Over at http://www.geocities.com/lumpley/rant.html is a bit from a game of mine about narrative sharing for gamists. I'd love to hear what all y'all smart people think.

However, and this is a big however, the game of mine, it's not a nice game. Funny, but not nice. Something like 2% of the text is swear words, which is a lot, plus it's called Kill Puppies for Satan and that's pretty much the plot. So please, if you're not into it, don't trouble yourself.

But is anyone else out there thinking about how we non-narrativists might catch up with the very slick, very cool, very sweet things that people are doing these days in narrativist games? (I just read The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, for instance, and it's left me a little sun-blind.)

-lumpley
http://www.geocities.com/lumpley/

Hey,

I'm eagerly awaiting my copy.

On the topic of Gamist developments, I am already enjoying the variety of innovations that have cropped up in the last few years. I think the first one is Once Upon a Time, which may fairly be called one of the Great Games, both fun and inspiring. Any number of the Cheapass Games should be considered, which although not really role-playing are certainly good meat for RPG design notions.

More on the role-playing side of things, we have Pantheon and Rune, and I suspect quite a few more to come.

I don't think Gamism has EVER really managed to get itself well-expressed in RPG design until recently. I also think there are many flavors of it that remain completely untapped; Pantheon (which was almost certainly influenced by Once Upon a Time) is a good example of bringing story-trophes and their management into the Gamist context.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Hey, can I ask you? I've been reading in the faq about Gamism, and looking at Pantheon and Rune, and reading things that you and others have said in the past, and here's my question:

Is it narrative sharing for gamists?

Your copy of puppies should be along any minute now. I put it in the mail on Monday. I hope you like it.

-lumpley


[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-09-27 14:22 ]

Lumpers,

Help me out a little. Is WHAT "narrative sharing for gamists"? If you're talking about Kill Puppies for Satan, then I have to wait until I've read it - and even then I hesitate to do any classifying until I've played it.

What do you mean by "narrative sharing"? I suspect violence is being done to the terminology. Let me see if I can make more sense by starting over.

1) Gamism, like Narrativism, has a very strong and obligatory component of metagame. That is, the PEOPLE'S priorities are overt and central. This leads to a lot of similarities between the two modes, although not in their details of expression.

For instance, I have observed Author stance to be common in Gamist play. This may manifest in its "Pawn" version, in which the player sees no reason to include the character's motivation or perspective in the character's decisions.

I have also observed that Gamist play does not necessarily treat the GM as any kind of authority. Or rather, that in some Gamist play, he is considered an opponent and thus has the same "status" relative to the rules as anyone else. Now that I think of it, of course, still other Gamist play is based on the GM being a referee who does not have any stake at all in the outcome but monitors the competition among players. And in still other Gamist play, no GM is necessary.

My point is that Gamism is wide open for system-development using a much wider spectrum of techniques and people-relationships than has been seen historically, until recently.

2) Drama methods, characterization, influence over outcomes employing overt currencies, strategic modifiers to Fortune methods both before and after the roll (or whatever) ... all of these are obvious and readily-used design components for Gamism just as they are for Narrativism.

Pantheon is an RPG with a Gamist focus that employs mainly Drama methods, managed by a currency using beads, modified by a Fortune method.

My point is that I still see it as Gamism - just because a Gamist game makes use of overt Drama methods does NOT make it Narrativist. It's using narrative as a competitive arena, not creating coherent-story structure as a goal.

And - just so people can't misunderstand - I think this is a brilliant and lovely thing. It's a new way to expand the possibilities of role-playing. It's fun. It's focused on its goals. It makes sense.

Was I on track regarding your question? Or am I misunderstanding the issue and going off on some tangent? If so, rescue me.

Best,
Ron

Hey Lumpley,

From the teasers you've got at your site, Kill Puppies for Satan looks pretty darn clever. And I just emailed you my mailing address. Real comments will have to wait on the postal service, but I'll say now that I'm particularly partial to Satan's attitudes toward killing and engendering the suffering of others. It reminds me somewhat of Lord Entropy's rules in Nobilis that forbid Nobles to love their Anchors, despite game mechanics that rely on relationships of either love or hate to link a Noble to his Anchor. Similarly, there seems to be a lot of narrative potential in the fine line that Satan requires of his servants. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole game.

I'm glad you liked The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I've been trying not to think about it too hard myself, in hopes that a setting idea will come to me if I don't force it. But if the ideal setting for the game seems apparent to you, please drop down to the "I created The World, the Flesh, and the Devil" thread and let me know what you're thinking. You seem to have a mind for setting, and I'm realizing that I clearly don't. I'm finding that I tend to steal settings from published games for my scenarios, and my current game is no exception.

Paul

Hey All.

Oopsie. How 'bout this:

Over at http://www.geocities.com/lumpley/rant.html is a bit I wrote about narrative sharing for gamists (which happens to be from a game of mine, but that's not the point except don't read it if you don't like swears.)

