Fine, Ralph wants to put out that I've got some half-assed unformed theory working? I'll play along. Besides this has been eating away at me for so long that maybe it's time I got t out there. :-)

----------------
Waaay back Jared posted the Beeg Horseshoe Theory. In it, he said that Sim didn't exist. He didn't really give a reason, but he stated it anyhow. And he sticks behind his point to this day.

Well, there's something about the model that stuck in my head the whole time. And what I've come to accept is that it seems to me that nobody plays RPGs in a complete vaccuum of lack of desire for G or N. I mean I can theorize of what such play might look like, but that's not the same as saying it happens.

Now, way back then, I challenged the "theory" by saying that I liked Sim, and felt that it was marginalizing to say that this was not a style of play. Have I changed my mind? No, I have not.

A while back, someone (please step forward whoever you are) that these things might be thought of as a couple of different axes. And over time, I've started to accept this more or less.

Essentially, you have two questions in a decision. One, am I making this as a "game decision" or a "story decision", G or N? And secondly, how much am I taking into account Versimilitude* as a goal of the decision. These are both affected on every single decision. Even if you don't actually think about them, the fact that we're playing in a "shared imagined environment" makes the question important. Especially to the other players.

Thus a decision seems to me to be Low Sim Gamism, perhaps, or High Sim Narrativism, or any other cross. Gamism and Narrativism are not binary either, but vary from a center that's a compromise. Think of it as a two dimensional space with the decision's position being determined by two vectors at right angles. So instead of the Beeg Horseshoe, we've got a plane actually.

What does this say? Well, that in terms of game support, all games are hybrid. And this seems patently true to me. All game support Exploration. The question is to what extent they are dedicated to Exploration being done "right". That is adherence to some sort of setting specific guidelines.

This is just the preliminary overview of the concept. I wasn't really prepared to deliver it. So my thoughts will probably get highly refined as people challenge the concept (as I hope they will). But it has more impact than this post may seem to imply or is obvious up front.

*I don't use Sim, because I'm trying to differentiate how this theory varies from GNS.

Mike

Mike,

I had a nice talk about this the other day, and the more I think about it, the more I think you're right. It's neat, because this isn't exactly the Beeg Horseshoe: it's not that Simulationism doesn't exist, it's that it's everywhere.

This also explains why Narrativism and Gamism look like kissing cousins, while Simulationism has always been the weird uncle in the closet: it's not the same thing, a different axis than Narrativism and Gamism, always used with them, but a definition of another part of an RPG.

In this light, the term is odd, though. Exploration can't replace it: all games have Exploration. The example I'd give that's baffling me is my own post-apocalyptic Sorcerer and Sword game: when we played this game, I injected a lot of surrealism. Bizarre conjoined married couples showed up, one villain kept coming back no matter how many times he died, the geography and world changed during play often. So, it was low on the Simulationism, as it didn't simulate much of anything, real or unreal. It was very high on the Exploration, though.

How does something like that fit into this structure?

Like I said, I'm not going to call it Simulationism because that would indicate by the older model that it's a type of decision by itself. And doesn't indicate the spectrum nature. I think that it's precisely that it is like Exploration, however, in that all games have some level of adherence to in-game reality along some spectrum. But I'll leave that term alone.

As to your specific game, however, it all depends on what the "rules" for the world are. This is the old "reality" caveat. Also, you're to an extent making the Simulationism must simulate error.

So I'm a little stuck for terms at the moment. What I need is a term for the spectrum that goes from at one extreme ignoring the "reality" of the game completely, and on the other pays so much atttention to the in-game conventions that it almost blots out the other axis. Plausibility almost works for this one, but not quite. Internal Consistency?

And the other spectrum should be named, as well. Something like the Challenge/Theme axis.

And yes, this does explain the percieved relationsip between N/G without the too commonly repeated statement that they are similar. They aren't, but one can shift from one to the other while ignoring the other axis easily. It's precisely shifting to the two axis view that allows us to see the difference.

Again, I want to point out that I think I'm just reiterating an idea that's not new. I do think that I have some new ideas on implications, however.

Mike

Hi Mike,

This is another one of those weird, "everyone's thinking along the same lines" deals. Paul and I were discussing this thread last night:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=24

which he jokingly referred to as the Dark Secret of the Forge. Anyway, minus the contentiousness and the motives behind Sim goals, your new take would definitely explain a bit more on how G/N are very different than S. I personally can get with G/N, but S as a goal alone has always eluded me.

How's this for a term? Fidelity. High Fidelity=Staying close to the plausibilty as defined by the game/setting/etc. Low Fidelity=willingness to discard or ignor it at will for other purposes?

So Riddle of Steel would be a High Fidelity Narrativist game, right?

Chris

Bankuei wrote: So Riddle of Steel would be a High Fidelity Narrativist game, right?

High Fidelity=Staying close to the plausibilty as defined by the game/setting/etc

Speaking of people all being on the same page, isn't this "Fidelity" about adherence to Baseline? I mean, for me this is the primary axis of the Baseline-Vision spectrum: adherence or non-adherence "to the plausibilty as defined by the game/setting/etc." as Chris put it. Interesting to think about Sim, i.e. essentially pure Exploration, as somewhat different from G & S.

Chris

This is a small post on naming:

Chris - Fidelity is just about the best term I can imagine.

Mike - I really like Challenge/Theme. I know it's not one term, but one term that you can apply a quantifier to is going to be hard to find for this purpose. Challenge and Theme get down to what Gamism and Narrativism are all about while getting rid of the annoying terms of "game" and "narrative".

clehrich wrote: Speaking of people all being on the same page, isn't this "Fidelity" about adherence to Baseline? I mean, for me this is the primary axis of the Baseline-Vision spectrum: adherence or non-adherence "to the plausibilty as defined by the game/setting/etc." as Chris put it.

I'll just (somewhat smugly I might add) note that there were several threads started by me about that time railing against the definition of Simulationism as it was then understood. In fact, my frustration with the large amounts of sillyness being expressed about simulationism at that time led me to team up with Scarlet Jester and work on the GENder model.

Its eerie how similiar Mikes initial post to this thread (and others chiming in to agree) is to that old GENder model...I might still have some drafts of it on my harddrive somewhere before SJ got fed up with the whole thing and quit.

IMO, I'll note the following:


1) in ages past I stated many times both here and on GO that Simulationism (or what Mike here is searching for an alternative term for) existed seperately from the G and the N along a different axis. Going back and reading Thread 24 you'll note that I referred to

Thus, if one is designing mechanics that are a simulation of something, this is completely independent of the type of game it is. You can make a Gamist Game with simulationist mechanics or an Explorative Game with simulationist mechanics or even a Narrativist Game with simulationist mechanics. In other words Simulation is not an objective, it is one of the paths that can be used to achieve an objective. And for those who say that Simulation can be an objective in itself, yes this can be handled in GEN too.

Mike:

This is really good. I can still picture it as a horseshoe of sorts, where the influence of the various S factors can outweigh the G or N factors, like maybe the two ends of the shoe point up, and the S is gravity.

Very good Ralph, except that I'm not proposing that Exploration isn't a factor in the other modes. I mean certainly one is exploring the character is one makes a Narrativist decision about some character issue. So Gender is out. I do admit that I'm probably influenced by your posts, however (imagine that). :-)

No, the primary difference here is that I'm saying that G and S or N and S priorities are not mutually exclusive. This is bigtime GNS heresy, and I was wondering when I'd get called on it. But what I'm proposing is that over a single decision, or even over the "instance of play" that one can have Sim/Nar decisions, or Sim/Gam decisions. Or to be precise that my model considers them separately. Which is important because Incoherency only occurs IMO, when one or both axes have problematically disparate play. Thus you have Fidelity Incoherence or G/N Incoherency (or both).

Now, on to Ron's biggest point (in a self-critical manner). What about play in which a player comes to a certain decision point at which his decision can only be one or another, say Sim or Nar. Well, for one thing, that's simply putting the Fidelity (can you tell I really like that term) thing at a high or low level. There's no question about the other axis, and where the decision stands.

And since GNS is now only supposed to be considered in terms of "instances of play" anyhow, these single decisions don't matter. Over the course of several decisions there's no way that there won't be possibilities to change from one to the other level of Fidelity. So over the long haul there will be both an observable amount of Fidelity, and a certain placement on the other axis as well.

(just to give Ron something to chew on once he get's here)

Note the other thing about this is that it neatly avoids the problems of control that bring up The Impossible Thing.

Mike

Matt Wilson wrote: I can still picture it as a horseshoe of sorts, where the influence of the various S factors can outweigh the G or N factors, like maybe the two ends of the shoe point up, and the S is gravity.

I'm not really sure I'm understanding the hairs that are getting split here, so let me bumble around a bit and tell me how far off the mark I am.

You seem to be saying that Sim play doesn't really seem like a mode of its own because the other two modes still include Exploration and decisions in those modes can adhere to a whole range of Verisimilitude.

I can definitely see that. It's like the old Axis and Allies debate my friend and I had. He insisted that the rules allowed you to build infantry anywhere. I insisted that 1) the rules didn't say that and 2) it didn't make any sense, since troops need manufactured goods life uniforms and guns. Both arguments were essentially Gamist. But I had the added objection based in Verisimilitude.

However, sim play as defined in GNS still makes a lot of sense to me because it talks about player priorities. In the argument between my friend and I, we were both still prioritized in a Gamist mode. For me, Verisimilitude was brought in as an added argument against someone who clearly didn't know the rules. A Narrativist decision still prioritizes the thematic elements. Perhaps the decision also supports Verisimilitude, but isn't that more of an accident or coincidence than anything else?

I can also see where you're saying that Sim play easily incorporates elements of the other two modes. However, I see what I do in designing a Sim scenario as quite different from what others do in designing Gam or Nar scenarios.

Let's say I want a scenario that features a significant combat challenge.

The Gamist sits down, comes up with something challenging based on the party's strength and then comes up with a reason why they're there. Sometimes the reason is good (the dragon woke up because an evil mage summoned it) and sometimes not ("You find a dragon. He's about 100 feet long." "Wait, I thought the cave entrance was only 10 feet tall?")

The Narrativist starts by asking what point he wants to make (or how the battle will facilitate the players' themes). Then he designs the battle to fit. Like the Gamist, this may have high Verismilitude or not.

As a Simulationist, I sit down and say "OK, who have they upset recently? How strong is that person and how upset is he?" I figure out what makes sense (has Verisimilitude) and then see if its too difficult for the players to beat. If it is, I start thinking about other factors that might give a more balanced challenge. It's only after I come up with a situation that I ask about the difficulty or try to balance the challenge. Likewise, I only look for thematic meaning in the battle after its over - trying to think about that ahead of time seems almost pointles to me.

So, for me, all three GNS modes have some crossover, but the model's focus is on priorities. I do see Sim play an as entirely different priority from the other two modes. If its the weird uncle to the other two, perhaps that's because the priority is in the game world (as opposed to competition or theme, which both happen at the player level).

It seems like trying to construct an axis or horseshoe model isn't really changing GNS. It just seems to be asking "What's going on along side the prioritized mode?"

Don't have a lot of time, I have to go eat a few dozen chicken wings. But here's the short answer until tomorrow.

Ron says that plausibility is important to Nar play. I posit that in fact both Fidelity and Narrative priorities can be put forth as primary, and, in fact, are usually until a trade off is required. Then and only then does play move to that low Fidelity, high Narrativism region.

This explains a phenomenon that I've been trying to explain for a long while. In movies or books, whathaveyou, often authors will step outside the bounds of Fidelity to get something that makes a plot special. Some people will buy this, and some people will not ("transporters can't do that!")

The people who will swallow this are the people who have more tolerance for low fidelity play. The others want high fidelity all the time. At least in that their tastes for each of these forms coincide.

Yes, to an extent this is very much the same theory, but I think it breaks it down in ways that have profound implications. We'll get to some more of those tomorra.

Mike

Challenge/Theme doesn't seem right. Theme implies the GNS definition of Nar.

One thing that has always bothered me about the relationship between Sim and Nar is how narrow the definition of Nar was. Any Story Now priority that isn't for the reason of Ergi's Premise falls under Sim Story or gets labeled as not-an-rpg-but-cooperative-storytelling. For example: Story Now for the sake of genre adherance, for comedy, for gee-wiz-bang-cool-like-it-would-happen-in-the-movies, or for its own sake. All metagame, but non-Nar and non-Gam. That kind of stuff is what validates Sim as an independent priority in the GNS model, except for the fact that they happen to be metagame reasons so they don't technically fall under Sim either. Leaving me with that 'grr, smashy smash' feeling.

However, Story Now as an independent priority (which Nar would be a subset of) is an acceptable counterpart to Challenge in my mind. But, gee, isn't Challenge/Story Now Axis an ugly term? Trouble is, I also can't think of a single word that doesn't favor one end of the axis.

