OK,

After more-or-less fence-sitting for a while, I am starting to form my own opinions on GNS as a whole. I will hold off on comments on Narrativism for Ron's upcomming essay. However, here I want to talk about Simulationism. After looking through various older threads as well as current discussion, I believe that understanding of GNS Simulationism is frequently muddled. I think the ideas of addressing Premise and Exploration as separate goals are very insightful -- but the points get lost in how they are expressed.

This quote from the recent thread highlighted it for me:

Silmenume wrote: For a player who might be described as expressing himself in a Simulationist fashion he might have been motivated by the following -

To experience what it is like to live the life a knight fighting against impossible odds.
To experience what it's like to save the life of another.
To experience what it's like to be in deadly combat.
To experience what it means to operate under the bonds of Chivalry, Duty, etc.
...
The Simulationist desires to experience the life of the character, hopefully in a fashion that is exciting and interesting. The interesting thing is that exciting and interesting fashion of experiencing things leads to exciting and interesting stories. The important thing to remember is that the Simulationist does not enter into a game with the number one priority of creating a story; it's just that the game, by virtue of exploring character and situation automatically leads to story creation.

I'm having trouble finding the referenced thread; however, I have taken issue with what I have viewed Silmenume's rather narrow view of simulationism in the past--not that I think simulationism is never about experiencing what it's like to be someone else, or can't be immersive, but rather that I think the core of the mode is found elsewhere.

In the recent thread Simulationism, started, I believe, by Calithena, I analogized simulationism to an interest in non-fiction.

There, I wrote: This is an interest in information for its own sake, in discovery, in exploring ideas and places and things.

That's what simulationism is like: it's mind-expanding, in that we're learning about something. It might be learning about people, or about places (real or imaginary), or about situations or color or just about anything else.....but if you love learning about something, then that's what the core of the simulationist experience is: learning about something.

Having now stumbled on the referenced post over in [Narrativism essay] Concept & excerpt (on the third page), I'm going to say more on it. Not surprisingly, I'm going to take issue with Jay's position.

I agree that someone might pursue those experiences as approaches to simulationist play; but again, Jay's emphasis on immersion as a hallmark of simulationism (which it is not) shows in his selection. One could as easily play the story of the knight to who sets out to slay the dragon and rescue the princess for any of the following reasons.

• To determine by experimentation whether a knight of that level of ability is a match for a dragon of that design.• To attempt to test certain strategic and tactical possibilities (weapon choice, choice of ground, and others) to see whether these make a difference in the outcome of such a battle.• In response to the recognition that a character of this type would in fact risk his life to save a princess from a dragon, even if the player does not have any particular desire to do so.• To cement a political alliance with the knight's family and that of the princess which will improve the player's opportunities to explore the milieu.

I could probably come up with others, all of which are simulationist in nature and none particularly immersionist.

Immersionism is a red herring in identification of creative agendae. It exists in all three agendae, impacts play significantly, can be used effectively in the right context for any, and tells us little or nothing about what the player actually wants from the game. Yes, much simulationist play is immersionist, particularly in regard to exploration of character; much is not, particularly in regard to exploration of system; and as John has rightly recognized, the balance falls in many different places in many different games, all of which are simulationist.

Any help?

--M. J. Young

I'm still struggling with the difference and the nuances between N and S.

This thread - especially the idea of the Great Thought Experiment - is very helpfull as it points out that immersion is more of a technique than part of any special CA.

'Interest in information and discovery for its own sake' - hm...

M. J. Young wrote: Jay's emphasis on immersion as a hallmark of simulationism...

M. J. Young wrote: To determine by experimentation whether a knight of that level of ability is a match for a dragon of that design.

Ron Edwards wrote: "... Hard Core occurs when Gamist play transmogrifies into pure metagame: Exploration becomes minimal or absent, such that System and Social Contract contact one another directly, and, essentially, all the mechanics become metagame mechanics."

M. J. Young wrote: To attempt to test certain strategic and tactical possibilities (weapon choice, choice of ground, and others) to see whether these make a difference in the outcome of such a battle.

