Hi All,

Okay. Thanks to Marco and John's replies to my question about OOC bugaboos, I think something has snapped into place.

A lot of this is old hand even to me. And a lot of it might be absolutely clear to you all. But something clicked for me a few moments ago that brings the whole point of all of this into new clarity.

Some people see the whole GNS thing as a labelling machine. A tool to determine who's playing what kind of game, so we know what "kind" of people we're playing with, we know what kind of game we're making.

Now, anyone who's gone through the GNS graduate degree progam knows this has nothing to do with anything. GNS isn't about labelling people.

But then, what is it?

For me, today, it's a diagnostic for determining if a group's Social Contract, Creative Agenda and Exploration are being met. It is also, importantly the manifestation of Social Contract, Creative Agenda, and Exploration. That's why the GNS stuff is part of the "verb" of the model.

When we sit around trying to figure out if "GNS" (a tiny, tiny part of the model in my imagination all of the sudden) is "scoring" a game's play correctly, we're just missing the whole boat.

According to the model, we've got, a group of human beings with a Social Contract (that's either been worked out or not), who've gathered with their Exploration elements (characters, setting, whatnot), and a Creative Agenda. Once they start to play they're either going to be doing Sim things, Gamist things, or Narrativist things (whether mindful of them or not.) That's it. These three ways of prioritizing decisions are simply going to manifest the Social Contract, Exploration, and the Creative Agenda.

If the first three elements are vaugue (or even in conflict) with the player's expectations, then there's a chance that the making of the game (the "verb"; the choice of GNS priorities) is going to get muddled and reach conflict. Thus, the game isn't G, N or S -- there are just the instances of play that are these things. The GNS part of the model suggests that if manifestation of play is grouped tighter around one of these three modes of play, there will be less strain on the group, and probably a better time had by all.

But not because they're playing G, N or S, but because they're manifesting a shared Creative Agenda, having fun Exploring stuff they've all agreed upon, and, here's the important one, manifesting a Social Contract they all enjoy.

The purpose of the model is to lay this stuff out on the table -- so, if need be -- everyone can be mindful of what's going on. That is, make choices about Social Contract, Exloration and Creative Agneda. Thus, if a game feels off, one can review all the element of behavior during play. If it becomes clear that the GNS stuff was all over the map (or two people were playing tug of war between Sim and Gamist) one could work backard through the model, perhaps even reaching Social Contract, and ask, "Exactly, why did I show up at that game last Friday? Why are we doing this?"

Because the model isn't just about play (which is tucked gently in the middle of the Venn diagram). It's about the whole kaboodal of why we'd do this, who we're doing it with, and how we want to do it.

Yes?

Best,

Christopher

[edited second paragraph from a run on sentence down to three sentences.]

Yes, agreed, Christopher! You've done a superb job, in my mind, of summing this up. And, you've done it in a way that, hopefully, is helpful to other people "on the precipice" must like you were up to writing this!

Hello,

Yup, that's the idea.

The typical problems in working out unsatisfying play, or in trying to reach more satisfying play (not necessarily the same thing), are:

1. Trying to deal with it by adding or subtracting Techniques.

2. Trying to deal with it by focusing on the imagined outcomes (what a character did, what happened when this happened, would the council really have decided that, etc), which is to say, staying with the Exploration per se.

... both of which are missing the "verb" element of the Creative Agenda and thus are not able to link all the layers/levels/boxes of the model together.

Best,
Ron

Well, that's not what it is for me.

I don't see GNS as a labeling system. I see part of it as a useful way of categorizing player decisions. Useful in that if I know the kind of decision that was made I can then see how other players, the game rules, etc. react with that.

But it's not a way of categorizing decisions. It's a way of describing what you think you saw at the table. This creates several problems.

a. People keep using it to describe the motivation behind decisions (Matt does this. Raven does this. People will, I predict, continue to do this because that's where the real value is--who cares if you diagnose a game as Sim? What's the value? It says nothing about how or why people were engaged, just how you *think* they were) and assuming the observed behavior will keep up (raven says there's context, I see the context, I don't think I buy it).*

I think the extreme vaguenss surrounding the techniques an analyst uses to categorize actual play is very, very telling.

I can only conclude the reason other people don't see that is because they have no problem analyzing the play--but that doesn't make it seem more rigorous to me. If anything it appears that the analyst will see nothing more than what he expects to see and the lack of criteria for observing, say "Exploration of character" makes it all in the eye of the beholder.

With a continuing lack of any concrete examples of how to make a G/N/Sdetermination, I can only wonder what I'd be expected to think.

b. The analysis between Sim and Nar (as exemplifed in Matt's example) looks completely subjective to me. I can look at any story and see multiple themes expressed there. I just ran a game in IRC--with OOC information. Looking at it, I can't classify the play in any way that's meaningful to me. Sure, I can say "looks like Exp of Situation--" but that's always what it looks like to me.

-Marco

But it's not a way of categorizing decisions. It's a way of describing what you think you saw at the table. This creates several problems.

a. People keep using it to describe the motivation behind decisions (Matt does this. Raven does this.

