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JeenLeen
2014-01-02, 03:07 PM
I've seen the terms narrativist RPG system as opposed to gamist/simulationist a fair bit on these forums, but could someone define them (as well as any other -ist systems)?

I've got an idea of what they mean based on the posts, but I'd appreciate clarification.

Angry Bob
2014-01-02, 04:09 PM
As philosophies for game design:

Narrativist: Narrative, story, or "fluff" comes first. If game balance or realism get in its way, it's preferable to sacrifice in those areas rather than compromise it. Even where there are detailed rules, they're expected to be thrown out if they would interfere with the story.

Gamist: Game balance and mechanical clarity come first. The game is first and foremost, well, a game, and the mechanics should be fair, understandable, and most importantly, balanced against each other, even if that means some strange interactions with the setting. Example: dude with a sword being roughly as powerful as a guy who can reshape reality on a whim.

Simulationist: The game is intended to simulate something. The rules as written should create an internally consistent world. If a mechanic unbalances the game but is "realistic," or more accurate to the setting, it can go unchanged because hey, sometimes life isn't fair.

They can also be applied to styles of DMing, I suppose, but they're primarily game design terms.

Rhynn
2014-01-02, 04:13 PM
Wikipedia! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory)

And the model that supplanted it (http://rpgtalk.wikia.com/wiki/The_Big_Model).

LibraryOgre
2014-01-02, 04:17 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory

Basically?

Gamism makes decisions that make for a good game. This includes things like game balance decisions. Sometimes those decisions get in the way of the game making sense, or telling a good story.

Simulationism makes decisions that make for an accurate simulation of the world. This includes rules about how different weapons work, or how weather affects people's actions. Sometimes, this gets in the way of a good game or telling a good story.

Narrativism makes decisions that make for a good story. This can include "narrative control" elements like story points, allowing a collaborative story to be told. Sometimes, this gets in the way of the game making sense, or in the way of a good game.

Under GNS, most games strike a balance between these... or think they are striking a balance, but fail because of some mistake on the part of the designer. 4e, for example, was frequently cited as being very "gamist"... the design was less about creating a world that functioned much like our own, and much more about creating a game that was relatively balanced. Hackmaster tries for simulationism... the mechanics are designed to mimic real life in a lot of respects. I'm not as up on narrativist games... they're not my cup of tea... but Savage Worlds is somewhat of an example, as mechanics are built into the game (such as bennies) that allow the players to control the flow of the story.

Airk
2014-01-02, 06:30 PM
Yeah. The gist is that each term defines what a game of that type "puts first" - being a good "game" (Carries with it connotations of 'balance' and fairness in particular - a good game gives all players equal influence.), being a good simulation (Of a world. Carries with it connotations of always striving for the most 'realistic' result) or a good narrative (A good story, basically. These sorts of games usually offer the players some ability to alter the story directly, rather than through their character.)

Of course, all games contain some elements of each, but the ratio is different.

Black Jester
2014-01-02, 07:32 PM
For a more "balanced" (for the lack of any better word) perspective on the issue, any reading into the GNS model and especially Ron "you all have brain damage (his words, not mine)" Edwards, you should also take a look on the writings of the RPGPundit (slight warning though: polite language isn't one his strengths) to let him tell you about the corruptive influence of the Swine (again, his word, not mine) . Both require some critical distance - and keep in mind, they are equally right in their opinions.

erikun
2014-01-02, 08:04 PM
A number of narrativist systems tend to focus on the end result of a particular action, and then extrapolate how a character got to that point from there. A good example is in combat, the result of a dice roll might put one character at an advantage against their opponent - what that advantage is, and how the character got it, is left to the players to determine.

A number of gamist and simulationist systems tend to focus on the direct result of an action, and then extrapolate any end results from there. A good example is that in combat, a dice roll from an action might move one character a certain distance - if that grants them an advantage, or a penalty, depends entirely on where the character ended up at the end of the movement.

You've probably heard about it due to the talk around Fate Core lately on this board. Gamist/simulationist tends to be grouped together because they tend to resolve actions in the same manner. (Note that this is not always the case - some gamist systems resolve actions like the narrativist example! It's just more common, though.) The terms narrativist, gamist, and simulationist are from GNS theory, mentioned above - I don't particularly agree with a lot of it, although those three terms get used a lot in discussions anyways.

Drachasor
2014-01-03, 01:09 PM
It's a misconception that Narrativst games don't care about balance or rules. Half the point of GNS theory is that the rules matter. Rules heavily influence how you play and think about a game. If you find yourself having to toss out the rules a lot in a Narrativist game, then the rules aren't very good; they are getting in the way. A good Narrativist game has rules which enhance the story and story-based decisions.

Similarly, balance also matters a great deal in a Narrativist game. If there's imbalance, then you can have one person that hogs the spotlight and controls most of the story. That's not very fun. You ideally want everyone to have roughly equal narrative power (on average at least).

In a lot of ways a narrativist game is similar to a gamist game in fact. In both of them your choices matter a lot and are a central focus on the system. It's simulationist that's the odd duck, imho. Balance doesn't matter there as long as it is realistic* for the setting. Similarly, your choices don't matter as much as what the character would realistically do in a given situation. It's all about simulating a setting and how characters would behave. Sorta like a computer simulation where you are exploring to find out what happens if you place certain characters in a particular environment.

As GNS is defined, true simulationist games are rare. I've seen a couple, but never played one. One had various motivations for a character, and by default you always acted in accordance with the highest motivation, but you could spend resources to temporarily boost another (but that risks increasing it).

I think the only reason gamist and simulationist get grouped together in D&D forums is a lot of people are under the mistaken impression that D&D is somehow simulationist. It really isn't. It has a veneer of "realism" as all RPGs do, but when you get right down to it, the system just doesn't have any real simulationist rules that matter. Of course, GNS theory doesn't state every game is all G, N, or S. A lot of games are a bit of a mixed bag. It is primarily built to argue that a game is better if you focus on delivering one of those categories. Though it is perhaps more useful to view it in terms of which element wins when there's a conflict (from a game design perspective). Settings and games that feel real need to have elements of G, N, and S, of course.

Anyhow, it can be a useful tool and perspective, I think.

*Which does not mean it is realistic in a real life sense.

TheEmerged
2014-01-03, 07:47 PM
How I define it, may not work for you, etc.

Narrativist - if I could go for an entire two hour session without once picking up my dice

Gamist - if I'm playing a game regardless of the story or carrying about how this might effect a real world

Simulationist - if I'm trying to do one or both with more of an eye to how the world affects me than how I affect the world

Devils_Advocate
2014-01-03, 11:08 PM
(1) A pure simulation based only on internal cause leaves no room for player input. It's a mathematical model, not a game, though it tells a story of a sort.
(2) A game of pure strategy and tactics doesn't really leave room for narrative considerations. It's a wargame (or the like), rather than a story, though it functions as a sort of simulation.
(3) What happens in pure group storytelling is driven only by the mandates of the participants. It's freeform roleplaying, with no simulation, though it is loosely speaking a type of game.

It seems generally fair to assume that people who want to play a roleplaying game with rules want something that is a game, a narrative, and a simulation. Emphasizing any one aspect as much as possible -- min/maxing, if you will -- excludes another aspect, and makes the experience no longer an RPG in the normal sense of the term.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 05:24 AM
I don't think these terms are meant to be applied to game systems but rather actual play or player motivation. Some people prefer one style over another and games can help facilitate one type of play more than the other but in and of itself a system is neither.

Many of these terms are hard to understand and there are plenty of people that will tell you all sorts of contradictory things. Some people are also very heavily inspired by their own agenda and way of playing that their understanding of the other ways will be skewed.

This is my understanding, although admittedly it was some time since I read the large articles on the subject that existed on the Forge.

Gamism: The motivation in gamism lies in the challenge, typically the challenge of the player. There needs to be a goal to overcome and it needs to be difficult so that the player has to be clever and use whatever resources the character has in a good way. Strategy, tactics and resource management are important things here.

Narrativism: Narrativist play is based on having a premise that is then explored during play. This premise can be many things, but often is meant to explore some part of the character and the choices they make. For example, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" can be an excellt premise for a game. The point of play then, is to explore this theme and put the players in situations where they have to make choices that can lead to the metaphorical hell.

Simulationism: This is a style of play I sometimes felt that some people in the Forge looked down on, and some people wrongly understands it as "play that is absent of challenges and premise". The way I see simulationism is that the motivation comes from total immersion. In simulationist game, you want to explore the character to the fullest, and you want to explore the world and experience it as though it was real. It's important to note that it has nothing to do with realism, but versimilitude is often important for simulationist play, as breaking the immersion is very bad.


As you can see, the names aren't very good and can give you the wrong idea. It's fauly to think, for example, that narrativism is better at creating "a story". If reading a novel that was written based on a campaign, it would be impossible to say which creative agenda that was used. The names really should be altered, but they've been so ingrained in people that it's impossible by now.

Some people think you can only ever have one creative agenda, and that claiming that you can be a little of each is deluding yourself, that one will always dominate and you are making yourself a disfavor by not acknowledging which one it is. I don't really agree with this, I think people can have a creative agenda that is a mix of all.

Xuc Xac
2014-01-04, 06:17 AM
People keep saying that Narrativism ignores the rules or is "free-form", but that's not true. Narrativism can have rules too.

Take the example of a fighter surrounded by goblins. Gameist rules might give the fighter an extra attack for each extra enemy around him in order to help balance the fighter's effectiveness against the area effect spells that a wizard gets. A simulationist rule might say that he gets a penalty to defense because he's surrounded and can't cover himself well from all sides at once. A narrativist rule might give him a damage bonus because the fighter has "burning hatred of goblins +5".

Gameist rules exist for the benefit of players playing the game. It might make sense that your character has nothing to contribute to a particular encounter, but Gameism will ensure that you have something to do anyway to keep the player involved when the character is sidelined.

Simulationist rules exist to keep the world functioning consistently. If you lose your last health point, you die just like anyone else. It doesn't matter if the other player characters haven't even taken a hit yet. Fairness among the players has nothing to do with it. It also doesn't matter if you got stabbed by a random goblin in a completely anticlimactic encounter just before the final confrontation with the main villain. Whether or not the plot is random and anticlimactic has nothing to do with it.

Narrativist rules exist for the benefit of the story. "My character is too important to die in the opening act. I spend an Action Point to re-roll my defense because the bullet hit my pocketwatch!" Gameism might say "Hey, you were randomly selected by the sniper and had the same chance everyone else did. It's your turn to get ganked!" and Simulationism might say "There's no way your $10 watch is going to stop a sniper round. If anything, you'll just get more shrapnel in the wound from the shattered watch!", but Narrativism doesn't care about being "fair" or "technically correct". Narrativism cares about what's more interesting. In a narrativist game, the "rule of cool" would have mechanical support so you wouldn't have to ignore the rules to do cool things.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 07:31 AM
People keep saying that Narrativism ignores the rules or is "free-form", but that's not true. Narrativism can have rules too.

Take the example of a fighter surrounded by goblins. Gameist rules might give the fighter an extra attack for each extra enemy around him in order to help balance the fighter's effectiveness against the area effect spells that a wizard gets. A simulationist rule might say that he gets a penalty to defense because he's surrounded and can't cover himself well from all sides at once. A narrativist rule might give him a damage bonus because the fighter has "burning hatred of goblins +5".

Gameist rules exist for the benefit of players playing the game. It might make sense that your character has nothing to contribute to a particular encounter, but Gameism will ensure that you have something to do anyway to keep the player involved when the character is sidelined.

Simulationist rules exist to keep the world functioning consistently. If you lose your last health point, you die just like anyone else. It doesn't matter if the other player characters haven't even taken a hit yet. Fairness among the players has nothing to do with it. It also doesn't matter if you got stabbed by a random goblin in a completely anticlimactic encounter just before the final confrontation with the main villain. Whether or not the plot is random and anticlimactic has nothing to do with it.

Narrativist rules exist for the benefit of the story. "My character is too important to die in the opening act. I spend an Action Point to re-roll my defense because the bullet hit my pocketwatch!" Gameism might say "Hey, you were randomly selected by the sniper and had the same chance everyone else did. It's your turn to get ganked!" and Simulationism might say "There's no way your $10 watch is going to stop a sniper round. If anything, you'll just get more shrapnel in the wound from the shattered watch!", but Narrativism doesn't care about being "fair" or "technically correct". Narrativism cares about what's more interesting. In a narrativist game, the "rule of cool" would have mechanical support so you wouldn't have to ignore the rules to do cool things.

There are no such thing as "g/n/s rules". It is player agenda, why people play, it's never meant to refer to rules. There are some games that are created with a creative agenda in mind but that doesn't make their rules anything really.

Also, your understanding is flawed. For example, in simulationist play, if you want to experience the world of Kung Fu action flicks, a $10 watch could definitely stop a sniper round. If we're talking herioc fantasy, a warrior could definitely get a bonus from fighting multiple enemies. D&D 3.5 is a higly unrealistic game but it can work very well for simulationist play if your base setting is based on the rules. It's first when the rules and the setting come into conflict that it causes a problem for the simulationst agenda. The rules that work great for simulating Hong Kong action movies won't work as well for simulating realistic WW2 action.

A rule of "you get +5 because your hatred of golins" is only helping narrativistic play if there's a premise that is based on exploring what hatred (of goblins) can make you do. Otherwise it's just like any other rule. Again, rules in themselves aren't one thing or another. They can aid certain types of agendas but that's all. If there isn't a premise, it isn't narrativism anymore. It isn't about creating "a story", all agendas do that. Burning Wheel's belief system is there to facilitate narrativistic play because it forces you to answer the question of "what theme do I want to explore with my character". But you could do that equally well in D&D 3.5, the rules certainly don't work against it, they just don't force you to do it.

From a gamist perspective, again the rules only matter so far as if they allow choices to matter. There aren't any "gamist rules", and being sidelined can be an acceptable outcome to someone with a gamist agenda if that is the best option. Inclusiveness isn't more or less a part of any agenda. From a gamist point of view, there being an equal chance of a sniper targeting anyone would be bad. That means there isn't a way to alter the outcome, like wearing camouflage clothing or walking in the shadow or something. The challenge lies in sneaking past a sniper and disable a bomb, and if that means leaving behind the large stupid brute who can neither sneak nor disable bombs then so be it.

So, again, there aren't any GNS rules, there's only GNS creative agenda and actual play. Rules can be created with a specific agenda in mind, but what sort of play is present will always be determined by the people that sit down at the table.

Drachasor
2014-01-04, 08:26 AM
There are no such thing as "g/n/s rules". It is player agenda, why people play, it's never meant to refer to rules. There are some games that are created with a creative agenda in mind but that doesn't make their rules anything really.

The entire point of GNS is that RULES MATTER. And personally I think this is the most important take-away from the GNS perspective. One might disagree on how the GNS division in particular, but it is a fact that rules change how people play. Anyone that's played with many different systems should notice that different rules not only support and even encourage different playstyles.

If you reward characters stabbing each other in the back, then characters will stab each other in the back. If you make knowledge itself drive you crazy, then players will be wary of knowledge. If you reward and make intricate rules for combat, then people will focus on combat.

The rules shape how you play. Good rules encourage, support, and provide a framework for the sort of play the game was designed for. Bad rules can act counter to the intended purpose of a game. How the rules work is fundamental to how a game plays. But this can be a complicated matter since the "rules" doesn't just mean game test, but house rules -- even unwritten and/or unspoken house rules.


A rule of "you get +5 because your hatred of golins" is only helping narrativistic play if there's a premise that is based on exploring what hatred (of goblins) can make you do. Otherwise it's just like any other rule. Again, rules in themselves aren't one thing or another. They can aid certain types of agendas but that's all. If there isn't a premise, it isn't narrativism anymore. It isn't about creating "a story", all agendas do that. Burning Wheel's belief system is there to facilitate narrativistic play because it forces you to answer the question of "what theme do I want to explore with my character". But you could do that equally well in D&D 3.5, the rules certainly don't work against it, they just don't force you to do it.

That's because "you get +5 because of your hatred of goblins" is a crappy narrativist rule. Now, "you get a action/hero/whatever point if you ACT on your hatred of goblins" is getting a bit better. Better still is "you get such a point when you act on your hatred of goblins in a situation where it might hurt you". That can fuel narrative conflict.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 10:00 AM
The entire point of GNS is that RULES MATTER. And personally I think this is the most important take-away from the GNS perspective. One might disagree on how the GNS division in particular, but it is a fact that rules change how people play. Anyone that's played with many different systems should notice that different rules not only support and even encourage different playstyles.

If you reward characters stabbing each other in the back, then characters will stab each other in the back. If you make knowledge itself drive you crazy, then players will be wary of knowledge. If you reward and make intricate rules for combat, then people will focus on combat.

The rules shape how you play. Good rules encourage, support, and provide a framework for the sort of play the game was designed for. Bad rules can act counter to the intended purpose of a game. How the rules work is fundamental to how a game plays. But this can be a complicated matter since the "rules" doesn't just mean game test, but house rules -- even unwritten and/or unspoken house rules.

Yes, rules matter. But there aren't GNS rules, there are rules that support GNS playstyle. I think that's an important distinction. You don't say "this is a narrativist game", you say "this is a game that is trying to support narrative playstyle". How you actualy play will always be more important than the rules.

It is true that you should be aware of your creative agenda and choose rules that will work in that framework. Rules matter. But the rules themselves don't have an agenda. People do.


That's because "you get +5 because of your hatred of goblins" is a crappy narrativist rule. Now, "you get a action/hero/whatever point if you ACT on your hatred of goblins" is getting a bit better. Better still is "you get such a point when you act on your hatred of goblins in a situation where it might hurt you". That can fuel narrative conflict.

The most important part of the definition of narrativistic play is the presence of a premise. While a rule that encourages you to place yourself in situations where your hatred of goblins is tested towards another "belief" like your own survival is good for narrativistic play, it doesn't necessarily make it poor for the other two agendas. From a gamist point of view, it could just mean the instigation of a challenge that needs to be overcome (defeating the goblins) and from a simulationist point of view, if your character hates goblins so much, it's only natural to attack them. As long as the world being simulated is one where people driven by strong emotion are more capable, it's only natural to recieve a bonus for it.

That's why many rules can be used for more than one agenda, even those that are created with a specific one in mind. There isn't any one way to describe "these kind of rules are G/N/S" like some people tried to do here, there's only "these rules have worked well for people with a G/N/S agenda".

erikun
2014-01-04, 11:50 AM
Yes, rules matter. But there aren't GNS rules, there are rules that support GNS playstyle. I think that's an important distinction. You don't say "this is a narrativist game", you say "this is a game that is trying to support narrative playstyle". How you actualy play will always be more important than the rules.
Well, true. How you play the game is a lot more important than any rules at the table. There are people who play newer editions of D&D much like they did AD&D, and have little problem outside a few houserules. There are people who play D&D like a sandbox/narrative/adventure, and have no problem ignoring the rules to play that way.

I've seen that a lot of people who dislike Fate Core are coming from a D&D background and are upset that Fate doesn't have the same types of tables and mechanics. (Not the only reason to dislike Fate Core, of course, but a common one I see.)

I think, however, that stating the rules aren't as important - or that there are no narrative rules - is a bit much. Some people simply aren't going to sit down at a table and say "I want to play a narrativist game!" They won't necessarily start by assuming the sort of game that will be played from the start. This is where the type of rules come into play - and there certainly are rules for narrative. World of Darkness has vice and virtue, actions taken that are good/bad for the character and give them some benefit. Burning Wheel has nature, beliefs, instincts, and traits. Fate has aspects. All of these rules allow players to change the nature of the game, or encourage players to play the game with a certain mindset.

I do think that a "narrativist game" is a silly concept. There's far more to a game than simply focusing on the narrative. But there are certainly rules to support a narrative playstyle, and that's what I mean when I say "narrative rules."

Drachasor
2014-01-04, 12:07 PM
Yes, rules matter. But there aren't GNS rules, there are rules that support GNS playstyle. I think that's an important distinction. You don't say "this is a narrativist game", you say "this is a game that is trying to support narrative playstyle". How you actualy play will always be more important than the rules.

If you are talking about the GNS theory, then yes, it is indeed about saying "this is a narrativist game" and so forth.

You are getting into territory about house rules both explicit and implicit. Sure, you can take D&D and play a narrativist game with it. The system is horrible for this purpose and you'll end up essentially playing a new game of your own devising, but you can call it D&D if you want. You'll be fighting or ignoring the system to do this all over the place.

GNS is all about saying that you should be playing a game whose rules support the game you want to play. That way you don't have to fight or ignore the game and instead the rules enhance the experience.

It is true that you should be aware of your creative agenda and choose rules that will work in that framework. Rules matter. But the rules themselves don't have an agenda. People do.


The most important part of the definition of narrativistic play is the presence of a premise. While a rule that encourages you to place yourself in situations where your hatred of goblins is tested towards another "belief" like your own survival is good for narrativistic play, it doesn't necessarily make it poor for the other two agendas. From a gamist point of view, it could just mean the instigation of a challenge that needs to be overcome (defeating the goblins) and from a simulationist point of view, if your character hates goblins so much, it's only natural to attack them. As long as the world being simulated is one where people driven by strong emotion are more capable, it's only natural to recieve a bonus for it.

Yes, hatred of goblins can show up in any sort of G, N, or S game. However, the mechanics for that hatred are going to be very different if you want the game to support G, N, or S. A "+5 bonus" on a roll is not going to handle narrativist needs very well, generally speaking (at least if we consider a resolution mechanic akin to d20).


That's why many rules can be used for more than one agenda, even those that are created with a specific one in mind. There isn't any one way to describe "these kind of rules are G/N/S" like some people tried to do here, there's only "these rules have worked well for people with a G/N/S agenda".

I am not sure what you are saying here.

You seem to be starting with the idea that a given system of rules can provide good support for gamist, narrativist, and simulationist needs. If that's what you are saying, I strongly, strongly disagree. I've never seen such a system that could handle even two of them well.

I don't know what you mean by "these kind of rules are G/N/S" though. Do you mean to say that a certain sort of system of rules could support gamist games and another for narrativist and another for simulationist? If so I have to say I think that's pretty much true. However, there are certainly tons of ways to make each type of game. Certainly something that works well for narrativist games isn't going to work well for a gamist game (unless you fundamentally alter it).

Part of the point of GNS theory that I agree with is that if you try to make a game that emphasizes multiple conflicting styles of play, then the rules are going to end up being a mess. At a certain point you'll have to decide which is dominant when conflicting styles butt heads. Even ignoring the GNS division and supposing a different division I think this is true.


I've seen that a lot of people who dislike Fate Core are coming from a D&D background and are upset that Fate doesn't have the same types of tables and mechanics. (Not the only reason to dislike Fate Core, of course, but a common one I see.)

To go off-topic slightly, my problem was the lack of balance and required game mastery. It's kind of tough making a group of characters they have roughly equal pull on the story, and the pile of offense and defense types with limited skills just makes it all the harder. Especially when even a difference of 1 in a skill can be a pretty big deal (bell curve system). But I digress.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 12:11 PM
I do think that a "narrativist game" is a silly concept. There's far more to a game than simply focusing on the narrative. But there are certainly rules to support a narrative playstyle, and that's what I mean when I say "narrative rules."

Focusing on the narrative isn't really the main point of narrativism as far as I understood. A narrative could occur from a railroaded story, indeed it could be a great narrative, but it wouldn't be narrativism. The point is to explore a premise. If there's already a preset narrative (like a railroaded adventure) in place to answer this premise, there is no longer any point in playing with a narrativistic agenda. The premise needs to be explored through character actions without any pre-determined outcomes.

And yes, there are rules that are made in order to try and support one playstyle or another, but I think that's what you should say; "rules to support narrativism". It's an important distinction I believe.

Drachasor
2014-01-04, 12:15 PM
And yes, there are rules that are made in order to try and support one playstyle or another, but I think that's what you should say; "rules to support narrativism". It's an important distinction I believe.

Care to elaborate on that? I'm not seeing a real distinction between "narrativist rules" and "rules to support narrativist". Seems like you're making an arbitrary distinction here.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 02:18 PM
Damnit! I was in the process of writing a long post and then I must have accidently touched something at the keyboard becuase the tab closed and now it's all lost. I'll have to write it later because I don't have time to do it again now, sorry.

Pluto!
2014-01-04, 02:34 PM
Narrativist: Games Ron Edwards likes.
Gamist/Simulationist: Games Ron Edwards doesn't like.

huttj509
2014-01-04, 04:31 PM
Narrativist: Games Ron Edwards likes.
Gamist/Simulationist: Games Ron Edwards doesn't like.

See, I assumed the question was regarding the terms as people actually use them, as opposed to the bizarro confusionworld they originated in.

Lorsa
2014-01-04, 06:28 PM
If you are talking about the GNS theory, then yes, it is indeed about saying "this is a narrativist game" and so forth.

You are getting into territory about house rules both explicit and implicit. Sure, you can take D&D and play a narrativist game with it. The system is horrible for this purpose and you'll end up essentially playing a new game of your own devising, but you can call it D&D if you want. You'll be fighting or ignoring the system to do this all over the place.

GNS is all about saying that you should be playing a game whose rules support the game you want to play. That way you don't have to fight or ignore the game and instead the rules enhance the experience.

Can you explain exactly why D&D is horrible for narrativist play? I don't see anything in the rules that says you can't have a game that explores a premise and focuses on emotionally important situations where character choices plays an important part.


Yes, hatred of goblins can show up in any sort of G, N, or S game. However, the mechanics for that hatred are going to be very different if you want the game to support G, N, or S. A "+5 bonus" on a roll is not going to handle narrativist needs very well, generally speaking (at least if we consider a resolution mechanic akin to d20).

You don't necessarily need a mechanic for hatred regardless of which agenda you are using.


I am not sure what you are saying here.

You seem to be starting with the idea that a given system of rules can provide good support for gamist, narrativist, and simulationist needs. If that's what you are saying, I strongly, strongly disagree. I've never seen such a system that could handle even two of them well.

I don't think I said good support. I said a system can be used for many kinds of play. Saying that a system is stricly one or the other is disregarding the fact that people have been playing all sorts of systems using all sorts of agendas for ages.


I don't know what you mean by "these kind of rules are G/N/S" though. Do you mean to say that a certain sort of system of rules could support gamist games and another for narrativist and another for simulationist? If so I have to say I think that's pretty much true. However, there are certainly tons of ways to make each type of game. Certainly something that works well for narrativist games isn't going to work well for a gamist game (unless you fundamentally alter it).

Part of the point of GNS theory that I agree with is that if you try to make a game that emphasizes multiple conflicting styles of play, then the rules are going to end up being a mess. At a certain point you'll have to decide which is dominant when conflicting styles butt heads. Even ignoring the GNS division and supposing a different division I think this is true.

Some people said that "narrativist games are rules-lite" and similar statements. I don't think you can make such claims that a certain type of game, be it rules-lite or featuring certain resolution mechanic is "G/N/S". I am fairly certain there can be games supporting any agenda with all sorts of varying mechanics.


Care to elaborate on that? I'm not seeing a real distinction between "narrativist rules" and "rules to support narrativist". Seems like you're making an arbitrary distinction here.

The former statement seems like it's trying to say that games can have an agenda. Rules are just an abstract system and as such they can't actually have any creative agenda or another. People can, and the person(s) that designed a system can certainly do it with one in mind. That doesn't make the game "G/N/S", but it does make it (possibly) support one or the other. Also, saying that these are "narrativist rules" seem to imply that narrativist play is the only possible outcome of using them. That simply isn't true. The people that sit down and actually play is going to be the ones that determine what sort of game it is.


