In another thread, Ron Edwards, while discussing possible pitfalls in Illusionism, wrote:

And finally, such play may suffer from "exhaustion escalation," in which the game-world crises become larger and larger scale, in inverse proportion to the players' diminishing emotional commitment to dealing with them.

Hi Matt,

As I recall, I first brought this up in a series of email exchanges with Jesse Burneko. I've only referred to it now and again since then; I don't think it's been discussed as a focused topic.

A lot of people probably know what I'm talking about. In the first year of play, the villains try to rob banks. In the second, they try to blow up a building. In the third, the entire city may be brought under control by the mind-ray. In the fourth, WW III looms as a threat. In the fifth, the aliens from Sirius invade ...

... and meanwhile, the players' enjoyment and excitement about what's going on in the game-world and with their characters diminishes exponentially. Note that the GM is a player too, and for this player, it's even worse because all sorts of tricks are failing to work. For instance, the "One of you is a traitor!" story, carefully worked out with the player who agrees to play his own ringer, ends up being a total bust because no one can tell the difference between the evil-replacement and the original character, or cares. The "mutant prejudice" story ends up a total bust when the players just go "Dark Phoenix" in response. Etc, etc.

What's going on is Situation with no Premise. That's really all there is to it. The solution is to get Premise into the processes of play (i.e. go Narrativist) or switch to a game which requires not even the illusion of Premise (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, or some other raw-butchery, perhaps humorous game).

I submit that playing Dust Devils, for instance, would rarely if ever succumb to this particular problem. Why not? Because Premise is constantly present in that game.

Best,
Ron

Agreed, Ron. I felt I "recognized" this phenomenon because of years of dysfuntional D&D play years ago. (To clarify, while this issue has been a thorn in my side, woulds have long since healed).

My own experience with escalation exhaustion was, I think, playing D&D 2nd ed. for years in which rather than view the gamist tendencies of leveling up and scaling challenges in the forms of tougher monsters, our group viewed them in simulationist terms, illusionist terms. The GM would take something away (an item, a friend, a power, whatever), then we'd earn it back, only to have it yanked away yet again by someone tougher, bigger, etc. This frustrated players to no end; play was sorely unsatisfactory, and increasingly so. Our solution was no solution at all: usuall start the whole process all over again. Go figure. I think many groups were playing in this way for years, probably still are. It seemed to me endemic to D&D of the sort we, and many other groups I observed, played.

Hello,

I would like to add that I think this phenomenon actually doesn't require escalation at all, as I have observed it most recently in my weekday group.

A little background: My weekday group decided that they would really like the expereince of climbing the full D&D ladder so I made a deal with them. I said I would run D&D from 1st to 20th level on two conditions. 1) I could use the Ravenloft setting. 2) There would be no "story" pressure and I could just run old 2nd Edition modules converted to 3rd Edition.

The characters have just broached 11th Level and over the course of the last six or seven sessions the kind of emotional exhausion being described has begun to occur. There has been no escalation of Situation at all since most Ravenloft adventures were pretty evenly written. As the PCs go from Situation to Situation over time they come to care less and less. What has ended up happening is the PCs have actually turned INWARD for their conflicts. In the beginning I could run two short Dungeon magazine style adventures in a single evening. It now takes me THREE sessions to run just one because the players spend so much time just sorting out the conflicts that they've made up among the group and virtually IGNORING the situation around them.

I think it has to do with the amount of time it takes for some players to find a "voice" or begin to recognize a kind of proto-theme being developed for their character. Then, over the long term, they begin wanting to develop that into a real Theme by addressing a real Premise but are stuck with the same-old pre-planned Situation driven play.

This is the pattern I've noticed among my players.

In my Narrativist games play starts out really slow as the PCs seem to flounder trying to figure out what to do, how to act or even search for a problem to solve. Things kind of just happen randomly and sometimes repetatively. But in the long term things begin to flourish and thrive. Eventaully the players find the "voice" for their character and start taking action. Things take off in fun, new and unexpected directions.

In my non-Narrativist games play starts out really fast. Players zip from scene to scene to scene. They follow clues, they solve mysteries, they vanquish evil. But in the long term things begin to die off and become really forced and drags. As the players find the "voice" for their characters they start wanting to address their own conflicts and issues and stop caring about other people's problems.

