Hi folks,

Jason wrote this in the Beeg Horseshoe thread, and I wanted to address his concerns:

Let's think of a Genevieve example, 'cause the Vieve-ster always has something interesting for me to analyze. For the moment naughty words are on (realism, genre, story, etc), 'cause it'll be what I'm thinking. I'm also not going to bother to introduce any characters, because I suspect I'll be writing a bit of a book anyway. Players are in {}: Genevieve {Jason}.

This all happened during the post game wind-down period - the time after {Al} goes home and everybody else either chit-chats in character or analyses/bitches about the session (dependent upon how well the session went). Nothing too important ever happens, but a lot of character relationships get fleshed out. This particular time something happened. I had fallen asleep on the floor in an awkward position when someone says, "Jason, Luccia {Eric} slept with Caspian {Tara}"..."Oh, shit".

The Vieve-inator and Caspian have had this growing romance. It's been pretty slow, she's pretty closed off, and doesn't much care for being touched. Luccia is the space slut.

Anyway, how we got to this point (As previously stated, my ass was passed out...but this is the tale I got):
Caspian and Luccia being the close buds they are were hanging out. Luccia started to badmouth Gilgamesh {Paul}. {Eric} thought it would be dandy if Luccia's com was bumped so Gil overheard. Gil overhead that, and the beginnings of Luccia turning her closet crush into making incredibly aggressive sexual advances towards dear old Caspian (the jury is still out on whether it was force or not)... Gil is a little shit, but a dear friend of Genevieve, so what does he do... Well, {Paul} decides Gil has to tell someone, but not until later. He'll be busy, everything will get nice and complicated by the time he gets around to spilling the beans...

Ok, now they wake me up.

Now I'm thinking, "Whoa this can go any number of terrible ways. She had just taken what she considered very serious steps towards Caspian. If this had only happened two sessions ago it wouldn't be an issue. Oh well, we're screwed now. It all depends on who tells her and how they do it. All the characters are pretty fond of her, and not of Luccia - so setting her on fire or something would break that. Hmmm...something weak and girly, make 'em feel real bad about it."

{Paul} thought it would be most amusing to tell Genevieve's visiting sister, Luir {Me Again}. Well, shit. Luir doesn't care too much for Luccia, competition for her sister's bright future and all. Guess I'll have her go confront her...Ooooo, I've been waiting for an excuse to make Luir really detest Luccia.

Luir ejects Caspian from the room and the yelling begins. {Eric} says Luccia pulls a weapon (rash and violent she is), so Luir conjures up a sword. The scene degrades into violence as Yama {Eric}, Mercedes {Rene}, and Gil show up on the scene (because the players wanted them to, all specific different motivations I suspect). It finally ends with Dusk {Me, Yet Again} - Luir's familiar, and eye of frost shaped like a girl - freezes most everybody (our little eye-girl has quite the high roll). Now why did I try this, it'd gotten to be a bit of a cluster fuck and Luccia had sucked some life out of Luir. Well, Luir and Dusk are linked - hurt one you hurt the other. 'K, perfectly good motivation to try to end this conflict now before a character actually gets nigh-killed and the focus of the story changes over to the conflict with Luir/Luccia. Let's get back on track. Genevieve has the problem here. This other thing is getting messy.

Heh. There is a little OOC talk about what happened, {Eric} says something about how it was all Luir's fault... Player conflict, hold on.

Eric: "But, she had a sword. Luccia was just defending herself."
Me: "Well, she wouldn't have had a sword if you hadn't brought out the cyber-weapons. Besides, she only threatened you with it. You sucked the life out of her. Succubus."
Eric: "But, I didn't draw a weapon."
Me "Yes, you did nancy-pants. You said it very clearly without stuttering."
Paul: "He's right you did say that."
Tara: "Yeah, but he took it back."
Eric: "Yeah, I took it back."
Me: "You did what?"
Rene: "You didn't take it back."
Me: "Err...fine, what do you want to have happened?"
Eric: "She didn't draw the arm blades."
Me: "'K, no sword then."
Eric: "Then no life drain. And Yama only attacked because Luir had a sword."
Me: "Then no fight; therefore no Yama, Mercedes, or Gil; therefore no being frozen."
Everyone Else: "Then what happens?"
Me: "Well, I guess she yells at her and leaves. No one else is involved."
Everyone Else: "That sucks."