M. J. Young wrote: In response to the recognition that a character of this type would in fact risk his life to save a princess from a dragon, even if the player does not have any particular desire to do so.

M. J. Young wrote: To cement a political alliance with the knight's family and that of the princess which will improve the player's opportunities to explore the milieu.

Silmenume wrote: The one hallmark of Simulationist play that I do stand by is the very vital need to maintain the internal causality of the Shared Imagined Space. The corollary to that is that meta-game is kept to a minimum. Other than that, just about anything goes for Simulationist play. It is for this very reason that I believe that Simulationist play is so diverse and rich in experience.
...
Once again you have a meta-game agenda when you speak of the "player's" opportunities. This could either be Narrativist by virtue of making a decision that purposefully opens up story options, or Gamist if the player is seeking to gain some sort of competitive advantage over the other players or the GM. The key here is speaking of the player and not the character, which automatically pulls one out of Simulationist mode of play.

So I say again - Simulationism is not synonymous with "immersive,” but it is about the desire to experience things while maintaining internal causality as a high priority.

First, let me apologize to Jay if I've misrepresented his position; it seems to me even yet that his emphasis on experience must be to some degree immersive.

However, I am confident

• that metagame priorities and external causalities are valid in some forms of simulationist play, such as those John just identified in which simulation of genre is achieved by metagame approaches;• that simulationist exploration of system to determine such things as tactical advantages and game break points is not gamist;• that exploring character honor and motivation from an external viewpoint is an entirely valid approach to simulationist exploration of character.



There is no reason in the world why you can't talk about player opportunities and player intentions and desires in relation to simulationism; after all, as we've hashed out many times on these boards, there's no such thing, really, as character opportunities, intentions, or desires, because the character only exists as a tool for the player.

Jay, you're a wonderful advocate for a particular kind of simulationism; but you're making the mistake of thinking that anything that isn't that kind of simulationism isn't simulationism. It's the same mistake as is made by those who think that D&D is not competitive because the players aren't playing against each other. There are gamist games in which players play against each other, and gamist games in which they work together against the game. There are simulationist games in which internal causality is absolutely required, but also simulationist games in which metagame techniques and player interests quite validly and directly impact events.

We can play a wargame about the Battle of Gettysburg to see whether one of us can outplay the other and win that battle given the same troop strengths Grant and Lee had at the time. That would be gamist. We could play the same wargame to see what would have happened had Pickett's brigade not charged the artillery, or Meade not held the hill, or otherwise altering the tactics of each side to see what might have happened--and that is not gamist, but simulationist, because the objective is to explore the possibilities of what might have happened. In the same way, I can have my RPG character go after the dragon for very gamist reasons that have to do with trying to prove that I've got what it takes to beat a dragon with this character, or for very simulationist reasons that I want to explore whether it is possible to beat a dragon with a character of this caliber (or in fact for the very narrativist reasons of wanting to send a character to almost certain death in the name of honor to explore the demands of honor as a virtue). Sure I can do it for simulationist reasons of wanting to experience something; but I can do it for very disengaged simulationist reasons of wanting to watch what happens to "him" (not "me") when I put him in that situation.

Finally, I can see why you would think that my statement

In response to the recognition that a character of this type would in fact risk his life to save a princess from a dragon, even if the player does not have any particular desire to do so.

Hello,

Well now, I'm all confused.

1. John, I do consider internal causality to be the primary definitional concept for Simulationist play. I've expanded it well beyond "physics in the game world," such that it can be applied to, say, character psychology or genre-faithfulness, but the idea remains the same. At least it does in my mind.

I cannot for the life of me imagine how you see my definition of Simulationism as differing from yours. "Prioritizing Exploration" and "prioritizing internal causality" are synonyms. What could one prioritize about Exploration per se except its own internal causes, of whatever sort? There isn't anything else.

2. More generally, I think the word "simulation" is perfectly valid for what I'm talking about. It's not merely a historical or default term. It works for what I'm expressing; my section in the Simulationism essay about that is built to show that no usage of the term denies my its use - not to say that the word has no meaning and therefore I might as well use it.

