Ideas that refuse to die: the Forge and the GNS

[Vahnavoi]

Let's start this thread with something I've already written on the topic lately:

From the Wikipedia article concerning GNS theory:

"On December 2, 2005, [Ron] Edwards closed the forums on the Forge about GNS theory, saying that they had outlived their usefulness."

It was never a good theory. It was internet forum posts level, built on earlier internet forum posts level musings. Its successor, the Big Model theory of roleplaying games, did not fare much better. Here is what RPG museum has to say on the topic:

"The Big Model has been significantly criticised and is no longer widely used, even by many of the people who liked it when it was new and current. For example, Vincent Baker has said that, while it was a useful tool to diversify thought around what role-playing games could be (i.e. that there was more than a single type of RPG that could be played), the attempt to categorise all RPGs and all players (e.g. using the GNS creative agendas) do not hold up, and furthermore RPG design has moved on and left the Big Model behind."

The only lasting legacy these theories had was the use of certain phrases, such as the words "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", by people who happened to be part of early 2000s internet hobby discussion. Majority of people who use those words, use them wrong, with no significant relationship to their special definitions in these theories. Outside of these theories, there isn't enough settled common usage for them to even net their own dictionary definitions.

So. Why talk about this now? Because I've been seeing the terms "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", as well as some other GNS/Forge terminology, show up again. It's not really a surprise. Let's be honest, these forums, and many people who come here, are relics of early 2000s internet era, in some cases, even earlier. So they still have both Forge and GNS in fresh memory, despite over a decade having passed since they were relevant.

So what exactly is my issue with that? Because it pains me when someone, in year 2024, can still say something like this:

I have seen GNS theory bantered around over dozens of forums and discord channels over the years, and its terms are relatively well-defined and understandable.

Let's put this into context via analogy. In the early 2000s, there was still significant on-going debate over whether Homo neanderthalensis had cross-bred with Homo sapiens, with popular science magazines publishing opinions backing both sides of the argument. Since then, genetic sequencing has settled the argument in favor of "yes, some interbreeding did happen", with subsequent research focusing on what effects this might still have.

If someone's confused by my choice of analogy, I can defend it later. Before then, a tip: it has to do with GNS idea of "incoherence". The main takeaway I want you to have, is this: appealing to the Forge or GNS today, is about as credible as appealing to pre-2000s ideas of how any kind of interbreeding between human species was impossible. Much less credible, really, since GNS was never an academic theory.

I'll later revisit this topic to discuss some other ideas that cover the same ground as GNS, without sharing it's pitfalls. Namely, it will be about aesthetics of gameplay, which is somewhat related to another recent thread.

[Xervous]

Something like the eight types of fun ends up serviceable because unlike GNS theory, it looks at the various desires a system can satisfy instead of attempting to cram so many different concepts into three categories. Understanding that The Forge was rabidly pro Narativism it’s not surprising to see how lots of other reasons for playing got swept into the other two G & S categories as afterthoughts. Narrative appeal features as but one of eight in ‘eight types’. GNS theory leads a person to sort the appeal of role playing into one of: Narrative where the essential concern is the formulation of a story, Simulation where the concern is a system of definitions of cause and effect that drive a world, and the Gamism category where fun that’s neither narrative or simulation gets dumped.

It’s no coincidence that most statements that invoke GNS tend to focus on and play up the importance/value of narrative fun in a game, that’s where GNS was designed to put the spotlight.

[Unoriginal]

If you want an idea to die, when the idea has already been disproven and discarded at large, then making a thread about it doesn't help further that goal.

An idea dies when it's forgotten.

Sooner or later, the GNS model will disappear from all threads, all mouths, all minds. But doing more than explaining why that model was discarded to people who don't know why is fanning the idea's dying embers.

[KorvinStarmast]

Something like the eight types of fun ends up serviceable because unlike GNS theory, it looks at the various desires a system can satisfy instead of attempting to cram so many different concepts into three categories.

Speculation:

Maybe Edwards grew up as a Trinitarian, so he felt a need to have three things.
Maybe he was a disciple of Dialectal Materialism, and needed three things (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)...and then there were three.
Maybe he was a confused Monty Pythoneer, and thus when with the Big Model he used five, rather than three, it blew up on him as he forgot that the number of thy counting shall be three.

I agree with you that Robin Laws got it righter. Five plus three = eight.
I think that part of the reason that Laws' approach has longer legs is that he derived from a play aspect, not an attempt to attach academic rigor to his topic.
(IIRC, Edwards was / is / has a PhD in something).

It’s no coincidence that most statements that invoke GNS tend to focus on and play up the importance/value of narrative fun in a game, that’s where GNS was designed to put the spotlight.

For our OP: (regarding the article you cited)

Majority of people who use those words, use them wrong,

I think that you need an adverb there, since you are modifying a verb rather than a noun.
...use them wrongly.. The blue pencil service offered at no additional charge.

To test this out in your brain, sub in the term incorrect for wrong, and you'll find yourself using "incorrectly" almost automatically.

