Read some of the things about power dynamics in this forum, and thought I would delurk and post an essay about power in RPGs, and how it relates to system, setting, and player roles.

Before I begin, a couple of notes.
I am unfamiliar with GNS terminology, and thus I may misuse it. Because of this, I'm going to try to use my own terms (defined below). If these have GNS equivalents, please let me know. I am aware that GNS are supposed to represent play-styles, rather than systems, but here I am using them in the colloquial form to represent system design methods.
I don't think that I'm the first person to, say, not see wargames as the baseline of RPGs. If all of this has already been thought of, that's spiffy-cool. I haven't read the entire archives of the Forge. Point me to the essay.
By "player" I mean any participant in an RPG, including the "GM" or "GMs" if the game system calls for them.
By "power" I refer to the ability to manipulate the fantasy world of the game, either through out of game or in game methods.
By "conflict" I mean any disagreement.

It seems to me that wargames are often seen as the "baseline form" of RPGs, and that all the other features of an RPG are add-ons, outgrowths, or evolutions from this basic form. I think that this view is somewhat misguided. I think that the baseline of the RPG is the pretend games that we play as children. You know, "I'll be a knight, you be a dragon, and then I'll kill you and save the princess." "But I was the dragon last time!"
The key interest, and problem, with these games is that all players have unlimited power. While this can turn out to be really great, in the case that everyone doesn't step on each other's toes, it can also be really awful in the "I shot you" "no you didn't!" "did too" "did not" sort of way.
I believe that all game systems, social contracts, "modes of play," and such are methods of restricting player power in assorted ways. I don't think that restricting power is a bad thing, just that the realization makes classifying restrictions much much easier. In fact, without an extraordinary amount of out of game trust (which restricts power in its own ways), I feel that power restrictions are necessary for an enjoyable game.
That said, I'm going to elaborate on how various RPG modes look to this view:
The classic "GM/player" division is a way of heavily restricting player power. Most of the players, in such a scenario, are only responsible for a single character in the scenario, and the GM is responsible for everything else. When a player conflicts with another player, system comes into play to resolve the disagreement. This can be done through a number of methods.
Most "Narrativist" games that I have seen mess with this mode of power restriction in one way or another. Lighter Nar games allow players some control of the external world and events, through means assorted means of player power distribution, while keeping the GM essentially in charge (The Pool, say, and its Monologues of Victory). Hardcore Nar games do away with the position of GM all-together, and modulate power over the world via some other game system (I am thinking of Universalis here). The two keys here seem to be that power remains restricted (despite the fears of more traditional players) and that the power distribution is largely at an out-of-game level.
Most well-designed Gamist games restrict power via the GM/player structure AND a carefully plotted out system of exactly what your character is and is not allowed to do. For instance, if I say "my character spins around, killing everything in sight," it is a violation of Gamist principles unless my character has a "whirlwind attack" ability, in which case, it is explicitly allowed and, in fact, no one can counteract it without their own trump ability. Two notions:
1) A pure gamist game is wildly dull -- or, at least, it plays very much like Diablo. Most "Gamist" players, I reckon, are thus NOT playing for purely Gamist ends.
2) On that note, Gamism and Narrativism are NOT impossible to mix. All you have to do is allow distributed narrative power within an explicit, power-balanced, ability system. For instance, a player could have the power "Flashback: Spend two Story Points and set up a flashback scene that pertains the present scene." You're just distributing narrative power to the players in a gamist way.
Simulationism is a method of restricting player power through genre. For instance, the old Marvel Super Heroes RPG (a good example of genre simulation) punishes players for murder and committing crimes, while it encourages players to maintain their character's "normal human" lives via rewards. This models very well "what happens in the comics," but it is a restriction on player power. Similarly, a game which is trying to be "realistic" restricts player power by preventing them from doing things which couldn't normally happen. "You can't survive a 20000 foot fall! It's unrealistic!"

Upon reflection, there is a lot more to be done with this. Here are some questions:
What other methods of restricting player power are there? How useful are they to assorted goals?
The "system--" a broad category that covers resolution, mechanics, setting, and genre, seems to have a share of its narrative power, which can be reduced by calling upon one of the above. For instance, a gamist limitation on a system is that it must be power-balanced and "fair." A simulationist response is that it must fit genre.
Could one see all games (not just RPGs) as merely highly-restricted subsets of this? What sorts of other things could be highly restricted subsets? Arts? To what degree is this useful at all?
This essay mainly addresses the distribution of power. But it does not address the goals of play. Is the type of power distribution linked to the goals? How? In what situations are what methods useful? I think anothe short essay on this might be forthcoming from my brain.

