Some questions. (This starts out RPG Theory and turns GNS. Wasn’t sure where to post it.)

I’ve been trying to find a comprehensive glossary of terms and acronyms with no luck. I noticed the promise of such in the title of the principal simulationist article but found that to be incomplete. (e.g. What the heck is SAN?)

(1) Am I just missing it? I apologize if this is the millionth irritating request for the same thing.

Over the years, I’ve written 2 significant versions of what the Forge would term a fantasy heartbreaker. (I guess we’ve all got a D&D rehash buried in the closet.) As fate would have it, I’m in the throes of reacting to the Hubris Story Engine, working on a 3rd version of my game. (I swallowed the whole thing except (1) chaos and (2) resolving an entire combat sequence with one roll. Then I found this forum, and now my head’s awhirl.)

(2) Is there a Forge way to summarize the features below? Is it misguided to be conformist in that regard?



Dual mode: scene-based (features intrigue) and round-based (features combat.)



Wide range of combat scale.
Non-damage effects. (e.g. Stun.)

. . . scales up to . . .

Standard combat. (e.g. matched numbers, 4-10 member party, no setting or formation considerations.)

. . . scales up to . . .

Dizzying spatial aspects across huge numbers of mixed units. (All without miniatures, grids or tracking of matching.)



Dual genre (Fantasy and Sci-Fi) core rules.



Absence of any game world.



Blasé human-centric. (i.e. low demi-human, magic, alien, time travel, etc.)



Level playing field by the numbers. (i.e. emphasis on matched chances for advantage between player characters and others.)



Heroic advantage through expense of magical mana (to fuel spell effects) and plot achievement rewards. Advantage comes in 2 forms: improving chances and canceling threats.



High integration of discrete ratings of compact ranges.



Character generation by capture of individual pseudo-genre concept (expansion card) and motivation abstract (driver) which is then named and located for world integration (protocol.)



Suspension of resolution allowing capture of timing aspect for effects.



Some things make sense to me (e.g. fortune-based resolution: “Oh, he means rolling dice.”) Other things are less clear (e.g. dial: “Zah?”) I read some post that said something like “Can we please have an explicit premise?” in regards to an RPG explaining itself.

(3) Accepting that this is a valuable prerequisite to publication, how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

And I guess I’m just airing my thoughts at this point. But . . .

When I first read the GNS, my initial impression was: Gamism (Oh, that’s combat,) Narrativism (Oh, that’s playing out the story) and Simulationism (Oh, that’s design and reffing.) Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.) Well, how can you win? They’re all good for something. Why can’t I make a 5-color deck?

I mean, to me, you ought to go nuts assuring exquisite system complexity to express the range of your choice for capture. (Not complication, not self-indulgent design-as-exploration.) Then you do your character, world and story build (again, seeking integration.) Finally, you run the thing like roundtable story-boarding, and who knows what the Hell will happen! But the effect is that a story arises that everyone moves and is moved by. I find it desirable that the system, character and plot mechanics should disappear, and I assert a path of rich relevance and interconnection as a effective method for achieving that end. (And, I admit, excellent training.)

That last bit’s not really a question. I don’t mean to broach a tone of “my way is best, after all,” I’m just expressing my ideal and my frustration with accepting that 3’s a crowd. If I had to favor one, it would be Simulationism, but I’m having trouble feeling guilty about needing to exclude the others.

(1) A Glossary is at the end of the Simulationsit and Gamist essays.

SAN is SANity for the Call of Cthulhu game IIRC

(2) Not to my knowledge. Others may know better.

(3) This depends on many factors. This is a big ol' thread by itself.

Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.) Well, how can you win? They’re all good for something. Why can’t I make a 5-color deck?

bcook1971 wrote: ...how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

bcook1971 wrote: ...I find it desirable that the system, character and plot mechanics should disappear

Hi and welcome to the Forge!

Much of the jargon from your quotes in #2 only have meaning in context of their posts. Can you include post links?