[Tanarii]

It is unfortunate that GNS refuses to die. And a large part of that is because people keep rediscovering it and thinking it's meaningful or even a stroke of genius insight, as opposed to the particularly odorous part of gaming history that it is. Especially on forums, and worse on Reddit. At least on forums there's enough old fogies around to set the record straight.

It doesn't help that there are still a lot of big names who came out of The Forge that have actually produced some damn innovative games. Provided you're willing to discard the Oberoni so-called Fallacy and in some ignore the included philosophical preaching that is directly contradicted by the actual rules they present, Torchbearer (Crane) and the far bigger Apocalypse World (Baker) have uniquely brilliant concepts built in to the rules. And Blades in the Dark is directly inspired by Baker's AW/PbtA.

[King of Nowhere]

Let's start this thread with something I've already written on the topic lately:



So. Why talk about this now? Because I've been seeing the terms "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", as well as some other GNS/Forge terminology, show up again. It's not really a surprise. Let's be honest, these forums, and many people who come here, are relics of early 2000s internet era, in some cases, even earlier. So they still have both Forge and GNS in fresh memory, despite over a decade having passed since they were relevant.

So what exactly is my issue with that? Because it pains me when someone, in year 2024, can still say something like this:



Let's put this into context via analogy. In the early 2000s, there was still significant on-going debate over whether Homo neanderthalensis had cross-bred with Homo sapiens, with popular science magazines publishing opinions backing both sides of the argument. Since then, genetic sequencing has settled the argument in favor of "yes, some interbreeding did happen", with subsequent research focusing on what effects this might still have.

If someone's confused by my choice of analogy, I can defend it later. Before then, a tip: it has to do with GNS idea of "incoherence". The main takeaway I want you to have, is this: appealing to the Forge or GNS today, is about as credible as appealing to pre-2000s ideas of how any kind of interbreeding between human species was impossible. Much less credible, really, since GNS was never an academic theory.

I'll later revisit this topic to discuss some other ideas that cover the same ground as GNS, without sharing it's pitfalls. Namely, it will be about aesthetics of gameplay, which is somewhat related to another recent thread.

you are making two major mistakes here.

the first is, you are confusing hard and soft science when you say it's as credible as pre-2000 ideas of interbreeding between neandertals and sapiens. in hard science you can get hard proof, you can have gene sequencing and come to an absolute conclusion that the theory is right or wrong. you can't do that in soft science, because you can't define things as exactly.
you can check the genes on neanderhtals and those on sapiens and look for correlations - using rates of divergence over time that you calculated with other experiments - to figure out how much of our DNA comes from neanderthals. but you cannot define exactly what a gamer is looking for, divide it into a bunch of subgoals, and assign to each of them an exact and measurable mathematical value.
that doesn't mean human sciences are rubbish. they do study things that are important to us, and that hard sciences cannot tackle. imperfect, fuzzy knowledge is better than no knowledge at all. but we must keep in mind what exactly the value of certainty of this knowledge is, before throwing alternate interpretations out of a window.

second, and most important for the argument: just because a theory is disproven, it doesn't mean it's entirely rubbish and should never, ever be mentioned again.
classic mechanics has been proven wrong a century ago, discarded for relativity. and yet, most engineers still use classic mechanics for practical applications. because classic mechanics is good enough, and more simple. for everything that's bigger than an atom and significantly slower than light, classic mechanics works. the airbag on your car, the calculations that make your plane fly and not crash on the ground, those are made based on wrong theories. guess what. and most chemists still use the valence shell electron pair repulsion (vsepr) model, though it was proven wrong. we do use it because it's good enough and it can be understood without taking years of additional training in quantum mechanics. then we also know there are a few exceptions where that theory doesn't work because you've got to use molecular orbitals, but i don't know anybody among my coworkers who would actually be able to calculate a molecular orbital.

So, I am not familiar with the GNS theory beyond the basics, and i'm not really sure what exactly it said and how it is supposedly disproven. but dividing a game into gamist, narrative, and simulation is well within my experience. I can totally attest that some players care more for some of those aspects than for others, and that a good game should combine the three in a good way. I can use that therminology, not because i am a relic of the old generation that still remembers the 2000' like it was yesterday - and really, i never was exposed to that theory during that time. No, I can use it because it makes intuitive sense, it can be understood without any special training, and it works well enough for my needs.
I have no idea what other theory is used nowadays; i do not follow that field, nor do I really care. maybe the eights types of fun is a better theory, but it's a lot easier to keep track of three factors, and plan things that should appeal to each of those factors, than it is to track eight different variables.

or, to put it in a greater perspective: we can always find a deeper, more exact, more complex explanation. but for the sake of simplicity, since our intellectual resources are limited, it's generally better to stick with the simplest model that works well enough for our needs.

It is unfortunate that GNS refuses to die. And a large part of that is because people keep rediscovering it and thinking it's meaningful or even a stroke of genius insight, as opposed to the particularly odorous part of gaming history that it is. Especially on forums, and worse on Reddit. At least on forums there's enough old fogies around to set the record straight.

