So, I started a thread in the Site Discussion, and Ron said I needed an actual play example. Here we go.

When: I'll use a game I played around march of this year.

What: D&D 4e. This was one of my first forays into the system, but the game itself had been going on since the game came out in june or july.

Who: Me, a player (though I wish I was the DM), Paul (player and munchkin wannabe), Gourdo (reluctant DM who doesn't really put as much effort in as he thinks he does, and not half as much as he should, in my not so humble opinion), and Richie (player, good at role-playing, simple).

We played a game set in modern times with all the D&D elements, so a modern magic kind of setting. Every character had to have a religion (whether they were devout or not) and history was more or less unchanged, though there were some changes that DM thought particularly important, (and which I thought ludicrous), including the Japanese controlling a sizeable portion of North america after World War II, and the gold standard and economy resulting in un-realistic prices and rewards.  For example, we were offered 1000 GP for our first mission, a a group, which is basically 200 dollars in equivalence in the 1920s. This is a fair sum, but not the kind of thing I expect people to risk life and limb for against zombies and other supernatural terrors (which is what we were asked to do).

There were several issues of breakdown in the game, most of them my own opinion. What I wanted was more control of the story. I had what I thought to be several great ideas (the other players agreed in private, but were oddly silent during the game. methinks they feared DM. He and I butted heads constantly). The DM remained firmly rooted to "his" story (even though the whole game was designed specifically by him for me [without my input] as a gesture to heal a group fission we had suffered months earlier), and would listen patiently to other ideas, "take them under consideration" and then proceed to ignore and not use them.

D&D 4e has an obviously strong gamist element, and we all enjoyed that part of it, no matter how many social issues amongst ourselves there were. The idea of narrativism as I understand it is story now, or story first in my words.

Needless to say, I did not enjoy this game nearly as much as I could have. I believe it is because the story is not what I wanted it to be, and that our characters could not influence it. Sure, wiping out this group of zombies saved the city and made us heroes, but if we wanted to do things differently, we could not influence the story along another path. It was one line railroading all the way.

So, is gamism mutually exclusive to narrativism? I could not have envisioned these questions at the time I played the game, nor do I see a direct correlation, but I suppose we need an example to work off of.

I wish I had an example game of capes to work with. I recently read the text and believe it easily supports both narrativist and gamist agendas (unless narrativism requires the players working together to craft the story equally, in which case my question is ultimately moot).

It seems to me that in a game such as D&D, (or many other systems and games for that matter) there could be gamist elements that keep the players interested on one level, while allowing them to work together to craft interesting stories. This way the challenge is there within the game world, and the story is shaped outside of it. Or is such a system one bitter gamer's pipe dream?

Thanks,
--Norm

Just a few things for the moment, because this discussion is key to some of my recent ideas as well. First of all, I see no connection between railroading and Gamism. Even in Gamism, railroading is a poor design. I remember Gygax's introduction to Castle Zagyg 2 : The Upper Works for C&C (which obviously is NOT a Narrativist attempt) stating his scorn for railroading. As far as I am concerned, I've experienced a lot more of railroading and GM-illusionism in Simulationist games than in Gamist ones, I've even read a few weeks ago a player writing (on another message board) "when I play I do my best to understand the implied railroading and to comply with it in order to respect the social contract". I you ever read a player of Gamist games writing that, he's not a player of Gamist games.

What strike me is that you will find, if you read it, a lot of examples about the way to GM a session and to take the other players' version of the game into account in the D&D4 Dungeon Master Guide. Most players I know have simply discarded it as "fluff" and I suspect a tendancy in older D&D players to overlook this kind of content with a "you know, we know what's D&D like" sort of motto. Because if you read it, you'll find whole sections telling you to say yes to the player's ideas, whatever they might be, and to allow them to use whatever pops in their mind in order to face the challenges the game sets for them. I consider these sections as an attempt to empower the players with the course of the story. Meanwhile, the entire game is just a set of resolution systems, challenges and step on up mechanics. I think that what these sections are meant for is to destroy the old fake Simulationist sin of D&D, which is actually great, but not to generate a story now system. You maybe would have much more enjoyed playing the game with a DM having read that.

On the other hand, I don't want to answer directly the theorical question underlying your actual play example but I suspect, having just read Vincent Baker's Storming the Wizard's Tower 1st part that the direction is worth exploring. It gives me hints to a new version of Gamism in which the challenges could possibly be co-designed on the spot by the players together, who would then face them, step on up and use all the crunch made available to them in order to face them. Is that Narrativism? I'm not really sure. Makes me almost think of a web 2.0 version of Gamism actually. If you extend the co-design to the crunch available to face the challenges, the story now element of this Gamist game would lay in its permanent co-designing. I'm REALLY pushing Storming the Wizard's Tower to an extreme here and apologies to Vicent Baker if he feels I'm twisting his game a bit too far. One thing is that if that would allow you to design challenges, adventures and why not, settings and characters, that doesn't give you a story as such because the mechanics aren't at all intended for that purpose. That's why I wouldn't call that Narrativism but it's sure an interesting thing.

Ayyavazi wrote:
D&D 4e has an obviously strong gamist element, and we all enjoyed that part of it, no matter how many social issues amongst ourselves there were.

Hello Norm,

With capes, it doesn't have some sort of 'gamist' mini game in it. There is skill involved in working it's mechanics to affect the story - this results in the story going in unexpected directions. Unexpected for everyone, rather than some GM knowing in advance. The skill used in mechanical play in capes is like the skill used in writing the prose of a book or in handling a brush when painting - it's a skill, but it's not gamist. It's like someone dribbling a basketball with paint on it, to make a painting - just because it appears to be a basketball, something used in so many sports, doesn't mean it's gamist.

In terms of the GM being rooted in 'his' story - what is the set up? I'm thinking 4E has the traditional bit of crappy text that says the GM can do anything. If you've agreed he has, then your handing him authority over the story (and 'anything' else) - you've made it 'his' story - then you resent him treating it as if it's his?

Hi Norm,

Thanks for posting this. Everyone, let's not dogpile him too, too much, OK?

Best, Ron

Callan wrote: I'm thinking 4E has the traditional bit of crappy text that says the GM can do anything. If you've agreed he has, then your handing him authority over the story (and 'anything' else) - you've made it 'his' story - then you resent him treating it as if it's his?

So he still has the authority? And who determines whenever it's possible to 'give it up'? The GM? For myself, I'd feel if I handed that to the GM it's absolutely no different from me handing him 'the GM can do anything' - the only countermeasure to his power, I've placed within his power. May as well say he can only use the authority when he wears a black hat - atleast then a well aimed dicebag or just plain grabbing it off his head and keeping it away, could happen! But I'll stop for now - as yet, I don't know if this helps Norm at all.

Ahey, :)

Ayyavazi wrote: is gamism mutually exclusive to narrativism?

Everyone, please hold up on posting for a bit. I know this is pushing the limits of moderator authority, but as I'm the one who asked Norm to do this, it seems right to give him the reply I promised before things get too focused on details. My post is almost ready and after it's up, the free-for-all starts up again. Thanks!

Best, Ron

Hi Norm,

I'm going to re-state what you wrote about your play-experience in Big Model terms, because only with that stuff in place can Creative Agenda be addressed. I have not lost sight of your basic questions and point, and will get to them in the end.

The first thing I see are a lot of judgments. I say this not to criticize you or say you shouldn't judge, but rather the opposite. Clearly you brought strong expectations or standards to what should be happening at the table, as you saw it, and they were met only marginally.

I'll try to paraphrase them and put them at the right level of the Big Model. (1) Social contract: put in effort, especially if you're the DM; be real if you want something, no "try" or expect to be treated as such if you aren't doing it. To summarize, as you saw it, the Social Contract should include genuine commitment from the person's best effort, and failure to do so should be called out. And also, these expectations were not being met.

(2) Exploration, specifically setting. You expected Setting not to be stupid, with stupid meaning "fantastic is OK, but not violating basic principles of human behavior or certain historical outcomes without at least some attempt at an explanation." This also reaches deeply into the Shared part of "Shared Imagined Space," because here was the DM, imposing X and Y and Z, and your judgment as a participant (i.e. you had to be imagining it too) was clearly not being valued. Whereas according to you, that judgment should necessarily be valued.

I started with these two not only because they are the outermost and next-most layers of the model, but also because they are linked by a very powerful point: if the group does not have "Let's play this game!" as part of the Social Contract, then there is no real door or connector between these two levels.

Many aspects of the breakdown you describe are rooted in these levels. Creative Agenda isn't a level, but rather a connector going through the levels, holding them together. Sometimes problems during play are based on clashing desires for the CA; sometimes they are due to problems with the levels themselves. I am pretty certain based on what you wrote that the Gamist CA was in at least workable, potentially strong shape for your group. The issue lies more with what content the CA was supposed to be working with, and the particular details of how that content was imposed onto play.

That claim of mine will not make sense unless I clarify a number of thing about Creative Agenda.

First, it is abundantly clear to me that you are completely at sea regarding the term Narrativism. It is definitely not "Story First." In fact, a great deal of the first part of my Narrativism: Story Now essay is built to clarify that point. For present purposes, in the play-account you're talking about, neither the story that was either mandated by the DM (as it happened) or generated more through player-character action (as you'd prefer) has anything to do with Narrativist play. It is simply and clearly best described as "the events which fictionally occurred" - the product of play in terms of fiction.

This doesn't invalidate your question, but I think it's absolutely necessary to re-frame your question into meaningful terms. You aren't asking about Gamist and Narrativist play at all. You're asking whether Gamist play can persist or occur when attention to story (as stated above in the simple/clear form) is occurring as well. The answer is yes, which I presume is good news. And also good news, that the attention in question is more enjoyable to you when you get to be involved rather than merely to watch someone impose it, is also compatible with this aim.

It seems to me that in a game such as D&D, (or many other systems and games for that matter) there could be gamist elements that keep the players interested on one level, while allowing them to work together to craft interesting stories. This way the challenge is there within the game world, and the story is shaped outside of it. Or is such a system one bitter gamer's pipe dream?

Ayyavazi wrote:
The DM remained firmly rooted to "his" story (even though the whole game was designed specifically by him for me [without my input] as a gesture to heal a group fission we had suffered months earlier),

This may help Ayyavazi, and it will certainly help me.

Could one say that  a strong gamist design could support narrativist play, as long as one saw the gamist elements as strong constraints on the possible paths of the story resolutions could include? In a way the system and its outcomes are like the expectations and physics of a genre?

Hiya,

Strategy, tactics, gutsy decision-making with mechanical consequences, and all related items may be present in the game - but it's not Gamist unless personal esteem among the real people is actually gained as the point of play by doing these things well.

So to answer your question directly, no, Gamist play cannot serve as support for (e.g.) Narrativist play, or for that matter, any other Creative Agenda. However, strategy, tactics, et cetera can certainly be present as a feature of Narrativist (or any other non-Gamist Agenda) play, to fuel and reinforce the Agenda in question.

Have you checked out the links I provided? Levi in particular, in the first Frostfolk thread, really illustrates what it's like for someone who actually grasps what I mean by "Creative Agenda" for the first time, even though he thought he knew what it meant at the outset (but was wrong). Once you see what I'm talking about, the very idea of pursuing more than one at once becomes immediately and obviously absurd.

Best, Ron
edited to remove redundant sign-off

Thanks everyone.

First, I do feel overwhelmed, but that is not unexpected. I knew going in I would not be able to respond for a few days, so this is only four or five more posts than I expected. I'll try to address everyone's points as they were made, but if I skipped it, let me know. Also, it will take time for me to read the threads Ron has recommended, so I may not be fully on board exactly what creative agenda and narrativism are. I've read all the essays, but I obviously missed something along the way.

For Patrice, I have most certainly read all of that text in the DMG. I was a big proponent of saying yes (many of my players beg me to move back to the area and run their games), and of letting the characters make useful choices outside of their combat tactics. Addressing interesting social dilemmas was always a big part of our games, as well as all of the tactics (at least for our male players).  This Wizard's Tower intrigues me. I will have to look into it.