2. Jay and M.J., I think the word "to experience" is causing a little more trouble than it's solving. Remember, grasping the N/S distinction is a personal process; people often have to find the right verbs and examples for themselves. Sometimes it's better to let that happen without constantly over-correcting bits and pieces along the way.

Best,
Ron

Hmm .. . let me take Ron's three points and add my effort to disentagle things a bit.

Point one, which I take as saying that John's Immersionist statement is mostly the same as GNS Sim. Here's the Immersionist statement I see Ron pointing to:

John Kim wrote: Immersionist is a style of play and game design which focusses on in-game causes, reducing the visible impact of non-representational elements like plot points, scene breaks, and narration assignment.

Ron Edwards wrote: Well now, I'm all confused.

1. John, I do consider internal causality to be the primary definitional concept for Simulationist play. I've expanded it well beyond "physics in the game world," such that it can be applied to, say, character psychology or genre-faithfulness, but the idea remains the same. At least it does in my mind.

I cannot for the life of me imagine how you see my definition of Simulationism as differing from yours. "Prioritizing Exploration" and "prioritizing internal causality" are synonyms. What could one prioritize about Exploration per se except its own internal causes, of whatever sort? There isn't anything else.

Wait, wait ...

John, here you say in post #1 that Simulationism is all about internal causality. "Yup!" I say. Then you say in post #2 that it doesn't, and that I don't understand.

Hands thrown up - whatever. I'll just point to what Gordon said. I agree with him.

And ... oh well, against my better judgment, I'll say this too. Regarding those RFGA Sim posters, John, in terms of this particular issue, I've said it before and I'll say it now - they were so hung up on their own little cabbage-patches of Sim application that all discourse about the basic criteria was lost in frenzied appropriation of the term. It's plain synecdoche to me: "I'm Sim! No, I am!"

Rejecting "genre-faithfulness" as a basis for Simulationist play is ipso facto inconsistent with the internal-causality criterion - I don't care how passionate they were about it. All that is "Judean People's Front vs. People's Front of Judea" to me; their individual possessiveness of it (based on internal-causality-of-what) isn't worth much critical attention.

And none of it invalidates my point - that you say internal causality is the key to Simulationist play, and so do I. I permit a much broader scope for that principle than the folks you're referencing, that's all.

But you know what? All this is just a sideline to the real issue. Which is: I think all of your initial post is good reading ('cept for the terms-thing; Sim it is and Sim it shall be). I buy it. I think you've re-stated some of my points about "story-oriented" as expressed in my GNS essay (which people seem to gloss over for some reason), in that whether we "end up with a story" isn't a feature of GNS-mode classification at all. I don't think it's a new point, and I'm not sure why we need terms for it like Fabulist and Immersionist (I shy away from using this term for anything, though), but it's a good point.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Wait, wait ...

John, here you say in post #1 that Simulationism is all about internal causality. "Yup!" I say. Then you say in post #2 that it doesn't, and that I don't understand.

Ron Edwards wrote: Rejecting "genre-faithfulness" as a basis for Simulationist play is ipso facto inconsistent with the internal-causality criterion - I don't care how passionate they were about it. All that is "Judean People's Front vs. People's Front of Judea" to me; their individual possessiveness of it (based on internal-causality-of-what) isn't worth much critical attention.

And none of it invalidates my point - that you say internal causality is the key to Simulationist play, and so do I. I permit a much broader scope for that principle than the folks you're referencing, that's all.

Hi John,

I'm familiar with these references you're linking to. All of them are confirming to me that we are agreeing on just about anything imaginably important.

I don't see any merit to telling one another "you don't get what I'm saying," so let's not do that.

Best,
Ron

OK, another post attempting to explain why I think John points at an important issue, but is also "agreeing on just about anything imaginably important" with Ron:

It is true (as far as I can tell) that an rgfa-Simulationist would be unhappy in many GNS-Sim oriented games. GNS does NOT say (really, it doesn't) that getting a bunch of Sim-liking folks together is all you need to do to produce enjoyable play. There are important issues in roleplaying enjoyment that are NOT GNS-focused (though I'd say they can be much more manageable given some understanding of the insights of GNS). Fabulist/Immersionist (the concepts, not the particular terms) is one such issue.