It doesn't help that there are still a lot of big names who came out of The Forge that have actually produced some damn innovative games. Provided you're willing to discard the Oberoni so-called Fallacy and in some ignore the included philosophical preaching that is directly contradicted by the actual rules they present, Torchbearer (Crane) and the far bigger Apocalypse World (Baker) have uniquely brilliant concepts built in to the rules. And Blades in the Dark is directly inspired by Baker's AW/PbtA.

similarly, the idea that you need better gaming theories to design better games is flawed. it just doesn't seem to conform to reality.
d&d was invented 60 years ago, when nobody had any inkling of those ideas. d&d third edition was developed in the early 2000. now we supposedly have those better theories, and they led to the 5th edition... which some people prefer, while others prefer to stick with the third. can we really, objectively say that either edition is "better"? or are they just different, and appealing to different tastes? what does even "better" means in this context anyway?
football (soccer for americans) was invented over a century ago, nobody had any inkling of what made for a good game back then, but it's still a very good and popular game. several martial arts as a form of sparring date back over a millennia, and they are still popular. many basic card games were invented centuries ago, and they are still great. chess got most of its modern rules codified in the late middle age.
you don't need an exact theory on what makes a game "fun" to make a good game. in part because there is not an univocal, objectively measurable definition of what a "good" game is. again, it's a soft vs hard science thing.
I would say, in fact, when it comes to something that you can't really calculate, an emphyrical evolutionary approach works better. that is, try a lot of things, keep what works. try to modify things, keep what works. that's how we got the things that are still immortal today: people in the past tried many things to pass the time, those that worked better were passed on to this day

[Unoriginal]

can we really, objectively say that either edition is "better"? or are they just different, and appealing to different tastes?

Without going into a "which is better?" debate, it's important to note that there is a big difference between "how well-crafted X is", which can be objective if we look at given criteria, and "how fun X is to play", which is purely subjective.

To give an example: Overwatch has objectively better graphics than Golden Eye 64. But some people can have more fun playing Golden Eye 64 regardless of how the characters and environment look.

[NichG]

I mean the real issue seems to come down to the idea of incoherence underlying GNS rather than any particular categorization - e.g. the idea that once you identify any particular set of differences between groups of people, then necessarily anything you do to try to satisfy those different groups will be mutually exclusive. So its an approach to game design that throws out the idea that compromise is possible, or that people might actually like more than one thing or want a diverse 'diet' in their gaming...

GNS in particular is not even necessarily un-useful as a way to get out of a rut of thinking about everything in terms of your first RPG. I mean, even now on these forums you still get people talking about freeform gaming as if it were unthinkable that anyone could ever actually enjoy it, so 'failing to understand wildly different kinds of play' is a thing and something, even a massively incomplete thing, that tries to span a larger space is helpful... But when you say 'yeah, now that we have these categories, you must pick one and devote your whole game to that or your game sucks', that's harmful.

[kyoryu]

Speculation:

Maybe Edwards grew up as a Trinitarian, so he felt a need to have three things.
Maybe he was a disciple of Dialectal Materialism, and needed three things (thesis, antithesis, synthesis)...and then there were three.
Maybe he was a confused Monty Pythoneer, and thus when with the Big Model he used five, rather than three, it blew up on him as he forgot that the number of thy counting shall be three.

He was building on the earlier categorization of GDS. Which, frankly, maps a lot closer to what people think of when they hear "GNS" and doesn't have nearly the same level of baggage.

I agree with you that Robin Laws got it righter. Five plus three = eight.
I think that part of the reason that Laws' approach has longer legs is that he derived from a play aspect, not an attempt to attach academic rigor to his topic.
(IIRC, Edwards was / is / has a PhD in something).

Also, Edwards was really really bad about explaining things, his theory was clearly aimed at promoting his preferred playstyle, very few people outside of his inner circle would agree with how things got characterized, and Edwards used some really really bad points - saying that people that played specifics types of games had brain damage, and then doubling down on that, is just the tip of the iceberg.

The entire idea that a game that didn't stick clearly to one of his categories was "incoherent" and therefore bad (despite their popularity and the love for them) also didn't help.

Which doesn't make him wrong, but it definitely means that people outside of the inner circle often ended up with vehement and often emotional arguments against the theory. OTOH, Laws' viewpoints are more descriptive, less prescriptive (he doesn't claim that the categories or goals are inherently opposed), has avoided most inflammatory language, and most people that have seen it at least sort-of-agree with the descriptions of what they like.

There's also the Cultures of Play article, which I have some pretty strong quibbles with, but is a good general way of thinking about games (I'd split storygames into storygame/narrative games, and Classic into about three different things).

So, I am not familiar with the GNS theory beyond the basics, and i'm not really sure what exactly it said and how it is supposedly disproven. but dividing a game into gamist, narrative, and simulation is well within my experience.

The problem is that those words, within GNS, don't really mean what people usually intuitively think they mean. I'd rather people use GDS (Gamism, Dramatism, Simulationism) which actually does map what they intuitively sound like. Like, that idea of three goals? That's a reasonable idea, though I find it simplistic and missing a bunch of stuff (for instance, both linear games and narrative gaming would likely fall under 'dramatism', when they're pretty opposed styles)

or, to put it in a greater perspective: we can always find a deeper, more exact, more complex explanation. but for the sake of simplicity, since our intellectual resources are limited, it's generally better to stick with the simplest model that works well enough for our needs.

