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For clarification, I see most of my games as S / N overlapping -- strong exploration of setting and character and no-collusion actor stance play with strong setting based premise and high-collusion pregame plotting.

from this thread:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8076&highlight=

Quote from: Ron Edwards
I agree with your post in general, but what makes the relationship map as I define it useful for Narrativist play, is that the GM is working from the map and back-story issues to set up scenes, not from pre-planned outcomes for scenes or relying on fiat to provide such outcomes during play. Combined with Bangs (as defined in Sorcerer, and refined in Sorcerer & Sword), which place the onus of significant decision-making squarely on the players, the relationship map is a powerful technique for facilitating thematic story creation.

Now, if that's what you're doing, then I have news: you ain't playing Simulationist.

I would argue that I am.

Let me give an example of one of my favorite few-shot plotlines, which I argue can be approached in a purely Sim way, and necessarily requires the use of a relationship map (or, rather, a story map) as a central game management device.  (Note:  I love this plotline.  If I am ever running for one of y'all, I will probably run this.  If you want me to do something else, you will need to request it.)

The basic set up:

The PCs are a group of missionaries from the Church, arriving in a small farming village in the boondocks to bring God's Word to the people and help them improve their lives and themselves.  I make it very, explicitly clear to the players that they are the Good Guys here -- I'm not going to pull any angsty backturns on them.  Further, they are essentially the only people in the world with magic, and they have a lot -- they can cure and bless like there is no tomorrow.  Well, there are some demonic sorcerers with magic, but it's very hard to come by and is at terrible price.

They arrive in a village full of rivalries, old and new, and many superstitions as well as one or two of the following: a crime, a corrupt authority figure, or demonic magic.  The plot emerges from introducing a powerful new element into the hidebound traditions of village life.  The only reasonable (in sim terms) way of handling these is a relational map of the village (albeit one with the rivalries and such on it) -- you can't expect the missionaries to take any particular path, you can only track their changes in the environment and how the people react to them.

The point here is that this is effectively a simulation of that situation.  Yes, it also drips moral conflict, but the use of the relationship map is not so much to plan the premise driven content (that emerges, by nature, from the setting and situation as a whole) but to track the gossip, backstabbing, double-dealing and suspicions in a simulationist manner, thus providing a "fair" and "accurate" determination of how the events play out.  I take a very "hands off" approach to this -- I don't change the way that the villagers would act to make the story more interesting.

And trust me, there are times when the players would have run me out of town on a rail if they weren't certain that I was tracking these things honestly (because things had gone so badly for them...)

Simulationist?

yrs--
--Ben

You're running a simulation of a situation... but the relationship map  - and through it, the whole simulation - is rigged.  You've got yourself a Premise - "Can a village's hidebound traditions survive contact with a powerful outside philosophy?"  The relationship-map in question has been specifically tailored to be a powder keg, and the player-characters have been specifically tailored to be the spark that makes everything blow up.

You've made it all but impossible to avoid addressing your premise, no matter how the subsequent simulation plays out.  Even if your subsequent exploration is done from an entirely simulationist perspective, the "damage" has already been done.

All in all, it sounds more than a bit narrativist to me  :-)

OK, I'll take a stab - you have a simulation of a situation, that also drips moral conflict.  Which ends up getting prioritized in play?  I mean that quite literally, in the sense of what actually happens - whether or not you change the villagers behavior to make the story more interesting (some Nar folks would, some wouldn't), is the story interesting (which in Nar terms means, is a Premise being created/developed)?  Or are you left with pure enjoyment of the implications of rivalries, twisting loyalties, the revelation of misplaced suspicions, and the like?

Either can be used to support the other, and either can show up as an obstacle for acheiving the other.  

That's a quick response - hope it makes some sense,

Gordon

Quote from: hanschristianandersenYou've made it all but impossible to avoid addressing your premise, no matter how the subsequent simulation plays out.  Even if your subsequent exploration is done from an entirely simulationist perspective, the "damage" has already been done.

All in all, it sounds more than a bit narrativist to me  :-)

BL>  Well, yes...  I think I was pretty explicit that the game is Nar/Sim at the top of the post.  It's difficult for me to cite examples from my own play experience that aren't somewhat Nar -- it just sort of happens when I'm around.  :-)

The point, though, is that while the Nar content comes from the overall situation, the relationship map is used for largely Simulationist purposes (tracking the emotional state of the various important characters in the village).  At least, I think that's Sim.  And, if it is, the relationship map is not necessarily a Nar device.

It's a niggling point, I admit.

yrs--
--Ben

Ben, there's nothing strictly Sim about tracking the state of and/or changes to things.  A Gamist might use the same relationship map you've got to track and tally up his allies in the town, using the number of allies as a sort of victory condition.