I'm not certain exactly how many of these conversations I've had with {Eric}, but this certainly wasn't the first. What the hell {Eric} was thinking. I have no idea. I was thinking: "Grr...smashy smash, damn you {Eric}, make up your frickin' mind. It doesn't fit for Luir to be randomly violent and I don't want to screw up any of the character's relationships with her family. I guess we'll have to change what happened."

Back to the story. I think {Tara} had Caspian run off and hide...I can't quite recall. Anyway, Luir talks to Gil and decides she's going to go tell Genevieve right now. Tara was going to have Caspian tell her himself, but there was some reason why she didn't...Grr, damned memory. Anyway, Luir breaks the news and Genevieve teleports home in the middle of the night. Heh, bite me party format - I just went to a different planet.

This was the big important decision. Why did I make it? First off it would make for some damned interesting reactions in the morning. Second, it was one of the options of things she would do. The only other option that seems to fit at this point in her life was going into a blind rage and stabbing Luccia with a broken mirror. I decided Luir broke the news in a fashion that led her to flight instead of fight... It kept Luccia the bad guy, and seemed like the most interesting.

The next morning, through a series of conversations some of the crew finds out what happened and that Genevieve is missing. Jeremiah {Tara} (the starship's pilot) promptly blinks to Mooravia (not the one on Earth, Genevieve's home world) - no discussion, no warning, just "We're leaving, you're in deep shit Luccia".

They found Genevieve in the consoling company of her family. Jeremiah and Jet {Rene} go to see how she is doing - Jeremiah and Jet both get along really well with the royal family. Some time passes, the character's talk amongst themselves - deciding what to do; wondering what's going on; trying to figure out how to keep the whole thing a secret from Genevieve's crazy, man-hating, arch-mage, grandmother lest she kill Caspian; etc.

At some point Luccia realizes she fucked everything up righteously. How do we fix it? Why, we try to enlist Gil's aid and conjure up a favor from the god of thought, so they all like me again. Heh, there is very little Genevieve hates more than having her mind toyed with. She figures out that she's been charmed, has it fixed, but doesn't find out who did it. These decisions were based on pissing her off even more, but not to the set Luccia on fire point. I didn't want her to find out because that would completely trash her relationship with Gil. Jet catches her during the midst of this and decides to give her a note from Luccia and some snotty comments. They don't get along so well after that.

'K, so I could type out all the little details, but they aren't decision points and I've babbled enough already.

The next important point is when Genevieve decides she's going to stay behind. This decision causes a bit of a chain reaction in later sessions. Evil plans already brewing in my head. I made it because Genevieve didn't really provide me with any other options, besides it was incredibly dramatic. If she just got back on the ship the punch of the whole sequence would have been lost. It would also have felt terribly contrived. Everyone gets on the ship and leaves. Everyone except Genevieve, Luir, and Zel {Yes, Me Again} (Genevieve's brother). Luir stayed because she had to tend to her sister's first love-affair disaster. Zel stayed for two reasons, he worships his sister and discord was growing between him and Jeremiah over Jet. I decided to make Luir stay because I didn't have another option that fit the character. I decided to make Zel stay because I was preparing for the next phase in his personal story. I was also going to trade him out later for one of Genevieve's other brothers.

I could keep going on this particular chain of events, but that's the end of the session.

******

Well, Sim? Nar? or Neither? I'm voting for Hi-Fi|Story Now, but you already knew that.

My stance is: This isn't Nar because at no point do I give a crap about the moral or ethical implications. This isn't Sim because I have an overt metagame agenda in many of my decisions that isn't verisimilitude, but is instead 'most interesting story.'

Heh, I was just posting the split in response to M.J. post...You beat me to it.

Bankuei wrote: Jason, does that clarify "What is Nar?" a bit better for you?