Also, when reading the entry on narrativism on the big model wiki:

Story Now

I'm not just talking about the minor issue of making stories in play. I'm talking about two things: (i) wanting fictional stuff in play that is emotionally engaging about real-human problems, gets the blood pumping, stuff you want to do something about; and (ii) not wanting any significant outcomes pre-determined or under anyone's arbitrary control, at all. In other words, no fair prepping plot. Or rather, go ahead and prep problems, but not outcomes for them, and bloody well no "sequences" or plotlines that rely on certain things happening soon. In Story Now play, there is no "GM controls the story." The story only appears because the player-characters' actions do matter.
Subtly or unsubtly, developed in play or there from the start, Story Now play always charges up and takes on Premise. That's what its Reward is all about.

I immedietely think "Yes! I like that!". However, many of the mechanics that people say are there to "enhance narrativist play" are things I don't like. I've always had a problem with Burning Wheel's belief system, as it's very difficult to define the 3 things that are important, and when you do it feels like those are the only important things to the character which simply shouldn't be true. I've also felt like the Plot Point awards in Serenity from engaging your negative traits are a bit weird and easily abuseable.

While I'm not a true narrativist player as I don't usually have a clear premise (I think the term is vanilla narrativism?), I've never felt I needed mechanics for it. Being in emotionally engaging situations where my choices matter always felt like its own reward. The mechanics lessen that somehow.

Sometimes they mechanics are also acting against what they're trying to do. For example, in nWoD (and c I guess), the suggested premise is something like "can you fight the monster within". It tries to emphasis the loss of morality and even have a mechanic for it.

However, while it sounds great in theory to explore the theme of a slow moral degeneration and the choices that can bring you down, that's not how it turns out in practice. Either those choices become completely void because a player happens to roll amazing on their rolls, or the slow descent becomes a speedride as the player happens to be unlucky. None of that is really fun and both fail the premise.

The last Vampire:tR game I played in, which was a solo campaign, we took away all the Humanity rolls and instead decided between player and GM when and if Humanity would drop. We still used all the normal penalties for having low one that is present in Vampire. I found it made for a much better game, and better exploration of the actual premise. My character was very concerned with Humanity, wanting to retain a high one, asking various mentors for help (and getting conflicting advice) and trying to be a "good vampire". It was very satisfying to be placed in situations where all the character's hard work crumbled to dust in order to protect/avenge loved ones. Having succeeded with those rolls due to luck would have felt cheap somehow.


See, I assumed the question was regarding the terms as people actually use them, as opposed to the bizarro confusionworld they originated in.

How do people actually use them then?

Tengu_temp
2014-01-04, 09:34 PM
If you are talking about the GNS theory, then yes, it is indeed about saying "this is a narrativist game" and so forth.


Note: the GNS system, as described by Ron Edwards, is flawed, biased and makes no sense. In order to turn the system into something reasonable, we have to extrapolate on his definitions. Just because by his definition this and that is true doesn't mean jack squat, because his definitions are incredibly flawed.

Now, how I see the system:
The GNS theory describes playing styles. What systems do is either support or not those playing styles. For example: it's easy to play a gamist game with DND 4e, but it's hard to play a simulationist one with it. For a simulationist game, GURPS is much better.
Almost nobody is purely gamist, or purely narrativist, or purely simulationist. Most people are a combination of all three, in various proportions. Also, people who favour the same style can still have completely different approaches to the game, because there are many more playing styles than just those three.

Drachasor
2014-01-04, 10:00 PM
Note: the GNS system, as described by Ron Edwards, is flawed, biased and makes no sense. In order to turn the system into something reasonable, we have to extrapolate on his definitions. Just because by his definition this and that is true doesn't mean jack squat, because his definitions are incredibly flawed.

Now, how I see the system:
The GNS theory describes playing styles. What systems do is either support or not those playing styles. For example: it's easy to play a gamist game with DND 4e, but it's hard to play a simulationist one with it. For a simulationist game, GURPS is much better.
Almost nobody is purely gamist, or purely narrativist, or purely simulationist. Most people are a combination of all three, in various proportions. Also, people who favour the same style can still have completely different approaches to the game, because there are many more playing styles than just those three.

I am not sure "playing styles" is the right term. More like genres or reasons why people play. He acknowledges that any RPG is going to have elements of his three genres because they are RPGs. However, the elements can and do come into conflict with each other. Basically the idea is that when designing a game you should decide on the genre and make sure when GNS elements conflict that the chosen genre comes out on top.

But sure, every game of a given genre won't appeal to fans of that genre. Much like every FPS or even every good FPS doesn't appeal to every fan of FPS games (and similarly everyone who plays FPS games doesn't play them the same). To draw a comparison though, has elements of simulationism, exploring a premise, and gamism too. But if you are slipshod about deciding what element comes out on top then you're going to end up with a mess of a game. Certainly there's room for more than strict G-, N-, or S-focused games, but I think it is generally true that mixing priorities would have to be done very, very carefully. There might be other genres or classifications as well, though GNS seems to work decently well.


Can you explain exactly why D&D is horrible for narrativist play? I don't see anything in the rules that says you can't have a game that explores a premise and focuses on emotionally important situations where character choices plays an important part.

Because there are no rules supporting exploring a premise, rewards are all about overcoming challenges, and usually there's a way to short-circuit any premise exploration.

Sure you can house-rule explicitly or implicitly to do narrativist play in D&D...but then your "D&D" will have gotten pretty far removed from the game as written. Most times people do this sort of thing "with D&D" it is just free-form roleplaying. At that point you don't really need a system at all.

Point is, D&D gets in the way of narrativist play.


You don't necessarily need a mechanic for hatred regardless of which agenda you are using.

Granted, but if hatred is going to be a major turning point/focus of the game, then a game that actually represents that is superior. If, on the other hand, the hatred is just an excuse for adventuring/play then it doesn't really need a mechanic.


I don't think I said good support. I said a system can be used for many kinds of play. Saying that a system is stricly one or the other is disregarding the fact that people have been playing all sorts of systems using all sorts of agendas for ages.

I don't think anyone has ever said this in this thread and GNS theory certainly doesn't state that. GNS is just about saying you should use the right tool for the job, and doing so yields a better play experience.


Some people said that "narrativist games are rules-lite" and similar statements. I don't think you can make such claims that a certain type of game, be it rules-lite or featuring certain resolution mechanic is "G/N/S". I am fairly certain there can be games supporting any agenda with all sorts of varying mechanics.

I grant that is true regarding "rules-lite" because that is extremely vague. On the other hand, a mechanic can easily carry a context as part of it. So there are certainly some mechanics, with the proper context, which support one of the G, N, or S genres.


The former statement seems like it's trying to say that games can have an agenda. Rules are just an abstract system and as such they can't actually have any creative agenda or another. People can, and the person(s) that designed a system can certainly do it with one in mind. That doesn't make the game "G/N/S", but it does make it (possibly) support one or the other. Also, saying that these are "narrativist rules" seem to imply that narrativist play is the only possible outcome of using them. That simply isn't true. The people that sit down and actually play is going to be the ones that determine what sort of game it is.

Games have an intended sort of play built into them. Sorry! isn't about shooting fireballs and making demonic pacts. Monopoly isn't about genocide or extorting the poor for slave labor. Etc, etc. Good rules are all about supporting and encouraging certain sorts of play. "Narrativist rules" just means that's the intended purpose of a system. That's all. If you want to use a drill to cut a piece of wood in half, that's your call, but that doesn't mean it will do a good job at it. Nor does it mean the designer of the drill didn't have an "agenda" and intended purpose for the drill.


While I'm not a true narrativist player as I don't usually have a clear premise (I think the term is vanilla narrativism?), I've never felt I needed mechanics for it. Being in emotionally engaging situations where my choices matter always felt like its own reward. The mechanics lessen that somehow.

Any RPG is supposed to be emotionally engaging. Narrativism doesn't have some special hold on that. That said, if you like those sorts of situations where choices matter in a narrativist way, then a good narrativist game will help make those situations happen and provide ways for story-based elements to come to the fore. Now I suppose it is possible you just prefer free-form roleplaying and have a really, really good GM -- but that's essentially saying you have someone you trust and that there are a lot of unwritten rules on how things work. That can work for individual groups but it isn't something that can be exported to other groups.


Sometimes they mechanics are also acting against what they're trying to do. For example, in nWoD (and c I guess), the suggested premise is something like "can you fight the monster within". It tries to emphasis the loss of morality and even have a mechanic for it.

Yes, bad mechanics happen. But that's hardly an argument against having mechanics. Bad free-form roleplaying happens too.

I just wanted to add I'm not saying I'm 100% in agreement with Ron on the GNS thing. However, I think he does have a large number of really good points.

Lorsa
2014-01-05, 02:45 PM
Because there are no rules supporting exploring a premise, rewards are all about overcoming challenges, and usually there's a way to short-circuit any premise exploration.

Sure you can house-rule explicitly or implicitly to do narrativist play in D&D...but then your "D&D" will have gotten pretty far removed from the game as written. Most times people do this sort of thing "with D&D" it is just free-form roleplaying. At that point you don't really need a system at all.

Point is, D&D gets in the way of narrativist play.

The character rewards are all given by overcoming challenges, that is true. That doesn't mean the player's rewards have to come from there. To me, those are different things.


I don't think anyone has ever said this in this thread and GNS theory certainly doesn't state that. GNS is just about saying you should use the right tool for the job, and doing so yields a better play experience.

Yes that is true. But you don't need a theory to tell you that it's best to find a system that does what you want and works with your style of play. Everyone who's ever played a roleplaying game can figure that out. :smallsmile:


I grant that is true regarding "rules-lite" because that is extremely vague. On the other hand, a mechanic can easily carry a context as part of it. So there are certainly some mechanics, with the proper context, which support one of the G, N, or S genres.

Do you have any examples of such mechanics? I'm actually curious as to what type of mechanics are best used with an agenda (or rather which mechanics are BAD to use with an agenda which is a more interesting question).


Any RPG is supposed to be emotionally engaging. Narrativism doesn't have some special hold on that. That said, if you like those sorts of situations where choices matter in a narrativist way, then a good narrativist game will help make those situations happen and provide ways for story-based elements to come to the fore. Now I suppose it is possible you just prefer free-form roleplaying and have a really, really good GM -- but that's essentially saying you have someone you trust and that there are a lot of unwritten rules on how things work. That can work for individual groups but it isn't something that can be exported to other groups.

Well, the GM in this case is most often me. I certainly don't prefer completely free-form play, but I haven't seen any mechanics that were supposedly made to enhance narrativism play that actually felt like they did that for me.


Yes, bad mechanics happen. But that's hardly an argument against having mechanics. Bad free-form roleplaying happens too.

Definitely true. I don't argue for not having mechanics, that would be stupid. I suppose what I need is some examples of good mechanics for various styles of play (like mentioned before).


I just wanted to add I'm not saying I'm 100% in agreement with Ron on the GNS thing. However, I think he does have a large number of really good points.

Yes, he does have some good points. However, his description of the various types of play can be a bit... confusing sometimes. For example, reading the entry on Story Now! it seems like many people have a flawed understanding of Narrativism. And sometimes people assume simulationism is concerned with things being like reality which isn't true at all. His definitions are very abstract, and while one agenda might be higher than the other at any one point in time, it often feels like the assumption is that it is always the same. This isn't true in my experience, and it can vary even over the course of a game session.

Urpriest
2014-01-05, 04:12 PM
Similarly, balance also matters a great deal in a Narrativist game. If there's imbalance, then you can have one person that hogs the spotlight and controls most of the story. That's not very fun. You ideally want everyone to have roughly equal narrative power (on average at least).

Would it be fair to say that Gamist games care about balance between characters, while Narrativist games care about balance between players? So a Narrativist game might have a powerful player with a weak character (a designated victim who can warp the story around their own victimization for example) while a Gamist game might have a powerful character that disempowers their player (a potent healer that has to do the same thing every turn to meaningfully contribute).

Lorsa
2014-01-05, 04:17 PM
Would it be fair to say that Gamist games care about balance between characters, while Narrativist games care about balance between players? So a Narrativist game might have a powerful player with a weak character (a designated victim who can warp the story around their own victimization for example) while a Gamist game might have a powerful character that disempowers their player (a potent healer that has to do the same thing every turn to meaningfully contribute).

If there is only one and the same option that is clearly "the best one" every round I don't think that would be very beneficial for Gamist play. The emphasis should be on strategy, resource management and general cleverness. There's a challenge that needs to be beaten. If the answer to beat it is only the same every time it's hardly challenging is it?

Urpriest
2014-01-05, 04:50 PM
If there is only one and the same option that is clearly "the best one" every round I don't think that would be very beneficial for Gamist play. The emphasis should be on strategy, resource management and general cleverness. There's a challenge that needs to be beaten. If the answer to beat it is only the same every time it's hardly challenging is it?

Depends on what the game is, really. GNS doesn't specify whether the game is primarily about character creation strategy or combat strategy or something else entirely.

That said, I agree that in many games a one-option character isn't powerful in a gamist sense. Nonetheless I think it's definitely possible for a gamist system to have a strong character choice that denies player agency.

Airk
2014-01-06, 11:41 AM
The character rewards are all given by overcoming challenges, that is true. That doesn't mean the player's rewards have to come from there. To me, those are different things.

Players are inherently inclined to chase character rewards. If a game tells a player "You get a chit everytime you roleplay well, and those make your character better" (Tenra Bansho Zero, Primetime Adventures, etc) then people will make an effort to roleplay well. If a game tells you "You get XP for killing monsters" players will make an effort to kill monsters. If a game tells you "You get a bonus point everytime you do something interesting with one of your Beliefs" (Mouse Guard, Burning Wheel) people will make an effort to bring up their beliefs.

Sure, you could say "But players should always be trying to roleplay well, because that is its own reward!" Maybe. But it's uncanny how well it works to tie advancement to it.



Yes that is true. But you don't need a theory to tell you that it's best to find a system that does what you want and works with your style of play. Everyone who's ever played a roleplaying game can figure that out. :smallsmile:


Hah. I wish. Seems like most people who have played roleplaying games try to make whatever system they are "comfortable with" (usually "Whichever one they learned first") serve all ends. Kindof like you are encouraging in this thread.



Do you have any examples of such mechanics? I'm actually curious as to what type of mechanics are best used with an agenda (or rather which mechanics are BAD to use with an agenda which is a more interesting question).

Sure. I just listed two above. For another, you can use Houses of the Blooded, which allows players to stipulate an "and..." or "but..." onto the end of their result - literally adding new elements to the narrative.

Tenra Bansho Zero has a reward system based on doing cool things and playing your Fates.

Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard give out their "XP rewards" based on doing things relevant to your Beliefs.

All these rules encourage a certain style of play.

Edit: Oh, and reading another thread here about character death, I am reminded that TBZ does another interesting narrative thing. Characters cannot be killed without player consent. Not just consent. There's a little box on the character sheet called the "Dead box". It is never required to be filled. If at any time a character with the Dead Box unchecked runs out of Vitality (HPs, sortof) they are out of the fight. They are defeated. They lose whatever was at stake in that fight. But they are never killed. On the other hand, a player may, at any time, CHOOSE to check that box when his character is hit. If he does so, the character takes, essentially, no "other" damage from that attack. And he gets +3 dice on his rolls now (A nontrivial amount). But NOW if that character runs out Vitality, he dies. The "Dead Box" is, essentially, the player saying "Okay. Now it's ON. My character is willing to die for this." This is a narrative design. Characters are NEVER killed "By accident" no matter how the dice come up. Characters are only killed at times when their player deems it is narratively okay for the character to die.



Well, the GM in this case is most often me. I certainly don't prefer completely free-form play, but I haven't seen any mechanics that were supposedly made to enhance narrativism play that actually felt like they did that for me.

What systems have you actually looked at? It might be easier to explain if I knew your frame of reference.

GungHo
2014-01-06, 11:51 AM
How do people actually use them then?
Short-hand categorization for explaining preferences and, more often, dislikes, particualrly when hoping to be on the right side of an argument on the internet.

The "tier theory" of D&D classes (as opposed to WotC's "tiers of play"), similarly, is a "theoryset" created by people who aren't the designers of the game but somehow it came to be used widely by the masses. JaronK cross-posted it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266559) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269440)... not sure if he was the originator or not, because I saw the Tier Theory many years prior to this.

JeenLeen
2014-01-06, 01:27 PM
I really appreciate all the commentary on this. I think this idea (regardless of how true the theory is or not) opened my eyes to part of how I play and enjoy games.

I think most of the games I've played have been gamist either in system design or my group's play style (both D&D 3.5 & oWoD: Mage.*) However, what I enjoy most about a game is immersion into the setting (simulationist) or the emotional effect of character growth or interaction with the environment (narrativist.) I think I could let go of the 'did we win'/gamist mindset, I would enjoy games more. (Problem is, when I try, I often find my character not measuring up to the others in usefulness, which makes me feel like I'm not contributing and thus not enjoy the game in that style. That, and I really enjoy the thought process of making powerful characters.)

I'd like to try a more narrativist game sometime. I liked how M&M had some rewards for your flaws. (Complications? Forget the term.)


*Probably not a very gamist system in itself, but with a combination of houserules and playstyle, it became like that. By mid-game, we all needed to have Dexterity 4/5, Dodge 4/5, Corr 3 (teleport), Life 3 (heal/heal others), and Forces 2 (be able to kill things) to be competent.

Rhynn
2014-01-06, 02:27 PM
While most games are a mix, some games you can pretty unambiguously class as "mostly something-or-other." I'd say Fate, HeroQuest, and Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard are narrativist games (and pretty dang good ones at it), with storytelling mechanics that put story power in player hands. D&D 4E is solidly gamist, with emphasis on balance and interesting mechanics and robust mechanical challenges. (A very solid work, although your mileage will vary on how too long battles take; but there's ways to adjust that.) HarnMaster is very much simulationist, although with many explicit caveats on how to use the simulation to create a better story and game (e.g. the book straight-up telling you not to use the huge tables for social class and profession, at least without having given it a good hard thinking).

Other games have great interplay of the aspects:

Artesia: Adventures in the Known World has a nice balance: the mechanics are pretty comprehensively simulationist (down to mechanics for conception and childbirth, and for death, dying, and judgment in the Otherworld), but they include many narrativist elements (the Bindings that feed character behavior and can be triggered both in PCs or NPCs to compel behavior; character advancement primarily by doing things, including awards for e.g. "Discover a hidden secret about yourself" and "Corrupt an innocent"), and altogether combine to create a solid game with robust mechanics.

Adventurer Conqueror King has intricate simulations and spreadsheets upon spreadsheets underlying and feeding into great and simple game mechanics, aimed at creating a fun game that faithfully replicates B/X D&D and the real ancient world, meshing the two together very well. (E.g. the domain fortification rules appear simple at first glance, but when you "shrink" them to the village-level, you get villages with manor houses that line up very well with e.g. medieval England; and the domain income mechanics lead to these manorial villages having rulers of very appropriate level).

The terms' specific RonEdwardsian definitions may be specific and even silly, but mostly they make efficient shorthand; is the game concerned with being a game, being a simulation, or creating narrative? Frequently that's all three, but to what degree does it succeed at each? (And would it work better if it only focused on one or two of those?)

The significance of the theory, I guess, is mostly in that traditionally, RPGs have been some combination of simulationist and gamist foremost, often with very little thought given to the narrative. Indeed, no edition of D&D really has mechanics that directly address the narrative, instead creating narrative through simulation and game mechanics. It can, therefore, be useful for many gamers to be exposed to the idea that games can have narrative mechanics. (Of course, not all of us are interested in them; I prefer simulation and game mechanics that create emergent gameplay and emergent stories...)

Airk
2014-01-06, 02:34 PM
I really appreciate all the commentary on this. I think this idea (regardless of how true the theory is or not) opened my eyes to part of how I play and enjoy games.

Regardless of whether the theory is "true", it is a useful lens for examining games. In much the same way that Newtonian physics aren't -actually- how the world works when you get down to the real "facts" but it's still a pretty handy model.


I think most of the games I've played have been gamist either in system design or my group's play style (both D&D 3.5 & oWoD: Mage.*)

This is pretty normal; Though the WoD games had pretensions of being narrativist (if you read the GMing advice and suchlike), they were still too rooted in 80s game design to really break the mold there in a meaningful way, and ended up just being gamist with instructions to "play narrativist".



However, what I enjoy most about a game is immersion into the setting (simulationist)

I'm not sure that immersion in the setting is necessarily what "simulationist" play is about, but that could be my faulty mental description of that particular corner of the map. I think that narrativist games actually benefit more from a rich setting that simulationist games do.


I think I could let go of the 'did we win'/gamist mindset, I would enjoy games more. (Problem is, when I try, I often find my character not measuring up to the others in usefulness, which makes me feel like I'm not contributing and thus not enjoy the game in that style. That, and I really enjoy the thought process of making powerful characters.)

It's fine to enjoy multiple styles. I certainly do. Also, being able to build a powerful character isn't necessarily limited to gamist games. Actually, since there is less emphasis on characters needing to be 'power balanced' (as opposed to 'story balanced'), some narrativist games allow for the building of very strong characters.

Rhynn
2014-01-06, 02:46 PM
I'm not sure that immersion in the setting is necessarily what "simulationist" play is about, but that could be my faulty mental description of that particular corner of the map. I think that narrativist games actually benefit more from a rich setting that simulationist games do.

There's no one approach to rich settings, I'd say. HarnWorld is undeniably simulationist (to a ridiculous degree, with tables covering every last manor-village in each kingdom supplement), and I find it an exceedingly rich setting, with incredible support for constructing my political intrigues and civil wars and such. It has a richness of verisimilitude, which works great for me; it has a much higher threshold for real-world knowledge than most games before you find yourself unable to cope with some unrealistic or ridiculous aspect of the setting.

Contrast the Forgotten Realms, where the maps and glossary entries suggest (and nothing really says contrary) that the entire Savage Frontier has more cities than villages, and probably 90% of the population is urban... a ridiculous set-up for anyone who understands how ancient cities worked.

But you can also have a setting that is rich primarily in characters, plots, factions, etc. Kult and the World of Darkness are more like this (although not necessarily of similar quality). Playing WoD, you're not really supposed to worry about the number of vampires your city can support (even though rough guidelines are given, the actual numbers are stated to vary by orders of magnitude), you're supposed to worry about what they're there for.

Airk
2014-01-06, 03:00 PM
There's no one approach to rich settings, I'd say. HarnWorld is undeniably simulationist (to a ridiculous degree, with tables covering every last manor-village in each kingdom supplement), and I find it an exceedingly rich setting, with incredible support for constructing my political intrigues and civil wars and such. It has a richness of verisimilitude, which works great for me; it has a much higher threshold for real-world knowledge than most games before you find yourself unable to cope with some unrealistic or ridiculous aspect of the setting.

Contrast the Forgotten Realms, where the maps and glossary entries suggest (and nothing really says contrary) that the entire Savage Frontier has more cities than villages, and probably 90% of the population is urban... a ridiculous set-up for anyone who understands how ancient cities worked.

I'm not certain that either of these play directly to the nature of the system though. Indeed, especially for games like D&D where the "Setting" is "wherever you want it to be, really." the degree of "richness" or "correctness" or whatever must by definition vary wildly. I mean, especially when you're talking about something like "immersion into the setting" (to use Jeenleen's words for what is of interest to them) large parts of the setting PROBABLY don't matter at all, and the fact that you have, say, a rule for how many people in the average thorp or hamlet is completely irrelevant. The answer to "how many peasants are there" only needs to be "enough to feed the people in the city where the game takes place." That's not simulationist.

You say that HarnWorld offers tons of support for political intrigue and such, but how much of that flows out of the game being "simulationist" and how much if it just comes from them being thorough with their setting?



But you can also have a setting that is rich primarily in characters, plots, factions, etc. Kult and the World of Darkness are more like this (although not necessarily of similar quality). Playing WoD, you're not really supposed to worry about the number of vampires your city can support (even though rough guidelines are given, the actual numbers are stated to vary by orders of magnitude), you're supposed to worry about what they're there for.

I suppose you can argue that simulationist games have problems with handwaving this sort of thing, but I'm not convinced that that makes their settings necessarily more immersive.

In fact, I'm going to go on and say that, honestly, settings and their "immersiveness" are distinct from games and their objectives. I don't really think it's possible for a given setting to be more or less simulationist, so long as you can accept the idea of simulating different things. (i.e. "We're simulating a Hong Kong action film.")

Edit: All that said, I think gamist games probably has the least degree of "interest" in their setting; For a gamist game, the setting is more likely to be the "excuse to have the game" rather than an intricate part of the simulation or narrative.

Rhynn
2014-01-06, 03:12 PM
You say that HarnWorld offers tons of support for political intrigue and such, but how much of that flows out of the game being "simulationist" and how much if it just comes from them being thorough with their setting?

A lot of it comes from the simulationism. I can look at the tables (they take up a huge part of the kingdom supplements, probably 20-25%) and tell how many knights and militiamen each baron can theoretically command, and use a guideline to get the actual percentage that show up to answer a summons. (This, incidentally, is directly dependent on the amount of peasants...)

For instance, by looking at the tables, who is subject to who, etc., I can tell who the major powers of the Kaldorian civil war are.

All this is basically about simulating something roughly approximating England circa 1066.

Adventurer Conqueror King has a lot of this, as well, and possibly an even more robust system for it: from realm sizes (in hexes) and average population you can derive population, income, garrison sizes, urban populations (which influence e.g. criminal syndicate sizes, which influences the level of their leaders)... from income and population (either or both) you can derive the likely levels of the leaders of the realms... all this is stuff that I, as a GM, find useful for the game. (Obviously, I can just decide these things top-down, too; nobody forces you to use the rules, and the author advises against over-using them.)

ACKS has very strong game mechanics that produce both excellently gameable results and a good simulation. HarnMaster is less concerned with the gameable mechanics and more with the simulation.


All that said, I think gamist games probably has the least degree of "interest" in their setting; For a gamist game, the setting is more likely to be the "excuse to have the game" rather than an intricate part of the simulation or narrative.

I definitely agree. I don't really see e.g. D&D 4E having an interest in the details of cities and such other than as background for combat scenes (e.g. Sharn's crazy architecture).

Airk
2014-01-06, 03:22 PM
Adventurer Conqueror King has a lot of this, as well, and possibly an even more robust system for it: from realm sizes (in hexes) and average population you can derive population, income, garrison sizes, urban populations (which influence e.g. criminal syndicate sizes, which influences the level of their leaders)... from income and population (either or both) you can derive the likely levels of the leaders of the realms... all this is stuff that I, as a GM, find useful for the game. (Obviously, I can just decide these things top-down, too; nobody forces you to use the rules, and the author advises against over-using them.)

I guess this is why I am questioning whether these games being of a simulationist bent actually makes the setting more immersive. Or indeed, why all this stuff is even presented as "rules" so much as an almanac equivalent of "City X has a population of Y, which means Z". And whether knowing that actually helps with immersion.


I definitely agree. I don't really see e.g. D&D 4E having an interest in the details of cities and such other than as background for combat scenes (e.g. Sharn's crazy architecture).

Even 3.5 or earlier editions were largely unconcerned with this sort of thing, I think.

Rhynn
2014-01-06, 03:31 PM
I guess this is why I am questioning whether these games being of a simulationist bent actually makes the setting more immersive. Or indeed, why all this stuff is even presented as "rules" so much as an almanac equivalent of "City X has a population of Y, which means Z". And whether knowing that actually helps with immersion.