That's what I meant to say. Naturally I’m not asking you to comment on Kill Puppies for Satan, since you haven’t even seen it yet. That would be tacky, or at least plenty confusing.

So anyway, Ron, yes, I'm almost certainly doing violence to the terminology, since my understanding of it is more intuited and less actually informed. What I mean by narrative sharing is when the non-gm players get to say what happens, not just the gm, like the victory monologues in The Pool. What I mean by Gamism is that you want things to be challenging more than you want them to be a. realistic or b. a good story.

The essay of mine is about making your players responsible for messing up their own characters' lives, by having them describe the trouble they get into (and punishing them with worse if they don't make it good). My "is it?" question is, is this Gamist? I'm not looking for An Answer so much as I'm trying to just talk a bit about Gamism. I read the Gamist Examples and Redifinition thread over in GNS, where people seemed to become entrenched in their disagreements, and I don’t think it helped me. In the faq you talk about winning, mostly, and I guess I think that playing well is more important than winning.

Hey! I did learn something in little league!

Paul, I put the cleverest bits of Puppies up on the web site on purpose, I hope you're not disappointed when you get it. And I will pop over to your thread, thanks!

-lumpley

Ah, the perils of starting a thread. I always discover at about my third post that all I really have to say is Hey Everybody! Pay attention to ME!


[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-09-27 22:20 ]

I'm all over this. I emailed you, I can't wait to see this. The website had me rolling, folks. God bless Satan.

James V.

On 2001-09-27 21:37, lumpley wrote:
So anyway, Ron, yes, I'm almost certainly doing violence to the terminology, since my understanding of it is more intuited and less actually informed. What I mean by narrative sharing is when the non-gm players get to say what happens, not just the gm, like the victory monologues in The Pool. What I mean by Gamism is that you want things to be challenging more than you want them to be a. realistic or b. a good story.

The essay of mine is about making your players responsible for messing up their own characters' lives, by having them describe the trouble they get into (and punishing them with worse if they don't make it good). My "is it?" question is, is this Gamist? I'm not looking for An Answer so much as I'm trying to just talk a bit about Gamism. I read the Gamist Examples and Redifinition thread over in GNS, where people seemed to become entrenched in their disagreements, and I don’t think it helped me. In the faq you talk about winning, mostly, and I guess I think that playing well is more important than winning.

In the spirit of endless clarification,

Mike's totally on target except for this little weenie point ...

"The definition of Narrativism includes that players have this power."

This is over-stated. Historically, Narrativist play makes use of Director stance more than the other modes. Currently, especially in games like Pantheon, Director stance is hootin' and hollerin' right there in solid Gamism.

Narrativism may INCLUDE Director stance, and it may be that such play includes it a LOT. It doesn't have to, though; stance plays no role in the definition of Narrativism or either of the other two goals/modes.

The overall point is that stance is a totally different issue from GNS, and (for instance) a person playing with Gamist goals might shift stance all over the place through a session of play.

Best,
Ron

Hmmm. That seems to be recanting to me, but we'll just attribute it to me mischaracterizing some statement that strongly linked the Director stance with the Narrativist mode as a definition. Obviously, though, you can have Director stance in any mode.

Mike

Hey All.

Mike Holmes says:

When you say "playing well" it all depends on what you mean exactly. If you mean defeating obstacles well, that would be gamist. If you mean accurate portrayal, that would be Simulationist. If you mean participation in such a way that you advance the story, that would be Narrativist. You can play well in all three ways, so playing well in general cannot be attributed to gamism.

Your "playing well" refers to the Uber-goal. That is having fun. Yes, if you play well in any or all of the three ways that you can, you'll have fun. But as such that has nothing to do directly with gamism.

And yes, what you describe as Narrative sharing sounds just like Director stance. It may be a particular way to apply it, but almost certainly director stance play. One word of caution, the prevailing notion around here is that mixing your priorities can be dangerous, an idea that I tentatively agree on. Ron has stated that he doesn't feel like he's ever seen a game that does it well, although he does admit that it's not impossible.

Mike

I read the rant, and, yep, that's handing direcorial power to the players all right. The slapdown method for keeping it in line is an interesting tactic for trying to keep them on target, but in most narrativist designs this sort of thing should not be necessary. Or rather, if you find it necessary to reign in players who abuse directorial power, they are probably playing in a gamist fashion. One easy way to get beyond this is to let them. If they just run away with the game and never create anything interesting, then they either don't get it at all, or are Gamists who don't want to change. If they do get it and like it, they'll start to make up good stuff on their own.

An easier way around this is to play SOAP (this is my standard litmus test these days, and at only an hour, it's a fast one). After one game you'll know if they get it (they will), and then you can ask them if they'd like to play that way in other games.

Mike

Hey Mike.

I still think you're not getting me about playing well. I said, playing well contributes to the game. I meant, playing well (in this Gamist sense) contributes to the game part of roleplaying, the give and take here's a clever difficulty here's a clever solution part of the evening. I don't mean the meta-goal of everyone having fun, I mean the goal of everyone being challenged and engaged and not sure whether they're going to pull it off against the odds or not. The Gamist goal.