That the prioritization of internal causality by rgfa-Simulationists excludes certain methods is important - they won't enjoy play that thinks you can prioritizie internal causality by, say, referencing genre. But in GNS terms, that doesn't change the fact that both the rgfa-Sim group and the genre-fidelity group are prioritizing internal causality. They just have different opinions/preferences about what that means and/or how to do it.

I think it is very useful to identify these mostly GNS-independant issues which none the less are very important to determining whether or not a particular person/group enjoys play. That's how I read John's initial post starting this thread (besides being useful claification of "story" and etc.). Understandable (to me) issues with the term "immersion" aside, putting Immersionist vs. Fabulist at the top of a list of such issues makes sense to me.

Gordon

Gordon C. Landis wrote: That the prioritization of internal causality by rgfa-Simulationists excludes certain methods is important - they won't enjoy play that thinks you can prioritizie internal causality by, say, referencing genre. But in GNS terms, that doesn't change the fact that both the rgfa-Sim group and the genre-fidelity group are prioritizing internal causality. They just have different opinions/preferences about what that means and/or how to do it.

John,

Yes, I think you're right - saying "prioritize" about rgfa-Sim *is* a mistake on my part, as "prioritize" is all about GNS. Perhaps because rgfa-Simfolk want so strongly to reject the metagame (which you're proposing to call "Immersionist", right?), they are very likely to display a GNS-Sim priority, as G and N so openly invite metagame involvement. But if there's flexibility in there for a small dose of Fabulism (perhaps covert, or unrecognized, or simply [and this might be controversial] unexpressed-but-really-you-know-it's-there-if-you-look -- so don't look -- Fabulism) . . . then there can be Immersionist N- or G-prioritizing play.

After all, there's actually a HUGE amount of ground between no-metagame and any-metagame-you-want. Where and how you draw the line between what counts as "too much" will vary. The Immersion-Fabulist axis, as I see it, is more of a spectrum than a binary test - except to those at either extreme.

Gordon

Down in Actual Play I agree with Gordon: Adventures in RGFA Simulationism. It's kind of a long example plus some rhetoric. The short form:

I wrote: But it seems to me that the Threefold's Simulationism and Dramatism comment on the Exploration level, not the CA level. They aren't creative agendas nor do they point to them. They're ways to Explore. Different tastes, different takes on in-game causality, character and setting integrity, participant authorship (when and about what), the role of mechanics, whether roleplaying is "fundamentally" internal to each participant or shared between them, dogmas about what "breaks immersion" and what "snaps suspenders."

Hey Vincent,

Stripped of ideals and dogmas, do the Threefold's approaches each contain a core of complementary techniques?

Interesting. I submit instead that they are uppity techniques (and ephemera), that think they can determine Creative Agenda. Remember the diagram:

[Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques [Ephemera]]]]]

Paul

lumpley wrote: Thus any CA can be served by any given Threefold approach to play.

Stripped of ideals and dogmas, do the Threefold's approaches each contain a core of complementary techniques?

Paul Czege wrote: Interesting. I submit instead that they are uppity techniques (and ephemera), that think they can determine Creative Agenda.

Hey John,

As for the Threefold "thinking" that they are Creative Agendas, I think that's reversed. Simulationism as a concept predates the Threefold Model, and the Threefold Model predates Creative Agenda. It's unreasonable to expect an earlier model to fit into later-developed categories. In other words, GNS mistook Threefold Simulationism for a Creative Agenda when in fact it was a category of techniques.

The chronology is irrelevant. As depicted in the diagram, Exploration is built on a foundation of Social Contract. And Creative Agenda is built atop that foundation of Exploration. Techniques are wielded properly by those with their feet planted upon such a Creative Agenda. RGFA Simulationism purports that techniques are sufficient for producing coherent play (e.g. Creative Agenda).

Paul

Paul: Ha! "Uppity" because of ideals and dogmas, which I specifically stripped!