Well, in ACKS, the city's population determines its Market Class, which determines how much of anything you can buy, and has a hugely important part in deciding e.g. the availability of mercenaries, hirelings, and henchmen. (Basically, Market Class I is an adventurer's dream.)

ACKS doesn't give you a setting, so there's no sense presenting an "almanac." The rules exist so you can create your own setting, which, following the rules, will also be a pretty dang good simulation of something approximating the real ancient world.

Anyway, I'm not talking about immersion, I'm talking about rich settings. Whether someone gets immersed in a setting or not is their business, IMO, but the richness of a setting is something we can more objectively assess. (I think it's separate from the quality of the setting, to a degree; I think oWoD is definitely a rich setting, but it's definitely not a setting I like, as presented...)

I do know that I find it very hard to get immersed in a setting that makes no sense to me, such as the Forgotten Realms as usually presented. This is sometimes ridiculously easy to fix with better simulation (such as mapping the Forgotten Realms with ACKS and its assumptions; suddenly, every 6-mile hex explicitly contains multiple tiny settlements...).

Airk
2014-01-06, 03:49 PM
Well, in ACKS, the city's population determines its Market Class, which determines how much of anything you can buy, and has a hugely important part in deciding e.g. the availability of mercenaries, hirelings, and henchmen. (Basically, Market Class I is an adventurer's dream.)

But this, too, is basically just a table?



ACKS doesn't give you a setting, so there's no sense presenting an "almanac." The rules exist so you can create your own setting, which, following the rules, will also be a pretty dang good simulation of something approximating the real ancient world.

Ah, there we go. That makes sense then.



Anyway, I'm not talking about immersion, I'm talking about rich settings.

Yes, but I think that's crosspurposes, since the idea that I'm trying to correct here is JeenLeen's assertion that simulationist games are necessarily about "immersion into the setting"



I do know that I find it very hard to get immersed in a setting that makes no sense to me, such as the Forgotten Realms as usually presented.

I'm baffled. Do people usually present the Forgotten Realms in its entirety, going out of their way to point out that there are no tiny settlements anywhere in certain areas? This just doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that's likely to come up.


This is sometimes ridiculously easy to fix with better simulation (such as mapping the Forgotten Realms with ACKS and its assumptions; suddenly, every 6-mile hex explicitly contains multiple tiny settlements...).

It's also easily solved by not worrying about how many tiny settlements there are, especially in a world where priests can create food with a prayer. ;)

Anyway, at risk of re-railing this thread a little bit, I found what I thought was an excellent post on rpg.net (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?695325-Chuubo-s-Marvelous-Wish-Granting-Engine-School-me&p=16968472#post16968472). Quoting the especially relevant bit here:


Chuubo's system is focused more on guiding stories than on resolving actions

A heavily narrativist game can be less of a task resolution system and more of a 'story navigator' as it were. In its simplest form, this results in rolls being broader, smaller in number, and more individually impactful. For example, in a simulationist game, if you wanted to sneak into the evil baron's castle, you might make a stealth roll (with copious modifiers) to approach the wall ("I approach the wall, keeping to cover, and watching the guards on their patrol, laying low if it looks like they're looking out." "Okay, make a stealth roll. Okay, you've reached the wall, now what?"), a climb roll (with copious modifiers) to scale it with your grappling hook, a combat roll of some sort (modifiers, yo) to knock out a guard, several more stealth rolls to hide the body, reach the courtyard undetected, etc. In a more narratively focused game, you probably say "I want to sneak into the Baron's castle and exchange words with the Princess." make a single roll (or whatever 'test' mechanism the game uses) depending on the method you want to use, and then...narrate how you do it (if you succeed) or you and the GM narrate how you fail (or what price you pay for success.) Then you move on to talking with the Princess. Or at least, to specifically dealing with, say, the two guards directly outside her chambers.

erikun
2014-01-06, 04:53 PM
I should point out that being a simulation does not imply being a simulation of reality. D&D's vancian magic system is very simulationist, but it's not trying to simulate any sort of reality - it's simulating a magic system where characters take the time to prepare and memorize spells out of a book each day.

Devils_Advocate
2014-01-06, 05:40 PM
Airk, you seem to be treating "immerse" as a synonym for "engage". But while engaging the player is certainly the point of immersion, there are other means of doing that. A game can be engaging without being immersive.

"Setting" in the context JeenLeen used it in refers mostly to one's character's immediate environment, because if you're pondering things beyond that, you're probably not very immersed! Unless, perhaps, your character is thinking about distant events for some reason.

The D&D 3.5 PHB, I recall, notes that some players refer to their characters in the first person, while others refer to their characters in the third person (and says that either practice is fine). "I step forward and open the door" versus "Ragnak the Destroyer steps forward and opens the door". I've gotten the impression that the latter is relatively uncommon. But I think that players may be more divided on whether they prefer to think of their characters in the first person or the third person!

Post-modernist metafiction aside, characters don't think of them being in stories or games, they think of themselves as being in real environments. And it's simulationism that treats environments as "real". That's essential to roleplaying in the sense of imagining that you are your character. The more that you're required to treat what you're doing as a game or as a story, the more you're yanked out of that in-character perspective by the need to function as player or author rather than character.

Some prefer "a game that actually feels like being a legendary, unstoppable warrior-magician rather than merely piloting one by remote control", to borrow from Yahtzee (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/251-Star-Wars-The-Force-Unleashed). Immersion is that feeling.

Airk
2014-01-06, 06:02 PM
I should point out that being a simulation does not imply being a simulation of reality. D&D's vancian magic system is very simulationist, but it's not trying to simulate any sort of reality - it's simulating a magic system where characters take the time to prepare and memorize spells out of a book each day.

I guess? The thing is that there's no standard for what that means, which is why everything from whatever the original version of D&D was to 3.5 are all equally effective at "simulating" that, because, you know, who are you to tell me how long it takes to memorize a formula for changing the fabric of the universe that I will then mysteriously forget as I recite it?

@Devils_Advocate - I had to read your post about 5 times before I -got- it, but that makes a lot of sense. Though I think the Yahtzee quote detracted from my understanding. ;)

However, I think I still disagree that you are being immersed because "simulation treats environments as real" but because simulation, instead, doesn't give you anything else or any other 'role' to pay attention to. It's less about what the style does, and more about what it doesn't do. The rules provided by a simulationist game probably don't help you think of any of it as real, but it doesn't give you any distractions from thinking of it as such.

OTOH, I get more easily immersed in stories than reality, so there's that.

Lorsa
2014-01-06, 06:21 PM
As far as I understood Simulationism (or The Right to Dream as it's been renamed to) refers to a wish of wanting to explore a setting just for the sake of exploration. As long as you can imagine yourself being this imaginary person in this imaginary world doing the imaginary things this person is supposed to do, you're happy. It doesn't necessarily require rule-systems that are good at simulating history, or reality or anything such. Yes, versimilitude often become very important because if you can't do the things you're supposed to do it gets boring. I mean, D&D can be a very simulationist-friendly game if what you want to explore is a bunch of murder-hobos that are making a living by grave-robbing (it can do other stuff too but still).

So, if you want to explore the a faux-medieval setting (or was it ancient?) then ACKS is probably better. How good a game is for a Simulationist agenda will depend a lot on what you want to explore.

I think it's often the names that makes people confused. Reading through the definition by Ron it seems to me that a Simulationst agenda is "as long as I can play a wizard (or whatever) and do wizardly things I am happy". The problem occures when what was thought to be a wizard can't actually cast any spells or turns out to fit with the image of a wizard that the player had.

For Simulationist play, the absense of presence of railroading is less of a concern for example, since as long as the exploration of [something] is there, the agenda is fullfilled.


Players are inherently inclined to chase character rewards. If a game tells a player "You get a chit everytime you roleplay well, and those make your character better" (Tenra Bansho Zero, Primetime Adventures, etc) then people will make an effort to roleplay well. If a game tells you "You get XP for killing monsters" players will make an effort to kill monsters. If a game tells you "You get a bonus point everytime you do something interesting with one of your Beliefs" (Mouse Guard, Burning Wheel) people will make an effort to bring up their beliefs.

Sure, you could say "But players should always be trying to roleplay well, because that is its own reward!" Maybe. But it's uncanny how well it works to tie advancement to it.

Well, I really do feel that good "roleplaying" (working under what I think is your definition here, as it can mean very different things) is its own reward. I have a player in a campaign currently that can enjoy himself very much during play, and then afterwards he asks "how much XP do I get?" and if I say "only one day passed during today's game session, just like last time, so I wasn't planning on giving any XP" he will get very annoyed. I had a talk with him about it, becuase I felt uneasy that he didn't consider the roleplaying in itself to be rewarding enough without getting some form of XP bonus to his character afterwards. I tried to explain that with the style of playing this group has chosen (which means in-game time sometimes move very slowly), I can't award XP every session or else the characters are going to get ridiculously good very quickly. So I asked him why it was he felt that good play wasn't its own reward. In the end it turned out to be a fairly illuminating conversation.


Hah. I wish. Seems like most people who have played roleplaying games try to make whatever system they are "comfortable with" (usually "Whichever one they learned first") serve all ends. Kindof like you are encouraging in this thread.

No. You should absolutely choose the rules you like best, that do what you want them to do. What I said was that there are systems that aren't as exclusive in which type of agenda they can be used for.


Sure. I just listed two above. For another, you can use Houses of the Blooded, which allows players to stipulate an "and..." or "but..." onto the end of their result - literally adding new elements to the narrative.

Tenra Bansho Zero has a reward system based on doing cool things and playing your Fates.

Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard give out their "XP rewards" based on doing things relevant to your Beliefs.

All these rules encourage a certain style of play.

I guess the problem I find with many of these things is that they can doubly penalise players who didn't write down Beliefs that are easy to engage, or aren't as good roleplayers or the like. Not only will they miss out on the "spotlight" so to speak, but their character will also get weaker, relatively speaking.

I know it's meant to be a "reward" but quite often it ends up feeling like the other players are being "penalised". Also, who is supposed to judge "good roleplaying"? Majority vote (popularity contest)? The GM (possibly biased)?

People can really like play that is about emotionally engaging choices but still get upset if one guy gets all the character rewards for himself.

Also, in some cases I've seen players being rewarded by points for doing things according to negative character traits that gets them into trouble. Only it isn't only their character that gets into trouble, most often it's the whole group and everyone has to help solve the situation that is created. Wouldn't it be better if everyone was given these points equally whenever someone in the group uses [whatever] to create an interesting situation? Sort of like how "get XP for killing monsters" doesn't take into account who does the actual killing (usually)?

It just strikes me as weird that creating a system that can be doubly penalising would be good for any sort of play.


Edit: Oh, and reading another thread here about character death, I am reminded that TBZ does another interesting narrative thing. Characters cannot be killed without player consent. Not just consent. There's a little box on the character sheet called the "Dead box". It is never required to be filled. If at any time a character with the Dead Box unchecked runs out of Vitality (HPs, sortof) they are out of the fight. They are defeated. They lose whatever was at stake in that fight. But they are never killed. On the other hand, a player may, at any time, CHOOSE to check that box when his character is hit. If he does so, the character takes, essentially, no "other" damage from that attack. And he gets +3 dice on his rolls now (A nontrivial amount). But NOW if that character runs out Vitality, he dies. The "Dead Box" is, essentially, the player saying "Okay. Now it's ON. My character is willing to die for this." This is a narrative design. Characters are NEVER killed "By accident" no matter how the dice come up. Characters are only killed at times when their player deems it is narratively okay for the character to die.

That sounds like it could be a somewhat interesting mechanic. Certainly innovative at least!


What systems have you actually looked at? It might be easier to explain if I knew your frame of reference.

I don't think I've looked at very many of these systems. I've played Burning Wheel for example which I found looked very good at a glance but didn't really work out for me as a system in play (many small reasons that summed together).

Airk
2014-01-06, 08:02 PM
As far as I understood Simulationism (or The Right to Dream as it's been renamed to) refers to a wish of wanting to explore a setting just for the sake of exploration. As long as you can imagine yourself being this imaginary person in this imaginary world doing the imaginary things this person is supposed to do, you're happy. It doesn't necessarily require rule-systems that are good at simulating history, or reality or anything such. Yes, versimilitude often become very important because if you can't do the things you're supposed to do it gets boring. I mean, D&D can be a very simulationist-friendly game if what you want to explore is a bunch of murder-hobos that are making a living by grave-robbing (it can do other stuff too but still).

I guess that's a better definition of simulationism than I was working with. Though it then makes me wonder why GURPS is considered a simulationist game.



Well, I really do feel that good "roleplaying" (working under what I think is your definition here, as it can mean very different things) is its own reward.

But in TBZ, that's perfectly okay, because there are both mechanical ways in which you get rewarded ("You brought up your Fates!") and 'style based' ways ("The way you described taking down that Samurai was awesome!").


I have a player in a campaign currently that can enjoy himself very much during play, and then afterwards he asks "how much XP do I get?" and if I say "only one day passed during today's game session, just like last time, so I wasn't planning on giving any XP" he will get very annoyed. I had a talk with him about it, becuase I felt uneasy that he didn't consider the roleplaying in itself to be rewarding enough without getting some form of XP bonus to his character afterwards. I tried to explain that with the style of playing this group has chosen (which means in-game time sometimes move very slowly), I can't award XP every session or else the characters are going to get ridiculously good very quickly. So I asked him why it was he felt that good play wasn't its own reward. In the end it turned out to be a fairly illuminating conversation.

Exactly. People like to feel rewarded. Games that reward a behavior encourage that behavior.



I guess the problem I find with many of these things is that they can doubly penalise players who didn't write down Beliefs that are easy to engage, or aren't as good roleplayers or the like. Not only will they miss out on the "spotlight" so to speak, but their character will also get weaker, relatively speaking.

Well, firstly, Beliefs and stuff are generally not immutable. If you played a session and realized "Hey, it's really hard to play the Belief that 'The only true knowledge is what you learn yourself'." then it's FINE to change it. Maybe "The best way to learn is to try new things" would work better for you. There's no cost here, no penalty. If something isn't working, you get to change it at the end of the session.

Regarding relative character 'power', well, is when you start wandering into other bits of "Rules". Rules like Tenra Bansho Zero Player Victory Condition #2: "You helped the other players to have as much fun as you had.". It's really the responsibility of the group to help everyone have a good time. If you see someone picking an un-actionable belief, or a 'dead fate', say "Hey, that might be pretty tough to play. Maybe you should try...". If you see someone sitting off to the side not getting into character, a player can ask them a question. It can be as simple as "Hey, what does SirPantsAlot think of this?". TBZ also encourages the GM to frame scenes without all characters present, so if he sees someone not getting enough face time, maybe it's time to give them a scene to just chat with another PC. ("It's the night before the final battle against the warlord, and Kennosuke is unable to sleep. Wandering the halls of the castle, he sees Ayame standing by a window. What do you say to each other?")

And of course, you are supposed to judge someone's RPing by the standard of that person, not by some mythical gold standard of good roleplay. If someone has a hard time getting into character, but manages a good in-character battle cry, or if someone usually isn't very descriptive, and throws in some nominal details, it should be worth a chit.



I know it's meant to be a "reward" but quite often it ends up feeling like the other players are being "penalised". Also, who is supposed to judge "good roleplaying"? Majority vote (popularity contest)? The GM (possibly biased)?

Depends. In TBZ everyone at the table can distribute aiki chits. I believe this is how 'fan mail' works in Prime Time adventures as well. You see something you like? You give the player a reward. This can be done by the GM or by another player. The only person that can't reward you is you.



People can really like play that is about emotionally engaging choices but still get upset if one guy gets all the character rewards for himself.

I've never seen this be a problem. Good roleplaying tends to be self reinforcing. If people are doing cool things, other people tend to try to step up and do cool things. And there's no "Oh hey, Bob got all the points this session" in any of these games. In Mouse Guard, at the end of each session, you go around the table and see who acted on their belief that session. In TBZ there's no limit to the number of Aiki Chits you can hand out.


Also, in some cases I've seen players being rewarded by points for doing things according to negative character traits that gets them into trouble. Only it isn't only their character that gets into trouble, most often it's the whole group and everyone has to help solve the situation that is created. Wouldn't it be better if everyone was given these points equally whenever someone in the group uses [whatever] to create an interesting situation? Sort of like how "get XP for killing monsters" doesn't take into account who does the actual killing (usually)?

You could do it that way if you want; The "reward you for penalizing yourself" mechanism works in a number of different ways though. In Mouse Guard, you're giving yourself a very clearly defined penalty - "I'm hotheaded, so my argument isn't going to be very clear. I take -1 die on this roll." And are relatively unlikely to get the whole party into trouble.



It just strikes me as weird that creating a system that can be doubly penalising would be good for any sort of play.

I guess you just need to try it. I don't think many people come out of these games feeling 'penalized'.


That sounds like it could be a somewhat interesting mechanic. Certainly innovative at least!




I don't think I've looked at very many of these systems. I've played Burning Wheel for example which I found looked very good at a glance but didn't really work out for me as a system in play (many small reasons that summed together).

Burning Wheel was kinda too crunchy for me; I really prefer Mouse Guard there myself.

A lot of these systems are new and/or nichey though, since I think the whole idea of making narratively focused games only really occured to people maybe... 15 years ago? And it takes a lot of time to go from the idea to figuring out good ways to do it and then getting them published. I guess FATE is the 'biggest' of them, but my brushes with its earlier incarnations did not leave me overly thrilled and the new FATE Core is a massive brick for a system that I sortof feel should be lean and quick. I should pick up FATE Accelerated though, and give it a once over.

Devils_Advocate
2014-01-06, 09:10 PM
The thing is that there's no standard for what that means, which is why everything from whatever the original version of D&D was to 3.5 are all equally effective at "simulating" that, because, you know, who are you to tell me how long it takes to memorize a formula for changing the fabric of the universe that I will then mysteriously forget as I recite it?
But spell preparation is suppose to be a cause of magic, not a magical effect, so the standard "it's magic" excuse actually doesn't work very well. So one could say that there's no in-universe reason for the speed at which a wizard prepares spells to be inversely proportional to the number of spells she can prepare, and that this seems quite implausible, particularly if preparing a spell involves a specific series of gestures and incantations rather than just memorization.

Now, in that case, one can rebut that the non-magical capabilities of d20 characters in general become increasingly blatantly superhuman as they level up, so wizards turning into the goddamn Flash during spell prep fits perfectly fine. Always taking exactly an hour still feels awfully artificial, though.

The bizarrely unique level of abstraction that wizardly equipment benefits from is more of an offender, though.


I think the Yahtzee quote detracted from my understanding. ;)
But... but it's so apt. All "I want to feel like I am my character, because my character is (hopefully) awesome".


The rules provided by a simulationist game probably don't help you think of any of it as real
My guess is that simulationist rules are both designed and used primarily for verisimilitude. What do you think is the main motivation behind simulationism, if not that?


OTOH, I get more easily immersed in stories than reality, so there's that.
OK, I'm pretty sure you're still misusing "immersed" here. I doubt that you feel you're present in stories more than you feel you're present in the real world. Most stories don't even have first-person narration! Where in them would you even be?

JeenLeen's specific wording is a big hint that "immersion" isn't a synonym for "involvement" or "interest". "Immersion INTO the setting". Not just observing a magical fantasy world, but being whisked away from your ordinary life by the friggin' power of imagination and dropped INTO a magical fantasy world, where YOU fight dragons and evil sorcerers and **** because you ARE a heroic adventurer, and because you came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and damn if you're not all out of bubblegum.


For Simulationist play, the absense of presence of railroading is less of a concern for example
Doesn't railroading by definition involve heavy-handed GM fiat, and thus undermine the principle of internal cause and suspension of disbelief?


Well, I really do feel that good "roleplaying" (working under what I think is your definition here, as it can mean very different things) is its own reward.
That doesn't mean that even more reward wouldn't be even better! ;) Although it might be. Overly rapid character advancement can be problematic if it means that a player barely has a chance to appreciate new abilities because they're soon rendered obsolete by even more yet more potent kewl powerz, or if it implies a world where anyone who can arrange to kill an appropriately ascendingly powerful series of monsters can become an earth-shaking demigod in the space of a month.


Also, who is supposed to judge "good roleplaying"? Majority vote (popularity contest)? The GM (possibly biased)?
I vote for voting! Assuming one wishes to create an enjoyable experience for everyone, what better standard than "what the group approves of"?

The rules may endorse a particular type of roleplaying as "good" by rewarding it. Pretty much the oldest trick in the book; giving XP for killing enemies and acquiring treasure rewards players for having their characters "act like adventurers" (i.e. homicidal kleptomaniacs), as they're meant to be.


Wouldn't it be better if everyone was given these points equally whenever someone in the group uses [whatever] to create an interesting situation?
For a cooperative game, probably, yeah. A fight for the spotlight is a potential problem even without building incentives for it into the rules.


Though it then makes me wonder why GURPS is considered a simulationist game.
"It is the paragon of the simulationist (1d4chan.org/wiki/Simulationist) category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart."
-- 1d4chan (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/GURPS)

Why would you question GURPS's simulationist credentials? Are you talking about the lack of a default setting, in response to Lorsa? This is a discussion about types of rulesets. We're not talking about settings, we're talking about what sort of interaction with a setting rules facilitate.

erikun
2014-01-06, 10:21 PM
As far as I understood Simulationism (or The Right to Dream as it's been renamed to) refers to a wish of wanting to explore a setting just for the sake of exploration. As long as you can imagine yourself being this imaginary person in this imaginary world doing the imaginary things this person is supposed to do, you're happy. It doesn't necessarily require rule-systems that are good at simulating history, or reality or anything such. Yes, versimilitude often become very important because if you can't do the things you're supposed to do it gets boring. I mean, D&D can be a very simulationist-friendly game if what you want to explore is a bunch of murder-hobos that are making a living by grave-robbing (it can do other stuff too but still).
I'd actually think that a narrative system could work just as well with exploring a setting. There's certainly nothing in the narrative that prevents someone from doing so, they'd experience the world and interact just as much as with any other system, and the narrative rules would (potentially) give the player more control over what direction the game moves and so could explore as they wish.

There's the potential problem of a GM trying to force the narrative along a predetermined story, but I've seen that happen with every system. I don't see narrativism any more vulnerable to it, or simulationism any less vulnerable.


I guess the problem I find with many of these things is that they can doubly penalise players who didn't write down Beliefs that are easy to engage, or aren't as good roleplayers or the like. Not only will they miss out on the "spotlight" so to speak, but their character will also get weaker, relatively speaking.

It just strikes me as weird that creating a system that can be doubly penalising would be good for any sort of play.
Wouldn't gamist mechanics cause just as much penalties to a player who isn't good at optimizing their choices, or not good at math, or not good at keeping track of all the various bonuses that they could/do have each round? Wouldn't a simulationist system penalize a player who isn't thorough with their preparation or not as familiar with the requirements for (situation) just as much?

Any kind of system requiring any kind of skill (or really, any kind of interaction) from the player is going to potentially penalize one who isn't as good at it. It doesn't matter if the player is not as good at remembering all the +1s or not as good at talking and negotiating with NPCs.

Airk
2014-01-06, 10:46 PM
But spell preparation is suppose to be a cause of magic, not a magical effect, so the standard "it's magic" excuse actually doesn't work very well. So one could say that there's no in-universe reason for the speed at which a wizard prepares spells to be inversely proportional to the number of spells she can prepare, and that this seems quite implausible, particularly if preparing a spell involves a specific series of gestures and incantations rather than just memorization.

Er, but it IS magic. For all we know, these spells can be no more than few syllables. Heck, Power Word: Kill used to be casting time 1, verbal component only, and still took forever to memorize. :P


My guess is that simulationist rules are both designed and used primarily for verisimilitude. What do you think is the main motivation behind simulationism, if not that?

Truthfully, I have no idea, because I have a hard enough time pinning down the definition.



OK, I'm pretty sure you're still misusing "immersed" here. I doubt that you feel you're present in stories more than you feel you're present in the real world. Most stories don't even have first-person narration! Where in them would you even be?

What on EARTH do you mean? Where would I be? I'd be THERE. Watching. How would I hear these people talking if I were somewhere else? o.o Just because I feel like I'm there doesn't mean I have to feel like one of the people being described, that's bizarre. Why would you even make that a criteria for immersion? o.o



JeenLeen's specific wording is a big hint that "immersion" isn't a synonym for "involvement" or "interest". "Immersion INTO the setting". Not just observing a magical fantasy world, but being whisked away from your ordinary life by the friggin' power of imagination and dropped INTO a magical fantasy world, where YOU fight dragons and evil sorcerers and **** because you ARE a heroic adventurer, and because you came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and damn if you're not all out of bubblegum.

Er, if you say so. That's not how I get immersed.



Doesn't railroading by definition involve heavy-handed GM fiat, and thus undermine the principle of internal cause and suspension of disbelief?

Absolutely not. It's a social contract thing again. If I tell you you are going to have free will and agency and then you don't, yeah, that's heavy handed and breaks suspension of disbelief. If you tell me, "We're going to play a short story that's going to be mostly predetermined, and you're along to character act and make quips" then I am totally on board with that and no, my suspension of disbelief is not broken, because I know what to expect.



That doesn't mean that even more reward wouldn't be even better! ;) Although it might be. Overly rapid character advancement can be problematic if it means that a player barely has a chance to appreciate new abilities because they're soon rendered obsolete by even more yet more potent kewl powerz, or if it implies a world where anyone who can arrange to kill an appropriately ascendingly powerful series of monsters can become an earth-shaking demigod in the space of a month.

Though humorously this is only ever really a problem in games where killing monsters for XP is the objective. ;)



Why would you question GURPS's simulationist credentials? Are you talking about the lack of a default setting, in response to Lorsa? This is a discussion about types of rulesets. We're not talking about settings, we're talking about what sort of interaction with a setting rules facilitate.

Yes, I know. But GURPS doesn't -feel- focused that way, someone. Yes, it has rules for lots of stuff, because that's what it does, but I've never felt its rules were particularly good at simulating things. Meh. I should probably go back and read it, but the truth is I don't really care enough.

Rion
2014-01-07, 04:03 AM
What on EARTH do you mean? Where would I be? I'd be THERE. Watching. How would I hear these people talking if I were somewhere else? o.o Just because I feel like I'm there doesn't mean I have to feel like one of the people being described, that's bizarre. Why would you even make that a criteria for immersion? o.o
Er, if you say so. That's not how I get immersed.

Here's the thing, there are different types of immersion, and one most comonly used when talking about games is not the same as the one used when discussing movies and books.

There are immersion as observer (books and movies), and immersion as actor (videogames and roleplaying games).

Immersion as observer happens when you feel as though you are a fly on the wall, present but only watching what others do. You are random and indeterminable person, different from scene to scene, yet always experiencing the world.

Immersion as actor is what happens when you feel a part of the world as an in individual capable of action, which the world then reacts to. You are an actor in the world who does not merely observe, but create ripples in the story.

Whether you prefer immersion as observer or uses the word "immersion" on it's own to refer to that type is completely unimportant, when discussing both video and tabletop games, immersion as actor is what is referred to when "immersion" is used on it's own and is what simulationists are after.

Yes, I know. But GURPS doesn't -feel- focused that way, someone. Yes, it has rules for lots of stuff, because that's what it does, but I've never felt its rules were particularly good at simulating things. Meh. I should probably go back and read it, but the truth is I don't really care enough.
While this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0) video talks about videogame theory, I still think it's appropriate to bring it up, since (in my opinion) simulationism is best described as "The Pursuit of Shandification in Tabletop Roleplaying Games". The idea that there is no seperation between setting and story, that nothing is ever described as "unimportant", it is merely something which has not been brought up yet.

