I have no expectations of anyone responding to this post, but I'll gladly reply to anyone who does. I'm really more expressing a conclusion I've come to, because I thought it might be interesting to other people out there.

From the Forge Glossary:

Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, the

    "The GM is the author of the story and the players direct the actions of the protagonists." Widely repeated across many role-playing texts. Neither sub-clause in the sentence is possible in the presence of the other. See Narrativism: Story Now.

Fascinating post! I hope people do respond to this and discuss it. It's pretty theoretical, though, and you might better serve your ideas by posting some actual play that illuminates examples of what you mean. CRPG actual play is kinda-sorta okay for this, but not really, ya know? The difference between a CRPG and a TRPG is larger than most people think.

First of all, the real meat of play is not "PC-freewill." It's player free will. For a game to be fun, players need to believe that their choices matter. Illusionism sets up a game where players believe their choices matter, but they really don't, because the GM is forcing things behind the curtain. When the players inevitably realize that the long serious of decisions they've made had no actual impact on the story, things usually collapse.

Some caveat words in there, like "usually" and such. Yeah, sometimes players just want to be entertained, let the GM to tell them a story, and go along for the ride while adding bits of color for their characters. And full-on 100% Illusionism is pretty rare, I think, because even Illusionist GMs react in some part to the actions of the players. However, tossing in occasional "free will" consequences where it doesn't matter to the GM can strengthen the GM's power over the illusion. It makes the players believe their actions always make a difference, but the GM knows that isn't true.

Additionally, as long as players are having fun, I don't have much bad to say about Illusionist play. I think, in most cases, adults who play in this style probably know what's going on but don't want to spoil the fun for themselves. They're pulling the curtain shut tight for themselves. It's not exactly Participationism, but it's pretty close.

Given two choices, however, which path would you take?

A) Your GM has a story he will tell. You have a little leeway to maneuver within the grand story the GM is telling, but no matter what you do, the story will turn out the way the GM has planned it. Your actions cannot influence that greater story in any way.

B) Your GM has no story. You have complete control over the decisions you make for your character, and those choices have meaning. Whether you make "good" or "bad" choices, the GM will apply the consequences of those choices. The story will shift accordingly.

Given those two choices, let's assume for a second that both potential stories will be of equal quality. That is, at the end of play (a session, a month, a year, a decade, whatever), you will look back at "the story" told along each path and judge it excellent. Given an excellent story, would you rather have free will as a player or would you rather have no influence on the story at all?

I realize the justification for GM-force / railroading / illusionism often is that it guarantees a good story. It keeps the characters alive. It produces a more "story like" story. It paces a story properly. And so on. Let's assume for a second that the illusionist method will produce an excellent story, guaranteed, but the player-agency method may or may not. Do you want to role-play a character for a decade through an excellent story in which you have no control? Is that what role-playing is to you? I'd prefer to take my chances that the story might turn out in a way I didn't expect but know that all my choices (and m friends' choices) led to that end.

So I have a group of friends together, and we're going to tell stories. That's role-playing, in my mind. We're going to share the responsibility for telling the stories. And hopefully we're all in agreement about the kind of story we want to tell--and the kinds of creative choices that matter to us. Really, "the story" is the destination, not the journey.

At the end of an evening of play, I want a personal story that is about me, not just about my character. After a night of playing D&D 4E, I want to talk about how my sorcerer pwned the dragon--but that story is really about how I built a kick-ass character and played him effectively, working closely with other players to create tactics that effectively overpowered a dangerous opponent. After a night of playing Apocalypse World, I want to talk about how Ebb the Operator sold out almost everything he believes in to survive another day, and how he's okay with that--but that story is really about how my friends and I are slowly drawing this terrible, horrible world and "discovering" its details and themes. After a night of playing My Life with Master, I want to talk about how the evil Master forced everyone's minions to kidnap children and distill their life force--but that story is really about how the players and GM addressed some difficult subject material (like co-dependence and abuse and violence) in an extremely poignant and disturbing way.

I like your "celebration of identity" idea. Is that your own phrase or did you see that somewhere? I think skill mastery is a clever technique for improving player-character identification. As the character masters a skill, so must the player, who mentally correlates his mastery with the character's. Look at D&D 4E. As you learn how best to use your PC's powers, you become a more effective player, but your character also becomes more effective. Then you level up and you have new powers to master but also tougher challenges to face. That's the reward cycle for that game. It's definitely not the reward cycle for all games, though.

For your "reverse illusionism" idea, you should take a look at the Burning Wheel game, which I think does exactly what you're proposing. It goes one more step, though. Characters get Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits which serve as beacons for the GM to know where the player wants to take the story--or really, what the story is. The player can rewrite them during play, too.

Adam wrote:
Given two choices, however, which path would you take?

A) Your GM has a story he will tell. You have a little leeway to maneuver within the grand story the GM is telling, but no matter what you do, the story will turn out the way the GM has planned it. Your actions cannot influence that greater story in any way.

B) Your GM has no story. You have complete control over the decisions you make for your character, and those choices have meaning. Whether you make "good" or "bad" choices, the GM will apply the consequences of those choices. The story will shift accordingly.

Given those two choices, let's assume for a second that both potential stories will be of equal quality.

Do you want to role-play a character for a decade through an excellent story in which you have no control? Is that what role-playing is to you? I'd prefer to take my chances that the story might turn out in a way I didn't expect but know that all my choices (and m friends' choices) led to that end.

Actually, I in no way meant to pan illusionism. Truth be told, it's the technique I use regularly as a GM !

Also, I do agree that the ability to choose by itself is not a magic bullet, for precisely the reasons Contracycle has described. TPKs just SUCK. If they're rare and in my mind well-deserved, then so be it, but I don't want it to happen just because "the universe is a cold and unforgiving place". Screw the universe. I want to have a good time.

However, that attitude of "screw the universe, I want to have a good time" is why I'm trying so hard to walk that fine line between player free-will and mechanisms for organically emergent bite. I think it is simply illuminating to separate the latter from illusionism, because they don't have to be the same thing.

Adam wrote:
At the end of an evening of play, I want a personal story that is about me, not just about my character. After a night of playing D&D 4E, I want to talk about how my sorcerer pwned the dragon--but that story is really about how I built a kick-ass character and played him effectively, working closely with other players to create tactics that effectively overpowered a dangerous opponent. After a night of playing Apocalypse World, I want to talk about how Ebb the Operator sold out almost everything he believes in to survive another day, and how he's okay with that--but that story is really about how my friends and I are slowly drawing this terrible, horrible world and "discovering" its details and themes. After a night of playing My Life with Master, I want to talk about how the evil Master forced everyone's minions to kidnap children and distill their life force--but that story is really about how the players and GM addressed some difficult subject material (like co-dependence and abuse and violence) in an extremely poignant and disturbing way.

Adam wrote:
I like your "celebration of identity" idea. Is that your own phrase or did you see that somewhere?

I'm starting to think that the pursuit of "Story" is the biggest red herring that *certain* role players can try to chase after. Why do we need to be telling a story at all? Is a dungeon in D&D really a story? Sure, we frame the fighting in the context of the PC's being lured into the dungeon with promise of loots or whatever, but that is all that is, framing.

When I run games they might seem like stories in the traditional sense, thats because I borrow a lot techniques from other forms of fiction to help create the kind of player experience I want, but I have one method of running games that works for me and the people I've played with, and everything else I've tried was sort of like Jack Skellington's attempt at Christmas...