I already know for sure that my players want, like, and are very responsible with directorial power. (When I say my players, I mean my co-players / co-gms.) What I want is to open the idea of shared directorial power to Gamists -- by making a game of it. The game starts out as How little grief will the gm let me give myself?, and before you know it you're a co-owner of the world instead of just a houseguest. But, and this is important, you're still a Gamist playing a Gamist game. I'm not trying to turn Gamists into Narrativists, I'm trying to give Gamists directorial power.

So let's see, let me take a step back. Here's what I think. I think that shared directorial power is great for Narrativists, because a. it gives the players more investment in the story and b. it lets the players tailor the story to their own interests and c. probably more reasons I'm just not thinking of. I say that shared directorial power is great for Gamists, too, for the precise same reasons, substituting Challenge or Strategic Tension for Story as appropriate.

(Oh, and of absolutely course when I say Gamists, I mean Gamists as though it were possible for any person to be only and entirely a Gamist, which I for one don't think it is. Naturally.)

-lumpley

I think I see what you're saying. And it's an interesting idea. I was advocating for a while implementing Directiorial power for Simulationist games. The problem there is that many people who play Simulationist games are in them for the much debated Immersion. Or rather they find things that break their suspension of disbelief damaging to their enjoyment. Such that giving a player directorial power detatches the player from his character, distracting the player if you will, it damages suspension of disbelief for some, and makes such a game less enjoyable for said players.

Similarly, the players that you have to worry about with your idea are simply the gamists who don't want to make any narrativist decisions. Or rather they don't care about the story, but instead only about how many puppies they stomp or whatever is the gamist meter of success in the game. These players (and we've all met some, I'll bet) will resent that you try to control their actions with such use of drama, and from their viewpoint they are totally justified. The way they see it, you have said that it is legal to do something, but then you punish them for doing it. Without any consultation of a rule or anything, but just by fiat. This is the opposite situtation of what they desire, and will disapoint them.

I do believe that many if not most players constantly make either G, N, or S decisions. This is most commonly found due to not having experienced the others, but also occurs by preference. Those who haven't experienced narrativism may take time to adjust to it, and may never in fact. I feel lucky that I seem to be able to enjoy them all more or less, but even I have leanings. So there will be players who would normally be attracted to the gamist parts of your game who will be disapointed by the directorial parts.

If you're players are comfortable shifting between gamism and narrativism, then this dichotomy will not be a problem for them. But as a general product, it is likely to have detractors who find that the clash of modes in the game make it unplayable for them. Moreso than would just dismiss a game for focusing on one mode, which is the minimum and, therefore unavoidable.

Given what you have in the rant, essentially the GM using drama resolution to teach players via negative reinforcement to play in a more narrativist fashion is quite suspect. Do you have anything other to back it up? If that is the whole of the means by which you intend to create the effect you seek, I fear that you'll find that it alienates far more than it works.

Mike

Mike,

Ah, interesting. I think I understand, but let me ask a couple more questions.

Given what you have in the rant, essentially the GM using drama resolution to teach players via negative reinforcement to play in a more narrativist fashion is quite suspect.

Hi Lumpley,

OK, I get it. Narrative schmarrative, then - let's talk Gamism (yay!) and Stance.

Regarding Gamism in general, competition and victory and loss are all intimately related terms; none exists without the others. So if I say "Gamism is concerned with winning," the other two terms come with that. So I'm not saying Gamism is JUST about winning, for instance. There's nothing "just" about Gamism.
- competition: "play well," meaning that your actions have a big impact on victory/loss conditions [different games use different degrees of Fortune to liven things up]
- victory & loss: assessments for those actions, socially acknowledged among the participants; this relies completely on some form of conflict of interest among those participants, such that not everyone may win

Now, I'll be first to say that Gamist role-playing can utilize all manner of stances. I do not think it's hard to see that Author stance is very common - the player's decisions are overt and the character follows suit (the GDS guys came up with the insightful term "Pawn stance" for the most overt, unapologetic form of this).

So, can a Gamist RPG make full and organized use of Director stance? Absolutely. It's right there in Pantheon, loud and clear.

Best,
Ron

P.S. About Elfs, it utilizes Director stance in the classic, environmental sense. I don't know where you got the idea that the Elfs player is limited to affecting only his character's actions.

I'd say that B is the closest.

Essentially, a gamist player makes decisions based on what is tactically the most sound thing to do, or the thing most likely to make the character succeed. The gamist player expects that the GM will be one of two things, either an opponent who plays by the rules of the game which serve to balance the game (like Rune, but with few other examples in RPGs), or he expects the GM to be an impartial arbiter who comes up with reasonable conflicts and chalenges which the player then tries to overcome and are handled fairly by the GM.

