Hi.

I've been doing a lot of thought recently into the methods and modes of Gamism, largely to help me with the design of Tactics. I thought I would post some thoughts here.

I think that there are a lot of switches here, and any one of these can be the focus of play. Different players focusing on different aspects may very well result in dysfunction.

Accumulative vs. Non-accumulative --

Accumulative Gamism is the sort of game that often gets dubbed "RPG" in video game circles -- as the character overcomes challenges, they become more capable of overcoming further challenges. D&D 3.0 is an acccumulative Gamist game, as are most RPGs when played Gamist.

Non-Accumulative Gamism is the sort of game where your ability to overcome challenges is not directly related to your past performance on said challenges. RPGs that do not award advancement based on achievement (such as many LARPs) are, when played Gamist, non-accumulative Gamist. Board games are usually non-accumulative Gamist. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean "no character advancement." It means "character advancement is not tied to previous successes or failures."

I think that the difference between these two is vast, because it changes the focus of the game and, often, the experience of new players of the game. (Older players are often spiteful of new players in Accumulative Gamist games, because they haven't earned their power, or they can't keep up.)

"Can You Take It?" vs. "Look, Ma, No Hands!"--

This is a rather simple division, but important -- Who sets the bar? Is it an external "challenge director" or is it the person facing the challenge themselves?

Competitive vs. Cooperative--

In competitive play, the players are ranked and challenged individually, and the goal is to become superior to the other players.

In cooperative play, the goal is to overcome the challenge as a group, using the group's resources.

I believe that most RPGs are written for the second, but get drifted to the first by (I believe) reasonably dysfunctional groups. It is certainly possible to play competive RPGs functionally (LARPs and Amber come to mind) but such play needs attention to be able to function.

Hardcore vs. Safety First -- more of a meter than a switch.

Hardcore players prefer to risk a great deal in challenges -- even their "right" to play the game. This mode is often associated with "accumulation" (above), where in any given instance you are losing your sense of entitlement.

Safety First players aren't so much interested in the risks as the challenge itself. Each challenge becomes a puzzle and an intellectual exercise -- in extreme cases, even a puzzle that can be replayed. Success and failure are not as important as, well, the thing itself.

I have almost never seen explicit Safety First game rules (ressurection spells in D&D are perhaps a form of this.) However, I have seen games drift this way many, many times. Often, the players feel the need to justify it to themselves about how they aren't "cheating," which I feel is sad. It's not really a less legitimate mode to play in.

Can people think of other such divisions?

yrs--
--Ben

Cool thread.

Ben Lehman wrote: Accumulative vs. Non-accumulative --

Hi there,

That's a great breakdown of dials/switches.

I think that some of it overlaps, structurally, with other modes of play. In other words, what makes the use of these mechanics features Gamist, is the social and creative use to which they're put. But that's probably a no-brainer point, not worth developing ... my goal is make sure people don't point to isolated mechanics in various games, which happen to correspond with anything you've mentioned, and say, "So this makes it a Gamist game, huh? What if I don't play it that way? Huh?" and so on ...

One concern I do have is the competition/cooperation thing. I still like to think of competition existing within a framework of larger-scale cooperation, which can often be missed in such a dichotomy. In other words, raw and only competition, with no cooperative framework, simply becomes a direct fight. I think a lot of people think competitive play must automatically become Hard Core Gamism, and shy away from it accordingly, because they don't see how most competition doesn't have to go there.

Best,
Ron

Nice breakdown Ben. Here's another set of dials—

How is the outcome determined, and how does the player influence the outcome?

Here’s what I’m thinking of. When you look on the back of a German boardgame, you’ll often find a bar graph that tells you who the game is for. For example, the back of the game Babel, put out by Kosmos, has a bar graph with two bars, one for “Lucky Devil,” and the other for “Planner.” Another game, Caesar and Cleopatra (published by the same company) has a bar graph with four types of play/player represented: “Lucky Devil,” “Bluffer,” “Ponderer,” and “Tactician.” Each bar represents the degree to which this kind of play should affect the outcome. It’s a rough guide, but an interesting one, and I can see it applying to RPGs as well.

These labels could be related to Drama, Karma, and Fortune, and how these affect game play. Gambling, after all, is appropriate to Gamist play as well as does “bean counting." Just looking at D&D (all versions, but especially 3e), you can see both of these at work. I've seen it mentioned more than once in past threads that the broad spread of possible results and relatively meager effect of a +1 or +2 to hit on the d20 roll at low character levels doesn’t stop people from being quite proud when they succeed in attacks or take down the enemies. And I know of plenty of cases where a player has gained accolades for rolling a natural 20 at the right time, as if he had somehow controlled the motion of the die. At the same time, as modifiers stack up over time, “bean counting” becomes more and more important, and the value of resource management for spellcasters is widely recognized. We talked a bit about Drama, Karma, and Fortune in the context of gamist play a while back when I was green to the Forge and was thinking about Gamism in relation to design. I think a bit differently about some of the assumptions I made in this thread, but you may find some relevant comments in the discussion.