That method. Make up difficult or interesting situations and throw them at the players, who have made difficult and interesting characters who then respond to the shit that's being thrown at them. There's a sense of continuity, the events in the games could be related like a story, I use dramatic techniques to keep the experience interesting, but I am NOT IN ANY WAY TRYING TO MAKE A GOOD STORY, or address themes or otherwise attempting to create a product that can be examined or appreciate outside of the experience of play.

Does this mean that this is the method that everyone should use? No, of course not, I'm just putting myself out there as an example of a gamer who's made years of fun for himself and others without ever once stopping to think about whether what he was creating was good stories... though thats something I've become interested in lately, like I said at the beginning, I'm starting to think that for me story has been a red herring.

And then, instead of skills, you could get at what the character uses the skills to get at! Like he has great planning and fighting skill, yes, but it's because he wants to end a war! So hey, perhaps we could just write down 'wants to end the war' on his character sheet! And hey, as he tries to do that, his 'wants to end the war' levels up! OMG, and he can add it onto his normal skills, making him stronger at what's important to him! And then we could go buy a copy of the riddle of steel and ogle the spiritual attributes section like it's porn, cause it's awesome!

Sorry, couldn't help but tease! Maybe it's not applicable?

Great series of posts (up until the last one), this is one of the things I've been trying to dig at with my posts on a "Vector Theory" of game design (over at my blog).

The story of the individual doesn't have to be the story of the GMs intent.

If a GM is basically just pushing their characters toward goals through smoke and mirrors, are the characters truly developing. Or are they just as caught up in the machinations of the world at the end as they were at the beginning? Only they appear to be more capable of addressing the GMs assigned obstacles during the later stages of the game.

I know that I'm one of those players who likes to see characters develop through the course of play, switching a character from chaotic to neutral when they see the destructive results of their activities. Or switching away from lawful when we see how the laws in the land are being used to oppress the people. Other players say..."but you can't change alignments!!" or some other thing that they've seen in the rules, but I like my characters to have a level of emotional depth, a changing story can bring that even if the regualr game rules don't back up this style of play, or if the GM's story is about that.

If I can get a bit of personality and tell my own story within the context of a larger story, or within the context of a string of meaningless encounters, then that's where I derive my fun. I get my fun from trying to tell stories despite the system, if I can use this method to tangle other characters up in my stories, so much the better.

I'm probably playing a different game to everyone else on the table, and sure there will be times when the relations between my character's actions and other characters create friction, but that's also a part of the play dynamic I enjoy that simply isn't quantified in the rules. When I run games, it's a different story altogether. Because I draw on the players actions to weave something together on the fly. I'll have a vague idea of a few key scenes that I think would be cool, but I rarely know when the right moment will come for introducing them into the plot. I run on instinct, and when a player makes a moves that might segway nicely into a scene I've been thinking about, I just need to offer a little extra prompting and suddenly the players are trying to work out whether everything was planned all the way along, or if their actions have really generated the cool scene that they've become a part of...it's hard to explain that both of these opinions are right. Similarly, I'll have a couple of nice end points to a story, I'll never know which one is the "right" ending to a campaign, I just let the actions guide toward one or another, framing up things along the way so that any climax could remain viable, dropping hints for all of them into the story. In this way, players really feel like they are contributing because they are contributing. Their choices do matter, but within the framework of possibilities that I've laid out for them.

I like to think of it as less like a railroad and more like a river.

You start at one end, and work your way to the other. You can't push past the left or right bank, but you've got a decent amount of leeway between the two of them. Different plot lines are like currents in the river that might draw you in, or push you toward certain sandbanks/obstacles. At the end of it is like a river delta, with a wide array of paths to follow, but eventually you'll reach the end of the river crossing into the sea. It's more a game than a story in the traditional sense, because it isn't defined from the start of play, but it's more than just a game. You need to pay attention to the feedback loop between narrative and game mechanisms.

It's interesting to see other people's perspective on the matter.

So it's clear, I'm not outright panning illusionism, either. If people are happy, then whatever. But I've seen -- in games I have run and in games I have played -- minor and major breakdowns that I attribute largely to hidden GM Force.

Gareth,

My "two paths" aren't meant to be the only possible paths. It's reductio ad absurdum, admittedly, but I'm not trying to prove anything there. I just wanted to illustrate my points. There are a lot of crazy assumptions I make for that argument, and I know they never occur, but I think it makes my subtler point clear, right?

But given your "gross exaggeration," I would say that I don't want my input as a player to be meaningless, and that I cannot have fun if I find out this was the case. That is, if as a GM you're going to take my input, ignore it, and then force the game in whatever direction you wanted in the first place, you better damned well keep that fact hidden from me, or it will ruin my play experience. Because any fun I was having was predicated on the idea that I was participating as an equal, and that my choices meant something.

I speak about illusionism as a GM who ran games using those techniques for 10-15 years, so I am not ignorant about the topic. These days, I still use some of the techniques I learned, but I do it as participationism, with the players in on the joke.

Daniel,

I'm definitely NOT saying that "Sim is just undecided Gamist/Narrativism." I'm very familiar with all three kinds play and I understand them all very well.

Let's talk about the TPK. I don't think it's a meaningful discussion without talking about it in the context of a creative agenda.

If I'm playing D&D 4E by the book, embracing its Step On Up ways, not drifting it, then a TPK is totally all right by me. It is very strong reinforcement of my choices as a player. It means we [I and my player friends] did not Step On Up. We failed to meet the challenges set before us. We made choices during play, and those choices were not optimal. If the Dungeon Master just handwaves away our deaths, it cheapens the experience for me. This is not a theoretical situation! I played in a 4E game with a heavy Step On Up agenda shared by the group, and we had a near-TPK and my character died. The DM basically made it not happen -- I can't remember if there was NPC healing/resurrection or we were left for dead but not actually dead or what. I talked with the group after that and made it clear that next time, just let my PC die. Fuck story continuity. It's meaningless to me if my Step On Up choices don't matter.

If I'm playing Sorcerer by the book, embracing its Story Now ways, not drifting it, then a TPK is totally all right by me as long as I got to make meaningful statements -- got to address the premise -- along the way that lead to my character's death. I want that death to say something. I want all of the characters' deaths to say something. I don't know what; it depends on the fiction, obviously. If the GM starts using Force to invalidate the statements I'm making with my character, I don't care if my character lives or dies. The game will suck.

If I'm playing Basic D&D in some kind of Right To Dream way, then a TPK might not suck. It might be the Right thing for our game. It might Make Sense. If it isn't, I would think the group's constructive denial would trump it. "Aww, there's no way we should have all died. A dragon couldn't even fit down in this cave. Where does the thing shit, anyway? We didn't even smell it down the corridor?" The main way to make a Right To Dream game suck for me is to use GM Force to invalidate my judgment of the SIS. If I tell you that it makes no sense that a dragon should be down in a 10x10 room and you use Force to hand-wave my concerns away ("He was teleported into the room, long ago, by a strange wizard who enchanted the dragon so he doesn't eat or excrete!") then I'm going to be upset. The important choices I make in a Right To Dream game are those that help guide and affirm the correctness of the SIS.

Important Point: The trouble in Sim games -- even more than Nar and Gam games, I  think -- is that you're accreting all this "right" material over time and it's often tied closely to a particular storyline or set of characters. If you kill off a character, that "right" material gets disconnected. It's more than just the kind of investment in Exploration that you see in non-Sim games. This material is the point of play, so losing it feels like a step (or ten) back. I think GM Force in service to "the story" is often a code word for "we need to preserve all of this material we've constructed together!" and it's more about Right To Dream than story continuity.

Possibly Silly Point: You said, "(I had to stop game designing and playing for a long span due to strife in my life, but it is coming to an end.)" I hope you meant that the strife is ending, not your life!