The problem is that one of two cases is true. In the first, the player sees you as an opponent (less likely case), in which case he will not use the narrative authority given him knowing that you will smack him down mightily as the rule gives you the authority to and as an opponent that is what you should do. In the second case (much more likely as the player will sense that you are not playing "against" him during other play), the player will believe you to be an impartial judge of the game and then be very disapointed when you tell him he can do what he wants and you subsequently punish him for taking advantage of it. Worse, in using negative reinforcement the player begins then to see you as an opponent, and then thinks that the game is dysfunctional, because again you are simply an opponent with unlimited power. What fun is playing a game under those circumstances when a fair contest is what you seek?

Also, to assume that a player will not be disapointed using this tactic is to assume that the player is comfortable with narrative methodology, in which case you'll find that there is no need to punish the player at all, as they will make decisions appropriate to the story. They may not succeed every time, but the "lesson" will be pointless as they already know it.

A player, even a narrativist one, who believes that his character will be punished if they use narrative power in a way that the GM determines in his limited wisdom to be improper will also be loathe to use it. If you feel that a particular response is not apropriate try discussing it with the player, point out the problem you see, and hopefully he'll retract his decision or, at least make a better one next time.

Is it "funny" to torture a player's character? Well, I'm sure you find it entertaining. And for the player? I've quit games because the GM behaved this way. Nothing makes me more frustrated than being told that I can be creative in any way that I want and then being told that I did it wrong. Worse, you would then go further and punish the player. I don't imagine many players would enjoy such humor.

Mike

Hey All.

Mike,

Also, to assume that a player will not be disapointed using this tactic is to assume that the player is comfortable with narrative methodology

- victory & loss: assessments for those actions, socially acknowledged among the participants; this relies completely on some form of conflict of interest among those participants, such that not everyone may win

he expects the GM to be an impartial arbiter who comes up with reasonable conflicts and chalenges which the player then tries to overcome and are handled fairly by the GM.

Hey Lumples,

You have exactly pinpointed the Gamist issue. ALL of GNS is about player goals and decisions, so yes, the conflict & competition & victory/loss issues in Gamist play are among the real people.

The real trouble in continuing the discussion of Gamism is that many people have an instant, negative reaction to its definition. This can be manifested either as (unfair) contempt for Gamism or as blame at me for saying anything so nasty about anyone.

Neither of these reactions are sensible. Gamism is a hell of a lot of fun with an RPG that works well for it, and if its stakes/strategy content interests everyone involved.

(If you see a corollary here with Narrativism, in that it is a hell of a lot of fun with an RPG that works well for it, and if the Premise at hand interests everybody ... well, you're right.)

So yes, that's the big insight into Gamism. It is NOT a criticism, put-down, or even a tolerant sneer toward Gamism.

One last thing - the terms "balance" and "fairness" are often tossed around casually in discussions of Gamism without much reflection. I strongly suggest that we are VERY far from understanding these issues, and I wish people would not leap to assumptions about what "all Gamists must think" about them.

Best,
Ron

P.S. We can talk about Director stuff in Elfs in the Elfs forum.

Balance. Well, of course this is a subjective term. Can a GM be balanced, unfair, impartial? Well, probably not perfectly, probably not all the time. So I should rephrase. The Gamist player may want a GM who attempts to be these things and who believes ththis is the way to play an entertaining game. And to the extent that this is possible, the conflict becomes between the player and the game that the GM constructs withing the rules of the paricular RPG.

This is why many a GM will spend a lot of time looking at whether or not a particular encounter they have devised is likely to kill the characters. The level of balance sought in many gamist games has to do with making sure that combat is neither too easy nor too lethal to the PCs. So as to not be thought to be claiming that gamism is all about combat, I will reiteratte that the definition extends to any conflict or challenge devised that would be of interest to the player (and as a rationale to the character continuing to try and defeat them). This example is just for illustration.

To the extent that this is difficult and that GMs do not succeed, yes, this annoys some players. Have you ever heard a player say that they were disapointed because they felt that the GM was trying to kill their characters? Ths is a common complaint, and rightfully stated - if true. This because the player wants a balanced conflict to overcome and in most of these games the GM has unlimited power. Which means that if he is actually competing that the contest is grossly unfair and obviously not winnable.

As far as it being a player issue, consider the classic example. In D&D characters are not concerned with the aquisition of experience points, players are. The over-the-top and contrived quote that I often give to illustrate is "Well, the baby kobolds weren't worth any experience points alive." This is humorous, extreme, and possibly prejudicial, but for a certain type of extremely Gamist player, one who does not care how his character feels, or to feel what the character feels, but only to be successful at achieving more of the game's meter of success (exp, levels, what have you), this is a totally valid way to play.

Think of an RPG for this theoretical player as some sort of really complicated boardgame. When making decisions playing the game "Dungeon", nobody thinks that it's absurd not to consider the emotions of your Hero pawn, or any consideration other than winning the game. This is why this is sometimes referred to as Pawn stance to play this way in an RPG.

