A response to Malcolm's thoughts about GNS in this thread didn't seem to fit with the focus of that thread - so I thought I'd start a new one.

As I understand it (his post that begins "With all due respect Ron"), Malcolm makes three points - first, that he finds GNS has too much emphasis on the authority of the designer and/or text; second, that he finds "creative agenda" itself problematic; and third, that having styles (GNS modes?) require elements be excluded rather than included is . . . bad/wrong/innacurate?

Let me start with point two, and say that in my opinion there's room for legitimate disagreement about the primacy and/or nature of creative agenda. If someone understands what the theory means by creative agenda and just doesn't agree that it's real and/or important to roleplaying, GNS is of no use to that person - and no one can prove that they are wrong or right to reject creative agenda in this way. But I see Malcolm saying that creative agenda is basically equivalent to "a consistent, relatively static social contract and shared vision" - and that doesn't strike me as an accurate equivalence, so I'm not sure if the various essays/threads/whatever have actually managed to communicate to him what creative agenda really means. This is an area where I think considered, rigorous thought may lead reasonable men to different conclusions than Ron's, but as it stands - what Malcolm says he's objecting to doesn't seem to really be what the theory is saying.

Point one I see as a really extreme case of the same phenomena - how someone could read the "The whole theory" thread and think the theory is about creative agenda as something that attaches to a designer/text is a mystery to me. Creative agenda is a phenomena that shows up in actual play. Yes, a designer/text can influence that play - why bother to write a game otherwise? - but the theory, and MANY discussions here at the Forge (Lumpley and etc.) should make it very clear that the "authority" (such as it is) ALWAYS rests with the actual people playing the actual game.

I'm not exactly sure what the third point is expressing - something like "GNS says exclude two of G, N, and S, and that's bad - we should include 'em all"? This seems to me a fairly complicated area. GNS does say that prioritization of one mode, with perhaps an acknowledged secondary/helper mode, is a desireable thing - or maybe more accurately, it says that over time play and being human will require that you prioritize one mode, and failing to identify and support that early can lead to a poor play experience for some or all of the participants. But it's complicated because that speaks only to the prioritization. Things that look like Exploring The Dream (but don't have to actually be Sim, unless they get prioritized) will always be hapening in all RPG play - Exploration is part of how the theory defines RPGs. The possibility to Step On Up and/or address Story/Premise Now is basically part of how the human mind works, so it's going to be there all the time - but it won't become Game or Nar unless it's prioritized.

(NOTE: People have pointed out of late that what specific issues/phrasing finally gets GNS to "click" for a particualr individual varies widely. Prioritization is a big one for me, but what that means for me is highly dependent on a bunch of discussions, so maybe it doesn't work so well for everyone. But since it works so well for me, I'm prone to offer it up anyway . . . appologies to anyone for whom it seems jargony or obscure.)

So - Malcolm may still end up not finding GNS a true and/or useful theory regarding RPGs, but the explanations as to why in the referenced thread just don't hold up for me. I guess this thread would be an invitation to either work through objections to my objections, and/or to have him (or anyone else) propose variant concerns (either new or clarifications from these three) about GNS.

An invitation that no one need take me up on, but working through why the concerns expressed just didn't seem on-target was useful to me - and thus, this post.

Gordon

I too had a number of issues with Malcolm's stated criticisms; I wrote them up, but didn't feel like starting yet another thread (at least not until the other issue was worked out). Since you've opened the door, however, I might as well put my effort to use.

Malcolm, I'm afraid I take issue with your criticisms.

I just don't find the aspiration to totalize this manifesto useful or conducive to discussing what's actually going in in many games, especially if it's something like Exalted, which is both extraordinarily popular and doesn't adhere to GNS values.

The model assumes a degree of control over how an RPG is interpreted that most authors, including myself, would be very reluctant to assert.

This is why successful RPG designs offer multiple redundant toolkits.

There seems to be a sentiment here that such designs are "incoherent" or the result of errors. They aren't.

* I also believe that these formal categories don't reflect the dynamism of real gaming groups. Real gaming groups rarely have a stylistic mission. They bounce all over the place...In the games I run and play in people jmp from simulation to straightforward tactical play to ethical quandaries all the time.

Players react accordingly and are sometimes inspired to do a great deal of interior roleplaying about these consequences, and the rules engine, as a simulation of the world, is put to the test.

objectors are either unknowingly following your model or are deceiving themselves. I don't think this is particularly persuasive.

I'm afraid this really will be my last post on the topic for the forseeable future. Now, point by point:

Gordon:

1) Ron's eccomendations on how games should be written, along with actual games that have been identified as being a part of this vibe bear witness to the accuracy of my statement about the creative agenda. Ron's articles specifically say to not bother supporting modes of play that don't fit a singular agenda, and called games hat did incoherent. Now he calls them something else, but that doesn't make much of a difference. It GNS was really about a pluralistic creative agenda, it would be supported by pluralistic design on the part of the people who use it. It isn't.