M.J. Young wrote: Jason, I couldn't say for certain whether you're involved in simulationist or narrativist play; but I think your objection to narrativism is dissolving before my eyes. You say that it's not narrativist because it does not address a moral or ethical issue. I read over the entire story, and I see a story that is inherently about love, betrayal, and jealousy. How are these not moral/ethical issues? Clearly the questions raised are whether Genevieve had any right to expect Caspian to resist the wiles of Luccia given the state of their relationship, or conversely had any right to expect Luccia to respect Genevieve's interests there. Genevieve is acting in a way that says she expected them to treat her better, that what they did was unfair and personally insulting and offensive to her--and that's a moral position. Luccia is obviously acting in a manner that says she doesn't think she owes squat to Genevieve's interests, and can sleep with anyone she wants without regard for friendship--and that's a moral issue. Caspian's actions are a little less clear at this point. We can't be sure whether he thinks Genevieve has overreacted to him having a one-nighter with Luccia when any relationship he had with Genevieve was so tenuous, or whether he thinks he really messed up something wonderful that might have happened with Genevieve by allowing Luccia to seduce him--but either way, these are moral and ethical issues, matters about whether he has obligations to others and whether they have obligations to him. The whole story screams moral issue; it begs to have people decide whether the characters are treating each other well or poorly, fairly or despicably. There are certainly moral and ethical issues at the very heart of this story, and both the players and the characters appear to be exploring them.

Now, I think it's possible to "explore moral issues" in a totally removed fashion, in which case it would become sim. I can imagine some conservative moralist reading the latest pulp romances or viewing the latest popular films strictly to see what sort of morals are conveyed so he can decry them, without ever becoming intellectually involved in the books or the issues they actually do raise. So you might be doing a simulationist exploration of these issues. I don't think you are. I think you're doing narrativism. Yes, you ask what is realistic for your characters to do; but that's not counter to narrativism. I don't feel that at any point you chose things solely because they were the most likely thing for any character to do. You considered all the things your character might do, which were both possible within the setting and plausible given the characterization of that individual, and then chose the one you wanted to have happen for reasons which advanced the story and best addressed the core issues of love, betrayal, and jealousy.

So if this is your example of something that's not narrativist because it doesn't address a moral or ethical issue, I think your concepts of moral and ethical don't match those intended by the theory. Did I miss something?

Genevieve is acting in a way that says she expected them to treat her better, that what they did was unfair and personally insulting and offensive to her--and that's a moral position.

Luccia is obviously acting in a manner that says she doesn't think she owes squat to Genevieve's interests, and can sleep with anyone she wants without regard for friendship--and that's a moral issue.

Caspian's actions are a little less clear at this point. We can't be sure whether he thinks Genevieve has overreacted to him having a one-nighter with Luccia when any relationship he had with Genevieve was so tenuous, or whether he thinks he really messed up something wonderful that might have happened with Genevieve by allowing Luccia to seduce him--but either way, these are moral and ethical issues, matters about whether he has obligations to others and whether they have obligations to him.

Ok, Chris...

You've just gone and cleared up pretty much every question at the end of the post, except one thing still doesn't make sense to me:

How can you be prioritizing something you didn't do on purpose?

Hi Jason,

Glad things are clearing up here...

Because I made the choice to keep Genevieve and her family's relationship with the rest of the crew positive, and also made the choice to adhere to her personality, that created the theme. Can it be said that I addressed the moral agenda or that the moral agenda simply occurred? If it simply occurred, can it still be Nar? How can you be prioritizing something you didn't do on purpose?

I'm still not convinced this is necessarily Nar play. Author-stance Sim, used to maximize conflict within the character's confines still seems to be a good fit (especially in light of the subjective information we get). I already went through that argument in the original thread, so I won't repeat it.

Let's look at it from another way. If this is an example of Nar play, how would you expect it to differ if had been Sim?

Chris,

Something is clicking here...

As M.J. said maybe I'm reading something into moral/ethical question the theory didn't want me to.

If I take 'story addressing a moral or ethical question' and swap it out with 'story that relates to how people think, feel, and what they believe' it works for me. Theme is all of a sudden a lot broader in my mind (whether or not there is actually any technical difference between those two statements).

I guess one thing that I may be bringing to the table here is that a moral/ethical question implies, well, an answer - the question being something the player intentionally asked. But, if moral/ethical question is 'this play creates a moral/ethical question', not 'this play answers (from a certain PoV) a moral/ethical question', then it just seems a lot less restrictive in my mind.

But, as you've mostly helpfully said a few times - it needn't be intentional. If you don't hear the question, you can't answer it; but I'm getting the impression that's OK. It can still be Nar and fall on deaf ears.