One problem in understanding this is, as Ron points out, that many people would denigrate this style of play, because it isn't what they call "role-playing". This sort of Gamist extremism is, of course, very rare, and I only bring it up to make the point. Many more players, in my experience, who are gamist also play a little Sim or Nar as well, because of the immense potential that exist there as well. But many of these players can still be reasonbly classified as Gamists, overall, as the majority of their play is still focused on beating the game (or the GM in some circumstancs). Though this sometimes occurs becuse of lack of exposure to other modes (gamist is still the most prevalent introductory style due to the influence of D&D), for some it may merely be that this is thier prefered mode.

Rune is bandied about (not just by myself) of late as an example of extremely gamist design. Players each take turns GMing and trying to create good adventures as defined by the strict rules of the game. The player who makes the best adventure wins. This is not some interperetation on my part, it is, in fact, a heavily advertised and touted feature of the game that somebody gets to win. A perfect example of competition between the players as a goal of the design. And, from what I gather a fairly effective design as well.

I'm sorry that I was unable to communicate the player nature of GNS to you and it took Ron's intervention to sort it out. In the future a good cue to watch around here is that posters usually do a good job of not confusing the terms player and character. As in the following definition of Gamism: the player wants to compete against the challenges of the game so the decisions that he makes as to what to have his character do will be based on whatever is the most effective use of the rules to be successful against said challenges.

OK, I'm beating a dead horse. Sorry. I'm just hoping that others reading will get it too.

Mike

Hmm, I too want to reach more a Directorial, or perhaps merely explicitly Authorial, angle for my players to exploit with compromising my, uh, vision, of the setting and circumstance.

I have had some limited success with what are in retrospect Directorial devices, but mostly at setup to foster inter-character relationships. What I want is to find ways that exploit the game dynamic to legitimise what is in fact directorial, or at least authorial, play. I found that in Mage, the fuzziness of the character abilities provoked a lot of tacitly authorial play, IME.

On 2001-10-01 07:31, contracycle wrote:
Hmm, I too want to reach more a Directorial, or perhaps merely explicitly Authorial, angle for my players to exploit with compromising my, uh, vision, of the setting and circumstance.

I have had some limited success with what are in retrospect Directorial devices, but mostly at setup to foster inter-character relationships.

What I want is to find ways that exploit the game dynamic to legitimise what is in fact directorial, or at least authorial, play. I found that in Mage, the fuzziness of the character abilities provoked a lot of tacitly authorial play, IME.

Gareth (contracycle),

I suggest checking out the following games, if possible: Everway, Hero Wars, Castle Falkenstein, Extreme Vengeance, Ghost Light, InSpectres, Wyrd, Soap, Wuthering Heights, The Pool, and The Whispering Vault.

These games are not all alike. Some are playful and some are very deep/intense. Some confine their Author-mechanics into very specific areas (e.g. in Castle F it shows up mainly in the magic system), and some have very a strong GM role (e.g. Everway) and others have no GM at all (e.g. Soap). But in some way, for each one, aspects of the game rely on player Author/Director power, and aspects of the game facilitate that power. Some are more explicit than others about it, and some are perhaps "naive" about it (at least as presented in the text).

Best,
Ron

Well, the devices I use/used are these:

Each character must have a connection to another character at game start. Connections cannot be reciprocal, alhough I have heard arguments against this particular caveat. The group gets together to negotiate "how they know one another", and sets up an intra-group dynamic. (incidentally, my favourite description of the problem I am trying to tackle hear was in LOT5R - "Two Dragons, a Lion and a Ronin walk into a bar" or words to that effect).

Secondly, I try to get players to engage creatively with their starting environment - Conspiracy X's base-building stuff is good for this, although formalised. On other occassions I just ask each player to contribute one fact about the start setting, and then synthesize it into a whole. This gives the players a psychological commitment to the setting, and places their characters in context.

Thirdly, I ask players for "cool images" that they would like to experience in the game. The best example was "SWAT troopers running through smoke" from one of my Cyber games. This gives me an idea of what kind of things the players are playing for, and then I go away and try to find a way to hit these markers. It also helps me keep tabs on player expectations and whether they are getting their jollies out of the whole thing.

Now: the kind of thing I am looking for techniques to achieve is a lot like the base building process in Conspiracy X. The characters are behaving in an Authorial manner (I think) largely because this is explicitly legitmised by the gamist device, i.e. point spending. None the less, the players are creating the world (drawing the map) themselves and, consciously or not, investing themselves in this part of the world.

So, I think that if say instead of experience points, players were rewarded in "world definition" points, we might provoke a lot of authorial thinking because we have provided a box in which it occurs. Maybe Harold the Mighty Thewed's player spends their world definition points saying "Now the King of Norway has a beautiful daughter..." and leading on to some conspiracy of dynastic marriage and personal aggrandizement on Harolds part. All well and good; there is no need for the player to break from one goal to another, the question merely has to be dressed up in a frame that the present goal can address. I think.