People will, I predict, continue to do this because that's where the real value is--who cares if you diagnose a game as Sim? What's the value? It says nothing about how or why people were engaged, just how you *think* they were) and assuming the observed behavior will keep up (raven says there's context, I see the context, I don't think I buy it).*

I can only conclude the reason other people don't see that is because they have no problem analyzing the play--but that doesn't make it seem more rigorous to me. If anything it appears that the analyst will see nothing more than what he expects to see and the lack of criteria for observing, say "Exploration of character" makes it all in the eye of the beholder.

b. The analysis between Sim and Nar (as exemplifed in Matt's example) looks completely subjective to me. I can look at any story and see multiple themes expressed there. I just ran a game in IRC--with OOC information. Looking at it, I can't classify the play in any way that's meaningful to me. Sure, I can say "looks like Exp of Situation--" but that's always what it looks like to me.

" Looking at it, I can't classify the play in any way that's meaningful to me. Sure, I can say "looks like Exp of Situation--" but that's always what it looks like to me."

Matt Snyder wrote: Marco, it's subjective to you. You've pointed to examples of your own actual play, as did John Kim. Both of you were met with, "Yeah, we discussed those. Based on what we had to go on they appeared to be X or Y. What's the problem?" You guys' argument seems to boil down to, "I can't tell." Others are saying they can. So which is it? There's the rub.

Matt Snyder wrote: Marco, I'm begging you to answer these questions honestly. Do you have a personal preference, a bias toward Simulationist games? Do you find that you "like" the idea of Simulationist games more than others? Do you classify yourself as a Simulationist? How do you know? Or, do you do so because others have told you that's likely what you are? Simmilarly, to you think Narrativism is not as much to your liking? Do you find something, however slight, distasteful in Narrativism? If the answer to these things is "Nah, I like all of the above games," then that's great.

John, I agree completely. Whole post, I think. I have absolutely zero attachment to sim play, As I said, I got a pretty strong vibe it must be sim-play because the games that seemed to work perfectly for me were Sim.

And while *I* can see where *I* was responding and engaged in moral questions during play, I've no idea if anyone else could. And I couldn't point to any specific reinforcement of answering those moral questions over, say, exploration of character or situation--the GM and group seemed to be pretty supportive no matter what I did.

-Marco

I'm getting this odd picture of Marco playing via IRC, smirking to himself, with a thought bubble "Ha! I'm playing nar, but they all think I'm playing sim, and they'll never know..."

Probably followed by a cackle, a twirl of his moustachios and him disappearing into the fog with a grand sweep of his cape...

I thought, and I may be wrong, that the creative agenda was what was demonstrated through play: hence what you think your doing is, afaics, pretty irrelevant to finding out what your doing. If it's sim play, then it's sim play, no matter whether the intention was nar, sim or gam. If you've got nar itches which you're fulfilling in your mental play-space, but is expressed in the shared play space through sim-identical play, re-inforcement etc, then the play is sim.

Isn't that what the model is talking about, fulfillment of agenda through play? How you're fulfilling your agenda through mental processes that inform play lie outside the model. Informing SC and CA, but outside it.

In Marco's examples, his nar decision making process is informing sim play, but not making it nar play: if it's expressed in sim terms, without making expressions among the players that promote a nar agenda, then the play is sim.

BTW, we're still getting hung up on "Game X is a sim game, so if I like games like X, I'm probably a sim gamer." Any rpg can be played in any mode, even if it's not supportive of it. "Sim" games are especially open to drift to nar and gam agendas, as they're designed to support the explorative substrate of all CA's. I've had Pendragon pulled all three ways in one campaign, I'm using HeroQuest for pretty darn simmy play atm, and I've even seen a couple of mad fools using Paranoia for Nar play.

System matters because the contained techniques and exploration level "stuff" can support specific creative agenda or not, but each CA can be wrung out of any system. Painfully sometimes, but it can be done.

So never mind what you were playing, or what you were thinking, what were you and the other players doing?

Good point, Pete. I'm with you on the "it's the doing, not the thinking or even, necessarily, the specific game you were 'playing.' "

You know, Paganini (Nathan, right?) raised an excellent point in another thread, and I was going to call off my dogs on Marco in light of that. He's already answered the questions, which is fine. I think you've (Pete) presented one very likely reading of Marco's situation.

The whole personal preference issue is a a red herring. I might say "I like to make Narrativist choices." But that doesn't mean I don't also like to make Gamist and Simulationist choices, given the appropriate context. We're talking about what I actually do when I'm playing the game. If I make choices in favor of the Narrativist mode, then I'm preferring Narrativism.

GNS is a strong tool in this respect, because it allows players to clearly identify their options. It also means that players may enjoy modes of play that they would not previously, because they now "get the point" of that mode of play. This last feature, I think, is often overlooked, and is in my opinion one of the most important effects of GNS. It allows people to have fun doing things that they might not have otherwise had fun doing.