This makes me ask the question of how Sim|Explore:Char and Nar|Explore:Char can possibly be seperate entities, other than perhaps their committement to Fidelity. No matter what, the player is going to be bringing statements about how people feel and what they believe into the actions of the character. Even unwavering Actor stance adherance to the character's personality is going to bring at least an unintentional theme into the character's actions. I suppose that you could avoid a theme by never having conflict, but then you'd have a whole lot of nothing happening - you wouldn't really be playing.

Which brings me back to Horseshoe 2 (I guess it's a square). If all this fits then it seems like just more reasons that support the Square Horseshoe Theory.

Geez, I seem to be having a major problem distiguishing between the Preview and Submit buttons today.

Anyway...

To me, the grey area of Sim|Explore:Char / Nar|Explore:Char maps more concisely to Hi-Fi|Theme than the existing pile of jargon that includes Nar/Sim Hybrid, Nar/Sim Congruent, Abashed Nar/Sim, El Dorado, Vanilla Narrativism, and whatever else I'm missing (or may not entirely understand).

The intentional/unintentional mix up may also clear up my problem with where comedic decisions fall. If players can unintentionally address a theme, then they can be motivated solely by thinking of something wacky to say and still have it come out like the Simpsons (which has theme ahoy!). If the comedic decision doesn't create a theme or isn't a humorous solution to a challenge I'm still confused as to where to put in the GNS model.

However, I'm not confused as to where to put it in the Square Horseshoe Theory (I think I'm going to call it that until Mike names it) - at the mid/neutral point on the Conflict axis.

So, am I off base here or does this all fit?

jdagna wrote: I'm still not convinced this is necessarily Nar play. Author-stance Sim, used to maximize conflict within the character's confines still seems to be a good fit (especially in light of the subjective information we get). I already went through that argument in the original thread, so I won't repeat it.

jdagna wrote: I think I'm mostly in agreement with you, except I do think it's Sim. In fact, about halfway through the story, I was thinking "Wait, this is just Author-stance Sim."

And I don't think Author stance is necessarily in conflict with Sim play. Here's why: almost every single D&D character reaches a point where he's so rich, he could buy a kingdom and retire. But instead he seeks out the tomb of so-and-so for another boatload of treasure and weapons, despite the obvious risk.

Now, Gam and Nar players don't have a problem with this. Certain characters would make this choice even in Actor-stance Sim. But a significant number of players choose to take the adventure, even though it doesn't entirely fit with their the only time I've ever seen a player retire such a character was when he wanted someting new to play with.

In other words, most Sim players are using Author stance to motivate their characters to continue adventuring. Why? Because it's more fun than role-playing tax collection from the serfs and players want to have fun. And the choice to retire the character is often an Author-stance Sim decision. It can make sense for the character, but needs the player's impetus.

In your case, your desire for fun and drama was shaping the character's actions. There was still a clear commitment to the character, and some reliance on Actor stance, but you knew that by encouraging certain reactions you could get the most drama rom the situation. Of course, in this case, you were controlling multiple characters and it's almost impossible to operate strictly in Author stance with multiple characters (in my experience).

jdagna wrote: Let's look at it from another way. If this is an example of Nar play, how would you expect it to differ if had been Sim?

I feel like I've been a tremendous influence on a thread to which I've not posted; I have to rectify that.

Sometimes I go bowling. I'm a terrible bowler, and sometimes I play with people who are really quite good. That means I don't ever expect to win. However, I still play to win; the object of the game is still gamist, an effort to do your best and show that you can do it, even if the stated object is to score more points than anyone else, which I know to be unachievable for me in that situation.

In the same sense, people playing D&D often think they're creating stories when they're actually following the game's rather gamist priorities, playing to win. Not all are doing that, but many are.

Aesop told fables, and they all ended with, the moral of the story is.... Authors never do that today; it's too trite. Yet they still write stories that have morals, and we as readers still discover those morals from reading.

Sorcerer is rightly hailed as a powerfully narrativist game which explores the question "what would you do for what you want". Now, let's suppose that we got someone interested in playing this game, but we didn't tell them that part. Instead we created characters, kickers, relationship maps--all the stuff that's needed to get started. Let's suppose our players now how to roleplay; they've played D&D, maybe V:tM, something else. They start playing Sorcerer, and they quickly start trying to get "what they want", and just as quickly start building up the humanity problems, the whole mess of Sorcerer mechanics that influence play. Before you know it, they're creating a story which is about "what would you do for what you want", without ever having really asked the question.