One might say I am looking for "directorialism in gamist clothing", a false consciousness of gamism :smile:

The mage example is I think a case in point. The "fuzzy" mechanic I referred to was the issue of coincidental magic, which introduced a profound shift in my approach to gaming in general. One of the examples given in the rules was of yer ever-popular Fireball spell. Actually creating a ball of flame is clearly direct, obvious magic against which there are mechanical risks and penalties. However, if you were to argue that, as it happened (nudge nudge wink wink), the poor victim was standing on a weak gas pipeline which at this very moment happened to blow, that would not be obviously magical and the world would Make It So - retrospectively if necessary.

The implications are staggering but perfectly in tune with the concept of Mage. If I have created this fireball coincidentally, and what has been defined as True by my magic IS True, then that implies that: records of the fault are "spontaneously" created in the gas companies files; people may "acquire" memories of having reported or worked on the fault; the necessary parts might already be in storage or on order; someone (else) might get prosecuted for negligence or manslaughter. Not only is it now True that the pipeline was weak, but it Always Was True.

In order to do this, you-the-player have to engage in Authorial, and arguably Directorial, play. But this is legitimised by the architecture of the game - yes, of COURSE you are imposing your will on the world - "Do As Though Wilt, For This Is The Whole Of The Law" as Mr Crowley would have it. And its reinforced by the competing philosophies of the character factions and the technocracy et al. I note that my partially Immersive player was much less prone to this sort of grand-scale tampering with the fabric of life as we know it, but still exploited the legitimisation of authorial control in a variety of ways centered around the characters relationships and experience of the world; I suspect it was a kind of inward looking authorialism, but that gets a bit funny in hurry.

Anyway, thats the kind of thing I'm looking for, but perhaps a bit more limited than mage did it, and without requiring that you buy a whole metaphysical philosophy en bloc for it to make sense.

I see what you're getting at, and I agree that these are powerful and provocative mechanics. Essentially, that you want the players to have Authorial/Directorial power explained as an expression of their in-game effectiveness, and limited by the setting as is appropriate. Yes, very cool. This is unlike The Pool, for example, in that the resource in The Pool is entirely metagame (though it expresses similarly in that the description of both is that of a successful application of some effectiveness).

Read that last twice if it helps, as it has a lot of jargon, particularly the ERM model stuff (Effectiveness, Resources, Metagame).

Anyhow, as Ron has implied, what you have described here, is possibly a gamist application of Authorial/Directorial power. This is what I believe was essentially your original contention, and I see it more clearly now. What you meant by narrativism, is just the Directorial/Authorial power, but without players having a free reign. Which is part of the definition of Narrativism, if I have it correctly.

The question becomes whether or not this will work. Can you simultaneously give a player authorial/directorial power, and limit it. And after thinking about it, I believe that it's possible. However, I still think that negative reinforcement may not be a good tactic in general (though, thinking about the nature of the game in question and it's apparent sado/masochistic tendencies, I might be worng in this particular context). If I were to try to accomplish this I'd personally try to find a way to positively reinforce "correct" use of the power in question.

The other option is to just allow "abuse" in this area as long as it does not affect balance in other areas. In your game (not having seen it in its entirety, lest anyone think this a review), for example, I don't see why it's particularly important for misey to be balancing. It is certianly more interesting to do it your way, but it just seems to me that people who don't heap misery on themselves for their evil acts are probably missing the point of the game.

If you want to make your game really gamist, why not allow the player to the left of the player aquiring misery decide what happens. This is balanced by the assigning player's sadism, and the desire not to be overly harshed by the player on your own left next time. Make it a karmic thing, the GM can veto anything that he thinks is more harsh than anything that the recieving player has already himself handed out. The first player to "break the seal" on the game can have anything done to him. So, if Bob on my right needs some misery, I can kill him, but then the player on my left can kill me next time I aquire some misery.

What would really drive this is some other gamist meter of success. For example, if the GM were to assign experience points or some sort of metagame resource (maybe you can aquire some Evil this way without attendant misery) or something based on how harsh the misery that they assigned was, players would have an even greater incentive to mess each other up.

This would all get my favorite gamist situation going, which is player competition amongst themselves. Fun, fun.

Mike

(edited because lately I can't type worth a damn)

[ This Message was edited by: Mike Holmes on 2001-10-09 15:32 ]

Hey,

I have kill puppies for satan. It is not a Gamist game - there is NO element of competition, between players/GM, among players, or anywhere. So let Gamism off the hook, 'cause it's not involved and doesn't deserve judgmental comments in its direction anyway.

Nor, frankly, is there much Author/Director power in the game either. It's quite standard in the sense that you make up "your guy," and you play "your guy," with the GM being Mr. External as in the usual Simulationist tradition. I really cannot see where or how Author or Director stuff has been incorporated. The game has precisely the same approach toward player, character, and events during play as, say, Call of Cthulhu. This is not a bad thing, but Author or Director stance is simply out of the picture.