For Adam,

I hesitate to include examples where I enjoyed the play, because of how Ron clarified what is gamist and what is narrativist. Essentially, the "gamist" things I enjoyed (and still enjoy) are making characters able to totally wreck anything thrown at them, whether skill wise or combat wise. I enjoyed the tactical dance that was D&D combat.

And Ron,

I appreciate your candor. And of course I am not taking the advice personally. I love the concept of RPG theory. And I love learning about exactly what it is I enjoy, because it will hopefully increase my enjoyment. For now, I will try to go through what I understand of your reply.

First, if gamism is about the social esteem, and not the tactics and strategy, then it seems to be gamism I did not understand. As such, I could not say it was the gamist element I enjoy at all. Sure, I love a pat on the back for a good idea as much as the next guy, but I don't play D&D only so I can win and be given props for it, I play any RPG with the intent first and foremost of winning (and losing) in such a way that my victory means something. Its that meaning that I always desire in gameplay, which is why I was so frustrated with the endless filler battles my DMs always gave me. A battle against a bunch of common enemies who are only there to drain my resources/give me new or more resources/fill game time, bore me no matter how badly I trash them (note: a close fight that is tactically difficult does a great deal to lessen the blow, but I tend to find the harder fights are normally the ones that meant more in the first place Or is this just retroactive memory alteration? Maybe I think the battle is more important if it is hard because I enjoy hard, and anything I enjoy must have been important somehow. hmm...)

I will be reading the topics you gave me as I have time, but for now the idea that Narrativism is about digging deep into certain issues seems to be exactly what I want, with a healthy dose of tactical application, the ability to earn an occasional pat on the back, and a deep and engaging fiction that all players can effect equally.

Thanks again, I would still like to explore a hybrid gamist/narrativist model, but I obviously have to study up on the terms some more.

And lastly, Jasper (since Ron handled the last poster's question fairly well).

The issues you speak of are real. The group fission was caused by a lie by the DM in question, which when called on split the group. His feelings were hurt, and he refused to play in any game with me from that point on. The group went on without him for some time, but his best friend was becoming tense because of the seperation, so I bowed out to let the normal group resume play. Months later, DM and came to the agreement that he would not lie so much and I would cut him more slack when he did. And that he would run a game (since I no longer had the time) that I could play in, rather than forcing me into a pre-made adventure, which I tended to hate. Imagine my surprise when the "custom" campaign he had designed was just as rigid as any pre-made! Turns out his style of DMing was very by-the-book. Once an element was decided by him, there was zero flexibility. Sure, our in combat actions determined winning or losing for that fight, but other than that, there was no choice.  Ultimately, when I moved away, it was not a big loss since I wasn't getting the type of gameplay I wanted.

Thanks again all. Lets see where this all goes.
--Norm

Okay, now that Ayyavazi has had a chance to read all that and respond, I can reply in the thread to Ron and not be muddling things horridly.

The crux of my point lay in strong gamist design and narrativist play.

Not mixing two play agendas in one player in an instance of play.

Much as people playing Kagematsu would not violate the setting constraints (Japan, era, village in peril, the kind of movies that inspired this game), I am asking if you could try to achieve your narrativist goals of play while abiding by the systemic constraints on what could happen.

A poor example might be that if in D&D you must strive to harm a high level person for many rounds (whittle the hit points) before anything dramatic could happen, the nod to this in even the most non conflict resolution based game that was suposed to be set in a D&D universe might say that a fight to the last will be long, no one one shot one kill type narrations. Something as simple as "after much flashing of blades and manuevering for position, one combatant fell."

Another poor example would be "phrase all tales in terms of how D&D would resolve it while playing Once Upon a Time."

My ongoing feeling is that many narrativist agendas are not positive or even neutral with regards to other styles of play, especially gamist play. Why do I think that? Because if you want to experience and enjoy the creation of a story, elements like rules, which sim and gamist play rely upon as almost unbendable agreements, can only be in the way. I could be very wrong and I keep trying to find an idea of how much can a rules set be used to establish the constraints of fiction that the story must follow.

Likewise, I have have to agree with Ayyavazis take on gamism, I've met no one who wants acclaim for doing well at a game really, but plenty who want an involved tactical experience with challenging situations, be it a board game, or any variety of roleplaying game.

Hi Norm,

Two major points. (Also, my apologies in advance for the terseness. I'm definitely at the end of a toddler-heavy day.)

1. When I say esteem, it's not isolated. It's esteem about strategy and guts. So play which involves strategy and guts as a minor component but doesn't have the esteem about it; that's not Gamist. It might have esteem about something else, maybe. But if you have (i) esteem (ii) about (iii) strategy and guts, as the point-purpose-agenda of play, then you have Gamist play. All three, in that causal relationship.

2. Agenda should not be confused with motive, which I think both of you a're doing. I am not saying motives are uninvolved, but I am saying that consulting them causes problems. There are some pretty agonzing discussions back in the history of the Forge about that. Here, I'll say that in order to discuss Creative Agenda, we need to look at what is done around the table, socially and creatively, which is the clear and completely normal (i.e. not arcane or zen-like) reinforcement of one another's fun. Instead of saying, "H'm, why do I play, gee, I feel this, I feel that," look at what you and others actually did and do during a particular session or sequence of sessions. I think I demonstrated the utility of this approach in the Frostfolk and Rifts threads that I linked to in my earlier post, so those are probably the best references.

We've been through this "challenge" discussion about fifty times at the Forge, and it always goes 'round and 'round until the person understands that we're not talking about motive, and therefore nothing about "but I do it for X!" means anything to the discussion.

Best, Ron

P.S. I realized that I forgot to include the code for the relevant Exalted threads: Bumpy Exalted game, [More Abyssals] CA Clashes and holes in gamist systems.

What an incredibly disapppointing answer. Why would you ask me to post my personal message to you just to give this answer? No, I don't actually need an answer.

I'm answering Norm and your support to his post, and I'll get to your specific points when I can. Your previous post is not trivial and this thread is a fine place to work with it.

Please bear in mind that disappointing you or not disappointing you isn't my concern.

Best, Ron

The following should mark a transition in this thread. Norm, we need to start this thing for real. I'll post in a bit to say how.

----

Here are the issues that go into chance.thirteen's point about strong Gamist design and Narrativist play. To summarize, we're talking about using a rules-set which does X really well but people may play it with priority Y. In fact, Once Upon a Time was an excellent example game, as anyone who's played it knows - you have to decide whether X or Y is really the point of play for a particular group and instance of play.

1. When I say "play agenda," it's not a "style." Style is trivial. It's like hats two different people might wear while doing the same basic thing, even if they can't stand each other's hats. This guy talks in character, that guy never does. This guy uses a gas grill, this guy only uses charcoal. They may claim to be profoundly different from one another but no one observing them could say that. Whether they could ever be compatible in some group activity is not fundamental to what they're doing, but simply individually up to them.

Agenda is seriously different. This guy raises hogs to put bows on them and to keep them as pets, and sell them as pets. This guy grills them and sells books about the recipes. They get together on the basis of being "big hog fans" and there is nothing they can do to reconcile what they want from pigs as a shared activity.*

2. Any rules set can be used for any Creative Agenda. So if you're talking about using, say, Rune as the rules set and you and I and a couple other people play it in some way which is aggressively Narrativist and non-problematic as such among us - yeah. Not only "can happen," but "does happen" all the time, all over the place.

In practice, certain rules in the set tend to get de-emphasized and even ignored, which is Drift. I played Rifts a long time ago, and personally Drifted it basically by ignoring danger to my character and the various point-reward systems. When Andreas (Settembrini) interviewed me about that, because he was surprised I'd played Rifts at all, he reacted essentially that I didn't understand Rifts and played it wrong. Whether that's "wrong," I can't say (and have never said so) - what it was, was Drifted-Risk for purposes of a Creative Agenda that I daresay was not only not well-supported by the textual rules, but possibly as far from the way Andreas plays it as one can get (which is well-supported by the rules).**

For a much more deliberate example, see my series of four threads about playing D&D 3.0/3.5 with a dedicated Narrativist Agenda; they're pretty long and elaborate. A search in Actual Play using my name and the terms "Christopher" and possibly "orc" will do the job. We Drifted the rules significantly and precisely, but I think it's also clear that we did indeed play D&D well within the rules margins that permit that label to say stuck on.

These points combine to say that Agendas are incompatible, and also that no rules-set prevents a given Agenda from being used/done (although many rules sets do not fully survive contact with certain Agendas).

This phrase of yours confuses me though.

My ongoing feeling is that many narrativist agendas are not positive or even neutral with regards to other styles of play, especially gamist play. Why do I think that? Because if you want to experience and enjoy the creation of a story, elements like rules, which sim and gamist play rely upon as almost unbendable agreements, can only be in the way.

Whew. OK, with that done.

Norm, it's your thread. I went over your posts and I'm not sure whether you want to pursue it. For the record, I'd like to continue, based on a series of questions we can go through regarding that particular game. It'd be a lot like the Rifts and Frostfolk threads. Are you interested?

Best, Ron

Hey Ron, thanks again for your replies.

I apologize I am not able to post as often as I would like, but my internet access is not regular, to say the least. I'll be on for the next five hours or so, but that may mean nothing.

Ok, so do I want to continue this? Of course. Even your terse post shows me a few things I could afford to examine a little more closely, in order to understand some underlying issues of game design.

Now, about motive. I can understand why motive only has a partial role, but only through a mirror darkly. To me, the majority of frustration comes from having motive x and point-purpose-agenda y. I want to play a game for certain reasons. Others want to play a game for certain reasons. It seems ridiculous to me that a group, united in agenda (motive wise), would play a game and follow a different agenda (whether consciously or sub-consciously).

That would make no logical sense. Therefore, there must be another reason (lets not get into eastern thinking and all the contradiction talk here).

I propose two potential reasons why this disconnect from motive might occur:

1. The group is not united in motive. Whether they think they are or not is irrelevant. If some members want x, but others want y, then the one with the most force behind it (whether from number of supporters, or simple style takeover, as in gamist-simulationist) will win out, and that agenda will be pursued in play. Note that if this is not consciously recognized by the players, it will almost certainly end up causing some form of frustration.

2. The group is united in motive, but the system is so strong that it steers the group away from their motive and into the agenda the system encourages. This will most likely only happen with a group of lazy or weak-willed individuals who for one reason or another refuse to change the rules (drift) in order to suit their original motive.

So, I agree, what is done at the table certainly causes my frustration, but I suspect that it is because I am not achieving my motive when playing. This is not to say I cannot have fun, just that it is frustrated fun, and certainly not the maximum amount of enjoyment I could be getting from the hobby. And my points above seem to support one of the most basic tenets of GNS theory, which is that differing creative agendas cause incompatibility, whether to a minor or major degree.

That said, I am not sure that I have properly divested Motive and Creative Agenda. I know it will be frustrating for you, but do you mind walking me through it? Or do I have most of right?

Now, as for what was done at the table. I am not sure exactly what agenda was being pursued as a group. I know what people said, but what they said by GNS rules is incoherent nonsense. We all said we wanted the following things: Tactical challenge (we certainly rewarded savvy thinking here, along with whoops for every critical hit), a good story (we awarded the GM with congratulations for each element we liked, though some of it was lies, and said things like "Cool!" when a character or player did or proposed cool things in the fiction, and to get "in" character and really try to act and think like our characters, which was hardly ever rewarded, but if we went in the wrong direction (such as acting "out of character" or meta-gaming) there were boos, ridicule, argument, and sometimes GM frustration. Then again, when meta-gaming was almost required by the game (that is, assuming every adventurer is somehow extremely experienced and tactically sound with a group they have only just met), it was glossed over and given flimsy foundation reasons, such as, "Adventurers are head and shoulders above normal people. They are extraordinary." When contemplating how that could be possible with so many prominent NPCs, the profusion of adventurers and magic, the proper response was...blank out.

So, in one way or another, each agenda seems to have been encouraged, but I suspect Gamism was primary because that was the way the GM ran the game primarily (getting extremely angry when we won "too quickly" or "too easily."

Thanks again,

--Norm

This post is in addition to the one I just wrote.

I just finished the Frostfolk threads (I had read the rifts one some time before but found it cumbersome and confusing, perhaps because I did not read the included play threads and know little to nothing about Rifts).