I also think that in regards to this model Exploration should be left floating in its own island, much like Stance. It shouldn't rest above or below, but be part of a matrix. Such that you could say High Fidelity|Story Now|Explore Char|Author Stance. Different players with these same goals may choose to layer them differently, and if they ever have to choose between them they may choose different categories as a primary motivation.

Let's see...Baseline and Vision. Gonna need a solid definition, but... My understanding was that Baseline was sort of the framework of expectations you can draw on to fill in unstated paramaters and Vision was the elements you needed to specify to the reader as coloring and diverging from your Baseline. I see similarities, but it doesn't seem necessary true that expectations would be high fidelity and divergent elements low fidelity. However, there may be a bit of a connection here...I distinctly remember jumping up and down and pointing at Fang while yelling "Beeg Horseshoe Theory! Beeg Horseshoe Theory!" in one of those threads.

I'm not persuaded.

As I understand the history, war games were originally devised with a view to using them to determine best strategies in real battle situations; their ability to emulate real combat conditions was an essential factor. I believe that they were so used in both world wars, as terrain features were sculpted and generals set figures in the sand and played out options.

In that context, neither narrativist nor gamist priorities were so useful. That is, we're not asking either whether the opponent is going to have moral issues about a particular approach or which approach is strategically best for the opponent, but given what we know about the opponent, what strategy is he most likely to use?

Similarly, in moving our troops in such a situation, in order to properly determine the outcome, we had to ask what particular field commanders were likely to do when faced with the situation we anticipated. Obviously, there will be field commanders who will retreat sooner versus those who will press harder; there will be commanders who will delay in looking for the opportunity versus those who will make the opportunity. We don't want to ask why they are different; we don't want to know what would happen if they all followed orders precisely. We want to know what will happen given everything we know about those commanders.

Thus the simulationist agenda itself is very much at the root of the development of wargames, despite the gamist influences that rapidly arose in the hobby form.

I've been in games where all I did was try to go with the reality--I had no story to tell, and no goal to achieve. It was nothing other than a time to experience something, to see what happened in response to what I did. I don't think that's a non-existent thing.

It's certainly true that sim play is easier to integrate with or disintegrate from the other two than they are to integrate with or disintegrate from each other. On the other hand, not so long ago someone was trying to suggest a hybrid approach in which all goals led to the same decisions (the Netrunner CCG thread). If we're looking at "it's the end of the world, unless you can save everyone, and you're the only ones who can do it," suddenly, sim, nar, and gam choices are all going to start to align with each other--gamist because the characters need to succeed, narrativist because the issue is the struggle against the cost of failure in this situation, and simulationist because, as someone said, no sane person is going to risk failing at such a task. You can integrate them by narrowing the scope of the game; they are still independent.

Jason a.k.a. Cruciel wrote: That kind of stuff is what validates Sim as an independent priority in the GNS model, except for the fact that they happen to be metagame reasons so they don't technically fall under Sim either.

genre adherance, for comedy, for gee-wiz-bang-cool-like-it-would-happen-in-the-movies, or for its own sake....

cruciel wrote: Challenge/Theme doesn't seem right. Theme implies the GNS definition of Nar.

But, gee, isn't Challenge/Story Now Axis an ugly term? Trouble is, I also can't think of a single word that doesn't favor one end of the axis.

I also think that in regards to this model Exploration should be left floating in its own island, much like Stance. It shouldn't rest above or below, but be part of a matrix. Such that you could say High Fidelity|Story Now|Explore Char|Author Stance. Different players with these same goals may choose to layer them differently, and if they ever have to choose between them they may choose different categories as a primary motivation.

Let's see...Baseline and Vision. Gonna need a solid definition, but... My understanding was that Baseline was sort of the framework of expectations you can draw on to fill in unstated paramaters and Vision was the elements you needed to specify to the reader as coloring and diverging from your Baseline.

I'm putting this in a separate post for organization sake. It follows one above.

M. J. Young wrote: I'm not persuaded.

... war games ...

In that context, neither narrativist nor gamist priorities were so useful. That is, we're not asking either whether the opponent is going to have moral issues about a particular approach or which approach is strategically best for the opponent, but given what we know about the opponent, what strategy is he most likely to use?

We want to know what will happen given everything we know about those commanders.

I don't think that's a non-existent thing.

The metagame priority in simulationism is verisimilitude itself, whether this would actually happen given the assumptions of the game world. Thus simulationism of movie reality is simulationism if that's the priority, because our metagame priority is to make it as much like the source material as possible.

Put me down as seeing Simulationism as one of the Big Three, and not The Other Thing.

Hi Mike,

Glad to see this developing.

The real test would be if there were a game where players just played aliens on an alien planet, and no conflict occured. You were just presented with typical day to day stuff, and were told to "react" appropriately.

That's not bad Chris.

The Conflict axis. Do you deal with conflict as a game construct or as an opportunity to address a premise; or in the middle presumeably neutral, i.e. not caring.

The Fidelity axis (formerly Simulation). In dealing with conflicts what level of emphasis is placed on verisimilitude. Do you have a high degree of fidelity, or a low degree of fidelity.


I like the elegance of it. Now, where are the big gaping holes we haven't thought of yet?

Hi Mike,

Very interesting stuff here.

Here are my current reservations.

1. The nature of play midway along the G-N axis is unclear. You describe it as an equal mix of G and N, but could it not also be the complete lack of both G and N priorities? If G and N are incompatible mind-sets is not that the more likely possibility? And yet, if all play must contain one or the other, that appears a contradiction.

2. There's also a point in the continuum representing low-fidelity neither-G-nor-N (or equal G and N) play. What does that play look like? (Perhaps, one of those endless Trivial Pursuit games with no one keeping score that happen when everyone is too tired or drunk to think of anything else to do?)

3. We know that problems relating to player differences on G vs. S priorities do occur. A GM says, "Your character's intelligence is too low to have thought of that." A player joins a dungeon crawl and wants to play a priest opposed to all killing of animals. We've characterized whole systems as being G-S incoherent. What do these things mean, in terms of the proposed new version of the model?

I think I can give a partial answer to #2. I believe that any representation of GNS space as a continuum, including yours and including the conventional "big triangle," covers a space larger than the general consensus of what role playing games are. (As I said on the Airplane Problem thread, I belive this is exactly why GNS doesn't require a universally agreed-upon definition of what a role playing game is to be useful.) On the triangle, the whole no-Sim edge gets cut off as being outside role-playing-as-we-know-it territory, and (if your theory about the fundamental importance of G or N is correct) the all-Sim corner would be lopped off too. Hmm, the resulting trapezoid could then easily be distorted and overlapped with your rectangle. It would look very similar, except its metric for G and N would be different in a way that just happens to resolve issue #1. Velllly innnntelesting.

Issue #3 remains key. What does any GNS continuum mean with regards to distinctions between coherent and incoherent, functional and dysfunctional, single-mode vs. hybrid, play, players, and systems? (That's a hybrid question; rhetorical enough that I'm not looking for an answer in detail at this stage, but not so rhetorical that I'm implying that continua are a bad idea.)

- Walt

Hi Walt,

Excellent points in all...

#1-

As someone who enjoys Gamist and Narrativist play both, I technically should be able to describe that region, but it still remains alien to me. I can look back at play experiences and directly say, "There's Nar at work!, Oh, look, went Gamist when I did that!", but can't really recall an action that was neither, but perhaps #2 holds some clues for us...

#2-

Low fidelity(genre expectations don't matter so much), Low Gam, Low Nar, what's the draw? Socialization. If we're using a X,Y,Z thing mapped to G/N/Fidelity, then we're talking about close to the zero point. I'd say the zero point itself is hanging out with buddies and bullshitting. It's the point where the game doesn't matter.

It's like folks who go bowling, to the movies, or to a sports game, and don't really care for it, but are there simply to hang out with their friends. Winning doesn't matter, the "spirit" of the game, the theme, the immersion, all of that is secondary to enjoying some time with your friends in this case. I'd say the term "Beer & Pretzels" has a connection to games that are focused around this.

#1 part 2 :P

So, looking at that idea, if you're not very heavily into the G/N aspect of things, but high on Fidelity, perhaps you're either in denial of your G/N desires or there for socialization. A third aspect that may come into play is basing your actions off of social approval of others, in which case the G/N decisions are more based on the preferences of the group, or specific individuals within the group.

If we're talking good stuff like GURPS, the classic high sim, no filler game, then what we're talking about is a High Fidelity game, that has room for drift from slight to gross drift towards G/N.

#3 Random thoughts, potential avenues of discussion-

Functional/Dysfunctional- It would seem that play is more functional when the group as a whole is playing in nearby coordinates on that X,Y,Z map. Obviously communication, social contract, and general compromise help out, but distance between emphasis of G/N and Fidelity can cause problems. Rough edges slide into Dysfunction when the group is no longer willing to make concessions and at least try to address individual concerns. The "don't talk, don't acknowledge" syndrome.

Single Mode/Hybrid- I think this model perfectly encapsulates the G/S, N/S sorts of gaming. Observe range from the Pool, TQB, Inspectres, octaNe, Dust Devils, Sorcerer, and TROS, as a range of Low to High Fidelity sorts of games in the Nar range.

Comments? Ideas? Nothing here's set in stone, just venturing from my mind at the moment.

Chris

Walt Freitag wrote:
1. The nature of play midway along the G-N axis is unclear. You describe it as an equal mix of G and N, but could it not also be the complete lack of both G and N priorities? If G and N are incompatible mind-sets is not that the more likely possibility? And yet, if all play must contain one or the other, that appears a contradiction.

2. There's also a point in the continuum representing low-fidelity neither-G-nor-N (or equal G and N) play. What does that play look like? (Perhaps, one of those endless Trivial Pursuit games with no one keeping score that happen when everyone is too tired or drunk to think of anything else to do?)

3. We know that problems relating to player differences on G vs. S priorities do occur. A GM says, "Your character's intelligence is too low to have thought of that." A player joins a dungeon crawl and wants to play a priest opposed to all killing of animals. We've characterized whole systems as being G-S incoherent. What do these things mean, in terms of the proposed new version of the model?

I think I can give a partial answer to #2. I believe that any representation of GNS space as a continuum, including yours and including the conventional "big triangle," covers a space larger than the general consensus of what role playing games are.

...

Velllly innnntelesting.

M. J. Young wrote: Actually, Jason, those examples,

genre adherance, for comedy, for gee-wiz-bang-cool-like-it-would-happen-in-the-movies, or for its own sake....

point up the metagame priority of simulationism quite well. You could be going for realism, for fidelity to a published reality, or for adherence to any of those priorities you named, and be involved in simulationism. Narrativism doesn't say that verisimilitude doesn't matter, but that it can't be allowed to derail consideration of the theme (why narrativist games so often allow people to arrive on the scene "at the right moment" instead of "when they would get there", a point I make in the other thread). Gamism doesn't say that verisimilitude doesn't matter, but only that we need to have a solid basis on which to predict what will happen so we can make fully optimized choices and have the system validate those choices through consistency.

Bankuei wrote: #2-
Low fidelity(genre expectations don't matter so much), Low Gam, Low Nar, what's the draw? Socialization. If we're using a X,Y,Z thing mapped to G/N/Fidelity, then we're talking about close to the zero point. I'd say the zero point itself is hanging out with buddies and bullshitting. It's the point where the game doesn't matter.p

So, looking at that idea, if you're not very heavily into the G/N aspect of things, but high on Fidelity, perhaps you're either in denial of your G/N desires or there for socialization.

A third aspect that may come into play is basing your actions off of social approval of others, in which case the G/N decisions are more based on the preferences of the group, or specific individuals within the group.

If we're talking good stuff like GURPS, the classic high sim, no filler game, then what we're talking about is a High Fidelity game, that has room for drift from slight to gross drift towards G/N.

Functional/Dysfunctional- It would seem that play is more functional when the group as a whole is playing in nearby coordinates on that X,Y,Z map.

... distance between emphasis of G/N and Fidelity can cause problems.

Single Mode/Hybrid- I think this model perfectly encapsulates the G/S, N/S sorts of gaming. Observe range from the Pool, TQB, Inspectres, octaNe, Dust Devils, Sorcerer, and TROS, as a range of Low to High Fidelity sorts of games in the Nar range.

Second post in a row again.

cruciel wrote: The metagame priority occuring in those examples isn't verisimilitude - it's what would make for the most interesting sequence of events. But, because prioritizing engagement in the charm of the sequence of events doesn't spring from a moral or ethical question it isn't Nar. I like action movies and pop fiction, not cinema and literature - that distinction pushes me into the Sim category by process of elimination only.

High Fidelity|Story Now.

Speaking of the Devil: Mike,

Mike Holmes wrote: Jason, I'm going to leave most of your thoughts about Narrativism alone, and let Ron or somebody else respond to them if they feel like it. Because my new model doesn't challenge Ron's definition of Narrativism, but as it happens, it does reconcile the problems that you're seeing, I think. At the very least, I think it makes it easier to look at.