The question is "what utility do we expect to gain from it?" I think GNS fails on most definitions, if you use the terms the way that they are meant. Even the closer-to-intuitive GDS has some flaws in it. The utility I expect to get from a theory like this is either going to be predictive (guidelines to make a good game) or descriptive (if you like this type of game, you'll probably like this game).

similarly, the idea that you need better gaming theories to design better games is flawed. it just doesn't seem to conform to reality.
d&d was invented 60 years ago, when nobody had any inkling of those ideas. d&d third edition was developed in the early 2000. now we supposedly have those better theories, and they led to the 5th edition... which some people prefer, while others prefer to stick with the third. can we really, objectively say that either edition is "better"? or are they just different, and appealing to different tastes? what does even "better" means in this context anyway?

You have to define "better". Better at what? It's usually works best to define "better" in terms of "meeting some goal". 3rd and 5th ed of D&D meet different goals and desires. It's like, which is better, steak or sushi?

football (soccer for americans) was invented over a century ago, nobody had any inkling of what made for a good game back then, but it's still a very good and popular game. several martial arts as a form of sparring date back over a millennia, and they are still popular. many basic card games were invented centuries ago, and they are still great. chess got most of its modern rules codified in the late middle age.
you don't need an exact theory on what makes a game "fun" to make a good game. in part because there is not an univocal, objectively measurable definition of what a "good" game is. again, it's a soft vs hard science thing.

I would say, in fact, when it comes to something that you can't really calculate, an emphyrical evolutionary approach works better. that is, try a lot of things, keep what works. try to modify things, keep what works. that's how we got the things that are still immortal today: people in the past tried many things to pass the time, those that worked better were passed on to this day

For sure! That type of iterative approach is always what I'm going to recommend, though a good theory can help guide the iteration. I don't know if we've really hit a good theory, though.

[Easy e]

3 things are a lot easier to remember than 8. I am just an idiot in the business world, and I have always been taught to keep any categorization in 3-4 max. More than that and folks will not recall it without a cheat sheet. Perhaps that is why it hangs on, because it is easy and simple to recall the basics.

I tend to think of it as the old Business adage of "You can have cheap, good, or fast; choose 2". So the high-level idea is very simple and ancient. Sure, there are ways to get all 3, but typically that involves a whole lot of technical knowledge and expertise, and degrees of statistical analysis. Does that mean the general idea has been "disproven" or is it still a useful framework, even if there is a lot more beyond the catchphrase?

That said, there is still a pretty big discussion and several theories on what makes something "fun". 8 Ways of Fun is one. 4 types of players per Magic another. I have heard a different method using 4 (or 5) in relation to video game designers. I have seen some argue that you can not design for "FUN" because the definitions of it are mutually exclusive by player. However, I am not sure there is a lot of scientific consensus on what "FUN" is, just a lot of people claiming they know what it is.

[KorvinStarmast]

@kyoryu
The six cultures was a nice essay, bookmarked. Thanks.

[Darth Credence]

My favorite thing about this thread is that I have no idea what the forge is or what GNS is, and coming to see what you are talking about has given me no idea other than, "Not even worth talking about." I will now be on my way, taking the implied advice of those who do know about it and not learning.

[kyoryu]

My favorite thing about this thread is that I have no idea what the forge is or what GNS is, and coming to see what you are talking about has given me no idea other than, "Not even worth talking about." I will now be on my way, taking the implied advice of those who do know about it and not learning.

I think that is the best lesson you can take from this thread.

[Vahnavoi]

Something like the eight types of fun ends up serviceable because unlike GNS theory, it looks at the various desires a system can satisfy instead of attempting to cram so many different concepts into three categories.

Looking at that article, it refers to the same paper from which I get aesthetics of play, referred to above, and these "eight types of fun" are a paraphrase of the eight aesthetics named there.

Understanding that The Forge was rabidly pro Narativism it’s not surprising to see how lots of other reasons for playing got swept into the other two G & S categories as afterthoughts. Narrative appeal features as but one of eight in ‘eight types’. GNS theory leads a person to sort the appeal of role playing into one of: Narrative where the essential concern is the formulation of a story, Simulation where the concern is a system of definitions of cause and effect that drive a world, and the Gamism category where fun that’s neither narrative or simulation gets dumped.

It’s no coincidence that most statements that invoke GNS tend to focus on and play up the importance/value of narrative fun in a game, that’s where GNS was designed to put the spotlight.

I would argue "simulationism" is even more of a wastebin category in GNS than "gamism". "Simulationism" in GNS has only strenuous relation to simulating anything. The idea of simulation as core roleplaying game element is more domain of the even older GDS and wargamer gripes commented on by Gygax all the way back in 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.

