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The Big Dice
2010-07-10, 06:49 PM
I was reading this article (http://ptgptb.org/0002/alltheboys.html) and thought I'd expound on some thoughts this sparked in me.

Let's start with the fundamentals: what is a role playing game? That's a harder question to answer than you might think, as illustrated by the short section given over to the question in the first page or two of any published RPG. To me, it splits into two core parts. They are, playing a role in an imaginary setting, and playing a game with your friends. And this is where the heresy begins: to have one without the other demeans both.

And dictionary definitions (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/roleplaying) of the word don’t are particularly unhelpful. So what is it? Is it ROLE playing, or is it role PLAYING? And how does it being a game fit into that?

Concentrating on the playing a role part is all well and good, but there are several fundamental flaws with the “storytelling” or “it’s all about the narrative” model of gaming. The most obvious one to me is the term 'storyteller.' This word (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/storyteller) can be defined in surprisingly few ways. And it gets worse when you look into it's synonym of narrator. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrator) And narrative (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrative) is even worse from a roleplaying perspective.

To me, telling a story implies that no matter what the players do, the outcome is already decided. Which means your active and unpredictable protagonists, aka your players, really don't have any impact on anything. Sure, anything can be justified with a good story, but my feeling is that the event doesn't become a story until after it has taken place. And having a strong narrative removes any necessity for involvement from your players.

To my mind, the medium of the roleplaying game just isn't a good one for telling stories. From my experience, roleplayers have a word for what happens when you try to use the medium to tell a story. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/story) They call it railroading and tend not to like it too much. Or, as a friend of mine says, “If you want to tell a story, go write a book already.”

So just playing a role isn't quite right, what about the playing a game? The word game (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/game) is a lot harder to define. However, when it comes to roleplaying games, there are two that I think fit better than most:

1. an amusement or pastime: children's games.
2. the material or equipment used in playing certain games: a store selling toys and games.
3. a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.
To me, the first one actually hits the nail on the head. Roleplaying is a pastime that has a lot in common with certain children's games. Which is something I'll come back to. Definition 2 works for the paraphernalia of roleplaying: dice, paper and books and so on. And definition 3 is what you get when you reduce the importance of playing a role in a roleplaying game.

Some games designers, and as a knock on effect, the people who play those games, tend to look down on one or the other approach to RPGs. Those who want the story and narrative aspects to dominate see people who play the game as lacking in some essential understanding of “how things should be.” While people who are more interested in the mechanical, game side of the equation see the narrative and story aspects as being needlessly pompous and self important.

And the thing is, neither perspective on roleplaying is right or wrong. Both are equally valid. One is yin to the other's yang. I would say that in my opinion, the very best roleplayers on both sides of the GM screen are the ones that can switch from the numbers and playing a game aspect of the hobby to the abstract and playing a role side of things without detrimentally affecting the flow of the gaming experience.

This dichotomy in gamers leads to something I call system snobbery. People on either side of the line look across to the others and see a warped version of themselves, and that leads to them thinking that people who don’t play in the same way as they do are “doing it wrong.” Or that they might be “stuck up, pretentious and arrogant.” They claim that the games the other side plays are weak, lame or somehow lacking. And yet, there’s no real difference. A good RPG should be able to accommodate a wide variety of play styles, from all social, no dice rolling all night, right the way through to mindless hack and slash.

And I completely blame game designers who made their names in the mid to late 90s for this split. Ideas like plot immunity and player entitlement were original and intriguing concepts when they first appeared in White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast games. But they are now looking a bit old and tired. Instead of new games offering as broad a canvas as possible, they instead focus on narrower and narrower visions.

All of which brings me back to my original question. Just what is a roleplaying game anyway? I believe a roleplaying game is what happens when a bunch of people get together to play 'let's pretend.' It's not that different from a bunch of kids playing Cops and Robbers really. Except as 'sophisticated adults' that's not good enough. We need to clearly define what our imaginary persona can and can't do, as well as find a way to resolve the 'bang you're dead' versus 'no I'm not' debate. That's why we have rules systems and task / conflict resolution mechanics. If we're kids playing 'pretendy magic samurai' then that's the role. If we're chucking dice and counting numbers with the intent of getting bigger numbers, that's the game.

Put those two things together and I think you're still missing something. It's something so fundamental to the hobby that it's almost completely forgotten about. I call it 'the First Question' and really it's where everything else stems from.

At the start of any game session, online scene or whatever, the GM sets a scene and posits a situation. After that there used to come a question. Somewhere along the way that got forgotten about, buried under all kinds of other ideas. But really, it's the doorway in to this weird and wonderful hobby.

And that question is, 'What do you do?'

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 08:57 PM
I was reading this article (http://ptgptb.org/0002/alltheboys.html) and thought I'd expound on some thoughts this sparked in me.

Let's start with the fundamentals: what is a role playing game? That's a harder question to answer than you might think, as illustrated by the short section given over to the question in the first page or two of any published RPG. To me, it splits into two core parts. They are, playing a role in an imaginary setting, and playing a game with your friends. And this is where the heresy begins: to have one without the other demeans both.

And dictionary definitions (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/roleplaying) of the word don’t are particularly unhelpful. So what is it? Is it ROLE playing, or is it role PLAYING? And how does it being a game fit into that?

Concentrating on the playing a role part is all well and good, but there are several fundamental flaws with the “storytelling” or “it’s all about the narrative” model of gaming. The most obvious one to me is the term 'storyteller.' This word (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/storyteller) can be defined in surprisingly few ways. And it gets worse when you look into it's synonym of narrator. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrator) And narrative (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrative) is even worse from a roleplaying perspective.
Just as a point of clarification, this is not what GNS would refer to as Narrativist play, as I covered in my prior article (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6871809&postcount=1)-

...Don't play "the story." The choices you present to the PCs have to be real choices, which means that you can't possibly know already which way they'll choose. You can't have plot points in mind beforehand, things like "gotta get the PCs up to that old cabin so they can witness Brother Ezekiel murder Sister Abigail..." No. What if the PCs reconcile Brother Ezekiel and Sister Abigail? You've wasted your time. Worse, what if, because you've invested your time, you don't let the PCs reconcile them?
You've robbed your players of the game.

Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they can't resolve the Situation without doing so.

Me: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any.

The point is that one can care about and enjoy complex issues, changing protagonists, and themes in both sorts of play, Narrativism and Simulationism. The difference lies in the point and contributions of literal instances of play; its operation and social feedback.

The article you're citing is pretty well a textbook example of a Simulationist player, and I very much sympathise with the author: I can't stand random OOC chatter that actively mocks the world and the characters, I want the setting to make sense, I want to daydream. But you have to realise that plenty of players are perfectly happy with 'the board game', as the article puts it.

The Big Dice
2010-07-10, 09:03 PM
The article you're citing is pretty well a textbook example of a Simulationist player, and I very much sympathise with the author: I can't stand random OOC chatter that actively mocks the world and the characters, I want the setting to make sense, I want to daydream. But you have to realise that plenty of players are perfectly happy with 'the board game', as the article puts it.
I'm not quite sure how the equation of:

FOCUS + ACCEPTANCE = ENGROSSMENT
ENGROSSMENT = ROLE-PLAYING

Works out to be any kind of simulation.

The real problem is trying to apply a theoretical tripartate system to a real situation. Real situations are much more nuanced than a simple "If not A then B. If neither A nor B, then C" allows for.

Umael
2010-07-10, 09:16 PM
The article is a lot of complaining about why can't people immerse themselves in the game because they have OOC chatter.

Sorry, but some of that OOC chatter I like. We have moments where games stop because someone said something that made everyone crack up laughing.

And you know what? We're having fun.

The author of that article? Isn't.

It's like going to a movie and complaining about people giving it the MST3K treatment without realizing that everyone else in the theater has joined in and is loving the audience reaction and commentary.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 09:31 PM
I'm not quite sure how the equation of:

FOCUS + ACCEPTANCE = ENGROSSMENT
ENGROSSMENT = ROLE-PLAYING

Works out to be any kind of simulation.
Because the primary focus is on the idea that "Internal cause is King." That- after the initial 'setup' is complete- both the characters and the world should behave in the way they do because of factors within the internally-consistent imagined world. It sounds so simple- and to we Sim-inclined players, it is- but it's clearly incompatible with what many other players evidently want.

sofawall
2010-07-10, 09:35 PM
I'm not quite sure how the equation of:

FOCUS + ACCEPTANCE = ENGROSSMENT
ENGROSSMENT = ROLE-PLAYING

Works out to be any kind of simulation.


You're forgetting, the words GNS uses have their own definitions that have only tenuous relationships to their English origins, if that.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 09:45 PM
You're forgetting, the words GNS uses have their own definitions that have only tenuous relationships to their English origins, if that.
This is often true. ...However, I think that Simulationism isn't the worst word for it.

Aroka
2010-07-10, 09:52 PM
OP's definition of the word "story" is completely unsustainable. A bunch of people all taking turns writing one sentence can still create a story; a bunch of people playing a RPG definitely can. The key is that it's not any one person's story.

Dairun Cates
2010-07-10, 10:17 PM
It's like going to a movie and complaining about people giving it the MST3K treatment without realizing that everyone else in the theater has joined in and is loving the audience reaction and commentary.

At the same time, have you ever been to a theater where you were enjoying a movie, and there was someone behind you that wouldn't shut up and stop nitpicking every small thing even when the person flat-out didn't know what they were talking about. That person thinks they're funny. Hilarious even. They can't let a chance for a joke pass up. And since every line is comedy gold, well, there shouldn't be a line they don't talk over. When it gets bad, it's unbearable.

Heck. I was even an officer in an anime club in college, and most of the fun was a bit of mocking the sillier bits with friends, but when the dramatic and climactic parts of the show comes, there's sometimes those people that think they're funny and will honestly say things like, "Your entire family died. Get over it wuss!" or any kind of comraderie between two males becomes homosexual in nature and for two females, it's instantly hot. Eventually, it gets bad enough that you can't even hear the lines in the show they're talking so much and they're literally making fun of the show making no sense because they're not paying attention to the parts where they're explaining it.

I think the writer of that article was honestly complaining of similar, because it's all too common. Jovial joking with friends builds comraderie. Abject mockery and forced humor build contempt and destroys willing suspension of disbelief. Pointing out something mildly silly with the GM's setting is comic relief, nitpicking every detail is mockery.

But it's not just that. It's the players that refuse to play with others, make characters that aren't compatible with the campaign, characters that complain every time they can't have the spotlight, and characters that flatout take joy in being a jerk and ruining everyone's fun. They're sadly way more common than they should be, and it only takes one to ruin somebody's fun. I've seen them, and at best, I've managed to keep what should have been an awesome campaign enjoyable enough for people to stay. If you ask my players what their favorite moments are, those players will certainly have been absent from those sessions or that campaign.

So, I do sympathize with the article. It's not perfect, but he does raise a legitimate complaint. He's not saying that OOC talk should never happen, but as he said, "if your OOC voice becomes completely indistinguishable from your IC voice, then something has gone wrong [sic]".

Have you ever had a session where no one was in character AT ALL and have you ever had people mock you for decisions your character made even though you did them to advance the game? Have you ever had someone argue every small rules decision from the GM and drive the entire session to a halt? Have you ever had someone that actively tries to kill party members, but gets defensive when everyone does the same in turn or the GM has NPCs not like him or her for it? THIS is what he's complaining about, and if you've never experienced it, I envy you.

Now, I'm going to read over some of the other posts and talk about some of the other points, because I love these kinds of discussions.

Kalirren
2010-07-10, 10:37 PM
So after having read (links are in my sig) the articles by Hitchens/Drachen (http://tinyurl.com/n9mezh) and Montola (http://tinyurl.com/l2y77y), I get the feeling that not many people have attempted to seriously look at RP as an art form, just like sculpture or music or painting.

If you're trying to look at the various processes that create a roleplaying session and try to describe from that what a RPG is, you're going to end up with a bunch of characterizations of different kinds and instances of RP that inherently fail to really nail the point about what RP is and why RP can be meaningful to its player-participants.

I'm not trying to say that this approach is fruitless, don't get me wrong; I think Montola's description of RP is pretty much spot on right, just because it's trying to be careful about delineating those features that -all- RPGs share.

Montola mentions the following basic rules.


1) Role-playing is an interactive process of defining and re-defining the state, properties and contents of an imaginary game world.
2) The power to define the game world is allocated to participants of the game. The participants recognize the existence of this power hierarchy.
3) Player-participants define the game world through personified character constructs, conforming to the state, properties and contents of the game world.


But Montola doesn't really ask the question about why those rules exist, to grasp at the essence of what RP might be. Admittedly that's sort of a fruitless endeavor, and might promise to close the field of academic roleplaying study in the best case and delegitimize it in the worst.

So I propose a different take on it. Instead of looking at process we look at product. As art, roleplay can produce stories, literature, and theater, and even spins off subsidiary categories of art (like music composed for a setting, or custom character avatars). Socially, it can build rapport, provide catharsis, and pass time meaningfully.

I think the defining element of RP is the interaction of at least two personae; even solo cRPGs involve the interaction of the player character avatar with the environment created by the programmers, and I can envision a single-player RPG involving the creation and interaction of multiple personae that would be very effective in exploring the player's mental state. But the important thing is the (cooperative) exploration of those personae. Through whatever stories that they may experience, worlds and world-contexts they may interact with, systems that may be used to describe them, we players develop those personae and come to understand them. We participate in them. Through our participation, they become ours, and we become them. Participation is where the meaning comes from, just as it always does.