The Frostfolk thread was great. If that is what this thread can turn into, then I am ll for it. I just wish I had the genuinely great experience these players had as opposed to my fumblings in the dark that resulted in more frustration than fun.

As a side note, the link to The Exchange is broken, or perhaps the creator took it down so that he could publish something and make money. I don't know, but I want this game! Where can I find it? Likewise, the Geek Hierarchy link works, but not the other Geek link (the name alludes me and I must press on).

I think I really have a feeling for Narrativism now, and the concept of Emergent Story that Levi worded so well is definitely one of the things I want to experience in play. Esteem for emergent story would be a great thing for me (perhaps I should just write a good book). I don't really care if there is competition to create the story, with other players trying to make different better stories or not, though placed in such a situation, I would certainly want to win! I care more about the emergent story, which is probably why I was so frustrated by the the DMs style.  The story was his story, therefore, our attempts to change and interact with it (other than just playing our roles) were ultimately futile.

It probably does not help that the D&D 4th system seems to support extremely gamist play (whether the text admits it or not). The system focuses almost no control on story forming in anyone's hands. The fiction becomes a vehicle through which we beat challenges.

This is probably where the heart of my original question came from. In a system that is completely silent on how to craft the fiction, but very loud and explicit on how to manage events within the fiction, any fiction building tips and rules can work. Therefore, the DM could easily spread around story creation and react on the fly, allowing players to create story and focus on issues of character and such like in the Frostfolk thread, or they can craft a rigid fiction in which we all play our parts (minor Sim?) in order to try our hand at the challenges embedded in the fiction (gamist?) I believe Gamism was the agenda because of the excessive esteem placed on success in combat.

Here is why: If our players won a combat or a skill challenge (rarely as they existed) too easily or quickly, the DM would become extremely frustrated. If the DM pressed us until the point where he actually had to fudge rolls in order for us to survive (which he always did, and many times blatantly, almost as if he were gloating), he was very happy. We as players never felt that we had failed in such circumstances however, because many times he won because other than extreme luck, we didn't have a chance in the first place. This is also because excessive preparation in one direction can specialize characters to face certain threats but leave them unable to face others. Even specializing for balance can be exploited by a specialized threat. Therefore, winning some conflicts is the purview of fortune, not skill.

Likewise, we all ran into frustrations because of the incoherence of the system. On one hand, it explains the entire process is cooperative, and the DM has to work to foster good story and play as much as the players. On the other, it encourages players and the DM alike to work as hard as they can to make characters and encounters that are challenging and threatening. But if an encounter actually does threaten a group (at least at low level) there is no recourse for the dead character. Thus, the DM must pull punches, but feel frustrated if he pulled the punch too early (in the encounter design, as opposed to during the encounter). And if he regularly makes encounters that are too hard only to pull punches, a number of bad things happen, including players realizing their characters are in no real danger from the DM threats, and players feeling like they have a bad DM, because he can't get the difficulty right.

And sure, the game does have plenty of "resurrection" rituals to handle character death, but in terms of "in-game" time, they are not feasible for certain story plots that the genre tries to enforce. For example, I once ran a game (3.5, has similar problems with resurrection, was a premade), where the characters were investigating children being kidnapped. I worked hard to evoke a sense of rush and a need to move forward as much as possible since the players knew the children were being sold at a slave market. They rushed headlong into the dungeon, running from threats too dangerous to confront, and working their way as best they could to the conclusion. One character got into a situation where they either had to die, or I had to spare them and ruin the belief that encounters were dangerous. I chose to let the character die, which de-railed the idea that there was a rush, since they now had to either pay for a resurrection (which they couldn't afford and would lose precious time fund-raising), or find a new recruit and get through the tough stuff all over again, which would also take too much time.

Had I been a better DM, I might have removed unnecessary threats altogether, or found a way not to kill the character, or perhaps just changed the outcome a little, forcing an extra couple of encounters into the adventure, where the characters chase the slave drivers and the children into the underdark, frantically trying to catch up. I would have had to create some new material on the fly, but it would have been possible. My frustration comes from the fact that the system is rarely conducive to this free-form thinking process on a regular basis.

I hope that gives us something more to discuss, and doesn't come across as rambling. I'm just trying to home in on the kinds of things I see in my games, and the kinds of things I want to see in my games.

Did we play for esteem as the point of play? I think we must have, but only because it was the only venue through which the strong willed DM would approve. Even when I Dmed for him, he was easily the strongest personality of the players, and drove the story significantly more than the others. Of all my players, he was the only to take me aside outside of games, to lunch or what have you, to discuss what he wanted to see in the story. I almost always did what I could to give him these elements because I loved the collaboration of story telling. I was endlessly frustrated that he did not return the favor. Perhaps it is both our faults. The other players were content to play second fiddle, because no matter how much I tried to eke out a response to, "What do you want to see happen?" They never gave me as much as Gourdo did, and only grudgingly gave me as much as they did. Sometimes they genuinely wanted things from the story, and I accommodated them at those times. Perhaps they were passive players, or perhaps their desire for story was a much further removed motive than for Gourdo and I.

Let me know what you think, and thanks again,

--Norm

Hi Norm,

Your slow-ish rate of reply is ideal for me. I find the quick pace of most internet discourse to be exhausting and generally counterproductive. Please don't feel any pressure to speed up.

I'm replying in an essay-type fashion rather than going through your points one by one. I think it's a better way in general, but one thing I don't want to do is accidentally miss any questions or points of yours. If I do, please let me know.

Let’s wait until later to address the issues of death, losing, participation, and return of “dead” characters into play. This has been intensively discussed at the Forge, and it could easily take over the thread.

Part one

Here's a concept which comes right out of my 2001 essay, but has often been missed: the platform. I explained it most clearly in the Rifts thread, and will quote it here in order not to bring all the details from that thread into the discussion. I've mildly revised the quote to clarify an ambiguous pronoun.

Imagine a little platform made of green-painted wood, standing a few inches high off the ground on its little legs. That's Exploration, the necessary imaginative communication for role-playing to occur at all. Perhaps it's a very pretty shade of green or particularly well-crafted in terms of pegs and glue. Doesn't matter. It's not the Creative Agenda.

Now imagine a secondary wooden structure built on top of it, reaching a whole foot off the ground at its tip. That's your game in action. Whatever shared goal or priority puts it there, or (in the analogy) whatever shape or material it is, that's your Creative Agenda. It's what you and the group do with the platform.

A Simulationist CA happens to be made of wood and happens to be painted green. That's why people are always mistaking Exploration for Simulationism, when it's not. Simulationist play is still a secondary structure on top of the platform. It also so happens that Gamist and Narrativist CAs are always brutally, recognizably distinct from the platform that supports them - made of plastic or aluminum, and always painted a different color or not painted at all. That's why people are always forgetting that no matter what, those agendas need the platform too.

Hey Ron,

Thanks again.

I'll try to go over your points individually.

1. What is Exploration exactly? I understand that story is part of the structure, and thus it can (or cannot, depending on play) emerge from the exploration. Here's what I am thinking. Exploration is the agreed means by which a group plans to interact with the fiction and rules to produce and support a story. This would explain its foundational placement. In effect, the group agrees (whether consciously or not) [and perhaps at a social contract level] what kinds of fiction they are working with, and a whole set of acceptable tactics, such as character choice, what characters do in the fiction. From there, the story itself can grow and be supported. If this part is off, what I say next probably will be garbled and useless.

2. i am not sure that play examples will be necessary at this point, and it is because your third point hit the nail on the head. That sounds almost exactly like what was going on. The frustration on my part at least did not come necessarily from the tactics employed by the GM, but from the fact that there were conflicting expectations, possibly because of the impossible thing before breakfast.

Essentially, I expected that I had freedoms, as you described. The GM encouraged these verbally, but then went ahead and tried to do HIS story. Thus, I ended up frustrated that his actions did not match his words. If it had been made clear at the beginning that he was expecting me to participate in his story passively, I would have not been frustrated (it would not have been ideal for me, and ultimately, freedom makes me happier than not, but at least I wouldn't have been so confused). Ultimately, I think points 2 and 3 are the same in this respect. If things are made clear at the beginning (and then supported by the groups actions) GNS (and all of its smaller implications) can actually be conducive to fun play for no better reason that it makes certain everyone is playing the same way. No expectations are crushed or strained, and thus the group, constrained by their choices and concession, is free to have actual fun.

4. I will check it out, but have limited time at the moment.

Thanks again Ron. As for starting a new topic about Narrativism and its placement as platform or structure, I think that may be warranted, unless I have already gone and messed it up (or understood it) with my above points.

The thing I am worried about is that though I am more aware of what Gamism and Narrativism look like, I am still shaky on the idea that they are mutually exclusive. If the group as a whole were aware of what they were doing (esteem as a point and premise as a point) I think it could co-exist. This could be more because I am passive enough to not let gamism take control of my actions as it does for others (or so it seems).

The play would look different though. Perhaps the game would have to encourage competition to create a story between the players, with rules encouraging the players to simultaneously confront some issue or premise (perhaps this would be gamist play with narrativist support, effectively making the address of premise as a means to win narration rights for the story?)

Cheers,
--Norm

Hi Norm and Ron,

this thread really calls to me right now. I am uncertain if my contribution really fits the discussion so I will try and present just enough to test if this belongs here.

I have played D&D since its first incarnation, even had Chainmail. Recently I have been trialling 4e by playing in a friends "living" Forgotten Realms campaign. I have some observations about the experience that I think is germane here.

The new D&D has complex, interlocking mechanisms. They are presented in such a way that, in order to play your character at optimal (Gamist style) the GM must provide suitably detailed world data when encountering things. This imposes some burdens that never existed in the earlier games: The GM has to do some mighty prep and is going to be inclined to go for linear plot lines, a string of "encounters" tailored to the detail of the player's characters. The GM may, with some effort, pull together a matrix based scenario giving players varying order of encounter. In those circumstances the GM is going to dislike having any elements of the matrix missed, after all the hard work that went into preparing it.

During the course of play the focus is going to be much on the numbers and exploits and how they hang together. Frankly this all comes off more like a game of Quake on the PC than an "Adventure", its holds back any Creative Agenda.

The "Living" campaign scenarios reinforce this by having the player's characters just teleport from adventure to adventure as if they were puppets on strings. "Hang on, last game we defeated this creature, earnt the support of these guys and found this map. Why are we now in Greyhawk looking for a job?". Even players who like being taken from scenario to scenario find this "move out of context" jarring.

Looking at the rules and my experience of play I know I could work up a more flexible campaign. One that has "actors" within it that react to the changing world situation and give players actions meaning and allowing them to make choices that can alter outcomes. It would be very hard work because of the need of such detail work up of potential encounter situations but there are ways to do it. Once you have that elbow grease in there then you can support any of the Creative Agenda needs of your players and its actually not hard to integrate all the different types. In fact Gamist and Narrativist can support one another, especially if you take the time to learn how much of each agenda each player emphasises.

Hi everyone, and Danny, welcome to the Forge. It's nice to see another long-toothed dog.

I request a little bit of time to work up a necessary post. I'm not inclined to shut down all posting except for just me and Norm, as I did with the Frostfolk one, but at the moment, each post is actually adding complexity rather than resolving it. I'm going to have to focus on Norm's needs for a bit, and then collect various other things that have cropped up.

In order for that to work, please let me get my next post up without further posts here. After that, and after Norm's response to it, then we'll open it up again.

Many thanks, Ron

I completed this post 12 hours ago. Then we lost the internet. Then I screamed.

----
Hi Norm,

Looking over your posts, I am unsure "when" you are standing in regard to the ideas discussed here. Have you read The Provisional Forge Glossary, specifically the first two pages with a diagram - i.e., my presentation of what I call The Big Model? Because if you're working with what people called "GNS" before that article was written (2004), then you're kind of in a swamp of past debate. It may even be that you haven't read Gamism: Step On Up, given some of what you've written here. Let me know.