You didn't consciously ask the questions you addressed; but you specifically answered them through your character actions. Genevieve clearly declared to Luccia and Caspian that they hurt her, that they treated her in a manner that was unfair, unethical, immoral--entirely inappropriate for people who supposedly are in relationships, because relationships inherently contain obligations, and those obligations are themselves moral, such that observing them or violating them is a moral issue. So in a sense you did ask the question, and you did approach it--you just did it at a level below consciousness.

Tolkien's Rings raises many moral, ethical, and spiritual issues, and provides answers to them. From what's been said about his approach, he probably didn't once ask himself how he could bring these issues into focus in his story. He wrote the story, and let the issues emerge. In fact, he started writing before he knew where he was going with it, and the epic story developed in his mind after he had begun.

In much the same way, you're attracted automatically to what interests you; what interests you are moral and ethical questions, but you don't label them that way. You aren't exploring them through some philosophical treatise which keeps them at arm's length at all times; you're using story to become involved with them.

I don't know what you're doing between the issues, as it were (although I suspect the issues overlap and intertwine, as all great stories do). Some time back, John Kim described a game he was running for kids, and the way in which moral stories arose during play. I suggested at that time that he was running a game that ran as simulationism between the stories, but that when something latched onto the group they shifted to narrativism, and the game followed them. I see that kind of play in Multiverser quite a bit, as some players move between modes in response to what kinds of elements are available to explore. On the other hand, you could be playing narrativist all the time. (One telling factor to that would be, if there aren't any such issue stories happening, do you sort of fast forward to the beginning of the next one or launch a new complication to make the story "interesting", or do you play the mundane events as enjoyably and rigorously until something else begins?)

So yes, people have metagame priorities and bring them into play all the time without recognizing them; in fact, I'd say that most people most of the time fail to recognize their own metagame priorities--that's the entire point and function of GNS, that people have these priorities and use them and even fight over them, without ever realizing that they're there. It's when we stop and recognize that we're not getting along because one person wants challenge and victory, another wants realistic flow of events, and a third wants great engaging issue-centered stories, that we can begin to understand why we're fighting.

Make sense?

--M. J. Young

Somehow I managed to write that last post and put it in preview mode, and then just left it there for an hour or so while I looked at other posts. Thus people have added to the thread in my absence.

The most interesting addition is perhaps

what Justin Dagna wrote: If this is an example of Nar play, how would you expect it to differ if had been Sim?

Hi folks,

Just have to chime in and say MJ hits a lot of points on this thread.

Justin-

Consider this:

Explicitly stated by Jason is player decisions that are not based on character decisions, or simulation of X. I'm not sure what rules or system he's running with, but the "comm system" example is rather a perfect example. It was a conscious decision of a player to institute the accidental eavesdropping, without any sort of "Roll % for accidentally leaving your radio on", or any such thing. I also don't think that such a thing would be genre expected, unless perhaps they're pulling out some sort of SOAP-like game.

At least twice, player decisions are heavily influenced on what would set up a strong twist or "Bang" in terms of driving conflict and confrontation, the sorts of things where character actions become those Thematic statements.

If we were going to take raw Sim play, the exploration would have been the focus. In this case, the major focus for player decisions is going to be "Does this fit my character + Does this fit the genre expectations/plausibility?" Instead we have "Does this fit my character + Is it interesting?"

I'd say all of our Sim/Nar questions evaporate in the face of Big Horseshoe 2. We've got High Fidelity/Nar play going on strong. My view, I go with Big Horseshoe and all the ugly "Where's the Sim/Nar boundary?" questions disappear.

Chris

cruciel wrote: This makes me ask the question of how Sim|Explore:Char and Nar|Explore:Char can possibly be seperate entities, other than perhaps their committement to Fidelity. No matter what, the player is going to be bringing statements about how people feel and what they believe into the actions of the character.

M.J., Chris,

Makes sense. If I'm digesting everything correctly I'm in agreement that the overall play was indeed Nar.