Anyhow treating the CA arrow as though it separates Exploration from Technique seems super-odd to me. I'd say it this way: Techniques in application drive Exploration, which taken together over time fulfill or fail to fulfill Creative Agenda. "On a high roll, you narrate" contributes directly to Exploration, and we have to watch for a while to see how it serves your CA.

John: You're the expert: if the Threesome was never about what-we'd-now-call-Creative-Agenda you'd know better than me. Certainly Ron's identified CA in a way that lets us approach it more clearly and directly than the RGFAers ever had. But I personally suspect - again, not having read any of it recently - that there's a lot of CA-level nonsense mixed in with the techniques.

Okay, now do I really suck so bad that I can't go read some old usenet? Guess not. Here's a quote, from you coincidentally:

Long ago, relatively, John Kim wrote: This is an ideal which I strike for in some of my games: a game where the players never ask or question what the "genre" is. Instead, they would tend to talk about the characters, the world, and how it works. If asked what "genre" it is in, they would be hard-pressed to say.

lumpley wrote: John: You're the expert: if the Threesome was never about what-we'd-now-call-Creative-Agenda you'd know better than me. Certainly Ron's identified CA in a way that lets us approach it more clearly and directly than the RGFAers ever had.

lumpley wrote: Okay, now do I really suck so bad that I can't go read some old usenet? Guess not. Here's a quote, from you coincidentally:

Long ago, relatively, John Kim wrote: This is an ideal which I strike for in some of my games: a game where the players never ask or question what the "genre" is. Instead, they would tend to talk about the characters, the world, and how it works. If asked what "genre" it is in, they would be hard-pressed to say.

Which is exactly what I mean: it looks like CA talk but actually isn't. Your non-genre ideal serves a Creative Agenda, but which? Impossible to say. I don't intend to hold you to something you wrote in the past, naturally, it's just to show that there was attention paid to "what we get out of roleplaying" on RGFA. Just a misidentification of techniques as such with "what we get out of."

lumpley wrote: (In fact I remember that conversation from first time around! "Cough, cough! 'Genre-convention apologists'? That's a rather cold dismissal of a valid approach to gaming." I had to look "apologist" up in the dictionary!)

M. J. Young wrote: I have the impression that you think simulationism is always about experiencing something; I think it can be about that, and/or about observing something. If you'll agree that there is a valid distinction here and that both are valid forms of simulationist play, then probably the disagreement we have is mere quibbles over specific instances; but if you're going to insist that experiencing is required and observing is something else, then we've got a major disagreement, I think.

John, cool!

I knew it wasn't you who said it. The whole "Cough, cough!" quote was from somebody later in the convo.

So if your Immersionism is an approach to Techniques, what is it? Can you talk about it in concrete Technique terms, who gets to say what about what and when, without crossing over into CA territory? Forget about GNS, forget about the in-game, can you pick apart the real live inter-player interactions and show us how they work? After that, can you build a ruleset that works the same way, so we can try it ourselves?

I've been working to do the same to my own favorite approach to Techniques, co-GMing, ever since I first came here.

Meanwhile, there's no need to position your Immersionism relative to the GNS Creative Agendas, just like I don't need to position my co-GMing relative to them, just like random example game designer doesn't need to position her "I like d8s!" relative to them. There's no more call to split the world into Nar/Imm Nar/Fab Sim/Imm Sim/Fab than there is to split it into Nar/d8-heavy Nar/d8-light. What spans from Technical Approach to Creative Agenda is the individual game in play.

-Vincent

Hi all,

Vincent, Paul - thanks for jumping in. I think my points are pretty much in agreement with yours. John - to repeat myself (perhaps more clearly thanks to the additional input), I think the Immersion (rgfa-Sim) vs. GNS-Sim confusion came up simply because you included "in-game causes" as definitional to Immersionism. But (I think) that's only PART of your definition, and you mean something different than the GNS "prioritize Exploration" by it - you mean (as Vincent and Paul seem to tease out) a preference for certain Techniques and styles.