Nolan,

In my post above this one, I'm carefully using "story" (not "Story") to refer to a retelling of events after the game about what happened at the table.  "My fighter totally locked down that elite solo boss and the rogue and the sorcerer were able to blast it to pieces in two rounds!" That's not a story about the fiction; it's a story about D&D 4E players Stepping On Up.

It's a kind of code word for "creative agenda," if you look at it the right way.

Michael,

I like your river analogy. Realize that the longer the river, the less meaningful my contributions are to the destination.

Let's say the GM has this plot arc mapped out: we'll start off as nobody peasants and fight our way up to renowned heroes who save the world from a race of conquering monster overlords. And the GM knows that we're going to survive all those battles along the way, and he knows that we'll save the world and drive back the overlords -- because, hey, it wouldn't be fun otherwise. After a year or two of play all culminating exactly how the GM planned, distinctions between rivers and railroads are kinda lost on me. That river can't be wide enough.

One of three things is likely happen (and I won't exaggerate profusely this time, Gareth):

1. The illusion holds. No one in the player group finds out that nothing we will do will change this world-saving outcome.

2. The illusion breaks; trouble ensues. The player group figures out that there's a fixed end for the game and this bothers people.

3. The illusion breaks, but business as usual. We figure out that the GM is railroading us and we don't care. We're having fun tooting along in the wide "river" the GM lets us maneuver in on our way to heroic greatness.

I believe that #1 is very rare. It's hard to maintain completely hidden GM Force for a long time without players getting wise. I suspect that a lot of #2 happens on the way to a sort of dissatisfied #3. The one player who isn't happy sucks it up and plays along so as not to ruin the game for everyone else. Fine, whatever. If you're just gonna end up in #3, why not substitute illusionism with participationism and avoid the risk of #2?

@Adam  Yup, totally with you on TPKs. I suppose my addition "If they're rare and in my mind well-deserved" covers a lot more possibilities than I'd implied.

Our use of the word "story" is making me nervous. From everyone's posts, I'm thinking we really are on the same page here (or at least a similar one) but there's a bit of vagueness in that word story. There are really two ways (or more) that we could interpret it. The first way to define "story" is as a single linear sequence of events, or at least a collection of main events that lead to a predetermined conclusion. This is illusionism and, although you can certainly get some really fun games out of it, I don't think anyone here disagrees with the fundamental point that it competes against player freedom.

The second interpretation of the word "story" is quite, quite different and is really what I'm driving towards. Michael, I think you touched on it best in the first half of your post:

Vulpinoid wrote:
The story of the individual doesn't have to be the story of the GMs intent.

Vulpinoid wrote:
I know that I'm one of those players who likes to see characters develop through the course of play, switching a character from chaotic to neutral when they see the destructive results of their activities. Or switching away from lawful when we see how the laws in the land are being used to oppress the people. Other players say..."but you can't change alignments!!" or some other thing that they've seen in the rules, but I like my characters to have a level of emotional depth, a changing story can bring that even if the regualr game rules don't back up this style of play, or if the GM's story is about that.

If I can get a bit of personality and tell my own story within the context of a larger story, or within the context of a string of meaningless encounters, then that's where I derive my fun. I get my fun from trying to tell stories despite the system, if I can use this method to tangle other characters up in my stories, so much the better.

I'm probably playing a different game to everyone else on the table, and sure there will be times when the relations between my character's actions and other characters create friction, but that's also a part of the play dynamic I enjoy that simply isn't quantified in the rules.

Yeah, I think I understood that, but the impossible dream is only impossible if the word "story" means story in the traditional sense. What the players in my games take away is a story, and you could call what I do as the game master storytelling (White Wolf does) but it isn't, so I create a "story" and they create the protagonists and its all functional.

I mean, look at most of the conversation on this thread, its about illusionism. Why, when a GM has an infinite budget and an infinite set of options to choose from, is it not possible for him to take your players actions into account in a meaningful way and be able to make the whole thing feel like a book or comic or whatever.

Were playing D&D and I have an adventure path where I expect the party to travel down the main road where they'll encounter a blockade. I want them to encounter the blockade so they discover the existence of the evil warlord. The adventurers instead decide to go through the woods. I, as the DM, still want them to learn about the warlord, and I want them to discover the blockade, so, viola, there are a band of wild elfs traveling through the woods that are heading the the blockade to tear it down.

Is this illusionism? Are the encounters in the woods meaningless? Is discovering a blockade on a road the same thing as discovering a band of wild elf rebels in the woods who want to destroy it? I don't think so. The GM gets what he wants, the players actions meaningfully effect the content of the game.

I've been ranting for some time that "story" means too many things and serves only to cloud discussions rather than illuminate them.  One salient question to ask in terms of this disuccion is "Why is story a good thing?"  It's taken as read that a "story" is what we want to come out of play, or that "story" should be the result of player actions, but what does that MEAN?

It means something specific when we talk about Story Now.  That is a clear and precise usage which can be used meaningfully and constructively.  Story now is essentially the characters as protagonists addressing premise.  The story which then emerges through the action of play is then NOT a sequence of events as such; it is specifically a moral or understanding derived from the answer to the premise which the players chose to give.

Note that this has nothing to do with boss monsters, or 3-act play structure, or the Hero's Journey.  Because all of these are structures used by a single narrator, who uses them in linear narrative to engage an audience that in direct, Story Now play does not exist separately from the author.  In this specific sense, story is the point of Narr play and story is therefore, in that context, a Good Thing.

The unanswered questions are these: what is "story" FOR in Gamist or Simulationst play, if indeed it is for anything?  Why should we ever talk about story when discussing non-Narr games?  What kind of specific actions and behaviours would we call on to produce whatever kind of "story" this is?

We get a lot of leak from Narr inspired discussion that does this debate no service. For example, the issue of player control over characters.  It is true that without direct control by the player of their character, they cannot address premise, and therefore in Narr play there cannot be Story Now.  But if we are playing in G or S, then the question of whether or not we can address premise is moot.  What precisely then is the function of player ownership of the character?  Surely that should should be expressed in terms that relate to exploration or challange, not "story" at all.  And therefore, objecting that the GM rejected your input in terms of story is also a meaningless statement.  I'm perfectly willing to concede control over "story" to the GM because "story" is not primarily what I'm there for.  That doesn't extend, though, to ceding control over Exploration, if exploration is what I'm there for.

I think Nolan has summed up neatly when he says "I use dramatic techniques to keep the experience interesting".  This is story as a technique, not as an agenda or goal of play.  It is ancillary to and supportive of the real goal of play, which is Something Else.  Is it useful to do so?  I think it is, for the same reasons he mentions.  It borrows, in a way Narr does not, from the traditions of linear narrative story telling.  Things like the three act play structure may well be useful when seen in this light, whereas they would be actively destructive in the context of Narr.  So we end up with a "story", and we have to take the One Ring to Mordor or whatever, and therefore we have reason to go places rather than just wander around willy nilly, and we have objectives to pursue, and we have reasons to talk to NPC's, and so the whole thing acquires some structure and direction that pure undiluted exploration and challenge would not have on their own.

None of this has to mean that the players get frog-marched  through a set of scenes imposed by the GM to present some sort of narrative or moral lesson.  Certainly that kind of thing has happened, and is the basis for all the hostility that is directed at "Metaplot".  But I would suggest that this mistake arises from failing to see story, in G and S, as supportive rather than the point of play.  It is attempting to impose the outcome of Narr onto games that are really pursuing other goals.  This, I fear, is for the most part what people think of when using Illusionism as a pejorative, and I don't think it's valid.