The question is was my play Nar...I think yes, which brings me to Justin's question...

I think why this example gets so Sim/Nar fuzzy is because of the multiple characters.

In the game this example is drawn from I've noticed these weird definitions for character. You don't have PC's (protagonists), NPC's (supporting cast), GMC's (GM controlled protagonists/antagonists) you've got a sort of sliding scale from NPC - PC. The more PC a character is the more owned it is by a single character, the more script immunity is has, the more permanence it has, the more alive it is, and the more verisimilitude the other players expect from the character's actions. It's sort of a strange little catch 22 - the less like a protagonist the character is the more Nar you can play them.

So, we've got Genevieve who's about as PC as it gets. I think her actions get played very Sim, even though I essentially choose the actions by adjusting her surroundings. But, Luir on the other hand was primarily in the game as development for Genevieve. At this point in the game Luir is less PC. I choose actions for Luir where my primary motivation is to influence the story of the protagonist (Genevieve). In a way, this makes Luir like a piece of setting for the protagonist. Though, not technically because she is more PC than NPC and the stance used is Author not Director in the following example:

I wrote: This was the big important decision. Why did I make it? First off it would make for some damned interesting reactions in the morning. Second, it was one of the options of things she would do. The only other option that seems to fit at this point in her life was going into a blind rage and stabbing Luccia with a broken mirror. I decided Luir broke the news in a fashion that led her to flight instead of fight... It kept Luccia the bad guy, and seemed like the most interesting.

I wrote: The next important point is when Genevieve decides she's going to stay behind. This decision causes a bit of a chain reaction in later sessions. Evil plans already brewing in my head. I made it because Genevieve didn't really provide me with any other options, besides it was incredibly dramatic.

Justin wrote: If this is an example of Nar play, how would you expect it to differ if had been Sim?

talysman wrote: I think Sim with emphasis on Char is going to seem Nar if you bring "statements about how people feel and what they believe" into the Nar definition. but I think that's the wrong approach. what makes a Nar game Nar is the players make important moral decisions. they may define their characters in such a way that the character never realizes where the road they are taking is really heading.

the classic example, which I think Ron offered once as an explanation, is a Sim paladin versus a Nar paladin. the Sim paladin does good things because that's how you play a paladin if you are faithful to the paladin's concept (Fidelity to Character). the Nar paladin will be faced with a choice where doing good may involve violating the paladin's oath.

Narrativism is moral conflict. which will you choose: murder to protect your homeland, or diplomacy that could get you killed? increase profits at any cost, or lose your business because you won't bulldoze that housing development? it's not about how the character feels at all: the character's feelings and beliefs are the Sim part, not the Nar part.

one of the other comments in this thread was about how moral and ethical questions imply an answer. you may be thinking about a moral or ethical code, which is indeed an answered offered to moral questions. Nar play does imply that there will be an answer, but the total actions of the character are, in fact, one such answer that a player offers; beyond that, there is no attempt to codify which answer is right.

I think one of the problems with the Beeg Horseshoe is that it seems to make the terminology easier to understand, but just leads into the same traps of misunderstanding that have arisen before. unless we can somehow emphasize that the Conflict axis (Challenge/Theme) is about conflict on a metagame level that is reflected in-game only incidentally, we'll get all the same "is Narrativism really a seperate mode?" and "is Simulationism really a seperate mode?" questions that we've already seen.

Chris,

I think I'm in agreement on all counts.

Bankuei wrote: I'm not sure what rules or system he's running with, but the "comm system" example is rather a perfect example. It was a conscious decision of a player to institute the accidental eavesdropping, without any sort of "Roll % for accidentally leaving your radio on", or any such thing.

cruciel wrote: The unfortunate thing for GNS, and the fortunate thing for Conflict/Fidelity, is that I now see pure Sim play as a very tiny amount of play - as opposed to the awesome beast I once thought it was.

I think the key here is that I let my story goals define Luir's personality, as opposed to what would have been most accurate - which in this case would have been a completely arbitrary decision and I most likely would have made the same one anyway.

M. J. Young wrote: In much the same way, you're attracted automatically to what interests you; what interests you are moral and ethical questions, but you don't label them that way. You aren't exploring them through some philosophical treatise which keeps them at arm's length at all times; you're using story to become involved with them.