Rich

Having had some initial difficulties in comprehending the model, I now think (probably incorrectly) that I have a general sense of the minimum criteria for gamist play. It seems to me that what makes play gamist is the presence of victory conditions whether shared or individual.

Mike Holmes wrote:
I think an important consideration here is whether the accumulation is potentially negative. That is, can you fall behind where you started. In many cases in games like this the goal is to try to simply break even or better, and upward movement can't be taken for granted.

The problem with this is that you tend to then get both the "steamroller effect", where a player out ahead can easily stay ahead, and the "death spiral", in which a player losing tends to lose more and more until bottoming out somehow (death often, in the case of a character). There are ways around this, however, and I'd kinda like to see an RPG like this.

Ron Edwards wrote:
One concern I do have is the competition/cooperation thing. I still like to think of competition existing within a framework of larger-scale cooperation, which can often be missed in such a dichotomy.

In other words, raw and only competition, with no cooperative framework, simply becomes a direct fight. I think a lot of people think competitive play must automatically become Hard Core Gamism, and shy away from it accordingly, because they don't see how most competition doesn't have to go there.

Rich Forest wrote:
How is the outcome determined, and how does the player influence the outcome?

fusangite wrote:
Having had some initial difficulties in comprehending the model, I now think (probably incorrectly) that I have a general sense of the minimum criteria for gamist play. It seems to me that what makes play gamist is the presence of victory conditions whether shared or individual.

Hello,

Quick clarification: the defining feature of Gamist play is the possibility of losing esteem, among members of the real live people, through the events and decisions of play. It doesn't have to be lot of esteem, nor does the loss have to be long-term. But putting in effort and attention to keep it from happening, or even better, to pump up the esteem if possible through one's decisions, is what makes Gamist play.

That's "Step On Up."

Best,
Ron

Ben Lehman wrote:
BL> Isn't this, effectively, a hardcore/safety first meter? Or is there some subtlety that I'm missing. You're right that the two are related.

Once again, I think I get it and then....

Let me get this straight: are you saying that how you play doesn't alter people's opinions of you in Narrativist and Simulationist play? It seems to me that all play must be gamist because all play is predicated on a hierarchy for evaluating the quality of other players' actions.

Hi Fusangite (er, do you have a name?)

I think the point Ron is making there is that we shouldn’t forget that social esteem is important to gamist play. There’s been a historical tendency of folks to forget this social level of gamist play, or gloss it over, so Ron is just nipping that tendency in the bud. He’s learned to be particularly attentive to certain mis-readings of GNS, and he tends to be very good at consistently pointing them out to make sure they don’t catch on.

So when Ron wrote: the defining feature of Gamist play is the possibility of losing esteem, among members of the real live people, through the events and decisions of play.

fusangite wrote: Once again, I think I get it and then....

Let me get this straight: are you saying that how you play doesn't alter people's opinions of you in Narrativist and Simulationist play? It seems to me that all play must be gamist because all play is predicated on a hierarchy for evaluating the quality of other players' actions.

Hey Pete,

Nice boots. Better slip mine on.

Firstly, I think you've pretty much "outed" yourself as a gamist with that: your play may be predicated on heirarchy for evaluating other players actions. Mine is sometimes, but more often it's driven by an almost fanatical curiosity about imaginary people, places, things and situations. I'd guess I'd have sim tendencies then. I've played in a few campaigns where that didn't matter as much as adressing a single question (is love stronger than death, frex); player status and a more general curiosity were sidelined. So that'd be generally nar.

Now, of course there's a degree of player jockeying for peer approval in all three, but for most of my play it's not as important as finding out what happens next

(or, more importantly, what happens when I do this). In narrativist games I've been in, it's not been as important as finding answers (or at least examples) of the Big Question.

To you, peer perception is the key for your play: great!

Hi Stuart,

I'm not sure I see how you're being informed that you're misinterpreting anything. I was under the impression that, two days ago, you nailed it. Gamist you say, and so Gamist it is - I don't see any special reason to question or doubt that. To discuss it further, presuming that you're interested, we really need to get concrete in terms of actual play.

Maybe a lack of acknowledgment on the part of everyone else is the problem, and I'd like to call on everyone to recognize that.