Here's why. The problem that I see with people trying to disect where the divergence occurs between Char Sim and Char Nar, for example, is that when it's Nar, people are usually playing up the "what would my character do" aspect. This is why Ron always tells me that my examples are incorrect, and why it's hard to delineate the line. Examples don't work precisely because what one does is to prioritize both at the same time. Ron says that all action must be Plausible. Well that just means that there's some element of Fidelity inherent in every decision. Dividing that out into it's own priority doesn't say that this is not true. But it does make it hard to think about which is "more" prioritzed in most situations. I would say that they're often both given high priority.

Nothing in there goes against any of the current theory you'll find. So what I'm presenting is what I think is a superior model for how to look at these things.

Yes, but it's key so we'll have to work on that. See, that axis I see as the "what the player expends his power to decide upon axis". That is, if I make a decision, I can make it "to win" or "to be dramatic". These are truely mutually exclusive. That is, the decisions to do one or the other, though they may look similar, have such different mental approaches to the game that they can't be the same at one time. Hence why when it does become apparent what the thought process is, those that prefer one over the other have problems with the other. The Roll playing Vs Role Playing thing in action. So this still needs its own axis to define that incoherency.

Good discussion, folks.

cruciel wrote:
Explore + Nar
Explore + Gam
Explore + Nar
Explore + Gam

Anyway, that's how all this has me thinking. I find it much easier to define my priorities using this approach than Nar/Sim allows.

Hi Emily,

please take credit then, I vaguely recall the word coming from somewhere, just wasn't sure where!

I believe that all of these goals are "metagame" goals if you want to put it that way. Consider that you can play the Pool as free form-y light as a trip through someone's mind, with very little genre expectations set up to hold fidelity to, or you could run a gritty Chicago crime thriller, with high Fidelity. While the Pool is flexible like that, you can also see that kind of Drift in D&D and even as far as GURPS, depending on who you're playing with.

A way of looking at this all that's been rattling around in my head, has been that there are multiple metagame goals: fidelity of the various sorts, narrativism, challenge, social standing, personal exploration, education, etc., any of which can be a primary goal of play and which may be more or less encouraged by given sets of mechanics or system elements. If instead we go with saying that some sort of fidelity is included in all play, and there really are only two other goals (nar/gam) where does everything else fit in?

But what if the particular goals that may be social or psychological in nature take pre-eminence? Are gamism and narrativism avenues through which these goals may themselves be reached?

Mike Holmes wrote: But in a moment, Ron would be along to tell you that this is, in fact Narrativism. That you're conflating the literature definition with something more flighty. Well, we don't have to debate this under my model.

It seems like the Big Question getting asked right now is whether a game can live on Fidelity alone. As often happens, I think design and play are getting confused a bit.

A game can be designed for Fidelity alone. We've seen it many times. GURPS, for example, is designed for Fidelity alone, as is BESM and Fudge, I'd purport. Notice all of these games consider themselves "generic" systems.

There is no "generic" play, though. Fidelity cannot be the only thing that keeps play going. (I expect protest to this remark, but I stand by it. No game can stand play with only Fidelity.) This does not mean the above games are bad, or unplayable. It's always been acknowledged that Theme and Challenge can arise from the social structure of play, and in fact, the social structure is the primary provider of these two. Rules can focus this, and help mightily, but without the social structure of either Theme or Challenge, they won't happen. In this case, a group who has a clear social impetus, and enjoys play with high Fidelity, will add Challenge or Theme to a Fidelity-only game, moving it to fit their group.

I really like this new model that's emerging, by the way. It has the following advantages:

- Games that I couldn't really fit into GNS fit great here. I understand GURPS in a new way.
- This model would be incredibly hard to use to label people. Any -isms can turn into -ists real fast.

Also, I edited out a huge part of this post when I realized it was moving off topic. I'm quoting it here, because I think there were some good ideas in it.

First, let me talk about a new model for design and play. If we use an axis-type model, you end up with a two-dimensional surface, with one axis of Fidelity and another of Challenge/Theme. You have to wonder - if Fidelity crosses the Challenge/Theme axis at the midpoint, what does that midpoint represent? It makes sense to have it represent a null - a space in which Challenge and Theme are reduced to nothing. Moving left of that point, Challenge is continually raised, and moving right, Theme is raised. In this model, Challenge and Theme are mutually exclusive.

Can that happen, though? Are Challenge and Theme mutually exclusive? I'm not sure, but if I have to offer an opinion, I'd say no. I certainly feel Challenge when trying to determine what tactics to use in the Riddle of Steel, and I've gotten serious Theme pay-off when that Challenge was met and defeated.

Challenge and Theme, while not being mutually exclusive, are not necessarily conducive to each other, though. In my above TRoS example, the Challenge is not a huge part of my play: it exists as a small, discrete part that is enjoyable, but not the focus. If they are not necessarily conducive, you could construct a model with three axes, all moving out from a singular point. A coherent game would "hug" one of the axes, and a game which did not hug one of the axes, but struck out into the middle ground would be "out there," or hard to use in play.

(It stands to note that by saying that Challenge is only a very small part of my example, I reduce it to not really being an instance of play, as recently defined, and could eliminate it, meaning I've just talked in circles.)

Emily Care wrote: So we are saying both that a game that only prioritizes exploration doesn't exist, and that all exploration is fidelity to some referent?

(Thanks for introducing fidelity as a term, Chris. I championed it in this thread a while ago, and somehow verisimilitude came more into vogue. :)

If instead we go with saying that some sort of fidelity is included in all play, and there really are only two other goals (nar/gam) where does everything else fit in?

I believe Mike placed Social at a step higher than gns, which is always true: any rpg occurs within the context of social interaction. But what if the particular goals that may be social or psychological in nature take pre-eminence? Are gamism and narrativism avenues through which these goals may themselves be reached?

Two posts again.

I just can't help but feel there is some sort of GNS defense mechanism in the definition of Nar.

Hi Clinton,

There is no "generic" play, though. Fidelity cannot be the only thing that keeps play going.

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: There is no "generic" play, though. Fidelity cannot be the only thing that keeps play going.

In this case, a group who has a clear social impetus, and enjoys play with high Fidelity, will add Challenge or Theme to a Fidelity-only game, moving it to fit their group.

- This model would be incredibly hard to use to label people. Any -isms can turn into -ists real fast.

Can that happen, though? Are Challenge and Theme mutually exclusive? I'm not sure, but if I have to offer an opinion, I'd say no.

In my above TRoS example, the Challenge is not a huge part of my play: it exists as a small, discrete part that is enjoyable, but not the focus. If they are not necessarily conducive, you could construct a model with three axes, all moving out from a singular point. A coherent game would "hug" one of the axes, and a game which did not hug one of the axes, but struck out into the middle ground would be "out there," or hard to use in play.

Two posts in a row.

Bankuei wrote:

There is no "generic" play, though. Fidelity cannot be the only thing that keeps play going.

I can only agree with you there. High Fidelity play alone, doesn't hold for me. It's part of my personal love/hate with Sim designed games. They have an excellent engine for drifting either way G/N, but usually fail to provide enough impetus to really to either well without some drift.

Mike Holmes wrote:
In fact, I'd simply say that, given power to go off on the Conflict axis, players will tend to do so. I mean, why not? These axes do not conflict. So it doesn't hurt my Fidelity to go off on the Conflict Axis. If a particular decision would, I can always retract to the center for that one decision if I have that as a strong priority.

Clinton, bingo. Note how some players are more uncomfortable with the SAs. This is because they don't see them in terms of the Conflict axis, they think that they have something to do with the Fidelity axis. And to an extent they do have some impact (for a player who prefers their Fidelity to be physics based, they might see SAs as dipping way low on that axis). If they were just to see them in the light of the element that makes the game's Theme decisions fun, then they'd probably not object. As Ron says, the only thing that prevents players from shifting back and forth on that axis is not knowing what the goal is. TROS shifts the goal back and forth so that you have fun with each end, IMO. SAs drive Thematic decisions (like who to fight), which then gives you power to make Challenge decisions (like how to fight).

Chris (Bankuei) suggested "Conflict Axis", and it works perfectly with what I'm describing.

Mike

Called on the carpet; let me respond.

Mike Holmes wrote:

quoting what I wrote: ...war games...we're not asking either whether the opponent is going to have moral issues about a particular approach or which approach is strategically best for the opponent, but given what we know about the opponent, what strategy is he most likely to use?

But how are these not the same? I mean, a good simulation will make it difficult to use unrealistic solutions. So in the end, good Gamism is usually congruent with good Sim.

Mike then wrote: The real test would be if there were a game where players just played aliens on an alien planet, and no conflict occured. You were just presented with typical day to day stuff, and were told to "react" appropriately. I can see it thoeretically, but it would be totally original to RPG play.

Mike also wrote: Note how the central feature of most RPGs is some sort of conflict resolution system.

He further wrote: As soon as you have Conflict, you have players using their powers to go Gamist or Narrativist.

This is long, an actual play example, and only mostly on topic. I won't cry foul if the moderators think it would be appropriate to relocate it.

M.J.,

Well, if we're gonna get all examply, I'm gonna throw out an actual play example that I believe is Hi-Fi|Story Now, but is not quite Nar and not quite Sim. You be the judge.

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.'

From my point of view, it seems to be all in the Author stance - it allows you syncronize Nar/Sim: Explore Sit|Char so they all feed off each other to create a consistent whole. I believe that whole is a single priority - Hi-Fi|Story Now. Honestly, I'm not convinced Author stance can be motivated by anything but a non-Sim metagame agenda.

Doh! I think I forgot the most important part.

M.J.,

Yeah, you're making sense, but I don't precisely see it that way. In my play experiences I see defining the consistent reality being motivated by story. Maybe that's not quite right. I see the story and consistent reality as homogeneous. As an analogy, take the author who has a character that won't allow him to make certain decisions. The character has a certain amount of aliveness that the author simply cannot fight without him becoming a different character. The author still has roads he takes to develop the best story in the form of creating the situations surrounding the character. The character may be an immutable Sim sorta thing, but everything around him is mutable - which makes the story mutable and prioritizable. You could think of the character a constant, or a restriction placed on the bounds of the story.

Mike keeps saying this isn't anything new, just a different way of looking at what we have. I agree with him (excluding my Nar contention/confusing/whatever it is). This approach seems more concise and accessible for defining the way I play than the current divisions/hybrids.

EDIT:
Your examples (correct me if I'm wrong) seem like solid Actor stance examples. In connection with my idea that Author stance must have a metagame priority other than verisimilitude, I would say that true Actor stance cannot have a priority other than verisimilitude. What I think you have with Actor stance is then the center point (or Don't Care point) on the Conflict axis with High Fidelity. At least, that's where I see what you're describing using this approach. In contrast then, I suppose what you'd have at the center with Low Fidelity would be 'not playing'...I think. (I'm having some deja vu here, didn't Walt and/or Chris already say something like this...oh well.)

cruciel wrote: From my point of view, it seems to be all in the Author stance - it allows you syncronize Nar/Sim: Explore Sit|Char so they all feed off each other to create a consistent whole. I believe that whole is a single priority - Hi-Fi|Story Now. Honestly, I'm not convinced Author stance can be motivated by anything but a non-Sim metagame agenda.

MJ, It seems to me that you're not reading the other posts. I've acceeded that one can make decisions that are neutral to the question of Gamism or Narrativism (challenge/theme, the Conflict axis). It's not that a player can't prioritze "sim". Quite the opposite. What I'm saying is that incoherence only occurs along one or the other axis. Simulationism does exist, and in this model is high fidelity, with neutral Conflict axis positioning.

Will this annoy the player who wants challenge to be the primary motivation of play? Sure. But not because the decisions are High Fidelity. That's the point. The decision is annoying because the player B percieves player A with his given power to win, not using that power to do so.

Basically, nobody ever said, "Man, you suck, that was way to realistic!"

What they object to (assuming a different preference), in the case of the example, is that either the player isn't responding well to a challenge, or he's not creating story. That is, that the player isn't with them on the Conflict axis.

Now, as I've said, I'll also admit that certain decisions only have mutually exclusive decisions in terms of which axis can be prioritized. But this is key. It's only certain decisions that have this quality. This is why Ron requires the "Instance of play" to note direction. What I observe, however in the Instance, is players going back and forth on both axes. But they do tend to be going for some position typically (including neutral).

OK, I'm just extending my point. I'd also like to point out that your example is unusual. I mean, you might think that it's "normal" play, MJ, but obviously the reviewer didn't. And most people would not. I've admitted that this sort of play can exist in other posts (even fought those who've said otherwise, like Clinton). The point is that this is simply a perfect example of the principle at work. That is, one can see that for Clinton, it's a requirement of play that one go off the neutral stance on the Conflict axis. For you it's not. Hence we see why we need this theory or GNS.

