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So, over in this thread, I raised some points that I'd like to discuss further.  Three of them, actually.  This is the first one.

Quote from: ethan_greerMany (many many) Sim game texts rant and rave and go out of their way for paragraphs to explain how Gamism is bad bad bad. There's admonitions to players and advice to GMs on how to suppress Gamism ad nauseum. Why would this be necessary unless Gamism was a natural tendency in many (many many) role-players?

I see the above as a given. Any dissent on that point?

What I'm after in this thread is, whence came the notion (that poisons so many conventional RPG texts) that Gamism is bad? And how do those texts effect our perception of the hobby in general and of Gamism specifically?

I think dysfunctional Gamism is fairly common, and it is bad bad bad. The anti-Gamist texts are probably an over-reaction to experiencing it in play.

Hello,

Most of what I have to say about this is already stated in the GNS Incompatibility and Hard Core sections of "Gamism: Step on Up." I'm very interested in others' interpretations and historical perspectives.

Best,
Ron

I think dysfunctional Gamism is very rare.  Not at all common.

What is common is the dysfunction that arises when a dedicated Simulationist get involved with a group of perfectly happy functional Gamists.  Then you have the Simulationists reacting in horror to what is perfectly understandable and reasonable play (from a Gamist perspective).

The extraordinary rules bloat of the 80s IMO ties right into these Sim gamers failing to recognize that this is a fundamental play difference best solved at the Social Contract level.  Instead of simply not playing with "those gamers" they wrote rule upon rule upon rule designed to thwart "munchkins" and protect themselves from those "power gamers".

Problem is, rules will never stop a Gamist, if they're broken they may well get the gamist players to quit, but that's hardly an ideal solution.  Gamists by definition are experts at figuring out how to use rules to their advantage.  

This then fed directly into the whole "The GM is God" mentality.  If the rules can't stop the rampaging gamists, then by god, the GM will.  And the only way to ensure that the GM can do that is to make sure that the game strips every semblence of power out of the hands of players and puts it solely with the GM...whom sim oriented game designers presume will be a Sim GM.

This is where you get the horrible garbage like "the golden rule" of "If you don't like the rule change it"...which basically translates to "If any of those vile little gamist twerps try to use any of these rules to derail your carefully sim campaign...then simply remove the rule or rewrite so they can't".

Earlier rule sets IME didn't couch the GMs role in terms of his ability to smack players down.  Descriptions of a GM's duties were generally pretty vague and mostly couched in terms of being a referee.  The very choice of referee terminology points to the game origins of RPGs.  Referees were there to know the rules better than the players did and to arbitrate any disputes or areas that the rules didn't cover.  The very concept of "house rules" had as its origin this referee function where certain referees (typically the host) would enshrine various rulings for posterity.


So the notion that Gamism is bad is purely an artifact of conflict between largely incompatable Creative Agendas.  Its a continuation of the same conflict that existed in wargames where there were very different camps on how to wargame.  Should you treat the game as a simulation and base your moves on what your studies show General Montgomery would have been likely to do.  Or should you treat the game as a game and base your moves on the fact that you know in advance exactly what the reinforcement schedule for both sides are, which cities provide Victory Points, and what units are in the enemy stack.

One can see the same rules bloat that effected RPGs effecting wargames.  What are dummy counters and variable reinforcement schedules, and variable game end conditions, and hidden movement except an attempt by Sim oriented players to force Sim thinking on to game oriented players.  A true sim oriented player would never base his decision on information that he knows he's not supposed to know...that would spoil the simulation.  A game player would.  So, enter 35 pages of rules on hidden movement, and preplotted orders.  A sim player doesn't need those to achieve a sim outcome (believe me, I've seen entire battles fought out with no rules at all except the players understanding of how the units "would and could" operate).  Those rules are there to try and force game players to play in a more simmy fashion.

Same thing in RPGs.  The only difference is that the very clear and understandable wargame goal of simulation got all mixxed up with ideas about "story" and "genre".

Quote from: Ron EdwardsMost of what I have to say about this is already stated in the GNS Incompatibility and Hard Core sections of "Gamism: Step on Up." I'm very interested in others' interpretations and historical perspectives.