When we suse story as if it is always the desired outcome, when we apply story to both the individual player actions and the work as a whole, when we use story in a way that fails to distinguish between goals and techniques, when we conflate story with player freedom - all of these mean we end up talking in circles.

Vulpinoid wrote:
Great series of posts (up until the last one)

Adam wrote:
Michael,

I like your river analogy. Realize that the longer the river, the less meaningful my contributions are to the destination.

Let's say the GM has this plot arc mapped out: we'll start off as nobody peasants and fight our way up to renowned heroes who save the world from a race of conquering monster overlords. And the GM knows that we're going to survive all those battles along the way, and he knows that we'll save the world and drive back the overlords -- because, hey, it wouldn't be fun otherwise. After a year or two of play all culminating exactly how the GM planned, distinctions between rivers and railroads are kinda lost on me. That river can't be wide enough.

Vulpinoid wrote:
Instead of a river, we're looking at a flight path. The aircraft has to stay within a fixed horizontal boundary imposed by the flight controller, but they are free to fly at whatever altitude they desire.

Thr difference between participationism and illusionism is not, AFAIK, just a case of issuing a disclaimer up front.  It's overt and explicit use of force or concealed use of force.  You must go here, you must go through this door, follow these flashing lights to the next encounter.  So disbelief is not suspended when this is happening all the time; it's the difference between a movie and a rollercoaster.  The function of the illusion is to allow the suspension of disbelief.

Secondly, Adam I think you've fallen into the trap off thinking that this is "about the character".  Why should it be?  The character is just a vehicle for the player.  If your goal as a player was "I wonder what it would be like to be a crewmember on the starship enterprise", then this stuff about whether the character matches up to some supposed standard or not is irrelevant.  You get what you want just by "being there".  The GM's plot can be anything as long as it doesn't do something strange like introduce The Force or whatever.

I suppose we should get on the same page about these definitions. Let's use these going forward. If Illusionism is GM Force behind the Black Curtain at every step, and Participationism is GM Force out in the open at every step, then we don't have a term for "up front disclaimers about GM Force, then keeping it covert," which is the model I'm proposing is fairly functional.

Most interesting, in that thread Ron characterizes illusionism as the functional one and participationism as the dysfunctional one. That doesn't really jive with my own experience.

For example, I recently played in an excellent D&D 4E game run by my friend Daniel. There were ten players in two teams of five, pitted against one another. This is Dark Sun, and half of us were Veiled Alliance, the other half Templars. I was on the Veiled Alliance side, whose mission was to kill some Templar dude. The mission of the Templars, obviously, was protecting him. First encounter is staged in a combat arena--not as gladiators, but as people in the stands. My halfling ardent character had a daily power that would let me make a "suggestion," and I used it on the Templars dude to try to keep him from running away. When my roll whiffed, Daniel told me that I should take the daily power back, that he should have told us up front that the guy was going to escape this encounter--full stop. In fact, the guy had a teleport power that Daniel had forgotten to use.

Now, if he'd told us before the encounter started how this had to go down, I'd have felt happier about it. If he'd used some kind of covert Force to cover his mistake ("uh, he has a power that lets him teleport as an interrupt"), and I found out about it, I'd have been annoyed. I think Daniel did the right thing under the circumstances, though, telling us his mistake and letting us know that the rest of the adventure he'd planned was predicated on chasing this dude, so he could die or he'd need to end the game (and this was a one-shot thing at a game store). But given the goal of the encounter had been "get the Templar dude" and now I knew my character could not do that, I used my next round to flee the scene. I was effectively out of the encounter. Sure, a five-on-five PC-vs-PC battle could have been fun but a) lots of PCs die that way and b) "my guy" wouldn't stick around for that. So I hopped.

My point is that there was this moment of "oh shit" at the table when everyone realized that Daniel "had planned" to make sure the bad guy got away. I suspect other people were annoyed. I was. And it was quickly fixed by Daniel's honesty with us.

@contracycle:

contracycle wrote:
I've been ranting for some time that "story" means too many things and serves only to cloud discussions rather than illuminate them.  One salient question to ask in terms of this disuccion is "Why is story a good thing?"  It's taken as read that a "story" is what we want to come out of play, or that "story" should be the result of player actions, but what does that MEAN?

It means something specific when we talk about Story Now.  That is a clear and precise usage which can be used meaningfully and constructively.  Story now is essentially the characters as protagonists addressing premise.  The story which then emerges through the action of play is then NOT a sequence of events as such; it is specifically a moral or understanding derived from the answer to the premise which the players chose to give.

contracycle wrote:
The unanswered questions are these: what is "story" FOR in Gamist or Simulationst play, if indeed it is for anything?  Why should we ever talk about story when discussing non-Narr games?  What kind of specific actions and behaviours would we call on to produce whatever kind of "story" this is?

Daniel wrote:
Did I mention story in a Simulationist context? I never mentioned story, not even in the players-addressing-Premise sense you speak of. Given that I'm talking about neither Illusionism nor Players-addressing-Premise, we can just drop the confusing word "story" altogether and leave it with the Narrs.

Contracycle, you mentioned being willing to concede control of the "story" if you're primarily there for exploration instead, but -- even in the cases you're supposedly there for exploration, is exploration really what you're looking for?

Contracycle, surely if this is as common a human experience as I think it is, you'll have a personal example of your own. Have there been any experiences you've had where you felt like you'd "won" or achieved a "victory", but not in the gamist sense? I'll leave it up to you to determine what it means to "win" in a non-gamist sense.

Hi everyone,

As I'd hoped, this thread has become an Actual Play thread through multiple people's input, so I'm planning on moving it. I decided to announce it here instead of PMing Daniel so everyone knows.

Carry on!

Best, Ron

@Ron  Thank you for the heads up. Indeed, the genuine "case studies" seem to be enlightening.

contracycle wrote:

Contracycle, you mentioned being willing to concede control of the "story" if you're primarily there for exploration instead, but -- even in the cases you're supposedly there for exploration, is exploration really what you're looking for?

I would say "yes", but also that it's not necessarily the only thing I'm there for.  I also enjoy a bit of challenge etc. thrown into the mix.

I recently got to see Firefly, at last.  There is one episode in which the action centres around the fact that the life support is off line because the engine is broken.  Fine and all, this is all very dramatic and tense, except: the artificial gravity is working.  The engine is DEAD, but the AG functions perfectly.  This makes no sense to me, and I notice it.
<...>
So that is the kid of thing I'm interested in, and which attracts my attention.  I'd happily trade a rather fixed plot for an AG that made sense, and which I can think about and interact with without throwing everything out of kilter.

contracycle wrote:

Contracycle, surely if this is as common a human experience as I think it is, you'll have a personal example of your own. Have there been any experiences you've had where you felt like you'd "won" or achieved a "victory", but not in the gamist sense? I'll leave it up to you to determine what it means to "win" in a non-gamist sense.

