Hello there- first time poster to this forum.

When first reading Ron's various essays on GNS, I formed the view that Ron was saying that a good RPG should contain only one of the three GNS outlooks, to the exclusion of the other two. I then disagreed with this doctrine. In response, Ron suggested that I had misunderstood his model, and directed me to some further postings on this subject I had not read.

The most helpful of these was a posting of Ron's from the topic "Can a game have all 3 G/N/S Revisited" in this Forum. In that posting, Ron said (amongst other things) by way of commentary on an earlier posting:

You begin your breakdown by specifying that you are talking about "elements of role-playing games." This needs some fixing. GNS does not describe elements of role-playing games. It describes three possible first priorities of role-playing as an activity.

This is a big deal, because lately people seem to have begun repeating some insupportable phrases about "every game has elements of all three" and similar, which I have decided needs weeding.

Hi, Marcus.

These are questions a lot of people who encounter GNS ask, and they seem reasonable to me. I'll let the Forge Sages respond in more detail on behalf of the theory, but basically as I understand it things go like this. G/N/S are descriptions of what people look for in their (actual) gaming, which goals (or modes of Exploration) they are consciously or unconsciously focusing on when they want to have fun.

If you're an old-time, experienced role-player, odds are good that at least two and maybe all three of these modes will appeal to you, at least in different times and places. But consider, for example, players who pride themselves on both playing 'long political adventures where no dice are cast' and 'hackfests'. Players who say this are in groups which switch back and forth between a Nar or Sim-oriented LARP type mode often only loosely supported by the underlying mechanics, if at all (consider 'no dice are thrown') and a Sim or Gam-facilitating combat engine which typically is better supported by the system in question. Such groups are functionally Drifting from one mode to another - functionally, because at least some people are having fun. (More on this in a minute.)

If you're wedded to the traditional model of the long-running campaign - a model which is far less common in actual play than warrant it being the default assumption - then you might think "oh, to be a fun, fully rewarding game, you have to drift like this, so you can experience all different modes of exploration at different points".

But a couple questions then arise. One is: what rules really SUPPORT this - not just allow it in the hands of good GMs or good players, but actually support it? Arguably, there are no rules that really offer support to all three modes of play. Another is: how many of your games actually fit the 'long-running campaign' model? Many, maybe even most role-players never experience this after college, and even in younger days there's plenty of switching back and forth.

OK, anyway, there are a lot of different claims going on here. The 'scientific' one (as I understand it) is that there are three identifiable modes of gaming behavior, which are all observable parts of gaming conduct. Separating out Sim from Nar and Gam both is the key here (or at least it was for me), and I think this is a really, really important distinction for people to get, even if they ultimately go back to a hybrid outlook.

The 'practical' one, which is what you are questioning, is twofold. It basically says:

1) Many cases of gaming unhappiness are cases where groups of gamers have conflicting GNS priorities in their play.

2) Being clear about what your priorities ("Creative Agenda", which needn't be cast at the outset in GNS terms) within your Exploration are will often allow you to have happier, less conflicted gaming.

3) Designing games with clear GNS priorities will therefore make for happier gaming.

3a: "But I enjoy all three modes!" Well, if you're running a long-term, old-school campaign with the same players over several years, then you'll have to come up with good drifting mechanisms, maybe meeting about 'what you want to do next' on a semiregular basis. But if you're like most gamers, where most of your games go from, say, 4-12 sessions, then this is much less of an issue. What do you want out of your gaming right now? Pick a game that facilitates it and then move on to the next one.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff so we'll see what others say when they chime in. But these are the answers I've come up with for myself (with the help of the Forge community) to the questions you're asking. So maybe we'll both get plowed over or maybe there's some kind of rapproachment in the offing, but this is where I'm at with what you're saying.

Time for my tuppenceworth...

Because designing an AFV isn't like Jazz.

Once you've designed a tank, it's out there being used. Sure, your end-users can (and will) tinker with it to maximize their priorities, but the latitude for doing so is fairly minimal.

Desiging an RPG is much more like writing a manual about how to design an AFV; you can lay down the law all you like, but in the end, your end-user can ignore every damn thing you say to achieve their ends.

To extend the analogy beyong breaking point, the model being discussed here came up as a result of a bunch of folks realising they've been using bits of mechanical instruction books for everything from AFV's to Ocean Liners to Jumbo jets to segways without knowing what came from where, or what exactly they were trying to build.

Once you've got an idea of what your trying to build, what's been done before that works with that, and what doesn't, don't you think it'll make design (and maintenance!) easier?

But it's not much like engineering at all. Because, at best, an RPG design is analogeous to that design manual, rather than the physical end product. The end product is an experience of rewarding role-play, a collaborative process rather than the physical product of a rulebook, sourcebook, etc.

The GNS distinctions are, afaics, very broad outlines of goals that are, ultimately, mutually exclusive. Note the word "ultimately" there, because many, if not most GNS conflicts can be negotiated amongst the group if it's socially functional. But the negotiation will be for what we will prioritize in this instance, to the detriment of the other agendas.

Now, the question is very apposite: why should we worry about classifying what agenda is prioritised, when the extent to which the goals are met is important? Well, what does it matter that a given system is equally good (or bad) at providing equal amounts of GNS, when the compromises necessary for that make it not-quite as good for any one of those agenda as another game? If I want to buy a sports car, do I want a fairly fast car with seating for a family of seven, or a hell on wheels two seater? While the seven seater may be fast, my agenda is "ULTIMATE SPEED!" An SUV may be fast, but I don't want to go off road. Now, if I'm looking for a car I can do the school run with, bet the shopping, AND go wild in the country on the weekends, the SUV will look better, depending on how well it would handle in those two instances. Because it's not a mixed priority or agenda, it's two separate agenda in different instances. Even if I wanted to go wild in the country with the kids, "go wild" and "with the kids" are opposing priorities (a quad bike is great for "go wild," less so for "with the kids"), and in making a choice on will be prioritised, while the other will inform the decision in a subsidiary role.