BTW, when I said Conflict resolution system, I just meant resolution system. If there is no conflict (and I mean this in a traditional sense as any two things that compete to produce an outcome incliuding any task), what do you roll for? A "true" non-conflict sim would never have a need to roll to see what comes out on top. It might have random rolls or systemic rolls for what's likely to happen, but you'd never have to consider a resolution system roll. The point is that, again, what constitutes conflict is in the eye of the "annoyed" party. So even your "perfectly sim" game must be on the chart somewhere.


The advantage of this theory is that it says that it's not that you're prioritizing Sim that's the problem that Clinton has with your example of play. It's that you're not getting off neutral on the other axis. At first glance this seems to be simply saying that GNS lies along one axis. But there's another important thing going on. And that's that it's now OK for the player to prioritize BOTH. That is, Clinton will have absolutely no problem with you making HiFidelity/Challenge, or HiFidelity/Thematic decisions. He only has a problem with the narrow HiFidelity/Neutral category.

Further that there's a whole 'nother brand of incoherency that lies on the other axis.

In Ron's model, you have to be one of three things in effect, or hop between them resulting in play that was, in total, measurable as one of the three things. What I'm saying is that there are four things to be, and you can be any two of them consistently. HiFi/Nar play for eample, is not schitzoprenic, it's quite consistent. Ron's model didn't really deny that, but made it hard to imagine, IMO.

The other advantage of this model is that it is atomic. That is, it does deal with each individual decision, and the overall play can be detailed if one wishes as a an average of all the decisions made. I think that's a valid way to look at it. Because we all know and agree that only ocassionally is it a single decision that causes players to be annoyed with other players' play.

And most importantly is the implication for design. It means that instead of thinking in terms of whether the game is purely one of three modes, you look at where you stand on each spectrum.

Suddenly we can all agree that TROS is HiFi/Theme with moments of big HiFi/Challenge. That it's simply not Neutral ever on the conflict axis. No longer are there any questions about whether or not the Sim overpowers the Nar or vice versa. I think that given the game's design that it's not an issue.

When designing, you then ask what I think are the pertinent questions. How does the game support Challenge or Theme. And to what extent, and how do I want to support Fidelity. The first question is pretty standard, but the second one is not as often considered. That is, it's assumed that you have to give up some Fidelity to get theme or challenge. But then we're told that hybrids are possible. Well, how do you get a hybrid? This model has the answer. All games are hybrid in a manner of speaking, and this model requires you to answer the question "to what extent"? But in a way that has, I think, a more clear impact on play results.

I'm tentatively thinking of calling this the Conflict/Fidelity model (alphabetic listing of terms so that I can't be called biased). C/M for short. Does that make sense?

Are my clarifications logical? Any more problems?

Mike

This post follows a more important one above.

Jason, Justin, I've always been of the opinion that the stances don't have a one to one relationship with anything. I think this model makes that more clear. That is, formerly it was hard to consider a thematic decision in terms of being made in Actor stance because the definition of that stance seemed almost identical with that of the presumed motives of the Sim mode. Same with Nar and non-actor stances.

In this model we see that Actor stance is one potential way to achieve HighFidelity, but that doesn't mean that it can't also be Theme. Which is what Ron's been saying for a long time to deaf ears. Similarly I've been saying that people don't recognize the extent of use of Author and Director in creating Hi Fidelity play. But the assumption seemed to be that these things supported Gam or Nar so powerfully that they weren't capable of supporting HiFi. But we see with this model that this assumption can't be true.

There will always be localized cases where these assumptions are true. But over time, they're demonstrably false. Which has it's most important repercussion in design where most decisions are made to promote an overall style as opposed to control of atomic decision making.

Mike

Lots to address, and I'm hoping to run a game tonight, so I may be too brief on some of these points. I have indeed read every post on this thread, although I won't pretend I fully assimilated all of them before I posted--there's not enough time in one of these hot threads to do more than read through and respond, because if you give it time to cohere in detail there will be another half hour of reading to do before you can post.

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?

Good story, by the way. It actually addresses moral and ethical issues better than some of the stories in my book. (I'm going to have to work on that.)

Mike, I think that there is gamist/simulationist incoherence and narrativist/simulationist incoherence.

The latter is easier to see, and in fact I see it in Jason's post.

Jason a.k.a. Cruciel wrote: 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).

Mike wrote: Basically, nobody ever said, "Man, you suck, that was way to realistic!"

well, I guess I'm kind of late getting into this thread... and it's already swollen to four page! here's my quick round-up on thoughts about this thread.

Mike Holmes wrote: A while back, someone (please step forward whoever you are) that these things might be thought of as a couple of different axes. And over time, I've started to accept this more or less.

So this is what I'm picturing - Do I understand all this correctly?

[img]http://www.simplephrase.com/bh.jpg[/img]

Games classified as Sim by the GNS model: this is a game whose mechanics focus on Fidelity and leave G and N up to the individual social contracts, or perhaps allows for either at the individual player's choice. Hero, GURPS, Fudge fall on various levels of Fidelity and stick near the center of the Challenge axis.

Games classified as Gamist by the GNS model: these are games that encourage/reward gamist decisions. D&D3 is a Hi-Fi Gamist game. Tunnels & Trolls is a Lo-Fi Gamist game.

Games classified as Narrativist by the GNS model: games that encourage/reward thematic decisions and story creation. Trollbabe is a Lo-Fi Nar game. Riddle of Steel is a Hi-Fi Nar game.

This is next-level shit that I find significantly diggable. As a theory it seems more palatable than GNS; it just clicks in my head better than GNS ever did. Somebody going to make an article? And what does Ron think of this?

M.J.,

Your analysis is very intelligent and spot on. I'm still a little iffy on whether it's Sim or Nar, and have got a little more to say, but have responded in this thread.

Justin, Mike:

I think you're right on the Stances. I'm seeing patterns, but patterns to do make absolutes.

'K, back to M.J.,

M.J. wrote: Now, how did those player characters all happen to show up at that moment? There's no indication that they heard the fight and came running. There's no indication that they (the characters) had any reason to go there such that they would stumble on these events. They appeared because the players wanted to have their characters involved in the story at this moment, not because there was any real reason, within the characters' world, that they would.

More M.J. wrote:
...snip...
No? Sure they did; they just didn't use those words. They said, "Why didn't you shoot the guy before he got away?" "I didn't think it was something my character would have done." "Well, you probably cost us the game." That's a gamist/simulationist conflict. That's the gamist saying that the simulationist erred by being to "realistic" in relation to his character's identity.

Simulationism is a metagame priority which at times does conflict with the metagame priorities of gamism and narrativism. It does so less often, and it is usually less recognized when it does. That doesn't relieve it from being a conflicting metagame priority.
...snip...

MJ, I agree with your analysis of Jason's play, FWIW. This all goes to Ron's "Oh shit, I'm playing Narratvist," section of the Sim essay. But just goes to show how thins model eliminates personal disagreement on what's happening in game. Without looking at the Fidelity angle as competitive, suddenly what's going on is more clear.


Again, we're not really disagreeing on the other points. Sim is a metagame priority. I've never said it wasn't. And I've also agreed that problems can occur between them in terms of such things as available decisions. I've just said that perceptually they don't compete in play.

Your example of what people say, "why didn't you shoot?" is a perfect example of the clarity of this new model. That is, players don't think in terms of these things conflicting. That is, the reason they never actually state what I said, is because they don't think in those terms. The "gamist" player is thinking in terms of using player power to compete. He's thinking along that axis. He's not concerned that the player's action is realistic. He's concerned that it's not playing to win.

Why the distinction? Because some players will expect both. Hi Fidleity/Challenge is also a valid way to play. So the player with that preference in fact expects the player's action to be realistic. He just expects the player to also be trying to win at the same time. It's the lack of the latter that's annoying.

Now, I've said repeatedly that a player may encouter points at which he can't have both HighFidelity and a HiChallenge response to a situation. And thus there is a potential conflict when he chooses one over the other. But it's precisely an understanding of both axes that's important, then. Has a LowFidelity tolerance been set? Then the player should make the more Challenge oriented response because there's no mandate to go High Fidelity.

This is key. Now we see that there's not only the traditional LowFi/Challenge style (which is oft berated as the "root" of Gamism; associated with Pawn stance), but a HiFi/Challenge style as well.

Keep in mind that there hasn't been any real changes from the original GNS theory. You can map one over the other. It's precisely a perceptual problem (several actually) that makes this version of the theory an improvement (IMO).

I agree with a lot of Jason's points regarding association with this model. Already he's been able to use it to define things in terms that (assuming you buy the model), seem pretty agreeble and intuitive.


Jon, that's not the post I was thinking of, sorry. Though I'm sure it reinforced my thinking on the subject, as did much of that thread.

Ethan, that's precisely what I envision for the plot. I don't want to privilege High Fidelity by placing it up, but it's intutive, and it also helps intuitively with the "gravity" effect that was mentioned. That is, I think of Fidelty as a bar to be achieved or exceeded. Whereas the other axis has balance across it in terms of effect.

Mike

There seeoms to be some confusion between the amount of something and the prioritization of something. This is understandable, as the word itself can be ambiguous. (If your boss tells you to prioritize recruitment, is she asking you to spend more effort on recruitment than you normally would, or is she asking you to make recrutiment your top priority above all other tasks? Probably depends on the boss.) But as I understand it, the prioritization referred to in GNS is always the relative variety. What is prioritized is what gets served when push comes to shove. In other words, it's the pushing and shoving, not the absolute amount of effort expended, that reveals priorities.

Simulationism is not fidelity.
Simulationism is not high fidelity.
Simulationism is (to a first approximation) the prioritization of fidelity.

The assertion of the square horseshoe is that fidelity does not conflict with Gamist or Narrativist concerns. But numerous examples raised in this thread show that sometimes it does. The admission that fidelity must be cranked down to accomodate really strong Gamist or Narrativist interests means that the rectangle has sloping sides. In my (geometry) book that makes it a triangle, dudes.

Which goes back to my earlier comparison. M.J. wants three independent dimensions, but if we accept that the dimensions are not entirely independent but must sum to the entirety of play (which we can normalize to a fixed value), we get a subspace that is a two-dimensional triangle. (If play has "more of everything" it's a bigger triangle but normalizing means we draw it the same size anyway.)

Ron has stated in the past that any GNS does not imply any particular shape or continuum, and that there is no practical way to characterize a decision as "x% S, y% G, z% N" which would appear to be a requirement for using a continuum model. But the length of a minimum instance of play (and the corresponding analytical irrelevance of individual decisions), the discusison of "supporting priorities" further described comparatively e.g. as "strong," and the foundational claim that all play has elements of all three modes all point in favor of a continuum.

Some points I'm coming away with from this thread so far are:

1. The idea that confliciting play priorities can be "along any axis" is useful, for any version of the model. That instead of saying "your G is getting in the way of my S," complaints will as likely take the form of "you're doing too much (that is, more than I want do support your doing) G" or "you're not paying enough attention to S." This is nothing that hasn't been clearly implicit in GNS all along, but it's worth noting.

2. "Fidelity" is a slipperier term than we're giving it credit for. For instance, fidelity is held to be compatible with Gamism because fidelity to a detailed set of rules can (obviously) support Gamist priorities. And it's held to be compatible with Narrativism because an entirely different kind of fidelity, fidelity to plausibility or consistency in the outcome, can support Narrativist priorites. The concept of "high fidelity" in particular needs some careful life support or it will collapse in contradictions and arguments (such as whether no-myth is necessarily low fidelity as Mike claims -- based on yet another type of fidelity, fidelity to a pre-existing imagined world-state -- or otherwise as I could argue). [Edited to acknowledge M. J. having made a similar point in the Fidelity Axis thread.]

3. Number 2, repeated nine more times. This all falls apart without a sound operational understanding of fidelity -- and I mean it all falls apart, core GNS included. (Well, maybe not falls apart completely, but a lot of progress gets reversed so that we'd be back to a negative definition of Simulationism as a lack of G or N metagame priorities.)

- Walt

Hi Walt,

Excellent points. I'm going to venture for the moment that Fidelity is talking about Fidelity to those Explorative elements(System, Setting, Situation, Color, Character). So, between those 5, there are various ways to prioritize what needs X amount of Fidelity.

So, if we're talking the Pool, system is at the top of the Fidelity list, with the rest being accorded to the group's standards. If we're talking Nar drifted D&D(with lots of fudging), then System is dropped accordingly, and the other 4 raised depending on the group. If we're talking Dust Devils, Setting and Color are going to have High Fidelity along with System.

When we look at it this way, and consider Sim as written, all that's being said is that Gamism or Narrativism has goals outside of Fidelity, and is willing to drop Fidelity to those explorative elements to accomplish their goals. On the mirror side, Sim is all about Fidelity to those explorative elements(Exploration, remember?).