You wrote,

1. What is Exploration exactly? I understand that story is part of the structure, and thus it can (or cannot, depending on play) emerge from the exploration. Here's what I am thinking. Exploration is the agreed means by which a group plans to interact with the fiction and rules to produce and support a story. This would explain its foundational placement. In effect, the group agrees (whether consciously or not) [and perhaps at a social contract level] what kinds of fiction they are working with, and a whole set of acceptable tactics, such as character choice, what characters do in the fiction. From there, the story itself can grow and be supported. If this part is off, what I say next probably will be garbled and useless.

The thing I am worried about is that though I am more aware of what Gamism and Narrativism look like, I am still shaky on the idea that they are mutually exclusive. If the group as a whole were aware of what they were doing (esteem as a point and premise as a point) I think it could co-exist. This could be more because I am passive enough to not let gamism take control of my actions as it does for others (or so it seems).

... Perhaps the game would have to encourage competition to create a story between the players, with rules encouraging the players to simultaneously confront some issue or premise (perhaps this would be gamist play with narrativist support, effectively making the address of premise as a means to win narration rights for the story?)

Hi Ron,

I have read all of your essays. I think I have read all of the essays posted on this site. The thing is, your essays run around 20+ pages each. Though I certainly read them carefully (and in the case of narrativism and gamism, twice) keeping all of the information in my head and understanding it is proving challenging, especially since many of the terms are charged with meaning for me that is apparently not the same meaning they have in the essay. Short of investing several consecutive hours pulling apart the glossary and individual articles, and making sure everything matches up with everything in a coherent way, I fear I may be unable to grasp the full thrust of everything you have written for quite some time, and only then with several discussions, of which this one is surely a big part.

That said, I did mean a series of fictional events when I used the word story initially, when discussing exploration. And your description of exploration really cleared up a good deal of confusion for me. Namely, the confusion of system and techniques. If rules are a technique, but the actual taking of action by player and character (whether interacting with mechanical rules or not) is considered system as well as the mechanics, then I understand fully why you say "System matters" Ultimately, I was equating system with mechanics, and to me, almost any mechanics I have encountered can be fit into any of the creative agendas (though admittedly, certain ones fit certain agendas better than others).

As for narrativist priorities being present or not, I can understand why you would say there was no shred of it. What I mean by story in this context is probably better described as premise.  Each of us wanted a different level of importance for premise. (I am using premise here as sort of a confrontation with moral quandary, like in dust devil's can a cowboy give up the gun, kind of way. I don't really know how to put it into words, which is frustrating for all involved, but if you get what I mean, then I won't have to articulate as much. If not, I'll try harder at a future time).

I, for one, wanted a healthy level of premise. I wanted to explore more than just the fiction (encompassing all the lovely bits of color and such) and I wanted more than just social esteem (though I certainly wanted to get those pats on the back for all of my contributions, whether it was winning a fight, contributing something cool to the series of fictional events, or what have you), I wanted to ask hard questions of the characters and ultimately the players. The thing was, in play, these hard questions could never come up, because they simply weren't present in the story the GM had designed. If we tried to interject them, it would inevitably run the plot off the rails, which would infuriate the gm, stress him out (and thus everyone at the table) and potentially end in a group time-out (which has happened several times). So, instead of addressing the hard questions, we would give up, little by little, not even noticing we were, until we were playing in an obviously gamist fashion and not understanding fully just why we were so frustrated with how things were going.

I don't have time for a play example right now (I know its pissing you off, but I promise I'll provide one soon), but I will get one up as soon as I have time to write it. I want to make sure I pick a good couple of sessions to demonstrate what I believe I am saying and also to answer your question about my most enjoyable game.

As for narrativism and Gamism co-existing, I think that what you described is spot-on. I don't want esteem to be the only point of play. I want esteem to be an important factor, in addition to the addressing of what I call the hard questions, and what I suspect is premise. When I have time, I will re-read the glossary, looking for all links to premise.

For now, it seems I want Narrativist play with subservient Gamism and a dash of Simulationism (Which I probably have as much understanding of as I do of rocket science, which is to say, Rockets go up, most of the time, and there's this fuel propulsion thing going on).

Also, I fear I may be on of the bitterest gamers in the world, since that sounds like a great way to play to me, as long as the hard questions are present.

Thanks again, and I will work on an actual play example post-haste,

Cheers,
--Norm

P.S. I am deeply sorry you had to go through the classic re-typing due to internet loss event. I hate those. Thanks for sticking with it.

Hi Norm,

I hope to make a series of points in the form of editing some of your phrases in significant ways. With any luck this can serve to tune your understanding, but I am not entirely sure it works, so let me know what you think.

1. I want to distinguish between the desire for a given Creative Agenda vs. its expression and realization in play itself. A given desire, such as you describe, is perfectly capable of being present and unrealized, which is to say, it cannot be said to be "your CA." It's not a Creative Agenda unless it actually happens; what you're describing is a frustrated desire.

As for narrativist priorities being present or not, I can understand why you would say there was no shred of it. What I mean by story in this context is probably better described as premise. Each of us wanted a different level of importance for premise. (I am using premise here as sort of a confrontation with moral quandary, like in dust devil's can a cowboy give up the gun, kind of way. I don't really know how to put it into words, which is frustrating for all involved, but if you get what I mean, then I won't have to articulate as much. If not, I'll try harder at a future time).

... to me, almost any mechanics I have encountered can be fit into any of the creative agendas (though admittedly, certain ones fit certain agendas better than others).

For now, it seems I want Narrativist play with subservient Gamism and a dash of Simulationism

Also, I fear I may be on of the bitterest gamers in the world, since that sounds like a great way to play to me, as long as the hard questions are present.

Hey Ron,

Thanks for your replies. I appreciate that you recognize what's going on in my head, even if I can't.

The only thing I look at skeptically (this is an understatement. I am an eternal skeptic sometimes), is the idea that I'm narrativist and done. What about wanting esteem for success in conflict or for coming up with good story ideas? I definitely want that too, just not as much as I want those hard questions. Simulationism only ever appeals to me when I am playing within a constrained setting in which I have no control, such as many published adventures for DnD or the campaign settings they publish. I like them well enough, but I like them more as sping-boards for my own imagination than as creative constraints.

So if I seek this esteem, is that a shred of gamism creeping into my narrativist desires, or is it just the general human need for appreciation and recognition?

Also, I don't believe you told me where I can get a copy of the Exchange. It seems like an interesting system, and I would love to have a look at it and maybe play a few sessions, once I get a group together.

And now, my actual play example. I decided to give you this because you asked a very good question that has been congealing within me for a short time now. I wanted to evaluate my most fun play experience. The problem is that since all of my DnD play experiences are firmly rooted in the past (at least four months ago, many of them years), I fear I may have retroactively changed the memory to accord with my new views, even though they may not have been before. Either way, I find that out of all the DMs I have had, none have satisfied me as much as I would have liked, but one did so better than the others. Oddly, I had more fun in his game than I did running my own, though I blame the players (and my bad DMing) for that.

So, the system is D&D 3.5. The DM is named Dave. He has his own world-setting he has created loosely, but encouraged us to make things up to help flesh it out. To sum up, its the colonial expansion, DnD style. The Orcs (and goblins and kobolds) are the native americans, the elves are the canadians, dwarves are mexicans (rumored to exist, but nobody knows for sure) and Humans are the colonists from a far off land. The humans follow a national deity (Serin) who mandates Divine Expansion, telling humans it is their duty to rule this new land for the betterment of all races. The deity is Lawful Evil, but everyone believes he is Lawful Good.

He wanted a low-magic setting (in the sense that he wanted to control certain aspects of the campaign), so he flat out denied flight magic of any sort, along with resurrection magic. People could theoretically still be ressurrected, but it was extremely tough, and definitely high level stuff. Since we all started at level 1 (and never got higher than 5 or 6) we knew that if we died, it was time to introduce a new character. Also, any magic item technically belonged to the human government (as far as they were concerned), but they only pursued things with a bonus of +3 or higher.

So, I played a human War-Mage (an arcane character based around extremely damaging spells in combat, but almost no subtlety. this helped him since it removed the chance that I would do all those annoying wizard things like scrying and such) His name was Ptolemy, and other than being min-maxed for damage, he was a racist. He was a devout follower of Serin (in his lawful good side, heavy emphasis on the Lawful) and believed Humans deserved to rule over all of the races. His family was killed by a plague, and their (large) life savings were used to buy him a comfortable life at the war-mage academy. He was out adventuring as a way to gain recognition and recruit people for the war-mage academy.

Gerald played Luthor, a human ranger with a dog for a pet (and future animal companion). He was impulsive, and paid lip-service to Serin and the government, but mostly just went his own way. I don't remember much about his family or life before adventuring.

Jenn played Valenathia, an Elven Paladin of Law. She was very stern and disdained the human ways, but it was her duty to inspect and ascertain our threat to the elven nation, and determine whether we humans were good or bad on the whole.

Mike played Thamior, a Human Druid. Mike didn't care much for the fictional elements of D&D, and only played a druid because we all bugged him not to play an elven ranger like he always did, min-maxed for damage. (in retrospect, I think we should have embraced his love of the class, and encouraged him to play whatever he liked so long as it enhanced everyone's enjoyment of the game. But, we were too selfish).

I don't honestly remember how we met. I know Luthor and I were traveling together already, and Thamior and Valenathia were traveling together. Our first adventure was a cattle theft. We investigated and found out a corrupt sheriff had killed the old sheriff and "sold" the land to a bunch of goblins nearby. They were just taking what was rightfully theirs. After raiding the goblin lair only to discover this fact (we left them with no warriors), we went in search of said corrupt sheriff. We ran the bastard out of town, and made a deal between the goblins and ranchers so that they could share resources and work to each other's benefit. I took one of the goblins (Kra) under my wing. Maybe I was trying to make up for what I had done to his tribe, maybe I just wanted to prove Serin could impact the other races. At the time, I had no idea, I just thought it would be cool to teach a goblin all about the human way of life. A growing dislike began between Ptolemy and Valenathia. The two world-views were just too different.

As for what was going on at the table, there was plenty. My war-mage was being nerfed so that I didn't do too much damage, and thus kill Dave's monsters too quickly. Everyone in the party loved my character's damage output and ability to control situations (especially since Luthor and Thamior weren't big damage dealers, and Jenn had horrible luck with her dice). He kept on saying it was going to make the other players feel inadequate and ruin their fun, but it was obvious that it really ruined the challenge from his point of view. He wasn't trying to win (though at the time I thought he was) he was just trying to make sure things were difficult for us. This was becoming frustrated because I was making mince-meat of most of his encounters.

The next adventure saw us investigating a plague in a nearby town at the behest of the local government. This was a fairly charged adventure,emotionally speaking, for my character, and I played it that way. Consequently, the other characters did not much like my constant reports to the government about our doings. Either way, we took the job and investigated. Through stupidity, I got Luthor killed. He and I got trapped on the side of a pit trap (he had jumped over to save me) and we got ambushed by some kobolds. Valenathia and Thamior weren't able to get to us very quickly, but they ran the kobolds off and retrieved our unconscious bodies. By the time we got back to town, Luthor was too plague-ridden to survive, and died. At this point Gerald introduced Aiden, a Cleric of Serin (very mild-mannered, focusing much more on the good than the lawful), but just as impulsive as Luthor. As a result, throughout the campaign, this character would run off alone to investigate things. It got us into a fair amount of trouble. He also had a bad philosophy on healing, only using it once we fell unconscious, which would inevitably make it easier for us to fall unconscious again due to the attacks of opportunity involved with standing up. We always had to brow-beat him into healing us before that point.

Either way, we found out the plague was caused by an orc trying to bring vengeance on us because humans ran his tribe out. We killed him and stopped the plague. During this whole little adventure Thamior also died. He and I decided we wanted to investigate a crypt in the dungeon, across another spiked pit. Aiden and Valenathia wanted nothing to do with it, so they stayed on the other side. Well, there was an undead monstrosity in the crypt. Aiden and Valenathia provided archery support (yeah, clerics and paladins do great with archery), and Thamior got knocked out. This beast was fairly evil, so instead of coming after me, it just ripped him in half. This caused Valenathia to blame me for two deaths, her best friend Thamior, and her friend Luthor (because she was befriending him). Things never really got better between the two. So, Mike started making a new character, Sir Richard of the order of the Rose, a Knight. He didn't finish making the character until our next adventure. By the time we saw daylight again, Kra had run away, and I thought I had lost him for good. So much for the teachings of Serin. All around it wasn't a total loss though, because the kobolds that killed Luthor had died, except for a pair of very young ones (due to plague, not us). Aiden adopted these as his sons, and they were a source of endless entertainment for the group, with Aiden trying to shield them from my harsh teachings and my military training, and me always trying to rip the soft velvety illusion Aiden spun about the world and Serin.