Why is it important how the city gets it's food? Because if I choose to pillage one of the villages surrounding the city, it will have consequences on the food supply. Why is the social hierarchy, local ruler and number of guards of that village important? Because it tells me who will resist my attempt to pillage it.

Simulationism is the process of going through a setting and flipping it's rocks over to see how it works and what effect that will have, and the moment fliping a rock over results in an unrealistic handwave, a metagame explanation that it's "unimportant" or a gives a result that might be challenging or thematically appropriate, but completely and utterly breaks verisimilitude? That's the only true loss condition in a simulationist game.

That's why games such as ACK are simulationist, because they give the DM the tools answer handle any question or action by the players (appropriate to the setting of course. Becoming an astronaut does not need to be handled) without breaking verisimilitude or admitting defeat.

lesser_minion
2014-01-07, 04:48 AM
I guess that's a better definition of simulationism than I was working with. Though it then makes me wonder why GURPS is considered a simulationist game.

On these boards, 'simulationism' gets used a lot to describe games that the poster in question regards as boring or too complex to be useful.

AMFV
2014-01-07, 04:53 AM
Er, if you say so. That's not how I get immersed.


And the crux of the problem with GNS, Gamist will mean different things to different people, some people like the competitive part of games, some people like the mathematical aspect, some people simply find the abstraction useful (particularly in rules-lite systems).

The Immersion thing is mostly the problem with narrativism, what one person finds compelling and immersing is going to be very different than what another person does.

The Simulationism has the same problem. Different people have different ideas about how things work and different thresholds.

In practice, people usually take Narrativist to mean rules light, or rules absent systems (they would be freeform in the truest sense). Simulationism and Gamism would be wargames, but they're not really good definitions because they can be applied in so many different ways. I could argue that D&D is focused on any of those aspects for example, and depending on my playstyle it could be.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-07, 05:04 AM
On these boards, 'simulationism' gets used a lot to describe games that the poster in question regards as boring or too complex to be useful.

show me a rules light simulationist game then. :smalltongue:

AMFV
2014-01-07, 05:15 AM
show me a rules light simulationist game then. :smalltongue:

Oregon Trail. A video game, but if you put the rules into a roleplaying game, they'd be fairly sparse and it is intended for simulationism.

Lorsa
2014-01-07, 05:46 AM
I guess that's a better definition of simulationism than I was working with. Though it then makes me wonder why GURPS is considered a simulationist game.

I got my definitions from The big Model wiki (http://big-model.info/wiki/Main_Page) and the articles Ron wrote on The Forge (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/). It's fairly abstract stuff though and not he's really not very good at explaining things.


Exactly. People like to feel rewarded. Games that reward a behavior encourage that behavior.

And many players don't like to compete with the other players for rewards.


Well, firstly, Beliefs and stuff are generally not immutable. If you played a session and realized "Hey, it's really hard to play the Belief that 'The only true knowledge is what you learn yourself'." then it's FINE to change it. Maybe "The best way to learn is to try new things" would work better for you. There's no cost here, no penalty. If something isn't working, you get to change it at the end of the session.

Yes, this is true. But the rewarding of beliefs and increase in abilities only when they're used (at Ob appropriate levels) means that players will be encourage to do things a certain way not because they wanted to do it that way but because it will give them a reward. "I would like to go and recite some poetry for the princess to impress her with my words, but since I want to increase my cooking I'm going to bake a cake instead." Also, the point of beliefs is to be put in situations where they conflict with each other. I understand full well why that is so, it's fun to be in the middle of a difficult choice, but only having 3 seems to be a bit troublesome. Normally I ask people to describe their characters and manages to put them into tricky situations anyway. It's easier when looking at the "full picture" of a character so to speak.


Regarding relative character 'power', well, is when you start wandering into other bits of "Rules". Rules like Tenra Bansho Zero Player Victory Condition #2: "You helped the other players to have as much fun as you had.". It's really the responsibility of the group to help everyone have a good time. If you see someone picking an un-actionable belief, or a 'dead fate', say "Hey, that might be pretty tough to play. Maybe you should try...". If you see someone sitting off to the side not getting into character, a player can ask them a question. It can be as simple as "Hey, what does SirPantsAlot think of this?". TBZ also encourages the GM to frame scenes without all characters present, so if he sees someone not getting enough face time, maybe it's time to give them a scene to just chat with another PC. ("It's the night before the final battle against the warlord, and Kennosuke is unable to sleep. Wandering the halls of the castle, he sees Ayame standing by a window. What do you say to each other?")

How on Earth can you measure if you helped other players have as much fun as you had? Fun is kind of an intangible value and so far we have no objective way of measuring it.

I do agree that it's the responsibility of the group to make everyone have a good time. I've always thought one of the good parts of my GMing is the ability to make sure everyone gets the same attention from me.


Depends. In TBZ everyone at the table can distribute aiki chits. I believe this is how 'fan mail' works in Prime Time adventures as well. You see something you like? You give the player a reward. This can be done by the GM or by another player. The only person that can't reward you is you.

Isn't that 1) heavily abuseable and 2) prone to favoritism?

The players can just throw rewards at each other or possibly only give them to their friends (which I've heard people saying has happened).


I've never seen this be a problem. Good roleplaying tends to be self reinforcing. If people are doing cool things, other people tend to try to step up and do cool things. And there's no "Oh hey, Bob got all the points this session" in any of these games. In Mouse Guard, at the end of each session, you go around the table and see who acted on their belief that session. In TBZ there's no limit to the number of Aiki Chits you can hand out.

Yes, good roleplaying tend to be self-reinforcing. I think so too. Which is why I'm uncertain why you need to reward something that is naturally self-reinforcing anyway?


You could do it that way if you want; The "reward you for penalizing yourself" mechanism works in a number of different ways though. In Mouse Guard, you're giving yourself a very clearly defined penalty - "I'm hotheaded, so my argument isn't going to be very clear. I take -1 die on this roll." And are relatively unlikely to get the whole party into trouble.

Yes, it depends on the situation obviously. But if you invoke your "Kleptomania" trait to steal from a noble at the wrong time, chances are the whole group will suffer the consequences of that action.


I guess you just need to try it. I don't think many people come out of these games feeling 'penalized'.

Burning Wheel was kinda too crunchy for me; I really prefer Mouse Guard there myself.

A lot of these systems are new and/or nichey though, since I think the whole idea of making narratively focused games only really occured to people maybe... 15 years ago? And it takes a lot of time to go from the idea to figuring out good ways to do it and then getting them published. I guess FATE is the 'biggest' of them, but my brushes with its earlier incarnations did not leave me overly thrilled and the new FATE Core is a massive brick for a system that I sortof feel should be lean and quick. I should pick up FATE Accelerated though, and give it a once over.

I guess I should take another round with these kind of systems at some point yes. Which is the best (or mostly focused on) "narrativist" game anyway?


Doesn't railroading by definition involve heavy-handed GM fiat, and thus undermine the principle of internal cause and suspension of disbelief?

Not necessarily. If you want to be a large barbarian that is killing orcs, then you're probably going to want the GM to lead you into situations where you can do just that. It isn't really railroading if it's voluntary though but still. You don't need to feel your choices affect the story or anything such, as long as you can be this character that do these awesome stuff you feel your character is supposed to do, that's enough.


That doesn't mean that even more reward wouldn't be even better! ;) Although it might be. Overly rapid character advancement can be problematic if it means that a player barely has a chance to appreciate new abilities because they're soon rendered obsolete by even more yet more potent kewl powerz, or if it implies a world where anyone who can arrange to kill an appropriately ascendingly powerful series of monsters can become an earth-shaking demigod in the space of a month.

This is why I've always felt there should be a difference between "player reward" and "character reward" and mixing them together becomes troublesome.

I mean, in WoD you're supposed to be rewarded with XP per playing session. That means that whatever you do, or regardless of how much in-game time that passes, your character will get better. So you could become an earth-shaking demigod in the space of a month by sitting in the mall and talking about whatever.

If the players like doing that, then that's all good and well, but it gets weird when you have to give character rewards for it.


I vote for voting! Assuming one wishes to create an enjoyable experience for everyone, what better standard than "what the group approves of"?

That works well if everyone in the group likes each other to the same degree. It can feel even more annoying to have the other players reward person X instead of yourself just because they like person X better.


The rules may endorse a particular type of roleplaying as "good" by rewarding it. Pretty much the oldest trick in the book; giving XP for killing enemies and acquiring treasure rewards players for having their characters "act like adventurers" (i.e. homicidal kleptomaniacs), as they're meant to be.

Yes, but at least those rewards are based on something the characters do, not what the players do.


For a cooperative game, probably, yeah. A fight for the spotlight is a potential problem even without building incentives for it into the rules.

Yes. That's what I've been trying to say. :smallsmile:


"It is the paragon of the simulationist (1d4chan.org/wiki/Simulationist) category of games. All simulationist games since GURPS secretly aspire to kill GURPS and wear its skin while drinking the blood of its delicious heart."
-- 1d4chan (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/GURPS)

Why would you question GURPS's simulationist credentials? Are you talking about the lack of a default setting, in response to Lorsa? This is a discussion about types of rulesets. We're not talking about settings, we're talking about what sort of interaction with a setting rules facilitate.

A game is only as good for Simulationist play as it allow you to explore the things you want to explore, be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do. Taken to the extreme, you actually don't need any rules for this at all. Free-form roleplaying can work exceedingly well with a Simulationist agenda.


I'd actually think that a narrative system could work just as well with exploring a setting. There's certainly nothing in the narrative that prevents someone from doing so, they'd experience the world and interact just as much as with any other system, and the narrative rules would (potentially) give the player more control over what direction the game moves and so could explore as they wish.

Well, this is sort of what I've been trying to say all along. A "narrativist" system doesn't necessarily make it impossible to play with it simply for exploration's sake. Some of the rules will be a bit unnecessary but are they in the way? That's the question.

It's faulty though to assume that control over the direction of the game is going to help with "exploring as they wish". If you want to kill dragons then you don't really care how you got to the dragon. On some level it's true that if presented with the option of "here is a dragon, here is a orc camp" and you want to kill dragons then it's better with the choice. While the Narrativist agenda fails when the player isn't awarded enough agency, the Simulationist agenda fails when the player isn't being put in the situations he want his character to be in.


There's the potential problem of a GM trying to force the narrative along a predetermined story, but I've seen that happen with every system. I don't see narrativism any more vulnerable to it, or simulationism any less vulnerable.

Well, if the GM is trying to force the narrative along a predetermined story it's no longer Narrativism. It's the exact opposite. It wouldn't work for someone with that agenda. It could work with a Simulationist agenda though.


Wouldn't gamist mechanics cause just as much penalties to a player who isn't good at optimizing their choices, or not good at math, or not good at keeping track of all the various bonuses that they could/do have each round? Wouldn't a simulationist system penalize a player who isn't thorough with their preparation or not as familiar with the requirements for (situation) just as much?

That depends what sort of challenges those "Gamist" mechanics are trying to give to the players. Typically though, it's much easier to help someone optimising character choices or keep track of bonuses than it is to help them to act on certain negative character traits in an enjoyable manner.


Any kind of system requiring any kind of skill (or really, any kind of interaction) from the player is going to potentially penalize one who isn't as good at it. It doesn't matter if the player is not as good at remembering all the +1s or not as good at talking and negotiating with NPCs.

But the system doesn't have to reward individual player skill in terms of character advancement. Being good at something could be its own reward. I know lots of people who don't want to play roleplaying games with the mindset that they have to compete with the other players for character rewards.

AMFV
2014-01-07, 06:11 AM
A game is only as good for Simulationist play as it allow you to explore the things you want to explore, be the person you want to be and do the things you want to do. Taken to the extreme, you actually don't need any rules for this at all. Free-form roleplaying can work exceedingly well with a Simulationist agenda.

In fact the best simulationist game is freeform LARPing. If you want to simulate a camping experience, you pack up your camping gear, and then go and camp, it's completely simulationist and indistinguishable from the real world.

Lorsa
2014-01-07, 06:59 AM
In fact the best simulationist game is freeform LARPing. If you want to simulate a camping experience, you pack up your camping gear, and then go and camp, it's completely simulationist and indistinguishable from the real world.

Yes you are right. But it doesn't work very well if you want to be a Kung Fu action hero though. :smallsmile:

AMFV
2014-01-07, 07:06 AM
Yes you are right. But it doesn't work very well if you want to be a Kung Fu action hero though. :smallsmile:


That's not a simulationist thing, since Kung Fu heroes aren't very realistic, you could have a fight club in your basement. But that could be trouble, anyways I just think that the definitions are arbitrary and poorly explained, sometimes useful but they could be much much better.

Lorsa
2014-01-07, 07:16 AM
On these boards, 'simulationism' gets used a lot to describe games that the poster in question regards as boring or too complex to be useful.


And the crux of the problem with GNS, Gamist will mean different things to different people, some people like the competitive part of games, some people like the mathematical aspect, some people simply find the abstraction useful (particularly in rules-lite systems).

The Immersion thing is mostly the problem with narrativism, what one person finds compelling and immersing is going to be very different than what another person does.

The Simulationism has the same problem. Different people have different ideas about how things work and different thresholds.

In practice, people usually take Narrativist to mean rules light, or rules absent systems (they would be freeform in the truest sense). Simulationism and Gamism would be wargames, but they're not really good definitions because they can be applied in so many different ways. I could argue that D&D is focused on any of those aspects for example, and depending on my playstyle it could be.


That's not a simulationist thing, since Kung Fu heroes aren't very realistic, you could have a fight club in your basement. But that could be trouble, anyways I just think that the definitions are arbitrary and poorly explained, sometimes useful but they could be much much better.

These comment sort of highlight very well what the problem is with the creative agendas. Most people don't really know what they mean. The definitions were developed in The Forge and are used in The Big Model, so that's the things we need to mean when we talk about GNS.

If we don't use the same definition, or mean the same thing when we discuss, things just get very confusing. Table waltzing doornob?

You can't use Simulationism to describe games you find boring and complex. How you get that from the definition is completely beyond me. Furthermore, Simulationism isn't concerned with realism in any way. You could very well want to be a superhero with a Simulationist agenda.

Gamist should mean the same thing to all people. What sort of actual challenges they like however is different, but the actual term "Gamism" doesn't change because of that. If your motivation comes from wanting to overcome challenges, regardless of what form those are, then it's a Gamist agenda.

If people don't use the terms according to their definition then it's no point having any discussion with them and if the definitions are so poorly phrased that noone understands them then we need better definitions.

AMFV
2014-01-07, 07:24 AM
These comment sort of highlight very well what the problem is with the creative agendas. Most people don't really know what they mean. The definitions were developed in The Forge and are used in The Big Model, so that's the things we need to mean when we talk about GNS.

If we don't use the same definition, or mean the same thing when we discuss, things just get very confusing. Table waltzing doornob?

You can't use Simulationism to describe games you find boring and complex. How you get that from the definition is completely beyond me. Furthermore, Simulationism isn't concerned with realism in any way. You could very well want to be a superhero with a Simulationist agenda.

Gamist should mean the same thing to all people. What sort of actual challenges they like however is different, but the actual term "Gamism" doesn't change because of that. If your motivation comes from wanting to overcome challenges, regardless of what form those are, then it's a Gamist agenda.

If people don't use the terms according to their definition then it's no point having any discussion with them and if the definitions are so poorly phrased that noone understands them then we need better definitions.

The problem is that the original simulationism stance was actually interested in reality and simulating that, or at least a certain type of reality. The funadmental problem is that the viewpoints are very disparate.

You can have very different types of experiences that are all equally gamist, for example Monopoly is a gamist game (since there is no narrative and isn't intended to simulate), in fact almost all board games could be defined as gamist in a large sense, but Chess is very markedly different in play from Arkham Horror. There are boardgames of varying degrees of strategy and competitiveness, games where the rules are set in stone, and those where the rules are open for debate, board games which are rules light like Checkers, and rules heavy, like Axis and Allies or Diplomacy. And these are almost all completely at the gamist end of the spectrum, it doesn't work as a definition because many people believe different things are important in the sense of a game.

I agree that it's a poor definition, and a poor model. There are certainly some things that might work to define gaming models, and GNS suffers in several respects from being very early in the study of RPGs, which is young as a formal study, and from being developed entirely by one person, those are things that are often harmful to the development of a good theory.

Airk
2014-01-07, 10:09 AM
It's fairly abstract stuff though and not he's really not very good at explaining things.

Yes, that's a large part of the problem.


And many players don't like to compete with the other players for rewards.

I don't understand how you can view this as a "competition". There's no fixed pool of rewards that people are "competing" for. There's no "first, 2nd, third and no one else gets anything" pot-sharing or something. There's no winner. Do a task, get a reward. If someone else is getting more rewards than you, it means they are doing the task more often, but who cares? You still get rewarded everytime you do it.




Yes, this is true. But the rewarding of beliefs and increase in abilities only when they're used (at Ob appropriate levels) means that players will be encourage to do things a certain way not because they wanted to do it that way but because it will give them a reward. "I would like to go and recite some poetry for the princess to impress her with my words, but since I want to increase my cooking I'm going to bake a cake instead."

What? No. Absolutely not. Rewards are not tied to where they came from, any more than in D&D you have to spend your skill points on skills you used during the last level. o.o It doesn't matter WHICH belief you engage, just that you do it.



Also, the point of beliefs is to be put in situations where they conflict with each other. I understand full well why that is so, it's fun to be in the middle of a difficult choice, but only having 3 seems to be a bit troublesome.

Actually, three is about all most people can keep track of.



How on Earth can you measure if you helped other players have as much fun as you had? Fun is kind of an intangible value and so far we have no objective way of measuring it.

I guess you didn't really get the joke about the idea of having "victory conditions" in an RPG, huh? Basically, it's a list of "Here's how to have the most fun playing this game!"



Isn't that 1) heavily abuseable and 2) prone to favoritism?

If you are playing a game with people who are going to abuse a system, they are going to abuse whatever system you pick, and you shouldn't play with them. Do you play with people who persistently metagame in inappropriate ways? Do you need rules that "prevent" that? Is your group dysfunctional, or do they like having a good time? Can it be abused? Sure. But what's the point? The banker in Monopoly could give themselves free money too - the rules don't say they can't - but it's against the spirit and point of the game, so why would you?

I think there's a fundamental problem here. You are still viewing games from a very oldschool "But what if my players CHEAT?!?!?!" mindset. If your players cheat, your game won't be any fun, and they will have no one to blame but themselves, but why would you do that? There's no "win condition" here other than the aforementioned "ways to have the most fun." And if the game says, in the RULES, "give this to a player when they do something cool" and someone starts giving it to other players anything they do anything, that player, is, essentially, breaking the rules. Just because it's subjective doesn't mean it's obvious when someone is "cheating".

And something else? One of the biggest problems everyone reports with playing TBZ? People don't give out ENOUGH Aiki. Not abusing the system by giving it out for everything. But sitting there thinking "I don't know if that was cool ENOUGH". To the point where the game gives instructions to the GM to watch for this and start handing out rewards themselves to get things moving.

People giving the stuff out for everything just isn't a problem, because people don't want to seem too free with the stuff.



The players can just throw rewards at each other or possibly only give them to their friends (which I've heard people saying has happened).

Why would you give them only to your friends? Heck, aren't you PLAYING with your friends? If you don't like these people, why are you gaming with them? And even then, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're all on the same team. o.o This is like being on a soccer team and saying "I'm not going to pass to THAT guy, I don't like him." o.o



Yes, good roleplaying tend to be self-reinforcing. I think so too. Which is why I'm uncertain why you need to reward something that is naturally self-reinforcing anyway?

Because you need to get to a certain threshold before it becomes self reinforcing? Because it helps smooth out the 'valleys' in the action? Because it helps you get the ball rolling? Because it works?



Yes, it depends on the situation obviously. But if you invoke your "Kleptomania" trait to steal from a noble at the wrong time, chances are the whole group will suffer the consequences of that action.

Why? Does the kingdom have some strange "came to the court in the company of a thief" law? In my opinion, this is STRICTLY a GMing issue.



I guess I should take another round with these kind of systems at some point yes. Which is the best (or mostly focused on) "narrativist" game anyway?

I don't know. I don't think any of them are SUPER narrativist. All of the ones I've thrown out here still have 'standard' task resolution systems. A lot of the differences are in the "soft" rules.

If I had to pick one, I'd pick TBZ (http://kotodama.bigcartel.com/category/game), because I think it's a crazy awesome game that comes from a different 'design space' since it was actually made in Japan and then (much later) translated to English. And it has a lot of very interesting touches.

I don't really make that selection based on a feeling that it is the 'most' narrativist of the games I'm familiar with, but as I said, I don't think I've run into a really heavily narrativist game yet. They're really just starting to break onto the scene in any sort of meaningful way.


This is why I've always felt there should be a difference between "player reward" and "character reward" and mixing them together becomes troublesome.

But what, exactly, constitutes a "player reward"? I've read a lot of discussions along these same lines, and they've never managed to come up with anything that works in that category. You can't give a player "fun". What else rewards a player? The ability to do cool things with the game, of course. And in most games, a player's agency to control the game is their character. Which means that "character" rewards ARE player rewards. Probably you could create some sort of 'narrative currency' that allows players to add things directly to the fiction, which Houses of the Blooded does a LITTLE bit, but I haven't really seen people double down on that idea yet.



That works well if everyone in the group likes each other to the same degree. It can feel even more annoying to have the other players reward person X instead of yourself just because they like person X better.

But why would you do this? What POSSIBLE advantage is there in NOT rewarding someone? You can't "save" your rewards to give to someone else, because there's no "pool" that runs out.



Yes, but at least those rewards are based on something the characters do, not what the players do.

I think this is a meaningless distinction in a game about stories. Again - you need to shed the "overcoming challenges" mentality here. The game is about making an interesting story, and that involves character growth.


That depends what sort of challenges those "Gamist" mechanics are trying to give to the players. Typically though, it's much easier to help someone optimising character choices or keep track of bonuses than it is to help them to act on certain negative character traits in an enjoyable manner.

I disagree entirely. "fixing" a gamist character often requires you to essentially break the rules ("You've taken these four feats, but you should have taken these others...") and it involves a LOT more changes. Helping someone act on a trait (Note: Most of these games I'm suggesting do not require these actions to be 'negative' in any way) is as simple as saying "Hey, it'd be totally awesome if you..."


But the system doesn't have to reward individual player skill in terms of character advancement. Being good at something could be its own reward. I know lots of people who don't want to play roleplaying games with the mindset that they have to compete with the other players for character rewards.

Again, my mind is BLOWN by your ability to somehow regard this as a competition. It's only a "competition" if you make it one, and if you don't want to BE in a competition, you PROBABLY don't want to make it one.

In all seriousness though, look at it like this:

Are we here to play this game and have fun? If the answer is "yes" then you should probably play the game in the way that is fun, rather than in a way that involves actively diminishing your enjoyment. If the answer is "no" then you probably shouldn't play the game at all and you should look seriously at your choice of hobbies and consider, I dunno, stamp collecting or something. ;)

JeenLeen
2014-01-07, 10:37 AM
I think I'm starting to get the idea more. I like settings that are internally consistent, but that isn't necessarily simulationist. From what I'm hearing, the GNS theory is based on what play a game encourages (and in part is extended to play style is encouraged by how a group plays) by what the player is awarded for.

In most games I've played, we get xp which we can use to become more powerful. Even allies in-game essentially become options or resources we can draw upon to solve problems. That is, to my understanding, a very gamist perspective.
However, for the WoD game I was in, we got xp based on how much got done. Whether it was advancing the plot, a complicated side quest because of our character's interest, we got xp. We'd get less xp if we spent time just talking to allies/connections, but we still got xp. So we were awarded for doing what made sense IC in combination with overcoming obstacles.
So I guess the award was primarily gamist, but we got awarded for a combination of gamist (overcome obstacles) and narrativist (advance or cultivate story or, to a lesser degree, character's growth).

On the other hand, if we acted out our flaws or even positive traits, that didn't matter unless it impacted things to advance. If it hurt our resources, it just hurt our resources (allies offended & not help, for example). Part of this was good as it led to our group with the same goals and encouraged a serious attitude about the setting, but I see how it led to less fun RPing in some cases. (For example, one player liked making stupid jokes or doing cool but stupid stuff IC. It annoyed the rest of us because that tended to get our allies mad and/or increase chances of us dying. The game play style punished that behavior. If it didn't, it might have been cool to all of us when he did that.)

(Note: by immersion, I primarily meant the ability to get into the mind of the character and their emotion in interacting with the world. If the setting lacks verisimilitude, I find that difficult because it doesn't make sense. Sorry if my poorly using that term led to any confusion)

AMFV
2014-01-07, 10:38 AM
Again, my mind is BLOWN by your ability to somehow regard this as a competition. It's only a "competition" if you make it one, and if you don't want to BE in a competition, you PROBABLY don't want to make it one.

In all seriousness though, look at it like this:

Are we here to play this game and have fun? If the answer is "yes" then you should probably play the game in the way that is fun, rather than in a way that involves actively diminishing your enjoyment. If the answer is "no" then you probably shouldn't play the game at all and you should look seriously at your choice of hobbies and consider, I dunno, stamp collecting or something. ;)

Well clearly this is a category of enjoying different aspects of a game, in fact different gamist aspects. I think that to divide a game up into it's GNS parts is actually useful, but I think to say, "this game is more gamist" is not as useful. So Lorsa prefers that cooperative aspects of a gamist system, which is a completely valid preference to my mind.

Airk
2014-01-07, 10:56 AM
Well clearly this is a category of enjoying different aspects of a game, in fact different gamist aspects. I think that to divide a game up into it's GNS parts is actually useful, but I think to say, "this game is more gamist" is not as useful. So Lorsa prefers that cooperative aspects of a gamist system, which is a completely valid preference to my mind.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

All I am saying is there is no competition here, so saying "I don't like to compete" is about as relevant as "I don't like Italian food." Unless you bring Italian food to the game, there won't be any. :)

Drachasor
2014-01-07, 11:12 AM
That's not a simulationist thing, since Kung Fu heroes aren't very realistic, you could have a fight club in your basement. But that could be trouble, anyways I just think that the definitions are arbitrary and poorly explained, sometimes useful but they could be much much better.

That's not what simulationist means. Simulationism is basically the idea of simulating the game setting including a simulation of how characters would act, react, and so forth. It's not about real-life realism, but realistic for the setting. Very different. There are honestly not many simulationist games.

A simulationist argument you see coming up in D&D would be when people defend warriors being crap compared to casters because they feel that's realistic for the setting. Balance doesn't matter. Equality of agency in any sense doesn't matter.

Of course, as I said before, some elements of each of the GNS categories are in any actual game. Things need to feel realistic enough (for the setting) for willing suspension of disbelief for instance. But there aren't many games out there where simulationist elements are the focus with rewards and mechanics supporting simulationist play (Synapse is the first that comes to mind...though I've never actually seen that played).


But what, exactly, constitutes a "player reward"? I've read a lot of discussions along these same lines, and they've never managed to come up with anything that works in that category. You can't give a player "fun". What else rewards a player? The ability to do cool things with the game, of course. And in most games, a player's agency to control the game is their character. Which means that "character" rewards ARE player rewards. Probably you could create some sort of 'narrative currency' that allows players to add things directly to the fiction, which Houses of the Blooded does a LITTLE bit, but I haven't really seen people double down on that idea yet.

Hmm, well you can distinguish between player and character rewards, I think. Much like you can distinguish between player and character decisions. This is perhaps most common in Narrativist games, where you must do something to create a conflict as a player. For instance, if the game let's you decide to accidentally run into some people you owe money to, then that's a PLAYER decision and not a decision the character makes.