Again, nothing new to GNS, just stated differently. What may be of value is to not consider the Fidelity/Conflict plane as a hard triangle, but perhaps a fuzzy one, similar to those fun Mendelbrot colored probability maps. What is a "make or break" Fidelity or Conflict question for one group, or one system, may not be an issue for another.

So one group playing with X system, with Y social contract issues regarding Fidelity, may find that they have to choose between action A or action B based on Fidelity vs. Conflict. Another group utilizing another system will not have that problem until further out on the graph.

To give a simple example, the classic throat-slitting issue of D&D: Do you follow the rules in which the person lives via hp, or do you simply declare them dead? This is a basic Fidelity of "plausibilty" vs. Fidelity of System happening. Or some other rule? Compare this to TROS, in which the throat slitting is handled by system fairly well, so the issue doesn't arise.

I'd like to say that any sort of judgement of a game in play, or a game facilitating X play, would be a dark blotch on the graph, lightening as it spreads out, showing the "most likely" sort of Fidelity/Conflict area of a game, and spreading out to the "less likely" areas based on drift, group, etc. I'd also like to say that in some cases, one could have seperate areas marked, for example, I'd say that TROS has coverage in both Gamist and Narrativist sectors of the graph.

Thoughts? Input?

Chris

I knew we'd get to this point. And I ought to have known that it was Walt that called me on it. I have what I think is an answer.

First, however, I'd like to address Fidelity. I agree that it's being handled sloppily, even in the other thread meant to address it. And it's not a simple topic. Fidelity can't mean adherence to the rules, however. So that's not what would characterize HiFi/Challenge. That corner would be similar to the HiFi/Theme corner in that the decisions would be congruent with both aims. It's not some special place, and doesn't require us to imagine anything special. Just a decision where it so happens that perhaps the realistic thing to do and the one that will win are the same. And that the decision is being chosen for both of those reasons.

See, it's this last idea that's the sticking point. Walt defines it well. Priority is the problematic point. GNS says that, a player will, when one of those moments comes, make a decision that's either A or B based on his priority at that moment. But then the theory notes that this priority will only be seen over an Instance of play. Meaning players will actually make some mixture of atomic decisions in play, the overall appearance of which is G or N or S.

But that admits that there's another metric involved. That is, there must be some impetus towards each mode that's employed, or those other decisions would not get made. Further, that likely there's some metric on the decision itself as to how it applies to the other metrics that in sum total results in the decision arrived at. That is, if I have a player with strong S preference, and a stronger G priority, and he makes an S decision, that something about that particular set of choices that's available makes the decision with the lower priority the more attractive one.

In any case, we could look at that closely, but what it implies is that it is important to look at these not as priorities in terms of Walt's absolute method, but as some sort of metric. And that it's also important to consider how they might be mixed. Because it seems to me that if we want to cater to some particular segment that it's important to consider multiple axes, and not just the one priority.

Now, in GNS, this takes the form of the contentious Hybrid game. But that would be to cater to two GNS priorities. Which would seem to be nonsensical in that, if they're priorities then you can only have one. Or perhaps a balance between two or all three. But what you can't have is a priority of one and also a smaller one for another because that would contradict the idea of a priority being that which is most important.

Basically what Ron calls the GNS "priority" I would call the largest vector on the model. But again that makes you think in terms of singluar player preferences when demonstrably they have more.

Now, this all becomes clear when we say that GNS is not about players, it's about those individual behaviors. But this is the problem, we're not making games for behaviors to play. We're making games for players to play. And they are more complex than single behaviors. I, unlike Ron, want to be able to label people with the model. And that requires rating them across thier multiple potential proclivities.

So, this model isn't triangular. Because it does not model a space that's based on what decisions actually get made (and even that triangle is only formed of a weight of decisions that are inside it; some do fall outside). It's based on the cross values of player desires. I have a strong desire for play that's both HiFi and Thematic. That puts me in the corner. Which doesn't exist in the GNS model.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Mike Holmes wrote: I have a strong desire for play that's both HiFi and Thematic. That puts me in the corner. Which doesn't exist in the GNS model.

Bankuei wrote: I'm going to venture for the moment that Fidelity is talking about Fidelity to those Explorative elements(System, Setting, Situation, Color, Character). So, between those 5, there are various ways to prioritize what needs X amount of Fidelity.

Hi Chris,

That’s probably the case on different ends of the Conflict axis, but I think that all the talk of ’fudging’ and whatnot in various threads lately shows that the Fidelity of System often falls to desire for Fidelity in other aspects of Exploration.

Hey Chris,

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs, but once rules become formalized they become System and not 'fudging'. I think that the 'ignore the rules' directive was instituted to help maintain balance in a system where it's notoriously difficult to balance challenge vs. character/party power and in that sense it was also instituted in the pusuit of making the game 'fun'. If the system had less variables involved in creating balanced challenges I don't think that 'ignore the rules' bit would even exist.

-Chris

Hi Chris,

Bankuei wrote: I'm going to venture for the moment that Fidelity is talking about Fidelity to those Explorative elements(System, Setting, Situation, Color, Character). So, between those 5, there are various ways to prioritize what needs X amount of Fidelity.

Bankuei wrote: I'd like to say that any sort of judgement of a game in play, or a game facilitating X play, would be a dark blotch on the graph, lightening as it spreads out, showing the "most likely" sort of Fidelity/Conflict area of a game, and spreading out to the "less likely" areas based on drift, group, etc. I'd also like to say that in some cases, one could have seperate areas marked, for example, I'd say that TROS has coverage in both Gamist and Narrativist sectors of the graph.

C. Edwards wrote: Hey Mike,

Mike Holmes wrote: I have a strong desire for play that's both HiFi and Thematic. That puts me in the corner. Which doesn't exist in the GNS model.

Maybe I’ve been reading more into some aspects of GNS than are actually present but I always thought that corner did exist in GNS, although not explicitly stated.

Actually it does exist, as multiple priorities. Which, as I've said is conceptually difficult. Basically the advantage of my model here is that it makes the location of that play explicit as a basic assumption.

Your desires for HiFi and Theme will coincide on some decisions and you will have to prioritize one over the other for some decisions. I thought that was the whole point of an observable instance not being limited in duration. It can take quite a few decisions for an observer to work out someone’s play priorities.

That's GNS. My model says that each decision is somewhere on the chart, and is made due to the player having an urge of X amount to do so. Yes, observation is problematic, but a player will know his own urges fairly well. And you can also observe over time. But here's the key; this model allows you to consider the atomic decision, if only theoretically. For design that's important. Because sometimes support has to be available on that scale. At least I find it very useful to think of things on that scale.

Basically it doesn't matter that we don't know what play is for design purposes, we're after all trying to engender a certain sort of play, not discern it.

Mike

That’s probably the case on different ends of the Conflict axis, but I think that all the talk of ’fudging’ and whatnot in various threads lately shows that the Fidelity of System often falls to desire for Fidelity in other aspects of Exploration.

I'd also say that the rule of "fudging" or "ignor the rules" comes from putting Challenge over System Fidelity. Consider the really old 1st edition D&D stuff, where you'd get a unique situation such as a tar trap which would get its own set of rules made up to deal with it, such as, "Movement is reduced to 1/3rd, and you cannot make Saves to dodge attacks or spells". "Ignor the rules" basically gives any GM the right to introduce new ones, or drift play at will in order to better facilitate Gamist priorities in D&D, and is the battlecry of those who believe D&D "can do everything".

Hi Mike,

I was referrring to Fidelity to the rules "as written"(interpreted however the group may after that point). Hence, "Ignor the rules" is permission given to Drift, permission to drop Fidelity a notch to fulfill other goals. Does that make sense to you?

Chris

Bankuei wrote:
I was referrring to Fidelity to the rules "as written"(interpreted however the group may after that point). Hence, "Ignor the rules" is permission given to Drift, permission to drop Fidelity a notch to fulfill other goals. Does that make sense to you?

Hey Mike,

Mike Holmes wrote: You guys have taken this beyond me. I'm not sure what Fidelity to System is, actually. I know that it's not using the rules as intended. That can't be right. It can be using the rules to evoke that which the game seeks to evoke, namely some sense of the world as arbitrary.

Pickett could refuse to charge, but he wouldn't.

I think that's the difference between fidelity and simulationism. The former considers all the options that are possible, given what is known about the world, the situation, and the character, but does not decide which to do solely on that basis. The latter chooses which option to take based on a defined metagame priority, the desire to be as true as possible to the elements without outside interference. In the same way that gamism encourages a player to choose an action from among the possible which furthers success and narrativism encourages a player to choose, again from among the possible, to develop theme, simulationism looks at the possibles and chooses the most probable, regardless of whether it leads to success or failure, whether it tells a better or worse story. It is a metagame priority which directs choice in exactly the same way as the other two metagame priorities: determining which of the possible actions the character will do.

Walt wrote: There seeoms to be some confusion between the amount of something and the prioritization of something....as I understand it, the prioritization referred to in GNS is always the relative variety. What is prioritized is what gets served when push comes to shove. In other words, it's the pushing and shoving, not the absolute amount of effort expended, that reveals priorities.

Simulationism is not fidelity.
Simulationism is not high fidelity.
Simulationism is (to a first approximation) the prioritization of fidelity.

However, then he wrote: M.J. wants three independent dimensions,...

I wrote: In regard to hybrids, I think there are three different notions that get mixed together.

• Uncommitted games. I think Multiverser falls into this category--the core engine is simulationist enough to run everything, but flexible enough that referees can raise or lower the level of simulation to fit what's necessary at the moment. That is, I can use a running skill success roll either to determine exactly how fast you ran or to determine whether you ran "fast enough" in this situation. Meanwhile, referees and players can bring issues and challenges (that is, narrativist and gamist concerns) into play through world and scenario choices--but referees do not have the power to force players into gamist or narrativist play. Players are free to play as they wish, sufficiently isolated from each other's goals that they won't interfere with each other, and able to shift in response to the game if they desire--or not if they prefer. Some of it requires that the referee respond to the player's desires; but then, part of the mechanics in the game is "does the character have things go the way he wants, and to what degree", so that's also built in.• Driftable games. I don't mean this in the sense that you can force a game to be whatever you want by ignoring parts of it; I mean that people are trying to build games that provide specific support for two or three styles, so that players can make it support the one they want. We encountered this on a recent thread, in which someone tried to toss together a game that would let players decide through character generation whether they were going for gamist, narrativist, or simulationist advancement by how they built the character. I found this implausible, and following John Kim's comments said that character generation was not a sufficient foundation for that, as the game engine itself was going to matter greatly. But there are games which move easily between two agendae, as long as everyone goes with them.• Focused Concept games. This is a game in which your creative agenda becomes in some sense irrelevant. I think I recently suggested a Viet Nam game, in which you're a member of a platoon. If the platoon is under fire, it doesn't much matter whether you're a gamist, narrativist, or simulationist--you're going to defend yourself and try to fight back. The gamist does it because he likes the challenge; the simulationist because it seems like what he would do; the narrativist because it's the color of the story against which the issues are played out. For very different reasons, they all do the same thing. Thus the player styles are not in conflict at that moment. However, I argue that the focus of such a game has to be so narrow that it will ultimately be dissatisfying to everyone one way or another. The gamist can't win the Viet Nam war. The narrativist can't do anything about his questions of the morality of the conflict. The simulationist can't focus on the experience of living in the southeast Asian jungle. Their priorities only align while in the very narrow area delineated by the concept; the closer they get to what they want to do, the more it falls apart. I don't think you can do this kind of hybrid beyond very narrow concepts (the Netrunner card game was suggested in this context, and I pointed out that the narrowness of the concept was the only reason it worked). Thus I think this is a pipe dream. Yet usually when people speak of hybrids, they're trying to do this: create a game in which gamist, narrativist, and simulationist players all in the same scenario will all make non-conflicting choices because their different goals lead to the same decisions. I think you and I are both on the same page here, thanks to our theology backgrounds. I frequently tell people that theology is everything: that what you really believe will ultimately determine what you actually do. You can't have players with entirely different agendae coming to the same conclusions on the best way to reach those different goals. It's the error of Jefferson (was it called the Marketplace of Ideas? I'm not remembering it right now), that if rational men discussed all the options we would ultimately all agree on the best way to reach the best world--it only works if we've already agreed in every detail about the best world, because otherwise we're all trying to get somewhere else. That's the problem with hybrids of this sort: if we're all trying to travel together and reach different places, we fight. It doesn't happen in Multiverser, because we don't have to travel together (Have fun stormin' the castle!). Other games let players drift between goals as play progresses. But you can't do what is sought here.

I'm finding large parts of this thread rather suspect.

The term Fidelity was not used because there was a particular meaning to be ascribed to it. The term fidelity was used as an alternative to calling the second axis simulationism, simply to avoid confusion.