I do think Immersionism, along with many outside-GNS preferences about Techniques, crosses with GNS a bit in that Techniques-in-action are the parts of a Creative Agenda. I think an Immersionist preference is more likely to persue Sim, because the Techniques that it rejects turn out to be very useful for G and N. At some point, to reject the Techniques of G or N is to reject G or N.

Given the difficult history of Immersionism on rgfa, here at the Forge, and elsewhere, I think it's no surprise that it turns out to be particularly problematic. I find it immensely useful to have identified the places where Immersionism (as John means it - and as he's a veteran of the rgfa wars on the subject, I'll take his meaning with greater weight than many others) has nothing whatsoever to do with GNS, and to notice that it's the places where a little overlap does happen/can be seen to happen that cause much of the grief.

Gordon

Gordon wrote: I do think Immersionism, along with many outside-GNS preferences about Techniques, crosses with GNS a bit in that Techniques-in-action are the parts of a Creative Agenda. I think an Immersionist preference is more likely to persue Sim, because the Techniques that it rejects turn out to be very useful for G and N. At some point, to reject the Techniques of G or N is to reject G or N.

lumpley wrote: So if your Immersionism is an approach to Techniques, what is it? Can you talk about it in concrete Technique terms, who gets to say what about what and when, without crossing over into CA territory? Forget about GNS, forget about the in-game, can you pick apart the real live inter-player interactions and show us how they work? After that, can you build a ruleset that works the same way, so we can try it ourselves?

I've been working to do the same to my own favorite approach to Techniques, co-GMing, ever since I first came here.

lumpley wrote: There's no more call to split the world into Nar/Imm Nar/Fab Sim/Imm Sim/Fab than there is to split it into Nar/d8-heavy Nar/d8-light. What spans from Technical Approach to Creative Agenda is the individual game in play.

John wrote: Well, as far as the very basics of system, I think that many systems are close to what I am looking for -- but few or none are exactly what I would want...

If you look at the whole model, it seems to me like Sim could simply be stripped out of the creative agenda layer and defined as the prioritization of the Exploration layer over the Creative Agenda (G/N) layer. Likewise, the Fabulist approach is the prioritization of Creative Agenda over Exploration.

As for immersion, MJ defining it as an individual technique makes oodles of sense to me (though I think it's ephemera, like stance). This is probably because we are thinking of a similar type of immersion.

If you look at the whole model like individual cogs in a machine, instead of arches in a long hallway, I think a lot of this is accounted for. It also accounts for other things not part of this discussion; like the social gamer (social contract over everything else), and the heavy immersionist (ephemera over everything else). I know this is contradictory to the model.

Less is more - that's what I've been thinking anyway.

lumpley wrote: Okay, I get you. But who gets to say what about what, and when? I'm sure you've noticed, we thrive on subtle distinctions! We are subtle distinction enthusiasts!

Maybe, down in Actual Play, choose your favorite past RGFA Simulationist episode of play and break out exactly how the inter-player / player-GM negotiations went. Without for god sake without worrying about GNS Creative Agenda.

Last night was New Year's Eve, and since we always celebrate by having me cook and serve hors d'oevres for many hours my visit to these fora was very cursory. Thus I skipped over responding to Jay's interesting post.

I think, though, that I'm going to disagree.

What's the difference between gamist combat, narrativist combat, and simulationist combat? I don't think that just because combat breaks out in a game, it makes it gamist, even for a moment, necessarily (there are undoubtedly games in which they drift gamist for the combat, and then drift back, but that's a different issue). I think you can have narrativist and simulationist combat. What distinguishes these?

I think that narrativist combat (which would be the more difficult for me, personally, to identify) retains its relationship to the theme. What matters is not who wins, but which way the story twists at this point, and how the theme is addressed. You could have a narrativist engine which made this rather uncertain, in that the player characters might win or lose without reference to what the players want, and this becomes part of the address of premise--yet it strikes me that many narrativist games don't let player characters die if the players don't approve it, in essence saying, "the death of your character in combat will only happen if you believe this will address premise in a meaningful way". So combat is narrativist if it's about the premise.