For other terminology, there's a good glossary at the end of "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" and also "Gamism: Step on Up." found in the articles section:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/

Those two essays will also help clarify what the three GNS preferences are. They are expressions of preferences as expressed by instances of play. A player that finds most reward in meeting challenges or competing is said to have gamist preferences; one who prioritizes the maintenance of some illusion of "reallity" (however that is defined in the game) has simulationist preferences; one who most likes to develop some thematic element and wrestle with it has narrativist preferences. It's important to separate GNS preferences from the people, as the people can demonstrate all three kinds of behavior - it's about which they find most rewarding.

Anyway, if you haven't already, read "Simulationism: the right to dream."

This is a common misconception. All three are present in every game just only one is focused or prioritized above the others. Asking how to make a game that prioritizes all three is sort of like asking why you can't write a piece of music that plays all of the notes of the scale at once or mixing all of the paints on the palette until it becomes a dull greyish brown.

Did you know that when a system engine is played, the behaviour of the players and their characters creates a world (or genre)? That's why there's no such thing as a "generic" RPG or "world-less" system engine, even though they are advertised, purchased and played by lots of people.

Once you've designed your system engine, the behaviour of the players using that system mixed with the group's social contract will create a set of behaviours. As to whether or not, those behaviours are desirable is another matter...

I feel it's due to a reaction against complex and overly-complex RPG designs that don't actually do what they advertise or exhort players to do.

Much of the jargon from your quotes in #2 only have meaning in context of their posts. Can you include post links?

bcook1971 wrote: But it seems like a matter of semantics. And I failed to mention my full view: the system would be useless without some world idea and some story idea to reveal some character ideas. To me, they're like blocks. i.e. system + world + story + characters = game experience.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote:

bcook1971 wrote: Then I read that a theoretical ideal of design is to center around a single perspective or a well-matched hybrid of 2, but never catering to all 3; that would be incoherent (which sounds terrible.) Well, how can you win? They’re all good for something. Why can’t I make a 5-color deck?

This is a common misconception. All three are present in every game just only one is focused or prioritized above the others. Asking how to make a game that prioritizes all three is sort of like asking why you can't write a piece of music that plays all of the notes of the scale at once or mixing all of the paints on the palette until it becomes a dull greyish brown.

bcook-

And, back to premise.

Way back a while ago, there was this term, premise, and another term, Premise. This pair was frequently a bugbear in discussions, and not the kind you get XP for.

Premise (that is, premise) has been replaced by the term Creative Agenda.
Basically, the Creative Agenda of the game is just What's Going On. The answer to "Why should I play your game - what's it good for?"

So the Creative Agenda of that game DND: Making coolly powerful characters by running around and killing monsters. If the game is any good, it'll be superlative at 1) making characters coolly powerful and 2) killing monsters.

The Creative Agenda of GURPS: A modular system to "realistically" replicate any setting you can think of.

The Creative Agenda of YourGame ought to be exactly why I should bother learning the rules and playing it.

Meanwhile, Premise is now a term that applies only to Narrativist games. It is the theme-like question that all play revolves around.
So, frex, Sorcerer has a Creative Agenda of playing Powerful Dudes teetering on the edge of Self-Ruin and a default Premise of "How far will you go to get what you want?"

That's my take on the terms, anyway.
Er, so, could we please have an explicit Creative Agenda for your game?

-Matt

And, when a game is referred to as being incoherent, that simply means that through its unfocused catch-all mechanics, the game tends towards dysfunctional play when player priorities of Gam/Nar/Sim are at odds. A game that is branded as "incoherent" can support the most unbelievably rich role-playing experience imaginable if it is being played by a group or players who share the exact same (or at least very similar) GNS priorities. Since it rarely happens that players are so compatible, so-called incoherent games are typically problematic during actual play.

Meanwhile, Premise is now a term that applies only to Narrativist games.