I can really understand where you're going with this situation and example because it's almost identical to the kinds of plotlines and relationship maps I come up with.  You take an emotionally and thematically-charged situation and drop the PCs into it to see what happens.  I also tend to call it Sim play, since we've both front-loaded the Premise and can then play without thinking about it ever again and without any commitment to a particular answer.  Is it really a priority of play if you only think about it at the beginning?  But everyone else keeps telling me that it's really Nar.  I'll wait for the Nar essay before I try to launch my counterattack on them.

In this case, I would particularly label it Nar, since you've declared the PCs as the good guys.  That seems like a pretty strong declaration of a moral Premise.  I'd be more likely to see what you're doing as Sim if you simply dropped the PCs into this situation with no expectations from them at all, where the emphasis might be exploring the situation or the characters involved.

Quote from: jdagnaBen, there's nothing strictly Sim about tracking the state of and/or changes to things.  A Gamist might use the same relationship map you've got to track and tally up his allies in the town, using the number of allies as a sort of victory condition.

BL>  Which is, sort of, my point.  I took Ron's quote as saying that the relationship map is a Nar device.  I think that it's a neutral device, with Sim leanings (because it tracks a world state.)

Quote
In this case, I would particularly label it Nar, since you've declared the PCs as the good guys.  That seems like a pretty strong declaration of a moral Premise.  I'd be more likely to see what you're doing as Sim if you simply dropped the PCs into this situation with no expectations from them at all, where the emphasis might be exploring the situation or the characters involved.

BL>  The PCs aren't necessarily good guys, but the Church is, as a whole, good -- does that make sense?  What I mean by that statement is that I'm not going to pull the cosmological rug out from under them with a bunch of pagans-are-good catholics-are-evil baggage.  There have been games where the PCs ended up slaughtering most of the village and keeping the others in line through fear.  Anything can, and will, happen.

And, for what it's worth, I also play games from the other angle -- traditional druids and healers dealing with the influx of the Church and the assault on their lifestyle.  I just tend to do those with gamers who I trust more.

Personally, I think that this style of play -- front loaded relationship driven Nar/Sim overlap -- is a very common form of Nar that is overlooked on the Forge because, largely, it is not system driven.  But it also probably belongs on another thread.

yrs--
--Ben

Hi Ben,

I don't read Ron's quote that way - he's just saying that r-maps CAN be used this way, and if you ARE using them this way, that's Nar play.  Of course, you could be using them in a different way - and that could STILL be Nar play.  Or it might not be.

The key bit in what Ron wrote is (for me) "useful for Narrativist play."  Which implies it may be useful for other stuff, too.  So, yes - a neutral device, that particular implementations of may "spin" to any leaning.

I like what folks have said about the cues that your particular game in question is probably Nar - but those cues are pretty much independent of the r-map.

Gordon

PS - "Tracking world state" is also a neutral thing, by my way of looking at GNS.  It is what you use that tracking for that will tell us about GNS preferences.

Ben, for a while it irked me that Ron had labeled Multiverser "simulationist" (although less so because he had praised it as among the best of that sort); but with a bit of consideration I began to see that he's probably right. Multiverser is driftable by the player in most cases, but the core engine is simulationist, and if the player doesn't want to take it elsewhere, that's where it stays.

Two of my worlds virtually scream narrativism. One of them, Post-Sympathetic Man, is an alternate modern in which the entire structure of social interaction is based on the concept of survival of the fittest. People literally kill to get to the top; they form coalitions for mutual empowerment, but anything we would call fair play is not a legitimate consideration. I drop a player character into this world, and expect that he'll deal with this. E. R. Jones called it the most insidiously evil horror scenario he'd ever read.

However, the first player I dropped into this world was strongly gamist. He ignored the core issues, and began to put himself into competition with those in power, in essence attempting to become the best of the best and so take over, at least in one field of endeavor. The issues never touched him. I've had others play this, and become immersed in the issues, but for him it was just a greater challenge.

The other world, Orc Rising, is a post-fantasy setting. Elves, men, and dwarfs are becoming civilized. Technology has not advanced significantly, but magic is fading from the world and few know any. Meanwhile, these "free peoples" are expanding by clearing the jungles to use for their own purposes, and are capturing and enslaving the orcs in great numbers, resulting in decimation of orc culture. The orcs aren't really the bad guys; but they aren't good guys, either. This whole slavery issue looms large in the setting, and players are easily drawn into the issues it creates.