I think this may result from players not being very good at recognizing a Premise from the get-go even if it's present. They kind of wander around aimlessly looking for things to do. After they've seen enough of the Big Picture (even if the Big Pictures is just a relationship map and some NPC driven conflicts) eventually something begins to click. The Premise begins to bleed through to their conciousness and then they take off. In a game where Premise is absent, the need for some kind of emotional connection, I think, may result in players constructing a kind of pseudo-Premise from the pieces of past Situtations that they DID find emotionally compelling. The result is that they begin acting on this pseudo-Premise which comes more and more and more into conflict with the GM-preped Situation.

I think the "escalation" effect is in fact the result of a GM installed patch to attempt to fix this problem. Instead of recognizing the need for Premise the GM assumes the players are simply bored of fighting bank robbers and so just has them start fighting building bombers. And probably in the short term, it works which is why the escalation continues.

Just my thoughts.

Jesse

Ron Edwards wrote: What's going on is Situation with no Premise. That's really all there is to it. The solution is to get Premise into the processes of play (i.e. go Narrativist) or switch to a game which requires not even the illusion of Premise (e.g. Tunnels & Trolls, or some other raw-butchery, perhaps humorous game).

Matt Snyder wrote: How have people using Illusionism successfully avoided this problem?

If you've experienced exhaustion escalation, has it driven you away from Illusionism, perhaps unconsciously?

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: If the solution is to go Narrativist or to switch to a game without even the illusion of premise, or I think replaces Premise with Step On Up, then what this whole thing seems to be describing is answering the hard Simulationist question "Is it enough?" with an emphatic "no."

Matt Snyder wrote: How have people using Illusionism successfully avoided this problem?

If you've experienced exhaustion escalation, has it driven you away from Illusionism, perhaps unconsciously?

Hello,

Jack raises the $64,000 question, and it's a good one.

The answer is, "That's why Simulationism is a play-priority and not merely 'more' Exploration."

In other words, for Simulationist play with a strong emphasis on Situation to continue as such, the people involved have to want to do this more than they want to get committed to Premise or to Step On Up. This would mean, as a group, wanting to "experience Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium and my GM" more to create a Lovecraftian story with a novel point of its own. To some of us, that's bizarre and subverts the whole point of play; to others, it's so exactly what we want that it's hard to see anything else as possible.

GBSteve, there's nothing derogatory in the term "illusionism." To the contrary, I consider it highly skilled play. Your response about making it work presents a very good point - which I translate into my jargon as, "Exploration of Situation & Setting works as the priority when Exploration of Character is explicitly made subordinate to it."

In other words, if you let Character Exploration out of its cage, it can evolve into Character-centered Premise (going Narrativist) or into Character-to-Situation Step on Up (going Gamist) very easily. Thinking over the text of Arrowflight, which is probably the finest Illusionist-based role-playing text I've ever seen, over and over, I see passages supporting this principle.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: In other words, for Simulationist play with a strong emphasis on Situation to continue as such, the people involved have to want to do this more than they want to get committed to Premise or to Step On Up. This would mean, as a group, wanting to "experience Lovecraft in action according to The Chaosium and my GM" more [than they want] to create a Lovecraftian story with a novel point of its own. To some of us, that's bizarre and subverts the whole point of play; to others, it's so exactly what we want that it's hard to see anything else as possible.

Hmm. Wouldn;t characters creat situation through their action by default? Seems to me the action at the table is always the characters situation, one way or another. I'm not sure I see what you are getting at.

I agree with Walt.

Haveing engaged in play that I would describe as thematic simulationist play, I can say that a number of things drive it.

1. Sometimes the vision of the world is compelling. The finest games I've been in have been exploring or engaging in a world that was amazing to me. A thurough examination and interaction with 'what if?'

2. The Lovecraft novel that we're creating has a start condition but no pre-ordaned ending. One character might give up in exestential angst. Another might decided to fight fire with fire (learn magic even though it corrupts), a third might rely on the inherent goodness of man (the player and the mechanics might or might not bear this out--but either way, at the end o fthe game the player's approach would've either been born out or failed).

In that sense the novel is not being created by Chaosium and the GM but by everyone at the table.

3. In a scenario like Silence of the Lambs (to use my most common example) most avenues of approach to the problem will fail (the FBI has little by way of clues, getting to the Senator's daughter means playing Lecter's games)--but as a player, getting to respond to that and enjoy exploring that interaction isn't hardly the same as following a script. I may not be able to use my fast-talk skill on Dr. Lecter--but if I come up with a really good ploy, I expect that to work.

That doesn't quite feel like someone else is writing the novel and I'm *just* reading it.