That people have then taken a word that was chosen for no better reason than a lack of a better idea at the time, and spun it into 5 pages of stuff...makes me highly skeptical of the whole thing. I mean its one thing if someone had developed these concepts and then hunted for a word to encapsulate them...but its something else entirely when a throw away term is inflated to these proportions.

The second axis should have just remained "Simulation" and then this entire derailment would never have occured.

Tying Fidelity back into the five elements of exploration is the right way to go, if any connection between fidelity and GNS Simulationism is to be maintained. (M. J,'s new theory won't need to do this, I suppose, because it puts fidelity on its own dimension orthogonal to everyting else including Simulationism -- a point that I did indeed fail to appreciate in recent posts.)

I agree that "fidelity to a set of rules" doesn't seem to have much meaning, yet if we're talking about the fidelity associated with exploration of system, it's where we end up. "Fidelity to (a) system" is tricky, kind of like "sticking to (a) diet." You can break a diet or fail to adhere to a system, but in the end you can't not have a diet (whatever you do in fact eat, is it) and you can't not have a system (however you do in fact play, is it). So the problem is what sort of fidelity goes along with "exploration of system." It appears that it could indeed be fidelity to a particular system (that is, not breaking or ignoring its rules, for instance), or it could be fidelity to some underlying principle by which a de facto system is being decided through play (the rough equivalent of "consistency" in exploration of, say, setting in no-myth play). The first possibility sounds much easier to achieve and more likely to be a real priority of real-world play, than the second.

The problem with saying that any magnitude of fidelity is compatible with any magnitude of Gamism or Narrativism is that it overlooks the signficant constraints on what kinds of fidelity (what elements of exploration the fidelity is being applied to) are compatible. "High fidelity to system" is not only compatible with high Gamism, it's all but required for it, but the same cannot be said for e.g. "high fidelity to character."

Indeed, the constraints on "what kind of fidelity" is compatible look a lot like congruence constraints, and adding the "high-fi high-Gamism" and "high-fi high Narrativism" corners seems to come about by spinning congruence scenarios(1) rather than expanding the "natural" GNS space -- whatever the hell that distinction means. Congruence is permeating this whole thread. M. J.'s Vietnam example under "Focused Concept" games is an elegant summary of (at least one type of) applied congruence including its important downsides. I agree with his points in full, though I might be more charitable and say "your creative agenda is served by default" rather than "your creative agenda becomes in some sense irrelevant" -- though the latter is just as valid a way to say it.

- Walt

(1) Which is not to say that such congruence scenarios don't occur in actual play. I believe they're common and that they underlie some of the skepticism toward GNS. At a first glance, it's easy to come to the conclusion that one's own group is "beating" the GNS coherence principles by simultaneously playing multiple modes without obvious incoherence symptoms -- and overlook the signficant compromises in scope of exploration that are being made to achieve that functionality.

I agree, Ralph. The tems should be interchangable. I prefer Fidlity because in terms of adding a magnitude to the term it sounds more sensible. That is, High Sim doesn't sound right. Sim is an absolute priority as are all the GNS modes. Fidelity is that measure that indicates the striving for Sim.

Walt said it:

Simulationism is (to a first approximation) the prioritization of fidelity.

The question is whether when you do so you're actually choosing from more than one priority--and the answer seems to be probably not. You're choosing to do That Thing because it is the best gamist choice; the fact that it is also the best narrativist choice is irrelevant to your decision, but is what makes coherent play.

Walt,

I've never understood System as one of the five elements. If system is the means by which we determine what happens in-game, then it's all of play, and encompasses the other elements. So if the system says that color shall be thus and such, and the GM is responsible for seeing that it occurs, color is part of the system.

OTOH, I can see exploration of Mechanics, which is what I assumed was what Ron meant before he rightly defined System in it's larger role.

Ron can you clarify once again what you mean by Exploration of System?

Mike

Hi Mike,

Rolling to hit is a great example of Exploration of System. We have turned to some methodology in order to imagine what is happening in the game world. This methodology necessarily includes all the formal mechanics, but "formal" is often locally defined. In the case of rolling to hit, that local definition just means, "follow the written rule." Most of the time, I think, we can stick with this simple understanding.

However, that simple understanding isn't sufficient. For instance, a rule or method might be in the book, but the group ignores it (e.g. weapon's Speed Factor or whatever the hell it was called in my old AD&D books). That omission is part of System for that group. Similarly, just deciding that "he hits," without rolling or using other formal indicators, is System too, insofar as someone is designated as The Buck-Stopper (the guy who decides).

To say that System therefore applies to all moments of play is perfectly correct. I should also say that System can be highly, highly prioritized, and that's often the case when it's formalized through text, and when, for that group, that text's integrity is a big reason for why they're using it. As you know, GURPS included this idea as a big part of its marketing strategy back in the 80s, and JAGS, EABA, and Pocket Universe all provide (in my view) an improved and even more committed version of this strategy.

Does that help?

Best,
Ron

Wrote the post quoted below about Exploration of System, then saw Ron's post in preview.

So I can only ask, does that mean all consensual use of System is exploration of System?

Gah. Wouldn't that make any functional play in any system Simulationist? In The Pool, I might know the perfect Premise-addressing thing to narrate, but the die roll says I don't get to narrate; using ( = exploring?) the system apparently has priority.

- Walt

before reading Ron's post I wrote:
All right, Mike, you got me. Every time I see the list of five elements I'm singing the "one of these things is not like the others" song.

But I assumed that this was one of those things that was debated way before my time on other now-inaccessible fora, probably fought over tooth and nail, and who wants to go back there and hash it all out again?

To be honest, I don't think changing it to "exploration of mechanics" helps in any fundamental way. It's still like including "adjust the telescope" in a catalog of viewable astronomical objects.

Problem is, as a real-world observed behavior, this is a no-brainer. I've seen and done plenty of play that only seems describable as Exploration of System. Sometimes in overall Gamist contexts (by experimenting with the system, I hope to discover more effective strategies) and sometimes in overall Sim contexts (I just want to see what happens if the system is operated in a certain way). Sometimes I visualise the outcome in terms of the imagined game space. ("Lookit that! A low-level magic-user in the Hackmaster wurld could earn 50 GP per day by buying used books which are very cheap, using the Erase spell to erase the pages, and reselling the blank paper which is very expensive. I wonder if that means there are sweatshops devoted to this odd activity.") And sometimes I don't. (Hmm, for every 10 points I put into stat X, I get back 9 points in figured stats. Let's see what my defense rating would look like if I maxed stat X.)

The only way out I can see is to declare such activities "not role playing" in the same manner that collimating the telescope isn't astronomical observing and "exploration of what kind of pizza we're going to order" is not role playing. A good case could be made for it, but it might be a rather unpopular position. (Also, I doubt my examples from the preceding paragraph are representative of all Exploration of System play; there are probably cases that are more resistant to being classified as "not role playing.")

Ron Edwards wrote: Rolling to hit is a great example of Exploration of System. We have turned to some methodology in order to imagine what is happening in the game world. This methodology necessarily includes all the formal mechanics, but "formal" is often locally defined.
...
To say that System therefore applies to all moments of play is perfectly correct. I should also say that System can be highly, highly prioritized, and that's often the case when it's formalized through text, and when, for that group, that text's integrity is a big reason for why they're using it.

Mike, I'm beginning to think you've never played a character who is not you with pointy ears or something; I know that's not true. I must not be understanding something here.

Mike Holmes wrote:

quoting what I wrote: The question is whether when you do so you're actually choosing from more than one priority....

I totally disagree. The reason I put Challenge and Theme on the same axis is that I tend to agree that on that count you probably only consider one option or the other. Or that, at least perceptually this seems to be the case. But in terms of Fidelity, players seem to follow this mental process to my mind...

1. This is the first thing that comes to mind.
2. It happens to seem to me to fit both axes.

To repeat what I previously wrote: The question here is not whether the game has high or low fidelity, but whether when the rubber meets the road it is strategy, theme, or integrity that is the deciding factor in player decisions.

Hiya,

I'm using the definition of Exploration from my essay. This seems to have tripped you up a few times already in discussion, John. It just means imagining stuff in the process of role-playing.

Best,
Ron

MJ, it sounds to me like you're just saying that conflict between the priorities occurs. Which I agree with. And that there are more than one kind of Incoherency in Fidelity. Which I've agreed to in the other thread.

You keep insisting that players always act from gamist or narrativist priorities to some degree

Funny thing about Exploration of System...I've got the same confusion over Situation (isn't all roleplaying about what happens?) So, to answer my own question, and maybe yours:

I think what I've forgotten is that all Exploration elements are present in play, saying you are prioritizing System doesn't mean it's your singular focus (like GNS would be), but instead it is saying that the player is committing more attention to how it influences the events in the shared imaginary space. For example, prioritizing Explore:System may be nothing more complicated than devoting more thought to how the movement rules work (System) than what the character looks like when running (Color).

*****

On Congruence:
All this approach is saying (in a round-about way) is that Sim/Nar Congruence and Sim/Gam Congruence is a valid single priority; and that Gam/Nar Congruence may occur, but the player is not prioritizing the Congruence, it just happened (or someone else, like the GM, engineered it to happen). I suppose it is also implying (by the way it is organized) that some level of Sim Congruence is what most players desire.

*****

I'd just like to chime in with Mike and Ralph (which might illuminate this side of the arguement a little more) I've been using Integrity, Fidelity, Verisimilitude, prioritization of Exploration, and Simulationism interchangeably. I don't know the perfect word for the concept, but all those words are addressing the same concept for me.

******

This may be the entire disagreement right here (well, my side of it anyway):

M.J. wrote: 1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is the thing that my character would most likely do, since he is unaware of my concerns for story or success.

I wrote: 1. Here's a set of options that have the required Fidelity.
2. Of those, I'll take a because it is the thing that my character would most likely do, because choosing my concerns for story or success would violate what my character would do.

M.J. wrote: You're ignoring that this is actually a real player priority which conflicts with both gamist and narrativist priorities in the same way that they conflict with each other and is actually independent of the commitment to fidelity within the game generally.

cruciel wrote: For example, prioritizing Explore:System may be nothing more complicated than devoting more thought to how the movement rules work (System) than what the character looks like when running (Color).

On Congruence:
All this approach is saying (in a round-about way) is that Sim/Nar Congruence and Sim/Gam Congruence is a valid single priority; and that Gam/Nar Congruence may occur, but the player is not prioritizing the Congruence, it just happened (or someone else, like the GM, engineered it to happen). I suppose it is also implying (by the way it is organized) that some level of Sim Congruence is what most players desire.

Mike Holmes wrote: The reason I put Challenge and Theme on the same axis is that I tend to agree that on that count you probably only consider one option or the other. Or that, at least perceptually this seems to be the case.

Hi Mike,

The way I see it, if you have Character, Situation, Setting, and Color, then nothing happens. That's right, even if you have Situation. It's all frozen without System.

Best,
Ron

Mike Holmes wrote: Except that by the larger definition, how you determine Color is via system. How you determine Situation is via system. How you determine setting is via system. I mean, if the system is that the GM is arbiter of the setting as he ususally is, then isn't the GM creating a setting detail like a palace just a use of system?

Better put, give me an example of using the system that's not also one of the other four. I mean if rolling to hit is a great example of exploring system, isn't that just altering situation as well? Or do we mean simply resolution systems, and not system overall?

I think that Fidelity might be different because exploration seems to preceed Conflict in a very real way (as it does in schematics that say that GNS comes after Exploration). Basically, Incoherence can occur at the Exloration level (Fidelity based), or it can happen in terms of where GNS is located (Conflict). This is not to say that players have to go through this process, it's saying that the foirst things that has to be considered is what's happening in the shared imagined space. And that requires the act to have some reference to Fidelity first.

Ron Edwards wrote:
The way I see it, if you have Character, Situation, Setting, and Color, then nothing happens. That's right, even if you have Situation. It's all frozen without System.

Hi Mike,

"Use" and "prioritize" aren't the same things. I'm kind of puzzled, man. All of the five elements are "always in use." Prioritizing them is a matter of which causes which, or which receive more energy and attention than the others - not a matter of which get used at all and which don't.

I was under the impression that the Sim essay was pretty clear about that.

Best,
Ron

Ron I think the problem Mike is having is that this discussion seems to have inflated system into something that is no longer 1 of the 5, but rather above the remaining 4.

i.e. Instead of

[Social Context [Exploration of the 5 [GNS]]]

it now appears to be:

[Social Context [System [Exploration of the 4 [GNS]]]

I thought I'd reiterate a point someone already mentioned in the thread, a point I think is getting lost here; Fidelity as it was originally proposed by Emily Care was simply a one-word rephrasing of the metagame priority of Simulationism. it's Fidelity (faithfulness) to the referrant (source). that source may be a movie, tv show, book, body of myth, set of genre expectations, or setting description in a game book. it's what was later called Baseline+Vision in another thread.

it is not Fidelity to Exploration (imagining), since Exploration happens in all role-playing. I think I made the mistake of talking about "Fidelity to Setting" in my contribution to the thread. I think Fidelity to Setting, Situation, Character and Color only matters for Simulationism in so far as those elements relate to Baseline+Vision; and Fidelity to System only matters in Sim games where System represents gameworld physics.