After re-reading this, I think the over-reaction was one of Sim-aligned desigenrs who had experienced the Hard Core or Gamism. Not dysfunction, but a style of play incompatible with Sim agenda.

Quote from: ValamirThis is where you get the horrible garbage like "the golden rule" of "If you don't like the rule change it"...which basically translates to "If any of those vile little gamist twerps try to use any of these rules to derail your carefully sim campaign...then simply remove the rule or rewrite so they can't".

Hmm. I have always read this kind of thing as empowerment  to change rules that weren't fun for the group. Too may people seem to hold to the sanctity of the rules. I don't think the notion that you should change the rules to make the game more fun for the group is garbage at all.

If the text says that the GM should, by himself, change the rules to suit his own aims--now that would be garbage. But I haven't seen (or at least interpreted) that.

Hold on, folks. The thread is only minutes old and it's already fragmenting. The phenomenon of Simulationist rejection of Gamist opportunities, in rules-texts and play, seems to be agreed upon - whether a given trend in specific texts represents this must remain a matter of personal interpretation.

Ethan, it strikes me that in the main, Ralph (Valamir), Jay (coxcomb), and I are all agreeing. Is there some other aspect to the issue that isn't being addressed, as you see it?

Best,
Ron

As a long-since-recovered persecutor of Gamists myself, I thought I'd chime in with a few other things:

1) I think that while Simulationists did freak out back in the day about Gamism, and that it was primarily Simulationists (or people who thought they were Simulationists, or thought about their gaming in a Simulationist way) who set this standard, I also knew budding Narrativists who freaked out about Gamism. And different kinds of both. As Ron says in the essay, Gamism has a tendency to swamp out other modes of play, and especially given the high degree of Nar/Sim confusion in many minds ('roll playing' vs. 'role playing', never mind that Gamism need not be the former and neither Nar nor Sim need be the latter), I think enough people got their own agenda messed up by Gamism to define themselves as 'not that' in order to get whatever priority they might have been aiming at going.

2) On these same lines, don't forget how young many of us were. I learned to play RPGs mostly in clubs full of mostly young men who were mostly interested in competition. Many of those who really stuck with the hobby were interested in it for other things (either exclusively or as well), but you had to fight to define any sort of identity against a large crowd of people who were on the whole ego/accumulation/killing and looting mindset.

3) I think that 'the DM is God' thing does go back to the earliest rules texts, way before the anti-Gamist confluence of the cognoscenti in the early eighties, and can very specifically be traced to the individual egos of a few men - specifically and most importantly Gary Gygax, whose individual idiosyncracies cast shadows over the hobby in more ways than one, but also several others - Phil Barker and David Hargrave come most immediately to mind. So I guess I'm disagreeing with Ralph that 'the DM is God' comes in specifically as an anti-gamist 'patch' in Sim rules piling - it was there, with certain practitioners, from the start. Read articles in Alarums and Excursions from the seventies - by no means do all the contributors share this view, but many do. Aside from that, the three men I mention both actively promote the absolute power view of gamemastering in texts published before AD&D '77/78.


Conclusion: I agree with some of the main lines of the narrative being offered here but not with all the particulars. People who were serious about roleplaying but not (or not-exclusively) Gam-oriented, in the social context of the traditional '70's rpg or wargaming/rpg club as I experienced it (and while I'm sure my experience is not universal, I also know that I'm not alone), had to fight to seriously explore other CA. This isn't to say that all those people wanted to do the same thing, other than 'not that' - they wanted many different things, as GNS makes so wonderfully clear. But many of the most prominent early dissenters turned to Sim, and so attempted to enshrine their own partial view as a norm in the rules-texts they created. My point is that this is already a second-generation, reactive movement against the wargaming origins of the hobby.

(Edited to add extra amplification of final points.)

I'm not of the camp that sees some GNS modes as natural and others as unnatural or learned.  I also would question the hyperbole of "rant and rave".  The passages explicitly against gamism in simulationist texts cannot be explained by the mere presence of gamists.  Narrativism, especially in its loosest formulations, is very common.  There are not parallel passages "ranting and raving" against addressing premise.