The model doesn't say "Choose a game to fit that one agenda," but does say "choose a game that fits your pattern of play, or be prepared to change one of them."

This question seems to be tailor made for me.

• I wrote a game, published just before System Does Matter was published, which I still maintain provides support for all three modes;• I play in all three modes with some regularity; and• I am a staunch believer in and defender of the model (and, I hope, a contributor to the understanding thereof at a few points).


Years ago, when I first made the statement that I played with gamist, narrativist, and simulationist priorities fairly equally, Ron challenged that assertion, ultimately with the statement, but not at the same time. I think that was what sold me on the model, because he was absolutely right. The three priorities interfere with each other; at any particular point in play, you are going to pick one, and you're going to follow that.

Multiverser does support all three GNS priorities, but it does so by employing three points to get there. One is that, as a game in which player characters move from universe to universe, the rules change--and I see this the more so, because the settings themselves are part of the rules (I know this may run into a huge debate about setting versus system, but I've been through it again and again, and the only answer that makes sense is that setting and system are completely integrated into each other even if you use a generic engine). If I drop a player character into a universe in which there are moral issues staring him in the face, I've changed the rules: we now have moral issues to resolve. The second is that the game responds to player choices rather smoothly, such that whether it goes gamist, narrativist, or simulationist is very much based on what choices the player makes for his character. I can drop a character into a world with tremendous moral issues, and he can embrace them or ignore them, however he prefers. The third is that player characters are independent, much of the time even isolated from each other, such that one can play gamist to his heart's content while another is delving difficult moral issues and a third is discovering an enchanting world. Thus although the game supports all three modes, at any moment any given player is going to be focused on the one of his choice.

Further, although Multiverser supports narrativist play, it doesn't force narrativist play. A game like Legends of Alyria or (I think) Sorcerer will make you face the issues; it's built so solidly into the engine that it can't be avoided.

A game supports multiple GNS goals by only three known possible ways: congruence, drift, and transition.

Congruence refers to those rare situations in which the same decision supports all three goals. I use two examples. The first is the Armageddon scenario, in which someone comes to your character and says, "the world will be destroyed unless you, and only you, save it; will you do it?" Whether your reaction is gamist ("Hot diggedy, wow, what a great opportunity to prove what we can do!"), simulationist ("This should be interesting; I wonder how it will work out?"), or narrativist ("That's a fascinating moral question: how far will I go in risking myself if the world is at stake--do I care if the world survives if I die?"), you're almost certainly going to agree to attempt to save the world. Similarly, if we set up a game in which all players are members of a squad in Viet Nam during the war, while you're traveling through the jungle you're going to do pretty much the same things whether you're fighting for survival and victory, exploring what it must have been like, or wrestling with the morality of war. (There will be moments when even this will break down, because not all decisions will be congruent.) Designing a game system to promote congruence is a dream, but I don't think anyone's done it.

Drift is what Multiverser facilitates: it lets the referee and the players move to whatever mode they want to play in the current situation. It encourages drift through universe change, in that sometimes moral issues are going to be grabby, and sometimes challenges are going to be in-your-face, and sometimes worlds are going to be plain fascinating (and conversely sometimes it will be difficult to scratch up a moral issue, or find a challenge, or see something worth exploring), but the core engine lets the players decide what they're going to prioritize in play, and the referee follows their lead.

I'm not sure whether transition has been successfully managed yet. Fang Langford's Scattershot was all about transition, in essence structured drift, but was never completed. This would require a rules system that changed to support the various modes, either in response to in-game events or by conscious player choice.

Your AFV design analogy fails for the reasons Pete observed; but maybe I can clarify that.

Obviously, if you're prioritizing movement, you have to make decisions that prioritize movement. If what you're trying to design is a vehicle that moves, you're going to go for very small guns, very light armor, and make other decisions that are counter to the other priorities. Sure, in designing such a vehicle, you're going to make compromises to attempt to balance the three; but in each specific case you're going to focus on whatever the priority is first.

But as Pete said, AFV design is not jazz; and that's an extremely good way to put that. We're not talking about designing a practical vehicle; we're talking about writing a song, or creating a movie. We're not talking about the tensions between armor, movement, and firepower. We're talking about the tensions between lullaby, dance tune, and action scene music. We're talking about three things which cannot all be prioritized at the same time. You cannot make an upbeat dance tune lullaby; it fails at one or the other, at the very least. You cannot score a movie and have it be something to which you can dance (assuming it's not Chorus Line or Flashdance or something), because the music has to support the scene. The more you try to combine these three objectives simultaneously, the more evident your failure at all of them becomes.

Now, what happens in some games is they exhibit incoherence in the design, trying to support gamist, narrativist, and simulationist preferences in the rules and expecting that players will sort it out. A good example of this is the overlay of rather narrativist (morally conflicting) alignment rules on the extremely gamist engine of OAD&D. Everything in the game other than that is built around kill monsters, get treasure sort of stuff. That's built around wrestle with the moral issues of the world. How do you reconcile these? Everyone does it differently. Some people completely ignore alignment altogether, and just go for the gold. Some minimize the importance of advancement and build stories around the conflicts created by alignment. Many seek some balance between the two, trying to work out how to pursue the gamist goals promoted by the core engine while acknowledging their commitments to specific moral and ethical principles (perhaps one of the reasons why chaotic evil is said to be a preferred alignment). The balance gets placed in different places, and each game group believes they are doing it "right"--but when players cross to other groups, suddenly there are conflicts about what is the "right" way to play. Many gaming groups have inherent problems because some are trying to deal with moral issues while others are going for the victory, or similar conflicts. Just about any game, particularly one with incoherent design, can be drifted to serve any goal; but if players aren't agreed on the goal, drift is going to create dysfunction, as they fight for control of "what we're going to do".