Umael
2010-07-11, 12:26 AM
At the same time, have you ever been to a theater where you were enjoying a movie, and there was someone behind you that wouldn't shut up and stop nitpicking every small thing even when the person flat-out didn't know what they were talking about. That person thinks they're funny. Hilarious even. They can't let a chance for a joke pass up. And since every line is comedy gold, well, there shouldn't be a line they don't talk over. When it gets bad, it's unbearable.

I understand your point, and I didn't mean for my earlier post to sound like I was dismissing the possibility of the other perspective. Yes, it can get to be too much, but if everyone is having fun, what's the problem?



I think the writer of that article was honestly complaining of similar, because it's all too common. Jovial joking with friends builds comraderie. Abject mockery and forced humor build contempt and destroys willing suspension of disbelief. Pointing out something mildly silly with the GM's setting is comic relief, nitpicking every detail is mockery.

Don't have any counterpoint to that (as my original point still stands, while I find things can be as bad as all that for certain groups), but I do have to comment - nice use of rhetoric there.

And yes, I am being serious in my compliment.

I think that a lot of your response, while articulate, is based on the misguided belief that I objected because I saw the article as the author whining. It is not so. If anything, my primary complaint is that the author's article was more free-form and stream of consciousness writing, which made his message difficult to decipher.

(Translation: I didn't get them from his article, but then, I didn't think it was particularly well-written. If that was indeed his point, then I withdraw my former objection.)

Yora
2010-07-11, 05:44 AM
Somehow I have the feeling that this all comes down to some people complaining "my group sucks!"

All the Boys But My Johnny are Marching out of Step
I think this hits the nail on the head.

arrowhen
2010-07-11, 09:07 AM
RPGs are the karaoke of story.

Thinker
2010-07-11, 09:14 AM
Just as a point of clarification, this is not what GNS would refer to as Narrativist play, as I covered in my prior article (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6871809&postcount=1)-




The article you're citing is pretty well a textbook example of a Simulationist player, and I very much sympathise with the author: I can't stand random OOC chatter that actively mocks the world and the characters, I want the setting to make sense, I want to daydream. But you have to realise that plenty of players are perfectly happy with 'the board game', as the article puts it.

GNS is bs. Why you want to pigeonhole people into neat little boxes is beyond me.

arrowhen
2010-07-11, 01:33 PM
GNS doesn't pigeonhole people, it just describes modes of play. It's still mostly crap - a bit of truth and a whole mess of ill-chosen terms and Ron Edwards pomposity - but at least it doesn't pigeonhole people.

Kylarra
2010-07-11, 02:24 PM
GNS doesn't pigeonhole people, it just describes modes of play. It's still mostly crap - a bit of truth and a whole mess of ill-chosen terms and Ron Edwards pomposity - but at least it doesn't pigeonhole people.However, GNS proponents do tend to pigeonhole people into their little boxes.

Hyooz
2010-07-11, 04:22 PM
All these different systems for defining playstyles and giving them names just seems silly to me. (Especially GNS. GNS is just leagues of stupid.) It over-defines people and games when the only question should be "Am I having fun?" not "Am I a simulationist or a narrativist?" and "Is this game gamist enough for me?"

I thoroughly enjoy being part of, participating in, and writing a good story though a game of DnD. I also like simulating little bits of my character's life through the rules, but then goofing the hell off during a combat because some things are just silly, and being in-character all the time gets tiresome for me.

No one fits perfectly under the GNS rules, and no system that tries to apply rules or boxes to people and games will ever work because, go figure, people don't fit well in boxes. The only method that works is asking someone to describe what they like in a game, and even that will have exceptions, and they will be able to enjoy games out of that scope.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-12, 08:32 AM
No one fits perfectly under the GNS rules, and no system that tries to apply rules or boxes to people and games will ever work because, go figure, people don't fit well in boxes....
No-one is absolutely tall, or absolutely short, or absolutely skinny, or absolutely fat, or absolutely muscular. Most people fall somewhere along a spectrum between these extremes, which don't have definite terminations in the first place. You could call the categories artificial, in a sense. But you still can't make clothes that will comfortably fit everybody.

Nobody ever said that a given person will fit exactly in a given GNS bracket. I know I don't, and it's completely irrelevant- nobody "absolutely" likes spicy food, and nobody "absolutely" hates it- whatever the hell that means- but people can have sufficiently different tastes on the matter that you can't serve the same dish to both and expect either to like it. Compromise, and they'll both complain, because now it's consistently mediocre. Serve them different dishes, and it takes twice as much effort to cook- and I'm not sure you even have that option in RPGs, where 'playing together' implies, at some level, eating out of the same bowl.

I don't know why this argument gets trotted out so frequently. France and Germany are artificial categories for arbitrary points on a continental landmass, but people living in them still tend to be hundreds of miles apart.

Ormagoden
2010-07-12, 09:22 AM
::Munches popcorn::

Murdim
2010-07-12, 11:14 AM
I don't care whether the GNS theory has an ounce of truth in it or not. But please, Samurai Jill, please stop trying to bring it and make it the focus of the discussion in every. Single. Topic. About the deeper nature of roleplaying games. I see you participating in.


RPGs are the karaoke of story.

CRPGs, maybe ; even then, it would usually be the karaoke of a "multiple choices song", if such a thing exists. Unless they're railroaded to the extreme, tabletop RPGs are more comparable to improv.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-12, 12:03 PM
I don't care whether the GNS theory has an ounce of truth in it or not. But please, Samurai Jill, please stop trying to bring it and make it the focus of the discussion in every. Single. Topic. About the deeper nature of roleplaying games. I see you participating in.
I'll stop when it ceases being relevant in almost every single case.

kjones
2010-07-12, 01:07 PM
I'm going to go home tonight and chant "GNS! GNS! GNS!" fifty times into my mirror and see if Samurai Jill appears.

Yora
2010-07-12, 01:10 PM
Regardless of the supposed sense of GNS, you're now getting mean.
Don't feed the trolls on either side of the fence.

Thinker
2010-07-12, 01:12 PM
I'll stop when it ceases being relevant in almost every single case.

The OP wasn't talking about GNS. He was using terms that were also used by GNS, but from the context it was clear that he was not referring to it.

I guess when you have a hammer...

Kalirren
2010-07-12, 01:14 PM
But there are better theories out there.

Actually, of all threads to bring GNS into, this is a rather good one, because the gist of the GNS thesis (however weak it may be) is still actually quite close to the OP's point. When most people think of telling a story, it's inherently not a collaborative process. The OP agrees:



To me, telling a story implies that no matter what the players do, the outcome is already decided. Which means your active and unpredictable protagonists, aka your players, really don't have any impact on anything. Sure, anything can be justified with a good story, but my feeling is that the event doesn't become a story until after it has taken place. And having a strong narrative removes any necessity for involvement from your players.


I think one of the biggest problems with Edward's viewpoint is that it tries to bundle two theses as a package deal which really belong separately.

Edward's (weak) thesis of Narrativism is simple: you -can- tell a story collaboratively if everyone agrees on a theme to be addressed. Then whatever the IC outcome, character-wise, the players will have a meaningful OOC story at the end because it addressed the theme they wished to address. This I think is pretty rock solid. Some groups do play this way.

Edward's (strong) thesis of Narrativism is more problematic; that you can -only- tell a story collaboratively if everyone agrees on a theme to be addressed. I disagree. Many groups are quite satisfied with stories that emerge from characters' experiences in context, without agreement upon any theme or premise for the game. Not every narrative needs to have a moral in order to be meaningful OOC.

But to return to what I think is the most interesting part of the OP's ramblings:



Some games designers, and as a knock on effect, the people who play those games, tend to look down on one or the other approach to RPGs. Those who want the story and narrative aspects to dominate see people who play the game as lacking in some essential understanding of “how things should be.” While people who are more interested in the mechanical, game side of the equation see the narrative and story aspects as being needlessly pompous and self important.

And the thing is, neither perspective on roleplaying is right or wrong. Both are equally valid. One is yin to the other's yang. I would say that in my opinion, the very best roleplayers on both sides of the GM screen are the ones that can switch from the numbers and playing a game aspect of the hobby to the abstract and playing a role side of things without detrimentally affecting the flow of the gaming experience.

This dichotomy in gamers leads to something I call system snobbery. People on either side of the line look across to the others and see a warped version of themselves, and that leads to them thinking that people who don’t play in the same way as they do are “doing it wrong.” Or that they might be “stuck up, pretentious and arrogant.” They claim that the games the other side plays are weak, lame or somehow lacking. And yet, there’s no real difference. A good RPG should be able to accommodate a wide variety of play styles, from all social, no dice rolling all night, right the way through to mindless hack and slash. (emphasis mine)

And I completely blame game designers who made their names in the mid to late 90s for this split. Ideas like plot immunity and player entitlement were original and intriguing concepts when they first appeared in White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast games. But they are now looking a bit old and tired. Instead of new games offering as broad a canvas as possible, they instead focus on narrower and narrower visions.


So the implied question here is, acknowledging and given the breadth of people's different playing styles, is it possible to design a broad-visioned system that is flexible enough to accommodate them, and how?

Yora
2010-07-12, 01:54 PM
A system should try to cater to one typ of people, and do that well!
A system that wants to do everything simply can not be good, because some things just contradict each other.
But the importance of the system is really pretty low. It's the groups agreement on what way of playing they will be using. You can play D&D without ever getting into any fights, or play DSA as a pure combat game.

Kalirren
2010-07-12, 02:06 PM
A system should try to cater to one type of people, and do that well!
A system that wants to do everything simply can not be good, because some things just contradict each other.

Yours is in fact the mentality that the OP decries. Smooth in use, broad in appeal, and easy to design, pick two. Most system publishers pick smooth and easy so they can get something out to the press. What the OP is looking for is smooth and broad, and presumably willing to put in the effort in the design to make it happen.

What are the contradictions you see? To take one example I've come to be familiar with, I know that people who play the numbers game like optimization and people who play for exotic fluff like flavored niches. All you have to do to resolve this impending contradiction is make a system wherein you have a formula for making a balanced class with any flavor. 4E does this quite well.

The Big Dice
2010-07-12, 04:37 PM
So the implied question here is, acknowledging and given the breadth of people's different playing styles, is it possible to design a broad-visioned system that is flexible enough to accommodate them, and how?

Much as it pains me to admit it, I think 4th edition Legend of the Five Rings could be a step in the right direction here. AEG have taken the phrase "L5R your way" and used that as the cornerstone for the design philosophy of 4th ed.

I haven't had a chance to read the book in great depth yet. And it's a meaty tome, 400 pages exactly. But my first impression is good. There's a reasonable balance of social and martial crunch, plenty of emphasis on story but also plenty of scope for action and adventure. And a genuine feeling that the writers were reaching for something different. Or at least different from previous editions of the game.

The thing with me is, I'm looking for a new paradigm in gaming. The mid 90s "fluffy storytelling games" approach seems to be too pompous, too much of it being drawn from LARPing. And the "crunchy hard mechanical games" approach seems to be too much an attempt to emulate CRPGS and MMORPGS. And both of those approaches miss the point. Tabletop roleplaying is a different beast from a LARP and a very different animal from MMOGs.

GNS just doesn't cut it for me either. Ron Edwards and his hangers on miss the point completely. They try to classify things too tightly, don't use language properly and followers of the theory don't get that it doesn't work in the real world. And oh my, the jargon. Which means the initial hypothesis must be flawed. Although I do like Edward's ideas on task resolution being broken down into a handful of categories, outside of game design, there's not much need for even that part of it.

The thing is, system is only relevant insofar as it gives a means to define and codify the genre of the game you want to play. Just as a 5 year old picks up a towel to play superheroes, or picks up a stick to be a lightsaber, I pick up a game system that is going to support the genre conventions I want to confine my roleplay with. I wouldn't use Mutants and Masterminds to play a samurai game any more than I'd use Legend of the Five Rings to play a 1920s gangsters game or Call of Cthulhu to play a superhero game.

But I might use GURPS to play any of those genres, if it felt right.

Other than that, I really don't think system matters.

Jarawara
2010-07-12, 05:08 PM
Warning: I had an insightful thought, but as I posted, it devolved into a long-winded rant about people I don't game with anymore. I considered deletion as being the wisest course of action, but I can't help myself. I wrote it, therefore someone must read it.

My apologies if this offends anyone. I didn't intend this to be a response to any thread on this board. I had off-board people in mind as I wrote it.

*~*~*

The author of the article kept referring to why he plays, and how games are missing the point of why people play. He then admits that there might be other reasons to play, but can't seem to imagine what they were.

I for one play games to socialize. I mean, I take my games seriously, but I have friends over to play because I like my friends, not my games.

But as I read through the article, I couldn't help but thinking... the main reason I see many people having for roleplaying is to play the game "King of the Hill".

They climb their hill, which is for them a personal testement on 'how roleplaying should be done', and then try to knock down everyone else who's climbing that hill in any way but their own (and often even if they *are* climbing the same way).

The many discussions on attempting to understand what drives people to (and away from) games, GNS theory, railroading vs sandboxing... all of this are just a side effect of the need of some to 'enforce' their vision of gaming onto others.

I shall give some examples, in case I'm not making any sense. Which is highly probable...

I game because I like the social interaction. Mind you, the *game* must have story, be highly engrossing, and the longer the better - my current campaign is on its eighth year and we are considering turning it into a book for publication - but as much time as I spend on the details that enrich the game and the world and the people within... it's the people at the table that I want to spend time with.

We joke, we laugh, we talk politics and TV and movies and relationships. We talk about anything but the game. I'm sure the author of the article would say that we totally ruined his fun, stole the magic, and utterly failed at roleplaying, but I wasn't there to stay in character, I was there to see my friends.

