Many games have mechanics that support one mode of GNS play. Victory points, hero points, and the like for gamist criteria, and Luck or points to manipulate the story for narrativist criteria.

My question: what would such metagame mechanics look like if they were intended to support Simulationist agendas?

Aidan

I think one of the points in Sim play is the absence of metagame mechanics that allow player-initiated plot changes (as opposed to character-initiated ones).

However, you can work those kinds of things in if you try to minimize the metagame aspects. For example, state that some poeple are fated to do important things, and these people are by definition the player characters. Thus, players can earn Fate points and spend them to gain some effect. In fact, WFRP uses Fate points by that name as a way to keep characters from dying too frequently. This kind of a justification could work well in a sim-based Greek mythology game, for example, where people really did believe in Fate.

Many games give extra experience as a reward for playing in character and doing other Simmy kinds of things. But usually the experience gets spent to improve character effectiveness, which is more of a Gamist reward for Sim play.

But, really, you'd need a mechanic that rewarded Sim play and aided Sim play. Very few of them do.

jdagna wrote: I think one of the points in Sim play is the absence of metagame mechanics that allow player-initiated plot changes (as opposed to character-initiated ones).

and then he wrote:
Many games give extra experience as a reward for playing in character and doing other Simmy kinds of things. But usually the experience gets spent to improve character effectiveness, which is more of a Gamist reward for Sim play.

But, really, you'd need a mechanic that rewarded Sim play and aided Sim play. Very few of them do.

I'm a pretty strong advocate of player creation; a player that does something quite Simmy is allowed to let the implications of that thing spill into the world at large. If you describe something well, then it's true in a wider sense, and has deeper implications that you can Explore.

Let me put this into a very direct, crunchy contect: Charms in Exalted. Charms are much like D&D3e Feats; they are localized rules shifts that permit you to do special things. There is a strong Exploration of System thing here; the game encourages player development of Charms, and has a mechanic by which Charms may be combined to form Combos.

A player who creates a set of sufficiently interesting set of Charms has the added Explorative capacity to create interesting Combos out of them. Granted, this probably isn't the main thrust of the rules, but it's sufficently interesting that there's a lot of fan attention paid to it.

This sounds really interesting, and I'll definitely have to go investigate them. It could be useful in Crux.

But, as I understand them, Feats aren't metagame. Are Charms?

I suppose they can be turned into metagame currency easy enough - just present such items as rewards of play.

Aidan

Aidan, I don't think that metagame mechanics are completely anathema in sim play; but they have to be effectively integrated such that the seem like part of the world, not some external events or interferences.

Years ago I was party leader in a D&D-style game in which I had some problems. The problems were that there were players in the game whom I found personally annoying, and there were characters in the game whom my character found unreliable, and sometimes, but not always, these corresponded. I felt I needed a method to keep my character's opinion of his individual party members separate from my own opinion of the players running them. To this end, I pulled up a spread sheet and listed each character across the top; then as play progressed I recorded events, actions, and decisions related to the characters which would reasonably have influenced my character's opinions of them, and scored these on a scale of how much positive or negative shift that would create. I now had a score for each character, a way of determining how much confidence my character would place in each of these, to which I could turn when I needed to make decisions about who to trust. That's a simulationist mechanic; it provides an out-of-game method of controling and understanding an in-game reality. Obviously, my character would never say, "well, Noar is a 45 on my chart, and Zetar is only a 33, so we'll give Noar this job." He would say, "I have confidence in both of these people, but I have more confidence in Noar, so I'll rely on him for this, and on Zetar for something less essential."

In my Game Ideas Unlimited article about Rewards, I suggest what I think might work as a metagame advancement mechanic in a simulationist game. I start the players as members of their high school newspaper, and let them explore the world as reporter, photographer, editor, assistant--that sort of thing. As they do this, if they are successful in their efforts they get points. The characters obviously don't get points; but when they graduate from school, enough points means they go on to become reporters, photographers, et cetera for the local town paper, and then when they get enough points they go on to the county, work for a national--maybe eventually they're working for CNN or something. The thing is, they advance in the news world by doing their jobs well; but we measure how well they do their jobs by the accrual of points earned in their investigations. The further they go in their jobs, the more they can investigate. (This becomes even less subject to gamist drift if the points are earned by the group rather than the individuals, having the team move to a new position all together when as a team they have impressed someone.)