Congruence aside, it's not possible to make a decision that prioritizes all three goals as primary; even with congruence, this is not how decisions are made. That is, it may well be that the decision I made which improves my tactical position for the upcoming battle happens to be the same decision someone would make to realistically play a soldier in my position, or even what might have been chosen in dealing with the moral issue of how do I face a war I'm forced to fight; but I didn't make it for those reasons--I made it solely because it improved my position tactically, and therefore I was making a gamist decision. Similarly, in a longer adventure (not a campaign), it's not really possible for gamist, narrativist, and simulationist goals all to rise to the kinds of ratios of preference you suggest. We're not talking about a game in which 34% of the decisions were gamist. We're talking about a game in which 100% of the decisions which mattered to the players were gamist, and there were a lot of decisions that could be classified as simulationist or narrativist in some way that didn't matter.

When it comes to it, you have to prioritize one. The others may or may not be along for the ride, but they are not relevant in any significant way to what we're doing, why we're doing it, and why this is fun.

I hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

Thanks for all your responses.

My near-namesake, M.J. Young, observed as follows:

Similarly, in a longer adventure (not a campaign), it's not really possible for gamist, narrativist, and simulationist goals all to rise to the kinds of ratios of preference you suggest. We're not talking about a game in which 34% of the decisions were gamist. We're talking about a game in which 100% of the decisions which mattered to the players were gamist, and there were a lot of decisions that could be classified as simulationist or narrativist in some way that didn't matter.

Marcus, a couple of points related to your example...in no particular order other than the one they occured to me in.

1) You mention that your particular brand of house rules wasn't important for the discussion. Quite to the contrary. House rules exist because a group wants to fix something in the foundational system to make it more to their likeing. To adapt it to meet their own needs (around here we would say "to make it better facilitate their own Creative Agenda"). I'm not suggesting you need to brain dump your system here, but give some thought to the choices of rules you added, modified, discarded over the years. They probably say alot about what your priorities as a group were at the time.

2) The idea of a Creative Agenda exists in its exclusive state for the course of a single "instance of play". An Instance of Play is an intentionally undefined term that roughly translates to "how long it takes for a Creative Agenda to emerge during play". This is often longer than a single session and certainly shorter than 18 years. Therefor it is quite certain that over the course of nearly 2 decades your group has enjoyed likely all three Creative Agendas. The exclusiveness clause simply means you weren't enjoying them all simultaneously.

It also means that you generally cannot determine Creative Agenda from a single event during play. Single play events are frequently used to illustrate concepts simply because they can be framed easily. But in actual practical application they are insufficient. See Walt Feitag's excellent thread on the dangers of focusing on "key decisions".


3) Assertaining a Creative Agenda from a play example generally requires a good bit of meta analysis. In other words, what the characters did (or more pedantically, "what the players decided to have the characters do") is only a part of the story. The social interaction among the players during the game is also important. When a player has his character do something, how do the other players react to that. Often times one can detect the Creative Agenda from what actions get cheered and what get jeered, or meet with disinterest.


4) You are not alone. Just about every person here has gone through this same mental wrestling with the idea. I myself had proposed an elaborate graph where the ratio of GNS modes in play at any given time could be mapped out. Its practically one of the "standard stages of understanding" of the model. The key is often to simply keep at it until one figures out what it actually says, rather than what one thought it said when one first read it based on one's own prior conceptions.

The thinkg here would be that GNS isn't about labelling the group but labelling the creative agenda of the group in a specific instance of play. Labelling the group Gamist at all, extends the theory beyond it's specific purposes.

So you might be able to say, in 55% of all observed instances of play, this group displayed a gamist creative agenda but in a particular instance of play it wouldn't be valid to say the group was 55% gamist.

It's like in a 100 meters sprint. Over a season, a particular runner might win 55% of the time. However, in an individual race, only one runner can win - they can't win in that one race 55% of the time.

HTH

Well, I think you've missed an important point: we're not saying that one agenda will monopolise, far from it, but that one will dominate. I'd take issue with MJ's assertion of 100% that matter, and use the word instance instead of game, but the principal holds that in any given instance of play, one of the creative agenda will be dominant. Which is dominant is usually tacitly negotiated (or even dictated) socially, but at any one time, either one agenda is dominant, or the dominance is in the process of being negotiated.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I tend to use the terms "gamist", etc when referring to systems, players, etc rather than the agendas themselves, as shorthand for "having gamist tendencies" or "supporting gamist play." So to me, if I typify a player as "gamist", I'm saying she will tend to prioritize peer respect for actions above simulation or confronting moral dilemmas. But it's a tendency, and doesn't preclude her from getting into other modes of play. A gamist system is one that, through it's design, tends to support gamist play (tactical planning, character optimisation, whatever) above simulation or moral dilemmas.

The thing is, when a group is exhibiting a dominant agenda, and reinforcing it, it will tend to edge out the others. The creative agenda is ultimately an expression of the social contract applied to exploration of an imagined space. As such, while we can talk about gamist players, systems, etc, they are all just things with tendencies towards gamist play within the group.

NOw, like you say, what's the point in saying that a game, or session, or player is "gamist", without saying that they're 100, 75 or 51 % gamist? Well, firstly there's the impossibility of getting those numbers in. Then there's the question of what you'll do with that information.