I don't remember much to do with the next adventure, but it involved rival kobold tribes and a kobold I now know to be very popular in D&D called Meepo, and a very young white dragon. We got the dragon back to its rightful owners, and discovered Sir Richard. We freed him by agreeing to solve their problem, and so we did. Mike didn't like it too much when Dave told him to erase all of his possessions when we found him. Dave thought this rather funny, but Dave and Mike never really got along, so it only made things worse between them. After some whining on Mike's part, (and some support from Gerald and I) Dave agreed to return some of the possessions when we found them in the dungeon. This amounted to a sword and shield, but hey, I guess you can't have it all.

This all leads up to the next adventure, which is the one I had the most fun with, and where I suspect we hit the premise, at least for my character.

In the next adventure we were exploring a cult. (Dave had been gradually ramping up the otherworldy horror in the world, so things were becoming more desperate from a charactr standpoint. Also, the government seemed to have mixed feelings about our little group). That, and a Goblin threat had been investigated by the government, and they were going to move to wipe it out. As it turns out, Kra had gathered up his old tribe and taught them everything I taught him, which turned out to be a very peaceful message that caused the community to prosper together. The government saw it as a threat, so my character lied to the government to protect his friend, even if his friend wasn't firing on all cylinders about Serin. In the process of eliminating the cult, I had the chance to use a couple of action points (Dave gave us some as the campaign got harder, and they could be used to "cool story things we normally couldn't" in addition to the standard 1d6 added to a d20 roll. I brought down the mine by turning my fists to stone with one of my spells (normally you can only turn one fist) and knocking out support structures as we ran from a blob monster that we could not kill. This trapped it beneath the city, but made the government declare us fugitives, even though they knew we had eradicated a cult. Turns out some agents of the government were in cults too! My character had to run from the government, and come to grips with the fact that everything he thought was stable was not, including the divine rule of his god. This is where we took a break from the campaign, but it sadly never restarted.

What did people enjoy the most? I know Mike and I enjoyed killing things left and right. We loved giving each other high fives for the critical hits and marveling at the sheer destruction we could wreak. Jenn, myself and Gerald loved the depth of the fiction and the world Dave had created, and I think (key word) that Everyone enjoyed watching me grapple with personal loyalty and my loyalty to the state. The damage-dealing is fun I can have in any campaign. What made this one stick in my mind is that it was so customized to the characters that I actually felt like my decisions had more consequences than just success or failure. Killing something wasn't always a path to victory, and it always complicated things. And between the plague-ridden town, accidentally getting Luthor killed, and maybe even Thamior, not to mention the big BANG at the end of being forced to choose between myself and the government, made this stick in my mind as the most fun I had ever had in D&D.

So, what do you think?

P.S. for those who care, we ended the campaign around level 5 after maybe 6 months of playing. Only mike really cared that it was so slow, and it just made me anticipate the levels more, waiting on the edge of my seat for the chance to get new ways to kill things and make things ever more complicated.

Hi Norm,

The only thing I look at skeptically (this is an understatement. I am an eternal skeptic sometimes), is the idea that I'm narrativist and done. What about wanting esteem for success in conflict or for coming up with good story ideas? I definitely want that too, just not as much as I want those hard questions. Simulationism only ever appeals to me when I am playing within a constrained setting in which I have no control, such as many published adventures for DnD or the campaign settings they publish. I like them well enough, but I like them more as sping-boards for my own imagination than as creative constraints.

So if I seek this esteem, is that a shred of gamism creeping into my narrativist desires, or is it just the general human need for appreciation and recognition?

Heh, it reminds me of those comics where the villain threatens two things the hero cares about, and he can only save one. Which one would he save? Here, if gamism and nar (and even perhaps sim) were being threatened by a super villain(lol), which one would you save? "But, like spider man, I'd figure out some way of saving them all!!!1!". And if you couldn't and were going to lose them all? Which one would your group put ahead of the rest and save?

I'm probably not adding anything new, but it's a fun way of thinking about it :)

Hi Norm,

As a minor point, if you were using D&D 3.5, we are definitely not talking about "far in the past" play, from my perspective.

Now for the fun of talking about actual play in Big Model terms. I have to say that you've provided a remarkably easy and fun one for those purposes. So let's start at the biggest and all-encompassing layer or sphere, and work our way inwards.

I might need a little more light shed on the Social Contract, which is to say, my understanding of who was playing and in what circumstances. Was it a college group, or old pals get-together, a one-time-thing, or what? age range? Had the group played together before, and for how long? On a more personal level, who invited whom to play, and who if anyone got shoehorned in? Did any person deal with any serious travel or inconvenience in getting to play? And this is an optional topic, so ignore if you prefer: were there any romantic ties or history among any persons involved?

All right, leaving some of the perspective on Social Contract for later, let's look at Exploration, specifically its five components.

... its the colonial expansion, DnD style. The Orcs (and goblins and kobolds) are the native americans, the elves are the canadians, dwarves are mexicans (rumored to exist, but nobody knows for sure) and Humans are the colonists from a far off land. The humans follow a national deity (Serin) who mandates Divine Expansion, telling humans it is their duty to rule this new land for the betterment of all races. The deity is Lawful Evil, but everyone believes he is Lawful Good.

He wanted a low-magic setting (in the sense that he wanted to control certain aspects of the campaign), so he flat out denied flight magic of any sort, along with resurrection magic. People could theoretically still be ressurrected, but it was extremely tough, and definitely high level stuff. Since we all started at level 1 (and never got higher than 5 or 6) we knew that if we died, it was time to introduce a new character. Also, any magic item technically belonged to the human government (as far as they were concerned), but they only pursued things with a bonus of +3 or higher.

So, I played a human War-Mage ... et cetera

... Our first adventure was a cattle theft. We investigated and found out a corrupt sheriff had killed the old sheriff and "sold" the land to a bunch of goblins nearby. They were just taking what was rightfully theirs. After raiding the goblin lair only to discover this fact (we left them with no warriors), we went in search of said corrupt sheriff. We ran the bastard out of town, and made a deal between the goblins and ranchers so that they could share resources and work to each other's benefit. I took one of the goblins (Kra) under my wing. Maybe I was trying to make up for what I had done to his tribe, maybe I just wanted to prove Serin could impact the other races. At the time, I had no idea, I just thought it would be cool to teach a goblin all about the human way of life. A growing dislike began between Ptolemy and Valenathia. The two world-views were just too different.

So much for the teachings of Serin.

Mike didn't like it too much when Dave told him to erase all of his possessions when we found him. Dave thought this rather funny, but Dave and Mike never really got along, so it only made things worse between them. After some whining on Mike's part, (and some support from Gerald and I) Dave agreed to return some of the possessions when we found them in the dungeon. This amounted to a sword and shield, but hey, I guess you can't have it all.

This all leads up to the next adventure, which is the one I had the most fun with, and where I suspect we hit the premise, at least for my character.

In the next adventure we were exploring a cult. ... the government seemed to have mixed feelings about our little group). That, and a Goblin threat had been investigated by the government, and they were going to move to wipe it out. As it turns out, Kra had gathered up his old tribe and taught them everything I taught him, which turned out to be a very peaceful message that caused the community to prosper together. The government saw it as a threat, so my character lied to the government to protect his friend, even if his friend wasn't firing on all cylinders about Serin. In the process of eliminating the cult, I had the chance to use a couple of action points (Dave gave us some as the campaign got harder, and they could be used to "cool story things we normally couldn't" in addition to the standard 1d6 added to a d20 roll. I brought down the mine by turning my fists to stone with one of my spells (normally you can only turn one fist) and knocking out support structures as we ran from a blob monster that we could not kill. This trapped it beneath the city, but made the government declare us fugitives, even though they knew we had eradicated a cult. Turns out some agents of the government were in cults too! My character had to run from the government, and come to grips with the fact that everything he thought was stable was not, including the divine rule of his god. This is where we took a break from the campaign, but it sadly never restarted.

I know Mike and I enjoyed killing things left and right. We loved giving each other high fives for the critical hits and marveling at the sheer destruction we could wreak.

I think (key word) that Everyone enjoyed watching me grapple with personal loyalty and my loyalty to the state. The damage-dealing is fun I can have in any campaign. What made this one stick in my mind is that it was so customized to the characters that I actually felt like my decisions had more consequences than just success or failure. Killing something wasn't always a path to victory, and it always complicated things.

Hey Ron,

Thanks for the very in-depth answer. I'll try to clear up your questions about social contract first.

Gerald and Jenn were together in a relationship, (and Gerald's first character, Luthor, had very much the same outlook as Aiden, just less faith, more pragmatism). Gerald and I were 21, Jenn was 26, and mike was 17 or 18. Here's the short and long of how our little group formed.

Gerald comes to me with the Eberron Campaign setting for 3.5 and I read it and love it and buy it. He promises to get a game going. Then a month or so later he purchases the World of Darkness from White Wolf, and wants to play that. We don't get a game started (what would have been our first published game played) until I take the reigns and get Eberron started a year later. The initial group is Gerald, his girlfriend Jenn, Me, BIf (an aging fat-beard, as he calls it), Danielle (a co-worker of mine), and Morgan, my girlfriend. Over time Danielle flakes out and we keep her character around until there is a good dramatic way for me to do away with her. When I introduce Mike to the game (whom Bif did not get along with), Bif refused to play. Initially, I had intended to give mike a trial run (convinced he would hate D&D because of its complexity), and then when he didn't like it, boot him and bring Bif back. Bif refused, and good thing too (he was an asshole, though very respectable for other traits) because Mike loved the game. Dave was a friend of the group, but never dealt very well with Mike's immaturity. He was brought in on the same night Mike was. Morgan and Jenn didn't get along, everyone accused me of favoring her, and eventually she left the group and the game ceased.

From there we had this nucleus of players that enjoyed playing together and knew how the game worked. Dave had this cool idea for a campaign (and I was begging to be able to play, not just DM all the time).

What has to be understood is that at first is that I was very much into all the crunchy bits of D&D. I loved fiddling with modifiers and min-maxing characters so I could cause maximum punishment. As a fledgling DM I had not done much of anything with premise (but my players loved the game, begging me for years now to get it going again and be their DM) at least to my knowledge. Mike loved my games because it offered plenty of combat and chances to show off how cool his character was in battle. He was pretty much silent when it came to non-combat encounters. Getting him to actually "role-play" was about as pleasant as pulling teeth.

As for Aiden, the reluctant Cleric, nobody liked it except Gerald. I still don't know his full reasons for doing what he did, but his rationalization at the time was that using his turn to heal was a waste of a turn, even if it would keep us from falling unconcious. As a player in other games, he had a tendency to de-rail the group, acting against group wishes, both story wise and encounter wise. By splitting away from the group occasionally, we would be forced to follow him, or else risk losing our cleric, which was all that was keeping us barely alive in Dave's gritty world. Mike and I were the most vocal about wanting healing, and Jenn was rarely upset as her paladin was fairly self- sufficient in the first place. Plus, Dave didn't attack her nearly as much as he did Mike's characters. I think.

The only times Aiden healed us when we needed it was when we whined and begged and cursed enough to make him do it, and even then sometimes he would change his mind and do his own things. We very nearly lost several fights because of his way of doing things, and never with anything to show for it other than more healing magic wasted altogether than would have been wasted if he had done it our way.

Why didn't the game continue?. There was growing tension between Dave and I due to his "nerfing" of my character. Were I in the situation now, I would look at it very differently, thanks to you. Anyway, that pissed me off. It also aggravated me that he took the colonial aspect of the setting and started introducing Lovecraftian horror, even though the group had expressed an "it might be interesting, but we like things as they are," attitude. That tension was draining Dave. Secondly, coming up with the creative content was draining him, and he wanted time off to be able to do something else. (we ended up playing a premade string of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventurers, heavily retooled by Dave to fit our characters, and it was another one of the most fun campaigns of my life). After that break, our schedules never synched up again, though Dave was pretty clear that he wanted to find a way to not include Mike in the re-start if it ever happened.