At the other end, while "gamism" and "simulationism" are too broad, "narrativism" is too narrow and doesn't actually cover all of the ground narrative covers in MDA (above), nevermind academic narratology. Briefly, Ron Edwards's concept of narrative and theme are too tightly wrapped around moral dilemmas. Then there's R.E.'s specific anti-"railroading" ideas baked into the concept which are frequently not followed or even understood by people advocating for narrative games.

---

If you want an idea to die, when the idea has already been disproven and discarded at large, then making a thread about it doesn't help further that goal.

An idea dies when it's forgotten.

The context of this thread, clearly, is that people have been more keen to forget that the ideas were disproven, than the ideas themselves.

Not too long ago, I happily thought exactly like you. Unlike you, I consider resurgence of these things to be a sign that the idea isn't dying on its own, and may need some killing. This is hardly unusual. Sometimes, bad ideas get popular anew. I don't think the correct response is to wait for new damages to occur before speaking up.

---

=KorvinStarmastI think that you need an adverb there, since you are modifying a verb rather than a noun.
...use them wrongly.. The blue pencil service offered at no additional charge.

It's up to the reader to decide whether I made a typo, or used a faulty construction on purpose for emphasis.

---

So, I am not familiar with the GNS theory beyond the basics, and i'm not really sure what exactly it said and how it is supposedly disproven.

Uh, have you considered this, right here, is your issue? I named the concept that has been disproven in the analogy you are criticizing: incoherence. GNS posits three mutually exclusive creative agendas. If GNS was true, we should be seeing games crafted to specific standards be much more succesful than games which mix and match elements. This has not happened anywhere. The one empirical prediction GNS can reasonably make, has empirically failed to match reality. Any refinement of the theory that could deny or avoid this, runs into other issues. Which leads us to this:

the first is, you are confusing hard and soft science when you say it's as credible as pre-2000 ideas of interbreeding between neandertals and sapiens.

Uh, no. It's noted by me, twice in my post and once in the analogy you are criticizing, that GNS is not an academic, nevermind scientific, theory. Leaving the analogy aside, GNS doesn't fulfill scientific standards of even the softest of soft sciences. This is an argument against it, not in its favor. Moreover, this means your extended tangent about Newtonian mechanics completely misses the mark. Newtonian mechanics still has applications because it produces predictions that are still reliable in everyday domains. There is no proof for GNS doing this. Since you admit you have no comprehension of GNS "besides the basics", your anecdotal experience of its "usefulness" doesn't matter at all. You aren't actually using GNS - you are using words from GNS to mean whatever the hell you want.

or, to put it in a greater perspective: we can always find a deeper, more exact, more complex explanation. but for the sake of simplicity, since our intellectual resources are limited, it's generally better to stick with the simplest model that works well enough for our needs.

The basics of MDA, above, are five pages. Full explanations of both GNS and the Big Model are longer, but don't have any benefits over MDA. Due to your self-admitted ignorance of theory, you failed to check if there are better alternatives to clear even this very low bar.

[T]he idea that you need better gaming theories to design better games is flawed. [ . . . ] I would say, in fact, when it comes to something that you can't really calculate, an emphyrical evolutionary approach works better. that is, try a lot of things, keep what works. try to modify things, keep what works. that's how we got the things that are still immortal today: people in the past tried many things to pass the time, those that worked better were passed on to this day.

Oh, I totally agree games can be designed through trial and error, and that many good games can be and are being designed without any master theories of how to build games.

There is no logical reason why this stance would lead me to be unwilling to speak against theories that precisely call for abandoning trial and error in favor of pursuing badly defined creative agendas.

---

@Easy E: GNS does not boil down to a neat engineer's trilemma, using its terms in such a way is another case of misappropriating the words to mean something entirely different from the theory. Even if you find some use in it, it is not - get this - an example of GNS being useful.

Never you mind that you can do these kinds of trilemmas just as easily with aesthetics of play - just pick the three that are most relevant to the game you are making!

Now, as for M:tG and video game developers fairly consistently finding 4 to 5 types of players... those findings are (usually) based on factorial analysis of surveys. Something that, you know, an actual (soft) science might do. These findings have been used to criticize GNS, as explained even in Wikipedia article on GNS (already linked), because they do not support it. You see, nothing comparable was done to found GNS. It has three categories because someone on the internet thought three categories would suffice, and it wasn't even Edwards. So, yes, the discussion is on-going. Discussion being on-going isn't a reason to not move past obviously flawed theories.

[NichG]

Categorization (in a statistical sense) is more related to compression than prediction. The utility is whether it makes something very efficient to express, or sheds light on things you'd miss otherwise.

The idea of categories naturally implying mutual exclusion is the error, not that it's the wrong categories.

Also in the compression picture, there can't even really be correct or incorrect categories, just sets that are more or less efficient towards a particular communication goal. In that sense it's unlike any standard science, more like engineering... At best you can say that one category set dominates another for all possible goals.

[Tanarii]

similarly, the idea that you need better gaming theories to design better games is flawed. it just doesn't seem to conform to reality.

Agreed. Especially when the folks in question created games whose mechanics frequently directly contradict the (IMO elitist) theory-mongering they include in the same books. Kevin Siembeida and Eric Wujic also did (and probably still do) the same in their games.

