that either I or Clinton had gotten out of line, but I can understand the preventative maintainance.

Mike

All righty then.

So what's the question, Steve? I agree in full with your initial post, as I said in my own post. I would even direct newbie readers at the Forge to your post as an excellent summary of what Simulationist play is all about.

Is there a further point or inquiry to be made, in your view?

Best,
Ron

Given that we're talking about "Simulationism as VR," I've two questions:

1) Do you think that the fact that this is a primary motivator for roleplaying is actually hurting the community? I don't mean this in a bad way - what I'm getting at is that there's many different ways these days to "experience" being someone else. There's computer games that actually get pretty close to that; there's camps you can attend, even as an adult, in order to experience being a soldier, astronaut, diver, or big-game hunter. Are people moving away from using role-playing to do this?

2) What parts of the VR experience are most important? (at least to Steve - I know answers may vary.) Are the psychological parts most important? (That is, being aware of the stresses your character might go through, a la Unknown Armies.) Or are the physical parts of the environment most important? (That is, being aware of the physical limits of your character.)

Clinton's position causes me some anguish, because I wish he were right, but I believe he's wrong. The implied idea that many more players would prioritize narrative if only given tools conducive to doing so parallels my own former belief, dispelled only after years of misguided effort, that computer game players would abandon their corridor shooters and flock to games that provided better interactive stories if only they were made available. This turned out to be a serious misperception of where the primary appeal of computer games truly lay.

Thus, what I'm about to suggest is kind of a radical taken-to-extremes version of Steve's point.

The single best predictor for the popular success of a genre of computer games (with the exception of pure abstract puzzle games, like solitaire or Tetris), or of any single game, is how effectively it places the player in a virtual world. Game play and story are both secondary to that. (The true fecklessness of the incessant debate in computer game circles over which is more important, game play or story, thus becomes apparent.) Why did graphic adventure games, with their crude railroaded narratives and poor game play, shove text adventure games, which had sophisticated interactive narratives and deep game play, completely off the shelves within a few years? The usual answer is insulting to the players: that the sixteen-color graphics and tinny one-channel audio were so dazzling to average players' shallow little magpie brains that they were incapable of noticing that the graphic games had such poor stories and limited game play. The real answer is that the graphic games, limited as they were, did a better job of putting the player into an imaginary world than the text adventure had done.

This argument, with many more examples and much more analysis, could go on for pages (Myst, anyone?), but I'm going to jump ahead to my conclusion, which I call the "world-centric" view of interactive entertainment:

In most interactive entertainment, the world itself is paramount. The artistic and recreactional value of an interactive world exists prior to and at a deeper level than that of any game play, challenges, fixed stories, or interactive storytelling opportunities that the world may contain.

The primary value of interactive storytelling is that it improves the quality of the interactive world in which it takes place. Not the other way around. The world doesn't exist to give the story a setting. The story exists to give the world a focus of attention.

We're used to narrative being primary in a whole succession of dramatic media from theater to novels to film and video. But in the interactive arts, narrative has a secondary role, just as music has a secondary role in theater and film, and just as poetry has a secondary role in popular music.

Of course, there are numerous exceptions to this, just as there are some movies whose visuals and storylines exist primarily to add accompaniment to their musical soundtracks, and some songwriters whose poetic lyrics are the main attraction of their songs. Just about every type of play discussed in depth at the Forge is such an exception. But they are just that: exceptions. The money and the popular taste follow the rule, which is that people choose interactive experiences based on a very visceral desire to be in the setting depicted, doing the basic things the system allows (skateboarding, or fighting, or casting spells), with relatively little concern for long-term challenge or for story.

How much does any of this have to do with tabletop role playing games in particular? The short answer is, I don't know. But I suspect that some of the same principles apply, probably to a lesser degree than for "interactive entertainment" at large but to a greater degree than is generally appreciated from within the RPG world. For example, I strongly suspect that the attraction for players of being "in-character" is generally overrated while the attraction of being "in-setting" is way overlooked. I strongly suspect that the main objection to railroading for many participants has more to do with "when my choices are arbitrarily limited it breaks the VR of the world" than with "my character's story isn't going the way I wanted it to go." I suspect that many GMs prioritize making their worlds as compelling as possible in their decision-making at the instant of play, with whether they do so by means of challenge, story, or in-world causality being a secondary concern. I believe that many of the metagame mechanisms associated with Narrativism can also be (and in fact often are) applied to enriching the interactive world by getting the players involved in creating setting elements, NPCs, back story, and situations with the primary goal being world representation rather than story building.