As for color, I don't think I understand what you mean. But if I do, there was plenty of color in Dave's head, just not that we could see immediately. So, we assumed things worked like in standard D&D until he told us differently. If you could give me an example of something you would see colored in the campaign so I could work from there, that would be great.

Jen most certainly enjoyed the dynamic in play between her character and mine. She was so into it, I sometimes thought she was upset with me!

As for Mike getting ganged up on, I think you mis-read what I wrote, or I mis-wrote it. Gerald and I were on Mike's side. We could only see through our previously established D&D rose-colored glasses that Dave was hurting Mike's rights as a player, not that what he was doing was making sense. To be sure, Gerald and I understood it made sense in the story, we would have just preferred Dave find a different way to introduce Sir Richard without taking his stuff. So, we wanted Mike to continue enjoying the game, and so we argued that he should have some of his stuff back. Plus, an unequipped knight does almost nothing for the party in a fight, so we were helping ourselves too.

Thats about everything I saw, though with the exception of the definition of Color, I now have a very good vision of exactly what you mean by System (not rules or mechanics, but those plus the entire social contract rules-set and the application of it all together, much of it that is probably not explained explicitly in the game text), and most importantly, what a reward system looks like in a Narrative game (and in a non-mechanical way!).

Also, I'll ask again, what happened to the Exchange? How do I get a copy. I just can't find it anywhere.

Thanks again,
--Norm

Hi Norm,
The social information helps a lot, including the Bif/Mike issue and the Morgan/Jenn issue. The whole thing reminds me very greatly of my college gaming (~1985) and seems to me now to be very fraught. The "group which works" seems to have coalesced around certain specific relationships, including one which might be described as "who the rest of us can all tolerate not enjoying entirely."

At the time, it seems to me as if you equated character effectiveness with competitiveness (or Step On Up more accurately), and perhaps equated "nerfing my character" with "story." That latter may be reaching a little, but even if it is, I can see how this second play account also suits the thread topic nicely.

Correction accepted regarding equipping the knightly character. I misunderstood you.

Color is not all that important to the discussion at the moment, but it is actually quite important - even key - to play. [Sorcerer] Cascadiapunk post-mortem illustrates a pretty good application of my current thinking. For this thread, well, I dunno where you want to go with the Color discussion. As a very basic distinction:

System: using dice to represent (or better as part of representing) a physical attack on another character, rolling a certain value, applying agreed-upon effects of that value to the target character's values, integrating the result with imagined events (i.e. effects).

Color: someone saying, "Your edge cleaves right down to his nose!", you shouting "Gunch!" for a sound effect, someone else saying, "Stopped him in his tracks!" Or any kind of description above and beyond the most literal translation of the System effects alone.

About reward systems, well, they're a lot like Color. They happen at the entirely emotional, social, and imaginative level of human action. Numbers, points, tokens, and specific rules applications are all ways of enjoying them. Such ways are fine things for game design, and woefully under-utilized in historical RPG design, but they are not, themselves, the reward or the Color in action.

Regarding The Exchange, that was Levi's project at the time, and I have no idea whether he pursued it. It's too bad if he didn't; the ideas were quite excellent.

Best, Ron

So, I've read some of the threads you posted (2 of the four I think), and I have some good ideas firing around in my head.

First, as for color and reward, and how it all relates to GNS, I think what I am hearing is that how you play, and what rewards you get, all wrapped in the fiction packaging (which can reinforce/reward play type) determines your GNS. Therefore, even if there are lots of crunchy tactical encounters that are very risky, you can still be playing narrativist because all of your color and rewards are Narrativist based. Likewise, you could play in reverse, just happening to address premise, but actually stepping on up. Perhaps this is why the modes are so easily confused. Essentially, each mode can happen within the other, or so it seems. Because of this appearance of one mode within another, we assume they are both active, when really one is and one isn't.

However, if that is true, then why can't both be active at the same time after all? What if a reward system (both social and mechanical) could be set up in such a way that both Step On Up and Narrativism were rewarded? (Notice I avoid simulationism entirely. I thought I understood it, but I don't). So, in my actual play, there was ample social reward for my character actions. The fiction was reinforced, and the story progressed as our group addressed premise. By social reward I mean the "fun" which is to say all of the smiles, cries of, "That was awesome!" and such. But mechanically, I couldn't say how we were rewarded. We received Experience in big clumps, not immediately after each fight. And there was at least one instance where the GM explained that just because we chose to fight an optional encounter that was hard did not mean we would get experience. We got treasure, but experience was reserved only for fights which moved the story forward. For Mike, this meant that he got experience for fighting the right fights, and letting us do our thing. So he did. There was no bonus EXP to speak of, because all of the mechanical rewards were Narrativist, but Mike probably felt like it was gamist. Fights did produce social reward for stepping on up.

But what if the game had played out differently? Lets say there were mechanical rewards of EXP for every fight. In addition, lets say additional EXP is given for fights that move the story forward and address premise. This would still promote Narrativism, even if Social reward were equal for both, simply because you get more for Narrativist play than you do for gamist play. Is this where the incoherence/dysfuntional play comes in? If Mike wanted more gamism from the game under this model, he would fight everything he could, which would drag us into fights that we didn't care about so he could get his EXP. As is, the treasure awarded regardless of whether we did things that promoted premise was an indiscriminate mechanical award just big enough to get Mike and I to want to kill everything, or eventually, to explore everything and find all the loot we could. Only in later gameplay did I start trusting Dave to make sure we got enough of everything and stop trying to get every piece of loot I could.

So, in a system that attempts to equally reward more than one style of play, it can successfully reward them. But by doing so, groups will be split based on their basic desires of play. Gamists will ruin it for Narrativists and vice-versa. The only way a group could enjoy such a game is if everyone was on the same page, essentially making one whole set of reward-cycles useless and ignored.

So, in a game like mine (the DnD game I mean), players can't pursue both agendas at the same time, because to pursue gamism mars the pursuit of premise driven play, and vice versa. Any game that hybridized the two would need to somehow string its conflicts together so that both styles were rewarded in such a way that they complimented each other, with the Step On Up always reinforcing the Story Now, and the Story Now always providing a means to Step On Up. I dare say such a game has not been designed thus far, and whatever system is developed to do such a thing would be rightly called revolutionary.

But in the end, I think it means that for the moment, until such a game is designed, I understand and agree that the GNS agendas are mutually exclusive.

Thanks for your time Ron. I don't know if this thread needs to go any further or not. It will if I got things wrong, but if I got things right, then I need to start a first thoughts thread on developing a game like what I mentioned above. In the meantime, I want to understand simulationism more, and I want to ask a question about your essays as a whole.

If the ideas you have developed in the course of writing your essays and through threads here at the forge have evolved and matured, why haven't you re-written the essays so as to avoid some (certainly not all) of the confusion. For example, only by your third essay had certain ideas really gelled for you, and as such the previous two can confuse people who aren't fully understanding you on your terms. Its just a thought.

I really appreciate you spending time clearing this stuff up for me. Did I get everything right, or am I still shaky on some things.

Cheers,
--Norm

P.S. I didn't remember to include what I think color is, but to me it is essentially the fictional wrapping around everything you do that makes the game more than just crunching numbers and rolling dice. Does that sound about right?

Hi Norm,

This reply takes your last post and responds to it as a series of points rather out of order, for purposes of maximum clarity, I hope. Let me know if I failed to answer anything important.

Most general first: I strongly recommend not perceiving my essays as theses or dissertations, and certainly not as textbooks or primary texts for "the Forge." They are signposts in an ongoing debate, and serve only as a snapshot of what I was thinking at that time in the debate. The dialogue at the Forge is the real text. If you want a revised version of the essays, you start a thread exactly like the one you started here, and the thread itself becomes the revised essay. That's how it works. If someone gets confused because they think I'm a guru and have posted some kind of Essays of Trooth for people to absorb and quote, well, I can't help them, until they grab a clue and join the discussion as an equal among equals, like you did.

You describe Color as:

... to me it is essentially the fictional wrapping around everything you do that makes the game more than just crunching numbers and rolling dice. Does that sound about right?

First, as for color and reward, and how it all relates to GNS, I think what I am hearing is that how you play, and what rewards you get, all wrapped in the fiction packaging (which can reinforce/reward play type) determines your GNS. Therefore, even if there are lots of crunchy tactical encounters that are very risky, you can still be playing narrativist because all of your color and rewards are Narrativist based. Likewise, you could play in reverse, just happening to address premise, but actually stepping on up. Perhaps this is why the modes are so easily confused. Essentially, each mode can happen within the other, or so it seems. Because of this appearance of one mode within another, we assume they are both active, when really one is and one isn't.

... why can't both be active at the same time after all? What if a reward system (both social and mechanical) could be set up in such a way that both Step On Up and Narrativism were rewarded?
...
So, in a system that attempts to equally reward more than one style of play, it can successfully reward them. But by doing so, groups will be split based on their basic desires of play. Gamists will ruin it for Narrativists and vice-versa. The only way a group could enjoy such a game is if everyone was on the same page, essentially making one whole set of reward-cycles useless and ignored.

So, in a game like mine (the DnD game I mean), players can't pursue both agendas at the same time, because to pursue gamism mars the pursuit of premise driven play, and vice versa.

Any game that hybridized the two would need to somehow string its conflicts together so that both styles were rewarded in such a way that they complimented each other, with the Step On Up always reinforcing the Story Now, and the Story Now always providing a means to Step On Up. I dare say such a game has not been designed thus far, and whatever system is developed to do such a thing would be rightly called revolutionary.

Hey Ron,

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. This is the first instance of internet access I have had in awhile. That said, I have not and will not have time to read the threads you recommended (which is quite a bunch)  for quite some time.

Now, I am not much of a person to abandon logic and say, "I feel," but here I just feel like something is missing. I like to think it is my subconscious putting pieces together but only showing me the result of its findings, not the work that got it there. It is entirely possible that those threads will clear it up for me and solve the issue, which I think is this: I don't agree that creative agenda is separated from the techniques that seem to go into it. I understand that some techniques are used more often in certain agendas than others, but are use-able in all agendas. I also understand that play doesn't "add up" to one agenda or another. But perhaps in making agenda such an all-encompassing standby the forge (I would say we, but I don't feel right taking any real credit for all the theory discussion that has gone on before) has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

What about moment-to-moment play? For example, lets go back to my play examples, which were broad-stroked a bit too much for you to see ( I think) the following: All of the surroundings were Narrativist play. Granted. Every battle was gamist. Was it setup for the narrative agenda? Sure. But each battle was hard enough that we had to decide what to do with it, whether to Step On Up (and no, I don't think I'm overusing that phrase-as-simplification) or not. And for each battle, the fun came not from premise, which normally fired only on small levels throughout some (not all) of the battles, but primarily from the thrill of winning and losing the combat, both of which happened occasionally. The fun in-the-moment came from that aspect AND the small-fire premise of some decisions.

Now, I get that overall, we were playing Narrativist. I know that it isn't because it added up that way, but because all of the play and the fun (much of which was only ascertained in the moments at which we realized premise had been addressed at all, which in some cases was weeks after the event) pointed to narrativist. What this means to me is that if you want to figure out creative agenda (as the hydra it seems to be to me), you have to look at the fun, but not just at any one level, and especially not at the overall level alone.

Essentially, look at the source of the fun at each point in play. This would mean moment-moment play (where the immediate fun might come from gamist goals, as it did in my example) and session-by-session play (where the fun was not even at the end of the session, but in the remembering of the session, and thus the recognition of all the premise that was addressed), and then in the overall entire-game sense (which again happens after the fact).