Gamist combat is characterized by the desire to win, to test not the character but the player. Losing in a gamist game is a personal loss, not a theoretical one. When one of my beloved Gamma World characters was finally killed, I was in shock--I actually lay on the couch for the rest of the night trying to recover from the loss, despite the fact that in a very real sense we as players had won the game (it was the final battle of the module, and we defeated them, but at the cost of my character). Not everyone takes losses so seriously, but these are losses by the player, and that's what makes it gamist. Losing or failing in a gamist game is like losing at checkers or tennis or football or bridge--it's about whether you won or lost.

Simulationist combat is about whether the characters win or lose, and has no reflection (or very little) on the skills of the players. "Your character died." "Cool. Now we know what would happen."

Thus facing the dragon because the premise demands it is narrativist; facing the dragon because you want to prove you, the player, can beat the dragon with this character is gamist; and facing the dragon to see what happens is simulationist.

Just because it's combat doesn't make it gamist.

If I'm wrong, Jay, what makes combat simulationist and not gamist?

--M. J. Young

Just to jump in and broaden M.J.'s comments about sim combat:

Sim combat in addition to being about 'what happens' can also be about genre fidelity - I'm the knight, he's the dragon, we fight! - and an expression of the PC's personality - I have the beserker disadvantage, he spilled my pint, we fight!

In addition it doesn't preclude personal stake: the PC is a tool that is used to further the exploration of the shared imaginary space. The loss of the character can limit the players access to the shared imaginary space, and hence their ability to explore (at least while new characters are created and introduced). So PC loss for a sim player can be a bummer too.

I'm pretty sure these are obvious points but I could see a possibility of them muddying the waters.

John, I'm wandering pretty far from GNS talk, but this quote of Chris Lehrich's from Plotless but Background-based Games -

So what he's doing is flinging the characters into the middle of a hideously complicated situation, and encouraging them to become important in it. The trick is that he really doesn't know the details of this situation; he's got Power Blocks and Relationships, but relatively few known details. So as the PCs go around talking to people and exploring the setting, they are also galvanizing and clarifying the situation.

cruciel wrote: If you look at the whole model, it seems to me like Sim could simply be stripped out of the creative agenda layer and defined as the prioritization of the Exploration layer over the Creative Agenda (G/N) layer. <SNIP>

It also accounts for other things not part of this discussion; like the social gamer (social contract over everything else), and the heavy immersionist (ephemera over everything else). I know this is contradictory to the model.

In reverse order:

Gordon wrote: But I agree very strongly about the second bit I snipped - preferences about things outside of CA matter, and talking about them more helps clarify what CA *isn't*. Which hopefully eases fears that GNS is ignoring issues that are very important to some folks.

Gordon wrote: On the first bit I snipped . . . it seems to me that the act of prioritization is the very defintion of Creative Agenda, so you can't really strip Sim out of the CA layer - Exploration isn't anything until prioritization takes place, at which point we can identify a CA. So barring caveats about defining Immersion via in-game causality, I think John is quite right to identify Immersion/Fabulism as outside CA.

John wrote: a style of play and game design which focusses on in-game causes, reducing the visible impact of non-representational elements like plot points, scene breaks, and narration assignment.

John wrote: "an active use of the imagination that, in the context of the shared story between players, possesses a logic that defies physics and responds to poetic concerns".

Duplicate post.

cruciel wrote: The Immersionist definition John was using:

John wrote: a style of play and game design which focusses on in-game causes, reducing the visible impact of non-representational elements like plot points, scene breaks, and narration assignment.

It seems like the immersion he's referring to is about in-game causality. Actor Stance seems to be thrown in there too. Immersion is so icky and gooey that I hestitate to touch it anymore.

Total agreement as far as director stance and maintaining in-game consistency. This used quite often in my style of play, where everybody may voice how they think a character should behave.

John wrote: a style of play and game design which focusses on in-game causes, reducing the visible impact of non-representational elements like plot points, scene breaks, and narration assignment.

First of all I would like to wish everyone here at The Forge a very Happy New Year’s! Thanks for making this such a wonderful and stimulating site.

M. J. Young wrote: I think you can have narrativist and simulationist combat. What distinguishes these?
…
Just because it's combat doesn't make it gamist.