The main mechanic involves generating "evil" points which power magic/psychopath abilities. That's a lot like the charges in Unknown Armies, which like Call of Cthulhu, is a hard-core Simulationist game.

kill puppies is full of fun attitude. It's written to make the reader laugh and be willing to play these horrid characters in a fairly comedic-splatter context. It's full of little gems (my favorite is the GM advice on how to play Satan, which is excellent, but the Dr. Skippy references in the scenario are a close second). The profanity and "oh, get with it" approach are entertaining.

That is engaging - but it has nothing to do with Narrativism. So, multiple posts into this thread, I am saying that the proposed topic is utterly meaningless. You have a fun Simulationist game. There is no Narrative sharing, nor Narrativist anything, nor Gamist anything.

Now, the rant from Cockroach Souffle is a bit of a different story. You've added some Director Stance stuff in there. But since the game, overall, doesn't have much of a Premise that matches with Narrativism, the Director stuff doesn't DO much in terms of GNS - it makes life easier, more creative, and more fun during play, but it doesn't create Narrativism.

And no, Mike, NO definition of Gamism, Simulationism, or Narrativism relies on Stances. Not one. The association of Stance with Mode (G, N, or S) is NOT definitive.

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-10-09 17:17 ]

Hey All.

Contracycle,

I play Ars Magica, where the more part of character creation is creating the Wizard's community that all the characters live in. It works great when the characters are unified and relatively isolated (sounds like Conspiracy X has the same kind of thing); doing it in a more open setting is trickier, and that's one of the things I'm struggling with too. Having everybody contribute a fact about the world is cool.

Mike,

Contracycle and I aren't the same person. He's the one with the way way cool idea of letting people spend experience points on world creation. I'm the one with the blasphemous game about negative reinforcement and punishing your players. :wink:

Giving the player on your left experience points for giving you appropriate levels of grief is a terrific thought, and it would certainly drive competition between the players. (There's no call for competition between the players in the game now, even a (perhaps too-) subtle bias against it. But I agree that it'd make a fine game if it's your thing.) Do you mind if I write it up as a variant and put it on my site?

Ron,

First, thanks for your kind comments. Can I quote you on my site?

multiple posts into this thread, I am saying that the proposed topic is utterly meaningless ... Now, the rant from Cockroach Souffle is a bit of a different story.

But since the game, overall, doesn't have much of a Premise that matches with Narrativism, the Director stuff doesn't DO much in terms of GNS - it makes life easier, more creative, and more fun during play, but it doesn't create Narrativism.

Hey,

"What part of the gamer is it that wants the in-game obstacles to be challenging but surmountable*, and (more importantly) d'you think we can use director stance to have the players set up those challenges themselves, rather than relying on the gm to do it**?"

Just about everyone wants in-game obstacles to be challenging but surmountable. Or rather, the outlook is widespread across the GNS modes. What differs is "what's challenging" and "challenging about what?" I am convinced that by "challenging," we are really talking about "engaging."

"**GMs being notoriously bad at creating the challenges the players want instead of going off on some ridiculous thing about alien abductions and why flash-bang grenades are not a solution to them. Or at least me being notoriously bad, alas."

Agreed. Your Director Stance material is a fine corrector. I consider you to have added a functional and interesting Director Stance mechanic to a Simulationist game for Simulationist-oriented players. Bravo!

(I have always said that any mode of play can accomodate any mode of Stance. The more we see MECHANICS that permit this to happen such that the desired mode is not violated, the happier I am.)

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Just about everyone wants in-game obstacles to be challenging but surmountable. ... What differs is "what's challenging" and "challenging about what?"

Ron,

On 2001-10-09 17:09, Ron Edwards wrote:
Hey,

I have kill puppies for satan. It is not a Gamist game - there is NO element of competition, between players/GM, among players, or anywhere. So let Gamism off the hook, 'cause it's not involved and doesn't deserve judgmental comments in its direction anyway.

Now, the rant from Cockroach Souffle is a bit of a different story. You've added some Director Stance stuff in there. But since the game, overall, doesn't have much of a Premise that matches with Narrativism, the Director stuff doesn't DO much in terms of GNS - it makes life easier, more creative, and more fun during play, but it doesn't create Narrativism.

And no, Mike, NO definition of Gamism, Simulationism, or Narrativism relies on Stances. Not one. The association of Stance with Mode (G, N, or S) is NOT definitive.

Hi Mike,

I'm not picking on you, and I apologize if you felt criticized. What you deserve is a big medal, as the guy who's pretty much DEFINED the activity of the Forge, especially lately.

Part of my comments reflect an ongoing frustration with putting Gamism into an "over there" box. For anyone who's interested, I love Gamism (yes, this is a change, and a recent self-realization). I think it deserves extensive attention and re-casting, both in the larger role-playing culture and here at the Forge. It struck me that the term was being used off-the-cuff here in this thread, without attention to whether it really applied. When it was clear that it didn't, the time came to say so. Again, this wasn't a dig at you and I'm sorry if I phrased it badly.