However - when we've had others in our group that don't think like we do, then the sparks start flying. Some start to insist that "everything you say is what your character says", or some version thereof. I played with one DM who would penalize you 100xp everytime you said anything that wasn't in-character, or make reference to anything that wasn't in-setting. A player described an object as being "navy blue in color", and was penalized 100xp because "navy blue wasn't invented as a color until the modern age".

I've seen DM's insist the players are not playing right. I've seen players critical of each other for the same reason. I notice that players never get 'punished for being out of character', if they do so to criticize others for being out of character.

I just called on an old friend, to see how his new game is going. He said he's "just about to lay down the hammer on these goofballs". And that was just in the first session. They weren't playing the way he wanted them to play. They weren't serious enough for him. They weren't... well, they weren't letting him have all the spotlight, is really what it is.

Rules fights are much the same. Often it doesn't matter who is right or wrong - the participants often want to 'win' the argument, regardless of what the rules actually say. I knew one player, even when proven wrong, insisted he was right but then went to another group and got into the same argument, but this time he changed sides. He knew he had been proven wrong the first time - so now he wanted to relive the fight but with the satisfaction of being on the right side. Ultimately, he was there to argue, not to play, and force others to admit that he was right.

And of course, anytime players start bickering over what character matches well against what character, ultimately leading to a PC v PC fight (whether as part of the gameplay, or as a specialized 'arena' game, it's still the same - my character is better than yours, and you *must* submit to my superiority).

I've even see it from time to time here, where people post on how when they see a DM running a game wrong, they would try to subvert the game and prove to the DM what's so wrong about it. Dude - if they're having fun, let them play. If you don't like it, leave and go elsewhere. But instead, there's this base instinct to play in that game in order to prove everyone else wrong, leaving only their way as the right way.

Those people are not just playing to 'immerse themselves in the gameworld'. They might have other reasons to play, maybe they do like to spend time with friends - but bottom line, they play so they can enforce their rules and their styles of play upon others.


RPGs - the adult version of King of the Hill.

Jarawara
2010-07-12, 05:32 PM
Lost in that rant may have been the basic message, that not all people play to 'immerse' themselves in the gameworld, and to 'play a hero'. I RPG to spend time with my friends. Others have other reasons, some good, some bad.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-12, 05:43 PM
I'm going to go home tonight and chant "GNS! GNS! GNS!" fifty times into my mirror and see if Samurai Jill appears.

Regardless of the supposed sense of GNS, you're now getting mean.
No, this stuff really doesn't bother me. Kjones is technically 'being mean', but he is also being silly, and silliness is easily ignored.

What infuriates me are posts by people that are clearly intelligent, educated, well-meaning, speaking from experience, and absolutely head-bangingly wrong.


At any rate, I'll quote from an exchange I had with Murdim-

"The reason why I brought [GNS] into play was because, in a prior thread, the OP had given me the distinct impression that he believed narrativist == railroading- because in most games, plot is imposed by force- and was now raising the specific term 'narrative' and it's connotations as an example of all the precise problems that GNS-narrativism specifically arose to solve. I was honestly trying to clarify a serious misconception on his part. I'm sorry if it came across as an effort to hijack the thread."

nefele
2010-07-12, 07:17 PM
ITo me, telling a story implies that no matter what the players do, the outcome is already decided.
[...]
To my mind, the medium of the roleplaying game just isn't a good one for telling stories. From my experience, roleplayers have a word for what happens when you try to use the medium to tell a story. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/story) They call it railroading and tend not to like it too much. Or, as a friend of mine says, “If you want to tell a story, go write a book already.”
Without underestimating the dangers of railroading (which basically occurs when the DM is hellbent on telling HIS story), I believe you are missing something fundamental about stories and storytelling.

Storytelling doesn't begin and end with pages written by one individual after some planning, like novels and short stories - where a bunch of people deciding on the spot what happens next would probably be a hindrance. This method is actually a recent invention.

Storytelling begins with collaboration. It begins with improvisation. It begins with no original plan whatsoever. With no idea how it will end when you speak the first word. With no noble goal to give meaning or teach a moral - though this sometimes came unwittingly, by default, and soon became a self-conscious option. It begins with ORAL TRADITION.

That's how humans began to tell stories. And they continued to use it as the prevalent storytelling method, despite inventing alphabets and theaters and printing presses along the way, from the minute we came down from the trees until the 20th century. Sophocles, Shakespeare, Hugo and Dostoyevsky, they were all supplementary to oral tradition, but never actually replaced it. Only the Society of the Spectacle and the lack of spare time managed to kill it.

Everything you can now find in a mythology book, folk legends and lore, fairy tales, ballads, all these are powerful stories, with theme and meaning and moral if you wish to find one. None of these were born out of a single imagination. None of these were born out of a plan. And yet, to this day, they continue to inspire people. And they continue to inspire - surprise! - roleplayers. Which is only fitting.

Storytelling via collaboration and improvisation is not something weird and exotic. It's what human beings have been doing for thousands of years. It's the most natural thing in the world. And there's a catch. If the stories are interesting, they get retold generation after generation, and stay alive. If they are boring, they are forgotten. (I never said that collective storytelling guarantees a good story.)

The exact same thing happens with RPGs, despite the fact that there are dice involved. Every game is a story, even dungeon crawls where nothing other than hack'n'slash ever happens. That would hardly make a good story (though it's not inconceivable, if the party dynamic is intriguing), but who cares? If the players were having a good time, it's cool.

But a game may also make a great story, despite (and occasionally because of) being improvised and collaborative. Something to remember and cherish and retell your friends and post on the internet - where people thank you and praise your group and your DM.

Case in point: read SilverClawShift's Campaign Journals (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836), at least the first game. No railroading. No plans in advance about how the story will end. No fudging dice for the sake of the story. And yet, it's a tale of its own right, with conflict and passion and suspense and emotion and closure and one of the most awesome epilogues I've ever read. Which was, naturally, improvised on the spot by a player.

The Big Dice
2010-07-12, 09:59 PM
Storytelling begins with collaboration. It begins with improvisation. It begins with no original plan whatsoever. With no idea how it will end when you speak the first word. With no noble goal to give meaning or teach a moral - though this sometimes came unwittingly, by default, and soon became a self-conscious option. It begins with ORAL TRADITION.
Storytelling begins with the story teller. The Celts called him a Bard. Other cultures had other names. A Celtic bard had to be able to recite not one but several epics perfectly before he was considered competent at his craft.

The Aboriginal people of Australia still have traditions that go back in an unbroken line for literally thousands of years. Oral traditions, based on the retelling of tales that go back to the Dream Time. And that have been told and retold in exactly the same oral form for millennia.

That's not improvisation and making things up isn't how an oral tradition works. An oral tradition is the telling and retelling of the same traditional stories, passed on by word of mouth.

Oral traditions really have nothing to do with RPGs.

nefele
2010-07-13, 12:31 AM
Storytelling begins with the story teller. The Celts called him a Bard.
The original storyteller, if I may be so bold, was NOT someone who already had a special place and title in society. The original storyteller was a bloody amateur, and he was there before such titles were invented. (Otherwise there would be no stories yet for him to tell. :smalltongue:)

Celtic mythology wasn't created overnight. I would think this is evident, wouldn't you? It had no single author. Scores of people contributed to it over the ages. Additions were made, variants were produced, details changed, and in the end you had Fionn mac Cumhaill's complete biography, to be more or less set in stone (very figuratively speaking) from one point onwards. Nice, but without collective storytelling preceding him, the Bard would have nothing to narrate.

When we have more sources available, like for Greek mythology, we can even reconstruct the time line of each tale (what was added when or when this variant was introduced) and the origin (what was borrowed from the Assyrians, what was a local belief of the peoples who dwelt there before the Greeks came, what was an addition of a single eponymous author). And here, the "set in stone" part is not so clear. Is it Hesiod? Is it Homer? Is it perhaps the classical times? They are not the same, because in the meantime people intervened and, well, improvised.

And to whose imagination do we owe the tales of King Arthur? Sir Thomas Malory? Or the countless poets that came up with the romances he basically stitched up? Or Geoffrey of Monmouth? Or the nameless people who produced the earlier versions of each tale?


...I feel kinda bad for stating something so blatantly obvious. Maybe I was misunderstood? Maybe the term "oral tradition" produced the wrong effect? To clarify, I meant it in the sense of tales passing from person to person and from one generation to another. Including epics that are indeed memorized word for word (because these are rarely made by a single author, and if they are, nine times out of ten it's a gathering of older tales), but mostly stories that change over time with each narrator's contribution. The variations of fairy tales, within a country (or language) and across the world, are a scientific field in itself. Child mentions several versions for half the ballads of his collection. Etc.

To clarify further, I'm not saying that storytelling in RPGs works in the exact same way with oral tradition - that would be daft. :smalltongue: But I am saying that the basic elements to which you objected (as if they made storytelling impossible) are common to both of them: multiple authors as opposed to a single one, and improvisation as opposed to a predetermined plan.

arrowhen
2010-07-13, 01:25 AM
RPGs are the karaoke of story.

CRPGs, maybe ; even then, it would usually be the karaoke of a "multiple choices song", if such a thing exists. Unless they're railroaded to the extreme, tabletop RPGs are more comparable to improv.

What I was getting at was that the point of karaoke isn't the song you're singing, it's the act of singing it. You don't have to be any good at singing -- hell, it's much more entertaining if you're not -- you just have to get up and do it.

RPGs are the same way. Sure, we tell stories together, but the story itself isn't the goal. We don't make up characters and roll dice and talk in funny voices for several hours in order to create a finished work of fiction. We do it to celebrate the process of creating fiction (and specifically, the process of creating fiction through gameplay, which is kind of weird when you think about it.)

No one looks back at the end of a session and says, "You know what? That was a lot of fun, but the story we came up with was a total cliche, the dialog was clunky in places, and the pacing was all screwed up. We fail."

AvatarZero
2010-07-13, 06:35 AM
You're forgetting, the words GNS uses have their own definitions that have only tenuous relationships to their English origins, if that.

You know, theoretical models are supposed to enable discussion by giving people some common terms to talk with. It's nice to be able to have a discussion without spending the first half hour clarifying what I mean by "story" or "realism" or "immersion" or any of the other words that mean different things to different people more often than not.


GNS is bs. Why you want to pigeonhole people into neat little boxes is beyond me.

Speaking for myself, because it helps me to understand the hobby, even if it's an abstraction.


What are the contradictions you see? To take one example I've come to be familiar with, I know that people who play the numbers game like optimization and people who play for exotic fluff like flavored niches. All you have to do to resolve this impending contradiction is make a system wherein you have a formula for making a balanced class with any flavor. 4E does this quite well.

Contradictions between playstyles and 4e being mentioned in the same paragraph? :smallsmile: I like 4e, but a lot of people don't. For the people who don't, and who do like 3e, there's a contradiction between what you might call Simulationist play and Gamist play; the designers for 4e made a conscious decision to level the playing field for 4e at the expense of removing a lot of setting detail and introducing a lot of dissociated mechanics. Promoted Gamism and the expense of Simulationism. That's a contradiction.

Here's where I get that term:
http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/dissociated-mechanics.html

Here's a place where Dave Noonan (one of 4e's designers) talks about Gamist play being the best type of play. (Search for "shaedling queen".) If you disagree, chances are you don't think 4e is objectively better than other games:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070803a

here's a rebuttal from that first website (again, you'll need to search for "shaedling queen":
http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2007-08.html

Side note: I use the term "dissociated mechanics" because it lets me get closer to the issue I want to talk about than everyday vocabulary. I think that a lot of people who would otherwise say "4e doesn't support Simulationist play as well as 3e!" have ended up saying "4e is just like World of Warcraft!" because they didn't have the words.

Saph
2010-07-13, 09:47 AM
What infuriates me are posts by people that are clearly intelligent, educated, well-meaning, speaking from experience, and absolutely head-bangingly wrong.

Jill, have you ever considered that the reason so many intelligent, educated, well-meaning, experienced gamers think GNS is a bad theory is because it is actually a bad theory?

Instead, your basic assumption seems to be that if anyone disagrees with you, it must obviously be because they don't understand the theory. So you explain it again, and again, and again. You're like Clippy the Microsoft Office Assistant Paperclip.



"It looks like you're having a discussion on RPGs! Would you like me to analyse the discussion in terms of GNS theory?" (Select Yes or No)

No.

"You have selected: No. Obviously this means you don't properly understand GNS theory! Would you like help?" (Select Yes or No)

No.

"You have selected: No. You will now be redirected to a stack of essays by Ron Edwards. Please select which essay of his you'd like to read first."

None of them.

"You have selected: None. Do you now agree that GNS theory is an excellent and insightful way to look at RPGs?" (Select Yes or No)

No.

"You have selected: No. Obviously this means you don't properly understand GNS theory! Would you like help? (Select Yes or No)

No.

"You have selected: No. You will now be redirected to a stack of essays by Ron Edwards. Please select which essay of his you'd like to read first."

None of them.

"You have selected: None. Do you now agree that GNS theory is an excellent and insightful way to look at RPGs?" (Select Yes or No)

No.

"You have selected: No. Obviously this means you don't properly understand GNS theory! Would you like help? (Select Yes or No)

(process repeats)

Samurai Jill
2010-07-13, 10:18 AM
Saph, you are being silly. Stop now.