On the balance I don't much like the idea of illusionism (such as it is--some people might say that a GM who alters an enemy force between games because one of the players is sick is practicing illussionism--or one who responds to a well made streetwise roll made in a new town by making up on the spot that the character *knows* and has history with a contact there is being illusionist ... ).

-Marco

Characters are fictional and don't create anything. Sorry to get all pedantic there, but this is one of those cases where the distinction is important.

Do players create situation through their characters' action by default? I don't think so, but I realize I wasn't being clear on what I mean by "create." I don't mean adding to the shared imagined space by executing a game mechanics procedure and reporting the outcome, or by instantiating a character's Standard Operating Procedure. I mean actually thinking something up, something that has at least a small element of the unexpected in it. I'm talking about real human creativity. "I do five hit points of damage" is not creating situation in the sense I'm talking about, but "I bash the glass out of his hand, splashing his drink on his date's face" might be -- provided that the system has allowed, but not specified, such an outcome, and provided that the action described is not the character's SOP or other form of cliche. On the larger scale, the process of accomplishing a pre-set mission involves situation evolving over time, but it's not creating (in the sense of exercising creativity) situation through play unless the players' choices can take that evolution in unexpected directions. That possibility exists in Sim play, but is certainly not assumable by default.

This is hard to explain, partly because the distinctions I'm trying to make have been largely overlooked and therefore the terminology (e.g.
"create" =?= "cause" vs. "invent") is not designed to describe the distinction. I have a monstrously long data-dump of an essay on this topic in the works. In the meantime, I don't want to hijack this thread. The point, with regard to the topic of sustaining the appeal of Sim play over time, is that exercising and exhibiting creativity through play can be a strong (literally) creative agenda even when the object of that creativity is not "story," and that such a creative agenda accounts for the long-term continuing appeal of some Simulationist play.

- Walt

Hi Walt,

Your in-between proposition seems to me to be a paraphrase of my Simulationist description. I'm fine with creative interjections and novel approaches in that context; it's the aesthetic priority that I'm talking about. When you say, "do Lovecraft," that's the key - with all the new plot angles or unplanned outcomes or whatever-you-want, if that's still the goal, then we're still talking about pastiche. Imaginative, fun pastiche, novel pastiche ... but still "doing Lovecraft," as an act of homage.

All of which is a fun way to play, which I enjoy in moderation, and which others enjoy primarily or even exclusively.

Marco, you seem to be under the impression that my definitions of Simulationist and Narrativist play are split between "no-theme" and "theme." This is incorrect.

Best,
Ron

Walt Freitag wrote: Characters are fictional and don't create anything.
I mean actually thinking something up, something that has at least a small element of the unexpected in it. I'm talking about real human creativity. "I do five hit points of damage" is not creating situation in the sense I'm talking about, but "I bash the glass out of his hand, splashing his drink on his date's face" might be -- provided that the system has allowed, but not specified, such an outcome, and provided that the action described is not the character's SOP or other form of cliche.

Walt Freitag wrote: The point, with regard to the topic of sustaining the appeal of Sim play over time, is that exercising and exhibiting creativity through play can be a strong (literally) creative agenda even when the object of that creativity is not "story," and that such a creative agenda accounts for the long-term continuing appeal of some Simulationist play.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Marco, you seem to be under the impression that my definitions of Simulationist and Narrativist play are split between "no-theme" and "theme." This is incorrect.

Best,
Ron

Hi there,

GBSteve wrote,

... cliché, to a certain extent is what makes these games playable. It's what provides the common ground from which small departures create an interest ...

Ron Edwards wrote: Your in-between proposition seems to me to be a paraphrase of my Simulationist description. I'm fine with creative interjections and novel approaches in that context; it's the aesthetic priority that I'm talking about. When you say, "do Lovecraft," that's the key - with all the new plot angles or unplanned outcomes or whatever-you-want, if that's still the goal, then we're still talking about pastiche. Imaginative, fun pastiche, novel pastiche ... but still "doing Lovecraft," as an act of homage.

All of which is a fun way to play, which I enjoy in moderation, and which others enjoy primarily or even exclusively.

Hi Walt,

I buy "proper subset." If you can believe it, I even thought "subset" when I composed the post, but decided I use that word too much. Should have stuck with it.