But in any case, passive consumers usually massively outnumber active (or interactive) creators. That principle alone makes the prospect of vast numbers of RPG players adopting Narrativist play styles seem unlikely, even if the tools for doing so were to become far more prevalent.

- Walt

Is there a further point or inquiry to be made, in your view?

2) What parts of the VR experience are most important? (at least to Steve - I know answers may vary.) Are the psychological parts most important? (That is, being aware of the stresses your character might go through, a la Unknown Armies.) Or are the physical parts of the environment most important? (That is, being aware of the physical limits of your character.)
I'm not really sure how to address your first question, since I don't think I'm really qualified.

wfreitag wrote: Clinton's position causes me some anguish, because I wish he were right, but I believe he's wrong. The implied idea that many more players would prioritize narrative if only given tools conducive to doing so...

My apologies for mistaking the implication.

Um, ignore the first and last paragraphs of my post. The rest is still on topic, I believe.

- Walt

wfreitag wrote: How much does any of this have to do with tabletop role playing games in particular? The short answer is, I don't know. But I suspect that some of the same principles apply,

MTG works becuase the rules are empowering, players are effective. And it has trhe colour we know and loves, elves and goblins and whatnot.

To Everyone:

Given that Ron seems to agree more or less explicitly with the original post in this thread, a question arises in my mind. What the original poster seems to be describing (and what Mike and Clinton were calling Imersion - I think) seems to boil down to extensive (possibly exclusive) Actor stance. I understand what they're talking about - I've seen scads of people touting the Great Important Thing (not to be confused with The Great Impossible Thing ;), whioch is: STAY IN CHARACTER.

All right, so this is cool. Simulationism with Exploration of Character. But that's not *all* there is to Simulationism. The Big Friggin Game is most definately a sim game, but perish the thought if people tried to Stay In Character (TM). It's Simulationism with Exploration of Setting (or possibly Genre, but Ron doesn't like that term... :)

So, please, please don't say that the original post is a good description of "what Simulationists do." It might be a good description of what *some* Simulationists do - those who have a specific focus on consistent (what Ron calls causal) characters.

To Walt:

I'm going to have to completely, utterly disagree with your comments about computer games. Obviously you have to take this in the context of myself, my friends, and the games we're familiar with, but believe me, we do spend a *lot* of time playing and talking about CGs. One of my friends is working on a degree in software engineering, and his more-than-passing interest in computer games rubs off on all of us. :)

To address your specific points:

wfreitag wrote: The single best predictor for the popular success of a genre of computer games (with the exception of pure abstract puzzle games, like solitaire or Tetris), or of any single game, is how effectively it places the player in a virtual world. Game play and story are both secondary to that. (The true fecklessness of the incessant debate in computer game circles over which is more important, game play or story, thus becomes apparent.)

This argument, with many more examples and much more analysis, could go on for pages (Myst, anyone?), but I'm going to jump ahead to my conclusion, which I call the "world-centric" view of interactive entertainment:

wfreitag wrote:
The single best predictor for the popular success of a genre of computer games (with the exception of pure abstract puzzle games, like solitaire or Tetris), or of any single game, is how effectively it places the player in a virtual world. Game play and story are both secondary to that. (The true fecklessness of the incessant debate in computer game circles over which is more important, game play or story, thus becomes apparent.)

Hi Nathan,

I think that Actor stance is one of several tools that are most often employed to generate the quality of play that we're talking about. However, Actor stance does not define that quality of play. Remember, stances are labile, which means they shift frequently. You might want to review my essay regarding how stances relate to GNS goals; there is no 1:1 relationship.

Also, I think that there is extensive scope for including overt Director-stance-enforcing rules into Simulationist-focused play.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Nathan,

I think that Actor stance is one of several tools that are most often employed to generate the quality of play that we're talking about. However, Actor stance does not define that quality of play. Remember, stances are labile, which means they shift frequently. You might want to review my essay regarding how stances relate to GNS goals; there is no 1:1 relationship.

Also, I think that there is extensive scope for including overt Director-stance-enforcing rules into Simulationist-focused play.

Mike,

Agreed in full. One of these days, I'd really like someone to write up examples of all three stances in action during very different GNS instances of play.

Stance is a technique (or practice, or behavior, whatever); GNS refers to larger-scale success or outcome of such things.

Best,
Ron

Er, Ron, I think that's exactly what I was trying to say. :) To me the original post looked like: "Aha! Simulationism is about imersion, which equates to Actor stance!" To which I reply: "No! No! No! Some Smulationism may rely heavily on Actor stance, but such is not a requirement.