Thoughts?

yrs--
--Ben Lehman

Nice to see a returnee. :-)

Ben Lehman wrote:
I don't think that I'm the first person to, say, not see wargames as the baseline of RPGs. If all of this has already been thought of, that's spiffy-cool. I haven't read the entire archives of the Forge. Point me to the essay.

...
It seems to me that wargames are often seen as the "baseline form" of RPGs, and that all the other features of an RPG are add-ons, outgrowths, or evolutions from this basic form. I think that this view is somewhat misguided. I think that the baseline of the RPG is the pretend games that we play as children. You know, "I'll be a knight, you be a dragon, and then I'll kill you and save the princess." "But I was the dragon last time!"

I believe that all game systems, social contracts, "modes of play," and such are methods of restricting player power in assorted ways. I don't think that restricting power is a bad thing, just that the realization makes classifying restrictions much much easier. In fact, without an extraordinary amount of out of game trust (which restricts power in its own ways), I feel that power restrictions are necessary for an enjoyable game.

Most "Narrativist" games that I have seen mess with this mode of power restriction in one way or another.

Lighter Nar games allow players some control of the external world and events, through means assorted means of player power distribution, while keeping the GM essentially in charge (The Pool, say, and its Monologues of Victory).

Hardcore Nar games do away with the position of GM all-together, and modulate power over the world via some other game system (I am thinking of Universalis here). The two keys here seem to be that power remains restricted (despite the fears of more traditional players) and that the power distribution is largely at an out-of-game level.

Two notions:
1) A pure gamist game is wildly dull -- or, at least, it plays very much like Diablo. Most "Gamist" players, I reckon, are thus NOT playing for purely Gamist ends.

2) On that note, Gamism and Narrativism are NOT impossible to mix. All you have to do is allow distributed narrative power within an explicit, power-balanced, ability system. For instance, a player could have the power "Flashback: Spend two Story Points and set up a flashback scene that pertains the present scene." You're just distributing narrative power to the players in a gamist way.

What other methods of restricting player power are there? How useful are they to assorted goals?

The "system--" a broad category that covers resolution, mechanics, setting, and genre, seems to have a share of its narrative power, which can be reduced by calling upon one of the above. For instance, a gamist limitation on a system is that it must be power-balanced and "fair." A simulationist response is that it must fit genre.

Could one see all games (not just RPGs) as merely highly-restricted subsets of this? What sorts of other things could be highly restricted subsets? Arts? To what degree is this useful at all?

This essay mainly addresses the distribution of power. But it does not address the goals of play. Is the type of power distribution linked to the goals? How? In what situations are what methods useful?

I think anothe short essay on this might be forthcoming from my brain.

Hi Ben,

Glad to hear from you.

Taking a cue from Mike, here's the original Lumpley Principle Thread: Vincent's Standard Rant: Power, Credibility and Assent. Try it, you'll like it.

The way you're looking at GNS seems to be that the different goals of the styles are used to restrict what participants can do. This may be 6 of one and 1/2 dozen of another between that and what Mike said. Coherent games, games that (mostly) do lead players to experience GNS conflicts, would both promote/discourage certain types of decisions and instances of play.

What you might be saying, which is against canon, is that any certain distribution of directorial/gm/creative/authoritative power is implicit in any of the three styles. It is explicitly stated that all of them can be used with any breakdown of authority. What you call power, sounds like Exploration to me from the main GNS essay.

But I'd be all for a discussion of how the different distributions work within the GNS or any other paradigm. In my experience, sim/vanilla narrativist play(world-based exploration with emergent plot and openness to exploring theme through character) works well with a very even distribution of all types of creative power (about system/world/character/narrative etc) among players.

I would think that gamist play(which needs a stricter definition than the one in the initial post in this thread, but then Ron is hard at work on that essay even now...), would be a heck of a lot easier with just one cook in the kitchen, I mean, gm.

Regards,
Emily Care

First things first -- using GNS terminology in the essay was misguided, and I would like people to ignore the fact that I used it.
The first type of power limitation I talked about was, essentially, "Director Power Limitation" (you can only take director power if you...) not Narrativism.
The second is "Ability-based power limitation," not Gamism.
The third is "Setting and genre based power limitation," not Simulationism.

GNS represents the goals of play, rather than the apportioning of power. GNS stance is what you do with the power, rather than otherwise. I think. I am still wildly confused about the model, especially the definitions of N and S, and I will be splitting that off into a thread in the GNS forum shortly.

Other responses-- Thanks, Emily and Mike!

Wargaming history: I am aware of the history of RPGs. What I was trying to say (rather clumsily) was that the RPG, stripped down to its most basic, is a play-pretend game, rather than a wargame. And, given that recreational wargames are descended from "Little Wars" which is descended from imaginary play, it is also the historical roots. ;-)

Lumpley Principle: Cool thread! I am definitely in the Valamir school of "system as extra player." More on that later.