One thing they did stick to is the idea that (paraphrasing) a given game should be designed to do one specific thing. As opposed to try to be generalist. AW and BitD are eminently hackable to do different specific things, which pans out as the groups of games known as PbtA and FitB. But they don't pretend to be general one size fits all games.

Kind of like D&D 4e and PF2e are designed to be Dungeons and Dragons Tactical Battles, but are often considered to be far more generalist. Or that D&D 5e was designed to be as general as possible and as a result doesn't do Tactical Battles, OSR, or non-D&D stuff in general (intrigue or heist especially) very well.

[Jason]

To give an example: Overwatch has objectively better graphics than Golden Eye 64. But some people can have more fun playing Golden Eye 64 regardless of how the characters and environment look.

Overwatch may have graphics that take more powerful hardware to run or take up more memory space, but that does not make them objectively better than the graphics used in Golden Eye 64.

"Better" is always a subjective term. "Objectively better" is an oxymoron.

The three booklets of Original D&D have a smaller page count, fewer color illustrations (as in none), and fewer total words than the three D&D 5E core hardcovers. That does not mean D&D 5E is objectively superior to Original D&D. It doesn't even mean that it is a more complicated game system than Original D&D.

[Vahnavoi]

@Jason: I find that to be a red herring. Yes, value judgements are subjective, but once such a statement has been agreed upon, objective claims can be made of how those values are pursued. F.ex. if we can agree that color illustration are a good thing for a game to have, then it makes perfect sense to say a game with none is worse, in that regard even if not overall.

This relates to the rest of discussion through aesthetics of gameplay, listed by MDA and equivalents. It shouldn't be a big ask to agree on the eight aesthetics named as goods a game can strive for. Once that is done, we can look at objective facets of games to rank them based on how they serve those goods.

I'd personally extend the list to cover various goods of printed products etc. physical aspects. The corollary being that yeah, OD&D likely objectively sucks in many respects compared to later products. I have no problem making these kind of evaluations of any other long-running game series I play. Let's be clear: I'm not "newer is better" guy. I play OSR games and spend way too much time steelmanning 1st edition AD&D alignment. You won't, however, see me defending 1st edition AD&D psionics anywhere. Why? Because they fail on logical-mathematical grounds. If someone responded to "1st edition psionics are objectively bad" with "badness is subjective!", I'd have to tell them: "okay. Explain what sort of values a person would need to have to find value in the system, and then show me one such person".

Please don't take this as an actual argument for "OD&D is objectively bad". I don't own OD&D books and have never played it, so I can't actually give a review of it.

[Jason]

@Jason: I find that to be a red herring. Yes, value judgements are subjective, but once such a statement has been agreed upon, objective claims can be made of how those values are pursued. F.ex. if we can agree that color illustration are a good thing for a game to have, then it makes perfect sense to say a game with none is worse, in that regard even if not overall.

Part of my point is that we can't in fact agree that having color illustrations are better than not having color illustrations.

"Better" is always a subjective term.

[Quertus]

So, here's pretty much where I stand:

So, I am not familiar with the GNS theory beyond the basics, and i'm not really sure what exactly it said and how it is supposedly disproven. but dividing a game into gamist, narrative, and simulation is well within my experience. I can totally attest that some players care more for some of those aspects than for others, and that a good game should combine the three in a good way. I can use that therminology, not because i am a relic of the old generation that still remembers the 2000' like it was yesterday - and really, i never was exposed to that theory during that time. No, I can use it because it makes intuitive sense, it can be understood without any special training, and it works well enough for my needs.

When I first joined the Playground, I would talk about "Realism". It was pointed out to me that, sometimes, when I used that word, what I really meant was "Verisimilitude". And sometimes what I mean is "Consistency".

When I was introduced to GNS terms (also on this site), and they were explained/defined to me (also on this site) I realized that, just like "Realism" vs "Verisimilitude", those words encapsulated meaning that was lacking from my vocabulary, that, sometimes, what you care about is making things "right", whereas sometimes what you care about is streamlining the rules to make them "playable" - Simulation vs Game. It's a definite, real, noticeable trade-off you can make between two outcomes of equal quality. Seemed good to add to my vocabulary, just like Verisimilitude. As an added bonus, GNS terms came with a 3rd word, "Narrative", for those crazy people who do things "for the Story", so I added that to my vocabulary, too.

Of course, being me, one of my many flaws is that I am very loose with my words, so there's whole sets of words I'll use almost interchangeably, like [Realism, Verisimilitude, Consistency, Coherence, Simulation, Accuracy], or [Efficient, Streamlined, Easy-to-learn, Game-play, Gamist, Playability], or [Plot Contrivance, Incoherence, Idiot Ball, Out-of-character, "For the story", Narrative, Unrealistic].

I think it's fair to say I'm not a fan of (any part of) GNS Theory, I just appropriated the terms, and abuse them as much as I do the rest of the English language.