Integrity, which is being discussed in a spin-off thread, is something different; I classify it as similar to Handling Time, Points of Contact, and similar system features: you can vary any of these in any game, regardless of where it lies on the Big Horseshoe. as an example: I've played a lot of Hi Fi Sim before and Lo Fi Gamist, but I prefer Low Handling Time in either of those game flavors. I also prefer High Integrity of Color, decent Integrity of Character and Situation, but I'm willing to play looser with Integrity of Setting, which is why the improvised world approach of Sorcerer & Sword is appealing to me.

Valamir wrote: Ron I think the problem Mike is having is that this discussion seems to have inflated system into something that is no longer 1 of the 5, but rather above the remaining 4.

Gordon C. Landis wrote:
But - maybe that experience has warped me, but my biggest problem in this Horseshoe 2 stuff has been I just don't see Challenge and Theme on the same scale. They exist independently, as far as I can tell. Admitedly, there is cross-influence but . . . well, everything has cross-influence, really.

Ron, that's a semantic argument. Forget "Use". Insert your term. How does one prioritize system or give it more energy? If it's always given attention, then how can it have less attention given to it? Try examples. I really can't imagine what you're talking about if it's not resolution systems or mechanics.

For example, do you mean to say that if I am the GM, and am describing the setting, that I'm prioritizing setting then?

Ralph, you are correct that I have a problem with that discussion, and what it entails, but it's based on this current problem in understanding.

Mike

P.S. Please try to read each post individually, folks. I'm posting and getting so many responses that I'm having to post one post right after another (I post, come back to find more to post to, and have to post again right away to keep up). So I've given up on saying that I'm posting twice in a row etc. Just try to ensure that you don't miss a response to your concern.

Hi there,

John wrote,

I'm betting Ron would say the same thing about any of the elements of Exploration... if you have Setting, System, Situation and Color, but no Character, you have no play.

talysman wrote: it's Fidelity (faithfulness) to the referrant (source). that source may be a movie, tv show, book, body of myth, set of genre expectations, or setting description in a game book.

it is not Fidelity to Exploration (imagining),

Going way, waaaaay back to the start of this thread....

Mike Holmes wrote: Like I said, I'm not going to call it Simulationism because that would indicate by the older model that it's a type of decision by itself. ...So I'm a little stuck for terms at the moment. What I need is a term for the spectrum that goes from at one extreme ignoring the "reality" of the game completely, and on the other pays so much atttention to the in-game conventions that it almost blots out the other axis. Plausibility almost works for this one, but not quite. Internal Consistency?

Bankuei wrote: How's this for a term? Fidelity. High Fidelity=Staying close to the plausibilty as defined by the game/setting/etc. Low Fidelity=willingness to discard or ignor it at will for other purposes?

Emily Care wrote: We've got one term with different definitions.

John already said most of what I was going to say, even though it was from another angle. I like the direction some people have taken with Fidelity, and I see a strong connection between Fidelity(2) and Baseline (even though I'm still a little fuzzy on specifically what that means). But, I don't think Baseline is quite what Mike is talking about here. So, if this is all true, I see very clearly where 'all play has Fidelity(2) and Sim needs to be its own axis' comes from, and I agree with the point. I just don't think it's the same arguement.

Verisimilitude is a big ugly word that says 'Hey look at me aren't I smart!', but it may be the closest word conceptional - according to the dictionary anyway:

Verisimilitude:
The quality of appearing to be true or real in a work of the imagination.

EDIT: Cross post with Mike. Bloorn? Well, it doesn't have any unwanted connotations.

Verisimilitude:
The quality of appearing to be true or real in a work of the imagination.

In summary:

I totally, completely endorse Bloorn as the new term. It's perfect simply because it avoids the semantic arguments that make my brain explode when I try to read them.

Bloorn.

So, Bloorn is an axis, and replaces GNS's Simulationism, Beeg Horseshoe 2's Fidelity. I propose Bloorn Horseshoe as a new name for the theory.

So, an example of a Low-Bloorn game that's near center on the Challenge Axis would be any rules-lite Sim game, say, the Window or Pollies. An example of a High-Bloorn game that's near center on the Challenge Axis would be Hero or GURPS.

The Bloorn Horseshoe's purpose is twofold:

1. Assist players in evaluating and understanding decisions made by themselves and others during play.
2. With this evaluation and increased understanding, assist designers in creating games that encourage certain types of decisions during play.

Does that seem right to y'all?

[Edited to make some wording more polite and meaningful]

C. Edwards wrote: But versimilitude is independent of Fidelity. Versimilitude can exist in both ends of the Fidelity axis, it's just that some people prefer a framework beyond internal consistency to be the agent of that versimilitude. Mike posted an excellent example of this very same thing in the Fidelity vs. Integrity thread.

OK, I was being facetious to make a point. See, whatever term you use, there are those who will say that you get the best Fidelity, Verisimilitude, Simulation, Immersion, Integrity, Veracity, Realish, whatever, via methods that aren't the sort of thing that I'm trying to describe here.

All these terms can be co-opted easily, simply because the idea that we're discussing doesn't exist outside of RPGs, Simulations, Video Games, etc. There is no term that has ever been meant to describe it and only it precisely. So one of two things has to happen. Either we have to make up a term that can't be misconstrued (this is where my SpecSimImm came from), or we have to agree that the term we choose has a special definition for purposes of the model and stick to that definition when discussing it.

That would be creating Jargon, which is what I was trying to do with Fidelity. The problem is that all sorts of other agendas come in, use common meanings for the term, and then say, "Aha! We were right all along, there's no reason to play Sim!".

Which is precisely what I don't believe is true.

This priority does exist, and there is no attempt by the model to diminish it in any way. In fact, I was trying to privilege the priority by putting it in it's own special place as a somewhat separate consideration from the other elements of the model.

So, I can continue to be silly and use Bloorn, or we can deside on a term. It seems to me that Simulationism never had this particular problem (though it had others), so I'm going to go back to using something like that for the nonce. But since I need it to be a magnitude, I'm going to call it the Sim Value. As in "the decision was seen to have a high Sim Value".


At this point, I'd like to ask if anyone has comments about the model as a whole. Does it seem to provide better understanding? Would a three axis model be better? Or is this all adding complexity without making anything more accessible? My hope is that the model can exist alongside GNS as a way of describing it in more internal detail when neccessary (kinda like special relativity works with the general theory).

Mike

Bummer. I really liked Bloorn, too...

However. It seems to me that the Horseshoe (Bloorn or otherwise) simply serves as a clarification of sorts to how Simulationism works in GNS. Which is pretty much what Mike just said. So I guess this is me saying, "I agree."

To answer the posed question of whether or not this model is useful - I'd say that it is. Basically, it's a reworking of GNS into a graphical sort of thing that can be easier to grok (picture >= 1000 words and all that...), and it reflects well how S works in GNS.

I think Sim Value is a good name for it.

BTW, in my last post, instead of "replaces GNS's Simulationism," I should have said (and meant) that it illustrates GNS's Simulationism, specifically how it is used in conjunction with the other modes.

Trying to define fidelity, Mike Holmes wrote: that quality of a decision that makes it seem more solidly something that occured as a result of in-game causality of some sort.

Mike earlier wrote: When you ask a player what's wrong, he'll say one of three sorts of things, true. But consider these examples:

"Not realistic enough." - the player really doesn't care why it wasn't realistic enough, just that for some reason it wasn't. Perhaps some other priority made it that way, or maybe it didn't.

"Not a good move." - the player does care why. That is, if he has a high Fidelity requirement, and it was Hi Fi, then he'll say, "But realistic" (which may mitigate or not depending). If he has a low Fi requirement, his objection will be, ", because you're using your power to intentionally lose for some reason."

"Not a cool story." - the player again cares why. If he has a high Fidelity requirement, then he'll say, "but very real" (and again that may mitigate). If he has a low Fidelity requirement, he says, "Because you're trying to win and not to tell a good story."

M. J. Young wrote: I still think this causalism/fidelity/bloorn thing is separate from simulationism.

The commitment to in-game reality/consistency/verisimilitude is support for all three, and can be set at any level for any of them. Any one of these can trump the other two.

I don't think it clarifies GNS at all.

Mike Holmes wrote: Anyone want to argue in favor of the model? If not then it would be time to can it.

ethan_greer wrote: To answer the posed question of whether or not this model is useful - I'd say that it is. Basically, it's a reworking of GNS into a graphical sort of thing that can be easier to grok (picture >= 1000 words and all that...), and it reflects well how S works in GNS.

I'm hearing you, Ethan. You're one of many who've said that it's helpful, actually. And I'd like to go on popular opinion, but I have to go with the debate as well.

So what is it about the model that you see as suuperior? Is it simply the graphical nature? If so, then there's nothing about my axis divisions that are important to that. Would you be fine with the three axis model? Or is there something about the axes that I've identified that you can point to as being inherently more understandable in relation to actual play?

Don't get me wrong, I hope you're right. But how would you address MJ's opposition, for instance?

Mike

Cool.

What about the model do I see as superior? Well, nothing, really. Earlier comments I've made seem to indicate that this model is superior in some way to GNS, but I'd like to retract that. My understanding and way of thinking has changed over the past few days. I'll try to summarize.

GNS - a big three-part model, bursting with chewy goodness and pages and pages of analysis. Digging through that analysis, I get to the following conclusions:

Gamism: As presented, it's straightforward and intuitive, easy to understand and corroborate through observation.

Narrativism: Same deal.

Simulationism: Presented as a prioritization of the five elements present in ALL roleplaying, and a mode of play in which causality is the chief concern without reference to the other two modes.

To which I respond, "Run that by me again?" As do lots of other folks.

Simulationism has always smacked to me of Euclid's 5th postulate - it seems somewhat out of place in that it's difficult to grasp, and is contrasted with the other two modes of the GNS theory. Simulationism is this "different thing." Nevertheless, there's no question in my mind that Sim exists as presented in GNS-proper, and that Sim can be and is prioritized in play over the other two modes. Hence, GNS is valid, works, etc.

But. Just as non-Euclidean geometry works in certain situations, so does this model. GNS and this model are not entirely compatible, but they are also not mutually exclusive. They share certain elements, but their use of those elements is slightly different. This model, like non-Euclidean geometry, is a reaction to an existing theory that questions one of the theory's tenets and presents a "yeah, but..." sort of argument.

So, what is this model good for? I think it serves as a useful tool for examining play behaviors and aiding design in hybrid games which have Sim as one element of the hybridization.

It works for Gam-Sim games, Nar-Sim games, and to some extent pure Sim games.

As M.J. states, Gam-Nar hybrids exist and/or are plausible. The only game I can think of that's like this is Once Upon A Time (a card game, not an RPG, but the principles are there). This model is not useful for analyzing hybrid Gam-Nar play. But that doesn't make it a useless model.

Mike,

To my mind the major concern about your theory is whether there exists anything which is both high challenge and high theme. Essentially this is the much doubted GN hybrid, or even strongly GNS hybrid. While your theory seems interesting as another way to look at GNS, it clearly assumes that this region of the mode space is unoccupied.

I'm not convinced that there exists a GN hybrid, but I am planning to try to design into one. Simply put, no one has given a good reason for one not to exist. I'm wary about removing the option, simply because it hasn't yet been observed.

-Mendel S.

Wormwood wrote: To my mind the major concern about your theory is whether there exists anything which is both high challenge and high theme. Essentially this is the much doubted GN hybrid, or even strongly GNS hybrid. While your theory seems interesting as another way to look at GNS, it clearly assumes that this region of the mode space is unoccupied.

So that would mean you disagree with my assessment that this model is not useful for classifying Gam-Nar decisions. Are you saying that this hybrid is reflected by putting the dot towards the center of the axis?

Mike,

So, in the geometric sense you have an upper half plane, (one positive definite axis and one positive and negative one) and the following elements are identified as such:

points are individual decisions

curves are player decision collections

compact regions are locations in which a given design supports play.

Even if this is the case, that still implies that no decision can be both theme and challenge, just an eventual pattern of decisions. I'm more certain that that is false, as I recognize decisions of that type in my own play.

If, rather, you are suggesting that a single decision may appear in multiple locations, then it seems that this is a poor representation of your ideas.