I also agree with your point that discomfort can arise within the category of Simulationist play itself, without harking 'way out to Gamist and Narrativist priorities. But does that specific sort of discomfort give rise to the escalation + exhaustion phenomenon? Perhaps, but not as often, in my experience, as the G and N caused one. That may be a matter of viewer bias, since I gravitate toward Narrativist play (and did so almost exclusively prior to the past two years or so).

Best,
Ron

Just to be clear about the original point of the thread, the Illusionist GM can avoid the problem with "escallation exhaustion" simply by not escallating. It's an inappropriate response to the problem. That is, you don't engage players simply by making their character's problems ever bigger, when they seem to be losing interest. Because the problem has nothing to do with the size of the conflicts that the character's are facing.

If the player is disinterested in the problems presented, you have a much more fundamental problem. Either the themes that your Illusionism is creating aren't speaking to the player, or he's not interested in that style of play, anyhow. Often the reason for the player burning out is that the GM is just pushing the same theme over and over. So, for the players with the supers defending stuff, it's just "We're the good guys" again and again. No surprise that the size of the conflict doesn't matter. "ooh, look, another fight with the baddies".

OTOH, I'd say that most High Concept games only have a couple of themes built into them for play. As per the discussion of the Cthulhu themes. Basically sim themes only go so far in play. This argues for a couple of things. One, the idea of Sim gaming for campaigns is shot, unless you're playing something like Multiverser, which attempts to fix the problem by giving you more and different settings to explore. Or the game needs something more to keep the player's attention.

So it seems that we're back at the Beeg Horseshoe, indeed, if we're looking at play of single High Concept Sim games in terms of campaigns.

But that's what I've been saying all along. Nobody plays Sim for that long as the sole priority. What ever happened to the idea of shifting and Hybrid play? Heck, in the thread on the Sim/Nar line recently, we've been talking about shifting between modes as a natural result of playing "in character". And given that to have incoherent play, you have to have people attempting to play Hybrid in the first place, it seems that it's indeed very common.

The point I'm making is the same one. Nobody does "just Sim" play. Or, rather, very few, IMO. Take supers. If there are lots of fights, I garuntee that there's a strong Gamist component. Champions, to me, is bits of Sim exposition between Gamist fights. Seen that way, play can go on much longer, as the players are getting one of their other priorities met in play. But that doesn't mean that they aren't getting their Sim jollies as well, despite play, perhaps being more Gamist than Sim at times. The Hybrid ends up being that Gentlemans Gamism sort of Sim (I agree to "handicap" my character to genre, and accept the problems as a greater challenge).

So, again, I don't buy that long term pure Sim games exist. But that's not to say that Sim doesn't exist as a Hybrid priority. It was exaclty the point of the models that I was trying to propose a while back that it's not useful to look at these things in terms of how much they are separate in play, but how much they overlap, and, indeed, conflict.

All this said, I see no automatic problems with alternating Illusionism with, say Narrativism, or Gamism (see lots of functional D&D play; like MJ's described "Trailblazing"). In fact, amongst a good group of players who understand what's going on in these terms, it's actually pretty easy to keep functional. Basically the GM and the players trading off on who has the actual control of creating theme or moving over to Gamism temporarily.

Basically it seems to me that we ought to stop looking at things like Illusionism in the light of pure styles, and consider how well they work in Hybrid styles. Since, to me, Hybrids are more common, and give more thrills in terms of satisfying more priorities.

Mike

For the record, I think we've been 'round the "is Sim real?" issue enough to say with a fair degree of confidence that it is (in fact, if Jared was still around and in the proper mood I think I could reach a compromise with the Beeg Horseshoe - but that's a different issue). I quoted an old post of mine somewhere around here recently - something like "making decisions in a Sim game is very much a creative act - it's just not primarily oriented towards Nar Premise."

That covers my opinion that Sim is real, but it does beg the question "all right then, what *is* Sim oriented towards?" And I think therein lies another aspect of the "exhaustion" problem, albeit with a different form of escalation than Ron & Matt point to . . .

One of the things that Sim play reifies (I use a fancy word for "really, really values" because all modes value this, Sim is just unique in seeing it as a goal in and of itself) is consistency with events, issues and/or details previously established through play (assuming those things were "true" to the Sim to begin with, of course). That is, there can be a moment of pure joy (that is sufficient justification for play in and of itself) simply in identifying the action that feels "just right" given all that has been established so far, and making that thing real in the imagined game world.