AvatarZero cited an article by a guy (http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2007-08.html) who is the perfect example of what I mean. He detests everything that was changed in D&D 4E that made things less 'realistic' or 'dissociative', but gives levels and classes a free pass, even going to great lengths to explain how Einstein could be a 6th level Expert (yes, because it is likely that Einstein rolled for minimum Hit Points with every 'level'.) It's a tour-de-force in ad-hoc rationalisation.

The man is a highly intelligent pants-on-head idiot.

Saph
2010-07-13, 10:34 AM
Saph, you are being silly. Stop now.

The point, however, is serious - that all of your GNS writing is all about "teaching" or "correcting" people. There's no real back-and-forth or conversation - instead the basic assumption is that you're right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

This is why people find you so frustrating to talk to; because all of your GNS writing is founded on the assumption that you know the "correct" way to analyse RPGs and that if anyone disagrees, it must be because they're too ignorant, too prejudiced, or too stupid to see how much better your way of looking at things is.

Basically, you want other people to listen to you and learn from you, but you aren't willing to listen to or learn from anyone else.

Yora
2010-07-13, 11:10 AM
The Aboriginal people of Australia still have traditions that go back in an unbroken line for literally thousands of years. Oral traditions, based on the retelling of tales that go back to the Dream Time. And that have been told and retold in exactly the same oral form for millennia.

That's not improvisation and making things up isn't how an oral tradition works. An oral tradition is the telling and retelling of the same traditional stories, passed on by word of mouth.
Storytelling is a performance art. A storyteller is an artist and not an information storage device that can be played back as desired. And what I regard as the difference between art and craftsmanship is that you reach the audience emotionally. And to reach your audience, you have to work with them. Arabic and Persian storytellers have also a very long and rich tradition, and they don't just retell a story, they make it into a participating performance. Each audience is different and comes from a different cultural background (at the very least going through different time periods).
I live in Bayreuth in Germany and the play the entire four Ring operas by Wagner every two years, for the last 120 years! And every time, the text is the same, but the story is told very differently.

Yes, there are probably some aboriginal elders in Australia, who claim they are telling exactly the same story their ancestors told thousands of years ago. And why shouldn't they? Western scholars always only want to know what has been preserved unchanged for preferedly a very long time. Contemporary culture has come to scientific attention only in the last 50 years.
So when an ethnologist comes visiting a viliage and one of the elders said "Well, there's that one story my uncle told me once, which he heard from his cousin, who had this hilarious experience", all they would get is "Yeah, whatever." But start with "This is the preserved knowledge of our ancestors, exactly like it was told 10,000 years ago, and you have this guy completely sticking to your lips." And why shouldn't they do that? Performance art is a great deal about putting on a show that suits the audience. And as it's an oral tradition, there's no way to prove it right ot wrong.
Now, I don't want to claim any specific case is a fraud or something like that, but it is very well known that native people told explorers exactly what they wanted to hear, and hoping to gain a greater social standing, started to do and believe the things the explorers claimed they do and believe. The stuff about the natural and spiritual natives of America, Africa, and Australia sounds all nice to us, because we want to believe there are, or have been people like that. And now its very hard to reconstruct how these people really were like, because they heavily adapted to the modern age.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-13, 11:12 AM
The point, however, is serious - that all of your GNS writing is all about "teaching" or "correcting" people. There's no real back-and-forth or conversation - instead the basic assumption is that you're right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.
This is a tautology. If you didn't believe what you said was right, you wouldn't say it. And if you didn't believe what those who disagreed said was wrong, you wouldn't be disagreeing.

The Big Dice
2010-07-13, 12:18 PM
Saph, you are being silly. Stop now.

AvatarZero cited an article by a guy (http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2007-08.html) who is the perfect example of what I mean. He detests everything that was changed in D&D 4E that made things less 'realistic' or 'dissociative', but gives levels and classes a free pass, even going to great lengths to explain how Einstein could be a 6th level Expert (yes, because it is likely that Einstein rolled for minimum Hit Points with every 'level'.) It's a tour-de-force in ad-hoc rationalisation.

The man is a highly intelligent pants-on-head idiot.

Are you sure you linked to the right page?

There's some well reasoned arguments for why this person doesn't like D&D 4th edition. But no mention at all anywhere on the page of Einstein.

The Big Dice
2010-07-13, 12:36 PM
The stuff about the natural and spiritual natives of America, Africa, and Australia sounds all nice to us, because we want to believe there are, or have been people like that. And now its very hard to reconstruct how these people really were like, because they heavily adapted to the modern age.

There are well documented people, such as the Kalahari Bushmen, who live now as they did as long go as anybody can tell. There are tribes in South America and Australasia that have had little to no contact with the modern world.

And you can bet your bottom dollar that none of them do any roleplaying once they get to the age of becoming an adult in the eyes of ther culture. And any that they do prior to this is training for the role they will assume when they do take their place as an adult.

And in the modern world, for the most part, roleplaying is seen as a form of therapy or training. The idea of the roleplaying game hasn't really permeated into the mainstream, except in the form of video gaming.

Well, video gaming and NASA looking at the possibility of using tabletop RPGs as a form of entertainment for crews on deep space missions.

hamishspence
2010-07-13, 12:37 PM
This is the essay:

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html

It was in the Creations- Miscellaneous Essays section.

Psyx
2010-07-13, 12:43 PM
There are well documented people, such as the Kalahari Bushmen, who live now as they did as long go as anybody can tell...
And you can bet your bottom dollar that none of them do any roleplaying once they get to the age of becoming an adult in the eyes of ther culture.

Having actually spent quite a lot of time in the Kalahari bush, the bushmen most certainly do roleplay. When hunting and tracking game they impersonate the animal in question in gait and movement in order to get into it's mindset and better track it.

Although sadly, very few of them live as they used to any more.

Animal dances and impersonations by hunters are quite common anthropologically, I think.

The Big Dice
2010-07-13, 12:49 PM
This is the essay:

http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html

It was in the Creations- Miscellaneous Essays section.

Still no mention of Einstein.

I've seen this touted as a reason why levels are a good thing and why they're a bad thing. Honestly, it doesn't matter. In a level based system, you're going to get weird artefacts like the guy who gets better at hitting things, gets tougher and more resistant to colds and also gets better at fishing. And all because he killed an arbitrary amount of things.

The fact is, level based games are a thing of the 70s. I was mildly surprised when D&D brought them back and then the whole D20 thing spread them far and wide once more over the gaming landscape.

hamishspence
2010-07-13, 12:51 PM
Still no mention of Einstein.

it's part way down the page:


KNOWLEDGE AND CRAFTING

There’s a common fallacy when it comes to D&D, and it goes something like: Einstein was a 20th level physicist. So, in D&D, Einstein – that little old man – has something like a bajillion hit points and you’d need to stab him dozens of times if you wanted to kill him. That’s ridiculous!

The problem with this argument is that Einstein wasn’t a 20th level physicist. A 20th level physicist is one step removed from being the God of Physicists. Einstein was probably something more like a 4th or 5th level expert.

This can be a little bit difficult for some people to accept, so let’s run the math. At 5th level an exceptional specialist like Einstein will have:

+8 skill ranks

+4 ability score bonus

+3 Skill Focus

In the case of our 5th level Einstein, that gives him a +15 bonus to Knowledge (physics) checks. He can casually answer physics-related questions (by taking 10) with a DC of 25. Such questions, according to the PHB description of the Knowledge skill, are among the hardest physics questions known to man. He’ll know the answers to the very hardest questions (DC 30) off the top of his head about 30% of the time.

And when he’s doing research he’ll be able to add the benefits of being able to reference scientific journals (+2 circumstance bonus), gain insight from fellow colleagues (+2 bonus from aid another), use top-of-the-line equipment (+2 circumstance bonus), and similar resources to gain understanding of a problem so intractable that no one has ever understood it before (DC 40+).

(This 5th level Einstein can also be modeled with as few as 5 hit points – 1 per hit die. Even if he rolled an average number of hit points on each hit die (3 each), as an old man his average Constitution of 10 will have dropped two points. With the resulting Constitution penalty, he still only has 10 hit points. This is the other reason why the hit point argument holds no water.)

AvatarZero
2010-07-13, 02:27 PM
it's part way down the page:

Neat article isn't it? I like the idea that at low level, DnD characters could be considered relatively plausible in their physical capabilities. I like e6 for the same reason. It helps you put your high level character in the context of reality, which is often very hard to do.

Kalirren
2010-07-13, 03:04 PM
Here's a place where Dave Noonan (one of 4e's designers) talks about Gamist play being the best type of play. (Search for "shaedling queen".) If you disagree, chances are you don't think 4e is objectively better than other games:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20070803a

here's a rebuttal from that first website (again, you'll need to search for "shaedling queen":
http://www.thealexandrian.net/archiv...ve2007-08.html


I like 4E's combat system, yet I don't consider myself a Gamist - I simply have the expectation that a system should deliver a succinct, comprehensive, and fair language for the types of conflicts and challenges it seeks to resolve. The 4E combat rules integrate crunch and fluff very well. They're the best part of the system.

I agree that the skill challenges are utter crap. I wouldn't use them.

Taking skill challenges as an example, in order to strike the balance between Gamist and Simulationist desires, you need to have solid mechanics by which characters can excel at certain tasks, and you need to have a way of integrating multiple points of contact, even multiple layers of points of contact. While 4E's skill challenges are pretty bad for this, a d10 skill system works pretty well; the usual mechanic is for successes on preparatory rolls to add dice to subsequent rolls, which allows extensive preparation to add up to a pretty big advantage.



Contradictions between playstyles and 4e being mentioned in the same paragraph? I like 4e, but a lot of people don't. For the people who don't, and who do like 3e, there's a contradiction between what you might call Simulationist play and Gamist play; the designers for 4e made a conscious decision to level the playing field for 4e at the expense of removing a lot of setting detail and introducing a lot of dissociated mechanics. Promoted Gamism and the expense of Simulationism. That's a contradiction.

Here's where I get that term:
http://www.thealexandrian.net/creati...mechanics.html

Side note: I use the term "dissociated mechanics" because it lets me get closer to the issue I want to talk about than everyday vocabulary. I think that a lot of people who would otherwise say "4e doesn't support Simulationist play as well as 3e!" have ended up saying "4e is just like World of Warcraft!" because they didn't have the words.


I read Alexander's articles and still I have a very difficult time understanding exactly what he thinks a dissociated mechanic is. The definition he gives is "a mechanical artifact that has absolutely nothing to do with the game world."

Yet all of the mechanics -have- something to do with the game world - that's why they're mechanics. The problems with "dissociated mechanics" seem to uniformly arise when a mechanic purports to define a way that the game world functions in a way contrary to common sense. That sounds to me like something I would call a bad ruling.



Yesterday I talked about the potential advantages of using dissociated mechanics to achieve certain goals and proffered the example of scene-based resolution mechanics....I like certain scene-based [resolution] mechanics specifically because they offer greater narrative control to the players (and the benefits that come with that). (emphasis mine)

Let's stop a second here and ask the question The Alexandrian rhetorically posed. Does 4E's scene-based skill challenge resolution mechanic actually give players greater narrative freedom and control over the scene? The answer is unambiguously "yes, it does." The players decide what skills ought to be rolled and what approach they take to solve the problem in front of them. That's narrative control. Trivial. Under the GNS model, Alexander as a Narrativist ought to be happy.

But then Alexander goes on to make a completely valid Simulationist argument against skill challenges. This is something that the GNS model completely fails to predict. If Alexander's a Narrativist, why would he care when Simulationism gets the shaft? He shouldn't, yet he does. Theory fails. Edwards might try to weasel his way through by claiming that Alexander's in some sort of angsty trap of Incoherent play looking for El Dorado, but I don't buy that. There's a much more succinct way of looking at it.

It's for this reason that I prefer to go back to the older GDS (Gamist-Dramatist-Simulationist) model, whose thesis was that any individual player or moderator decision was made for Gamist or Dramatist or Simulationist reasons. I find this more accurate than Edward's stronger theses about group playing styles. Simply put, I think Alexander (and just about everyone) has demands from their systems. They want it to work, to be clear, to be balanced, to fairly partition narrative control, and to reflect some aspects of the game world. The GDS thesis agrees.

Moreover, it stands to reason from the GDS thesis that if the three GDS motives encompass all of gaming interactions, then a good system should be able to support them all. In a good system, it should be easy to create balance between character concepts. It should be easy to introduce mechanics relating to character motivations and desires, even Edwardsian Themes, as the game progresses. It should be easy to deal with layers of advantageous and disadvantageous in-game circumstances on a system level. And at no time should one be forced into using a mechanic that fails to succinctly, comprehensively, and fairly resolve an action. A good system would be like a toolbox; you can have hammers, saws, and screwdrivers, each useful in different situations, but the screwdriver wouldn't leap into your hand and demand to be used in conjunction with the hammer as a chisel when the saw would do perfectly well.

So I agree with you when you say that 4E is a less Simulationist game than 3E, but I think that comment makes even more sense inside a non-Edwardsian framework than it does inside an Edwardsian one. While 3E tries hard to heavily detail an in-game world and describe its effects on interactions between characters, including tactical combat, 4E takes a loose hand to the same. Both systems have good support for making decisions on Gamist ground. Neither supports decisions being made on Dramatist grounds very well. The Dramatist decisions that are made by player and GMs are implicitly shifted into freeform/homebrew gear, as are the Simulationist ones that aren't covered by skill challenges (which should have been left out IMO).

You call this a contradiction between Gamism and Simulationism, however, and I just don't see that being necessary. Not that it didn't happen in the 3E-4E transition; just that it isn't generally necessary. I think the only reason why they had to remove large amounts of setting detail upon transitioning to 4E was because those details were dependent on the AD&D-esque mechanics of 2E and 3E. 4E wasn't backwards-compatible, and wasn't designed to be either, so those setting elements had to be phased out for consistency. The ones that weren't phased out were kept.