The problem is that those words, within GNS, don't really mean what people usually intuitively think they mean. I'd rather people use GDS (Gamism, Dramatism, Simulationism) which actually does map what they intuitively sound like. Like, that idea of three goals? That's a reasonable idea, though I find it simplistic and missing a bunch of stuff (for instance, both linear games and narrative gaming would likely fall under 'dramatism', when they're pretty opposed styles)

The question is "what utility do we expect to gain from it?" I think GNS fails on most definitions, if you use the terms the way that they are meant. Even the closer-to-intuitive GDS has some flaws in it. The utility I expect to get from a theory like this is either going to be predictive (guidelines to make a good game) or descriptive (if you like this type of game, you'll probably like this game).

So... when I want to say I'm doing something because it'll make gameplay better, I say it's a "Gamist" concern; when I say I'm doing something because it maps to the fictional reality, I say it's a "Simulationist" concern. Ignoring that "Gamism Concern" and "Simulationism Concern" just sound silly (or that doing things for a "Gamism Reason" or "Simulationism Reason" just doesn't sound as good as doing them for a "Gamist Reason" or as "Simulationist Reason", or with G~/S~ Reasoning), am I using the terms the way GNS would, GDS would, both, or neither? Because (aside from the fact I'm me, and don't use my words consistently, like, at all) I feel I at least intend to use them the way I was told they were defined in GNS, which sounded intuitive.

Bonus question: the counterpoint to "Narrative Concern" (or Reason(ing)) would be... "Dramatic Concern" (or Reason(ing))?

[kyoryu]

So... when I want to say I'm doing something because it'll make gameplay better, I say it's a "Gamist" concern; when I say I'm doing something because it maps to the fictional reality, I say it's a "Simulationist" concern. Ignoring that "Gamism Concern" and "Simulationism Concern" just sound silly (or that doing things for a "Gamism Reason" or "Simulationism Reason" just doesn't sound as good as doing them for a "Gamist Reason" or as "Simulationist Reason", or with G~/S~ Reasoning), am I using the terms the way GNS would, GDS would, both, or neither? Because (aside from the fact I'm me, and don't use my words consistently, like, at all) I feel I at least intend to use them the way I was told they were defined in GNS, which sounded intuitive.

Bonus question: the counterpoint to "Narrative Concern" (or Reason(ing)) would be... "Dramatic Concern" (or Reason(ing))?

You're using the terms the way GDS would (which, again, I think is a reasonable-ish model though misses a lot).

GNS generally defines the terms in terms of exploration - of system (gamism), of the world (simulationism), or of theme (narrativism). Under GNS, Toon, GURPS, and Fate are all primarily simulationist games. As are linear, story-driven games like D&D running DragonLance.

[Unoriginal]

"Better" is always a subjective term. "Objectively better" is an oxymoron.

Person A tries to fire an arrow at the center of a target. They end up missing the target entirely.

Person B tries to fire an arrow at the center of the same target, in the same conditions. They hit the center of the target.


Are you declaring that B's performance cannot be described as objectively better than A's?


You can't measure fun or pleasure on objective bases, certainly, but there is such things as standards of quality that are objective.

If I buy two different backpacks for the same price, but one is so badly sewed together it breaks apart on the first day and the other lasts for years, then calling one purchase "objectively better" is not an oxymoron.

I'd personally extend the list to cover various goods of printed products etc. physical aspects. The corollary being that yeah, OD&D likely objectively sucks in many respects compared to later products.

If they were published today, the first D&D booklets would more than likely get the game company directly sent into a lawsuit-shaped hellscape, since there are artworks there straight up taken from Marvel comic books.

And you don't mess with Marvel's lawyers in 2024.

I'd say that "would destroy the company's finances if not immediately removed from sale" is a pretty good metric to say something objectively sucks.

[Vahnavoi]

Part of my point is that we can't in fact agree that having color illustrations are better than not having color illustrations.

"Better" is always a subjective term.

Who is this mystical "we"? Because I can likely go out on the street and get complete strangers to agree on that. More generally, it is in fact an objective requirement for the society I live in that a lot of people do agree on values and that that we can make conditionals bases on those values that are amenable to objective examination.

Seriously. Take a look at the named aesthetics of play in MDA. Which of those things you - you personally - would not be willing to nominate as a value for games?

[Satinavian]

So. Why talk about this now? Because I've been seeing the terms "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", as well as some other GNS/Forge terminology, show up again. It's not really a surprise. Let's be honest, these forums, and many people who come here, are relics of early 2000s internet era, in some cases, even earlier. So they still have both Forge and GNS in fresh memory, despite over a decade having passed since they were relevant.

So what exactly is my issue with that? Because it pains me when someone, in year 2024, can still say something like this:

I regularly see people use "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", but it is nearly two decades since i last have seen anyone use proper GNS.

Why is that ? Because people find some use in the concepts of "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism", but have long given up on GNS, Edwards and Forge.

People find it useful, to describe certain play styles, preferences or even rules with those three terms. It helps to get ideas across. And yes, the use is not the same as in GNS. But i would not say "the people use the terms wrongly" and more "the use has shifted as no one is working in the GNS framework anymore". And yes, the current use is closer to the older, less elaborate GDS framework but as the term "Drama" nowadays has its own baggage, people will likely continue to use narrativism instead. People who liked simulation of Threefold did not exactly feel properly represented by how simulationism of GNS was used and vehemently disagreed about all the games they were associated with actually fit the category.