The problem is, as play continues, you accumulate more and more details. The simple act of keeping it all straight can get really . . . exhausting. This is somewhat balanced by the fact that the payoff for adding a new bit that manages to feel like fate in the context of a TON of old stuff is (for most Sim-folk, I think) larger than the payoff for something that involves a smaller set of stuff (stuff=Explored elements this Sim-game values), but in the end - as there is no alternate priority to defer to, like Nar Premise or Step on Up, the inevitable small slip-ups in accumulated consistency eventually start to wear on the Sim play group.

At least, that's how I've seen it happen: the escalating amount of data that ongoing play generates weighs particularly heavy on Sim groups. For them, it's not just a matter of making sure the Explored elements are sufficiently developed and maintained to support their Nar or Game goals - the Explored elements are the point of play. Their devlopment and maintenance are the very essence of what why we're doing this.

So, to answer one of Matt's questions - yes, escalation exhaustion has driven me away from illusionist play somewhat, as I realised that a concrete, alternate goal (like Nar Premise) provides a solution to many ongoing play issues. Over the last few years (contrary, I think, to what some might expect) I've found Sim more satisfying for very short duration games, and Nar better suited in our long heroic campaign-style play.

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: One of the things that Sim play reifies (I use a fancy word for "really, really values" because all modes value this, Sim is just unique in seeing it as a goal in and of itself) is consistency with events, issues and/or details previously established through play (assuming those things were "true" to the Sim to begin with, of course). That is, there can be a moment of pure joy (that is sufficient justification for play in and of itself) simply in identifying the action that feels "just right" given all that has been established so far, and making that thing real in the imagined game world.

The problem is, as play continues, you accumulate more and more details. The simple act of keeping it all straight can get really . . . exhausting.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: Escalation exhaustion has driven me away from illusionist play somewhat, as I realised that a concrete, alternate goal (like Nar Premise) provides a solution to many ongoing play issues. Over the last few years (contrary, I think, to what some might expect) I've found Sim more satisfying for very short duration games, and Nar better suited in our long heroic campaign-style play.

John,

My understanding - yes, the issues of "detail escalation" (not a great term for it, but it does distinguish it from scale escalation, which was - I think - Matt's primary concern in this thread) exist in all modes, really - because all modes rely on Exploration. I just have seen this as particularly problematic in Sim, because the Exploration is the whole point of play. Now, a Nar group that really CARED about particular Explorative elements - who do NOT choose to say "hey, it worked for our shared Story Now creation - let the details of what we decided on Norse Laws a dozen sessions ago slide a bit" - well, they are in mostly the same boat as the Sim group.

My "long term" - oh, say more than a couple dozen sessions, up to (my personal longest) 3-4 years of mostly-connected campaign. Short-term, less than that, probably with an expectation of at least 3, and usually less than a dozen sessions. Leaving a 12-24 "medium" zone . . .

All that said - and especially with the addition of John's "NOT escalating is also a problem as you feel like you're stagnating" . . . I'm not Matt, or a moderator, but I'm begining to think we've discussed the boundries and nature of the issue this thread raised sufficiently. I haven't seen many *solutions* though. I have none to offer, except "go with Nar/Game goals" and/or "end play at some agreed-upon escalation level."

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: My understanding - yes, the issues of "detail escalation" (not a great term for it, but it does distinguish it from scale escalation, which was - I think - Matt's primary concern in this thread) exist in all modes, really - because all modes rely on Exploration. I just have seen this as particularly problematic in Sim, because the Exploration is the whole point of play. Now, a Nar group that really CARED about particular Explorative elements - who do NOT choose to say "hey, it worked for our shared Story Now creation - let the details of what we decided on Norse Laws a dozen sessions ago slide a bit" - well, they are in mostly the same boat as the Sim group.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: All that said - and especially with the addition of John's "NOT escalating is also a problem as you feel like you're stagnating" . . . I'm not Matt, or a moderator, but I'm begining to think we've discussed the boundries and nature of the issue this thread raised sufficiently. I haven't seen many *solutions* though. I have none to offer, except "go with Nar/Game goals" and/or "end play at some agreed-upon escalation level."

John Kim wrote: Is this really a GNS issue, then? There are Narrativists who care about continuity, you seem to feel. Conversely, are the Simulationists who do not?

Simply, as always, Exploration of character, setting, situation, whatever are all potentially important to all modes of play.

So, detail, itself is not neccessarily pertinent to one mode or the other. What I think Gordon is trying to get at is that it's the idea of these things being concretely in-game, or their continuity being felt as concrete, as opposed to, say, being injected for thematic reasons, is that in which the Sim priority is interested.