Well, the example I';ve given most often - given that I have spent much more time as a GM than a player - is of a WoD vamp game in which I played the prince of a city.  WoD establishes that on entering a city, incoming vamps have to report to the prince and request permission to feed, which makes sense.  But as the prince, I found in play that I also needed to know who had left the city, becuase otherwise I had no idea what the total population actually was.  I ended up communicating with neighbouring potentates to see if some of the people on my Missing list had recently passed through their turf.  So in this sense, I discovered something that I had not known before, teased out a bit of implicit logic in the setting that was not overtly expressed.

contracycle wrote:
Another example from WoD, this time from Mage.  Realising that we really did have godlike power at our fingertips, and that the more you controlled society the easier it was to exercise that power, I sort of magic[k]ed up an island of uncontacted "primitves" ala King Kong; and then I showed up, healing the sick and creating food, your full on biblical display of divine largesse.  Note that this was all on my own initiative, the GM had nothing to do with this except respoding to my questions and statements.  All of this was fine, but a problem became clear quite soon; none of it mattered.  What did I get out of being god-king?  The locals had nothing they could give me that I couldn't produce myself.  Food, treasures, a harem of maidens, none of this was significant to a real Mage.  And I didn't respect them, because they were just mundanes, they didn't matter - so what did I care for their praise and worship?  All in all, being god-king was a drag. And thus I discovered for myself an answer to the question of why even settings with wizards might not be totally dominated by them, might not be, erm, thaumocracies?

These are instances which I found particularly memorable, which felt like "succesful play" that fulfilled my aims.  I went and turned over rocks and found out what was under them.  This made me happy.

Daniel... Why was the Vampire example not Sim? Because he addressed challenges and felt satisfaction from success? A Prince consolidating power and managing his city is very in setting for Vampire (though I have problems with that example based on the way that I understand Cainites behaving, but I don't know what The Package was for the players in that game). Tactical decision making can be an element of Sim play, especially when tactical decision making is part of The Package.

Example: We were playing an OWoD Vampire game and we're the last surviving Camarilla vampires in a city that's just feel victim to a Sabbat crusade. We need to be able to get out of the city. The whole game revolves around addressing tactics to escape and use against the Sabbat.

If your playing a game set in the Star Trek universe and you come across some alien life form or technical problem with the ship, it seems very in agreement with the Star Trek (sorry, talking TNG here) to problem solve and plan in order to come up with the right tactic to address the problem. It also makes sense that the characters, and thus the players would feel a sense of accomplishment when they succeeded. Now, this could be Gam or even Nar, but if the main joy in playing out the engagement is that the outcome FEELS RIGHT, that it feels STAR TREK, than I think there a clear Sim agenda.

But what is it exactly that your looking for. No offense, but it seems that we aren't talking about the impossible dream anymore, but getting into a discussion on looking for a table top technique that will recreate the learn as you go approach that you enjoyed so much in BK? Is that correct.

Daniel wrote:
Anyway, I digress. I would claim that maybe you need things such as logical consistency, but you're not there expressly for them. It's like claiming you went to watch Firefly mostly to see if they would treat Anti-gravity engines with the respect they deserved. This makes little sense. In fact, you went to see Firefly just because it's a damned good movie.

I'm going to make several claims here: I feel like you're having to twist to fit the existing definition of Simulationism. This is not an example of it (or at least, I'm highly skeptical)...

In any case, as valid as your example of "true Simulationism" is, it is off the mark from what I'm describing.

@ CC

My response to you is mostly implicit in my answer to Nolan, so I'll just continue from there. However, I did want to say one thing: you mentioned Sim doesn't totally preclude the presence of challenges. True. So what? Narr doesn't totally preclude the presence of mano-a-mano bloodythirsty Gamist combat, either. By the same token, if there are Gamist activities going on, maybe these activities aren't supporting the main priority, but are the player's main agenda!

@Nolan

masqueradeball wrote:
Daniel... Why was the Vampire example not Sim? Because he addressed challenges and felt satisfaction from success? A Prince consolidating power and managing his city is very in setting for Vampire (though I have problems with that example based on the way that I understand Cainites behaving, but I don't know what The Package was for the players in that game). Tactical decision making can be an element of Sim play, especially when tactical decision making is part of The Package.

Example: We were playing an OWoD Vampire game and we're the last surviving Camarilla vampires in a city that's just feel victim to a Sabbat crusade. We need to be able to get out of the city. The whole game revolves around addressing tactics to escape and use against the Sabbat.

If your playing a game set in the Star Trek universe and you come across some alien life form or technical problem with the ship, it seems very in agreement with the Star Trek (sorry, talking TNG here) to problem solve and plan in order to come up with the right tactic to address the problem. It also makes sense that the characters, and thus the players would feel a sense of accomplishment when they succeeded. Now, this could be Gam or even Nar, but if the main joy in playing out the engagement is that the outcome FEELS RIGHT, that it feels STAR TREK, than I think there a clear Sim agenda.

But what is it exactly that your looking for. No offense, but it seems that we aren't talking about the impossible dream anymore, but getting into a discussion on looking for a table top technique that will recreate the learn as you go approach that you enjoyed so much in BK? Is that correct.

Not sure how to phrase this, but if were talking Big Model, I think we should stay within it... its a closed system, there ARE 3 Creative Agendas, and thats that.

This is not at all to say that I think the Big Model is necessarily right or that what your talking about isn't just as important as the CA's.

Within the Big Model, what your talking about seems to be "Step On Up" lite or some version of "Right to Dream."

Outside of it... I'm not sure. I'm trying to find experiences in my own actual play that reflect what your talking about so that I can relate to the experience. Your use of video game references is helpful, but what about some of your play experience with D&D/Shadowrun?

Its funny and perhaps irrelevant but when trying to think of examples from my own RP-ing I keep having this instance come up from D&D where are PC's spent all this time sailing, so I decided to put all my skill points while leveling into ship related shit... for some reason that was a really rewarding experience for me, just because I had these points on my sheet that I could look at and go "oooh, thats all the stuff I learned while we were sailing." Contra's example of the vampire Prince reminded me of this too, because it seemed like what he did there was all about reinforcing the SIS. For him, figuring that little bit about vamp politics reinforced the SIS, for me looking at my char sheet and having that in character reminisce (which was very much just me internally thinking out how my character might feel) also reinforced the SIS, I got to put my imagination into action, as did Contra...

Also, please note that the shit I said about the Big Model may be totally bogus and is in no way meant to be a "Your doing it wrong" type of pronouncement. I really want to have this conversation with you, I think theres something important here to talk about, but I think tagging things as "Sim" or "not-Sim" will be misleading when the goal is defining/expressing this experience you're having. Lets figure out what the experience is and then figure where (if anywhere) it fits within the Big Model or any other theoretical system of RPG classification.

I think The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast is borne of strong Illusionist techniques ingrained at a deep level and expressed by Sim-preferring game designers in their "how to role-play" sections of their rulebooks.

I suspect they don't actually mean that the players have complete control over their characters. I think they do often have fine-grained control over developing that character (via chargen and advancement rules). I suppose players might think they have complete control within the illusion of play, as long as the GM keeps the Force covert. Add a strong Sim agenda and oft-related techniques and this can work pretty well. But the player control is just an illusion (one that the Impossible Thing promised, mind you).

I suspect they don't actually mean that the GM has complete control over the story, either, but they say it anyway. But a lot of those books offer GMs advice that teaches them illusionism and subtle and not-so-subtle GM Force.

I'm not necessarily averse to an argument for a fourth agenda; there is no inherent reason that there should be only 3.  But to make this case there would have to be a strong argument from observation and AP examples that illustrate the claim.  But to clarify this I'm not sure that disucssing my examples is going to be of much use to you.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the Vamp example again.  I didn't achieve any success; none of the people on my missing list could be traced through neighbouring cities.  I got a null answer, which was perhaps uself in that it ruled out certain possibilities, but the point at hand was that it was NOT the immediate in-game results that counted, it was the deeper understanding of the political structure at work in the Camarillla; and which, as I already mentioned, applied not just to me but to everyone who was present, and which would potentially inform all subsequent handling of the same topic in other games.  And in fact, part of the point was also this: that WoD themselves had written the role of the prince from the perspective of the lesser orders, and had missed a salient element of the problems that actually face a prince.