Developing Premise into practical form
Again, all three modes are social applications of the foundational act of role-playing, which is Exploration. Taking that into a social, role-playing circumstance, the people get more concrete about a shared Premise, and thus their decisions acquire a GNS focus of some kind. To play successfully, the members of the role-playing group must be, at the very least, willing to acknowledge and support the focused Premise as perceived by one another.

Er, so, could we please have an explicit Creative Agenda for your game?

bcook1971 wrote:

Can't agree. The GNS article says:

Well, Hell.

I get the difference and the argument and benefit of Ron's view. I'm just collapsing under restrictions against using what are considered meaningless terms. (e.g. story, plot, genre.)

Anyway, it's a compact, procedural rules set for exploring fantasy and sci-fi pulps that feature scaling combat and interplay of character motivation as revealled through the pursuit of a related purpose.

Bill Cook (it is Bill, isn't it?) wrote: ...how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

how does one express premise for a world-less system engine?

Above I wrote: ...when the player makes those in-game decisions that are important to him, he will make them based on the style he prefers.*

Yes, it's Bill.

Thx for your thoughtful explanation. I was reading your Applied Theory article when I had my lightbulb moment. That prompted my first post.

Gamism, narrativism, and simulationism are play styles; they are characterized and identified by the kinds of choices made and, in a loose sense, the motivation behind those choices.

So a gamist, narrativist, or simulationist game is one that rewards the players for making choices which promote that kind of play overall, and sometimes penalizes them for making choices which go against that intent.

Why are you creating this game at all, in the first place?

So, what is it that you are trying to do? What is it that all these other games have failed to accomplish that you think you know how to fix? What flash of insight on how to make games work has brought you here?

But looking back, I can see that those principles formed our premise, and our design goals: you have been thrown into the multiverse, and any time you are killed you will return in a new universe facing new adventures; the worlds will be different, but you will remain you.

Hi Bill,

I'd recommend leaving the GNS concepts alone for a while. Many people immediately want to jump into them, but unless you're willing to really take some time and try to really grasp them, it's probably going to lead to more confusion than assistance for you. This isn't a diss on you, or the GNS presentation, but most people have a very hard time distinguishing between behavioral patterns, emotions, "intent" and personal views, making GNS a difficult topic for most people to swallow.

What would probably be MUCH more useful to you in design, would be to check out a LOT of other games, and how they do it. Some of your ideas, such as scaling combat, have been done in a lot of other games, including ones that also have the option for 1-roll/entire combat(Hero Wars/Quest, Trollbabe, the Pool, etc.) This isn't for the purpose of stealing or copying ideas, but to save you much effort in the sense of re-inventing the wheel.

Probably if you want actual useful commentary, there's two things to do here, without having to get all GNS with it:

1) Share some of the mechanics to your game

There's quite a few excellent designers, and playtesters, who would be able to comment and give advice. If you don't feel comfortable sharing your mechanics, I'm afraid not too much helpful advice can be given. It's rather like a programmer asking for help, but not providing code, only vaporware specs.

2) Actual Play

By sharing even a "playtest" version of your system, folks who are interested can try it out, play it, and let you know how it runs. Take a look over in our actual play section, which includes both published games, and games still in the making. Plus, nothing stirs up interest as much as a positive playtest report by folks who have run with it.

Chris

bcook1971 wrote: As a designer, I don't find compexity in itself undesirable, so long as it supports my agenda for capturing a specific list of game effects.

bcook1971 wrote: My impression, in terms of video games: Wing Commander promotes Gamist play, Dragon's Lair promotes Narrativist play and Prince of Persia promotes Simulationist play.

Discrete set of play-based character qualities of high procedural relation. Scale combat, reclaim spatial and capture timing. Integrate characters as plot agents. Human-centric, non-otherly focus.

About that non-otherly, it's why T2 doesn't work for me and why 12 Monkeys satisfies: both center around time travel, but the former devolves into inconsequential flare while the latter closes a circle of theme and achieves significance through sacrifice.

Well, this thread gets my vote for "Best Intro for Newbies."

Good questions, and good answers, all. Bravo.

---EC