To do a simulationist metamechanic, you have to consider what it represents within the game world, and how to make it feel as if it represents that and not some arbitrary interference from outside.

I hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

Thanks MJ, that does help. It gives me somewhere to start, at any rate.

Aidan

M. J. Young wrote: That's a simulationist mechanic; it provides an out-of-game method of controling and understanding an in-game reality. Obviously, my character would never say, "well, Noar is a 45 on my chart, and Zetar is only a 33, so we'll give Noar this job." He would say, "I have confidence in both of these people, but I have more confidence in Noar, so I'll rely on him for this, and on Zetar for something less essential."

John Kim wrote: But how is this any different from any other simulationist mechanic?

taalyn wrote: Many games have mechanics that support one mode of GNS play. Victory points, hero points, and the like for gamist criteria, and Luck or points to manipulate the story for narrativist criteria.

My question: what would such metagame mechanics look like if they were intended to support Simulationist agendas?

Aidan

compare the following: (1) an in-game essence or metaphysical effect called "Karma," which represents the character's moral status in that game-universe according to (e.g.) a god or principle in that game-world; (2) a score on the sheet which has literally nothing to do with the character's in-game identity, also called "Karma," recognized and applied by the real people with no in-game entity used to justify it. In both systems, Karma is a point-score which goes up and down, and which can be brought into play as, say, a bonus to one's dice roll. But I'd say that #1 is not metagame at all, and #2 is wholly metagame.

Mechanically, how do they differ? One thing to consider is how the score goes up and down - by player-use, or by in-game effects? Another is whether the score is integrated with the reward/improvement system - does spending a Karma reduce one's bank of improvement points? In fact, is Karma a spent resource at all? Still another issue is whether in-game effects must be in place, or inserted into place, to justify its use. No one of these indicators is hard-and-fast, however; one must consider them all at once, and how they relate to Simulationism (and non-Simulationism) is a fascinating issue. At this point I tend to think that the main issue, basically, is who is considered to "spend" them - character or player.

My question: what would such metagame mechanics look like if they were intended to support Simulationist agendas?

Just had an idea for a more concrete idea for metagame mechanics in sim play.
It's not unusual for games to give some kind of hero point- you spend a hero point, gain a bonus to an action, and later either recover the hero point or do something to earn a new one.
A sim example of such a system could be:
You are playing a game set in the Wild West, based on the film, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It's an accepted part of the genre that shootists are bad hombres, and rarely miss. They certainly don't fumble drawing their pistols from their holsters (the setting isn't based on The Unforgiven, or grim reality.)

In such a setting (or any setting), you could have a pool of points that can be used only to reinforce character concept - our shootist can use them to make him a better shootist, or to ensure he is able to function as one (get rid of inappropriate fumbles and whatnot that might tarnish the character concept) and could even be applied by the GM to encourage this. He sets up a farm, and his Shootist points are invoked to cause the farm to fall to ruins, or bandits to raise it and run off with his daughter. He's soon back following the path of the shootist.

This looks like a sim example of metagame points - to me, anyway. If I'm mistaken, let me know.

Demiurge,

That's an even better explanation. So, Crux has Boons which can 1) allow the player to get autosuccesses. If the autosuccess isn't tied to character concept in a significant way, then it becomes a gamist metamechanic. If it is tied to the concept, it is simulationist. Or rather, to be precise, they support those modes of play. 2) gives player the ability to create some part of the world - that there's a gun under that carseat, that the guard is my cousin Ronny, etc. This supports Narrative play.

Am I interpreting those uses correctly?

Aidan

On the general definition of "metagame mechanic"

My opinion has always been that a metagame mechanic is one that is:
1) Not a result of internal causality
2) Invoked at the player's discretion

In other words, a standard shooting mechanic is (presumably) a result of the game's internal causes, with a die roll to represent causes we're not aware of. The mechanic works based on the character's actions (he shoots or he doesn't) and doesn't directly involve the player (except to the extent that he decides the character's action).