Just as play "in character" doesn't matter to mode, neither does play "about long-term accretion". It all depends on what the players think is the value of these things. At the risk of one of my bad eamples, which would be just an example, and not definitive in any way, would be if something were injected by the GM out of the blue for thematic reasons. Like, if I said, "Suddenly your character remembers a little girl who once gave him her lunch when he was down and out," in a situation where I want to try and promote some Narrativist scene where a player has to make some choice about a child, that would be a Narrativist addition to the continuity. For the Narrativist, the only test that it has to pass is that it "could have happened". It's not an unreasonable sort of fact to establish, and by golly, if it makes the moment work, it's good. The Simulationist, OTOH, sees this as an obvious metagame intrusion that has no connection to the "real" world that's being played in. The addition is internally consistent, it just gives off that metagame "I've been put in to ensure theme gets created" vibe.

Actually rejection of such an addition would indicate a pretty low tolerance for breaking Sim (after all we can't establish everything, and backgrounds are considered open game in many cases). But, again, it's just an example.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: OTOH, I'd say that most High Concept games only have a couple of themes built into them for play. As per the discussion of the Cthulhu themes. Basically sim themes only go so far in play. This argues for a couple of things. One, the idea of Sim gaming for campaigns is shot, unless you're playing something like Multiverser, which attempts to fix the problem by giving you more and different settings to explore. Or the game needs something more to keep the player's attention.

So it seems that we're back at the Beeg Horseshoe, indeed, if we're looking at play of single High Concept Sim games in terms of campaigns.

But that's what I've been saying all along. Nobody plays Sim for that long as the sole priority. What ever happened to the idea of shifting and Hybrid play? Heck, in the thread on the Sim/Nar line recently, we've been talking about shifting between modes as a natural result of playing "in character". And given that to have incoherent play, you have to have people attempting to play Hybrid in the first place, it seems that it's indeed very common.

So, again, I don't buy that long term pure Sim games exist. But that's not to say that Sim doesn't exist as a Hybrid priority. It was exaclty the point of the models that I was trying to propose a while back that it's not useful to look at these things in terms of how much they are separate in play, but how much they overlap, and, indeed, conflict.

All this said, I see no automatic problems with alternating Illusionism with, say Narrativism, or Gamism (see lots of functional D&D play; like MJ's described "Trailblazing"). In fact, amongst a good group of players who understand what's going on in these terms, it's actually pretty easy to keep functional. Basically the GM and the players trading off on who has the actual control of creating theme or moving over to Gamism temporarily.

Damn, I'll have to try that line of reasoning on my wife. ;-)

Glad that I'm making sense to someone. :-)

Mike

Mike -

Yes, your example illustrates what I was trying to get at. Thanks!

Gordon

cruciel wrote: Based on my personal experience, I'd have to say initial disinterest isn't the problem. The escalation can happen even when having oodles of fun (I was at the time), but it gets unrewarding to push through someone elses story, hence the exhaustion; it also tends to get trite.

John Kim wrote: Thanks, that's helpful. In Gordon's hypothesis, the two solutions would be shorter campaigns (i.e. cut off escalation) or switching to Nar/Game. Do you think shorter campaigns would have helped in your case? i.e. Would you still be fully satisfied with Sim if it weren't for the escalation?

Excellent thoughts everyone -- Mike, I found your post regarding long term Sim. play (or lack thereof!) very helpful for consideration.

Just wanted to acknowledge that I appreciate folks considering the questions I raised. Keep discussion!

I hope I haven't given the wrong impression about long term Sim play. It's really simple. You just can't do the same thing over and over. If that's all a game provides, then you can still play long-term and stay Sim, it's just up to the GM (perhaps with player input) to find new themes to incoprporate. And the enjoyment that a given player has for the theme in question can prolong things a great deal as well. A very sim player who likes Lovecraft to death might very well enjoy the same thing week in week out.

But it's really no different than saying that hacking up orcs repeatedly gets dull in a Gamist game. That's easier to vary, however, as you can just change the challenge. Theme is a little harder to generate; changing the monster in CoC might not change the theme at all. But the problem is the same. Even in Narrativist play, if the players keep coming back to the same thing with their themes uncreatively, it's goint to get boring. "Ah, betrayed a friend again? yay"

What I do say is that an easy way to extend any game is to include the other two elements appropriately. If the game has been really Narrativist for too long, then throw in some Gamism. Then run a Sim episode. Etc. Keeps things fresh, IMO.

Mike