To put my original point in the simplest terms, there is an inherent bias that challenge and theme are necessarilly distinct. Even if this can be overcome on the next level of the theory, it is still a concern in terms of generating this bias in the first place. I have yet to see a significant advantage to account for introducing this bias, even though the half-plane does provide some advantages in understanding the nature of Sim play. Simply put, I feel that the model over corrects for the importance of Sim.

I suspect that you are actually thinking in terms of bary-centric coordinates in a triangular system. In this case you have three coordinate axes, but only two dimensions. Each coordinate is based on the distance between the vertex and the point within the triangle. The zero point is on the line opposite the vertex. In this coordinate system, something that is between challenge and theme, are each "half" challenge and "half" theme, and almost no sim. In the sense you've presented that point indicates nothing, being almost at the origin, and is essentially pure congruence.

The main advantage of bary-centric coordinates is that the actual shape of the triangle is irrelevant. I think this is where your model goes wrong, it suggests, not only that we can think in terms of a 2-dim coordinates for the triangle, but in doing so specifies a shape for the triagle, and in particular a shape which seems too simplistic to avoid adding bias to the model.

I hope that helps clarify things,

-Mendel S.

Hello,

I suggest that people might be interested in reading my breakdown of Gamist play in my new essay (I was expecting today, probably in a day or so) before we get too definite about "challenge," and being too sure about G+N play.

Mendel, in particular, you have mentioned "decisions" a few times, but I think you might be thinking at a scale well below what I consider a valid instance for discussing GNS.

Best,
Ron

Sorry for the line by line, but I think it's appropriate here.

So that would mean you disagree with my assessment that this model is not useful for classifying Gam-Nar decisions. Are you saying that this hybrid is reflected by putting the dot towards the center of the axis?

Wormwood wrote: points are individual decisions

curves are player decision collections

compact regions are locations in which a given design supports play.

Even if this is the case, that still implies that no decision can be both theme and challenge, just an eventual pattern of decisions. I'm more certain that that is false, as I recognize decisions of that type in my own play.

If, rather, you are suggesting that a single decision may appear in multiple locations, then it seems that this is a poor representation of your ideas.

Simply put, I feel that the model over corrects for the importance of Sim.

I suspect that you are actually thinking in terms of bary-centric coordinates in a triangular system.

Mike,

I guess the long and the short of it, is I'm in favor of the 3D version.

When I mean designs support a compact space in the general space, is that a given design turns out to favor region of play, which can best be defined by some number of bounded portions of the space.

I often end up thinking of the standard GNS in bary-centric coordinates, but a full 3D view is signficantly easier.

I also can't shake off the feeling that what is actually being modelled is a projective space on something else, as is especially evidenced by multiple points being directly associated. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to open than can of worms.

-Mendel S.

Addressing me, Mike Holmes wrote: Does the three axis model work for you then?

but then he wrote: Groups of decisions say something about overall play, but I contend that it's not that the player has a single priority; it's that the player has several priorities each being expressed in play to differing extents with each decision.

Heh, so in response to Mike's 'does anyone want to defend the model?' I was trying to collect my thoughts on the Is this really Nar? thread for a new assault on M.J.'s post with Sim/Nar Congruence as my battle axe.

However... It looks like I can make a much shorter post.

The three vectored model doesn't break anything for me, so if it clicks for other people I'm for it. I can say Hi-Sim|Hi-Nar|Lo-Gam and that means functionally the same thing as Hi-Fi|Theme in my mind.

The three vector model maintains the reference to Congruent play as a single priority - which is the important part for me. It also adds Nar/Gam Congruence to the mix - which I'm personally not sure anyone can actually do at a single decision point, but I do think it would be possible over an instance of play.

I think that other than my objection to the fact that it's going to be hard to visualize, and with the caveat that each of the three axes (not just the sim one) has it's own peculiarities in relation to the others, I can accept the 3D model.

Basically, yes, MJ, all that stuff that you said is what I'm imagining. I'd alter it slightly to say that I think that players often are looking at two axes at once, and that one happens to be Sim more than the others, but that this is only a trend that I observe and has no weight a priori. That is, a group will tend to set minimum bars for each, but the Sim one is almost always considered. That is, for even the most Gamist or Thematic action, the sim vector for the decision must be at a level 1, which is the simple internal consistency level. That is, a player cannot say, "I kill the dragon by taking a nuke out of my pocket and forcing him to swallow it." when we all know that nukes don't exist/are too big for pockets/he didn't purchase one earlier. That's magnitude 1 on the sim scale to say that the action taken considers causality on the most basic level. No matter how much players want to allow Gamism, for example, they'll not go below this level.

That said, as I've said before, a postmodern RPG might allow for sim zero, so even this is just an observation about common play.

Stated otherwise, the most basic precepts of the game, the genre expectations, are the minimum sim requirement in most games. The only question is going higher on the sim scale is how many additional points of contact are involved in making the decision more sim: where does the text say you can buy nukes, how commonly available are they, how much do they cost, how much does a character with his profession make, how large are they, how large are pockets in terms of carry cap, etc. Consider all the above and the Sim level skyrockets. Consider only, "I went to get a pocket nuke in a Flash Gordon game", and you have only sim 1.

That's the sort of analysis that one can do with the model. Again, the way I see it, groups establish minimums. That is, players are never dissapointed with "too much" anything. They are only dissapointed when too much of one thing results in too little of another that they have a minimum requirement for. Thus, the Gamist, as an example a player with a minimum Gamism axis requirement of 7, has no problem with simmy or narrativist qualities, but tends to see problems in terms how adversely they affect the minimums. That is, if a narrativist decision because of lack of congruence also has a Gamism vector below 7, then he'll see the decision as problematic. He may or may not be able to identify the cause; but he sure as heck knows what the problem is. This example agrees with your analysis above MJ. But consider the case where a particular decision falls below two axes' minimums.

For the geometry heads, these three minimums on the axes form the "eigth space" of acceptable play for a player. The edges of which will, of course be fuzzy because players are humans and have to rely on imperfect perception, and are imperfectly consistent. In fact, a particular player's "box" will fluctuate in dimensions no doubt.

Again, power is just the authority granted by the game (defined as player using text or agreed to convention) to make decisions with a high vector along a particular axis. Thus, again, Narrativism does not clash with Sim, it clashes with whatever happens to cause the lack of narrativist power. Which may be a designer sim priority, but that's irrelevant.

As to Walt's note (one that I accidentally encouraged) that decisions tend to be problematic when hybrid, and hence less occuring in high combinations, what I'd say is that, if one plots actual decisions, there are fewer where there are multiple vecrtors with high magnitude. So plots of actual play will tend to look something like a leaning umbrellas in this model. That meaning, that density will tend to be found nearer the point at which the three minimums cross. But actually they'll not be densest there, but just a bit above. This is because players will tend to have a safety buffer that makes their decisions more certainly above the minimum. But, yes, as you get above the "umbrella", there are less and less points that occur in most games because there are fewer and fewer actual decisions that can be made that have all three vectors high. Or rather many decision points do not have these plots as representative of a possible choice.

This does not affect the space in which the decisions can be made. As long as there's a theoretical decision that's maximally all three in congruence, then the shape is a space or a box (if you assume some maximal value for a decision).

So, any problems with the 3D vector model of GNS?

Mike

I'm on board with the 3D Vector model. I dig it.

And, I stand by my previous post - but that's become a separate issue.

M. J. Young wrote: We've got a decision to make, and we've got a choice that we can value as gamist 10, narrativist 6, simulationist 4. That is, I'm assuming here that a a gamist would view this as a very good way to reach his objectives, a narrativist as a moderate way, and a simulationist as a poor but not terrible way--but I'm quantifying these, because we have a three-vector graph.

Hey Cassidy,

Here's how I see it.

Each individual is going to have their own particular layout on the graph for each decision. The person making the decision is going to have a layout, and each of the other people observing that decision will have a layout based on how they perceive that decision. You're also going to have what each player considers to be the baseline of the groups GNS priorities plotted onto the graph. The baseline will most likely vary between each player to one degree or another. So, even a player who thinks that his decisions fall within exceptable parameters may be breaking the boundary of another player's baseline assumptions.

-Chris

Cassidy wrote: For each decision though wouldn't you need to plot a point for each player based on how they personally perceive the decision as meeting their own expectations and GNS goals?

The guy making the decision in your example may quantify the decision as being G10,N6,S4 but what if another player with Narrativist priorities sees the decision a little differently, i.e. G13,N2,S5?

I would feel inclined to plot points based on how the player making the decision feels their decision meets the agreed upon GNS goals and expectations of the group as a whole.

Mike,

I very much like the 3-D vector space. But a few suggestions, I'd make about the structure of the space.

Ultimately decisions are dynamic, and it may be a good idea to distinguish the current state of the game, and the currently present decision. The way I see it, is that the context that is Explored is modified by play decisions. If the context is appropriate for player goals, then it remains unmodified, or lightly modified. If it's not, the players start pulling the context around. I see these contexts as regions in the vector space, just like player preferences.

I imagine this game-play region jerkilly being pulled different directions, each player trying to keep part of it over their region of choice. This means we have a natural origin, the accepting decision, which just continues the Exploration as it had been. Calling this (0,0,0) we can open the entire 3-space to study, considering decisions such as (3,0,-2), a trade off between gamist and simulationist objectives. If the current state of the Exploration is high sim, and low gamist, a wide variety of players might make this decision. In the opposite case, the decision may be much less likely.

The thing I like about this perspective, is you can visually imagine the regions moving in a fairly stable, brownian way, for a highly coherent game, and in a jerky tug-of-war in an incoherent one. It also explains quite a bit of the sweet spotting of game play, as well as the evolution of player preferences during play. Heck, it even explains why people playing strongly in one mode, will often make decisions in other modes, simply because their core mode isn't threatened.

I'm still thinking about what this model could mean for hybrid design, in the very least the dynamical perspective would be vastly useful.

I hope that is food for thought,

-Mendel S.

I think a three-space model is overkill for most purposes. The Beeg Triangle, with corners representing 100%G, 100%S, and 100%N respectively, gives you most of what you need. For instance:

- From a given position, you can represent drift that increases one of G, N, or S while leaving the ratio between the other two the same, as movement directly toward the appropriate vertex.

- From a given position, you can represent drift that sacrifices one priority to enhance another, leaving the prevalence of the third unchanged, as movement perpendicular to the line connecting the present position with the vertex representing the unaffected priority.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the triangle is a projection of the three-space onto the plane G + N + S = 1.0, bounded within the region in which G >= 0, N >= 0, and S >= 0.

It's generally conceded that most current functional play (leaving aside what might be theoretically possible) that is analyzable in GNS terms is positioned near the edges of the triangle -- that is, represents coherent play (is near one of the corners) or a hybrid with a clear priority and a strong supporting priority (along the edges, especially the N-S and G-S edges, excepting the centers of the edeges.) The centers of the edges represent the hypothetical balanced two-mode hybrids. Ron has opined that such play tends to be unstable, tending to drift closer to one of the adjacent vertices. (Also, drift that jumps across those center-edge points appears to be not uncommon).

What the 2-D projection lacks that the 3-space has is the idea that play can have "more of everything" (G + N + S > 1.0) or "less of everything" (G + N + S < 1.0). These are rather speculative ideas anyway, and I don't see any reason they can't be discussed while still using the triangle for most conventional GNS "mapping." Even reliably functional play in the center of the triangle (G = S = N = 1/3) is dubious under present theory.

- Walt

In response to me, Cassidy wrote: For each decision though wouldn't you need to plot a point for each player based on how they personally perceive the decision as meeting their own expectations and GNS goals?

The guy making the decision in your example may quantify the decision as being G10,N6,S4 but what if another player with Narrativist priorities sees the decision a little differently, i.e. G13,N2,S5?

I would feel inclined to plot points based on how the player making the decision feels their decision meets the agreed upon GNS goals and expectations of the group as a whole.

what Mike wrote: A player was playing with his girlfriend, and did something that favored his character, and disfavored another player's. The player saw this a purely Social (and Gamist by the new definition), and it seemed to him to be completely without Sim merit. Sim Zero. To him there was no reason that the character would do what he did. To me and the other players, it was a valid choice in that we thought it was not out of character.

Hi there,

GNS is currently not represented by any graphics at all, no, not even a triangle. This has two consequences ...

1. I am not at all sure what Mike's construction is an alternative to.

2. Nor am I 100% sure just what that construction is any more. As first presented, it was a bit of a change, at least in explanatory terms. As currently stated, I guess I'm seeing plain old [Exploration[GNS]] as I've been stating all along, just with "Sim" being extended up/back into the Explore box.

Best,
Ron

I lost any connection I saw in this thread back on page two or thereabouts.

I'm not even certain what's being discussed at this point.

What started as an idea to pry Sim loose from the trinity and make it an overlay on top of G or N has morphed into something I don't even recognize.

At this point, IMO, this thread needs to close down and perhaps in a few days when the discussion has been digested by the participants a new one that cuts to the chase with some better clarity can begin..