A metagame shooting mechanic might feature bidding to see who hits. Highest bidder wins. If you want bidding to represent causality you have to do some mental gymnastics to get there. However, the player directly participates in the bidding mechanic - he isn't restricted in his bid by "what his character would do" because the bids are based on factors like the player's current bidding resource, the player's desire to succeed now, and other factors. Neither the player's resources nor his desire stem from the game's internal causality.

This definition is why I can say with some confidence that metagame mechanics don't really belong in Sim games. Ideally, players in a Sim mode wants to minimize both factors in the definition.

demiurgeastaroth wrote: Just had an idea for a more concrete idea for metagame mechanics in sim play.
It's not unusual for games to give some kind of hero point- you spend a hero point, gain a bonus to an action, and later either recover the hero point or do something to earn a new one.
A sim example of such a system could be:
You are playing a game set in the Wild West, based on the film, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It's an accepted part of the genre that shootists are bad hombres, and rarely miss. They certainly don't fumble drawing their pistols from their holsters (the setting isn't based on The Unforgiven, or grim reality.)

In such a setting (or any setting), you could have a pool of points that can be used only to reinforce character concept - our shootist can use them to make him a better shootist, or to ensure he is able to function as one (get rid of inappropriate fumbles and whatnot that might tarnish the character concept) and could even be applied by the GM to encourage this. He sets up a farm, and his Shootist points are invoked to cause the farm to fall to ruins, or bandits to raise it and run off with his daughter. He's soon back following the path of the shootist.

This looks like a sim example of metagame points - to me, anyway. If I'm mistaken, let me know.

taalyn wrote: Demiurge,

That's an even better explanation. So, Crux has Boons which can 1) allow the player to get autosuccesses. If the autosuccess isn't tied to character concept in a significant way, then it becomes a gamist metamechanic. If it is tied to the concept, it is simulationist. Or rather, to be precise, they support those modes of play. 2) gives player the ability to create some part of the world - that there's a gun under that carseat, that the guard is my cousin Ronny, etc. This supports Narrative play.

Am I interpreting those uses correctly?

Aidan

jdagna wrote: On the general definition of "metagame mechanic"

My opinion has always been that a metagame mechanic is one that is:
1) Not a result of internal causality
2) Invoked at the player's discretion

In other words, a standard shooting mechanic is (presumably) a result of the game's internal causes, with a die roll to represent causes we're not aware of. The mechanic works based on the character's actions (he shoots or he doesn't) and doesn't directly involve the player (except to the extent that he decides the character's action).

I think this could be a sim mechanic, IF (and only if) the source of the points make sense in a Simmy kind of way. For example, if you get points for killing bad guys, you've really got a Gamist mechanic (by beating one challenge, you get resources you can use to beat the next one). If you get these points as a result of playing your character in a Simmy way, then I think you wind up with a Sim mechanic, but one that could easily be subverted by those evil Nar/Gam types. The example of points being used to cause a farm's destruction sounds more Nar than Sim to my ears.

It seems to me the problem with such a point system from character identity is that it is a special case exception to other characters in the game. And without a seamless in-game rationale, I would expect this to be displeasing.

I'm inclined to wonder if Sim metagame rewards might be control of what is simmed. This is effectively the ability to demand a scene, or description. I think the sim interest is largely in Seeing Stuff, and in character conception, and in character action, you can effectively compel the GM to describe whatever it is you choose to explore. If this is denied, Questions will be Asked. If I create a character oriented around horses, say, then I can (in principle) compel my GM/whatever to give me horse-oriented feedback.

I wonder if there is any commonality in sim players seeking out vehicles and other forms of mobility by which they can unilaterally change their perspective on the game space. Perhaps scrying and comms and the like, too. Dunno, thoughts?

The major problem it seems to me is that if Exploration is the priority then any form of player authorship and hence overt ability to generate game content would defeat the purpose. Hmm, perhaps something like this might be aproached from the principle of mysteries and secrets; perhaps the "meta" game reward is to see things that other people in the game are unable to see - i.e., that this sight is in some manner priviliged. I have been toying with the principle of "the arcane" (in its prosaic sense) quite a bit recently There is a frisson in knowing things that are Secrets; arguably the entire celebrity rumour mill is based on the illusion of this.