Looking at agenda this way paints a different picture, at least as I see it. Looked at this way, agenda fires on multiple moments and at individual points as well as on the after-the-fact remembering, which for me is often more fun than the actual game was itself. Is this an anomaly in me, or perhaps does it mean I should be doing something that can generate such memories without the game (such as simply day-dreaming)? I don't think so. My friends feel similarly from what I have observed. They always seem to have more fun after the fact than in the actual throes of the game. Maybe that means we are changing our memories, trying to justify an un-fun activity. But even accounting for that, it doesn't change the real enjoyment of the memory itself, which in such an overall-view as the GNS seems to require, seems to fit in perfectly. Essentially, if it is ok to look at the play experience as a whole in order to determine the GNS, why cannot we define the play experience as the before-during-after of the game in question?

Seen this way, I believe that not only is hybridized play possible, it is present in most games already. In these games the overall goal (if there even is one for a given group, and for many there isn't, at least not explicitly expressed and understood) might be narrativst, and the active agenda overall might be narrativist, but in the moment to moment, it is part Narrativist (the small-firing Nar moments), part Gamist (The Step-On-Up of accepting a battle or not, and applying risky tactics), and part Simulationist (from the actual imagining of play as these individuals in these situations, and the attempt to "get in-character").

So, did that make any sense?

Thanks again Ron. I don't think this thread is exhausted yet. It may just be my stubbornness, or just a general inability to accept things. It might even be lack of information on my part. But something in what I have written rings true. It wraps up everything very elegantly, at least for me. It makes everything make sense without further discussion. I also sense that what I have written may be counter intuitive to how you view the whole matter. That being said, I would love to see you pick apart what I have just suggested, and then give me a play example broken down at all of the levels to show me where I am wrong, or misunderstanding things. Maybe it would even be helpful for me to craft a play example (since I don't have one that I think fits) in order to demonstrate what I am saying. Maybe in that you would be able to help me understand where my assumptions are incorrect and thus leading me to incorrect conclusions.

Thanks again,

--Norm

Norm.

I think looking at those moment to moment things is a fascinating topic.  It is however a different topic than Creative Agenda.  I know some of Ron's earliest writings on GNS talked about what is the most fun for your group and that can often be a good tool to help determine GNS but I think often it can muddy the waters when certain instants are remembered and the fun of being in the moment and is recalled but how you got there and what made it important is forgotten. 

On Hybrids I dont think they are possible, but when I say that I'm talking about in a full CA sense where it's the big driving force for your game.  It's impossible to serve two masters.  So what you are describing when you talk of moment to moment gamism is what Ron calls tatical play in support of narrativism.  It may just seem a matter of different way of saying the same thing but I think that it's valid.  It's often hard to pick out any CA at a moment to moment level, it's often just exploration, Simulationism to me doesnt really make sense as a moment to moment thing because then it is just exploration.

Thanks for responding Caldis.

I understand that as GNS is defined, the moment-to-moment play does not count as GNS. What I am talking about is re-defining it. I think that the idea of Creative Agenda (maybe I have loaded those words too much for myself) can and should be applied at all levels. Essentially, think of the big model. The CA is the arrow, right? It encompasses everything and passes through everything. Essentially it is the forest, with each layer being a tree. I am saying the the fun of a given game is much the same, it is a complicated forest, and should be examined as such. Instead of saying that point of play is applicable only at the forest level, I say it should be applied at the tree-by-tree level.

Also, it is essential for me to understand what the nature of roles is here in this discussion. Is this a meeting of equals, with Ron being first among equals? Or is this more of a lecture or dissertation on GNS. If it is the former, then the consideration that terms as they are defined may be incorrect or lacking in scope (yes, I realize this is an extremely arrogant assumption on my part, that I could actually come here with only months of understanding what Ron has worked on for years, and expect to be able to shed light and change such sacred cows. I am arrogant, or at least confident). If it is the latter, then I can understand why the constant form of these threads is more to to teach and less to change. However, it seems that Ron alludes to these individual threads as the ongoing discussion, in which he refines and updates his views on GNS. If that is the case, then even as pupil, I may have something to add. However, I can see that it might be a huge pill to swallow, since to me my outlook seems like a completely different way of looking at things. To me, it feels like I have been led out of Plato's cave and now see the light, but my companions cal me crazy and point to definitions of the "dark" as examples of why light cannot exist.

Like I said, I know it sounds arrogant. I hope it doesn't put anyone off and cause them to ignore me. And I hope I'm right, because if I am wrong, I am about to be humbled in a very serious way. Then again, I just may be ill-informed. Once I read the threads Ron recommended, I may find that everything Ron was saying makes sense, and my earlier thoughts were just so much delirium.

Cheers,
--Norm

Hi Norm,

Like you said CA encompasses moment to moment play. What you're missing is that the parts cannot be examples of the whole. Imagine learning that someone kicked a ball and then concluding the game must be soccer. There's lots of other games that involve kicking balls. (Let's ignore for now the fact that the kind of ball will identify most games.) We might think of CA as the goal of the play-experience generated by the accumulation of rules, boundaries, content, and specific actions of play. You only get a whole when the parts synergize, becoming more than their sum.

The CA arrow is the selection of rules, boundaries, content, and specific actions that create the experience.

At the player level, I think you can say that players make moment-to-moment conceptualizations and decisions about how to use the rules to further what they see as the CA of the game. Players may have a bias towards aiming at a particular CA for reasons of past personal experience and preference. Good game design includes clear definition of the intended CA of the game and perhaps disabusing expectations you can anticipate.

For your question about the forums check out the site discussion section of the forums, funny since now that I look at it that's where you started out this thread.  Specifically this thread deals with the general rules of the forums. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=1604.0   That thread is fairly old and things have evolved somewhat in the meantime.  The way I'd put it is that discussion is open as long as we respect one another and also respect that you may not change someone elses mind.  At some point we may just have to agree to disagree and let it slide.  If your willing to discuss your ideas and try and show what you mean through actual play discussions then we may be able to get somewhere.

On to the meat of the discussion.  I have to confess I have (or at least had) some sympathy for considering GNS even in the moment to moment sense of play (for awhile there was some talk with the term atomic GNS bandied about).  Here's the problem I see with redefining CA in such a fashion.   In your play experience you showed that big picture your CA was Narrativist but there were moments where tactical combat was very important even if they werent driving what the game was about.   The problem I see is that if you discuss those individual moments as if they were a creative agenda how can you use the same term to discuss the bigger scale without causing confusion?   Another problem is that the definitions of CA are working on the larger scale and may not apply exactly on a smaller scale.  Strong tactical play can be just that and not meet the requirements of step on up.  

Historically, the attempt to define forms of play arose from the fact that when the internet brought groups of players together, it became reapidly clear that many of them viewed RP in radically different lights to each other, with a lot of back and forth about who is or is not "doing it right".  If it were easy or normal to hybridise a game such that it featured all of the identified components, that sort of dispute should not have arisen.  Further, claiming to play in a way that does can be just another form of claiming to be uniquely right, and refusing to see that your game is actually an identifiable type.

If Creative Agenda is defined as being met only if everyone is trying to achieve it, and only it, that's fine. It is easy to say "No, you cannot design a game to meet more than one CA simultaneously, because that is by definition impossible."

That's said, using Rons term "style" may yield something applicable. Personally, the vocabulary is limiting, it doesn't describe something I wish to achieve, and it can't describe the elements I do want to achieve in a distinctive fashion. It mainly gets in the way because I can't use terms like Narrative(-ist/-ism) or Game(-ist/-ism)without the baggage.

I need a term for a game aiming to have enjoyable fiddly bits, rules that themselves are fun to use, be it a guessing mechanic, evocative maneuvers for social and physical conflict and action, resource management or whatever. It can probably find something in common with the goal of having many weapons with "accurate" details described or even encoded in game mechanics. I have friends that enjoy this a great deal, and I do as well, however non of us are motivated by praise or the desire to "win". 

Maybe mechanicist is the term I'll have to use.

chance.thirteen, having enjoyable fiddly bits and rules that are fun to use doesn't really mean anything for CA, unless they are the whole point of play. If those things are why you play, if that's where you get your reward from, then I think you're gunning for exploration of system. It's Simulationism primarily focused at exploring the rules of the game and how the group applies them. The right to dream the meta-game, if you will.

Notice that I said exploring the rules of the game and how the group applies them. Just reading the book isn't enough, it needs to be used in play. Anathema to this kind of play would be ignoring the rules, regardless whether that's done to facilitate Step on Up, for Story Now, or for the Right to Dream focused on another aspect than System.

Yes, I wish to ignore CA. It has done nothing for me save make me spend a great deal of time arguing that something isn't a valid part of a CA. So what? I have no use for the purity achievement that a CA requires. My players will never come to an agreement on such a thing, their interests, and what they enjoy are always a mixed bag by person, by game, by group, by session. So whatever it is that a CA achieves, I'm not going to get there, so I discard it as a topic.

So I want terms that are below the CA category in organizational terms. Words that will let me discuss the techniques, the goals, and the possible mixing of design aims without being pointed at the absolute of a CA and how it cannot be achieved by said pursuits.

If I ask "How many elements associated with the exploratory or mechanical elements of a system can be present before it really stops the narrativist style of play?", the answer should not come back to Creative Agenda. If using those terms confuses the discussion, then I need new ones.

I'm not sure you got my message. I proposed a CA that might fit what you called "mechanicist". You respond by saying you want to renounce the whole idea of CA, because you're convinced you'll never achieve any. I don't get it, and neither do I get your hypothetical question at the end. Your issue is probably an interesting and useful topic, which deserves its own thread and AP report.

Hey everyone.

I haven't been able to address Norm's latest post due to GenCon prep. That's no big deal; pacing of discussions here is better slow anyway.

Norm, there is one thing I do want to clarify. There is a crucial distinction to be drawn between single Techniques vs. combinations of Techniques. The former are not associated with specific Creative Agendas. The latter are definitely and profoundly associated either with Creative Agendas or with distinctive forms of Incoherence. Your post seems to me to confound these distinctions, and to ascribe to me that "Techniques aren't Agenda." As I've built my entire body of writings on the idea that Techniques are relevant to Agenda, this makes it difficult to reply. With my distinction in mind - that I'm talking about combinations of Techniques, not single ones - perhaps what I'm saying can make more sense.

My discussion of your combat scenes and the issues of one Agenda for fights (or whatever, smaller) inside a larger one for the story (or whatever, bigger) will have to wait until after GenCon.

Jasper, Marek (chance.thirteen) - it's time to let your assertions and counter-points stand as they are, to be assessed by readers. You cannot be debaters and judges at the same time. You've made your points here. Let them stand.

I do suggest starting daughter threads to raise issues of the mechanicist notion. I am, after all, the author of an essay called System Does Matter, and frankly I'm starved for discussion of rules-combinations and how they do or don't yield fun play. But it's time to get that topic away from this thread.

Best, Ron

People should address Jaspers ideas, I was just making a comment then answering a direct question. So no need to broaden or derail the thread on my account.

Hello all,

Thanks for the responses. It feels good (in an odd sort of way) to know that I have a thread that is interesting for people and sparks new and creative thought (at least I hope its doing that, rather than simply giving people a chance to espouse their deeply held convictions).

That said, I am sad that Ron will not be able to answer my questions until after GenCon. All in all, I suppose it can wait. The situation is hardly life or death.

But, as for techniques not applying to Creative Agenda, I am surprised that you thought I meant that at all. Perhaps I wrote something that sounded like that (an example would be great). But, my intention is to show that because of the close nature of techniques (and groups of techniques) to Creative Agenda, and the given definitions of creative agenda, no hybrid play is allowed. What I mean is this: Each agenda is defined by being THE point of play. It automatically excludes any notion of hybrid play because then it would not be the only point of play, it would be one of two or one of three. Therefore, if everyone insists on keeping the agendas as they are, then new agendas need to be explicitly created and termed so that we can begin to discuss them. Sadly, I am not sure if such a path is worth treading until Ron is able to respond to my earlier post.

And for those of you who have repeatedly focused on the strong tactical play, please read this carefully. Our enjoyment did not come ONLY from the tactical play. It came from taking the risks and coming out on top. It also came from whatever (if any) small narrative moments were occurring in the fiction. For example, one time my character threatened a group of goblins that I would kill their children (whom I was keeping hostage at my magical fingertips) if they didn't throw down their weapons. Their response (calling my bluff, or even, just sheer desperation) forced me to address just how far my character would go to accomplish his God's and the State's will. The point was, he was beginning to care about the Goblins, even though he shouldn't have.