I suppose if you have resources for player decisions like that separated from character resources, you could speak of player rewards vs. character rewards. But I don't think I have seen a game that really separated the two out. Usually any currency like that can be used either way as you say.

Regarding rewards, an important aspect you missed is that rewards also mean that you don't have a game that says it is about one thing, and then only rewards you for doing something else. If you have a game that's very narrativist (or supposed to be), but you only get rewards for clever thinking in combat (e.g. gamist), then that's going to be a problem. It sends conflicting messages to the player and undermines the focus of the game. This is part of way D&D is a crappy Narrativist game without extensive house-rules (implicit or explicit), because it just isn't built to rewards any of the narrative stuff.

Sure you should enjoy doing whatever you do, but the game should also reward that. Not because it is necessary to enjoy it, but because that's just coherent design. Imagine a computer RPG where you only advance in levels or gain equipment by playing a collectable card game -- that would be absolutely bizarre. It is honestly no less bizarre to have dysfunctional rewards in a pen and paper RPG, but we are more used to it there.

LibraryOgre
2014-01-07, 11:24 AM
That's not what simulationist means. Simulationism is basically the idea of simulating the game setting including a simulation of how characters would act, react, and so forth. It's not about real-life realism, but realistic for the setting. Very different. There are honestly not many simulationist games.

Or, as it says in my sig....

It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.

Airk
2014-01-07, 11:38 AM
Hmm, well you can distinguish between player and character rewards, I think. Much like you can distinguish between player and character decisions. This is perhaps most common in Narrativist games, where you must do something to create a conflict as a player. For instance, if the game let's you decide to accidentally run into some people you owe money to, then that's a PLAYER decision and not a decision the character makes.

You can distinguish them, but there's a wrinkle in that all character decisions/rewards are ALSO player decisions/rewards. But it doesn't go the other way. That said, I haven't really seen any systems that had significant non-character player rewards in them, because I think people are still struggling to come up with what that IS. The only one I can think of is the 'narrative agency currency' reward, which is probably present somewhere, but not in a system I have read.



Regarding rewards, an important aspect you missed is that rewards also mean that you don't have a game that says it is about one thing, and then only rewards you for doing something else. If you have a game that's very narrativist (or supposed to be), but you only get rewards for clever thinking in combat (e.g. gamist), then that's going to be a problem. It sends conflicting messages to the player and undermines the focus of the game. This is part of way D&D is a crappy Narrativist game without extensive house-rules (implicit or explicit), because it just isn't built to rewards any of the narrative stuff.

Sure you should enjoy doing whatever you do, but the game should also reward that. Not because it is necessary to enjoy it, but because that's just coherent design. Imagine a computer RPG where you only advance in levels or gain equipment by playing a collectable card game -- that would be absolutely bizarre. It is honestly no less bizarre to have dysfunctional rewards in a pen and paper RPG, but we are more used to it there.

Definitely a good point. You don't want reward dissonance.

NichG
2014-01-07, 11:50 AM
I don't think I've ever seen simulationism defined as being about having systematic ways that determine how the characters would act.

Simulationism, from my point of view at least, is all about 'lets see what happens as a result of these elements'. A 'completely' simulationist system wouldn't be designed to create particular outcomes, but instead would be designed so its easy to determine outcomes given a set of elements.

In other words, a heavily simulationist game might ask a question like 'the player introduces a new spell that can turn wood into stone - what are the consequences for the setting, the world at large, etc?'. It might also just ask 'what are the consequences for the player's next fight?'. But it's all about determining what the consequences of a certain action or change are in a self-consistent system.

In this sense, Tippyverse would be an example of playing D&D as a simulationist game - its the result of asking "What are the consequences of the rules-as-physics?"

nedz
2014-01-07, 01:03 PM
I view this stuff through the lens of Exploration. I.e. What do I want to explore ?

Narrativist
I want to explore the characters. How do they interact with each other ? How do the characters react to events ? How can I manipulate the characters ?

Gamist
I want to explore the options available to me in terms of abstract problems. How do I build my characters ? How do I use them tactically ? What combos can I create ?

Simulationist
I want to explore the culture of the setting, experience a new world and explore it's geography. How does this setting work ? How can I manipulate the setting ?

None of these are mutually incompatible, they are just different foci.

Drachasor
2014-01-07, 07:32 PM
I don't think I've ever seen simulationism defined as being about having systematic ways that determine how the characters would act.

Simulationism, from my point of view at least, is all about 'lets see what happens as a result of these elements'. A 'completely' simulationist system wouldn't be designed to create particular outcomes, but instead would be designed so its easy to determine outcomes given a set of elements.

In other words, a heavily simulationist game might ask a question like 'the player introduces a new spell that can turn wood into stone - what are the consequences for the setting, the world at large, etc?'. It might also just ask 'what are the consequences for the player's next fight?'. But it's all about determining what the consequences of a certain action or change are in a self-consistent system.

In this sense, Tippyverse would be an example of playing D&D as a simulationist game - its the result of asking "What are the consequences of the rules-as-physics?"

Eh, if you're just exploring how some spell or something changes the setting, you don't really need characters at all for it. As I have read it, simulationism is about seeing how a character interacts with the setting. How well he does, whether he lives or dies, etc, etc. The Tippyverse is an example of how a self-consistent world isn't simulationism, I think. Every settings needs to care about verisimilitude or people won't want to play in it. The Tippyverse is just about that.

An example of a simulationist would be sanity in Call of Cthulu and that does of course affect character behavior, because modeling a character's behavior is just as important as modeling the rest of the setting. Whereas Narrativism is focused on what makes a good story/exploration of the premise, Simulationism is focused on "how would my character REALLY behave in this setting/circumstance." That concern is more important than any others in a simulationist game.

NichG
2014-01-08, 05:42 AM
Eh, if you're just exploring how some spell or something changes the setting, you don't really need characters at all for it. As I have read it, simulationism is about seeing how a character interacts with the setting. How well he does, whether he lives or dies, etc, etc. The Tippyverse is an example of how a self-consistent world isn't simulationism, I think. Every settings needs to care about verisimilitude or people won't want to play in it. The Tippyverse is just about that.

An example of a simulationist would be sanity in Call of Cthulu and that does of course affect character behavior, because modeling a character's behavior is just as important as modeling the rest of the setting. Whereas Narrativism is focused on what makes a good story/exploration of the premise, Simulationism is focused on "how would my character REALLY behave in this setting/circumstance." That concern is more important than any others in a simulationist game.

Where have you seen it defined this way? Because I don't think I've actually played any games where this kind of thing is true, Call of Cthulhu included.

I would say that the sanity track in CoC (or the humanity track in Vampire, or similar things) is actually a very gamist element - its basically a hitpoint track, and its more there to disincentivize certain risky but profitable behaviors in those systems (e.g. reading Mythos tomes in CoC or diablerizing elders in Vampire), thereby creating a tension between the player's desire for taking control of their environment and their desire to maintain control of their character.

Lorsa
2014-01-09, 07:26 AM
To conclude the discussion for the OP:

Noone really understands what the various GNS terms mean, and work on very different definitions of them. That is why, whenever someone mentions it on this forum you should ask "what do you mean by GNS?".


I don't understand how you can view this as a "competition". There's no fixed pool of rewards that people are "competing" for. There's no "first, 2nd, third and no one else gets anything" pot-sharing or something. There's no winner. Do a task, get a reward. If someone else is getting more rewards than you, it means they are doing the task more often, but who cares? You still get rewarded everytime you do it.

Well, partly I was speaking of a group I heard about that had fixed rewards for these kind of things. But if you've gotten 10 rewards and I've only gotten 5 then you clearly have more than me. Some players don't lilke to compete and might not even compete actively with each other, but when the system rewards them differently they'll get jealous or feel like they've lost. I think this is perfecty understandable from a psychological viewpoint.

So, many players (and me too) prefer to be rewarded as a group rather than individually.


What? No. Absolutely not. Rewards are not tied to where they came from, any more than in D&D you have to spend your skill points on skills you used during the last level. o.o It doesn't matter WHICH belief you engage, just that you do it.

Is that a thing in D&D? I've never had that restriction on my players at least. The skill rewards in Burning Wheel are most definitely tied to where they came from and they encourage you to use the skills you want to increase rather than the ones that makes the most sense in the given situation. Especially since training problably isn't going to make your character better.

You are right that it doesn't matter which belief you engage, but it will still be a limitation on what the players will want to do, as they will make choices that uses their beliefs to get artha instead of some other action that they might have preferred.

I know it may sound a bit weird. The beliefs are supposed to encourage you to seek conflict as far as I understood but sometimes they work the opposite way and sometimes they just feel like they're trying to restrict behavior. You'll follow them not because these are things you want to do but because you want the reward. That's the wrong reason to make decisions from in my mind.



Actually, three is about all most people can keep track of.

And it's very hard to make 3 things conflict. It's much easier when you have a continuum of character traits to construct situations where part of the many goals and personality traits of the character conflict with each other.


If you are playing a game with people who are going to abuse a system, they are going to abuse whatever system you pick, and you shouldn't play with them. Do you play with people who persistently metagame in inappropriate ways? Do you need rules that "prevent" that? Is your group dysfunctional, or do they like having a good time? Can it be abused? Sure. But what's the point? The banker in Monopoly could give themselves free money too - the rules don't say they can't - but it's against the spirit and point of the game, so why would you?

I think there's a fundamental problem here. You are still viewing games from a very oldschool "But what if my players CHEAT?!?!?!" mindset. If your players cheat, your game won't be any fun, and they will have no one to blame but themselves, but why would you do that? There's no "win condition" here other than the aforementioned "ways to have the most fun." And if the game says, in the RULES, "give this to a player when they do something cool" and someone starts giving it to other players anything they do anything, that player, is, essentially, breaking the rules. Just because it's subjective doesn't mean it's obvious when someone is "cheating".

It's true that I don't like playing with cheaters or people that abuse the system. But there'll always be players that does it to a small degree, sometimes without even realising it themselves. People can abuse something without knowing that's what they do.

But really, isn't it better to have as few rules as possible that can be abused in silly ways? It's great that you can 100% trust everyone you play with, but not all people have that luxury.


And something else? One of the biggest problems everyone reports with playing TBZ? People don't give out ENOUGH Aiki. Not abusing the system by giving it out for everything. But sitting there thinking "I don't know if that was cool ENOUGH". To the point where the game gives instructions to the GM to watch for this and start handing out rewards themselves to get things moving.

People giving the stuff out for everything just isn't a problem, because people don't want to seem too free with the stuff.

I can see how that could be a problem too, yes.


Why would you give them only to your friends? Heck, aren't you PLAYING with your friends? If you don't like these people, why are you gaming with them? And even then, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're all on the same team. o.o This is like being on a soccer team and saying "I'm not going to pass to THAT guy, I don't like him." o.o

Well, the soccer example did happen to me back when I played soccer. I wasn't very popular and some people seemed to only pass me if they really really had to. I wasn't much worse than the others really, although after a while of not being involved in play as much obviously the others had more confidence with the ball.

I do play with my friends. I also play with some people who aren't my friends yet. Also, perhaps I should say "only give the rewards to your best friend". Not a thing that has happened to me personally, but I've heard it was a problem with another group one of my players has been in. These things does happen and you can ignore that being a problem as much as you like, but when constructing a system isn't it better to have a rewarding system that doesn't take into account players being biased towards each other? The more groups it's useable for the better?


Because you need to get to a certain threshold before it becomes self reinforcing? Because it helps smooth out the 'valleys' in the action? Because it helps you get the ball rolling? Because it works?

Does it work? That's the thing I'm not convinced about.


Why? Does the kingdom have some strange "came to the court in the company of a thief" law? In my opinion, this is STRICTLY a GMing issue.

If your stuff gets stolen while a certain group was present but you don't know exactly who stole it, chances are you're going to hold the whole group responsible. Also, unless the group wants to leave the character to his fate, the group actually has to do something to get him/her out of the mess.


I don't know. I don't think any of them are SUPER narrativist. All of the ones I've thrown out here still have 'standard' task resolution systems. A lot of the differences are in the "soft" rules.

If I had to pick one, I'd pick TBZ (http://kotodama.bigcartel.com/category/game), because I think it's a crazy awesome game that comes from a different 'design space' since it was actually made in Japan and then (much later) translated to English. And it has a lot of very interesting touches.

I don't really make that selection based on a feeling that it is the 'most' narrativist of the games I'm familiar with, but as I said, I don't think I've run into a really heavily narrativist game yet. They're really just starting to break onto the scene in any sort of meaningful way.

Alright! I will check up TBZ when I have a bit more time on my hands. :smallsmile:


But what, exactly, constitutes a "player reward"? I've read a lot of discussions along these same lines, and they've never managed to come up with anything that works in that category. You can't give a player "fun". What else rewards a player? The ability to do cool things with the game, of course. And in most games, a player's agency to control the game is their character. Which means that "character" rewards ARE player rewards. Probably you could create some sort of 'narrative currency' that allows players to add things directly to the fiction, which Houses of the Blooded does a LITTLE bit, but I haven't really seen people double down on that idea yet.

Actually, you can give a player fun, and that's exactly what you should do. That's the player's reward and in fact the only one that really matters. Maybe you don't play roleplaying games to have fun, but I certainly do. That's my reward.

There are certainly people have fun when their character is rewarded too. Not everyone is like this but many are. Still, there's a difference between a character reward and a player reward, even if sometimes giving a reward to a character will also be giving a reward to the player (as in increased fun).

What you're saying though is that it's good to have a mechanic that says that every time a player is rewarded with fun the character should also be rewarded and get better. I don't see how that needs to be true; I mean if you already have fun as a player, why do you also need your character rewarded?

Personally I think the best character reward systems are those based on in-game time. Like say in Ars Magica, when you study for a season you get Y amount of XP for the skill you studied. That's always seem like the most logical ways to reward a character and it prevents the issue of characters becoming demi-gods in the span of a month.

You could potentially walk around the problem of characters being rewarded too much in a short time by restricting player freedom. Saying that "ok, now two years have passed and the next adventure starts with..." would work. But I don't like to lilmit my players like that and I don't like to be limited that way as a player. What if one of them wants to do something/start an adventure of their own? That should be possible, but the reward should be that they have fun doing those things or playing that player-initiative adventure, not necessarily that their character gets better.

So yeah, there's a difference between what is a player reward and what is a character reward. If you still can't see it I'll try to explain it even better.


I think this is a meaningless distinction in a game about stories. Again - you need to shed the "overcoming challenges" mentality here. The game is about making an interesting story, and that involves character growth.

I don't think that had any "overcoming challenges" mentally implicit in it. Of course character growth can and should be part of an interesting story. There are many ways a character can grow though. Personality-wise and skill-wise. That is done in different ways typically and you don't need to reward a character with skill increases just because their personality change or because the player had fun.


I disagree entirely. "fixing" a gamist character often requires you to essentially break the rules ("You've taken these four feats, but you should have taken these others...") and it involves a LOT more changes. Helping someone act on a trait (Note: Most of these games I'm suggesting do not require these actions to be 'negative' in any way) is as simple as saying "Hey, it'd be totally awesome if you..."

Or you could help them before they make their feat decisions. Doesn't break the rules that way. And keeping track of modifiers is almost certainly something you can do.

I'm not sure about you, but it never feels quite as fun for me to do something "awesome" if it was someone else's idea. It basically feels like they're playing my character and many people find that unfun. So I would say it can be hard to make people engage certain traits a certain way if they aren't naturally good at it and still let them have 100% agency.


Again, my mind is BLOWN by your ability to somehow regard this as a competition. It's only a "competition" if you make it one, and if you don't want to BE in a competition, you PROBABLY don't want to make it one.

In all seriousness though, look at it like this:

Are we here to play this game and have fun? If the answer is "yes" then you should probably play the game in the way that is fun, rather than in a way that involves actively diminishing your enjoyment. If the answer is "no" then you probably shouldn't play the game at all and you should look seriously at your choice of hobbies and consider, I dunno, stamp collecting or something. ;)

I don't regard it as a competition. But saying "it's only a competition if you think of it as one" isn't really how most people work. Doesn't matter if we're not actively competing with each other, I could still feel bad if you have more stuff than I do. Claiming that jealousy doesn't exist is simply untrue.

Besides, just because *I* don't make it a competition, doesn't mean someone else couldn't. If I don't bring italian food someone else might. And when the actual rules bring out a plate that says "put italian food here" some players are going to be extra wary.

Many people prefers when a system rewards the characters equally (as far as XP and the like is concerned). It avoids the problem of something becoming a competition altogether, and it helps avoid the situation of one character becoming pointless and not being able to contribute anything useful which will lead to the other players being in the spotlight more often which most people think is bad.

Airk
2014-01-09, 10:52 AM
So, many players (and me too) prefer to be rewarded as a group rather than individually.

I think "many players" should judge each system individually. :)



Is that a thing in D&D?

No, that was a typo, so my statement made a lot less sense than it could have. Sorry about that. =/


The skill rewards in Burning Wheel are most definitely tied to where they came from and they encourage you to use the skills you want to increase rather than the ones that makes the most sense in the given situation. Especially since training problably isn't going to make your character better.

Again; BW isn't a game about skill advancement, and you need to shed the idea that "Oh, oh, I'm going to game the system by improving the 'useful' skill". Firstly, because that doesn't really accomplish anything. And secondly, because odds are, that the skills you're rolling the most are also the skills that are most important, because you are rolling them the most, right?



You are right that it doesn't matter which belief you engage, but it will still be a limitation on what the players will want to do, as they will make choices that uses their beliefs to get artha instead of some other action that they might have preferred.

Wait, wait what? How does that even make sense? The game is basically telling you "pick three things that you want to guide your character's actions" and then you say "But I don't WANT to play a game about those three things that I picked!"? This is like making a wizard and then complaining that your melee attacks aren't good. o.o

Also, BW gives rewards for dramatically playing AGAINST beliefs, so if you pick "Never leave a friend behind" and then make a dramatic decision -to- abandon someone, that is ALSO worth artha. As long as the belief is in play in an interesting way, you are rewarded.



I know it may sound a bit weird. The beliefs are supposed to encourage you to seek conflict as far as I understood but sometimes they work the opposite way and sometimes they just feel like they're trying to restrict behavior. You'll follow them not because these are things you want to do but because you want the reward. That's the wrong reason to make decisions from in my mind.

But you PICKED them. You. Yourself. Why would you NOT want to pursue the three things that you said you wanted your character to be about? I mean, you don't pick these things out of a hat you choose them, and, as mentioned, they're not static. If your characters beliefs don't interest you, you have no one but yourself to blame here. You've said, "I want to play a character who sticks by his friends, thinks really highly of himself, and doesn't trust strangers." and then you complain that you are being forced to make decisions about trusting strangers, standing by your friends, and your own self worth?



And it's very hard to make 3 things conflict. It's much easier when you have a continuum of character traits to construct situations where part of the many goals and personality traits of the character conflict with each other.

No no. Here, you are definitively wrong. Beliefs in BW are not -supposed- to conflict with each other. They're supposed to be CHALLENGED. Trying to make beliefs conflict with each other is virtually impossible under most circumstances, because you could have a character whose beliefs are "All dwarves are lying scoundrels" "Never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself." and "I must overthrow my brother, the duke." There's no good way to make those conflict with each other. But what happens when you meet a dwarf who routinely proves himself trustworthy and who refuses to let your mistrust affect his behavior? What happens if you encounter someone who always sends other people to do his dirty work? What happens if you encounter some people who really believe your brother is doing good things for the people of the duchy? Now your beliefs are being -challenged-. You have to think about what they mean and how your character handles these situations.

The book steps right up and says "You should pick beliefs based on what you want the game to be about" so if you are somehow finding yourself in situations that are about your beliefs and not enjoying it, you picked the wrong beliefs.



It's true that I don't like playing with cheaters or people that abuse the system. But there'll always be players that does it to a small degree, sometimes without even realising it themselves. People can abuse something without knowing that's what they do.

If no one realizes it is happening, then I think this is a victimless crime. It's also mitigated heavily by the fact that it's not any one person making these decisions (like it is in any standard game that gives "rewards for roleplaying") Yes, maybe you like Bob's roleplaying better than Mary's. but Jim might like Mary's better than Bob's. These things tend to self correct, even if it's "Wow, I feel bad for Jim, he hasn't hardly gotten any aiki this scene."


But really, isn't it better to have as few rules as possible that can be abused in silly ways? It's great that you can 100% trust everyone you play with, but not all people have that luxury.

Again; If people are obviously cheating, then why would you play with them? It's OBVIOUS if you cheat, even if this rule is "subjective". ("I pick up the rock!" "Ooooh, awesome, aiki chit!" "Uh, that's not how it works, Bob.")



I can see how that could be a problem too, yes.

And it's pretty much a problem that is mutually exclusive with your concern above, AND one that can be corrected by the GM during play.



Well, the soccer example did happen to me back when I played soccer. I wasn't very popular and some people seemed to only pass me if they really really had to. I wasn't much worse than the others really, although after a while of not being involved in play as much obviously the others had more confidence with the ball.

It's actually not a particularly good analogy, since passing the ball puts you in a position to screw the game up for your team, so there can be legit reasons to not pass to someone. There are no legit reasons to not give someone aiki chits, because again, it's not a competition. Someone else's character being able to do more cool stuff just means more cool stuff at the table.



I do play with my friends. I also play with some people who aren't my friends yet. Also, perhaps I should say "only give the rewards to your best friend".

No, seriously. I don't not understand. Why would you do this? Also, even if "you" do do this, why would everyone at the table do this? I mean, at this point, you're at the same level of stupid as a GM who makes sure that ALL the magic items are only usable by their best friend. It's not against the rules! Why aren't there rules that say everyone has to get the same number of magic items? Clearly this is an exploitable system, because it's just NOT FAIR that the GM can give items to their best friend!

See the problems with your complaint?



Not a thing that has happened to me personally, but I've heard it was a problem with another group one of my players has been in. These things does happen and you can ignore that being a problem as much as you like, but when constructing a system isn't it better to have a rewarding system that doesn't take into account players being biased towards each other? The more groups it's useable for the better?

Because ALL games have this problem. But instead it's "only" the GM who has -all- the power in the game and can therefore screw people over. Instead here, everyone has reward capability, so EVERYONE needs to do something wrong before it becomes a problem. It's actually more robust than a traditional reward system because there needs to be widespread favoritism for it to break down, instead of everything being based on the opinions of one person.


Does it work? That's the thing I'm not convinced about.

One of us has tried it, one of us has not. Who do you think has a better idea of whether it works?



If your stuff gets stolen while a certain group was present but you don't know exactly who stole it, chances are you're going to hold the whole group responsible. Also, unless the group wants to leave the character to his fate, the group actually has to do something to get him/her out of the mess.

So what? Sounds like a good story! :)

Again. Get rid of the whole "challenges are bad" mindset. So -what- if the party "gets into trouble"? The whole point of the game is the party getting into trouble and then presumably trying to get out.

Honestly, this sounds like a super fun scenario now that you've explained a little bit more. :)


Actually, you can give a player fun, and that's exactly what you should do. That's the player's reward and in fact the only one that really matters. Maybe you don't play roleplaying games to have fun, but I certainly do. That's my reward.

Please give me some fun. :) No, really. The rules say you need to give me fun, right now. Do it. The rules say I get one point of fun for that.

Good luck with that player reward scheme you've got there.

You can encourage people to have fun. You can try to create fun for the table. But you have no way of knowing in advance if any particular action will create fun, and you certainly can't do it on demand.



What you're saying though is that it's good to have a mechanic that says that every time a player is rewarded with fun the character should also be rewarded and get better. I don't see how that needs to be true; I mean if you already have fun as a player, why do you also need your character rewarded?

I think I understand your concern now. You've got it backwards. :) Everytime the player CREATES FUN for other people, they are rewarded. :) The system doesn't reward you for -having- fun, because yes, that's it's own reward. The system rewards you for making the game fun for others.



Personally I think the best character reward systems are those based on in-game time. Like say in Ars Magica, when you study for a season you get Y amount of XP for the skill you studied. That's always seem like the most logical ways to reward a character and it prevents the issue of characters becoming demi-gods in the span of a month.

The problem I have with this is that improving skills in a system like this is boring. I've played Ars Magica, and at the end of the day, that sort of skill system just ends up being a "GM gives out XP" system, because either there is something happening that season (because the GM says there is), in which case you don't study and you play, or there isn't anything happening that season, in which case that season basically doesn't exist for purposes of actually playing the game, and instead you get some XP. It's really not very interesting in practice, no matter how "realistic" it is. And I'm not here for realism. I'm discussing narrativist games here.



You could potentially walk around the problem of characters being rewarded too much in a short time by restricting player freedom. Saying that "ok, now two years have passed and the next adventure starts with..." would work. But I don't like to lilmit my players like that and I don't like to be limited that way as a player. What if one of them wants to do something/start an adventure of their own? That should be possible, but the reward should be that they have fun doing those things or playing that player-initiative adventure, not necessarily that their character gets better.

Honestly, I'm not really clear why we're having a discussion of reward pacing here? It seems sortof removed from the point.



So yeah, there's a difference between what is a player reward and what is a character reward. If you still can't see it I'll try to explain it even better.

As far as I can tell, you have not said anything new. My points remain:

#1: There are no good player-only rewards. There is nothing you can specifically hand out to a player for taking a specific action, on demand. Fun arises only organically. It is not suitable as a reward currency. Fun is also an "out of game" commodity.
#2: Character rewards give a player greater capabilities within the game. The game is only able to make rules about things within the game. The character is the player's agent in the game. This makes character rwards player rewards as well because they are giving the PLAYER greater ability to act within the game.

And a related note: Getting rewarded can be...rewarding. When other people at the table smile and nod and go "That was cool!". And having an action that you specifically take when you feel something was cool means that people are more likely to 'mention' things that they thought were cool, and you are more likely to notice. It's the difference between telling your waiter "You did a good job tonight!" and leaving a big tip. Praise is nice and all, but a physical action gives it more weight.



I don't think that had any "overcoming challenges" mentally implicit in it. Of course character growth can and should be part of an interesting story. There are many ways a character can grow though. Personality-wise and skill-wise. That is done in different ways typically and you don't need to reward a character with skill increases just because their personality change or because the player had fun.

But you don't have to avoid it for "realism" either. Let's face it - in many stories, there's no clear 'reason' why a character gets better. They're older. Wiser. Learned life's lessons. Whatever. Very rarely does a character "go study" or "spend lots of time training" or something.



Or you could help them before they make their feat decisions. Doesn't break the rules that way. And keeping track of modifiers is almost certainly something you can do.

Sure, you can make someone's character for them. That's super fun for them, isn't it? Especially in a gamist game that's supposed to be all about using your character to overcome challenges. Why not just let someone else play you too, since they'd probably be making better decisions.

See how this kind of fault finding works for anything?



I'm not sure about you, but it never feels quite as fun for me to do something "awesome" if it was someone else's idea. It basically feels like they're playing my character and many people find that unfun. So I would say it can be hard to make people engage certain traits a certain way if they aren't naturally good at it and still let them have 100% agency.

There's a difference between "Maybe you could bring in your "Hatred of Weakness" fate here?" and "What if you did <specific thing X>" right? No one is playing anyone else's character.



I don't regard it as a competition. But saying "it's only a competition if you think of it as one" isn't really how most people work. Doesn't matter if we're not actively competing with each other, I could still feel bad if you have more stuff than I do. Claiming that jealousy doesn't exist is simply untrue.