I don't know what you're doing between the issues, as it were (although I suspect the issues overlap and intertwine, as all great stories do). Some time back, John Kim described a game he was running for kids, and the way in which moral stories arose during play. I suggested at that time that he was running a game that ran as simulationism between the stories, but that when something latched onto the group they shifted to narrativism, and the game followed them.

jdagna wrote: I don't want to argue with your interpretation of your particular play... but I think this situation is not always an instance of Nar play. In fact, I make decisions like this all the time and consider it Sim play with emphasis on fun.

jdagna wrote: There's this growing tendency to see Gamism as blue dye and Narrativism as red dye, and to say that anything not perfectly purple or perfectly white is just another shade of red or blue. However, GNS speaks in terms of priorities. Not every decision serves the main priority. You could make 49% of your decisions in a Nar sense and 51% in a Sim sense and still be prioritized according to a Sim mode.

[snip]

Maybe I'm more Narrativist than I think, but I firmly believe the presence of Author/Director stance and an interest in the story's quality can exist under a Simulationist priority. This is why the GNS essay specifies that only one priority can manifest at a time. Whatever takes precedence is the mode of play. Analyzing secondary priorities leaves the behavioral clarity of GNS behind and I'm not convinced it adds very much to our understanding of play.

Hi there,

Chris and M.J. have done most of the work already! I'll pick out a few phrases and concerns, in a way which I usually scold people for doing, and for which I apologize in advance.

cruciel wrote,

How can you be prioritizing something you didn't do on purpose?

If I take 'story addressing a moral or ethical question' and swap it out with 'story that relates to how people think, feel, and what they believe' it works for me. Theme is all of a sudden a lot broader in my mind (whether or not there is actually any technical difference between those two statements).

Ron has done such a fine simple summary, I hesitate to write more; but there was something in Jason's post I wanted to highlight.

He wrote: I'm getting the impression here that that 49% is actually what makes it Nar, because those Nar decisions could be said to be in conflict with a Sim priority, but the 51% Sim decisions are not necessarily in conflict with the Nar priority.

Ron Edwards wrote: Justin's swap is 100% valid. I consider the first phrase and the second phrase to be synonymous. This is a lot like Aidan's recent question that all came down to his preference for the word "values" over "morality/ethics," which I also consider synonymous.

M.J wrote:

He wrote: I'm getting the impression here that that 49% is actually what makes it Nar, because those Nar decisions could be said to be in conflict with a Sim priority, but the 51% Sim decisions are not necessarily in conflict with the Nar priority.

Exactly.

cruciel wrote: That pretty much clears up my final question. Though, the fact that you can have less apparent Nar and still have it be technically Nar (because of the way Nar demands a decision be made) makes Hybrid play that cannot be defined as Congruent non-existent in my mind (making me wonder why we need the term Hybrid). It's like Nar is California and Sim is Vermont in the electoral college.

. . .

I think my questions about Nar have been answered. Everyone has been most helpful and I appreciate it. Does anyone else have anything unfinished that doesn't fit in one of the square horseshoe threads? 'Cause if I'm still on the mark, I'm good to go.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: I just wanted to expand a bit on the less apparent yet still technically Nar bit - which is, the exact same can be true of Sim or Game in appropriate situations (California and Vermont can flip-flop). It's not that Nar decisions in particular have this attribute. This was a big part of "understanding" GNS for me - that the decisions that are made when it is NOT possible to make a decision that is (to try out terminology I'm still a bit fuzzy on) Congruent that indicate a GNS preference. A Hybrid would presumeably be when decisions made in those circumstances are not almost-exclusively from one of G, N and S.

Jason,

The point I was trying to make is that it is entirely possible (IMO) to switch every "Sim" and "Nar" in your most recent post, and it still makes sense. If, at those key points where it is not possible to make a decision that is Congruent, you almost always make Sim decisions, your play will end up as Sim - even though there may have also been plenty of Nar-possible stuff going on.

Now, your point about how a Nar decision in some of those crucial moments can end up really bending play as a whole towards Nar seems pretty valid to me, and it is interesting how the nature of a "real" Nar decision has such ripple effects. But I'm not sure it's all THAT different from what happens with Sim decisions.