Edit:

So to respond to the OP's call for a new paradigm in gaming, I think I understand exactly where you're coming from now. System only matters when it fails to work, when it fails to provide the appropriate toolset for the task. Narrow-visioned games spawn from the use of narrow-visioned systems because you work with what you've got. I haven't read L5R 4E before. Maybe I'll try to find a copy. Thanks for that tip.

olentu
2010-07-13, 03:13 PM
This is a tautology. If you didn't believe what you said was right, you wouldn't say it. And if you didn't believe what those who disagreed said was wrong, you wouldn't be disagreeing.

I think that the point trying to be gotten across is that there is a difference between believing that what I say is correct and deciding it would be impossible for anything to ever change my mind at all ever and believing that the current information and arguments that I have seen shows my position as more correct but realizing that I have not seen all arguments and information.

Yora
2010-07-13, 03:58 PM
Edwards might try to weasel his way through by claiming that Alexander's in some sort of angsty trap of Incoherent play looking for El Dorado, but I don't buy that.
He wouldn't. I think he abandoned the GNS-Theory years ago and was involved in developing another model (which isn't much better).

AvatarZero
2010-07-13, 05:32 PM
I like 4E's combat system, yet I don't consider myself a Gamist - I simply have the expectation that a system should deliver a succinct, comprehensive, and fair language for the types of conflicts and challenges it seeks to resolve.

I might be being dense, but I can't work out what you mean by this. What do you mean, "fair language"?



I read Alexander's articles and still I have a very difficult time understanding exactly what he thinks a dissociated mechanic is.

I have a decent example. It might help, or it might just illuminate what I think a dissociated mechanic is.

Child of Shadow stance (3.5, ToB)
What?: Grants you concealment, but doesn't allow you to hide.
Why?: "The fluttering shadows make it difficult to specifically target you, but your enemies are aware of your position."

You have concealment but can't hide because you're obviously surrounded by shadows. There's an in-world rationale associated with the mechanic it.

Marking (4e, many sources)
What?: An enemy takes a -2 penalty when it makes an attack that doesn't include the marker, but subsequent marks replace rather than stacking.
Why?: Not explained.

In both cases, the mechanic is there to serve game balance; Hide in Plain Sight is not normally an ability available at level 1, and a Solo monster with 4+ marks on it is at a crippling disadvantage in combat. (Technically, it could use AoE attacks that hit every PC that marked it.) Child of Shadows justifies it's balancing act, Marking doesn't. The mechanic of "nothing can be marked by multiple sources" isn't associated with an in-game rationale, it's just part of the game.

I'm not saying that 3e has no dissociated mechanics, but I think that 4e has more, as part of a shift in design ethos that could be described as moving away from Simulationist gaming and toward Gamist gaming if you use the GNS model. There was a conflict, and the designers chose one of the two.

Whether that's what Alexander means by dissociated mechanics (getting really tired of typing that) or not, that's what I meant by it. Still, if "a mechanical artifact that has absolutely nothing to do with the game world." means something similar to "a mechanic (that someone made?) that isn't explained within the game world" then I think we're on the same page. One point I'd disagree on is that the term "mechanical artifact" implies that there are rules that aren't artificial in an RPG. Maybe the rules I used are more artificial than others (they contradict what you'd expect from the rest of the rules about marking and concealment), maybe not. They aren't there to model anything, but those that are were also made by people.


Anyway, I like what you're saying. I like the GNS system, but it's only one model. I think that GNS is a decent way to break down what people like and therefore what sort of fun you should work to facilitate as a game designer, and I think that some decisions encourage one sort of fun at the expense of others. I don't think that game participants can only enjoy one type of fun (and really, does Edwards? I haven't seen that anywhere), and I don't think that a game that only supports one type of play is better than one that supports more than one. I think that different types of play experience can work together to create something better than the sum of it's parts.

Here's the big one, though: GNS seems to present game design as a zero-sum game; you can't improve a game, you can only take from one area to feed another and try to make something "pure". I think that people keep getting better at making games, funnily enough with the aid of advances in theory, even theory that says that you can't make a game that is just plain better than another game.

With that in mind, where can I read more about this GDS model? Here? (http://www2.uiah.fi/~mpohjola/turku/manifesto.html)

Lord Vampyre
2010-07-13, 08:13 PM
The point, however, is serious - that all of your GNS writing is all about "teaching" or "correcting" people. There's no real back-and-forth or conversation - instead the basic assumption is that you're right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

This is why people find you so frustrating to talk to; because all of your GNS writing is founded on the assumption that you know the "correct" way to analyse RPGs and that if anyone disagrees, it must be because they're too ignorant, too prejudiced, or too stupid to see how much better your way of looking at things is.

Basically, you want other people to listen to you and learn from you, but you aren't willing to listen to or learn from anyone else.

Saph, I shouldn't have to say this, but you really should just allow Samurai Jill argue from her GNS standpoint, and let it go. I understand that you have probably heard the same argument over and over, but let it go. Not all of us have been in the forums for very long. Therefore, eventhough the GNS model is far from new, it becomes new to the new readers. I don't know if I would agree with the GNS model, but I would like the chance to hear it. Therefore you should stick to your reasons for not agreeing with it, and then simply agree to disagree.

Kalirren
2010-07-13, 11:23 PM
Lord Vampyre, if you want to read about Edwards and his GNS stuff you should go to the Forge and read his essays firsthand first. After that you can read basically all you want about it at length on a series of threads that Samurai Jill started on these forums called "GNS Revisited":

GNS theory: The Paladin Syndrome. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123278)
GNS Revisited: Narrativism (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124005)
GNS Revisited: Simulationism (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124005)
GNS Revisited: Gamism (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124990)
GNS Revisited: A Summary (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=125196)

Long story short, each thread got into a long series of arguments of the general form that Saph was not-quite-parodying. IMO, neither the GNS theory nor its relative the Big Model holds enough water to be worth discussing when compared to more sensible and less ideologically invested RP theory out there. I think you'd be better off reading the articles linked in my own sig. While I support SJ's presence in the thread, I have to agree with Saph that it can be rather distracting to have to talk through SJ's GNS every time we discuss RP theory, because we basically debunked it before. Discussions do, in fact, go farther with less ambient noise, even on the Internet.



Where can I read more about this GDS model?


It's actually called the Threefold model - I called it GDS because you seemed to be familiar with GNS. The Wikipedia article is actually pretty decent, and John Kim's archive on the Threefold model, which can be accessed from the Wikipedia article, should lead you to enough reading material.



GNS seems to present game design as a zero-sum game[.]


I agree. This, I think, is the most pernicious aspect of the Ron Edwards personality cult as a whole. If Edwards' strong thesis of Narrativism (and its related generalization, the idea that groups can only play effectively if they agree on a strong Creative Agenda) is true, and strong CAs are exclusive of each other as Edwards claims, then system design is in fact a zero-sum game between serving different CA modes. Faithful Edwardsian acolytes can arrive at that conclusion in a single step. But in my experience I've seen very little support for this idea, and so I don't think it -is- a zero-sum game.

From a completely OOC point of view, the two biggest efforts in gaming are getting everyone together and having something prepared for that occasion. In an ideal gaming group using an ideal system, the only meaningful tradeoffs should be between session time, preparatory time, and the rest of Real Life. Modern systems haven't come anywhere near close to that limit, which makes me think that we've a long way to go before we have to start seriously contemplating tradeoffs.

Edit: Sorry, I missed the point about fair language. I meant "(succinct, comprehensive, and fair) language" as in "an effective vocabulary". I come from a background of playing freeform before playing any other RPG, and we still had system; it was a system built upon English and fiat, not stats and dice, but a system nonetheless. But fiat isn't really fair.

So in practice, when dealing with most systems that do have traits and stats and all that jazz, the most basic "fairness" in my mind reduces to having some sort of due process: "roll a d20 and add your modifier" works. In a slightly more advanced sense I also use the word "fair" in the context of the system not favoring any approach to problem-solving over another. So D&D is arguably less fair (on the surface) than Vampire because its social resolution mechanics are less well developed than its combat resolution mechanics, whereas Vampire's are on more (though still not) even footing.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-14, 04:10 AM
Let's stop a second here and ask the question The Alexandrian rhetorically posed. Does 4E's scene-based skill challenge resolution mechanic actually give players greater narrative freedom and control over the scene? The answer is unambiguously "yes, it does." The players decide what skills ought to be rolled and what approach they take to solve the problem in front of them. That's narrative control. Trivial. Under the GNS model, Alexander as a Narrativist ought to be happy...
I am unlikely to have time to answer all the posts in this thread in any great detail, but this is a serious misconception.

What you are talking about is tactical control over the means of solving a particular short-term problem. This has little or nothing to do with controlling the overall stakes of the conflict. "Solving the problem in front of you" is not narrativist per se. Deciding what problems are worth solving would be.

Freedom within the scene is fine and dandy, but in thematic terms all it amounts to is control over small-scale details. Freedom to choose the scenes you are in is necessary (though not sufficient) for GNS-narrativism.


I also disagree about GNS being a zero-sum game. All it states is that tradeoffs are (I think pretty manifestly) needed between each mode in ways that make establishing one mode as dominant a good idea for players that favour one mode. If you like tactical combat more than verisimilitude, then spending time tracking the growth of individual skills will probably not make you a happier gamer- as a poster made clear in another thread.

But the reason why it's not a zero-sum game is because it can trade off things you care about less for things you care about more.

Lord Vampyre, if you want to read about Edwards and his GNS stuff you should go to the Forge and read his essays firsthand first. After that you can read basically all you want about it at length on a series of threads that Samurai Jill started on these forums called "GNS Revisited...
Also, those essays could stand some revision. They're not wrong, (IMHO,) but like another poster said, I may have been missing the forest for the trees.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-14, 05:38 AM
He wouldn't. I think he abandoned the GNS-Theory years ago and was involved in developing another model (which isn't much better).
For the umpteenth time, no, he didn't. GNS was expanded into the Big Model. Nothing about the latter repudiates the former.

The Big Dice
2010-07-14, 11:04 AM
I also disagree about GNS being a zero-sum game. All it states is that tradeoffs are (I think pretty manifestly) needed between each mode in ways that make establishing one mode as dominant a good idea for players that favour one mode. If you like tactical combat more than verisimilitude, then spending time tracking the growth of individual skills will probably not make you a happier gamer- as a poster made clear in another thread.

But the reason why it's not a zero-sum game is because it can trade off things you care about less for things you care about more.
That's exactly the point of GNS being a zero-sum game. You take away from one thing to add to another, but the whole remains the same size. Net gain or loss, zero. Trade off doesn't give growth.

THe other issue I have with pretty much all gaming theories is, they ignore what I believe to be the largest category of gamer: the social player. Everyone knows someone like this. They play for the sake of hanging out with friends for an evening. Even if they might also be the resident rules encyclopedia and have bought copies of the rulebook, the real motivation for play isn't some arbitrary category, it's the people they game with.

Jarawara
2010-07-14, 12:02 PM
The other issue I have with pretty much all gaming theories is, they ignore what I believe to be the largest category of gamer: the social player. Everyone knows someone like this. They play for the sake of hanging out with friends for an evening. Even if they might also be the resident rules encyclopedia and have bought copies of the rulebook, the real motivation for play isn't some arbitrary category, it's the people they game with.

Me! Me! *raises hand emphatically*


Actually, I'd a bit more odd than that. I play games for the *story* -- but not in D&D groups. I find most often in D&D groups that story either does not exist, or is vague, or uncompelling. But in all the other games I play, I look at them as an unfolding story. Axis & Allies? It's the story of how the allies finally defeated Germany (or perhaps the story of how Japan took over the west coast). Federation & Empire? It's the story of how Klingons tried to take over the galaxy. Campaign? It's the story of how candidates fought and bought and lied their way into office. Stocks and Bonds? It's the story of how I lost my shirt on Wall Street. (Well, the *fictional* story of how I lost my shirt, as opposed to the real story.)

And all of these 'stories' can be told single player. I can play both sides, solitare rules, I don't need anyone else to tell myself a story. But if someone comes over to play, I'm not looking to tell the story of how I whipped his butt at Civilization, or how I got my head handed to me in Onslaught. Instead, I just want to see my friend.

Story time is solitare time. Gaming with friends... is social time. I don't need no stinking 'gaming theory' to tell me how to have fun with my friends.

Lord Vampyre
2010-07-14, 03:05 PM
Story time is solitare time. Gaming with friends... is social time. I don't need no stinking 'gaming theory' to tell me how to have fun with my friends.

You're right no one ever needed 'gaming theory' to tell them how to have fun with their friends. Fortunately, that isn't the point to 'gaming theory'. Gaming theory is an extension of the softer sciences. It is a chance for those individuals who interested in RPGs and interested in sociology or psychology to combine their interests. It is chance for them to explore the how and why the gaming community, what used to be a rather small subculture, enjoy what the category of gaming known as RPGs.

If your wondering, I say them because my job as an engineer has me strongly rooted in the physical sciences. And although I love gaming, I have only a mild interest in the social sciences.

Raum
2010-07-14, 06:31 PM
Not all of us have been in the forums for very long. Therefore, eventhough the GNS model is far from new, it becomes new to the new readers. I don't know if I would agree with the GNS model, but I would like the chance to hear it. Therefore you should stick to your reasons for not agreeing with it, and then simply agree to disagree.I can't entirely agree with this, primarily because GNS and the Big Model are extremely unscientific. Allowing it to be sold as anything approaching a scientific theory without challenge doesn't help those new to the idea. All that said, I'd rather not derail this thread into one more thread about GNS...which is another reason not to discuss it here. (That wish may well be too late but I'll avoid the topic here.)