Try it and see. Seriously. At this point, I can only conclude that you are making erroneous judgements about a system based on lack of experience, because I know a lot of people who play these games and this has never been brought up. Is it possible that someone, somewhere, just doesn't click with it and perceives a personal insult anytime someone else gets a reward? Sure. Is it possible for this to happen in ANY kind of system? Absolutely. Just because everyone gets the same amount of XP doesn't mean everyone is "equal". People who want to find competition and feel inferior will find a way to do it.



Besides, just because *I* don't make it a competition, doesn't mean someone else couldn't. If I don't bring italian food someone else might. And when the actual rules bring out a plate that says "put italian food here" some players are going to be extra wary.

Sorry, the rules never say "put competition here". :P Honestly. Play the games. Tell me if they feel like "competition". I've never played more cooperative-feeling games than the ones that encourage this kind of thing. Think about it. When you play D&D, why do the players play nicely with each other? Because of a social contract? Maybe? Often they don't. Here, there are literal benefits to doing things that other people at the table enjoy.

This is, quite literally, a system that says "When other people at the table enjoy the things you do, you get a prize." So what's the incentive to do things people at the table won't enjoy?



Many people prefers when a system rewards the characters equally (as far as XP and the like is concerned). It avoids the problem of something becoming a competition altogether, and it helps avoid the situation of one character becoming pointless and not being able to contribute anything useful which will lead to the other players being in the spotlight more often which most people think is bad.

This is all very egalitarian and also all completely false. Giving out group XP might avoid a perceived "competition" for XP, but if someone is looking to make the game a competition, they can still compete for loot, gear, magic items, character face time, in world power, or WTFever. This is a placebo at best.

You know what protects you against competition? A ruleset that doesn't screw you over with regard to character power. Playing a roleplaying game, and not a tabletop miniatures battle game. Getting over the idea that someone else's character is "better" than yours. Again. This is NOT a game about overcoming challenges. You are not "useless" just because your skill in X isn't as high as another person's. Especially in a game where clearly defined niches exist. So what if the fighter has more int than the wizard, because he still can't cast spells.

Honestly, I could play a character who is TERRIBLE at everything in a narrative-focused game. Heck. Many times in a story, the most important character is the one who is terrible at a lot of things. The point of the game isn't "Oh, I helped you do this thing!" but rather "I got to have a dramatic moment where..." You need to approach the game with an understanding of what is and isn't important.

NichG
2014-01-09, 11:27 AM
I disagree that there are no player-only rewards. You can reward the player with OOC narrative control, for example - awesome RP there, here's a card that lets you pick an NPC of your choice and that NPC is secretly a villain.

Edit: Whether or not the player appreciates the reward is a separate issue from whether its a reward or not (I mean, you could have a player that hates leveling up, and getting extra xp is a burden, but its still a 'reward' in the sense that it is 'something extra' the player gets for 'some reason').

I think character-only rewards can be conceived of as well but it is a harder thing to do. Something like 'your character has a manor house waiting for when they retire' is close to a character-only reward, depending on the player - e.g. if a player is in it for the combat/ruins exploration/etc, then saying 'your guy gets an earldom when the game is done' or 'your guy gets to be eternally ageless, even if this campaign won't last more than 6 months in character' or whatever will mostly reward the character, not the player. The thing is, a player who is into that will consider it a player reward at the same time.

So 'character-only' rewards are something that tends to happen more by accident than something you'd really want to try to build into a system.

Airk
2014-01-09, 12:17 PM
I disagree that there are no player-only rewards. You can reward the player with OOC narrative control, for example - awesome RP there, here's a card that lets you pick an NPC of your choice and that NPC is secretly a villain.

Have any games actually DONE this that you are aware of? I'm sure there are some, and I'm also pretty sure that 90% or more of the RPG playing community would promptly try to dismiss them as "not RPGs". ;)



Edit: Whether or not the player appreciates the reward is a separate issue from whether its a reward or not (I mean, you could have a player that hates leveling up, and getting extra xp is a burden, but its still a 'reward' in the sense that it is 'something extra' the player gets for 'some reason').

Correct!



I think character-only rewards can be conceived of as well but it is a harder thing to do. Something like 'your character has a manor house waiting for when they retire' is close to a character-only reward, depending on the player - e.g. if a player is in it for the combat/ruins exploration/etc, then saying 'your guy gets an earldom when the game is done' or 'your guy gets to be eternally ageless, even if this campaign won't last more than 6 months in character' or whatever will mostly reward the character, not the player. The thing is, a player who is into that will consider it a player reward at the same time.

Yes. I think this is actually an example of appreciation, as referenced above, rather than these things "really" being character only rewards. I think the only way you can REALLY build a character only reward is to add something to the fiction that character wants, but the player doesn't, and that is, essentially, the opposite of a reward, because at the end of the day, we don't really CARE what the 'character' wants, because the character doesn't actually exist. We only care that the player has a good time.

NichG
2014-01-09, 01:22 PM
Have any games actually DONE this that you are aware of? I'm sure there are some, and I'm also pretty sure that 90% or more of the RPG playing community would promptly try to dismiss them as "not RPGs". ;)


Well, I've done it in my campaigns for one. After a few of my players had issues in another GM's campaign with things like xp rewards for campaign journals and the like (basically, it got bad enough that people were significantly under-powered if they didn't do some sort of out of character stuff to earn XP), I decided that I'd give 'plot control cards' instead of bonus XP when players did really cool stuff to support the campaign.

I'm also aware of a 4e D&D product that is basically something exactly like this, where you get cards that act like action points in specific ways, but some of them are metagame plot control things.

There's also stuff like this in Serenity and a few other RPGs I'm aware of, where you can either have a powerful character or you can have a character with a lot of dramatic editing points. White Wolf's Adventure! game also has dramatic editing powers as a big part of it.

It's also something that'd make a lot of sense to do in a highly narrativist game, where you're spreading out control of the plot but you want to make sure that different people get to control the plot in very specific ways.

I would say that 90% of the RPG community is probably more open-minded than you think. There are a lot of people experimenting with a lot of ways to play tabletop RPGs.



Yes. I think this is actually an example of appreciation, as referenced above, rather than these things "really" being character only rewards. I think the only way you can REALLY build a character only reward is to add something to the fiction that character wants, but the player doesn't, and that is, essentially, the opposite of a reward, because at the end of the day, we don't really CARE what the 'character' wants, because the character doesn't actually exist. We only care that the player has a good time.

As I said, this is something much more likely to happen by accident than because a system is being designed to achieve it. I can't actually think of what you'd want to use this for.

Hmm... no, I'm being hasty. You could use this if you had a system where the player is actually responsible for multiple characters, and those characters are not actually allied. For example, if the player is running both the Earl of Northampton, Loyalist to the Throne, and the Traitor of Umboldshire who is trying to put a pretender on the throne, then a reward for the Earl may be a penalty for the player, who is trying to raise up the Traitor right now for some meta-game reason.

It'd be a very weird game, almost a civilization-builder, where the characters were highly constrained in how they could act, and the player somehow stood to gain from their conflicts in a meta-game fashion. Think something like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings' scoring systems - you get a lot more points if your nation falls apart in a civil war and you have to re-unite it than if you have a nice, peaceful reign where nothing happens.

Airk
2014-01-09, 01:46 PM
I'm also aware of a 4e D&D product that is basically something exactly like this, where you get cards that act like action points in specific ways, but some of them are metagame plot control things.

What product is this? I'm curious.



There's also stuff like this in Serenity and a few other RPGs I'm aware of, where you can either have a powerful character or you can have a character with a lot of dramatic editing points. White Wolf's Adventure! game also has dramatic editing powers as a big part of it.

How much do these game decentralize editorial control? Are we talking about 'Yes, and...' or something more significant?



It's also something that'd make a lot of sense to do in a highly narrativist game, where you're spreading out control of the plot but you want to make sure that different people get to control the plot in very specific ways.

Why "very specific ways"? Or did you mean "to a very controlled degree" (as in "until they run out of points")?



I would say that 90% of the RPG community is probably more open-minded than you think. There are a lot of people experimenting with a lot of ways to play tabletop RPGs.

I used to think that, then I spent some time reading the savage kneejerk attacks that happen on places like this forum.



Hmm... no, I'm being hasty. You could use this if you had a system where the player is actually responsible for multiple characters, and those characters are not actually allied. For example, if the player is running both the Earl of Northampton, Loyalist to the Throne, and the Traitor of Umboldshire who is trying to put a pretender on the throne, then a reward for the Earl may be a penalty for the player, who is trying to raise up the Traitor right now for some meta-game reason.

It'd be a very weird game, almost a civilization-builder, where the characters were highly constrained in how they could act, and the player somehow stood to gain from their conflicts in a meta-game fashion. Think something like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings' scoring systems - you get a lot more points if your nation falls apart in a civil war and you have to re-unite it than if you have a nice, peaceful reign where nothing happens.

I'm not really sure how this would work; Either you'd have so little control over "your characters" that I think it would break down, or you're back in the space of "anything a character can do to affect the game can and will be used by the player to further their agenda" in which case these are player rewards after all.

NichG
2014-01-09, 02:26 PM
What product is this? I'm curious.


I heard about them on these forums, but it was awhile ago. I'm not sure if these were it, but these seem to be about what I remember: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Drama_Cards



How much do these game decentralize editorial control? Are we talking about 'Yes, and...' or something more significant?


Well, I only have direct familiarity with Adventure! In Adventure! you could spend something like 1-4 points. The effect is categorized as follows (if I remember right, I may have the on/offscreen tiering backwards):

1 point: Minor offscreen
2 points: Minor onscreen
3 points: Major offscreen
4 points: Major onscreen
*: GM can veto if there are plot ramifications

A minor offscreen would be something like 'there's a contact in the next town who I can trust to send a secret message back to base'. A major offscreen would be something like 'it turns out I'm actually a bastard scion of the royal family, and I'm now in line for the throne'.

A minor onscreen would be 'you know how I'm out of ammo? I have a spare clip hidden in my boot'. A major onscreen would be like 'so, the third battalion crests the hill and comes to our rescue'.

So yeah, lots of editorial control.



Why "very specific ways"? Or did you mean "to a very controlled degree" (as in "until they run out of points")?


The example of the deck of cards is that each player has a certain set of cards. Player A can make some NPC the villain; player B can cause someone to be a benefactor to the party; player C can make someone spill an important piece of info. Thats because its the specific cards they've been rewarded - a 'make a villain' card doesn't let you make a benefactor.



I'm not really sure how this would work; Either you'd have so little control over "your characters" that I think it would break down, or you're back in the space of "anything a character can do to affect the game can and will be used by the player to further their agenda" in which case these are player rewards after all.

No, what I'm saying is that a character-only reward in such a system would be something that is beneficial to a character, but which the GM inflicts as a way to interfere with the player's plans.

E.g. imagine the player and GM are basically having a tug of war over the fates of a certain stable of characters. The player 'wins' by creating certain conflicts and letting them play out. The GM is actually trying to interfere with this in an active manner (perhaps representing some other 'force' in the cosmos that is messing with fate).

Imagine a system where in order to make a character do something, the player has to state not just the action, but match it to a motivation. The characters each have a certain list of motivations, and motivations arise from need. So for example, the player has a character who has the motivation 'Escape Poverty'. They can use that motivation to get the character involved in a shady organization that is willing to pay well.

The GM can thwart the player's plans by rewarding the character a large sum of money, thus destroying their motivation 'Escape Poverty'. This is explicitly a character reward and a player punishment (well, a form of 'attack' at least)

Airk
2014-01-09, 03:10 PM
So yeah, lots of editorial control.

Right.



The example of the deck of cards is that each player has a certain set of cards. Player A can make some NPC the villain; player B can cause someone to be a benefactor to the party; player C can make someone spill an important piece of info. Thats because its the specific cards they've been rewarded - a 'make a villain' card doesn't let you make a benefactor.

And are these cards just randomly selected, or are they drawn from specific 'decks'? Does one player have the 'villain deck' and another one something else, or...?



No, what I'm saying is that a character-only reward in such a system would be something that is beneficial to a character, but which the GM inflicts as a way to interfere with the player's plans.

E.g. imagine the player and GM are basically having a tug of war over the fates of a certain stable of characters. The player 'wins' by creating certain conflicts and letting them play out. The GM is actually trying to interfere with this in an active manner (perhaps representing some other 'force' in the cosmos that is messing with fate).

Imagine a system where in order to make a character do something, the player has to state not just the action, but match it to a motivation. The characters each have a certain list of motivations, and motivations arise from need. So for example, the player has a character who has the motivation 'Escape Poverty'. They can use that motivation to get the character involved in a shady organization that is willing to pay well.

The GM can thwart the player's plans by rewarding the character a large sum of money, thus destroying their motivation 'Escape Poverty'. This is explicitly a character reward and a player punishment (well, a form of 'attack' at least)

Ah, okay. Yeah. So the players, REALLY, aren't identifying with the characters in any way here except perhaps as signifiers in much the same way they might be identified with the shoe in monopoly.

Though it's not actually necessary for players to have multiple characters in this model.

NichG
2014-01-09, 05:03 PM
And are these cards just randomly selected, or are they drawn from specific 'decks'? Does one player have the 'villain deck' and another one something else, or...?


Well I think the idea for the deck is that when a player does something exceptional, they get a random draw, and that card is the 'reward'. I don't actually have that deck - what I did for my campaign was far more on-the-fly, and I've actually only ended up handing out one card so far, for a player who basically built a campaign wiki for us. Pretty much in the future if it comes up again I plan to just improvise the cards I hand out as seems interesting at the time, rather than doing anything formal for it. It'll be interesting to make sure they're strictly a player reward and hard to turn into in-character power, but the one-use nature of them prevents anything from getting too out of hand.



Ah, okay. Yeah. So the players, REALLY, aren't identifying with the characters in any way here except perhaps as signifiers in much the same way they might be identified with the shoe in monopoly.

Though it's not actually necessary for players to have multiple characters in this model.

Yeah, thats true. I'd almost say that in this case the stable of 'pawns' isn't really the player's character, but instead the meta-entity that is jerking around their fates is actually the persona who the player is 'playing as'.

Black Jester
2014-01-10, 03:12 AM
NichG[/S] Airk"]Ah, okay. Yeah. So the players, REALLY, aren't identifying with the characters in any way here except perhaps as signifiers in much the same way they might be identified with the shoe in monopoly.

I originally misattributed this quote.

And as a consequence, it is not an actual roleplaying game anymore. By deliberately neglecting one of the basic prerequisites of the medium, you not have a complete roleplaying at hand, only a crippled and bleeding remnant of it, wasting its potential. Calling it an RPG is not only misleading but also quite pretentious.
There are quite a few games that have roleplaying elements, but are not actually real RPGs, because they are lacking a key principle here or there. That doesn't necessarily make them un-entertaining (I like Arkham Horror for instance), but they are different beasts.

NichG
2014-01-10, 06:23 AM
And as a consequence, it is not an actual roleplaying game anymore. By deliberately neglecting one of the basic prerequisites of the medium, you not have a complete roleplaying at hand, only a crippled and bleeding remnant of it, wasting its potential. Calling it an RPG is not only misleading but also quite pretentious.
There are quite a few games that have roleplaying elements, but are not actually real RPGs, because they are lacking a key principle here or there. That doesn't necessarily make them un-entertaining (I like Arkham Horror for instance), but they are different beasts.

Formally, it is still an RPG. The player is taking on the roles of their various 'pawns'. They just aren't completely immersing themselves into any single one of those characters. Its more like a GM's experience of the game than a player's, but there's nothing to say that it isn't still a game in which you're playing roles. Its just a game where you have multiple roles to play.

Also, that quote is mis-attributed to me.

Black Jester
2014-01-10, 07:11 AM
Also, that quote is mis-attributed to me.

Sorry, I will change that immediately. My bad.


Formally, it is still an RPG. The player is taking on the roles of their various 'pawns'. They just aren't completely immersing themselves into any single one of those characters. Its more like a GM's experience of the game than a player's, but there's nothing to say that it isn't still a game in which you're playing roles. Its just a game where you have multiple roles to play.

I disagree vehemently. One of the core tenets of an actual RPG is the strong sense of identification for one character, and removing this is act of reducing it by taking something essential away. The idea of a simulation game to create some background or insights or so is certainly not without merits (I use a very similar measure to write up settings or adventures), but it does not provide the same attachement to a fictional alter ego (and the corresponding escapist element) and consequently fails to provide the full RPG experience. You might dismiss this alter ego aspect or reduce it to a very minor element, but it is an essential part of the apeal of RPGS as a medium to provide an opportunity to actually personally succeed in proxy through your character, thus providing gratification.
So, again, story games or simulation games have their merits, they can be lots of fun with the right people and for the right targe group, but they are different creature from an RPG.

NichG
2014-01-10, 08:35 AM
I disagree vehemently. One of the core tenets of an actual RPG is the strong sense of identification for one character, and removing this is act of reducing it by taking something essential away. The idea of a simulation game to create some background or insights or so is certainly not without merits (I use a very similar measure to write up settings or adventures), but it does not provide the same attachement to a fictional alter ego (and the corresponding escapist element) and consequently fails to provide the full RPG experience. You might dismiss this alter ego aspect or reduce it to a very minor element, but it is an essential part of the apeal of RPGS as a medium to provide an opportunity to actually personally succeed in proxy through your character, thus providing gratification.
So, again, story games or simulation games have their merits, they can be lots of fun with the right people and for the right targe group, but they are different creature from an RPG.

I can't say that I agree that identifying with a single character is central to an RPG. Its ridiculous to say that, e.g., a GM is not playing a role when they take up the mantle of an NPC, even if they are not going to be playing that one NPC 100% of the time.

Playing a character is not exclusive with having considerations that exist above the viewpoint of the character - if it were, there would be no such thing as an RPG. Every game has this sort of thing - the need for the player to engage in the mechanics to some degree, the need for the player to be considerate of spotlight sharing with the group, etc. Its an artificial standard to say that the player must 'be' the character for it to be an RPG.

There's a whole gamut of levels of immersion, not just 'on' or 'off', and its not the case that any particular threshold of immersion is where something goes from being 'not an RPG' to 'an RPG'. Not just that, but immersion can exist alongside having larger-scale considerations - one can be deeply immersed in one character for a scene, then when the scene ends they may make various decisions or go and become immersed in another character.

To argue that 'full immersion should be the one and only goal of an RPG' flies in the face of the reality that people play such games for all sorts of different reasons and purposes. A 'roleplaying game' can be as much about the 'game' part as it can be about the 'roleplaying' part.

Airk
2014-01-10, 10:27 AM
I can't say that I agree that identifying with a single character is central to an RPG. Its ridiculous to say that, e.g., a GM is not playing a role when they take up the mantle of an NPC, even if they are not going to be playing that one NPC 100% of the time.

Actually, evidence seems to indicate that early versions of D&D were specifically designed for multiple characters per player - a whole LOT of the rules regarding things like ability score requirements and complete lack of character balance make a lot more sense if you're "rolling up" a "squad" of 5-10 guys instead of one character. Yeah, most of them are going to turn up as "fighters" and suck, but everyone will probably get a couple of "real" characters who won't be -too- worried by their lack of hitpoints because they'll be shielded by a blob of fighters. ;)

Note also that I wasn't actually endorsing the style of play you quoted, per se, merely identifying it from what NichG has been saying.

Also: Whoo, time to first "It's not an RPG!" rejection was even lower than I thought. My cynicism lives to fight another say.

Airk
2014-01-10, 01:47 PM
Just bumbled across this, and it seems somewhat relevant to theme of this thread.

Defining Story Games (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/460/defining-story-games/)

It's a pretty compelling definition, and definitely separate from GNS theory - as in, in provides another way of categorizing games.

Rhynn
2014-01-10, 02:52 PM
Actually, evidence seems to indicate that early versions of D&D were specifically designed for multiple characters per player - a whole LOT of the rules regarding things like ability score requirements and complete lack of character balance make a lot more sense if you're "rolling up" a "squad" of 5-10 guys instead of one character. Yeah, most of them are going to turn up as "fighters" and suck, but everyone will probably get a couple of "real" characters who won't be -too- worried by their lack of hitpoints because they'll be shielded by a blob of fighters. ;)

It seems strange that that would suddenly become the case in AD&D 1E* when it wasn't the case in OD&D. Do you have actual evidence? There's plenty of people who've told plenty of stories about what it was like to play in the Lake Geneva campaigns, and I don't recall anything about 5-10 PCs per person.

Just to be clear, there are no ability score requirements in OD&D. Just using the original books, the only difference between a Str 3 fighter and a Str 18 fighter is how fast they get XP (-10% vs. +10%). An Int 6 wizard casts spells just the same as an Int 12 or Int 16. And so on...

AD&D 1E is a detailed enough game that it would certainly have told you if you were supposed to be rolling up 5-10 characters.

Maybe you're confusing the fact that PCs often had henchmen in AD&D 1E? Henchmen were NPCs, usually controlled by the player until the DM got a poor loyalty result for them.

Incidentally, there is a D&D retroclone where each player starts with 3-8 (IIRC) 0-level characters. The party goes through a "funnel" (first dungeon) that kills a goodly portion of the characters, and the survivors get to 1st level and choose a class, becoming "real PCs." (Doesn't feel like less of a RPG to me, either.)

* Edit: Or in Holmes Basic or Moldvay B/X, I guess. Pretty sure both instituted "minimum 9" attributes for classes; but even then, an Int 9 wizard and Int 18 wizard only differed in rate of XP gain, so I still don't see your point being true there. AD&D 1E was the first game where you needed high Int or Wis to be a wizard or cleric (requirements were still 9 for both, but wizards especially were doomed to suck at higher levels if they didn't have Int 15+). Also note that OD&D, Basic, B/X, and BECMI all allowed transferring points between ability scores, and in original-set-only OD&D, there was never any reason not to drop the ones you didn't use for XP to 3, except for Dex IIRC.

Airk
2014-01-10, 04:32 PM
Sorry; "evidence" was the wrong word. Let's just say that all the stuff makes more SENSE in that context.

I'm not familiar with OD&D; (Indeed, a couple of years ago, if you'd said "OD&D" to me, I would have the 'the hell is that?') so I was going off the AD&D 1E rules. That said, I disagree that 1E was sufficiently detailed that it would've told you if you were supposed to make more than one character. If there's one thing I found 1E to be lacking in, it was instructions "around" the game.

Rhynn
2014-01-10, 04:45 PM
I'm not familiar with OD&D; (Indeed, a couple of years ago, if you'd said "OD&D" to me, I would have the 'the hell is that?') so I was going off the AD&D 1E rules. That said, I disagree that 1E was sufficiently detailed that it would've told you if you were supposed to make more than one character. If there's one thing I found 1E to be lacking in, it was instructions "around" the game.

Okay, let's use the evidence of modules, then: which AD&D 1E modules present 5-10 PCs per player? (We can probably safely assume that none of them were meant for 1 player; unless I'm forgetting a Ghost of Lion Castle style solo 1E module.)

Also, again, are there stories from people who played 1E with Gygax, for instance, that suggest this was the case? I don't recall reading any.

Now, if you want to say that doing it that way could work better... maybe. Although then I have to point out that your assumption of low ability scores doesn't really apply to 1E: it had a "soft" ability score generation system to begin with (4d6, drop lowest, arrange) and introduced a completely insane system in Unearthed Arcana (roll 3d6 to 9d6 depending on class and ability score, keep best 3 dice), and UA was authored by Gygax himself. It was the older editions, and the 1E-parallel BECMI, that had 3d6-in-order (but, again, they allowed you to move points between abilities, albeit at ratios less favorable than 1:1).

Black Jester
2014-01-10, 05:14 PM
I can't say that I agree that identifying with a single character is central to an RPG. Its ridiculous to say that, e.g., a GM is not playing a role when they take up the mantle of an NPC, even if they are not going to be playing that one NPC 100% of the time.

We can agree that the role of a player and that of a gamemaster are distinctively different from each other and that they fulfill different functions by using different tools, can't we? Being a player and being a gamemaster are very different activities, even though they are interconnected (and no, gamemasterless games are similarly not worthy of being callled a full-fledged RPG) either).


Playing a character is not exclusive with having considerations that exist above the viewpoint of the character - if it were, there would be no such thing as an RPG. Every game has this sort of thing - the need for the player to engage in the mechanics to some degree, the need for the player to be considerate of spotlight sharing with the group, etc. Its an artificial standard to say that the player must 'be' the character for it to be an RPG.

Not at all. The strong sense of identification with the character is a unique strength of RPGs as a medium. Neglecting or even abandoning this aspect leads to the disruption of one of the very core elements of the game. I am usually not comfortable using the Forgian cultists' terminology as if it had any meaning but for the sake of mutual understanding, so I don't call it immersion, I call it what it actually is: Role-playing. NAnd yes, by default, there is no role-playing game without actual role-playing. That should be bloody obvious.


There's a whole gamut of levels of immersion, not just 'on' or 'off', and its not the case that any particular threshold of immersion is where something goes from being 'not an RPG' to 'an RPG'.

And again, I disagree vehemently - at least partially. Sure, there are different levels and degrees and even more forms of "immersion", but the complete lack of it as the extreme of 'not more identification with a character than with a pawn in a boardgame level' indicates is definetely outside of any margin of actual roleplaying games.
Sure, you can add roleplaying elements to almost any game (see for instance Dread, or in a very different form Arkham Horror or Hero Quest (the board game, not the Glorantha-adaptation. The latter is very much an RPG); but without personal identification it has less to do with an actual RPG than a six year old waving around with their axtion figure and screaming "I am Raphael."



To argue that 'full immersion should be the one and only goal of an RPG' flies in the face of the reality that people play such games for all sorts of different reasons and purposes. A 'roleplaying game' can be as much about the 'game' part as it can be about the 'roleplaying' part.
I have never said that it is the only aim or an aim at all. I said it is an essential part of the game, not something to strive for in particular, but something necesary to be able to strive for anything. It is not the designation but the wheels on your car to get to it.

Airk
2014-01-10, 05:36 PM
(and no, gamemasterless games are similarly not worthy of being callled a full-fledged RPG) either).

Statements like this tend to undermine the feeling that you are taking this discussion as an intellectual one rather than just stating your opinions as facts. "Worthy"? Seriously? If there are roles, and you play them, is it not an RPG?

Black Jester
2014-01-10, 05:50 PM
Perhaps the choice of the terminology "worthy" is a bit harsh, but as a consequence of the subjective intrinsic value we as supposed roleplaying game enthusiasts have probably attached to roleplaying games as some sort of hollistic meta-entity (let's generously include storygames of all sorts in this most general category), it did not seem entirely inapropriate, as the term was supposed to indicate the high value inherent in the 'RPG label' and the high level of esteem it transfers to the game attached t it, at least among the target group involved in this debate.
Now, honestly: Sorry when I sounded too smug; English is not my first language, and thee are some nuances of the laguage that I sometimes fail to grasp in their entirety.

Airk
2014-01-10, 06:38 PM
Perhaps the choice of the terminology "worthy" is a bit harsh, but as a consequence of the subjective intrinsic value we as supposed roleplaying game enthusiasts have probably attached to roleplaying games as some sort of hollistic meta-entity (let's generously include storygames of all sorts in this most general category), it did not seem entirely inapropriate, as the term was supposed to indicate the high value inherent in the 'RPG label' and the high level of esteem it transfers to the game attached t it, at least among the target group involved in this debate.
Now, honestly: Sorry when I sounded too smug; English is not my first language, and thee are some nuances of the laguage that I sometimes fail to grasp in their entirety.