So I can't really agree that this example is indicative of another agenda.  What, I think, muddies all this is that of all the GNS agendas, Sim is the least understood, or at the very least, that which has the least unambiguous language and terminology with which to discuss it.  Just as in this thread we've been through story, and freedom and control, and exploration, without coming to any sort of clear insight.  We can pretty confidently say how you go about setting up a game for Narr, and for Gam, but what precisely is good setup for sim?  You can determine when a game ends for Narr - when the story climaxes, and for Gam - when the challenge is overcome or failed.  What is the end condition for Sim?

Thus the problem of trying to split a new agenda out of Sim is that its hard enough as it is to get a clear grip on the Sim agenda in practice, let alone trying tease out a second agenda from which Sim is distinct.  If we can't frame sim-in-play tightly, how do we know where this potential new thing is different from it?  Even if, for example, it were taken as read that Illusionism is valid and viable, how do we resolve the inherent contradictions between the illusion of freedom and the practical application of concealed force?  The techniques by which this has been done, and we all agree that it has, still languish in the experiences and habits of individual GM's, without any broader principles or methodologies which can either be discussed or around which actual games can be built.  We're still in bolt-of-inspiration territory.

So from my perspective, if there is this Fun Thing which you identify as occurring in games would have been classified as Illusionist sim, it may well be the case that this observation is more usefully employed for firming up sim itself than to be proposed as something distinct from it.  Whichever way that pans out, it seems to me more important and productive to concentrate on identifying exactly what you mean than it is to propose ways in which it differs.

Just putting in my own two cents regarding the Vampire City example.  Daniel, it seems like you're saying "Because there was a challenge which was faced and the player garnered satisfactoin from facing that challenge this is an example of Step on Up creative agenda."  To me that seems incorrect, because it seems to suggest what Contra did trumps why he did it.

I'm going to infer/assume a lot in the following.  My apologies for anything that is way off.

Think of it this way.  The GM was playing in a very Right to Dream way with Contra, answering questions in a way that reinforced the game.  They were on the same page of what fun play should be.  But what if the GM was playing Step on up, and treated this like a Step on Up conflict?  In that case, the way to play the interaction is to challenge the player.  "You want to find out that information?  Cool, you need to do these things, roll these social rolls, and if you can overcome the difficulty then you get the information you want."  To which I would assume Contra's response would have been "What?  That's ridiculous.  All I want is the answer to a simple question from people who have no reason to balk at answering.  Why is this happening?"

That to me is at the heart of Creative agenda.  The same action might be taken, the very same roll might be made, but the "why are you rolling" can be completely different and THAT defines creative agenda not only of the player, but as the group as a whole.  Just facing a conflict and overcoming adversity isn't necessarily Step on UP.  Perhaps I'm reading too much in to this.

Hi Daniel,

I believe what you're describing is, in fact, a particular flavour of Simulationism (or Right to Dream) although it's one we might not see all that often.

It's only fair that I make it clear what I'm talking about when I say "what you're describing"; specifically what I mean is:

  - Your experiences with Banjo Kazooie, specifically, "Pretty much the central core of the game is that you learn about and practice a specific set of skills available to your bear & bird. By beating each level, you prove to yourself that you have mastered that particular skill set."  And also "It combines the elements in a relatively unique combination to allow the player to learn the moves and grow with the characters, feeling the same sense of achievement that the characters themselves might feel if they weren't fictional. The emotions you feel when Grunty finally gets knocked off the tower .. it's like a tonic!"

  - Your general sense of agreement with Adam Dray's experience: "At the end of an evening of play, I want a personal story that is about me, not just about my character. After a night of playing D&D 4E, I want to talk about how my sorcerer pwned the dragon -- but that story is really about how I built a kick-ass character and played him effectively"

  - Your self-described primary purpose for play:  "Like most people, I play just to play. The settings and boss-fights and colour are all interesting, but if it lacked good gameplay, it would fail at its intended purpose. Looking for "good gameplay" is too vague, and not at all helpful. "

Since this has become such a definition-based discussion, I'm going to just paste from the canon article:

"Simulationism is expressed by enhancing one or more of the listed elements [Character, Setting, Situation, System, Color]; in other words, Simulationism heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration."

(Tangentially, the term Illusionism has also come up; I think the clearest definition comes from Chapter 5 of GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory:

"[...] the GM dominates the characters' significant actions, and the players contribute only to characterization. This is called illusionism, in which the players are unaware of or complicit with the extent to which they are manipulated.  Illusionism is not necessarily dysfunctional, and if Character or Situation Exploration is the priority, then it can be a lot of fun."

Tangent over.)

To further expand on Simulationism:

"Different types of Simulationist play can address very different things, ranging from a focus on characters' most deep-psychology processes, to a focus on the kinetic impact and physiological effects of weapons, to a focus on economic trends and politics, and more."

And even more:

"Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, *cause* is the key, the imagined cosmos in action."

(What I want to point out here is the three examples that the author chose to use.)

And, finally:

"A lot of people have trouble with the notion of "Exploring System.""

And now, with all groundwork layed, it is my opinion that you are describing the recognized Creative Agenda of Simulationism in the specific recognized (if only barely) flavour of System exploration.

I feel like that's quite a bit to lay on you all at once, so I think I'll stop here for now.  I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have mangled in all the cutting and pasting.

Cheers,
Roger

Roger wrote:

  - Your experiences with Banjo Kazooie, specifically, "Pretty much the central core of the game is that you learn about and practice a specific set of skills available to your bear & bird. By beating each level, you prove to yourself that you have mastered that particular skill set."  And also "It combines the elements in a relatively unique combination to allow the player to learn the moves and grow with the characters, feeling the same sense of achievement that the characters themselves might feel if they weren't fictional. The emotions you feel when Grunty finally gets knocked off the tower .. it's like a tonic!"

I still think that dragging GNS into discussions of porting the Banjo Kazooie experience to tabletop gaming is pretty perilous. It's pretty bizarre to talk about creative agenda regarding a solo computer RPG, where there's no one to share an agenda with (can you meaningfully share anything with the game designers? I think that's a pretty interesting question, actually).

And trying to pin down Roger's creative agenda preference is fraught with danger, too. As I said earlier and what Caldis says above, this is most likely about techniques.

Daniel, as a point of order, can you remind us what you're trying to get out of this thread? It's morphed and drifted and stuff, and I want to make sure we're engaging your points and not heading off onto our own theory tangents. I know I have that tendency.

Let me go back to your original post and try to address some things. Leading in to your talk about The Impossible Thing, you talk about how the allure of tabletop gaming is that "you can do absolutely anything!" I don't think that's true in any game. There are always constraints of some kind, imposed by the game design, by the other players (including GM), and by yourself. And the participants look to creative agenda (usually without thinking about it as such) to determine what constraints to apply. Just as the Right to Dream (Sim) can be described as "constructive denial," there's a similar process that happens within the context of Story Now (Nar) and Step On Up (Gam) where the participants constrain their choices to further the group's shared sense of correct play. But my point is, it's not true that you have "complete and utter control over your character" in any of these games.

It is certainly true that one has fewer artificial constraints in a tabletop game. Computer games are software, ruled by rigid computer programs that cannot think creatively like a human being. They have a far smaller knowledge domain from which to build reactions. Often, the inputs are extremely limited (a finite command set). Having human beings to react to your input opens the door very wide.