2) "The Whole Theory" talks about the text having a specific position and not including any text that deviates from it. It would be disingenuous or uselessly vague to claim that this wasn't about a design-side agenda. If Sorcerer had, say, three different modes of resolution for the same task, depending on where the group was at that day, then I'd believe otherwise. It doesn't. No game that uses GNS uses redundant toolkits and they are found to be specifically abhorrent. If you go and claim that one system is supposed to support a very wide range of play styles, then you just unddermine the whole, thesis, and system doesn;t matter after all. The conslusion I'm forced to come to, based on the theory and practice of GNS, is that these games are not designed to be accessible in a fashion other than that explicily intended and even favoured by the author of the text.

3) GNS in theory and design don't take into account that play groups change wildly, want different kinds of play from day to day and sometimes have members that simultaneously want different kinds of play. People do, and they have fun at it. Real fun; gamers aren't lying to themselves or unwittingly adhering to GNS. They're enjoying themselves in a much more anarchic manner.

Greyorm:

1) GNS is a value system. You see it in games that are designed by folks who believe in GNS tenets. Exalted is not designed according to GNS tenets. Invariably, it seems like games like it are difficult to describe using GNS and never capture why people like it -- aside from the oft-repeated assertion that they are tricking themselves into liking something that's not "really" good.

And yes, Greyorm., I *am* capable of abosorbing the text and critiquing it, thanks for asking.

2) The folks on the Forge may be game writers, but they aren't the majority of game writers.

This is something else that gets me, actually. Over the years, a number of people who've worked hard on writing good games have talked about the creative process, but I don't see things like references to Jonathan Tweet's writings or Bruce Baugh's blogs around here. If GNS is supposed to really encompass everything, then it should encompass or critique their ideas, too. I don't see this kind of exchange at all.

I think it's not too fallacious; the idea that most writers aren't too worried about how you're going to play their games is almost inescapably obvious.

3) Successful RPGs are ones people enjoy playing significantly more often that they don't enjoy playing at a rate combined with the rate at which said games were disseminated due to the growth of fan networks to arrive at a rough measure.

4) Rifts/Palladium, GURPS post-Compeniums, Shadowun, some iterations of Tristat. All successful. All "incoherent." I don't think all of these are great. AS a matter of fact, I think some of them suck. But GNS does't seem to be the tool to mine the elements that are great from them.

Also, I'll point out that while DnD was first and enjoyed bennies because of that, the WoD came out of a basement like everything else. Oh, while we're at it, let's add Ars Magica, thanks to its complex combat compared to other systems and despite its emphasis.

5)It's prescriptions for design don't acknowledge multiple modes, given that they seek to consciously limit support. I think it's patronizing to assume that groups only change their play styles because of a rules set, to boot. Thus, I think that the literature's appraoch to multiple modes is grudging and incomplete, where it hasn't become increasingly divorced from the raw experience of gaming with the addition oof new contingencies and terminology.

6) The scenario I've described isn't an x or y situation. I can easily bring out multiple play styles in a single session, from different players, all at once, with something as simple as the scenario I describe. This isn't bragging; lots of people can do that. But GNS doesn't believe them.

7) "We'll get along fine as soon as you realize I'm right," ( i.e "If you're willing to accept. . ." ) isn't really an interesting basis for discussion for me, which is why this is the last word I have to say on the matter.

8) I would submit that if gamers ticking themselves into think they're having fun 100% of the time, then it's the same as actually having fun. Again, I find the implicit assertion that players are more ignorant than GNS theorists to be misguided.

The fact that a chunk of GNS uses this premise is, in my opinion, a reason to cast it into the fire in of itself.

9) My conditional tone ("I believe") was meant to be conciliatory, not because I'm unable to prosecute any theses I have to the fullest. I am certainly capable of being less conciliatory and firmer, but I'm committed to spending my time here talking about "bits" of game design, not destroying the underpinnings of a well-liked theory/manifesto that I think does some good. I feel that some of your remarks have edged dangerously close to less friendly territory, and my personal approach don't include casting aspersions on the tastes of a large chunk of gamers. I'm not interested in persuing this any further.

Thanks, Malcolm, that post cleared up a great deal for me.

eyebeams wrote:
It GNS was really about a pluralistic creative agenda, it would be supported by pluralistic design on the part of the people who use it. It isn't.

The conslusion I'm forced to come to, based on the theory and practice of GNS, is that these games are not designed to be accessible in a fashion other than that explicily intended and even favoured by the author of the text.