Fair enough. It still feels like you are making some sort of qualitative value judgement here though. If you want to say "I don't think those games fit within the purview of the RPG label" that's one thing, but saying, even now, that there's some "high value' inherent in being an RPG and that these games somehow don't meet that bar seems unnecessarily dismissive.

So I shall just presume that you believe these are some other sort of commodity. That said, what would you propose to call GMless games if not RPGs? Because so far, I don't think it has been demonstrated that they are outside the definition.

Rhynn
2014-01-10, 06:48 PM
You can certainly define RPGs narrowly, with requirements like "separate game-master role" and "one character per player" and so on, but that's going to leave you with tons of games (not just systems, but separate games run with the same systems) outside of the definition... and then you'd have to come up with some other definitions and names for those.

I regularly run D&D, etc., with multiple PCs per player. I let my players run their own henchmen (with the provision that I will occasionally make decisions for them, usually when the dice dictate). Does D&D stop being a RPG if I run it that way?

And I could certainly imagine narrativist RPGs with no game-master role, and GM duties shared between players, with some sort of metagame currency, for instance, used to adjudicate the world. Or just simple rules.

Black Jester
2014-01-10, 07:01 PM
Of course I am making a qualitative value judgement; the notion that all playstyles are equal and equally valuable is little more than a brazen lie born out of avoiding conflicts and inconveniences. There are objectively better or worse games, there are objective better or worse players. If you measure a game's quality by checking if it fulfills the necessary criteria for a roleplaying game and it doesn't, it might still be a highly entertaiing game, but specifically as a roleplaying game, it fails.
That said, I really like simulation games, sometimes. This is the measure of how I crate adventures/campaigns/segments after all, and including other fellows in this process is often refreshing and offers more ideas and can make really fulfilling .


The GM-less games seem to fail on me being formalistic. Admittedly a rather mediocre criticism, but by leaving out a key element of the social structure it just doesn't feel right (as you can see, I am much less convinced of this). If you have a movie without any visuals, just a black screen, does it still count as a movie?

NichG
2014-01-10, 07:33 PM
Black Jester, the thing is that there is a difference between 'the set of games that Black Jester would like to play' and 'the set of games that we can theoretically construct'.

If we want to construct a formalism for actually discussing the various aspects that games have and the general field of game design, it is necessary for that formalism to be able to cover not just games you personally like but also games that go against your tastes. So the 'relative quality' of various games from your personal point of view do not exclude them from discussion.

'RPGs' isn't just 'the games Black Jester approves of as the best of the set', but all games with a certain set of design elements. Within that scope, we can then discuss what makes for a game that either fits or fails to fit your particular needs for a game.

Its counter-productive to pre-emptively exclude things that don't fit a traditional mold (like GM-less games) because then we cannot actually explore new ideas at all. Even if, say, a multi-character-per-player game may sacrifice immersion in favor of other considerations, it still has a player taking on the role of characters. I'm not defending this idea because I think it makes for a superior game than any other particular game, I'm defending it because I think it formally falls within the scope of things that could be called RPGs and excluding it based on a matter of taste weakens the formalism and makes it hard to actually discover new ideas that could make for cool games.

Airk
2014-01-10, 09:38 PM
Of course I am making a qualitative value judgement; the notion that all playstyles are equal and equally valuable is little more than a brazen lie born out of avoiding conflicts and inconveniences. There are objectively better or worse games, there are objective better or worse players. If you measure a game's quality by checking if it fulfills the necessary criteria for a roleplaying game and it doesn't, it might still be a highly entertaiing game, but specifically as a roleplaying game, it fails.

This is not how it works. At all. Quality has nothing to do with this discussion, and the problem is that you keep bringing it up. Some games which are absolutely RPGs are awful (FATAL), some games which are absolutely not RPGs are excellent (Dominion).

You need to stop using "quality" (singular, measurable) as a metric in this discussion, because it's irrelevant and wrong.

You may define an RPG based upon its "qualities" (multiple, non-value-judgement properties) but I'm not getting the sense that this is what you are doing.



The GM-less games seem to fail on me being formalistic.

I'm not sure what is meant by this word.


Admittedly a rather mediocre criticism, but by leaving out a key element of the social structure it just doesn't feel right (as you can see, I am much less convinced of this). If you have a movie without any visuals, just a black screen, does it still count as a movie?

I don't think that's a very apt analogy, as I don't think removing the GM necessarily diminishes the shared creative space at all. Actually, it probably expands it. I think that GMless RPGs are RPGs, in much the same way that asymmetrical board games are board games. The presence of absence of a GM, and the requirement that all players have an equivalent table role are both common constructs in RPGs/Board games, but neither is inherent in definition. Middle Earth Quest is still absolutely a board game, even though three of the players are working together, opposed by a fourth player who plays by completely different rules. Archipelago is still an RPG even though directorial/authorial responsibility is not vested in a single person. Dominion is probably not a board game because even though all players play by the same rules and take turns, there's no board. Microscope may not be an RPG because it doesn't have character 'assignment' (at least, I don't think it does. I haven't actually read it.)

Those are not-quality related judgements. You might hate those games. They might be bad (I doubt it). But that has nothing to do with whether they are RPGs or not.

Lord Raziere
2014-01-10, 11:33 PM
Of course I am making a qualitative value judgement; the notion that all playstyles are equal and equally valuable is little more than a brazen lie born out of avoiding conflicts and inconveniences. There are objectively better or worse games, there are objective better or worse players. If you measure a game's quality by checking if it fulfills the necessary criteria for a roleplaying game and it doesn't, it might still be a highly entertaiing game, but specifically as a roleplaying game, it fails.
That said, I really like simulation games, sometimes. This is the measure of how I crate adventures/campaigns/segments after all, and including other fellows in this process is often refreshing and offers more ideas and can make really fulfilling .


oh, point to me, then, the universal criteria of all RPG's from which we all share and rigidly adhere to in ironclad precision.

oh wait, I think I already found it!

turns out that an RPG can't be an RPG without the nine alignments. all the other stuff? completely fake. who knew?

Lorsa
2014-01-11, 05:37 AM
Sorry for the delay. Lots of things to think about and do and other threads to reply to. Also this thread kind of took a... sideturn that I'm not going to touch here.


I think "many players" should judge each system individually. :)

You don't think it can be beneficial to have developed an idea of things you like/dislike so you can more quickly realise if a system isn't going to be to your liking?

But yes of course you need to have an open mind and sometimes try out things that are removed from what you usually play.


Again; BW isn't a game about skill advancement, and you need to shed the idea that "Oh, oh, I'm going to game the system by improving the 'useful' skill". Firstly, because that doesn't really accomplish anything. And secondly, because odds are, that the skills you're rolling the most are also the skills that are most important, because you are rolling them the most, right?

If it isn't a game about skill advancement, then why does it have very detailed rules about how skills advance? If a game isn't supposed to be about something, you probably shouldn't spend lots of space talking about this thing in your game.

And rolling skills isn't what's going to increase them. You need to roll skills at Obstacle-appropriate difficulties. So when you stand there with the choice of using one skill that's going to improve and another where the Ob is basically pointless, the system encourages you to use the one that can improve rather than the one that will make the most sense or create the most fun.

It's what you said yourself. Rules can encourage certain behaviors. And to me, the BW skill advancement system encourages the wrong kind of behavior.


Wait, wait what? How does that even make sense? The game is basically telling you "pick three things that you want to guide your character's actions" and then you say "But I don't WANT to play a game about those three things that I picked!"? This is like making a wizard and then complaining that your melee attacks aren't good. o.o

Also, BW gives rewards for dramatically playing AGAINST beliefs, so if you pick "Never leave a friend behind" and then make a dramatic decision -to- abandon someone, that is ALSO worth artha. As long as the belief is in play in an interesting way, you are rewarded.

But you PICKED them. You. Yourself. Why would you NOT want to pursue the three things that you said you wanted your character to be about? I mean, you don't pick these things out of a hat you choose them, and, as mentioned, they're not static. If your characters beliefs don't interest you, you have no one but yourself to blame here. You've said, "I want to play a character who sticks by his friends, thinks really highly of himself, and doesn't trust strangers." and then you complain that you are being forced to make decisions about trusting strangers, standing by your friends, and your own self worth?

No no. Here, you are definitively wrong. Beliefs in BW are not -supposed- to conflict with each other. They're supposed to be CHALLENGED. Trying to make beliefs conflict with each other is virtually impossible under most circumstances, because you could have a character whose beliefs are "All dwarves are lying scoundrels" "Never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself." and "I must overthrow my brother, the duke." There's no good way to make those conflict with each other. But what happens when you meet a dwarf who routinely proves himself trustworthy and who refuses to let your mistrust affect his behavior? What happens if you encounter someone who always sends other people to do his dirty work? What happens if you encounter some people who really believe your brother is doing good things for the people of the duchy? Now your beliefs are being -challenged-. You have to think about what they mean and how your character handles these situations.

The book steps right up and says "You should pick beliefs based on what you want the game to be about" so if you are somehow finding yourself in situations that are about your beliefs and not enjoying it, you picked the wrong beliefs.

Actually i'm fairly certain the game encourages the GM to create situations where two beliefs conflict with each other.

You are quite right though, you are supposed to pick things that matter to you and sometimes that works great! I certainly got to act on my beliefs when I played and managed to create situations where they came up for others when I was a GM (although some was very hard).

However, a character is more of a continuum than it is a discrete 3 beliefs kind of thing. It's possible that when something comes up in the game you realise "I really care about this!" but you hadn't forseen this before the session and as such you aren't rewarded for pursuing it.

Anyway, I don't REALLY have a big problem with the belief system, but I like to discuss the things I could potentially see as problems.


If no one realizes it is happening, then I think this is a victimless crime. It's also mitigated heavily by the fact that it's not any one person making these decisions (like it is in any standard game that gives "rewards for roleplaying") Yes, maybe you like Bob's roleplaying better than Mary's. but Jim might like Mary's better than Bob's. These things tend to self correct, even if it's "Wow, I feel bad for Jim, he hasn't hardly gotten any aiki this scene."

I didn't say noone realises it is happening, I said the person who does it might not realise it. Those are two different things. :smallsmile:


Again; If people are obviously cheating, then why would you play with them? It's OBVIOUS if you cheat, even if this rule is "subjective". ("I pick up the rock!" "Ooooh, awesome, aiki chit!" "Uh, that's not how it works, Bob.")

Maybe some people don't have much of a choice as to whom they play with?


It's actually not a particularly good analogy, since passing the ball puts you in a position to screw the game up for your team, so there can be legit reasons to not pass to someone. There are no legit reasons to not give someone aiki chits, because again, it's not a competition. Someone else's character being able to do more cool stuff just means more cool stuff at the table.

Well it was your analogy. :smalltongue: All I wanted to point out was that people can sometimes do things that are less good for the team simply because they don't like a person as much. It's sad but it happens.


No, seriously. I don't not understand. Why would you do this? Also, even if "you" do do this, why would everyone at the table do this? I mean, at this point, you're at the same level of stupid as a GM who makes sure that ALL the magic items are only usable by their best friend. It's not against the rules! Why aren't there rules that say everyone has to get the same number of magic items? Clearly this is an exploitable system, because it's just NOT FAIR that the GM can give items to their best friend!

See the problems with your complaint?

Well, if a group of people are being bullied by one person, it's much easier for the group to gang up and do something about it. But if one person is being bullied by a group, it's much harder to do something about it and much more likely that the person will just feel like they are somehow in the wrong or really not deserving the rewards after all.


Because ALL games have this problem. But instead it's "only" the GM who has -all- the power in the game and can therefore screw people over. Instead here, everyone has reward capability, so EVERYONE needs to do something wrong before it becomes a problem. It's actually more robust than a traditional reward system because there needs to be widespread favoritism for it to break down, instead of everything being based on the opinions of one person.

Since I am very often the GM, I trust myself. :smallcool:

But you're that it would be harder for it to become a problem, I won't deny that. However, if it IS a problem... well look above.


One of us has tried it, one of us has not. Who do you think has a better idea of whether it works?

Obviously that would be me.

(that was sarcasm btw)


So what? Sounds like a good story! :)

Again. Get rid of the whole "challenges are bad" mindset. So -what- if the party "gets into trouble"? The whole point of the game is the party getting into trouble and then presumably trying to get out.

Honestly, this sounds like a super fun scenario now that you've explained a little bit more. :)

I agree! It sounds great fun!

But you might as well reward the entire party for it, don't see any reason why it only has to be the guy with the trait?


Please give me some fun. :) No, really. The rules say you need to give me fun, right now. Do it. The rules say I get one point of fun for that.

Good luck with that player reward scheme you've got there.

You can encourage people to have fun. You can try to create fun for the table. But you have no way of knowing in advance if any particular action will create fun, and you certainly can't do it on demand.

I think my reward scheme is working pretty great actually. Come to my game and I'll be sure to give you some fun! Might take a little while for me to figure out where you get your fun from but after that I can promise you lots of fun!


I think I understand your concern now. You've got it backwards. :) Everytime the player CREATES FUN for other people, they are rewarded. :) The system doesn't reward you for -having- fun, because yes, that's it's own reward. The system rewards you for making the game fun for others.

Well, that DOES make more sense. I could work with that.


The problem I have with this is that improving skills in a system like this is boring. I've played Ars Magica, and at the end of the day, that sort of skill system just ends up being a "GM gives out XP" system, because either there is something happening that season (because the GM says there is), in which case you don't study and you play, or there isn't anything happening that season, in which case that season basically doesn't exist for purposes of actually playing the game, and instead you get some XP. It's really not very interesting in practice, no matter how "realistic" it is. And I'm not here for realism. I'm discussing narrativist games here.

Honestly, I'm not really clear why we're having a discussion of reward pacing here? It seems sortof removed from the point.

Is it removed from the point? Maybe. I just think that character reward pacing is important in all games because I've found that while players often think very short term "give me XP NOW NOW NOW" they're also often dissatisfied when they found out that in the span of 5 in-game months their character has became the most powerful guy in the block thus removing the actual premise of their character and making the game less fun. Players can be extremely short-sighted sometimes.


As far as I can tell, you have not said anything new. My points remain:

#1: There are no good player-only rewards. There is nothing you can specifically hand out to a player for taking a specific action, on demand. Fun arises only organically. It is not suitable as a reward currency. Fun is also an "out of game" commodity.
#2: Character rewards give a player greater capabilities within the game. The game is only able to make rules about things within the game. The character is the player's agent in the game. This makes character rwards player rewards as well because they are giving the PLAYER greater ability to act within the game.

I think fun is the only reward the really matters, but maybe that's just me.

Character rewards does give the player greater capabilities within the game and thus more potential for having fun. While it may sound great in theory to have a positive feedback loop (as in, you're doing things that are fun for you so your character is rewarded thus giving you higher ability to do more fun things) it's quite possible to leave one or more players at the sidelines and having them feel left out.

Now if you're being rewarded for making things fun for others it gets a bit better but it can still create a power disparity that in the end means that some players will have less fun regardless of what this powerful character does. I guess at that point you could just stop giving that player any rewards and then the problem will get fixed after a while but I prefer not to run into it in the first place.


And a related note: Getting rewarded can be...rewarding. When other people at the table smile and nod and go "That was cool!". And having an action that you specifically take when you feel something was cool means that people are more likely to 'mention' things that they thought were cool, and you are more likely to notice. It's the difference between telling your waiter "You did a good job tonight!" and leaving a big tip. Praise is nice and all, but a physical action gives it more weight.

This argument would be more valid if not for the simple fact that all GMs play the game without getting any tangible rewards whatsoever. All they have is people nodding and saying "that was cool!". If it's enough for the GM, why isn't it enough for the players?

I guess you could argue that it would be good to reward GMs with more physical actions as well. It sure would be nice but it might also make me feel a bit weird (depending on what these physical actions were).


But you don't have to avoid it for "realism" either. Let's face it - in many stories, there's no clear 'reason' why a character gets better. They're older. Wiser. Learned life's lessons. Whatever. Very rarely does a character "go study" or "spend lots of time training" or something.




Sure, you can make someone's character for them. That's super fun for them, isn't it? Especially in a gamist game that's supposed to be all about using your character to overcome challenges. Why not just let someone else play you too, since they'd probably be making better decisions.

See how this kind of fault finding works for anything?

Yes, there can be faults in many things. Faults aren't exclusive just to one thing.

As you pointed out however, help with character creation (I said help, not actually creating the character) can be detrimental for a gamist agenda that is focused on character optimisation (not the only way to have a gamist agenda mind you). But you could play a game like D&D without actually competing within the group about who makes the strongest character, because you have a very different agenda, and thus help each other without ruining any fun.


There's a difference between "Maybe you could bring in your "Hatred of Weakness" fate here?" and "What if you did <specific thing X>" right? No one is playing anyone else's character.

Point taken. It could work. I sometimes do this as a GM too regardless of system if I feel the players have forgotten something about their character that they said before was important.


Try it and see. Seriously. At this point, I can only conclude that you are making erroneous judgements about a system based on lack of experience, because I know a lot of people who play these games and this has never been brought up. Is it possible that someone, somewhere, just doesn't click with it and perceives a personal insult anytime someone else gets a reward? Sure. Is it possible for this to happen in ANY kind of system? Absolutely. Just because everyone gets the same amount of XP doesn't mean everyone is "equal". People who want to find competition and feel inferior will find a way to do it.

I do in fact know a few people who have this sort of problem. Which is why for their sake I have to make sure to find systems with as few individual rewards as possible. Sure, they might find a way to feel inferior anyway but I don't have to make it [i]easy for them.


Sorry, the rules never say "put competition here". :P Honestly. Play the games. Tell me if they feel like "competition". I've never played more cooperative-feeling games than the ones that encourage this kind of thing. Think about it. When you play D&D, why do the players play nicely with each other? Because of a social contract? Maybe? Often they don't. Here, there are literal benefits to doing things that other people at the table enjoy.

This is, quite literally, a system that says "When other people at the table enjoy the things you do, you get a prize." So what's the incentive to do things people at the table won't enjoy?

I think I already said I was going to try it out more at some point! But there's only so many hours in the day that you have open for roleplaying so we'll see when it happens.


This is all very egalitarian and also all completely false. Giving out group XP might avoid a perceived "competition" for XP, but if someone is looking to make the game a competition, they can still compete for loot, gear, magic items, character face time, in world power, or WTFever. This is a placebo at best.

For many players, it's a very good placebo.


You know what protects you against competition? A ruleset that doesn't screw you over with regard to character power. Playing a roleplaying game, and not a tabletop miniatures battle game. Getting over the idea that someone else's character is "better" than yours. Again. This is NOT a game about overcoming challenges. You are not "useless" just because your skill in X isn't as high as another person's. Especially in a game where clearly defined niches exist. So what if the fighter has more int than the wizard, because he still can't cast spells.

Honestly, I could play a character who is TERRIBLE at everything in a narrative-focused game. Heck. Many times in a story, the most important character is the one who is terrible at a lot of things. The point of the game isn't "Oh, I helped you do this thing!" but rather "I got to have a dramatic moment where..." You need to approach the game with an understanding of what is and isn't important.

And I wish all my players felt as you do, that character power is completely unimportant. That isn't the case however, so I got to work with what I have.

Airk
2014-01-11, 11:24 AM
This argument would be more valid if not for the simple fact that all GMs play the game without getting any tangible rewards whatsoever. All they have is people nodding and saying "that was cool!". If it's enough for the GM, why isn't it enough for the players?


I don't have a lot of time right now, but I really wanted to address this one (I'll get to the rest later).

I think MANY, MANY GMs run games because that is the ONLY way the game is going to happen. Do they enjoy it? Probably. Would they rather be playing? Almost certainly. I know this happens in my group, and I've read about it happening in many, many places.

Being a GM is a LOT of work, and a basically thankless task in many cases. It sure would be nice if they were rewarded in some way.

Humorously, TBZ allows players to give aiki the GM. It doesn't DO anything, but it's still recognition, which is better than nothing.

Lorsa
2014-01-14, 06:53 AM
I don't have a lot of time right now, but I really wanted to address this one (I'll get to the rest later).

I think MANY, MANY GMs run games because that is the ONLY way the game is going to happen. Do they enjoy it? Probably. Would they rather be playing? Almost certainly. I know this happens in my group, and I've read about it happening in many, many places.

Being a GM is a LOT of work, and a basically thankless task in many cases. It sure would be nice if they were rewarded in some way.

Humorously, TBZ allows players to give aiki the GM. It doesn't DO anything, but it's still recognition, which is better than nothing.

I was waiting for that later, but I guess I might as well reply to this before the thread dissapears.

If a GM runs a game beause that is the only way it is going to happen it still means they prefer it rather than whatever else they could be doing. They must get some form of enjoyment out of it, no?

I agree, it would be nice if they were rewarded in some way. But since they typically are not it seems a bit hollow to me to claim that a player couldn't get enjoyment out of simply playing the game when that's what they expect of their GMs.

Airk
2014-01-14, 11:51 AM
I was waiting for that later, but I guess I might as well reply to this before the thread dissapears.

If a GM runs a game beause that is the only way it is going to happen it still means they prefer it rather than whatever else they could be doing. They must get some form of enjoyment out of it, no?

I agree, it would be nice if they were rewarded in some way. But since they typically are not it seems a bit hollow to me to claim that a player couldn't get enjoyment out of simply playing the game when that's what they expect of their GMs.

Still working on it. But I don't get this argument AT ALL.

You are seriously saying that because someone gets "some form of enjoyment" out of something, that that is proof that everything is great and that there's no need for any changes that would add more enjoyment?

Also, as stated, a good reward system increases the fun for everyone.

Airk
2014-01-14, 01:07 PM
okay, here we go. x.x


You don't think it can be beneficial to have developed an idea of things you like/dislike so you can more quickly realise if a system isn't going to be to your liking?

But yes of course you need to have an open mind and sometimes try out things that are removed from what you usually play.

Both, of course, but if there's one thing I've taken from discussing games on the internet, it's that people are WAY more likely to judge something prematurely than they are to make an accurate assessment about anything other than a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding their enjoyment. There's way too much "oh, I knew I wasn't going to like that" when it was really "I went into it with the intention of not liking it, so sure enough, I ended up not liking it". Don't take this as a personal reflection, but I think most people are actually really bad giving different things a try.


It's what you said yourself. Rules can encourage certain behaviors. And to me, the BW skill advancement system encourages the wrong kind of behavior.

It's a good point about the skill system, and may explain some of why I find Burning Wheel's crunch to be somewhat at odds with its professed aims. (I prefer Mouse Guard myself) That said, I don't think "gaming the system to use the skills you want to improve" is actually a problem because I don't think the players, as a rule, are allowed to choose what skill they use. The GM will look at the challenge and go "Okay, this one is Scout (4)". Players have the option of suggesting other skills and approaches, but at the end of the day the GM is deciding what they roll.


Actually i'm fairly certain the game encourages the GM to create situations where two beliefs conflict with each other.

I don't recall it doing so, and none of the examples I remember had conflicting beliefs. Certainly doesn't work in Mouse Guard where each character only HAS one belief. ;)


However, a character is more of a continuum than it is a discrete 3 beliefs kind of thing. It's possible that when something comes up in the game you realise "I really care about this!" but you hadn't forseen this before the session and as such you aren't rewarded for pursuing it.

This is possible, but I don't think it happens often enough to be a concern. After all, the GM, if they are doing their job, is going to guide you towards situations that interact in interesting ways with the beliefs you have, rather than the ones you don't. And if you discover something that's super awesome, you can change your belief to get more of it in the future.



I didn't say noone realises it is happening, I said the person who does it might not realise it. Those are two different things.

In which case, isn't this a social contract issue?


Maybe some people don't have much of a choice as to whom they play with?

So... you would play with people who cheat obviously in other games? Because at the end of the day, abusing aiki chits is cheating. There's no punishment for cheating in any game, other than what the social contract enforces. If you played with someone who routinely lied about his attack totals, how would you deal with that? This is even more obvious, because they can't just say "Yeah, that's a total of 25!"


Well, if a group of people are being bullied by one person, it's much easier for the group to gang up and do something about it. But if one person is being bullied by a group, it's much harder to do something about it and much more likely that the person will just feel like they are somehow in the wrong or really not deserving the rewards after all.

I think that if you your whole group is bullying someone, that you have bigger issues than the rewards distribution system in your game. My god. How dysfunctional a group do we have to design for here? I prefer games that assume that the people at the table are mostly well adjusted adults, rather than children who need to be browbeaten and "explicitly banned" from doing things. Especially since even "explicitly" banning things doesn't help because people can still cheat.

The game CANNOT fix your broken table. It doesn't matter what game it is, how it doles out rewards, or anything. You can argue "You shouldn't play a game that leaves loopholes where people can easily abuse other people at the table" in which case I would still respond with "it's not the game's responsibility to keep people from abusing the other people at the table." And indeed, the game CANNOT prevent people from abusing others at the table. Maybe it can make it harder, but at the end of the day, the only thing that will give you a healthy gaming environment is a healthy social contract in your gaming group.


(that was sarcasm btw)

Unlike some people on this forum, I think I would be at home in Sweden. ;) (I laughed my arse off at the 'humility' comments in the elitism thread)


But you might as well reward the entire party for it, don't see any reason why it only has to be the guy with the trait?

The only reason I can think of is that it allows the rest of the party to coast on someone else doing the work. If the idea is to encourage people to make fun for others, and most of the table are only being passive receivers of fun, then I think the system isn't encouraging the right behavior.


I think fun is the only reward the really matters, but maybe that's just me.

Yes, that's great. But I guarantee you, that you cannot effectively implement a system where, when a player does something, you immediately and always give them fun. It's just not possible. Fun, like immersion, is something that can be encouraged, but not 'ruled' or produced on demand. That means it's inappropriate to have rules regarding fun, or a reward system that uses 'fun' as a mechanic.


Yes, there can be faults in many things. Faults aren't exclusive just to one thing.

As you pointed out however, help with character creation (I said help, not actually creating the character) can be detrimental for a gamist agenda that is focused on character optimisation (not the only way to have a gamist agenda mind you). But you could play a game like D&D without actually competing within the group about who makes the strongest character, because you have a very different agenda, and thus help each other without ruining any fun.

The problem I am starting to have with your arguments is that you seem unwilling to come down on one side or the other on whether you want to correct social issues with game fixes or with social fixes. Playing a D&D game where you "don't compete with the group about who makes the strongest character" is a social fix. It's the SAME social fix that I've been arguing makes your whole discussion about "You have to give out equal rewards because what if one person feels overshadowed because OMG, Bob got more aiki then he did!" invalid, but here you are arguing that it works in a gamist game (a game ABOUT character power) but not a narrativist game that's not about character power? How does this make any sense to you? You seem very willing to find hypothetical fault in other games, and overlook the fact that the same faults are present in games you seem to view as "fine". This makes it frustrating to have this discussion, because it seems like you are using a double standard.

CombatOwl
2014-01-16, 09:22 AM
Of course I am making a qualitative value judgement; the notion that all playstyles are equal and equally valuable is little more than a brazen lie born out of avoiding conflicts and inconveniences. There are objectively better or worse games, there are objective better or worse players. If you measure a game's quality by checking if it fulfills the necessary criteria for a roleplaying game and it doesn't, it might still be a highly entertaiing game, but specifically as a roleplaying game, it fails.
That said, I really like simulation games, sometimes. This is the measure of how I crate adventures/campaigns/segments after all, and including other fellows in this process is often refreshing and offers more ideas and can make really fulfilling .


The GM-less games seem to fail on me being formalistic. Admittedly a rather mediocre criticism, but by leaving out a key element of the social structure it just doesn't feel right (as you can see, I am much less convinced of this). If you have a movie without any visuals, just a black screen, does it still count as a movie?