Gamism: I have an essay boiling inside me on why Gamism is a very good thing, and a satisfying RPG play style. It's called "the Gentleman Gamist" and it should be posted shortly to the GNS forum. But, what I was getting at was that in-system power gaining (also known as minmaxing) is not necessarily done for Gamist ends. This is often an assumption, and I think it is flawed. More on that in afformentioned essay, and below.

So I have thought a bit more about what I was getting at with the post, and it is this:

We can divide a role-playing game into two things: A power-distribution method and the goal of play.

A game without a power distribution method gives all of its players infinite power, which is a problem. Thus, almost all games have a setting which provides context as to what is possible and a system which provides resolution to disputes and possibly more, depending on how much power is invested in it. The power distribution mechanic can be explicit, like in Universalis, or implicit, like in many games. It can also be very weak (such as most "systemless" GM fiat games) or very strong (such as in chess.) There are assorted ways of doing this -- many games use several. I would like to try to enumerate them, but I do not know if they are enumerable.

Games also have goals -- usually the goal is to have fun. The question then becomes how people should act to have fun, which I think leads into the three modes of play. Note that there is a subtle tension here between the goals of the players and the goal of play. The best example I can think of is go -- as a player, you play to win, but the goal of the game is to have an interesting, challenging game. Hence, there are handicaps and other such things. Maintaining seperate player and game goals requires a cognitive dissonance which I think might make for interesting discussion.

I think that this model can be applied to all games, not just RPGs. It might be possible to apply it to other human endeavors, as well...

Is this more or less clear?

yrs--
--Ben

Two quick things.

The first is that, if I understand aright, I agree that the gamist, narrativist, and simulationist models can be extended beyond role playing games. One sees the gamist and simulationist aspects frequently in wargaming (the difference between playing the game to win versus playing it to see what would happen), and to a considerably lesser degree in board games (most of which are gamist, although rarely simulationist design issues arise). Narrativism doesn't usually appear outside role playing games generally, although that may be primarily because there's not much you can do with it in a board game.

The second is that I think what you are calling "power" has come to take the term "credibility" in local usage. By "credibility" we mean whose statement of the reality within the game is taken as correct. At one point credibility was distinguished from "authority". The suggestion was that rules and possibly other printed materials such as modules were authoritative, in that those in the game could appeal to them to resolve arguments, but that the application of those rules was still determined by the distribution of credibility in play. In most games, the referee's interpretation is regarded as the most credible, that is, once the rule is read it means whatever he says it means (and if you think he's crazy, you're in essence deciding that he's not a good referee because he doesn't follow the rules in the way you understand them).

At first I wasn't going to mention this distinction; but your reference to the power levels of characters seemed a good reason to distinguish the terms--a fortieth level paladin may be a powerful character, but this doesn't necessarily give his player more credibility. Also, if you search for credibility you might find more insights into it, as I know the term has been used numerous times since it was coined.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: The second is that I think what you are calling "power" has come to take the term "credibility" in local usage. By "credibility" we mean whose statement of the reality within the game is taken as correct. At one point credibility was distinguished from "authority". The suggestion was that rules and possibly other printed materials such as modules were authoritative, in that those in the game could appeal to them to resolve arguments, but that the application of those rules was still determined by the distribution of credibility in play. In most games, the referee's interpretation is regarded as the most credible, that is, once the rule is read it means whatever he says it means (and if you think he's crazy, you're in essence deciding that he's not a good referee because he doesn't follow the rules in the way you understand them).

At first I wasn't going to mention this distinction; but your reference to the power levels of characters seemed a good reason to distinguish the terms--a fortieth level paladin may be a powerful character, but this doesn't necessarily give his player more credibility. Also, if you search for credibility you might find more insights into it, as I know the term has been used numerous times since it was coined.

Ben,

You said: "[Power is] The ability to effect the fantasy world."

And then:

Ben Lehman wrote: I think that "power" may be slightly larger than "credibility." Credibility tracks out of game social dynamics, "power" tracks all things that effect the gameworld, inside the game or out. You could argue that all power is actually credibility, but I think that in some extreme cases (Chess, say) this is blatantly untrue.

Hi Ben.

You wrote: In that case, the player of a 40th level paladin IS granted more power than the player of a 20th level paladin

Ben Lehman wrote: Wargaming history: I am aware of the history of RPGs. What I was trying to say (rather clumsily) was that the RPG, stripped down to its most basic, is a play-pretend game, rather than a wargame. And, given that recreational wargames are descended from "Little Wars" which is descended from imaginary play, it is also the historical roots. ;-)

Ben Lehman wrote: A game without a power distribution method gives all of its players infinite power, which is a problem.