Either way, the point is that we weren't getting fun from just a combo of tactics and narrative. Some of the fun came from the backslapping on good choices. Essentially, within those moments, we had a dual purpose at the table. We wanted to address premise (assuming it was there) and we wanted to be esteemed for our tactical choices.

Ron had previously addressed this by saying that by being able to fully enjoy the addressing of premise, we were now open to enjoy other aspects of the system that were not necessarily narrativist in design. I think that though this has some truth in it (being that overall, we played narrativist), I also believe that in our geeky gamer hearts, we enjoy the backslapping just as much, and perhaps more, at least in the moment.

Cheers,
--Norm

Hi Norm,

The struggle you are going through in understanding what the Creative Agendas mean and how they apply is something I've stuggled with a few years back and you seem to be stuck roughly on the same points I was. It makes no sense to analyze Creative Agenda moment to moment. It can only become apparent after a full reward cycle, an instance of play.

Also, CA is entirely personal, there is no such thing as a group CA, although when everyone in the group shares the same CA during the same instance of play, play is considered coherent and, generally speaking, more fun.

Should also be noted that your own point of play can vary from one instance of play to another even with the same group and using the same system. Your "point of play" can vary between instances of play, but it is prevalent throughout a single one.

Explaining why you can only analyze CA after a full reward cycle is something entirely non-trivial and I'm going to try using an analogy. Let's talk about TV series and more specifically the TV drama ER. If you look at an individual episode of the series as a whole, its genre is pretty easy to identify. If you dissect that same episode into its individual scenes, you'll have some action moments, some comic relief moments and some dramatic moments. In fact all those elements are pretty much necessary for the episode to work and deliver its full dramatic impact, but you won't call it a comedy or an action show. You can enjoy the comic bits or the action bits tremendously, but that's not why you watch the show. By the same token, someone who likes comedies or action shows but dislikes soapy dramas, will not like an ER episode even if its a particulary comic or action oriented one.

Hope I made some sense.

Cheers,
--Rogerio

You made plenty of sense. Its just the sense you are making that I have a problem with. :-)

Here's the thing. Ron has said that a person does not have a GNS specifically. That agenda is a group thing that pierces all aspects of the model. To me, this means it should be observable at all points, like in your scene to scene description. The biggest punch is at the end of the whole show, slightly less so per season, per episode and so forth. But if people can play any agenda and enjoy it, which seems to be what is being said by saying that people don't possess an agenda, they play it, then that means that the definition you give of agenda doesn't serve to address hybridization at all. All it says is that there may exist a play agenda that is hybridized Narrativism-Gamism, but Narrativism by itself can never be combined with Gamism. That sounds like we are just arguing the terms.

I am not trying to come off harsh or angry, because I am neither. I am just trying to understand. If I have to stop using Gamism and Narrativism in order to get my point across, I will. But this whole definition gripe is starting to be a little annoying. How are we supposed to discuss hybridized play if everyone keeps saying that by definition it can't happen? And every time I have seen an actual play post dissected, it seems like someone calls the CA, and there there may be some back and forth before it settles on one. If someone argues that there were two, it gets argued down to one, and the other was just exploration of other techniques that happened to generate lots of fun, rather than the possibility that there were two agendas present simultaneously, one more prominent than another. But I am probably ranting.

I do thank you for your input, especially if you think that we have similar problems, or at least you identify with my struggle. I would like to know more of your thoughts on this issue.
Cheers,
--Norm

Ayyavazi wrote:
To me, this means it should be observable at all points, like in your scene to scene description. The biggest punch is at the end of the whole show, slightly less so per season, per episode and so forth. But if people can play any agenda and enjoy it, which seems to be what is being said by saying that people don't possess an agenda, they play it, then that means that the definition you give of agenda doesn't serve to address hybridization at all. All it says is that there may exist a play agenda that is hybridized Narrativism-Gamism, but Narrativism by itself can never be combined with Gamism. That sounds like we are just arguing the terms.

Norm, I looked back over the thread and I have to ask what has changed in your thoughts since you wrote this?

Ayyavazi wrote:
So, in a system that attempts to equally reward more than one style of play, it can successfully reward them. But by doing so, groups will be split based on their basic desires of play. Gamists will ruin it for Narrativists and vice-versa. The only way a group could enjoy such a game is if everyone was on the same page, essentially making one whole set of reward-cycles useless and ignored.

So, in a game like mine (the DnD game I mean), players can't pursue both agendas at the same time, because to pursue gamism mars the pursuit of premise driven play, and vice versa. Any game that hybridized the two would need to somehow string its conflicts together so that both styles were rewarded in such a way that they complimented each other, with the Step On Up always reinforcing the Story Now, and the Story Now always providing a means to Step On Up. I dare say such a game has not been designed thus far, and whatever system is developed to do such a thing would be rightly called revolutionary.

But in the end, I think it means that for the moment, until such a game is designed, I understand and agree that the GNS agendas are mutually exclusive.

GNS theory is bunk altogether in my opinion, so I think you should just attempt a player revolt and have yourself made DM, because that seems to be the crux of the problem. Some people are good at it, and some others aren't. It's certainly possible to do good story with D&D 4e, and you shouldn't restrict yourselves just because you think it's "Gamist," which shouldn't be a derogatory term in the first place.

Thanks for your input guys.

Rogerio, I do understand what you are saying. Essentially, we have to examine a full cycle of the game to get its agenda. But here's what I was wondering.

In a game like DnD, the reward cycle for combat is quicker than the reward cycle for premise driven play. You can get experience and treasure every single fight (yes, I know it can be argued that EXP is a pacing mechanism), but you only get that explosive moment of narrativism every session or two (at least thats how it happened in my example). As a result, you have one reward cycle happening within another.

Now, you asked if I would still enjoy the tactical combat if there were no story around it. If I say no, you say, "Well, then its narrativist play." If I say yes, you say, "Its gamist play." So, here's the rub: I can and do enjoy tactical combat on its own, as long as it is understood (consciously or subconsciously) that there is reward for that play, that is the social backslapping, the risk of looking stupid, and the in-game exp and treasure rewards. However, to be honest, that will lose its luster eventually (after several fun sessions). So, my answer is yes and no. Short term, sure, I would enjoy it. Long term, I wouldn't. Now, I probably completely messed up what your  hypothetical response would be, but I think that now the problem is made clear: You can have one reward cycle (the combat) within the greater scope reward cycle of narrativism and addressing premise. As such, I believe the game was a not-so-well-functioning hybrid. That is, not everyone was on board for the hybrid play. Dave (the DM) obviously was gunning for narrativism, full stop. Gerald and I were looking for a hybrid, Jenn was going for Narrativism, and Mike was going for Gamism. I know players can't have an agenda, but they can have play types they enjoy more, and my analysis (however flawed) is that those were the goals in our group, and what we actively worked to achieve.

So, for you and caldis, I think the reason the thread isn't done is because it has moved on to the discussion of reward cycles and their ability to fall within one another. Does that merit its own thread?

Thanks again for your input guys,
Cheers,
--Norm

Hi,

I want to address this first and get it out of the way:

A wrote:
Now, you asked if I would still enjoy the tactical combat if there were no story around it. If I say no, you say, "Well, then its narrativist play." If I say yes, you say, "Its gamist play."

A wrote:
You can have one reward cycle (the combat) within the greater scope reward cycle of narrativism and addressing premise.

Thanks Rogerio,

I guess as long as everyone else agrees with you about hybrid play being incoherent but incoherent play being fun, then that would settle it. I don't care if my play is considered coherent or not. I care that it is hybrid and fun. I do think that function hybrid play (and the maximum fun of coherent play) is possible as well, so long as everyone's goals match, and they pursue the hybrid agenda uniformly. But I do not know if that is a separate discussion or not. Anyone care to shed some light on that?

Thanks again and Cheers,
--Norm

Hi Norm,

Sheesh what a leap you made...

I guess as long as everyone else agrees with you about hybrid play being incoherent but incoherent play being fun, then that would settle it

The in-game situation has our party tracking the NPC Gerard's group through the woods. We didn't really roll to find the tracks so much, because that would lead to uselessness. As we were preparing to frame the scene forward after some tracking, the GM said he would be calling for a roll. He meant for us to make a Woodcraft roll to see if we would catch up with Gerard under circumstances favorable to us or to him.

Godinho, however, interrupted him and stated that he wanted to pay special attention to see if anyone was following us. The GM pondered this for a minute, then announced he'd be calling for two rolls instead. He then proceeded to have us roll against someone who was indeed following us, which we managed to spot, then corner.

Here's the thing: this third party really didn't exist at all until Godinho said what he said. And here's the disconnect: Godinho, as a player, said what he said because he saw it as a "good move". Rogerio, on the other hand, chose to interpret it as an expression of interest on the player's part for the concept of having someone else following us. So, he created the follower on the spot.

A bit of further disconnect: when we did find and corner the guy, Rogerio was satisfied that he was done his job as GM by responding to the player's interest. Godinho was satisfied as a player to have had his good move pay off and be successful.

I do think that function hybrid play (and the maximum fun of coherent play) is possible as well, so long as everyone's goals match, and they pursue the hybrid agenda uniformly.

Thanks again Rogerio

Yeah, I'm making a huge leap. I'm ok with that for the moment. What I want to discuss is that there is NO hybrid agenda.

Ok, Gamism and Narrativism cannot coexist, by definition.  Since redefining these terms seems to be impossible at this point, lets for the sake of argument create a new agenda: GammoNarrativism. If this is too similar to Gamism and Narrativism in terms of word usage, we can call it Storcompism, or Step On Up Into Story Now. In this agenda, here is the point of play: Esteem for gutsy actions and their consequences in story terms and challenge terms. Players are seeking to have lots of gutsy choices that they will earn esteem for, and those choices will also have consequences in the fictionl story. They aren't looking just for interesting consequences, and they aren't looking for just gutsy decisions. They are looking for both and are rewarded for both, not independent from one another, but fused together.

So, if a group has players pursuing Gamist goals, players with Narrativist Goals, and players with GammoNarrativist goals, it will still become dysfunctional. Only a group full of players with GammoNarrativist goals would have coherent ply (maybe) and non-dysfunctional play.

So, is GammoNarrativism possible?

Thanks again, and I hope Ron doesn't kill me for all of this stuff which he will see when he gets back from GenCon. Maybe he'll request a daughter thread for just him and me, I have no idea. But for now, lets continue.

Cheers,
--Norm

This pace of posting is generally unhealthy for productive discussion so I'm going to let this brew here for a while. I do have an answer which I am not going to post at this time, to allow for others to present their point of view and possibly to allow Ron to answer as well.

As a side note, I think some of our conflicting views are at the definition level, especially by what we mean by point of play. I will expand on this as well when (and if) I reply.

I want everyone to know that if I weren't in a public place, I'd be laughing my ass off right now. I just finished reading the three SIM threads Ron recommended to me on page three of this discussion, and realized that yeah, he was right pages ago. This conversation is cleared up. I agree completely that Hybrid play must be impossible. Each of the Three agendas is an elegant construction in its own right, and must by necessity be mutually exclusive to each other agenda. This is all based on Point of Play. You cannot have two Points of Play at once. It is not humanly possible (unless maybe you have that split-the-brain surgery). Therefore, though agenda may switch back and forth from one session to the next, generally speaking, one agenda will be the primary agenda, and all others are relegated to techniques.

From here, I think the topic needs to move into my http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=28490.0  GNS and hierarchy thread. There, my ideas (which split off at one point) are now merging. I now think that all agendas can be present at once, but one agenda will reign king from cycle to cycle, and switching can only be easily accomplished with constant system drift, or with a purely flexible system and flexible reward structure within it. I apologize for wasting everyone's time. It seems everyone kept telling me the truth, but I was too caught up in one way of thinking to consider it. Perhaps my other thread suffers the same problem, though I cannot know for sure.

As is, I suppose the play example I used in this thread can be ported to that thread so that the discussion can continue. As is, I think this one is all set. Thanks again everyone,
Cheers,
--Norm