3) GNS in theory and design don't take into account that play groups change wildly, want different kinds of play from day to day and sometimes have members that simultaneously want different kinds of play. People do, and they have fun at it. Real fun; gamers aren't lying to themselves or unwittingly adhering to GNS. They're enjoying themselves in a much more anarchic manner.

1) GNS is a value system. You see it in games that are designed by folks who believe in GNS tenets.

Exalted is not designed according to GNS tenets. Invariably, it seems like games like it are difficult to describe using GNS and never capture why people like it -- aside from the oft-repeated assertion that they are tricking themselves into liking something that's not "really" good.

If GNS is supposed to really encompass everything, then it should encompass or critique their ideas, too. I don't see this kind of exchange at all.

I think it's not too fallacious; the idea that most writers aren't too worried about how you're going to play their games is almost inescapably obvious.

4) Rifts/Palladium, GURPS post-Compeniums, Shadowun, some iterations of Tristat. All successful. All "incoherent." I don't think all of these are great. AS a matter of fact, I think some of them suck. But GNS does't seem to be the tool to mine the elements that are great from them.

5)It's prescriptions for design don't acknowledge multiple modes, given that they seek to consciously limit support. I think it's patronizing to assume that groups only change their play styles because of a rules set, to boot.

Thus, I think that the literature's appraoch to multiple modes is grudging and incomplete, where it hasn't become increasingly divorced from the raw experience of gaming with the addition oof new contingencies and terminology.

6) The scenario I've described isn't an x or y situation. I can easily bring out multiple play styles in a single session, from different players, all at once, with something as simple as the scenario I describe. This isn't bragging; lots of people can do that. But GNS doesn't believe them.

7) "We'll get along fine as soon as you realize I'm right," ( i.e "If you're willing to accept. . ." ) isn't really an interesting basis for discussion for me, which is why this is the last word I have to say on the matter.

8) I would submit that if gamers ticking themselves into think they're having fun 100% of the time, then it's the same as actually having fun.

Again, I find the implicit assertion that players are more ignorant than GNS theorists to be misguided.

The fact that a chunk of GNS uses this premise is, in my opinion, a reason to cast it into the fire in of itself.

Hi folks -

Eyebeams has said he's going to quit this discussion, and arguing with people who aren't going to be around for the rest of the argument is sort of pointless. But I wanted to riff off one of contracycle's responses to him, starting out disagreeing a little and then ultimately coming back to what I think is agreement:

"...whether or not someone likes it does not make it a good design. This is irrelevant."

This seems dangerous to me in the context you brought it up in. One point of isolating modes of play is supposed to be to help gamers enjoy what they're doing more by giving them games which fit their own goals of play (which might vary from group to group, night to night, etc.). So whether person x likes game y is irrelevant, as a bare fact, but if a lot of people really like game y, then one assumes they have reasons for it. One should try to figure out what those reasons are. And if lots of people like a game over a long period of time, then one should figure out if there are design elements that are supporting this, or if not what exactly is.

I'm of the opinion, for example, that first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, at least in the streamlined form that most people actually played it in (i.e. without the wonky weapon/armor modifier chart and most of the obscure tables in the DMG) was a very good design - in particular, that it was better than any edition of the game since. Furthermore, the Forge has given me the tools to understand why for the first time - before I always blamed it on marketing, inertia, getting there first, etc. Well, these were there, to be sure. But if you approach 1e AD&D as a gamist design, which is about killing monsters and looting dungeons, the game is very well done. It focuses all its mechanics on combat, things like breaking down doors, disarming traps, and doesn't waste time on a distracting skill system or social mechanics. Moreover, it leaves puzzle-solving deliberately vague, so that the GM can force his players to 'step on up' as real human beings and solve the riddles/puzzles for themselves, irrespective of their characters' abilities. No, AD&D was a good game - the problem is that so many of us were playing it and we wanted it to do things it wasn't doing for us. The trick was to play a different game when you wanted a game that was about something else! It sounds so easy, but who knew this back then?

I don't want to accuse Eyebeams of being disengenous, but I have never seen an instance of anyone on the Forge claiming that people 'trick' themselves into liking a game. I don't understand what this would mean. I've only been here a couple of months though - maybe someone could point out a thread to me.

I think Exalted is appealing to people because your in-game token can do really cool stuff, you gain powers fairly quickly, and the fantasy gaming community, inspired by anime and by 3e's significant power up from earlier editions of D&D, are ready for the kind of 'fantasy superheroes' adventuring Exalted offers. Players love, love, love accumulating things like feats and charms and the choices that go with them and Exalted supports that. This is something I don't know how to deal with - I want to give the people what they want, but I really hate game systems that guide character development in that way. (OK, I got a new level, what can I get? drives me nuts. I want them to say something like "OK, I got a new level, what do I want?", and then we make it up if it's not in the book already. Once you have a big list inertia invariably sets in.)