However, here, too, the first player who ever entered this world didn't go for the issues. He played sim. He asked questions, got answers, wandered around learning how this world worked. He bought one orc slave, and told him to consider himself a free man and a friend, but that was the extent of his interest in the slave trade or the destruction of orc culture.

If you've got a situation in which players are tackling difficult moral, ethical, or personal issues which are thrust on them by the setting, then you've got narrativist play happening. Maybe you don't always get narrativist play--maybe you get players sometimes who come into the situation and wait to see what happens so they can explore how such a world works. One of the original Multiverser playtesters took the position that he was a spectator, an observer of events in the universes he visited, and rarely interfered in any way. Simulationist play tends that direction: we're here to discover what is happening. Narrativist and gamist play are more proactive, being efforts to make something happen. You can create settings that are so charged with issues that it is almost impossible to avoid narrativist play, but that doesn't mean that your players are creating theme while playing simulationist--it means you've made it extremely difficult for them to stay out of the thematic materials.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: Ben LehmanPersonally, I think that this style of play -- front loaded relationship driven Nar/Sim overlap -- is a very common form of Nar that is overlooked on the Forge because, largely, it is not system driven.  But it also probably belongs on another thread.  

Well, I would guess that it isn't discussed more because folks who play that way aren't talking about it.  While it might be common elsewhere, I don't think it is very common here on the Forge.  At times I have felt like an oddity here for talking about games of this sort.  

As for play not being "system-driven", I think that depends.  I see it as being a reversal of function.  In a rules system like, say, Trollbabe, the mechanics do little to aid plausibility, consistency, and continuity.  These are left up to the players and GM to produce on their own.  In contrast, a rules system like RuneQuest provides plausibility, consistency, and continuity -- but they leave things like scene breaks and pacing for the GM and players to handle on their own.  

Quote from: M. J. YoungBen, for a while it irked me that Ron had labeled Multiverser "simulationist" (although less so because he had praised it as among the best of that sort); but with a bit of consideration I began to see that he's probably right. Multiverser is driftable by the player in most cases, but the core engine is simulationist, and if the player doesn't want to take it elsewhere, that's where it stays.  

I'm not sure how this is any different than the case of relationship maps.  I think we have agreed here that r-maps are a tool which can be used for both simulationist and narrativist games.  Relationships are a part of the setting, and the map is just a way to keep track of such things -- just like a map of the town.  But the same applies to most other game-world mechanics.  They are used to track in-game quantities (i.e. Strength, damage, etc.), but those are things which can be used in either Simulationist or Narrativist games.  

If we agree that r-maps should not be called "narrativist", does it make sense to call Multiverser mechanics "simulationist"?

Hello,

John, the issue regarding system is this: single techniques vs. sets of techniques.

Again and again, someone who's struggling with the GNS concepts has a certain technique pointed out to him or her, and then goes "boink, I get it." But that does not mean that the technique in question defines a given mode of play; it only means that the particular person needed to consider that technique, relative to his or her current habits of play, in order to understand a given mode.

So then, when, people point at that single technique and say, "But that can be used for [fill in G, N, or S]!!", it's an aggravation in terms of the larger-scale, group discussion here.

I've said it a bunch of times: single techniques have no mode. But sets and combinations of techniques operate to facilitate modes.

It's a very easy concept that gets left trampled in the mud when people hare after (a) instants of play rather than instances, and (b) single techniques rather than sets of techniques in social situations.

One other thing: again and again, I have stated that this sort of Narrativist play,

Ben:

Quotethis style of play -- front loaded relationship driven Nar/Sim overlap -- is a very common form of Nar that is overlooked on the Forge because, largely, it is not system driven.

John:

QuoteI would guess that it isn't discussed more because folks who play that way aren't talking about it. While it might be common elsewhere, I don't think it is very common here on the Forge. At times I have felt like an oddity here for talking about games of this sort.

... is very common. And it's discussed frequently at the Forge. And it's typical of my preferred play, which I post about all the time. I can only surmise that you two are so distracted by the various weirdo applications (My Life with Master, Universalis, etc) that you miss the meaty, straightforward one.

A cursory review of threads on this forum and in Actual Play yield dozens of explicit discussions about this. If you're not seeing it, I dunno what to say.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron EdwardsAgain and again, I have stated that this sort of Narrativist play,
(...Ben's and John's description...)
... is very common. And it's discussed frequently at the Forge. And it's typical of my preferred play, which I post about all the time. I can only surmise that you two are so distracted by the various weirdo applications (My Life with Master, Universalis, etc) that you miss the meaty, straightforward one.

Fair enough.  I would be interested in more discussion of this, but the only way to do that is to start it.  I'll start a new thread for that.