Take your campaign as a fantastic example: my knee-jerk reaction is to typify it as a broadly simulationist game. The gamist propositions (optimisation of tactics, self-improvement through experience, seeking clues throughcombing through the paper) can also support sim play (exploration of systems, character and setting). The narrative issues of "what makes a hero" can still be explorative rather than addressing premise. Crucially, you state that players will break established characetr to address moral questions, but even that gets couched in sim terms ("a hero wouldn't do that" is addressing a moral dilemma through established genre conventions).

As ron says, the crucial question is what do the players approve or get psyched about; by the looks of things, I'd think "being heroes" is probably the answer, as opposed to beating the bad guys or finding out what the price of heroism is, but I'm putting words in your mouth, and you know better than I.

So, if it's primarily a sim game, what then? Throw out all the gam and nar goodness? God, I hope not! But you're looking at GNS thinking that's what it's saying, but it isn't. It's saying that whatever system you're using, it will end up as a sim supporting system in this group, whatever else it does. From time to time, nar and gam play arises in this group: at those times, they're playing nar, gam, or whatever, and at those times the sim aspects of the system are deprecated in favour of the gam or sim parts.

But enough ranting: I think if you bear in mind that, when not talking about an actual instance of play, gamist, narrativist and simulationist are shorthand for preferences, tendencies and support for the given creative agenda, not pigeonholes and taxonomic defintions, the theory makes more sense.

One other thing... MJ said "decisions that matter", which may make the argument circular, in that decisions that don't support the dominant agenda in an instance of play by definition don't matter. But that's an important distinction: in a session of play, think about the choices that made a difference to the play that night, what was behind those decision, and, crucially, how the rest of the group reacted to the way the decisions were made. That'll tell you what the dominant agenda was in each case.

The next question is... what do you want the theory to do for you? Becuase I think you think it's dictating something which it isn't.

PS: the joys of cross posting.

Skip the rest. What Ralph said.

That'll teach me to ramble all over my lunch break

You are not alone. Just about every person here has gone through this same mental wrestling with the idea.

Marcus, to a great extent you're right: the model is, to a large, degree non-falsifiable, and it's supporters are filled with ranks of guys who will tend to say "You haven't understood it" to anyone who disagrees with it.

But you can say the same about most literary, artistic and cinematic theories. Because, like I said before, playing an rpg is more akin to art than science, and the model is one of collaborative creative endeavour rather than science.

It's an analytical, critical tool; expecting it to behave like a scientific theorem is unreasonable.

Now, like other critical tools, you can say it's nonsense, or basically not useful to you (which, amongst others, Bruce Baugh has said), but to try to demolish it as unscientific is futile.

Trying to turn it into a scientific theory, with psychological evidence and experimental predictions strikes me as trying to teach the proverbial pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

It works fine for me as a critical tool to apply to play, and games design by extension. Better than any other I've seen, in fact.

And as for "indoctrinating"... well, would you rather we let folks spin off discussions on the board into pits of oblivion of wrangling over the meaning of individual words, or get concensus on what the terms mean and enforce that consensus? Maybe I've emotionally loaded that last sentence too much, but I think my feelings on that are clear, if only because my early posts are full of stuff "agreeing" with the model, to be shot down by people who understood (and created) the model.

But, if it's got you thinking critically about play, even if you disagree with my imterpretation of your play... great! If you put out your own competing theory or modification to GNS that you champion against whatever we got going... well, you'll have a lot of company here. I disagree with Ron about the fundamental emotion of Sim play. Some days on the boards it looks like sim play is the "pure" form of RP, and the other two are weird offshoots, other days sim looks like a minor sect populated by poor fools who can't commit to either form of "proper roleplaying."

If we're singing from the same hymn sheet, we can barely agree what key we're singing in, let alone the tune.

marcus wrote: For example, Pete (undoubtedly in perfectly good faith) interpreted apparent instances of Game-oriented and Narrative-Oriented in Superheroes as really being Sim play to support the idea that a game session might have been all Sim. Presumably another person might have interpreted the apparently Sim-oriented and Narrative-oriented play as crypto-Gamist. In such circumstances surely conclusions will be driven more by faith than by empiricism. Even if I deliberately set up a play session to test GNS by trying to facilitate, as far as possible, an equal mix of Sim, Game, and Narrative play and then reported the result, I fear that the result would be simply be brushed aside by the above process of GNS reclassification.

Wow, well said, Justin. I think you've just created the test of the theory. It would require that it be applied blind in order that bias not play a part (I can't be the tester), but I think the outcome would be obvious. Then again that might just be the bias talking again.

Mike

Marcus,

marcus wrote: ...subjected to intensive indoctrination in it...

I have a further concern about GNS theory that it is really untestable, in that the definitions of the various outlooks are loose enough to allow many types of play to be classified in different ways

As a method of predicting what sets of rules or styles of play are likely to succeed in producing a felicitous result, however, I have grave doubts.

I want to thank the Reverend for reminding me that I wanted to comment on that newspaper thing. He's pretty much nailed it: it isn't that you have an in-game newpaper, it's why.

In nearly every game I play, there's someone (frequently me) writing something that stands as a record of what's happening in the game, or in the world. Making it part of the world (I've done journals, reports to superiors, letters to loved ones, restrospective history books, and more) doesn't do more than create another detail in the world. However, in reading what is written you can often discover much about what it is the players are prioritizing.

One thing that we see (and do) a lot of here is the sort of Monday morning quarterbacking of trying to figure out what someone else's playstyle is from their descriptions. There's a lot of disagreement in these threads when that happens. For example, I was thinking that you were probably playing gamist from your description, but when I saw Pete suggest you were simulationist I realized 1) that trying to analyze your play style from the available information required filling in a lot of gaps and 2) that such a discussion at this point would only cloud the issue. It seems like you might be playing in any mode, but ultimately you're probably actually playing in one.