The frequency with which games posit specialist or unique insight makes me wonder why this should be the case. Some of it is marking out the hero as the hero, and some I think is the excitement of forbidden knowledge. If the basic act inherent to RPG is Exploration, then perhaps the basic conceptualisation of RPG (and other fiction) tells us something about what an extreme player commitment to this act would seek. However it occurred to me while phrasing my example about horses that the GM, and indeed the game text probably will not know what it is the player wants to explore. Sure, theres a whole bunch of self-selection in the topics when electing to play a game, but within those bounds a I expect a player behaving according to this 'model' might still focus on a sub-entity within the whole.

Perhaps, therefore, a mode involving sequenced information might be employed, a sort of enlightenment by stages. In fact I think I encountered an extant version of this recently....

BEWARE! Freelancer spoilers below!
Not that I think it likely that anyone here would particulalry care, but form demands...

I think I saw in Freelancer the use of this sort of convention to the point of cliche. Having played a lot of these sorts of games, I saw the great revelation coming. In the opening scenes, a terrorist organisation stages a surprise attack and kills a foreign ambassador. However, in the opening of the attack they say "Do not interfere, we are protecting the president" or words to that effect. There had been nothing as yet pointing to a danger to anyone let alone the president - therefore this non sequitur was a Clue. And given the Clue, I could and did predict that the terrorist organisation would turn out to be not to be so terrorist, and such indeed was the case.

End Spoilers!

So to sum up this ramble I would say that I think there may be virtue in looking towards, umm, "layered revelation", and specialist and unique viewpoints. As to WHY this works in a metagame sense I would suggest that it has to do with the kudos actively or tacitly awarded the Knowers of Things. That is, if you are a particular specialist and players come to you for specialist insight, you gain the social recognition of your wisdom. In the game, this might be a wholly mechanical artifact but the FORM of interaction between the people is preserved in the sim. Even if your fictional heretical insight cannot be revealed in the game, the dynamic amongst the players (sim or otherwise I venture) will tend to affirm the value of the specialist insight and the player/character status of being Illuminated.

In terms of a feedback thing, I think the method you cite, Gareth, just might work. But I agree that, again, even the metagame desire to see certain things is a metagame desire that is problematic in some ways to enable in terms of player power in Sim.

Perhaps understanding would be easier if we were to define metagame in terms of Sim. That is, metagame is something that is counterproductive to Sim in that it supports a metagame urge, and Sim seeks to eliminate this. This would be supported by Darren's excellent readings of the essays, I think. And further, I'm not sure what other use the term has besides this.

This is all confounded by what I've termed Pseudo-In-Game (looking for a bettter term, so help me out). That is, a mechanic that's clearly metagame by Ron's definitions from the essay, but is designed in such a manner as to have some strong in-game cognate. Such as the "shooting" mechanic suggested. While obviously not meant to be part of the in-game causal relationship, it's also supported by the notion the the characters are "the best", and that the mechanic represents that in some way. The Karma example is exactly meant to show how one can tell that such a mechanic is metagame (or not), despite the ruse.

One argument would say that such mechanics are good because they represent a compromise. That is, a willing player can suspend his disbelief a little easier that with an out and out mechanic. The opposing argument says, however, that in attempting to be such a ruse, the player will be even more offended than by a pure metagame mechanic that presents itself "honestly'. I think both sides of the argument have merit, and it's going to come down to personal preferences.

I think that subtlety of use is much more important in making a metagame mechanic less obtrusive. That is, if the mechanic is presented in such a way that it's employment tends only to occur in cases where the actions are congruent with the Sim decision, where they can be presented as decisions that come from in-game cause (despite not) originating from something already controlled, these are the least likely to offend. This is different from Pseudo-In-Game mechanics which often allow the player unsubtle control of elements that they would normally have no control over. If Karma is the only thing that a player controls outside of his character, that's pretty unsubtle, though still pseudo-in-game.

To parallel, Author Stance play occurs all the time in Sim; a fact which at first seems contradictory. But as long as the decision looks like something that could have been produced by Actor Stance play, then nobody complains. And I posit that players do this all the time. I know I certainly do. How does it support Sim? As an example, take the player who has his character travel to a far off land. Quite often it wasn't just plausible that the character would do this, but it's because the player was genuinely curious that he took this choice. So he's playing Sim, but using metagame to achieve it.