M. J. Young wrote: Simulationist combat is about whether the characters win or lose, and has no reflection (or very little) on the skills of the players.

M. J. Young wrote: "Your character died." "Cool. Now we know what would happen."

Silmenume wrote: Narrativist – “Yeah, I was willing to die to uphold the chivalrous virtues.” – Question of Premise
Simulationist – “Yeah, at least my character was brave enough to try and bought a little time for the town to evacuate in the process.” – Question of Character and Situation

Hello,

Jay, what you're running into is the problem of scope.

You will never successfully provide an exemplar of all Gamism compared with all Simulationism compared with all Narrativism.

The categories are too broad to be exemplified and compared at that level. It's better to drop down into a particular sort of each one, with the three sorts sharing some common Explorative features. Then the comparison can mean something.

I also think you might consider using real, actual examples of play rather than "if a player" hypotheticals - especially when those hypotheticals include descriptions of internal states and motivations, which are really not going to clarify anything.

Best,
Ron

Greetings -

Ian - The bravery issue to me is not a moral issue, but one of character i.e., definitional. "He was cheerful, with a smile for everyone, had a ravenous appetite for stories and good drink, and was a brave man." At least that is how I intended its usage. The question of holding up chivalrous virtues I had intended to be an example of premise in play - are you willing to die attempting to uphold chivalrous virtues? If my examples were ill conceived, I apologize. They sort of evolved out of precedent.

I do agree that single decisions are non-diagnostic of GNS, what was offered was the outgrowth of established argumentative form. They were offered as "an" example and were not meant to be diagnostic. By diagnostic I am guessing that means by looking at an instance of play one could then determine/diagnose which CA is in operation. Rather I was trying to demonstrate a CA and what the player might consider important (what meaning might be derived) in regards to a similar event occurring in all three agendas.

Ron - as poorly as I faired, your post actually supports a position I was struggling to argue. Simply that merely doing something just to see what happens, in this case pitting a knight against a dragon, is not indicative of any particular agenda. Perhaps my examples were poorly wrought, but the same gist was implied in your post. The fictional examples are artifacts of the way the posts evolved.

The use of hypotheticals which include descriptions of internal states and motivations probably will not clarify anything on a diagnostic level, which CA is being expressed, but internal states and motivations are central to the players' reasons for playing (the meanings created and derived) and thus should be of intense interest to the DM's running their games. For the sake of proving which CA was in effect perhaps my examples were inappropriate, but that there are internal processes in operation should not be automatically dismissed and brushed under the rug.

Both Gamism and Narrativism have or at least allow for overt meta-game feed back loops between player and DM to facilitate the creation of meanings that are desired by the players. Sim, by its priority for a low or reduced meta-game expression process, needs to find other ways to employ this feedback loop. During the game proper, the Sim DM is left to the difficult task of observing the social reinforcement behavior in real time and making on the fly decisions regarding that behavior. Another process would be the post-game "debrief" which could be direct by talking to the players or indirect such as reading the players' blogs or listening to the players’ conversations after the game. I think this meaning feedback loop is vastly underutilized in Sim play, and that meaning as a whole tends to get dismissed from the model because it isn’t diagnostic. While it is a slippery topic to deal with, Meaning is the flipside of the CA. It is precisely this lack of feedback that I believe that many people leave Sim (the “world” isn’t responding to their interests) or that DM’s find it hard to run effectively.

So yes, little value to the diagnostic process, but vital to be aware of as roleplay is a meaning creation process. One may raise the objection that if they have no diagnostic powers, why worry about internal states. Because roleplay is a meaning creation process, the DM, by being aware of his player’s desires, can front-load, specifically create events or develop narrative (lower case ‘n’) tools that maximize the chances of the players generating their desired meanings.

I should have probably split this into a new thread – I am just too much of a mallet head to figure that out at present.

Aure Entaluve,

Silmenume

Hi Jay,

Since your post consists of replies, I'm going to let it stand as part of this thread.

But it's really time to call this thread closed. Please, everyone, take sub-topics elsewhere.

Best,
Ron