I also suggest - and this is related to the desire of some posters to know, at least, your real first name - that your "on line persona" should be simply discarded when posting at the Forge. We really, really don't care about anyone except the real you.

I also think my post may have misled some people about the issue of esteem and approval. Rich in particular has re-stated my point in precisely the terms to express it far better than I did. If I'm not mistaken, his re-statement supports all of your conclusions rather than informs you that you're misinterpreting anything.

Best,
Ron

Thanks a lot Ron. I'm most relieved by your post. As the author of the model, I obviously find your statement regarding my style of play rather more authoritative.

I think I'll enjoy it here.

Stuart.

Hello,

Two neurons finally freakin' fired in the right direction. I think I was so wrapped up in composing my nearby "whole model" post that everything else sank beneath black water for a while ...

From my Gamism essay:

A few paragraphs back, I promised a definition for Gamism and here it is. It operates at two levels: the real, social people and the imaginative, in-game situation.

The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. This is the inherent "meaning" or agenda of Gamist play (analogous to the Dream in Simulationist play).

Gamist play, socially speaking, demands performance with risk, conducted and perceived by the people at the table. What's actually at risk can vary - for this level, though, it must be a social, real-people thing, usually a minor amount of recognition or esteem. The commitment to, or willingness to accept this risk is the key - it's analogous to committing to the sincerity of The Dream for Simulationist play. This is the whole core of the essay, that such a commitment is fun and perfectly viable for role-playing, just as it's viable for nearly any other sphere of human activity.

The in-game characters, [etc].

Hm,

Now you've gotten my neurons firing again, Ron.

First, it has just occurred to me that Walt Freitag did some excellent analysis in this post that is relevant to the question of this thread. His points are particularly useful because he’s nailed down some interesting stuff at the “real people” level. I think there are some parallels and connections between some of your breakdown, Ben, and some of the things Walt identified in his post. His “Scorekeeping” seems to related to your identification of accumulative gamist play, for example. He discusses:

1) Scorekeeping
2) The Be Prepared Game
3) The Set-Up Game
4) The Resource Management Game
5) The Modifiers Game
and
6) Luck

And any of these could become the focus of attention in gamist play.

Also, something in Ron's quote from the gamism essay reminded me of another switch that could have interesting possibilities in gamist play: “incrementalism” versus “the bomb.” I've stolen this insight from The Ticking Time Bomb: How Steep Rewards and Sudden Catastrophes Help Make a Game Great. Basically, "incrementalism" and "the bomb" describe how actions are rewarded in the game system. Do small changes have incrementally small effects, with success dependent on careful and consistent resource management? Rune has some of this in how points are scored. Or do small changes have the potential to “explode” at certain points, leading to big changes in the playing field. Now for an example... Hm... Right now, no intentional incorporation of bombs in RPG design is jumping out at me, although I’m probably overlooking something really obvious in some game, somewhere. Well, I suppose “exploding dice,” “critical hits,” and “botches” from various games offer the luck version of this, but bombs in other areas of potential gamist fun/focus seem lacking. Incorporating bombs in other areas of gamist interest could be an intriguing possibility for a strong gamist game. They offer clear options for those moments to arise where everyone suddenly goes, “Whoah. That was great!” in response to "strategizing, guts, and performance" at the right time.

I suspect some gamist play probably has taken advantage of bombs in game systems to various degrees, even if the game systems in question failed to intentionally provide for them. I wonder if some “system breakers” could be said to be exploiting unintentional bombs in the character generation system (which some would argue is a game in and of itself) or in other aspects of a game system.

Rich

I would suggest that in Classical RP, the "bomb" is character death via levels. That is, you undergo successive incremental power-ups (sword +1, armour +1) but you still have a responsibility to avoid biting off more than you can chew. The fatal mistake is to go to a level that you are not ready for, and hence get chopped to little tiny bits.

However, of course, the making of levels more or less explicit, and the introduction of mass resurrections severly undermine this aspect in a lot of actual play. It was Rons T&T discussion and recently playing Baldurs Gate that suggests this to me.

Civilisation has a bomb which is "being left behind" in the technology race. If you let this happen, you may well find tanks overrunning your spearmen. I think the bomb concept as discussed in that article is very useful.

Edit: I mention Civ to provide a counterpoint to somne of the above discussion: SELF esteem matters at least as much as public esteem. The chief critic of my own performance is me.

1) Scorekeeping
2) The Be Prepared Game
3) The Set-Up Game
4) The Resource Management Game
5) The Modifiers Game
and
6) Luck

And any of these could become the focus of attention in gamist play.