We'll talk about the Stance/GNS issue privately, I think. Publicly, we're obviously on the same page about it, in that, given a GNS focus, we think system design should make Stance (of all kinds) help with that focus. Do I have that right?

Best,
Ron

On 2001-10-10 10:44, Ron Edwards wrote:
Publicly, we're obviously on the same page about it, in that, given a GNS focus, we think system design should make Stance (of all kinds) help with that focus. Do I have that right?

Hey,

If I'm not mistaken, one of the entrenched assumptions of much Simulationist play is that the players only get Author and Director power during character creation. Then, they can make suggestions about "what's going on," or invent NPCs for "who my guy knows," and all that - but only then.

But why is that before-play-only so entrenched? Why not do the Lumpley trick and let some of that into the nuts and bolts of play? If the game is not heavily committed to the complex back-story (and believe me, kill puppies is not), then it ought to be a blast. Same goes for any number (if not all) Simulationist approaches, including some that have "story" material involved.

Granted, a fair amount of Simulationist play would NOT work well with such mechanics, but some of it just might.

(Gamist RPG design has done this quite a lot lately, possibly due to the impact of Once Upon a Time on the shared culture. Pantheon's the obvious example, and I suspect a lot more is to come.)

Best,
Ron

Hey All.

Mike, I've been thinking about the negative reinforcement thing and I have a couple things to say about it after all. None of this is stuff that I'd expect you to pick up from the text.

I want to give the players of my game power over the world that they may never have had. It's not nothing, it's actually kind of a big deal, and it's not something everybody comes to easily. So I have to sell it.

GMs:

"What? You mean give up my iron-fisted control of the world and everything in it?"

"Easy now, just the parts you don't like [a transparent but comforting lie] and plus, if your players try to break the game you can kick their butts."

Players:

As contracycle says, some players (especially non-Narrativist players) hesitate to take directorial power, especially when it isn't specifically bounded by the rules. (Character creation is an obvious case of directorial power bounded clearly by the rules.) I've found that if for character creation I hand a player a blank sheet of paper and ask her to write a couple paragraphs, if she's not prepped, she won't take advantage of the opportunity. That kind of sudden, unexpected freedom can actually inhibit creativity.

"What? You mean I can do ... anything?"

"Well, not ANYTHING. If you try to break my game, I'll kick your butt."

--

I don't expect that the negative reinforcement would ever actually happen.

It's all theory on my part, though. Like I say, my players are enthusiastic and responsible sharers of the world. Playing with a GM at all is the challenge for them.

Oh, and whether a. it's possible to break a game and b. anybody actually ever worries about it are open questions.

--

I find it more confusing, personally, when people's user name is one thing and they sign their posts something else. That's why I don't sign mine Vincent.

Why my username is lumpley to begin with is a good question, and the answer is not that interesting: when I signed up for Juno they recommended v1_baker332@juno.com and I said -- no way. Sure enough, nobody else had already taken lumpley. Now I've gotten used to it.

-lumpley


[ This Message was edited by: lumpley on 2001-10-10 13:03 ]

Ron Edwards wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, one of the entrenched assumptions of much Simulationist play is that the players only get Author and Director power during character creation. [..]

*blips in, not having read the whole thread in detail*

Simulationism demands consistency and a strong vision of how the world works. Therefore, to avoid directorial power damaging the game, you need to have one of the following conditions being true:
1) Everyone has the same strong vision of the world. Tricky, but possible.
2) The application of directorial power is limited to stuff that can't break the world - the diaries mentioned in the previous post, for example.
3) The GM has a veto on all uses of directorial power ("no, your uncle isn't the bloody Minister of Finance", or, from a vampire game "No, you can't hack into the Swedish computer network and scramble a jet to bomb the guy you're in melee with").

Hey Gareth (mytholder),

"*blips in, not having read the whole thread in detail*"

*winces - this thread is not well suited for quickie comments* Oh man, do you have to do that?

"Simulationism demands consistency and a strong vision of how the world works."

I suggest that all role-playing demands these things, and that your points apply to Director Stance in general, not to its use/applications in Simulationism alone.

Since Director Stance in Simulationism is a real new baby in the world of RPG design, maybe we should take it to its own thread.

Best,
Ron

Random,

Upon mulling, I've decided to get leery after all of considering anything outside of the literal role-playing session to be a "Stance." So maybe what we're talking about between sessions should be considered "preparation." In a strong Simulationist context of a certain kind, that kind of preparation, and its framing in the group, may be making sure that Director stance is not applied during play.

I agree with you entirely about "much" not being "all." I chose the word very carefully.

Amber is an interesting choice to be using, because I think its design is (to use Jim Henley's term for Everway) "abashedly Narrativist," which means that it has to drift a bit to get Narrativist, and similarly, drifts easily into other modes of play. That whole issue is worth its own thread, though.

Best,
Ron