Now what would a GNS advocate do with Exalted? Well, first, they'd just describe it - how is it put together, what do the mechanics support, and so on. This means describing it from various instances of play, the more the better. Then you build up a profile.

Then they'd observe the fun people were getting from it, how often incoherence broke out in play from drifting between modes, etc. It's possible that the joys of 'wow, I'm a cool-as-hell asskicking anime fantasy superhero' will outweigh the fact that Bob is Nar-prioritized and Sue is Gam-prioritized and periodically one is bored and pouts at the table while the other gets to do their thing. If so, that's data: asskicking anime fantasy superhero games really speak to people right now. Will they in ten years?

Exalted obviously makes people happy, right now. Great! Does the game produce incoherence, and does that incoherence interfere with the happiness people get from it at the table? I don't have an answer to that question because I haven't played it or observed it being played, but that's where the GNS analysis comes in, is at that question. My guess is that the people who really like it like it because of (a) the color and setting and (b) two forms of player empowerment: the charms and the influence of player description on what happens.

It is important to be able to figure out why people enjoy games. There are a lot of reasons for this and satisfaction of GNS modes do not exhaust them. On the other hand, a very definite and very common kind of player frustration is diagnosed by GNS, and out of that diagnosis a cure, involving certain tenets of game design and certain approaches to play, has been described. It may not be the only cure, even if GNS is true; but why on earth wouldn't you try to fix so blatant a problem?

Hello,

One quick point I'd add to that analysis, Sean, is that buying is not liking, in terms of the model. Exalted really hasn't been out all that long, and enthusiasm for purchasing, reading, and imagining playing it is all irrelevant for Creative Agenda talk. The feedback from actual play, especially sustained play, is what matters. I'm pretty sure you understand that - my goal is to point out that "People love Exalted" or its converse are not actually observations, and that initial sales of Exalted or any RPG do not reflect market forces. Those will kick in after the hype-spike and will probably be evaluated in a scale of years.

Bringing commerce as a variable into all of this would require a much better shared understanding of RPG biz than currently holds.

Malcolm, if you're still reading this, most of what I'd say has already been stated by Gordon and Gareth (contracycle). You've attacked and destroyed a mannequin who at most vaguely resembles what I'm saying.

Best,
Ron

Calithena wrote:
Exalted obviously makes people happy, right now. Great! Does the game produce incoherence, and does that incoherence interfere with the happiness people get from it at the table? I don't have an answer to that question because I haven't played it or observed it being played, but that's where the GNS analysis comes in, is at that question. My guess is that the people who really like it like it because of (a) the color and setting and (b) two forms of player empowerment: the charms and the influence of player description on what happens.

I may make little incredulous noises the next time someone questions why the Forge is seen as a little bit elitist and exclusive. People have, I think, here, been a little too ready to win an argument and a little too slow to explain.

To feel the need to argue with someone who has quit the field is not I feel the most generous of impulses. I don't feel that any post after Raven's "Thanks, Malcolm, that post cleared up a great deal for me" did anything to move the thread forward.

I'd agree, Ian, to an extent. I don't want to go too long, and I think there are extenuating circumstances and all, but... this could have been handled better.

From a guy who has handled things wrong on occasion, himself.
Mike

Hello,

I have discussed the issue of four recent GNS threads (two on the Lumpley Principle, two which seem to be more general) with some of the posters via private message.

I'm not happy with them either and would just as soon consider them all closed.

Best,
Ron

[EDIT to note cross-post with Ron and to say - interesting issues found or not, maybe now ain't the time. Future posts, perhaps . . . ]

With whatever limited authority I'm granted as thread-starter (and my appologies - I started the thread and then got too busy to watch it) . . . I agree there's no point in arguing (in a hopefully-positive sense) with someone who isn't there.

If there are issues we can identify and let stand on their own that are worthy of discussion - like maybe (building off the design-side agenda vs. actual play focus issue Malcolm points to), how is it that a creative agenda that's all about actual people in actual play is somehow hooked-up to design? - then the thread can continue.

For me, the answer to that one is pretty obvious: CA is all about actual play, and that doesn't mean System Doesn't Matter - it means System Doesn't Determine.

(Is there a word for inverse-synecdoce? Where the INvalidity of a (perceived) part is confused with invalidating the whole? I see this happen from time to time, where acknowleding that the most far-reaching interpretation of (e.g.) System Matters is not true is used to say "see, System Matters is wrong!" No, the far-reaching interpretation - which no one may, in fact, have been making - is wrong. Good point, but not an invalidation of thereal essence of System Matters. But anyway . . . )

If that issue (absent Malcolm) or another seems interesting, let's discuss. Otherwise, I guess everyone has said what there is to say . . .

Gordon