I'm also beginning to think that familiarity with the theory colors the telling of the tale. Let me explain what I mean.

I can tell some great game stories from before GNS was published, stories which I've told many times before, in which whatever it was that was really exciting about the game at the time comes through clearly, and we see that this game was gamist, that one narrativist, the other simulationist. However, when I read accounts of people's play styles here, they're always laced with, "I thought we might be playing gamist because...but then this part seems narrativist because...and of course there's all this going on that fits with simulationism, because...." The stories people tell here aren't what excited them about the game; they're efforts to marshall evidence that supports each of the three creative agendae and try to figure out how much of each was actually included.

That's why I say you have to focus on the decisions that mattered to the players. When they create those newspapers, are the excited about how realistic these seem, with classified sections, comics pages, a Bridge column, and full page ads for department stores, along with national and regional news and an editorials section, not to mention sports, fashion, and entertainment? That may be a little extreme, but there are players who would very much enjoy just creating that newspaper, like model railroaders setting up electric lights that turn on and off on a timer set to the day/night cycle of their lines, or model shipbuilders carefully painting faces on the backs of each of the four hundred cannon on the huge galleon they're constructing because some spanish ships had these visages. Or are your newspapermen thrilled by the idea of something that looks like a newspaper hiding clues for them to ferret out of the ordinary news, so they can get a jump on the enemy? Or is it perhaps rather that the editorial slant of the paper puts the player characters in sharp contrast to the opinions expressed, such that they become the core of the issues being raised here, people who think they're doing the right thing who are being characterized publicly as villains? There are a lot of ways in which the careful meticulous construction of a newpaper can enhance gamist, narrativist, or simulationist goals. The question is, what is it that really excites the players about this? Sure, the paper might support all three agendae; but to which of these are the players actually responding?

I think that should help.

Oh, and the Rev is right--your comment about indoctrination being necessary to understand, even if meant in a joking manner, was a bit harsh. I believe that Relativity is a sound theory. I get letters from people frequently who want to argue that Einstein was wrong, but I generally write back and tell them that they should throw out their laser-driven CD player because lasers can't possibly work, and get the government to stop wasting money on particle accelerators since the time dilation effects the create don't happen, and work to stop the massive propaganda campaign that the Japanese have mounted to persuade the world that we dropped atomic bombs on them, since these are patently absurd. There is much about the model that is not intuitive, and a lot of people who objected to it and who still object to it for that reason. However, the combination of clarifying that the model and what you understand the model to be are not exactly the same thing with real evidence that the theory is able to predict outcomes (and there is such evidence for GNS--Legends of Alyria is a phenomenal example of the theory in application) usually eventually gets people to recognize the value of the model.

--M. J. Young

--M. J. Young

First of all, I apologise to those I offended with the term "intensive indoctrination" in my earlier post. I was not using that term in its perjorative sense, but rather in the neutral and literal sense of "thoroughly steeped in the doctrine" of GNS. My point (with which you may all disagree) was that if almost all role-players when first hearing the theory respond "that's wrong" and it takes weeks, months or years of clarification, exemplification and assertion of the theory through this forum to talk them round, then I would say that is a danger sign for the theory. Even persuading someone of quantum theory would be an easier job than this- the results of the two-slit diffraction experiment should be enough to underline the case.

Secondly, the responses to my last post on the question of verification of the theory might be summarised (I hope not too innaccurately) as two suggestions how the theory could be verified in future from observation, one claim that it is futile to try to verify it as it isn't a theory that makes predictions, and one statement that the theory has already been verified "because it works for me". These responses do not exactly fill me with confidence that the theory has ever been put to the test in an empirical fashion.

When I talk about testing the theory empirically, I am only referring to its predictions as to what will make for good gaming. The taxonomic and terminological aspects of GNS- how it classifies games and gaming behaviours and the new terms it has created to facilitate discussion- are not, of course, amenable to empirical testing as they make no statements about the world but are merely a set of definitions. A person can, of course, define words as he sees fit- there is no truth or falsity in a definition. The only tests in this case are internal consistency and usefulness. GNS taxonomy and terminology appears to me to be both internally consistent and useful (although the difficulty of determining into which category a given behaviour falls limits this usefulness to a degree), but such may be the case with many other such systems. If GNS is to be more than a set of terms and a school of game design claiming no priority over any other school, it must show that games designed ignoring its dictates will inevitably be poorer, and games observing its dictates are inevitably richer.

My final comment follows up on Pete's opening words of his last post:

Marcus, to a great extent you're right: the model is, to a large, degree non-falsifiable, and it's supporters are filled with ranks of guys who will tend to say "You haven't understood it" to anyone who disagrees with it.

My last posting crossed with that of M.J.. What is this Legends of Alyria game, and how does it's play support GNS?

Marcus

Hi Marcus,

Two things. If I'm not mistaken, Ron's stated it's not a theory. It's a model. For me (and perhaps only me), that's enough. When I hold up the model against all the games I've ever played, and all the time things have gone well or fallen apart and I automatically "get" what was going on. I'm not asking for the model to be "proven." It simply offers me a clarity I've never had before. I suspect this won't satisfy you, but there it is. In the arts, not the sciences mind you, but the arts -- acting, drawing, so on -- there are plenty of models for understanding portraying human behavior onstage or drawing the human figure. Some people respond to some, not others. However, some of them are contradictory and you actually can't hold two such models in your head at the same time. You end up pickign the one that's most productive for you.