How do you objectively determine the quality of a game? I mean, Synnibar is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever made... But it was a lot of fun in play because of the bizarre quirks. Paranoia is usually considered a good game, but from the perspective of game design, its a bad choice to make knowledge of the rules a punishable offense. Both of them are fun for certain sorts of play, liked and disliked each by different players.

I have similar questions regarding "the qualities of a roleplaying game." How is that objectively defined? How do you objectively measure how a system adheres to those qualities?

erikun
2014-01-16, 12:11 PM
Different systems place emphasis on different parts of the game, different mechanics, or just simply different playstyles. Different people have different priorities when playing the game, from personal opinion to preferred playstyle to favorite types of dice. As such, it's pretty much impossible to have one objective "best RPG system" because, even taking everyone's priorities into account, there are still going to be different answers for the best system for the individual. Heck, some preferences - such as in-depth detailed rules vs. easy to learn and teach - are going to outright contradict.

That said, that doesn't make all systems equal. There are going to be systems that are simply worse. Perhaps a system has poor writing, or poor mechanics, or is just too sparse and doesn't cover important aspects. Especially when you get a lot of systems that focus on doing the same thing, such as all the D&D-like systems we have around, it is much easier to compare them amongst each other and get a clear objective comparison. Usually.

However, the idea that Fate Core is somehow better or worse than Pathfinder, or Traveller, would be just a strange statement to make. They've very different games, with different focuses and different playstyles. I'd much prefer Fate Core over Pathfinder, and do like that I could transfer a Pathfinder campaign into a Fate Core game without much problem. But I wouldn't take a Pathfinder group and insist that they should be playing Fate Core, unless they're looking for something different and Fate might be something that would interest them.

kyoryu
2014-01-16, 06:49 PM
How do you objectively determine the quality of a game? I mean, Synnibar is widely regarded as one of the worst games ever made... But it was a lot of fun in play because of the bizarre quirks. Paranoia is usually considered a good game, but from the perspective of game design, its a bad choice to make knowledge of the rules a punishable offense. Both of them are fun for certain sorts of play, liked and disliked each by different players.

In general, I think that the quality of a roleplaying game is subjective - "does it meet the needs of the group playing it?" is really the only interesting criteria.

I think there's a bit of room for objective judgement, though, in terms of "does the game satisfy the desires/needs it sets out to?"

Lorsa
2014-01-17, 06:47 AM
Both, of course, but if there's one thing I've taken from discussing games on the internet, it's that people are WAY more likely to judge something prematurely than they are to make an accurate assessment about anything other than a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding their enjoyment. There's way too much "oh, I knew I wasn't going to like that" when it was really "I went into it with the intention of not liking it, so sure enough, I ended up not liking it". Don't take this as a personal reflection, but I think most people are actually really bad giving different things a try.

This may be true. I usually try to keep an open mind though. I've played some really dysfunctional systems in my time...


It's a good point about the skill system, and may explain some of why I find Burning Wheel's crunch to be somewhat at odds with its professed aims. (I prefer Mouse Guard myself) That said, I don't think "gaming the system to use the skills you want to improve" is actually a problem because I don't think the players, as a rule, are allowed to choose what skill they use. The GM will look at the challenge and go "Okay, this one is Scout (4)". Players have the option of suggesting other skills and approaches, but at the end of the day the GM is deciding what they roll.

Actually I'm fairly certain that Burning Wheel states that the players describe what they want to accomplish and which skill they use for it. The GM then sets the appropriate Obstacle (according to the guidelines). Burning Wheel is, by and large, trying to avoid giving the GM too much power.


This is possible, but I don't think it happens often enough to be a concern. After all, the GM, if they are doing their job, is going to guide you towards situations that interact in interesting ways with the beliefs you have, rather than the ones you don't. And if you discover something that's super awesome, you can change your belief to get more of it in the future.

It's true that it isn't enough to be a concern. My whole starting point however was "I'm not sure the belief system is needed to do what it's supposed to do". I mean, I can usually, just by talking to the player and looking at the character figure out what sort of situations they'd be interested in.


In which case, isn't this a social contract issue?

Let's see... where did this start? Oh yes! I was saying that some people just naturally, for example, optimises their characters without really thinking about it. If you've agreed to something as a social contract, a person can break it without even thinking about it. Like with the Burning Wheel skill system, someone can abuse it without really thinking or noticing that's what they are doing. Not that this really have to do with anything...


So... you would play with people who cheat obviously in other games? Because at the end of the day, abusing aiki chits is cheating. There's no punishment for cheating in any game, other than what the social contract enforces. If you played with someone who routinely lied about his attack totals, how would you deal with that? This is even more obvious, because they can't just say "Yeah, that's a total of 25!"

In roleplaying it is much easier to cheat in not-so-obvious ways. You can be slightly biased with your aiki chits handouts and when pressed on the matter the explanation of "I just really find this person very cool!" would be a sufficient explanation. It can be very hard to figure out if someone is obviously cheating in a roleplaying game. But in general, no, I hate playing with cheaters.


I think that if you your whole group is bullying someone, that you have bigger issues than the rewards distribution system in your game. My god. How dysfunctional a group do we have to design for here? I prefer games that assume that the people at the table are mostly well adjusted adults, rather than children who need to be browbeaten and "explicitly banned" from doing things. Especially since even "explicitly" banning things doesn't help because people can still cheat.

I wish I knew more well adjusted adults. :smallsmile:

But seriously, some of these complaints are things I've heard people I play with now say about other groups they've been with in the past rather than groups I've played with myself.


The game CANNOT fix your broken table. It doesn't matter what game it is, how it doles out rewards, or anything. You can argue "You shouldn't play a game that leaves loopholes where people can easily abuse other people at the table" in which case I would still respond with "it's not the game's responsibility to keep people from abusing the other people at the table." And indeed, the game CANNOT prevent people from abusing others at the table. Maybe it can make it harder, but at the end of the day, the only thing that will give you a healthy gaming environment is a healthy social contract in your gaming group.

Yes I know.

That doesn't mean I can't prefer games with fewer loopholes anyway. The less temptation there is the easier it is to stick to the social contract.


Unlike some people on this forum, I think I would be at home in Sweden. ;) (I laughed my arse off at the 'humility' comments in the elitism thread)

You are very welcome! I have a sofa to sleep on if you just want to visit, but I can much recommend it as a nice country to live in.


The only reason I can think of is that it allows the rest of the party to coast on someone else doing the work. If the idea is to encourage people to make fun for others, and most of the table are only being passive receivers of fun, then I think the system isn't encouraging the right behavior.

So uhm... why are you playing with people who aren't making things fun for the others in the first place?

The argument works both ways doesn't it? :smallsmile:

To clarify, what I mean is that while everyone should try to make fun situations happening, the GM usually holds the initiative to most scenes. If the GM creates scenes where one player character's traits can come into effect much more often than another, it's hardly the fault of the second player for not initiating as many fun situations and thus shouldn't be punished for it. The assumption is that everyone will want to create fun for everyone. Not being in situations where you can do so can be frustrating in and of itself, without seeing someone else get all the tangible rewards.


Yes, that's great. But I guarantee you, that you cannot effectively implement a system where, when a player does something, you immediately and always give them fun. It's just not possible. Fun, like immersion, is something that can be encouraged, but not 'ruled' or produced on demand. That means it's inappropriate to have rules regarding fun, or a reward system that uses 'fun' as a mechanic.

But isn't this what you're arguing? When a player does something that leads to fun, they get a mechanical reward? In many cases it's even "when you get into situations that are fun for you, you get a reward".


The problem I am starting to have with your arguments is that you seem unwilling to come down on one side or the other on whether you want to correct social issues with game fixes or with social fixes. Playing a D&D game where you "don't compete with the group about who makes the strongest character" is a social fix. It's the SAME social fix that I've been arguing makes your whole discussion about "You have to give out equal rewards because what if one person feels overshadowed because OMG, Bob got more aiki then he did!" invalid, but here you are arguing that it works in a gamist game (a game ABOUT character power) but not a narrativist game that's not about character power? How does this make any sense to you? You seem very willing to find hypothetical fault in other games, and overlook the fact that the same faults are present in games you seem to view as "fine". This makes it frustrating to have this discussion, because it seems like you are using a double standard.

I think my whole argument has been based on "you can play D&D (and almost any system) with a narrativist agenda". And I supposed also "narrativist play is self-rewarding". Perhaps even going as far as "I feel mechanical rewards are more a function of a gamist agenda unless they're based on something like in-game time in which case it's more of a simulationist agenda".

I wish to state for the record though that I don't consider D&D (3.5 in this case) "fine". I play it, sure, because when I open and read through the book about a hundred or so adventure ideas start flowing into my mind. Despite the sometimes broken mechanics. Reading Burning Wheel gave me maybe ten ideas. I don't know why that is so, but some games just naturally simulate my creative nerves more than others.

If I look as though I move from one side of the fence to another, it's because partly I am expressing opinions and views that I have heard from my players and partly because I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm selfishly using you to weight arguments back-and-forth so I can form a clearer picture of these types of rules and their intentions/outcomes.

Airk
2014-01-17, 10:06 AM
Actually I'm fairly certain that Burning Wheel states that the players describe what they want to accomplish and which skill they use for it. The GM then sets the appropriate Obstacle (according to the guidelines). Burning Wheel is, by and large, trying to avoid giving the GM too much power.

Fair enough; I confess it's bee a while since I went through that book. I've had a lot of other systems to consume since.


It's true that it isn't enough to be a concern. My whole starting point however was "I'm not sure the belief system is needed to do what it's supposed to do". I mean, I can usually, just by talking to the player and looking at the character figure out what sort of situations they'd be interested in.

Sure. Or you could have them write it down so that it's always in the front of everyone's mind. Let's face it. People drive their actions off their character sheets. When they're sitting there floundering around for something to do, they look at the character sheet for ideas.



Let's see... where did this start? Oh yes! I was saying that some people just naturally, for example, optimises their characters without really thinking about it. If you've agreed to something as a social contract, a person can break it without even thinking about it. Like with the Burning Wheel skill system, someone can abuse it without really thinking or noticing that's what they are doing. Not that this really have to do with anything...

Yeah, I was going to say... ;)

I really disagree that you can 'abuse' the BW skill system without realizing it though. You have to look and do a fair amount of figuring to know what tests benefit you. Actually, this is one of my issues with the system. It's way too annoying to track and figure out what skill checks count.



In roleplaying it is much easier to cheat in not-so-obvious ways. You can be slightly biased with your aiki chits handouts and when pressed on the matter the explanation of "I just really find this person very cool!" would be a sufficient explanation. It can be very hard to figure out if someone is obviously cheating in a roleplaying game. But in general, no, I hate playing with cheaters.

So, we are DEEPLY concerned that someone might give someone else just enough extra chits that they are "being dishonest" but not so much that anyone can really say that they are? Really? This is what we've come to? Though this is still somewhat self correcting since A) You can only get one chit from one action, so if someone is giving you stuff for 'everything', you're not getting much from anyone else and B) Other people may well decide, subconsciously or not, that you don't need any more rewards since you've got so many from Bob.

I know you seem to have a hard time believing this, but the system works in a way that is mindblowingly fair. At the end of the day, you can't really play "logical" games with it, because it's NOT logical. It's human behavior. You get all kinds of weird stuff like "Bob is really GOOD at delivering one liners, so at first he gets tons of chits for that, but after a while, people get 'tired' of giving him chits for one liners, so now his one-liners need to be better or he needs to do something else." The hardest part is just getting the ball moving.

Could this break down if you play with honestly DECEPTIVE, manipulative people? Sure. but I think any game breaks down in that sort of situation. Does this break down in the face of normal human biases and behavior? Absolutely not. It works because of those.



That doesn't mean I can't prefer games with fewer loopholes anyway. The less temptation there is the easier it is to stick to the social contract.

Sure. But obvious social pressure is a pretty good enforcer. And again, almost every game has TONS of places where a player can cheat if they want to. ("Oh, sorry! I just added the same number to my hit roll as last round, and 'forgot' I didn't have combat advantage this time.")


So uhm... why are you playing with people who aren't making things fun for the others in the first place?

The argument works both ways doesn't it? :smallsmile:

Not really. Many, many players show up for games and expect to HAVE fun, but comparatively few show up with the intent to MAKE fun. The 'conventional wisdom' is that it's the GMs job to 'make' fun. See your own comments below.



To clarify, what I mean is that while everyone should try to make fun situations happening, the GM usually holds the initiative to most scenes. If the GM creates scenes where one player character's traits can come into effect much more often than another, it's hardly the fault of the second player for not initiating as many fun situations and thus shouldn't be punished for it. The assumption is that everyone will want to create fun for everyone. Not being in situations where you can do so can be frustrating in and of itself, without seeing someone else get all the tangible rewards.

I think a lot of these systems have intent to remove some of that onus from the GM, actually. As you noticed above about BW.



But isn't this what you're arguing? When a player does something that leads to fun, they get a mechanical reward? In many cases it's even "when you get into situations that are fun for you, you get a reward".

Yes and no. There's a difference between:

"You did X, so I give you fun!" (Because you cannot give fun "on demand")
and
"You did something fun, so you get a reward"

As you can tell, in one, fun is rewarded when it happens, and in the other, one is supposed to magically create fun when asked. They're not the same. You can TRY to create fun, but it doesn't always work. But that's okay. Someone trying to create fun will succeed occasionally and be rewarded. Someone being put on the spot to create fun NOW because the game says you "have to" is going to fail at that a lot, causing a breakdown of the reward system because the reward doesn't happen consistently.

Fun, while DESIRABLE as a reward, is a bad reward to try to use as incentive because its very nature makes it somewhat unreliable. Therefore, incentivizing everyone to TRY to generate fun whenever possible results in more fun than just saying "When X happens, you have to make it fun!"



I think my whole argument has been based on "you can play D&D (and almost any system) with a narrativist agenda". And I supposed also "narrativist play is self-rewarding" Perhaps even going as far as "I feel mechanical rewards are more a function of a gamist agenda unless they're based on something like in-game time in which case it's more of a simulationist agenda".

I think this, as a whole, is misunderstanding the nature of the problem. It doesn't have anything to do with creative agendas at this point. It's broader and more general than that.

Let's ask a weird question. Why are we using rules AT ALL? We COULD just sit around the table and make stuff up. After all, that would be "fun" and the only goal here is fun, right? You, the GM could still "Give out" fun. But we don't. We play games. With rules. Rules give structure to roleplay. They tell us what is desirable and what is not. We inherently want to follow rules because that is what a game IS. Structure around play. Good rules guide behavior in ways that just "wanting to have fun" does not.



I wish to state for the record though that I don't consider D&D (3.5 in this case) "fine". I play it, sure, because when I open and read through the book about a hundred or so adventure ideas start flowing into my mind. Despite the sometimes broken mechanics. Reading Burning Wheel gave me maybe ten ideas. I don't know why that is so, but some games just naturally simulate my creative nerves more than others.

Burning Wheel is harder. Because D&D lends itself to what are, essentially "dumb" (not really using that in a derogatory way) ideas. (Uh, actually, I guess I really mean "simple"). Because it doesn't really matter about the why's and the motivations and the complexities. You can go and kill the goblin warlord, because the goblin warlord is BAD and raiding villages.

Burning Wheel is harder because at the end of the day, it's tougher to make a "plot" about overcoming obstacles into interesting, deep RP. More THINKING needs to happen to make Burning Wheel work, IMHO. D&D has a low threshold of effort. (Note: That's 'idea making effort' not 'game prep effort' - D&D has a TON of game prep effort. Yuk.)

Exercise for you. Next time you get an idea from D&D, think about how it would work in BW. Especially with characters who have a lot of beliefs about each other.



If I look as though I move from one side of the fence to another, it's because partly I am expressing opinions and views that I have heard from my players and partly because I haven't made up my mind yet. I'm selfishly using you to weight arguments back-and-forth so I can form a clearer picture of these types of rules and their intentions/outcomes.

Ah, so I'm not so much discussing with YOU as I am with the cognitive space occupied by everyone you are in contact with about gaming?

No wonder this is so convoluted. :P

Tragak
2014-01-19, 10:50 AM
Gamist:
*You care about the game's math
*You want the dice to decide what happens
*The GM runs NPCs according to what the books say.

Simulationist:
*You care about the game's setting
*You want the characters to decide what happens
*The GM runs NPCs according to what she determined for them before the scene started

Narrativist
*You care about the game's story
*You want the DM and players to decide what happens
*The DM runs NPCs according to what she and the players come up with as the scene is happening

Gamist/Simulationist:
*You care about describing the game's world mathematically
*If a story happens as a result of your descriptions, than that's a happy accident
*If you have to sacrifice a potentially cool story element in order to make the math and the setting agree, then the story changes to accommodate the math and the setting

Gamist/Narrativist:
*You care about describing the game's possible stories mathematically
*If a detailed setting happens as a result of your story, then that's a happy accident
*If you have to sacrifice a potentially cool setting element in order to make the math and the story agree, then the setting changes to accommodate the math and the story

Simulationist/Narrativist:
*You care about describing the game's world in terms of what happens in the story
*If you happen to end up using math to describe what happens, then that is a happy accident
*If you have to sacrifice a mathematical element in order to make the story and the setting agree, then the math changes to accommodate the setting and the story

Gamist/Simulationist/Narrativist:
*You care about describing the game's story and setting mathematically
*Even if you have to tweak the math, story, and setting ideas, you never fully abandon any of them

Lorsa
2014-01-19, 12:03 PM
I really disagree that you can 'abuse' the BW skill system without realizing it though. You have to look and do a fair amount of figuring to know what tests benefit you. Actually, this is one of my issues with the system. It's way too annoying to track and figure out what skill checks count.

Maybe not BW, but other systems are possible to abuse without realising what you do. I really dislike systems that are easy to game as that's not what I want out of my roleplaying experience. It's one of the reasons why I dislike systems that have very different systems for character creation and character advacement.

Let's face it, people can be tempted into using the system to give themselves an advantage and then say it's because of [made up in-character reason]. And even when the reason isn't made up the effect is still there.


So, we are DEEPLY concerned that someone might give someone else just enough extra chits that they are "being dishonest" but not so much that anyone can really say that they are? Really? This is what we've come to? Though this is still somewhat self correcting since A) You can only get one chit from one action, so if someone is giving you stuff for 'everything', you're not getting much from anyone else and B) Other people may well decide, subconsciously or not, that you don't need any more rewards since you've got so many from Bob.

I know you seem to have a hard time believing this, but the system works in a way that is mindblowingly fair. At the end of the day, you can't really play "logical" games with it, because it's NOT logical. It's human behavior. You get all kinds of weird stuff like "Bob is really GOOD at delivering one liners, so at first he gets tons of chits for that, but after a while, people get 'tired' of giving him chits for one liners, so now his one-liners need to be better or he needs to do something else." The hardest part is just getting the ball moving.

Could this break down if you play with honestly DECEPTIVE, manipulative people? Sure. but I think any game breaks down in that sort of situation. Does this break down in the face of normal human biases and behavior? Absolutely not. It works because of those.

Yes, I am DEEPLY concerned. No, not really. And I would be willing to give it a shot if the people I play with are interested. New experiences can be good even if you turn out not liking it.


Sure. But obvious social pressure is a pretty good enforcer. And again, almost every game has TONS of places where a player can cheat if they want to. ("Oh, sorry! I just added the same number to my hit roll as last round, and 'forgot' I didn't have combat advantage this time.")

Yes, you can always cheat. Some ways are more obvious than others.


Not really. Many, many players show up for games and expect to HAVE fun, but comparatively few show up with the intent to MAKE fun. The 'conventional wisdom' is that it's the GMs job to 'make' fun. See your own comments below.

I show up with the intention to make fun. But then again I am very often the GM. In any case I don't think my comment says anything about the conventional wisdom that the GM is the only one that is providing fun. The point was that the GM inevitably has the power to create the scenes and thus can limit the options for players to provide fun.


I think a lot of these systems have intent to remove some of that onus from the GM, actually. As you noticed above about BW.

Yes, it's certainly not bad to spread some of the initiative for a good game around the table. Some players will always be better than others at creating fun though. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be welcome.


Yes and no. There's a difference between:

"You did X, so I give you fun!" (Because you cannot give fun "on demand")
and
"You did something fun, so you get a reward"

As you can tell, in one, fun is rewarded when it happens, and in the other, one is supposed to magically create fun when asked. They're not the same. You can TRY to create fun, but it doesn't always work. But that's okay. Someone trying to create fun will succeed occasionally and be rewarded. Someone being put on the spot to create fun NOW because the game says you "have to" is going to fail at that a lot, causing a breakdown of the reward system because the reward doesn't happen consistently.

Fun, while DESIRABLE as a reward, is a bad reward to try to use as incentive because its very nature makes it somewhat unreliable. Therefore, incentivizing everyone to TRY to generate fun whenever possible results in more fun than just saying "When X happens, you have to make it fun!"

I think the statement is more "You did X, so you (or we) have fun!". That sounds like a reward to me. What you are saying sounds like "I did X, and had fun, but it isn't enough so now you have to give me a reward!". Fun incentivise itself I thought. Isn't that why we're all there?


I think this, as a whole, is misunderstanding the nature of the problem. It doesn't have anything to do with creative agendas at this point. It's broader and more general than that.

Let's ask a weird question. Why are we using rules AT ALL? We COULD just sit around the table and make stuff up. After all, that would be "fun" and the only goal here is fun, right? You, the GM could still "Give out" fun. But we don't. We play games. With rules. Rules give structure to roleplay. They tell us what is desirable and what is not. We inherently want to follow rules because that is what a game IS. Structure around play. Good rules guide behavior in ways that just "wanting to have fun" does not.

Actually, I don't think it would be very fun if we didn't have any rules. I can sit alone at home and fantasise all day if I want but it wouldn't be as much fun. The structure, the inherent randomness, the input from other people, all those things make it more fun. So yes, we need good rules, and we need to find the ones that will make it most fun for the ones that play.


Burning Wheel is harder. Because D&D lends itself to what are, essentially "dumb" (not really using that in a derogatory way) ideas. (Uh, actually, I guess I really mean "simple"). Because it doesn't really matter about the why's and the motivations and the complexities. You can go and kill the goblin warlord, because the goblin warlord is BAD and raiding villages.

Burning Wheel is harder because at the end of the day, it's tougher to make a "plot" about overcoming obstacles into interesting, deep RP. More THINKING needs to happen to make Burning Wheel work, IMHO. D&D has a low threshold of effort. (Note: That's 'idea making effort' not 'game prep effort' - D&D has a TON of game prep effort. Yuk.)

Exercise for you. Next time you get an idea from D&D, think about how it would work in BW. Especially with characters who have a lot of beliefs about each other.

You are quite right. In D&D, you can have some long lost ruin where an evil wizard was once burined and is now infested with undead and monsters. Maybe some kid from a nearby village stumbled in there by mistake as well. Who knows. It works.

In BW, there isn't really magic in the same way, is doesn't feel like there's any good reason for there to be a lost ruin with an evil wizard buried and it doesn't feel like there are undead and monsters. There are lots of things that would work in D&D that doesn't work in BW. The "setting" generated by the rules feels a lot more restrictive as far as ideas go.

I have the same problem with some other settings, like Lord of the Rings for example. I don't really know what to do in that setting.

Yes, I will do the exercise. Eventually though, some games just inspire ideas better than others.


Ah, so I'm not so much discussing with YOU as I am with the cognitive space occupied by everyone you are in contact with about gaming?

No wonder this is so convoluted. :P

Yep. Lovely isn't it? Part of the issue is that as GM, I am interested in finding things that work for my players so naturally their opinions matter to me.

Tengu_temp
2014-01-19, 01:45 PM
Gamist/Simulationist/Narrativist:
*You care about describing the game's story and setting mathematically
*Even if you have to tweak the math, story, and setting ideas, you never fully abandon any of them

The problem is, this pretty much describes everyone, with rare exceptions. Almost every RPer cares about story, setting and rules to some extent.

Airk
2014-01-19, 10:05 PM
Maybe not BW, but other systems are possible to abuse without realising what you do. I really dislike systems that are easy to game as that's not what I want out of my roleplaying experience. It's one of the reasons why I dislike systems that have very different systems for character creation and character advacement.

Truthfully, I'm not aware of any systems that are very easy to 'game'. It's one of the first things that tends to get designed out. Of course, you always have systems like D&D where there are just so GODDAMN MANY rules that it's impossible to eliminate all the loopholes, but for games with relatively less stuff, it's rarely a problem in my experience.



Yes, you can always cheat. Some ways are more obvious than others.

Which is sortof my point. Trying to cheat awards that everyone sees is really hard.



I show up with the intention to make fun. But then again I am very often the GM. In any case I don't think my comment says anything about the conventional wisdom that the GM is the only one that is providing fun. The point was that the GM inevitably has the power to create the scenes and thus can limit the options for players to provide fun.

Yes, the GM can ruin everything. We already knew that though. :)

Doesn't mean the players shouldn't bring their fun chasing shoes and their improv hats.



Yes, it's certainly not bad to spread some of the initiative for a good game around the table. Some players will always be better than others at creating fun though. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be welcome.

Of course not. Which is why these things are judged subjectively. The importance is on the effort.



I think the statement is more "You did X, so you (or we) have fun!". That sounds like a reward to me. What you are saying sounds like "I did X, and had fun, but it isn't enough so now you have to give me a reward!". Fun incentivise itself I thought. Isn't that why we're all there?

To read some of the threads in these forums, you'd almost think that no, we're not. And again. Fun backed by rules is more effective than fun that's just freeform.



Actually, I don't think it would be very fun if we didn't have any rules. I can sit alone at home and fantasise all day if I want but it wouldn't be as much fun. The structure, the inherent randomness, the input from other people, all those things make it more fun. So yes, we need good rules, and we need to find the ones that will make it most fun for the ones that play.

Exactly. Rules create fun. But rules cannot legislate fun. Rules that reward efforts to create fun tend to encourage that kind of behaviour.


In BW, there isn't really magic in the same way, is doesn't feel like there's any good reason for there to be a lost ruin with an evil wizard buried and it doesn't feel like there are undead and monsters. There are lots of things that would work in D&D that doesn't work in BW. The "setting" generated by the rules feels a lot more restrictive as far as ideas go.

Because BW is very much a setting that wants to make SENSE. Though I think if you pick up some of the supplement stuff, there's lots of 'magic' and 'monsters'.



I have the same problem with some other settings, like Lord of the Rings for example. I don't really know what to do in that setting.

Speaking as someone who runs a game in it, it's not easy. It's an apt paralell to BW too, since as far as I can tell, with the exception of Faith for Men, the whole world is super duper based on Middle Earth.


Yep. Lovely isn't it? Part of the issue is that as GM, I am interested in finding things that work for my players so naturally their opinions matter to me.

This must be that 'sarcasm' thing I've heard of so many times. ;)

Airk
2014-06-17, 02:00 PM
It seems strange that that would suddenly become the case in AD&D 1E* when it wasn't the case in OD&D. Do you have actual evidence? There's plenty of people who've told plenty of stories about what it was like to play in the Lake Geneva campaigns, and I don't recall anything about 5-10 PCs per person.

YES! YES I DO! (Okay, sortof late, but whatevs.)

Second character sheet shown here clearly indicates that people were expected to create and play multiple characters under at least some circumstances.
http://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2013/07/character-sheets-in-1975.html#more

LibraryOgre
2014-06-17, 04:27 PM
The Mod Wonder Uses Turn Undead! It's Very Effective!