Gaming theory is an extension of the softer sciences. It is a chance for those individuals who interested in RPGs and interested in sociology or psychology to combine their interests. It is chance for them to explore the how and why the gaming community, what used to be a rather small subculture, enjoy what the category of gaming known as RPGs.For theory and peer reviewed papers, I highly recommend the International Journal of Role Playing. I think there's a link in Kalirren's post.

-----

All of which brings me back to my original question. Just what is a roleplaying game anyway? The Hitchens/Drachen article had one of the better definitions I've seen...here's a slight paraphrase: "A role-playing game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome. It is set in a persistent imaginary world where players influence the outcome and the environment, players feel attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable."

That said RPGs, like most games, are social events. That's where the author of the article you linked to seems to fail in my opinion. He needs to find a group of people with similar gaming interests and styles. Role-playing covers a very broad set of potential experiences. The author complains about an aspect of the social event that others find enjoyable. It's like going to a futbol (soccer) game and complaining it's not (American) football. He needs to find people who enjoy the same aspects of gaming he does!


Put those two things together and I think you're still missing something. It's something so fundamental to the hobby that it's almost completely forgotten about. I call it 'the First Question' and really it's where everything else stems from.

At the start of any game session, online scene or whatever, the GM sets a scene and posits a situation. After that there used to come a question. Somewhere along the way that got forgotten about, buried under all kinds of other ideas. But really, it's the doorway in to this weird and wonderful hobby.

And that question is, 'What do you do?'I agree. In character, it's all about the choices you make.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-15, 05:00 AM
That's exactly the point of GNS being a zero-sum game. You take away from one thing to add to another, but the whole remains the same size...
Dice, I just said that it doesn't stay the same size if you care more about the parts you gain. Which many players evidently do.

The other issue I have with pretty much all gaming theories is, they ignore what I believe to be the largest category of gamer: the social player. Everyone knows someone like this. They play for the sake of hanging out with friends for an evening. Even if they might also be the resident rules encyclopedia and have bought copies of the rulebook, the real motivation for play isn't some arbitrary category, it's the people they game with.
That's exactly why GNS arose: The folks at the table are all supposed to be playing by the same rules, but more crucially, their interactions will not make the experience more fun if they are working at cross-purposes.

Rules which pretend to be all things to all people tend to result in different people at the table latching onto different aspects of the rules and ignoring, or pressuring to change, the rest, which can lead to interpersonal frictions. Sometimes the players work things out socially and compromise. If they have roughly similar tastes, compromise is fine and dandy. But if they don't, you get an experience that's uniformly mediocre for everyone concerned.

Look- forget GNS for a second. Here's that WotC study people seem fond of mentioning:
http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html


* A Thinker is a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers Strategic/Combat Focus. This kind of person is likely to enjoy min-maxing a character, spending hours out of game to find every conceivable advantage available in the system to deliver maximum damage from behind maximum protection, even if the min-maxing produces results that are seemingly illogical/impossible. This kind of person wants to solve puzzles and can keep track of long chains of facts and clues.

# A Power Gamer is a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers a Tactical/Combat Focus. This kind of person is likely to enjoy playing a character that has a minimum of personality (often, this kind of person plays a character that is simply an extension of the player). This kind of player enjoys short, intense gaming experiences. The consequences of a failed action are minimized for this player, who will roll up a new character and return to the fray without much thought for the storyline implications of that action.

# A Character Actor is a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers a Tactical/Story Focus. This kind of person is likely to enjoy the act of theater; using voice, posture, props, etc. to express a character's actions and dialog. This player will have a character that makes sub-optimal choices (from an external perspective) to ensure that the character's actions are "correct" from the perspective of the character's motivations, ethics, and knowledge.

# A Storyteller is a player who most enjoys the game when it delivers a Strategic/Story Focus. This kind of person finds enjoyment from the logical progression of the narrative of the scenario. There should be a beginning, a middle and an end. Characters should develop over time in reaction to their experiences. This player will look for a non-rules answer to inconsistencies or anachronisms in the game experience.
(Emphasis mine.)

The most interesting thing about this study is that it's own data completely contradicts it's own conclusions. It presents 4 groups of players (5 if you include a small minority with no clear preferences,) that have desires and goals which are flatly incompatible.

How can you possibly provide a character creation system that will please both the 'thinker' and the 'character actor'? If your rules support making consistent characters, they will inhibit min-maxing, and vice versa.

How can you possibly provide an overarching narrative structure that will please the 'storyteller' without it being wrecked by the 'powergamer'? How can you have characters that develop over time if they lack personality and their decisions have no consequences?

Everything that one of these groups prefers and values is going to be an affront to the preferences and values of one or more of the others.

(I should also mention that these groups probably represent two different flavours of gamists and a blend of nar+sim players, since the study conflates the world and setting with questions of story, protagonism and theme. The 'thinkers' and 'powergamers' can probably get along fine, as can the second two groups as far as they're described, but there's a very clear rift between the top and bottom quadrants.)

Thinker
2010-07-15, 08:21 AM
(Emphasis mine.)

The most interesting thing about this study is that it's own data completely contradicts it's own conclusions. It presents 4 groups of players (5 if you include a small minority with no clear preferences,) that have desires and goals which are flatly incompatible.

How can you possibly provide a character creation system that will please both the 'thinker' and the 'character actor'? If your rules support making consistent characters, they will inhibit min-maxing, and vice versa.
You can make it so that the rules support consistency and min-maxing. Make the powerful choices also be the most consistent ones. The power gamer and the thinker don't care about the internal consistency, but that doesn't mean that they actively oppose it. Likewise, the story teller and the character actor don't oppose having mechanically strong characters, merely that their priorities lie in things that make sense from a character perspective.



How can you possibly provide an overarching narrative structure that will please the 'storyteller' without it being wrecked by the 'powergamer'? How can you have characters that develop over time if they lack personality and their decisions have no consequences?
The narrative structure can encompass both a power gamer's actions and those of the story teller. The power gamer may not have the same attachment to his character from a story perspective, but penalties that can carry over to a new character will dissuade the power gamer. Likewise, adding mechanical benefits to progressing the story will appease him. So long as the story is progressing, the story teller won't care.



Everything that one of these groups prefers and values is going to be an affront to the preferences and values of one or more of the others.

(I should also mention that these groups probably represent two different flavours of gamists and a blend of nar+sim players, since the study conflates the world and setting with questions of story, protagonism and theme. The 'thinkers' and 'powergamers' can probably get along fine, as can the second two groups as far as they're described, but there's a very clear rift between the top and bottom quadrants.)

Compromise is a wonderful thing. I think that there is a compromise for all views with regards to these roles, as well as those prescribed by GNS. Something that adds to the experience for one does not necessarily detract from the experience for others. I also doubt that anyone is truly at the extreme for any of these classifications.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-15, 10:11 AM
You can make it so that the rules support consistency and min-maxing. Make the powerful choices also be the most consistent ones. The power gamer and the thinker don't care about the internal consistency, but that doesn't mean that they actively oppose it...

The narrative structure can encompass both a power gamer's actions and those of the story teller. The power gamer may not have the same attachment to his character from a story perspective, but penalties that can carry over to a new character will dissuade the power gamer. Likewise, adding mechanical benefits to progressing the story will appease him. So long as the story is progressing, the story teller won't care...
This is technically possible: in many respects it's what the Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel accomplish. However, it has the drawback of adding substantial complexity, and the methods of accomplishing the reward cycle can be highly counter-intuitive. (e.g, 'paying to suck', with respect to disadvantageous character traits during character creation.)

More critically, however, while the rules *can* be an important influence in swaying players over toward a particular overall mode of play, a lot of dedicated powergamers/thinkers just won't put up with it. Even if you indirectly bribe them to role-play, they don't want to have to bother with it. Particularly if you use a stick, rather than a carrot, (and in a competitive context, the absence of a carrot pretty well amounts to a stick.)

If powergaming/min-maxing is what they fundamentally find fun, and character acting/storytelling is not something they intrinsically enjoy, no amount of stick-and-carrot will make up for the tradeoff.

Tyndmyr
2010-07-15, 10:49 AM
Ok. This is pretty much a GNS argument at this point, so there's no use addressing the original topic.

GNS fails, because it relies on the premise that players are most efficiently categorized by three metrics(gamism, narrationism, and simulationism). These don't really describe actual, real world gamers. Real world gamers are often described by how they play, or by what they like to play.

IE, he hates magic, but he loves fantasy games. Bit of a munchkin, though.

Everyone knows exactly what that means, and can probably pick out systems he'll enjoy as a result of that. GNS will blather on at length about how he's an incoherent mixture of gamism and what have you, using non-standard definitions of words that don't really make any sense. Not terribly useful.

Thinker
2010-07-15, 10:58 AM
This is technically possible: in many respects it's what the Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel accomplish. However, it has the drawback of adding substantial complexity, and the methods of accomplishing the reward cycle can be highly counter-intuitive. (e.g, 'paying to suck', with respect to disadvantageous character traits during character creation.)

More critically, however, while the rules *can* be an important influence in swaying players over toward a particular overall mode of play, a lot of dedicated powergamers/thinkers just won't put up with it. Even if you indirectly bribe them to role-play, they don't want to have to bother with it. Particularly if you use a stick, rather than a carrot, (and in a competitive context, the absence of a carrot pretty well amounts to a stick.)

If powergaming/min-maxing is what they fundamentally find fun, and character acting/storytelling is not something they intrinsically enjoy, no amount of stick-and-carrot will make up for the tradeoff.

I think that our primary disconnect is that you think that power gamers/min-maxers actively dislike character acting and story telling or that story tellers actively dislike mechanics. My opinion is that they simply don't care. Story is at worst totally irrelevant to a power gamer. Mechanics are totally irrelevant to a story teller. You can mix the two by providing a mechanical incentive (bribe) to the power gamer that, if interesting, is embraced by the story teller as well.

As for making disadvantages not simply "paying to suck", you make it so that a disadvantage not only fleshes out your character, but helps provide a niche for him as well. As a small girl, Mandy fell from a tree and broke her leg; because she was unable to play and grow like the other children, she had a greater opportunity to learn arcane knowledge, pick locks, or pick up on people body movements. You then provide each of this bonuses a use in combat, a use with interacting with people, and a use for other skills. The power gamer is happy because his master of wizardry is slightly stronger. The story teller is happy because he has something that fits his background on his character sheet.

This does create a more complicated system, but that does not have to be a bad thing. There is no situation that I can come up with where you have to benefit one style of play at the expense of others.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-15, 05:38 PM
I think that our primary disconnect is that you think that power gamers/min-maxers actively dislike character acting and story telling or that story tellers actively dislike mechanics. My opinion is that they simply don't care. Story is at worst totally irrelevant to a power gamer. Mechanics are totally irrelevant to a story teller. You can mix the two by providing a mechanical incentive (bribe) to the power gamer that, if interesting, is embraced by the story teller as well.
Yes, except that at some point they will realise that they are, for all practical intents and purposes, not min-maxing anymore. Compensating a player for having a weaker character through metagame resources that make them 'lucky' as long as they role-play convincingly and develop over time is a perfectly viable system, but trust me on this one- some players simply have no interest in it. There was a subfaction of TRoS players hellbent on excising Spiritual Attributes, because the 'drama crap' was simply not their cup of tea.

Besides, there are fundamental conflicts between these attitudes to play. The top two quadrants are, at the end of the day, all about winning. Drama, by contrast, is about not having clear win conditions: They can never co-exist at once.

As for making disadvantages not simply "paying to suck", you make it so that a disadvantage not only fleshes out your character, but helps provide a niche for him as well. As a small girl, Mandy fell from a tree and broke her leg; because she was unable to play and grow like the other children, she had a greater opportunity to learn arcane knowledge, pick locks, or pick up on people body movements. You then provide each of this bonuses a use in combat, a use with interacting with people, and a use for other skills.
Actually, you don't. (Well, you can, but it won't especially encourage harmonious co-existence between G and S/N-inclined players.) It will most likely break sim (how does sitting in a room pick up on body movements?) and emphasises parity in overall mechanical competence (i.e, 'balance',) as the be-all and end-all of play. It's like the concept of "Role-Play XP"- rewarding role-play is well and good, but you're rewarding it with a thing that's contradictory to role-play, because XP doesn't make sense from a sim/nar perspective. It sends mixed messages.

What you can do is to reward role-play- i.e, manifesting a trait, belief or quality even when it's inconvenient- with a metagame resource that grants influence over critical junctures of the story (Artha and Spiritual Attributes in BW/TroS respectively,) but doesn't contribute directly to character-effectiveness. (Strictly speaking these still break sim for the sake of narrative, but less glaringly, and you at least present a clear hierarchy of priorities: Story -> World Logic -> Winning.)

Samurai Jill
2010-07-15, 06:15 PM
Ok. This is pretty much a GNS argument at this point, so there's no use addressing the original topic.
...I'm not stopping you.

IE, he hates magic, but he loves fantasy games. Bit of a munchkin, though.
Isn't hating magic and loving fantasy basically a contradiction in terms? ...I mean, a setting with no supernatural elements at all basically isn't fantasy. ...Anyway.