I think, when you played Banjo Kazooie, you enjoyed a set of experiences. Let's not call it illusionism or simulationism or anything like that. You enjoyed the game's reward system, which is a carefully tailored operant conditioning system (i.e. a Skinner box). Good games are good at making you salivate as you learn to ring the bell and get a treat. Though I have not played it, I assume that Banjo Kazooie couples this positive reinforcement (skill gains, etc.) with negative reinforcement (losing the game and having to start over if you fail badly enough). Additionally, it employs a strong "skill ladder" technique, which years of MUD and MMORPG development have shown to be a powerful psychological tool to get players to keep playing. You start out weak, master a skill as a character and as a player, and then you get a new skill to master. Repeat until your character is very strong, and then you fight the boss. This play experience was designed to be fun and addictive. It's no surprise you enjoyed it so much!

But none of that has the least bit to do with creative agenda or illusionism or The Impossible Thing. Not at all. So all of that talk is just muddying this discussion.

If the meat of your post is to talk about your idea you call "reverse illusionism," which some other people call "flags" and what I'd call "player-driven situation," then realize that this idea has been employed to great effect in games already. Some of those games are very much NOT simulationist games.

Look at Sorcerer, for example. A player authors a Kicker as part of character creation. The Kicker is a compelling situation the character finds himself in at the beginning of play, a situation which has no clearly "correct" resolution. Finding out what the player will do is what makes the Kicker interesting. Thus the player gets to author her story from the get-go, telling the GM "this is what I want play to be about" (and the GM is compelled to make play about that Kicker). When the player resolves her Kicker, she writes another, thus keeping the cycle of player-authored story turning.

Look at Burning Wheel. A player authors Beliefs and Instincts and chooses Traits. These not only tell the GM what the player cares about, but also form the heart of the character advancement system (for these earn special "artha" points that are necessary to earn extra dice on the very difficult skill checks that are required to advance a skill to the next level).

Am I taking your original post in the direction you wanted to go with it?

Very briefly, there are a number of ways in which Exploring System can look like Gamism -- it's a close parallel to the ways in which Exploring Character and/or Situation can look like Narrativism.

I could go on and on about this, but I agree this is a good point to take a deep breath and listen to where Daniel would like the thread to go.

Sorry for taking so long to answer. I've not only been busy, but have been mulling over responses.

I want to take a moment, too: thanks to everyone who has responded!!

Roger wrote:
Hi Daniel,

I believe what you're describing is, in fact, a particular flavour of Simulationism (or Right to Dream) although it's one we might not see all that often.
<..>
Since this has become such a definition-based discussion, I'm going to just paste from the canon article:

"Simulationism is expressed by enhancing one or more of the listed elements [Character, Setting, Situation, System, Color]; in other words, Simulationism heightens and focuses Exploration as the priority of play. The players may be greatly concerned with the internal logic and experiential consistency of that Exploration."
<..>
To further expand on Simulationism:

"Different types of Simulationist play can address very different things, ranging from a focus on characters' most deep-psychology processes, to a focus on the kinetic impact and physiological effects of weapons, to a focus on economic trends and politics, and more."

And even more:

"Consider Character, Setting, and Situation - and now consider what happens to them, over time. In Simulationist play, *cause* is the key, the imagined cosmos in action."

(What I want to point out here is the three examples that the author chose to use.)

And, finally:

"A lot of people have trouble with the notion of "Exploring System.""

And now, with all groundwork layed, it is my opinion that you are describing the recognized Creative Agenda of Simulationism in the specific recognized (if only barely) flavour of System exploration.

I feel like that's quite a bit to lay on you all at once, so I think I'll stop here for now.  I'll do my best to clarify anything I may have mangled in all the cutting and pasting.

Cheers,
Roger

Glad that resonated with you, Daniel.  As others have correctly pointed out, I took a risky stab in the dark in guessing at what you were describing.  But I got lucky, and here we are.

This is going to drift away from Actual Play for a bit, and potentially away from your own experiences, but I hope we can bring it back to the real world at some point.  I'm specifically not trying at all to cram you into some idealized player mold; some of the following may apply to you, some of it may not, and that's fine.

I think I'll start with describing how our idealized player, the Purist for System, who is a Simulationist devoted exclusively to the Exploration of System, interacts with players with other Creative Agendas.

* With Gamists:  They tend to get along well.  They both have an interest in gaining a mastery over the System.  The most significant conflict arises from Calvinball, which is anathema to our Purist for System.

It can be easy to confuse the two players, as they can both engage in "rules-lawyering".  The easiest way to distinguish them is that a Purist for System will rules-lawyer against his own character, while a Calvinballer never will.  This unshaken faith in the integrity of the System, regardless of the havoc it may wreak on anything else, is very characteristic of the System Explorer.

Breaking the Game behaviour can also be seen in both camps.  It's in the nature of the System Explorer to seek out the weird corner cases and weak points of the System, but only for the intrinsic value of doing so.  Once discovered, actual exploitation of the Broken pieces is of little value to the Purist for System.

As in the Calvinball case, the System Explorer can sometimes be found Breaking the Game in the opposite direction -- making a character absurdly underpowered and ineffective, simply to Explore that territory of the System.

Outside of role-playing, I see this as the sort of relationship between an academic theologian and a fire-and-brimstone preacher.

* With Narrativists:  There tends to be an orthogonality of interest here, with either side finding little to agree on or fight about.  Many game systems which are devoted to supporting Narrativism simply do not have enough System in them to be worth Exploring, which further limits the interaction between the two groups.

They both deal with emergent themes, but in such radically different ways that they're hardly the same topic.  From the Narrativism: Story Now article:  "The key to Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that engage the players' interest."  For comparison, from the Simulationism article:  "The way these elements tie together, as well as how they're Colored, are intended to produce "genre" in the general sense of the term, especially since the meaning or point is supposed to emerge without extra attention."

The themes that emerge from System Exploration are emphatically not moral nor ethical -- they are the physical properties of the System, and are no more moral or ethical than gravity or aerodynamics.  "Can love overcome fear?"  The Purist for System sees that question as merely an issue of which modifiers come to bear on the dice roll, and an answer of "67% of the time, yes" is perfectly acceptable.  The Narrativist doesn't even know where to start in arguing with that.

The one place they occasionally threaten to overlap is in Ouija-Board play, but Purists for System tend to have as little tolerance for that as Narrativists.

* With other sorts of Simulationists:  You might be forgiven for thinking, at this point, that Purists for System are pretty easy-going players who more-or-less get along with everyone.

  Here's where everything ends in tears.

The main other camp of Simulationists, besides our own Purists for System, is High Concept.  From the Simulationism article:

"The [High Concept] formula starts with one of Character, Situation, or Setting, with lots of Color, then the other two (Character, Situation, or Setting, whichever weren't in first place), with System being last in priority. [..] The process of prep-play-enjoy works by putting "what you want" in, then having "what you want" come out, with the hope that the System's application doesn't change anything along the way."

Purists for System cannot abide with System having the lowest priority, and especially cannot tolerate the insistence that the application of System won't change anything.

In theory there is an ideal collection of parts, which perhaps we could call Shangri-La, in allusion to the idealized El Dorado Sim-Narr game, in which System can be perfectly applied without mangling Character or Situation or Setting or anything else.  In practice, it never works out like that.

The High Concept guys are mad at the Purist guys:  "Look, all we want to do is play in Middle Earth.  You know, elves, dwarves, Gandalf.  Why can't you just play along with that without trying to break everything?"

The Purist guys are mad at the High Concept guys:  "I love Middle Earth as much as anyone else!  But we have to play by the rules.  The orcs have no agricultural basis -- no one needs to go to war with them.  We can just all lock our doors and wait for them all to starve to death.  We don't have to worry about spies because we'll just have our paladin use Detect Evil on the whole village every day.  Why can't we just follow the rules?"