Hi there,

This post is specifically directed to Matt Snyder's post above.

Matt, one thing I have a hard time getting across to people is that GNS is not intended to match up to a marketing survey. The history of role-playing commerce is very, very heavily influenced by features of the three-tier system - to the extent that play preferences, historically, have not acted as a coherent or easily-recognized market force.

In other words, I think discussions of "what gamers want" in GNS terms, and trying to match that in any obvious way to historical or projected trends in how games have been designed or packaged, would not be very useful.

I have written an extensive manuscript all about the RPG as a commercial product, and most of it is guaranteed to get people screaming defensively and bursting into tears. One of the reasons I haven't completed/published it is to find some way of expressing the points with minimal shock value. If I can figure out how to do that, and once that essay is available, then I think we might get somewhere in terms GNS, marketing, and game design. Before that, I'll just stick with Coherence (as I define it) as a meaningful design goal and leave the market stuff out of it.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi there,

This post is specifically directed to Matt Snyder's post above.

Matt, one thing I have a hard time getting across to people is that GNS is not intended to match up to a marketing survey. The history of role-playing commerce is very, very heavily influenced by features of the three-tier system - to the extent that play preferences, historically, have not acted as a coherent or easily-recognized market force.

In other words, I think discussions of "what gamers want" in GNS terms, and trying to match that in any obvious way to historical or projected trends in how games have been designed or packaged, would not be very useful.

As to the original question:
I like different gaming styles (make different decisions in my gaming) at different times for a variety of reasons.
In the course of different simulationist games(imprecise term) I have:
(a) Had my character do something because "That's what he would have done." (char Exploration)
(b) Had my character do something because it would create a neat mental picture. (color Exploration)
(c) Had my char. do something because I wanted to see "what happened next." (situation Exploration)
(d) Had my character go somewhere because I wanted to know what was over the hill. (setting Exploration)
I play sim for a variety of reasons(when I do). All of these have tinges of Exploration when I make that choice.
(I have also been known to make char Exploration decisions in the midst of a Gamist style game. I'm working on that).

I still think my VR analogy was in some ways a bad one, since it's given everyone this idea that I'm championing simulationism as being either complete character-immersion or complete environment-immersion where everything melts away and you have this intense transcendant experience.

Nope.

I'm talking about five people hanging around a table, and four going "that was cool, what's around the corner?"

Personal example:

I ran GURPS for a long time, and I got the best results from my group when there was no story, and was no competitive gaming going on. In fact some of it was so disjointed it was surreal. One night in a fantasy game the players (who had characters like Willie Gilligan and an albino midget dwarf) went through a portal (by choice, they could have gone the opposite direction) and enter some dimension where an enormous line of people were pushing this wheel. When the PCs destroyed the wheel, the people elongated into the sky. They didn't gain anything. And there was really nothing that distinguished this as a story. It was just an encounter. And from there they moved to the next one.

Here's another example. I know you did this in junior high.

GM: So, you're walking through a cornfield and this hot elf chick saddles up next to you.
Player: Dude, I totally bang her!

It's not gamist behavior. In the context of the game, there's nothing to gain. It's not narritivist behavior. Maybe if this has consequences later on, but in my junior high games, the elf chick got banged and got forgotten.

It's sim-play. It's an interesting encounter (well it was in junior high), and your character is endowed with interesting abilities (ha ha) to pull it off. It's wish fulfillment.

I can think of different ways this encounter can be played out in different Stances, levels of immersion, etc etc. A player in Director's stance can say, "Dude, there's this totally hot elf chick in the cornfield." Or a completely immersed player would say, "I totally can feel the elf chick's nipples" (or whatever it is totally immersed players do).

Yet, until you either add a relevant competitive game element (go up a level by banging elf chick) or make the elf chick important in a piece of narrative story (story as in plot, character, theme--not what happened to me on the way through the cornfield)--it remains an example of Simulationist play.

Hi Steve,

If you kinda skip over the immersion-tangent, then I think this thread demonstrates that your VR analogy is a good one. Everything you wrote in your recent post is absolutely on target. Not only does it correspond perfectly to my essay (Sim play prioritizes Exploration), it also provides a good touchpoint for people who need further explanation.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Clinton's discussion of immersion would be an excellent thread in its own right, if we can all remember that the term does not refer to "one thing." Check the older Transparency threads to see a good example of the kind of discussion that I would prefer to see about immersion.