There are of course many other differences in player preference and game design that aren't covered by GNS (or WotC's divisions for that matter.) The thing is those difference are obvious. Everyone knows whether they like sci-fi, or superheroes, or lovecraftian horror, or whatever- if the other person has a problem with it, they'll know immediately. The problem is that someone's preferences for a given GNS mode can be highly non-obvious until you're already deep into a given campaign, and they usually become obvious by creating problems.

Thinker
2010-07-15, 06:16 PM
Yes, except that at some point they will realise that they are, for all practical intents and purposes, not min-maxing anymore. Compensating a player for having a weaker character through metagame resources that make them 'lucky' as long as they role-play convincingly and develop over time is a perfectly viable system, but trust me on this one- some players simply have no interest in it. There was a subfaction of TRoS players hellbent on excising Spiritual Attributes, because the 'drama crap' was simply not their cup of tea.
How would picking the best possible mechanics (that also happen to be good for roleplaying) cease to be min-maxing? If you truly think that is the case, make the design modular. Have something be the default rules, but add a sidebar that explains how components can be removed. It adds to complication, but makes the system reach a broader audience and can be made to work for groups with people who you claim fall into opposing archetypes.



Besides, there are fundamental conflicts between these attitudes to play. The top two quadrants are, at the end of the day, all about winning. Drama, by contrast, is about not having clear win conditions: They can never co-exist at once.
I would like to see some evidence of this. Not just "that's what GNS theory says", but the evidence that it is based upon.



Actually, you don't. (Well, you can, but it won't especially encourage harmonious co-existence between G and S/N-inclined players.) It will most likely break sim (how does sitting in a room pick up on body movements?) and emphasises parity in overall mechanical competence (i.e, 'balance',) as the be-all and end-all of play. It's like the concept of "Role-Play XP"- rewarding role-play is well and good, but you're rewarding it with a thing that's contradictory to role-play, because XP doesn't make sense from a sim/nar perspective. It sends mixed messages.

What you can do is to reward role-play- i.e, manifesting a trait, belief or quality even when it's inconvenient- with a metagame resource that grants influence over critical junctures of the story (Artha and Spiritual Attributes in BW/TroS respectively,) but doesn't contribute directly to character-effectiveness. (Strictly speaking these still break sim for the sake of narrative, but less glaringly, and you at least present a clear hierarchy of priorities: Story -> World Logic -> Winning.)

I don't see what makes coming up with plausible reasons for mechanical decisions very difficult. The lame child example was not incredibly well thought out (taking 2 seconds to come up with), but could be explained as not being able to participate in other activities and so spent more time people watching. You achieve balance by rationing when certain combinations of abilities become available. You can have spell-casters be the mighty gods among men, but make it take longer to achieve those spells so that at that point, non spell-casters can have ways to counter those abilities (if that is how your system differentiates archetypes).

What data is GNS theory based on?

Samurai Jill
2010-07-15, 06:27 PM
How would picking the best possible mechanics (that also happen to be good for roleplaying) cease to be min-maxing? If you truly think that is the case, make the design modular. Have something be the default rules, but add a sidebar that explains how components can be removed. It adds to complication, but makes the system reach a broader audience....
Again, this is a perfectly viable approach, but then more assembly is required before play can start, and it's not going to solve the problem that, at the end of the day, everyone at the table plays by the same set of rules. You're still not going to be all things to all people.

I would like to see some evidence of this. Not just "that's what GNS theory says", but the evidence that it is based upon.
All I can say is look at good stories. I think you will be hard-pressed to find one where the protagonist is always presented with nothing but a series of emotionally-obvious choices.

I don't see what makes coming up with plausible reasons for mechanical decisions very difficult...
It isn't, if 'coming up with plausible reasons' is all you're looking for. But this essentially amounts to ad-hoc rationalisation of a pre-existing decision, and players can smell it. I know I can.
You're missing the point. Rules that emphasise, explicitly or implicitly, that 'everyone being equally strong' is the most important quality in play is also announcing, in flashing neon letters to the subconscious: "This is an arena for competition. Do whatever it takes to win."

What data is GNS theory based on?
Oh, there's been no comprehensive survey on the subject, if that's what you mean. (Though I think the WotC study does more to strengthen than to contradict it, and there's been a definite trend in recent game design that supports the theory.) Make of it what you will.

Superglucose
2010-07-15, 06:29 PM
I was reading this article (http://ptgptb.org/0002/alltheboys.html) and thought I'd expound on some thoughts this sparked in me.

Let's start with the fundamentals: what is a role playing game? That's a harder question to answer than you might think, as illustrated by the short section given over to the question in the first page or two of any published RPG. To me, it splits into two core parts. They are, playing a role in an imaginary setting, and playing a game with your friends. And this is where the heresy begins: to have one without the other demeans both.

And dictionary definitions (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/roleplaying) of the word don’t are particularly unhelpful. So what is it? Is it ROLE playing, or is it role PLAYING? And how does it being a game fit into that?

Concentrating on the playing a role part is all well and good, but there are several fundamental flaws with the “storytelling” or “it’s all about the narrative” model of gaming. The most obvious one to me is the term 'storyteller.' This word (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/storyteller) can be defined in surprisingly few ways. And it gets worse when you look into it's synonym of narrator. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrator) And narrative (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/narrative) is even worse from a roleplaying perspective.

To me, telling a story implies that no matter what the players do, the outcome is already decided. Which means your active and unpredictable protagonists, aka your players, really don't have any impact on anything. Sure, anything can be justified with a good story, but my feeling is that the event doesn't become a story until after it has taken place. And having a strong narrative removes any necessity for involvement from your players.

To my mind, the medium of the roleplaying game just isn't a good one for telling stories. From my experience, roleplayers have a word for what happens when you try to use the medium to tell a story. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/story) They call it railroading and tend not to like it too much. Or, as a friend of mine says, “If you want to tell a story, go write a book already.”

So just playing a role isn't quite right, what about the playing a game? The word game (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/game) is a lot harder to define. However, when it comes to roleplaying games, there are two that I think fit better than most:

To me, the first one actually hits the nail on the head. Roleplaying is a pastime that has a lot in common with certain children's games. Which is something I'll come back to. Definition 2 works for the paraphernalia of roleplaying: dice, paper and books and so on. And definition 3 is what you get when you reduce the importance of playing a role in a roleplaying game.

Some games designers, and as a knock on effect, the people who play those games, tend to look down on one or the other approach to RPGs. Those who want the story and narrative aspects to dominate see people who play the game as lacking in some essential understanding of “how things should be.” While people who are more interested in the mechanical, game side of the equation see the narrative and story aspects as being needlessly pompous and self important.

And the thing is, neither perspective on roleplaying is right or wrong. Both are equally valid. One is yin to the other's yang. I would say that in my opinion, the very best roleplayers on both sides of the GM screen are the ones that can switch from the numbers and playing a game aspect of the hobby to the abstract and playing a role side of things without detrimentally affecting the flow of the gaming experience.

This dichotomy in gamers leads to something I call system snobbery. People on either side of the line look across to the others and see a warped version of themselves, and that leads to them thinking that people who don’t play in the same way as they do are “doing it wrong.” Or that they might be “stuck up, pretentious and arrogant.” They claim that the games the other side plays are weak, lame or somehow lacking. And yet, there’s no real difference. A good RPG should be able to accommodate a wide variety of play styles, from all social, no dice rolling all night, right the way through to mindless hack and slash.

And I completely blame game designers who made their names in the mid to late 90s for this split. Ideas like plot immunity and player entitlement were original and intriguing concepts when they first appeared in White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast games. But they are now looking a bit old and tired. Instead of new games offering as broad a canvas as possible, they instead focus on narrower and narrower visions.

All of which brings me back to my original question. Just what is a roleplaying game anyway? I believe a roleplaying game is what happens when a bunch of people get together to play 'let's pretend.' It's not that different from a bunch of kids playing Cops and Robbers really. Except as 'sophisticated adults' that's not good enough. We need to clearly define what our imaginary persona can and can't do, as well as find a way to resolve the 'bang you're dead' versus 'no I'm not' debate. That's why we have rules systems and task / conflict resolution mechanics. If we're kids playing 'pretendy magic samurai' then that's the role. If we're chucking dice and counting numbers with the intent of getting bigger numbers, that's the game.

Put those two things together and I think you're still missing something. It's something so fundamental to the hobby that it's almost completely forgotten about. I call it 'the First Question' and really it's where everything else stems from.

At the start of any game session, online scene or whatever, the GM sets a scene and posits a situation. After that there used to come a question. Somewhere along the way that got forgotten about, buried under all kinds of other ideas. But really, it's the doorway in to this weird and wonderful hobby.

And that question is, 'What do you do?'

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

Thinker
2010-07-15, 06:55 PM
Oh, there's been no comprehensive survey on the subject, if that's what you mean. (Though I think the WotC study does more to strengthen than to contradict it, and there's been a definite trend in recent game design that supports the theory.) Make of it what you will.

Then I consider this entire discussion to be nothing more than pointless banter. My own reasoning is based on nothing more than anecdotal information and since the counterargument is the same, no logical conclusion can be reached.

Lord Vampyre
2010-07-15, 07:32 PM
I can't entirely agree with this, primarily because GNS and the Big Model are extremely unscientific. Allowing it to be sold as anything approaching a scientific theory without challenge doesn't help those new to the idea. All that said, I'd rather not derail this thread into one more thread about GNS...which is another reason not to discuss it here. (That wish may well be too late but I'll avoid the topic here.)

I'm not saying you have to allow them to go unchallenged, but you do have allow them to argue their point. In the end, you have to be willing to agree to disagree. I've finally read GNS and don't really find it that much different than other forms of game theory. Although, I find most theory on why gamers play the way they do faulty at best and down right trash at worst. And as far as I'm concerned the biggest problem with the GNS model is that it doesn't allow for the 3 modes to coexist or even believe its possible.


For theory and peer reviewed papers, I highly recommend the International Journal of Role Playing. I think there's a link in Kalirren's post.

Yes, I'm beginning to read them.

The Big Dice
2010-07-15, 07:41 PM
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

And at last someone comes out with a sig worthy quote for me :)

Kalirren
2010-07-15, 08:43 PM
I'm not saying you have to allow them to go unchallenged, but you do have allow them to argue their point. In the end, you have to be willing to agree to disagree.

I really have to disagree with you here, LV. "Agreeing to disagree" simply isn't a good course of action when any side of the debate is fundamentally more unsound than any other. We have -repeatedly- debunked that theory on these forums.
In my experience, the Threefold model explains all emergent situations of gameplay that GNS attempts to explain, Scarlet Jester's GENder Theory explain all conflicts between system and playing style that the Big Model attempts to explain, and there are plenty of situations that GNS and the Big Model predict to occur which have never occurred in my play.

Wrong ideas have a right to be heard, as all ideas are wrong, but no civil discourse demands that ideas more wrong than others be given equal weight just because someone in the room believes them to be true. Yet the reality is that ideas persistently voiced in forums become endemic to them despite their worth or lack of it, and the value of a forum's general output is dependent upon the quality of the ideas that are endemic to it. I'm not advocating censorship by others. I'm advocating judicious self-censorship. It's polite for one to admit when one is talking a line of crap and to stop polluting the atmosphere with it.

Although the whole thing may really be moot anyway...


I've finally read GNS and don't really find it that much different than other forms of game theory. Although, I find most theory on why gamers play the way they do faulty at best and down right trash at worst. And as far as I'm concerned the biggest problem with the GNS model is that it doesn't allow for the 3 modes to coexist or even believe its possible.


LOL, that's really what most people think about GNS anyway.

Lord Vampyre
2010-07-15, 08:46 PM
You're missing the point. Rules that emphasise, explicitly or implicitly, that 'everyone being equally strong' is the most important quality in play is also announcing, in flashing neon letters to the subconscious: "This is an arena for competition. Do whatever it takes to win."

SJ, I've finally realized my problem with most of your arguments and the GNS model. You've reduced the players down to automatons that have no capacity to adapt to the situation. There are many who enjoy all 3 modes of game play as laid out in the GNS model. When the situation arises we adapt.

In many of the best campaigns that I've played in (IMO), all three modes of play were explored at one point or another. A mode of play isn't all or nothing. It is merely the delineation of an extreme as seen by one individual.

Now, I'm sure this isn't true for all players. Some players only like certain aspects of the game, and would rather do something else than play in one of the other modes. Often times these people either find a gaming group that fits their style or move on.


I really have to disagree with you here, LV. "Agreeing to disagree" simply isn't a good course of action when any side of the debate is fundamentally more unsound than any other. We have -repeatedly- debunked that theory on these forums.

The whole point of agreeing to disagree is that you will never be able to change the point of view of some people. You simply have to let it go that you will never see eye to eye, and just lay your argument to rest eventually.

The Big Dice
2010-07-15, 10:07 PM
Wrong ideas have a right to be heard, as all ideas are wrong, but no civil discourse demands that ideas more wrong than others be given equal weight just because someone in the room believes them to be true. Yet the reality is that ideas persistently voiced in forums become endemic to them despite their worth or lack of it, and the value of a forum's general output is dependent upon the quality of the ideas that are endemic to it. I'm not advocating censorship by others. I'm advocating judicious self-censorship. It's polite for one to admit when one is talking a line of crap and to stop polluting the atmosphere with it.

My biggest problems with any kind of gaming theory is simply the sample sizes. How can you come up with a hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis when it's very difficult to get a sample size that's bigger than your local gaming group? And where's the evidence to back up the conclusions that gaming theorists come up with? Anything, even anecdotal evidence, would be better than nothing.