So, this is why I like Gareth's idea (and to the extent that MJ's is like it, his, too). Basically you are empowering players to cause something to happen that jibes with their metagame agenda, but only in such a way as it could have been the character's decision to do so anyhow.

Still metagame, in my book. But less obtrusive. One thing that makes some of these proposals more problematic in terms of Sim, is that they limit what the character can do in a very metagame way in order to enable certain decisions as rewards. That is, it's taking away from the player's ability to affect the universe as the character to say that they can't go and apply for a job as a reporter until certain conditions have been met. Either those conditions are causal, and in-game, or they are not, and metagame.

Does that help at all, or am I just being confusing?

Basically it seems to me that we're talking about the sort of things that form the border regions where Sim collides with metagame. It's very much a spectrum sort of thing to me. If you want to really extend the theory, one can point out that statistics are, in fact, slightly metagamey, even those that are supposed to represent in-game things entirely. This is why MJ has the problem he does. Can you eliminate this entirely? Actually, mechanically, you can. Just have no mechanics. I think that Andrew Martin would agree with me that all statistics presented as abstractions for players could be seen as somewhat metagame. Hence his games that only refer to things in in-game terms (a character doesn't have a speed rating, he can run 20 MPH and accellerate at 4m/s^2, etc).

So what does that mean? Well you can't have it both ways, it seems to me. I'm sure that there are implementations that are better at allowing players to project metagame power into the world at hand, but in the end, they all impact the sim feel to an extent. It's exaclty that I think that all games are hybrid in this way that led me to my posting about the axis model. It's OK that there's a conflict because in the end, players usually want more than one thing. Meaning that if you fail slightly on the one axis, that it's OK as long as it's still in the range on the other (the umbrella thing).

So, put these mechanics in, by all means. Just be aware of the extent to which they have to be effective at what they do in comparison to the impact. And that some players are just not going to like them (but big deal, that's true of all mechanics).

Mike

Example from Crux again:

Boons are like good luck. They can be drawn from the caern (a white mote) and represent excellent benefits. If my character is running a race, succeeds and gets a Boon, perhaps he he wins by a significant margin, or attracts the attention of someone who could make him famous, or otherwise get something extra nice out of the event. Boons drawn can also be turned into motes for a Passion immediately.

Boons can also be generated - bought by spending motes of Passions. Now my character is trying to sneak by a guard outside the temple, to save his lover:

- I spend a mote of his Passion: loves Julie 2, and he automatically succeeds. This supports Gamist choices.
- spend a mote, and the guard is Julie's brother, unaware that she's been kidnapped by his employer. This is Narrativist.
- spend a mote, and I get to narrate how the sneaking happens - Sim.

The Sim reward has parts that look gamist (autosuccess) as well as Narrativist (gets to narrate the event), the difference is that a Sim player would use it to explore the Setting.

I think this is pretty much along the lines of Mike's Pseudo-in-Game idea, since the metagame use is supported by in-game story (passions). I think this is more clearly about a metagame mechanic than Gareth's "layered revelation" idea, which seems to me to be just a style of GMing. At least, I'm not sure how it can be a metagame mechanic.

Am I understanding you guys right?

Aidan

Definitely pseudo-in-game. And to the extent that your game is about things like magic as game realities, it's also somewhat subtle. But I think the more that you can do to make it seem just like any other character ability, the better. As it is, it's somewhat of an exception, and, hence, a bit non-sim.

OTOH, I'm not sure that you ought to worry about that. It's certainly not tremendously damaging to sim, and even if it is, is it some goal of yours to remain high sim?

As always, my philosphy is make the game work first. Then look at GNS simply to see if the rules conflict in terms of GNS. You're about at that point, and I'm not seeing the game being particularly conducive to producing incoherence. So seems all good to me.

Mike

Ah-ha! I found the thread that I was looking for.

Lots of good discussion of Simulationist play, metagame mechanics, and reward system in Is S out of balance with G/N?

The thread wanders a bit, but stick with it with this topic in mind.

Best,
Ron