I feel comfortable (speaking for myself, and no one else here), seeing it like that. I'm *not* looking for what can be proven. I'm looking for what works. And it works for me.

Second, I think there's something tricky going on here in terms of needing to be indoctrinated upon first hearing about it.

Point one: I didn't balk at the model when I first read the GNS essay. I balked at the idea of showing up to a board full of theory and jargon about RPGs, but after being pointed here by another gamer, who had heard me speak about my dissatisfaction with RPGs, I gave it a shot.

I started reading the GNS essay and thought, "This is it. This is so right." So right off the bat, I got it.

I printed out the pages and re-read the essay for an even better grasp of the material. By coincidence, I was reading it at a game convention. So I sat there that weekend, alternately reading the material and sitting with strangers playing role playing games.

You know what? Everything I encounterd that weekend only supported validity of Ron's observations.

But here's the second half of this: I was a disatisfied gamer. I'd chucked all my game books years earlier. I knew I had once liked the hobby, came to be frustrated beyond endurance by the lack of pleasure, and walked away.

I truly believe I got the theory fast because I was dissatisfied. Other people apparently weren't -- not becasue they were happy when they played. I've never joined a group since college that wasn't constantly sniping and griping about their fellow players. But they kept playing. Apparently, somehow, normal play involved being very, very disatisfied with the actual playing.

I now believe that the real "indoctrination" takes place in the way games are played and how people are taught to be play. I submit that the problem "experienced" gamers have with "getting" the model has less to do with the model than that it bangs smack into almost every assumption they have about RPGs, playing, fun, the role of the GM, what a session is supposed to be like and more.

I submit that because Ron's model was built specifically to root out a blind spot in so many of the troubled players out there that when they see the model it often makes no sense because the problems of current gaming practices Ron talks about is everything they've been taught not to see as they've become "experienced" role players. (And, please, don't take my word about the troubled players -- just hop over to RPGnet and read all the angry threads where people complain about their screwed up players, GMs, boring sessions, and frantic attempts to re-rig systems so they finally work. It's a large cohort and there's plenty of trouble.)

This is no reflection on your intelligence or anyone's. And I know, too, this idea is going to smack of more equivications on the part of someone who "gets it," another attempt to dodge the issue. But it's what I see: it's what I see when I read the rules of RPGs; it's what I see when I go to cons; it's what I see when I read the posts at RPGnet. There *are* crazy incoherencies in RPGs. I noted them seven or so years ago in an article for Inphobia Magazine -- just before I chucked all my game books. But I couldn't see a way to solve them. Out in Chicago, though, Ron stuck it out and worked to do just that. In fact, he read my articles and thought, "Yeah. This guy's right." Then I showed up here and read his article and thought, "Yeah. This guy's right."

So, here's at least one man who didn't have to argue with Ron each step of the way before I "got" it. I saw the symptoms of incoherence years ago, but I couldn't do the diagnosis. Ron (with a lot of other influences and a lot of work) did. My story isn't everybody's story -- but it is my story. As a disatisfied player already ready to assume everything people took for granted about "good" roleplaying had to be up for grabs, I came in without any baggage looking for a solution. Unexpectedly, Ron's model delivered the moment I opened it on my web browser.

Don't know what else to say.

Best,
Christopher

If I too may introspect for a moment, perhaps my problem is that I'm generally pretty happy with my role-playing experience, although, of course, always looking for room to improve.

The only major problem I can think of was one player who for a couple of years regularly cheated by constantly beefing up his characters in a couple of games when nobody was looking to make them more effective, and then resisted strongly suggestions that the characters should be disempowered. After I contrived to kill off one of the characters, the player dropped out for about a year, but has since returned and is one of the mainstays of the playing group. I'm not sure if one could class this as a GNS problem or not. Was this a case of an overly Gamist player clashing with a Simulationist group? I'm not sure, as apart from the cheating the player plays much the same now as before, and I don't think the group as a whole has changed much.

I think the main development, GNS-wise, in my group's play of late is the greater use and appreciation of Narrative elements in play. I feel that this is a useful avenue for exploration, notwithstanding the fact that from long years of experience I feel that Gamist and/or Simulationist goals will always be of great importance to the players. As I understand GNS theory, however, an increase in Narrative elements in such a group can only make play worse, as play will then become "incoherent" unless the Narrative is completely prioritised over Game and Sim (thus making play fall within the definition of Narrativist). So my personal intuition is that I should aim for a better balance of outlooks in play, yet GNS seems to be saying exactly the opposite- concentrate on a single mode and to the extent that other modes are allowed to exist they should be subordinated to the main mode at all times. I want to move forward, but GNS seems to be saying I should either move backward (to purer Sim play of yesteryear, if Sim is truly my priority mode of play) or completely abandon my pretty successful gaming style for a completely new style (abandon Simulationism for Narrativism). This is one reason I find the GNS model hard to accept on a practical level.

Marcus

My advice, Marcus, is to treat the model like you would treat, say, freudian or feminist or brechtian or marxist lit crit: trying to "disprove" it is futile, as is asking it to act like a scientific, empirical predictor of behaviour.

Where people have asked you to try to apply to the model to future play, it's like asking you to analyze a book using, say, freudian critical tools. It's illuminating, not predicting, any more than "Well, if you read Lord of the Rings from a marxist perspective, you can see the rise of the dark races as a metaphor for the class war. From a romantic viewpoint, it's about a fight to preserve the idyll gainst industrialisation." What it won't do is tell you what happens next.

And just like a school of criticism, you can equally well say that it doesn't illuminate for you, or that while that interpretation may be defensible, it doesn't make it "right," especially where it's applied to your play, or, as many have said, "Oh yeah, I get it, I just don't want it."