The Gamists and Narrativists, who otherwise don't have a problem with the System Explorer per se, don't get to play at all with this huge argument in the way, so they get all pissed off at whoever is in the minority.

So the Purist for System, who has a certain predisposition towards GMing anyway, decides he's just going to build his entire universe from the ground up, based on the bedrock of System.  Very occasionally they succeed in this epic endeavour, but failure or burnout prior to failure is much more common.  As has been said before, Purist for System is a very hard design specification.

If he does manage to get it implemented, the last thing he wants is a lot of loose cannon player characters running around inside his delicate clockwork universe, so we tend to wind up inside the Impossible Thing for Breakfast.

The Hard Question:  For the Purist for System, it's this:  You've got the System to Explore, so what do you need other people for?  Why not just sit in your room alone, turning all the cranks of the System and enjoying its clockwork motion, without anyone else getting in your way?

That's (again) a fair amount to lay on Daniel and everyone else, and as much as I want to talk about this, I don't want to threadjack to do so.

Cheers,
Roger

Roger wrote:
This is going to drift away from Actual Play for a bit, and potentially away from your own experiences, but I hope we can bring it back to the real world at some point.  I'm specifically not trying at all to cram you into some idealized player mold; some of the following may apply to you, some of it may not, and that's fine.

Roger wrote:
I think I'll start with describing how our idealized player, the Purist for System, who is a Simulationist devoted exclusively to the Exploration of System, interacts with players with other Creative Agendas.

* With Gamists:  They tend to get along well.  They both have an interest in gaining a mastery over the System.  The most significant conflict arises from Calvinball, which is anathema to our Purist for System.

Roger wrote:
* With Narrativists:  There tends to be an orthogonality of interest here, with either side finding little to agree on or fight about.  Many game systems which are devoted to supporting Narrativism simply do not have enough System in them to be worth Exploring, which further limits the interaction between the two groups.

Roger wrote:
Purists for System cannot abide with System having the lowest priority, and especially cannot tolerate the insistence that the application of System won't change anything.

In theory there is an ideal collection of parts, which perhaps we could call Shangri-La, in allusion to the idealized El Dorado Sim-Narr game, in which System can be perfectly applied without mangling Character or Situation or Setting or anything else.  In practice, it never works out like that.

The High Concept guys are mad at the Purist guys:  "Look, all we want to do is play in Middle Earth.  You know, elves, dwarves, Gandalf.  Why can't you just play along with that without trying to break everything?"

The Purist guys are mad at the High Concept guys:  "I love Middle Earth as much as anyone else!  But we have to play by the rules.  The orcs have no agricultural basis -- no one needs to go to war with them.  We can just all lock our doors and wait for them all to starve to death.  We don't have to worry about spies because we'll just have our paladin use Detect Evil on the whole village every day.  Why can't we just follow the rules?"

Roger wrote:
So the Purist for System, who has a certain predisposition towards GMing anyway, decides he's just going to build his entire universe from the ground up, based on the bedrock of System.  Very occasionally they succeed in this epic endeavour, but failure or burnout prior to failure is much more common.  As has been said before, Purist for System is a very hard design specification.

If he does manage to get it implemented, the last thing he wants is a lot of loose cannon player characters running around inside his delicate clockwork universe, so we tend to wind up inside the Impossible Thing for Breakfast.

The Hard Question:  For the Purist for System, it's this:  You've got the System to Explore, so what do you need other people for?  Why not just sit in your room alone, turning all the cranks of the System and enjoying its clockwork motion, without anyone else getting in your way?

Daniel wrote:
In fact, I'd go so far to say that I'd like to direct the High Concept question towards the System itself. "Hey System, look, all we want to do is play in Middle Earth. You know, elves, dwarves, Gandalf. Why can't you just morph and play along with that, without trying to break everything?" When the System meshes with Concept, I'm in love. When the System actively blocks Concept, that just pisses me off. When System is neutral in respect to those parts of the Concept that are unimportant to me as a GM, I similarly am neutral. E.G. one Middle Earth System that says Elves get a +1 with bows, while a different Middle Earth System says that Elves get a free Weapon-Proficiency (Bows) skill. They're different, but in a blind taste-test against the fiction, I'm satisfied either way.

Right; one of the big questions with Simulationism in general is "So what the heck is the GM supposed to do?  Just keep track of all the bookkeeping, or is there more?"

The two approaches to getting System and everything else to play nice together are:  1) Start with System, and build everything else on top of it, in accordance with its demands;  and 2)  Start with Everything Else, and keep reverse-engineering it out until you have a consistent System.

In practice there's often a cyclic feedback loop, where a problem arises, and either the System is changed to stop fighting with the Setting, or the Setting is changed to stop fighting with the System.  Sometimes it works; sometimes it all flies apart.

You might find it useful to look at some "naked System" games, like FATE 2.0, GURPS, Universalis, and even PrimeTime Adventures, to see where others have gone from "I have this neat piece of System I want to use."

So the final question I'm facing is: what do I want my System to emulate? This is where all the actual play examples become even more important. The relevant ones that Roger summarized were my Banjo-Kazooie case, and Adam's wanting "to talk about how <his> sorcerer pwned the dragon".

Another example I can think of that hadn't occurred to me before: a buddy of mine was running a Monk in one of my campaigns. I felt his Monk wasn't getting enough "exercise", what with two other tanks already being in the party. As such, I built a sort of nemesis for him, an evil Dark Elf Monk. At the time he thought it was just a random NPC, so he raved to me about how exciting it was; little did he know it was intentional. My point is that he was able to walk away from the game talking about how his Monk pwned the nemesis. My players walk away really excited about the game only occasionally, and that was definitely one of the times.

Ultimately, then, I think what I'm ideally looking for is a System built specifically to cater not to any particular Setting or Colour, but to player psychology. I want the System to be able to consistently and reliably develop that player-to-character relationship through hardships in the adventure. Now, the very hard part: actually figuring out what that means and how to really do it. :-.

(I *really* to start buying more games to get experience. Oy)

DB

There arent very many games that work to that player psychology aspect that you mention but there's been a lot of player advice over the years.  There are newer games that try and get the player to indicate more clearly what it is they want from the game but that clarity is working counter to that deceptiveness that fooled your buddy into believing that the NPC nemesis was just a random character.  Gurps (or other similar games) will give you a mechanical system that sounds like part of what you want, you can easily go through the process of building up characters until they get skilled enough to advance to greater challenges.  What it doesnt do is read the players to find out what is going to give them that spike of interest that make these events stand out to the player and if you dont get that it can get pretty dry and mechanical. 

Traditionally finding that spark of interest from the players has been almost entirely a GM skill and one that hasnt got a lot of attention.  Gurps has disadvantages that can signify player interest but it's hard to know how to use them or what exactly interests the player about that disadvantage (or if they just took it for the points).  Gurps lite is available as a free download if you want to check it out for that mechanical system of play,  you could also check out the Shadow of yesterday (also available free) for a game that brings that spark of interest from the players to the fore. 

Perhaps it's a good time to let this thread stand, and spawn daughter threads? The issues are trenchant enough that I think specific, play-based subtopics would be very valuable, especially if they can be critiqued and intellectually digested separately.

Daniel, it's your call; let me know.

Best, Ron

Yes .. I don't think I can continue contributing much more without some additional field research.

It's occurring to me how very much a science this is. Sure we can all imagine what we think things are like based on previous experience, but moving from idea to theory requires experimental evidence.

As a final note, I just wanted to say again to everyone who participated: WOW this has been a refreshing thread for me. Thank you.