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: The point I was trying to make is that it is entirely possible (IMO) to switch every "Sim" and "Nar" in your most recent post, and it still makes sense. If, at those key points where it is not possible to make a decision that is Congruent, you almost always make Sim decisions, your play will end up as Sim - even though there may have also been plenty of Nar-possible stuff going on.

Now, your point about how a Nar decision in some of those crucial moments can end up really bending play as a whole towards Nar seems pretty valid to me, and it is interesting how the nature of a "real" Nar decision has such ripple effects. But I'm not sure it's all THAT different from what happens with Sim decisions.

cruciel wrote: Ah, I see what you mean. Hmmm...I'm not sure, the Nar ripple seems to have had a pretty strong effect in my example. Does it for everyone? I don't know. Sticking with that analogy ('cause I think it's neat) I can see Sim play as a still pond - unmolested by outside influences. In my case a very deep and dark one. If I keep occasionally drop in little Nar pebbles I'm never going to have that perfect stillness again. And if the Gamist wind starts to pick up, my little ripples are gonna get all screwed up.

cruciel wrote: Ah, I see what you mean. Hmmm...I'm not sure, the Nar ripple seems to have had a pretty strong effect in my example. Does it for everyone? I don't know. Sticking with that analogy ('cause I think it's neat) I can see Sim play as a still pond - unmolested by outside influences. In my case a very deep and dark one. If I keep occasionally drop in little Nar pebbles I'm never going to have that perfect stillness again. And if the Gamist wind starts to pick up, my little ripples are gonna get all screwed up.

It's exactly that I see some Sim in all play that has me posting the new Model, Justin. I agree with you a lot.

Mike

Hi there,

This is a response to one of John Kim's points:

I guess the point here is that moral/ethical issues will come up -- in fact, may even be extremely likely -- simply from playing characters the way that one envisions them. Now, the resulting story might not be a well-structured delving of that issue, but it may still be rife with issues. I'm not sure what this means in terms of theory, but I thought I should say it.

Ron Edwards wrote:

I guess the point here is that moral/ethical issues will come up -- in fact, may even be extremely likely -- simply from playing characters the way that one envisions them. Now, the resulting story might not be a well-structured delving of that issue, but it may still be rife with issues. I'm not sure what this means in terms of theory, but I thought I should say it.

You seem pretty hipped on the "intent" issue, John. Intent means absolutely nothing to me or to the current model. What you describe falls into the category of Narrativism, if resolving the issues in question turns out to be the identifiable priority of the people in play, eventually. From everything you've presented in your many posts about real play, that seems to be the case among your group.

Ron Edwards wrote: I am absolutely opposed to verbiage like "Play against one's character for the good of the story" to describe Narrativism. This is nothing but word salad; it carries no content at all. I think it's a referent to some form of dysfunctional play involving power-struggles over outcomes, but that's about as close to sense as I can make of it.

Yay! I love an agreement.

Best,
Ron

Justin,


First off, I'm personally in agreement with what you've said in your post, and hence why Mike's model speaks to me.

jdagna wrote: Going by the this metaphor, you could design a game scenario with lots of challenge in it then push the car down the hill and let gravity do its work. Likewise, you can load up thematic potential and then give the car a little push down the hill to see what happens. As long as play remains internally-driven, you're still dealing with Sim play, aren't you?

I think I'm understanding where my interpretation of GNS has unintentionally differed from other people's. I've been defining priority differently, by looking at a priority as an average trend in decisions instead of a way of making a few significant (apparently sometimes unconscious) decisions.

With that said, I can see:
1) How Nar play is actually broader and Sim play narrower than I'd thought GNS defined them.
2) Exactly what nits the horseshoe theory is trying to pick. I'm starting to see where there's a need for it.

And now... I get to re-read everything so I can re-examine it. Anyone found a way to pause time for a week or so?

Anyway, thanks to everyone, Mike and Jason in particular, who helped with my questions

cruciel wrote: The thing here seems to be that, in my example, the play had a lot of Sim elements, but because Nar decisions were made the play was ultimately Nar. The nature of Nar decisions, even a small amount of them, is that they shape the story. The play here could only have been Sim if I had made no Nar decisions. So, if hybrid play incorporates both Nar/Sim decisions (for example), then the so-called hybrid play is actually Nar play, because Nar has been allowed to shape the story.