Now, what is it specifically about gamism that warrants the passage?  Or is it simply the case that narrativism is a recent development?

A part of it, I feel, is that while dysfunctional gamists - who I would characterise by cheating, aggression, sulking, dice throwing, disruptive behaviour (all of which I've seen in the context of gamist games) - may be rare in post-adolescent games, the ones you meet make an impression.

Okay. Everyone agrees that an anti Gamism bias exists in many role-playing game texts. That's not the real point of the thread. The point is in that last question I posed above.

Over in the other thread I saw a lot of gut reactions flying around, along the lines of, "hey! I prioritize Sim naturally, darn it!" Well, okay. My question is, how much of that "natural inclination" towards Sim is a result of anti-gamism rants in the mid-late 80s/early 90s texts?

Here's my answer: A shitload. Why? Simply because perception is shaped by language.  And when nine out of ten texts say (in so many words) "Gamism is bad, Sim is the One True Way," it seems likely to me that people who were learning the hobby by reading those texts were subconsciously picking up up that bias, taking ownership of it, and assuming it to be their own idea. And I'm including myself in with that group of people.

Hi Ethan -

I agree with your answer to some degree if you're talking about people coming up today. But my point is that those eighties/nineties texts aren't coming out of a vacuum - they're coming out of the RPG culture of the seventies and very early eighties - and in that cultural context, there were also anti-Gamist reactions, which were shaped by a frustration with, well, the difficulty of establishing any other mode of play in high school and younger RPG clubs, and some collegiate clubs. I think this pressure is still present to some degree, which might be why so many of us who are serious about the hobby today (as young people or otherwise) so naturally absorb the texts you are talking about as 'right' even though they're really just 'right if you like a certain variety of Sim, and not otherwise'.

Sean

Quote from: ethan_greerOver in the other thread I saw a lot of gut reactions flying around, along the lines of, "hey! I prioritize Sim naturally, darn it!" Well, okay. My question is, how much of that "natural inclination" towards Sim is a result of anti-gamism rants in the mid-late 80s/early 90s texts?

I can only speak for myself, but the early play experiences I brought up in the other thread were basically uninformed by texts. I "learned" to play by fudging it with my firends without reading the rules, and the play was largely Sim: top priority was "wouldn't it be cool if..." exploration.

When I actually started reading the game text a few years later, I'm sure I was influenced by the anti-gamist bent, but the SIm habit was formed for me without them.

(edited to sharpen point)

Hey Jay,
Were you using a ruleset in those early experiences, or was it mainly freeform?

Quote from: ethan_greerHey Jay,
Were you using a ruleset in those early experiences, or was it mainly freeform?

I was "using" my borther's D&D modules, if you can call it that. I didn't even have access to the rulebooks at first. Basically, I looked at the cool maps, occasionally used the descriptions in the booklet and then winged it.

Quote from: ethan_greerMy question is, how much of that "natural inclination" towards Sim is a result of anti-gamism rants in the mid-late 80s/early 90s texts?
Here's my answer: A shitload. Why? Simply because perception is shaped by language.  And when nine out of ten texts say (in so many words) "Gamism is bad, Sim is the One True Way," it seems likely to me that people who were learning the hobby by reading those texts were subconsciously picking up that bias, taking ownership of it, and assuming it to be their own idea. And I'm including myself in with that group of people.

I find it hard to address the question since the phrasing "subconsciously picking up" makes a negative almost impossible. If preferences were influenced subconsciously, that means people wouldn't notice, right? So how can I tell whether I or someone else is coming to Sim through natural inclinations or because of subconscious influence? IMO I can't, because the consequence on behaviour is the same and the conscious affirmation of Sim priorities doesn't tell me anything either, since the person I'm talking to may be subject to the aforementioned subconscious influence.
FWIW, I'm still thinking it's the idea of "being someone else" which draws people to the hobby initially and I'm also thinking that discouraging Gamism was mostly part of an effort to establish a unique identity for roleplaying as a hobby by distinguishing it from other "games".