But don't be surprised when you come on to a forum saying "It's a failure, because, as I understand, it works like this, which is screwy," you get responses along the lines of "well, you've got it wrong then, because it's always worked for me," or even just "well, you've got it wrong, it works like this."

And, as you've pointed out, absolute agreement on the model is in short supply, as it is in litcrit, film crit and theatre crit schools. What can I say? That's the creative arts for you.

{edit: cross posted with your response, give me a minute...)

As I understand the model (and I've demonstrated my slippery grasp of it more than once), inchorence is when the group is trying to satisfy two or more mutually exclusive agenda in the same instance of play, especially where the clash of agendas is not acknowledged.

In the musical metaphor, it's like a band trying to play a lullaby and the can-can simultaneously. That's not to say the same group couldn't do both at different times, just not at the same time... or at least, not in any sense we'd call succesfully.

In these cases, either someone changes priorities for that instance to align with the other, or it desends into an argument of "you're not playing it right."

But I suppose trying to analyze good play, in any model, is like analyzing good comedy, or music, or (our favourite metaphor) sex. As long as it's good, who cares why it works? In fact, over analysis can sap the joy out of anything. It's when it goes wrong, or you get the feeling you could be doing it better, that you hit the books. Or videos...

What exactly is a 'theory', if not a 'model' that's held up under testing and been on this basis deemed 'true,' or 'approximately true', or 'true within its domain', or whatever?

The question of the thread is: why is the prioritization the thing? The answer, as I understand it, and I'm aware that there are those here who understand it better, is: because

a) gamers have different goals in different situations
b) the three modes of behavior which pursue those goals are broadly describably as gamist, simulationist, and narrativist.
c) many dissatisfied gamers are gamers who are playing in groups where the group's dominant mode is different from the one they want to play in, or gamers who are trying to pursue gamist or narrativist goals by way of sim-prioritized 'realism', etc.
d) therefore, in order to break out of this dissatisfaction, you have to either (1) find a group that wants to play for the same part in the same way that you do or (2) find a group with which you have enough harmony to drift together in similar patterns, AND (3) select a game system that facilitates (1) or (2).

A and B seem to me non-controversial, and the sociological research which is establishing them is happening right here on this board. It is somewhat informal, and is not ready for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but I see no reason not to think that there's strong initial plausiblity to the view. (c) is tougher to establish, but once again given that (a) and (b) are right I think that there's a strong initial case to be made for (c) too.

The practical hypothesis, which is empirically testable, is found in d. Ron's writings and many of the frequent posters at the Forge suggest that d1 is the way to go; many newcomers and a few of the frequent posters in the community keep open that d2 is also a legitimate possiiblity, and arguably M.J. Young's and Fang Langford's work are attempts to push in this direction. Marcus holds out for d2, and not surprisingly, because he's in a group where d2 seems to be working out for him, through good communication, natural harmony, long experience, or whatever.

From a practical standpoint, both in play and design, d1 is the more interesting direction to pursue right now, since the theory is new and explicit design along these lines is relatively new as well. It seems likely moreover that good work along d1 lines is likely to be more helpful to d2 than the other way around, just like you study foxes and rabbits first as a prelude to modeling a complicated real-world ecosystem.

I am pursuing d2 for various personal reasons, despite that the same group was for years incredibly dysfunctional and I found myself frustrated with the game more often than not, coming very close to quitting RPGing altogether. A few specific details can be found in Actual Play in the thread "Stupid Player Tricks."

More interesting and topical to the current discussion is that I'm doing it without d3 -- that is, we are continuing to use a system not designed for our style of play. Though that has become more and more a problem of late as our style asserts itself and conflicts more often with the system.

So when I proclaim that it "worked for me" I mean that. It worked for me. It has been tested and utilized to excellent effect by myself in an actual gaming environment, even with the deck stacked against me, so to speak, in terms of group behavior and game system.

Understanding of the model led to understanding what was going wrong in play, explaination of why I was frustrated, and provided me a clearly defined goal to pursue, and (along with discussions on these boards), methods by which to reach that goal.

That is, I kept trying all this stuff in an effort to achieve certain results. The fact was that my efforts were incompatible with the results because of the underlying style of play -- ultimately, the methods I utilized were enforcing the wrong priorities in play.

That I love my game now is testament to the model's effectiveness and applicability.

Marcus Young wrote: What is this Legends of Alyria game, and how does it's play support GNS?

Legends of Alyria sounds like an interesting game, and I'll have to get hold of a copy when it comes out.

Still, I would argue that the fact that a purely Narrativist game can be created and enjoyed does little to demonstrate the truth of the GNS model. What you would really need to show is that, all other things being equal, such "Purist for GNS" games (if I may irreverently add a new term to the lexicon) are invariably superior to their Non-Purist for GNS rivals.

Marcus

Errrr...... for a start, what's purist for GNS? A game that only supports one agenda? A game that easily accomodates drift?

And compare it to what? A game that doesn't support any agenda? A game that manages to support multiple agendas in a given instance all the time every time (because the models' got overlapping agendas in convergence)? Or just a basically "incoherent" published game (Ron's poster boy for that is Vampire: The Masquerade, mine's GURPS) that sets up mutally opposing agenda within the books, and cannot be played without drift, according to the model?

Because even if we could agree on what two products we were comparing, forgistas could claim that the play is what matters, because it's a model of play, not game design. Sure, it can inform game design, in the same way a theory of acting can inform playwriting, but in the same way Stanislavski, or Johnstone, or Brechtianism can be applied to any play, so the model can be applied to the play of any game.