That's part of the problem with GNS. Ron Edwards is renowned for stamping on posters at The Forge who dare to voice an opinion that is different from his. This (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=28491.msg268049#msg268049) is a fairly typical response to someone trying to point out flaws in the Forge's ideas and have a rational discussion that acknowledges those flaws. I don't like the way the Forge forums squash open discussion. That says to me that while they might promote and support independent RPGs, they don't promote or support indepenent thought, or expression of those thoughts.

And that's a shame. Independent thought is what led Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson to turn a mass battle game into a tactical skirmish level game and then on to make the first recognised RPG. It's what inspred Greg Stafford to create Glorantha, then to come up with RuneQuest as a means of exploring his creation. It's been the cornerstone of the roleplaying hobby since the mid 70s when it first emerged.

Kalirren
2010-07-15, 10:49 PM
The whole point of agreeing to disagree is that you will never be able to change the point of view of some people.

You know, this is actually something I never really understood. You either understand something or you don't. And I suppose I assume that anyone can be made to understand anything in any way as long as inherent aspects of their experience don't block that understanding. That's what arguments are for; changing minds, enabling people to see familiar things in new ways.

But when someone comes into an argument with an unchangeable mind, of course there will be disagreement, even if they're right, seeing as how there are usually multiple different ways of being right. I can't see the point of institutionalizing a unilaterally-caused system failure like that by somehow "agreeing" to disagree. You can agree to disagree about taste. But you can't agree to disagree about validity. That might as well be a definition of the concept. When honest people argue within the same framework of validity, at worst I can see them coming to the conclusion that someone's set of experiences would be unintelligibly different from another person's thesis. Barring that, the only remaining possibility is a dishonest obstinacy, a determination to not understand or not admit to understanding an opposing point of view.


You simply have to let it go that you will never see eye to eye, and just lay your argument to rest eventually.

I agree with this; SJ and I have basically gotten to this point.

Psyx
2010-07-16, 03:39 AM
The problem with any psychological hypothesis is that psychology isn't an exact science; no matter how much some psychologists would like it to be. GNS cannot be bullet-proof 'right' in all cases, because -in the field- nothing ever is. The issue comes when people nail their flag to a pole, convinced that some new theory is all-encompassing. It's not physics: That doesn't happen.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-16, 04:46 AM
SJ, I've finally realized my problem with most of your arguments and the GNS model. You've reduced the players down to automatons that have no capacity to adapt to the situation.
No, I am not. If that were the case, system would indeed not matter, since nothing could sway the players' reactions one direction or another.

Let me try to expand a bit on the example given. Coming up with plausible ways in which a given 'disadvantage' might actually be a strength sounds fine- and, in isolation, it is fine. But consider the final result across the system: you've created rules where anything bad that ever happened to the character, ever, resulted in them being exactly as mechanically strong before and after. Which, from a sim perspective, is preposterous. The overall trend of design belies the attempt at camouflage.

Besides, it may not even be compatible with the source material for the setting. Tolkien's elves are pretty clearly stronger than other races, while orcs are fairly clearly weaker (on an individual basis. And before you ramble on about level adjustments and so forth, levels ALSO break sim in a big way.) Having characters that are, one way or another, roughly equally powerful is a good thing to have. But going to extraordinary lengths to ensure they are exactly equally powerful, outside of gamist play, will likely do more harm than good. Because Life is Unfair.

In many of the best campaigns that I've played in (IMO), all three modes of play were explored at one point or another. A mode of play isn't all or nothing.
I'm of the opinion you can get maybe one-and-a-half of the modes to coexist peacefully at once. When people say 'I enjoy all three', what their play usually amounts to is 2 parts game and 1 part sim, with game firmly on top.

But I could be wrong- what aspects of a campaign did you feel showed a clear switch from one mode to another?


Ron Edwards is renowned for stamping on posters at The Forge who dare to voice an opinion that is different from his. This (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=28491.msg268049#msg268049) is a fairly typical response to someone trying to point out flaws in the Forge's ideas and have a rational discussion that acknowledges those flaws...
If you bother to read the thread, you'll notice it was closed for being off-topic (or counterproductive to the thread's purpose,) and invited the guy to post in another forum. (In my limited experience RE is quite finicky about threads being on-topic, whether they're related to GNS or not.)


I agree with this; SJ and I have basically gotten to this point.
I haven't gotten to this point.
Kalirren, you were applying a definition of GNS-narrativism that was factually incorrect. You may or may not believe that GNS has anything to do with reality, but the definition of narrativism you were invoking had nothing to do with the term-as-defined. Freedom in task resolution =/= protagonism.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-16, 04:59 AM
My biggest problems with any kind of gaming theory is simply the sample sizes. How can you come up with a hypothesis, and then test that hypothesis when it's very difficult to get a sample size that's bigger than your local gaming group?...
Wel, hypothetically speaking, one could play many different RPGs with many different groups over many years, and consult with other people who did likewise. And you could solicit accounts of play from other folks. Which, I imagine, is what many game theorists have done. There's plenty of 'anecdotal evidence' to draw on.

If nothing else, take a gander at the WotC study I linked to- You can fairly say the data doesn't exactly match GNS, but there are definitely deep incompatabilities evident in the breakdown.

And use your common sense: if a player flat-out states that tracking practice of individual skills solves a problem 'they don't think exists' but will spend 20 minutes resolving combat in blow-by-blow detail, doesn't that say something about their relative priorities? Isn't it more reasonable to say that the design direction of D&D over the last 20 years has been a case of calculated tradeoffs between different demographics' desires, rather than the product of well-funded idiots?

Psyx
2010-07-16, 05:54 AM
I haven't gotten to this point.


It doesn't matter. Debate and communication both require two people to participate. Unless you like lecturing walls.

The Big Dice
2010-07-16, 11:13 AM
If you bother to read the thread, you'll notice it was closed for being off-topic (or counterproductive to the thread's purpose,) and invited the guy to post in another forum. (In my limited experience RE is quite finicky about threads being on-topic, whether they're related to GNS or not.)
I read the thread. It hadn't wandered far off topic, and was in fact exploring areas that were pertinent to the original post, which was "Help me to understand GNS." This thread is further off topic than that one ever got, and it's just one example of how Ron Edwards crushes discussion. Because if he allowed true discussion of his ideas, they wouldn't be his ideas anymore.

Most people, including commercially successful game designers, realise that GNS is in fact written in code. It doesn't mean what the words used to define it usually mean. Except some people take the code at face value. And some of them design commercially unsuccessful RPGs. Which is great, fringe groups can be extremely creative, and the entire gaming hobby started out as a fringe thing.

However, things have gone past fringe creativity. Now we've got this dogma floating round gaming circles. A dogma that has been demonstrated time and time again to be both inaccurate and so badly written that it's (seemingly intentionally) confusing.

Which is really the biggest issue of all with GNS / the Threefold Model / The Big Model and so on. It's not an idea that's open to debate and discussion. It's doctrine and dogma, often in the form of recieved wisdom rather than knowedge gained from experience. And that's not something you can debate or discuss. It's something that proponents of it will defend and support in the face of overwhelming scorn and disinterest from the rest of the community.

And that's a shame, because there's some intelligent and creative people who are basically holding themselves back in the name of designing and playing games that fit in with the restrictive ideas of a very small minority of the gaming community at large.

Caphi
2010-07-16, 11:17 AM
And use your common sense: if a player flat-out states that tracking practice of individual skills solves a problem 'they don't think exists' but will spend 20 minutes resolving combat in blow-by-blow detail, doesn't that say something about their relative priorities?

You're still spreading these lies after I refuted them directly. Combats take forever because players don't pay attention and spend too much downtime deciding and calculating, not because we're resolving a thousand tactical data points.

Kindly stop word-mining falsehoods to support your point. It generally has the opposite effect.

Kalirren
2010-07-16, 12:00 PM
I haven't gotten to this point.

Oh really? Well that's good then, I had assumed from our previous discourses that we had. Forgive me.



Kalirren, you were applying a definition of GNS-narrativism that was factually incorrect. You may or may not believe that GNS has anything to do with reality, but the definition of narrativism you were invoking had nothing to do with the term-as-defined. Freedom in task resolution =/= protagonism.

Conceded, the GNS modes don't refer to players, but to play. Still, there are plenty of indications that Alexander likes Narrativist play. In his own words, he likes playing roles and telling stories. And this is what he says about the tradeoff in using dissociative mechanics:



First, you can play a role. In this approach you get inside your character's head and figure out what they would do.

Second, you can create a story. In this approach you are focusing on the creation of a compelling narrative.

The division between these two approaches can get pretty muddy. Not only because people can switch, mix, and blend the two approaches in various ways, but also because we have a natural desire to turn sequences of events into narratives: If someone asks us about our day, we'll tell a story about it. Similarly, even if we approach the game by playing a role, the events that happen to our character will be almost immediately transformed into a narrative of those events.

The difference between the two lies not in describing the result of what happened (which will always be a story), but with the approach by which you decided what would happen. Another way to think of it, perhaps, is to consider the difference between an actor (who plays a character) and an author (who writes a story).

[...]

The disadvantage of a dissociated mechanic, as we've established, is that it disengages the player from the role they're playing. But in the case of a scene-based resolution mechanic, the dissociation is actually just making the player engage with their role in a different way (through the narrative instead of through the game world).

The advantage of a mechanic like Wushu's is that it gives greater narrative control to the player. This narrative control can then be used in all sorts of advantageous ways. For example, in the case of Wushu these mechanics were designed to encourage dynamic, over-the-top action sequences: Since it's just as easy to slide dramatically under a car and emerge on the other side with guns blazing as it is to duck behind cover and lay down suppressing fire, the mechanics make it possible for the players to do whatever the coolest thing they can possibly think of is (without worrying about whether or not the awesomeness they're imagining will make it too difficult for their character to pull it off).

Is this style of play for everybody? No.

Personally, I tend to think of it as a matter of trade-offs: There are advantages to focusing on a single role like an actor and there are advantages to focusing on creating awesome stories like an author. Which mechanics I prefer for a given project will depend on what my goals are for that project.


I think it's pretty clear that at least in his own head, Alexander thinks of a good dissociative mechanic as a Dramatist mechanic.

I guess you would make the point that even the extensive use of Dramatist mechanics doesn't make for Narrativist play. I'd have to concede here. You might merely want to tell an awesome story, not a thematic one. (Although Awesome can be a Theme of its own right, in which case you're back on the hotspot defending the integrity of the GNS modes, since it becomes very easy to mesh Gamism and Narrativism under the collective party premise "We are the Protagonists, and We do Awesome Things.") Or you might just want to further things along for the convenience of plot.

The Alexandrian laments the skill challenge mechanic. I honestly think he's just misusing it. Most of the problems can be solved by sensibly partitioning the problem. (For instance, his example of getting into the castle could be solved quite well by having separate skill challenges for the wall, the guards at the gate, and the official channels for audience, just like a dungeon can have multiple paths through guarded by different monsters.)

Still, Alexander offers a Simulationist argument against a Dramatist mechanic in a game he considers to be overly Gamist in its appeal. Why would anyone do this? Do you think he's completely unjustified in doing so inside GNS theory? Inside the Big Model? There's sort of an unknown in that it's difficult to tell what kinds of CAs Alexander believes D&D 4E supports.

Psyx
2010-07-16, 12:24 PM
"It's not an idea that's open to debate and discussion. It's doctrine and dogma, often in the form of recieved wisdom rather than knowedge gained from experience. "


Bingo.

And as far as psychology goes, that's frankly a dumb approach. The whole profession was hamstrung for years by Freud's ideas becoming cast-iron gospel. You'd have thought that everyone would have learned a few lessons by now.

Tyndmyr
2010-07-16, 01:26 PM
Oh, there's been no comprehensive survey on the subject, if that's what you mean. (Though I think the WotC study does more to strengthen than to contradict it, and there's been a definite trend in recent game design that supports the theory.) Make of it what you will.

In other words, it's a theory without data. In any sort of scientific terms, Hypothesis would be a much more appropriate term than theory. Other appropriate terms would include "wild guess".

I am skeptical of all systems that start with an explanation first, and then try to find the data to fit it, instead of the reverse. Any realistic model of player behavior would begin with actually studying player behavior, instead of inventing neat little boxes to drop players into.

Kalirren
2010-07-16, 09:54 PM
[...]And that's a shame, because there's some intelligent and creative people who are basically holding themselves back in the name of designing and playing games that fit in with the restrictive ideas of a very small minority of the gaming community at large.

This. A thousand times this.

Jarawara
2010-07-16, 10:59 PM
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."


And at last someone comes out with a sig worthy quote for me :)

It *is* most quote-worthy, befitting of a sig.

However, it came out a long time ago. I think that was C.W. Lewis who said that. Can anyone confirm?

Kalirren
2010-07-16, 11:57 PM
Yep, it was him.



Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Yora
2010-07-17, 06:34 AM
I am skeptical of all systems that start with an explanation first, and then try to find the data to fit it, instead of the reverse. Any realistic model of player behavior would begin with actually studying player behavior, instead of inventing neat little boxes to drop players into.
I work a lot with theories and classifications in the fields of cultural studies and religion, which are as hazy as you can get in science. And while I think most of them are viable assumptions (if not neccessarily the best), GNS Theory still seems not right to me.
I guess it's really about this thing you pointed out. It claims to represent all forms and groups of RPGs, but doesn't show any evidence outside what I assume is the creators own personal experience.

Psyx
2010-07-18, 08:11 AM
I work a lot with theories and classifications in the fields of cultural studies and religion, which are as hazy as you can get in science.

http://xkcd.com/435/

Stycotl
2010-08-07, 12:15 AM
http://xkcd.com/435/

ha! here's the one that this thread reminds me of:
http://xkcd.com/386/