And we also get into the whole "this game's better than that game" thing that can only fall into a sinking pit of despair unless we can agree on a common set of standards to judge them by (and if we're arguing about the validity of a model in the first place, I don't think we'll be able to), or admit that the play's the thing, the experience is subjective, and all we can get is anecdotal evidence.

By "Purist for GNS", I was thinking of any system that fell within Ron's dictum in "System Does Matter" that "I suggest a good system is one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks". I hadn't thought of a system that easily accomodates drift. What would such a system be like?

I had though that GNS was, inter alia, a theory about game design. I realise that the model has progressed somewhat from "System Does Matter", but the statement I quoted certainly looks to me to put the GNS model in this category.

I realise that there are practical difficulties in comparing games and playing experiences, but in my view without such comparisons the model cannot be validated, and can be nothing more than a bunch of terms some like and others don't.


Marcus

Hello,

I'd like to call attention to the word "suggest" in that sentence you've quoted, Marcus.

Its use means the sentence could just as well be written as a question:

"Is a good system one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks?"

Perhaps understanding the sentence in this light is key to this and other threads you've begun. It's not a clarion call toward The One True Way of game design. It's a question.

Assuming the answer is "certainly yes," and then objecting to its certainty, is a bit of a circle.

Did I make such an assumption at the time of writing that essay? Maybe ... but I don't think so, not too badly anyway. In my favor, I did pick my words carefully - "suggest" vs. "submit," for example. And I did help found the Forge in the interests of expanding my understanding. The Forge is working out the answers, much as Sean (Calithena) outlined so well a couple of posts above.

Best,
Ron

Hello, Ron.

I realise that your model has progressed considerably from the "System Does Matter" essay, as you pointed this out to me in the Sorceror Forum and said that the matter of concentration on a single outlook was not as black and white as that first essay might be read to suggest. Looking through your other essays, however, although the point isn't made as starkly, I got the impression that you remained of the view that concentration on a single outlook in game design was at least a pretty good rule of thumb. Was that simply a misreading of the model on my part?

If "System Does Matter" did indeed merely ask the question "Is a good system one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks?", does the GNS model have any answer to this question?

Marcus

Hi there,

Direct questions. All right ...

1. I do think "one Creative Agenda at a time" is at least a pretty good rule of thumb, when thinking about game design. That may not necessarily mean "pure G, N, or S" though. There are at least a couple pretty good hybrids (with Simulationism subordinate) out there, and I have often said that G and N play are socially and structurally extremely similar, and thus some game systems do a nice job for either.

Also, "at least a pretty good rule of thumb" is a very good way to put it. It's certainly not the same as, "Ron says it's just one, man! He said!"

I do think that trying to please any and all role-players with one game design is probably a lost cause and the source of some pretty bad games. Yeah, bad games. Pretty judgmental thing to say.

2. My current answer to the question is, "A game design is better insofar as it's clear about the Creative Agenda it best helps to bring into social reality." I don't think any and every combination of G, N, or S is reliable for a Creative Agenda. Which ones I think work well, and why, is pretty well developed in the "hybridization" sections of the current three-essay series. The final one, which is currently quite close to being ready for first-draft reading, presents some new thoughts about that.

Best,
Ron

Marcus Young (not to be confused with Mark Joseph Young) wrote: I hadn't thought of a system that easily accomodates drift. What would such a system be like?

in which I wrote: After all, for most composers of songs (the famous lyricist/composer teams may or may not be included in this), we're not creating words set to music, or music with words attached, but a song. The feeling that the words express must be consonant with the mood of the melody; the emotional dynamic of the progression must be conveyed and amplified by the lyrics. We're not writing two things that we put together; we're writing one thing that has two distinguishable parts. So, too, the game designer isn't creating a setting and a system most times, but a game.

If you'll permit me to push the comparison further, those two distinguishable parts may be distinguishable in the analysis, but they are not as clearly distinct in the reality. Frequently the structure of the lyric is part of the music--word phrases are written whose strong staccato pronunciations amplify the rhythms of the music, or music is written to draw out the flow of the words. I have often said that nearly ever sentence can be teased into giving up its own melody; without too much difficulty, I could sing this article to you, improvising what the melody needs to do with each phrase, because the words and the music are inextricably tied together in a song. The words are music, and the music words.

So, too, setting and system are not as distinct as you may think. I have noticed of Multiverser since it was published that the current world setting in which the character is playing becomes part of the rules that control play, even without altering any of the rules as we understand them. Introducing a setting steeped in challenge will lead most players to play with a view to tactics, meeting the challenges, while a setting in which moral and ethical issues are a major part of the background often brings out strongly issue-oriented play, and yet another which is strange and peaceful calls for more explorative approaches. Setting is system; it is that part of system that dictates location-dependent events and encounters. System meanwhile is setting, that part of setting that controls what happens, how the world is altered. Roleplaying game theorist Ron Edwards has said that system is the equivalent of time in the game: it is the aspect of the game that controls change within the world. Thus even fully generic and universal systems become fully integrated into their settings, as system and setting are parts of the same whole, not elements in a construction kit but definitions overlaid by distinctions we've made. Anyone who has ever, after taking a bit of college level psychology, tried to figure out where their spirit ends and their body begins, understands this. We can see that each has a clear place that is its own, but the edges between them are too fuzzy to identify.

It looks to me that it is much harder to identify testable predictions for GNS theory than I had thought. If the theory accomodates successful hybrids, then simply identifying a successful Non-Purist for GNS system is not necessarily evidence against the theory.

I think I have run out of questions for now. I thank each of you for your help.


Marcus

P.S. Multiverser sounds interesting, although I don't have a clear picture in my head about how it works.

Marcus Young wrote: P.S. Multiverser sounds interesting, although I don't have a clear picture in my head about how it works.