And why is GNS itself irrelevant ? Well, maybe it is because the idea to pursue purity in one of those agendas and how mixes are inconsistent never caught on. And of course the fact that the Forge only ever cared about NAR and never produced anything helpful for the other branches or, really, understood at all what was important there, hurt as well. And the latter is of course also a reason for the shift in use. Edwards was not the right person to properly define or write about gamism or simulationism given the poor understanding he had.

[Vahnavoi]

[P]eople find some use in the concepts of "gamism", "simulationism" and "narrativism" [. . . ] People find it useful, to describe certain play styles, preferences or even rules with those three terms. It helps to get ideas across. And yes, the use is not the same as in GNS. But i would not say "the people use the terms wrongly" and more "the use has shifted as no one is working in the GNS framework anymore".

Our chief disagreement is contained in this earlier phrase of mine:

Outside of these theories, there isn't enough settled common usage for [these terms] to even net their own dictionary definitions.

People like the words. Saying they like the concepts is a stretch, because there no non-equivocal concepts behind these terms. When someone says f.ex. "I like narrativist games" because they feel "this word sounds like it fits my personal definition of narrative game", the word is NOT helping them get an idea across - the only good response to that is "what do you mean by narrativism?". The alternative is to replace each instance of "narrativism" with narrative (and each instance of "simulationism" with simulation and each instance of "gamism" with game-like), but these are not clearer. Each of these terms has problems of usage to the point where I am forced to ask, how exactly are people finding them useful?

[King of Nowhere]

So, I am not familiar with the GNS theory beyond the basics, and i'm not really sure what exactly it said and how it is supposedly disproven.

Uh, have you considered this, right here, is your issue? I named the concept that has been disproven

no, my ignorance is part of my point: I do not need to know the gns theory to use terms from it - because using terms from that theory does not constitute an endorsment of the theory.

You act like everyone saying something like "this system is too gamist for my tastes, I prefer a more simulationist approach" was also carrying a big neon sign stating

THE GNS THEORY IS RIGHT IN EVERY ASPECT

No, that's not the case. we can use words like gamist or narrativist because they are useful descriptors, without that having anything to do with the GNS theory. Indeed, I challenge you to rephrase the sentence above in a way more suitable to your tastes, that's equally easy to convey and to read for the illiterate.
I bet most people using those words don't even know there's a theory in the first place. they use the words because they work and they are useful, that's all.

your anecdotal experience of its "usefulness" doesn't matter at all. You aren't actually using GNS - you are using words from GNS to mean whatever the hell you want.

my anectodal experience of its usefulness matters extremely, because that's exactly the point: the fact that people use words from gns to mean things that are more or less well agreed upon. you are complaining that people use words such as gamist or simulationist when they should not, because come from a wrong theory. I say that people should use them because they are useful. the fact that I - and others - find them useful is proof enough that they are useful. you are the one trying to prove a negative. when you try to prove a negative, a single case of the opposite is enough to make the demostration wrong.

the first is, you are confusing hard and soft science when you say it's as credible as pre-2000 ideas of interbreeding between neandertals and sapiens.

Uh, no. It's noted by me, twice in my post and once in the analogy you are criticizing, that GNS is not an academic, nevermind scientific, theory. Leaving the analogy aside, GNS doesn't fulfill scientific standards of even the softest of soft sciences. This is an argument against it, not in its favor. Moreover, this means your extended tangent about Newtonian mechanics completely misses the mark.

you are the one missing the mark. i don't care about gns, and that's never been the point. You can't talk of gaming theory - any piece of it - as if it was hard science.

Newtonian mechanics still has applications because it produces predictions that are still reliable in everyday domains. There is no proof for GNS doing this.

You are, once more, confusing "using some words that were first introduced by a theory" with "using the whole theory".

There is no logical reason why this stance would lead me to be unwilling to speak against theories that precisely call for abandoning trial and error in favor of pursuing badly defined creative agendas.

90% of people who use those terms never heard of those theories in the first place, and just use the words for convenience - with meanings that are generally agreed upon, as much as people can agree on softly defined concepts.

And I really don't get your crusade. You are trying to get people to stop believing in something they never believed in anyway. you are getting mad that people use some words because of associated meanings that are only mildly related to those words. you think everyone should spend time and resources into familiarizing with problems that are not their problems, and not really problems at all anyway, just for the sake of, perhaps, using a slightly more accurate therminology.

from my perspective, it would be like there are two lovers expressing love "from their hearts", and you burst out screaming"no! you don't love with your heart, you love with your brain - more precisely it comes from hormonal secretion in the hypothalamus! the theory that the heart is the source of emotions has been disproven centuries ago! I can't believe people still believe we think with our hearts! you must not say "i love you with all my heart", you must say "i love you with all my hypothalamus" instead! Go read some basic treaties on anathomy!"
Well, I will keep saying that I love people with my heart, just like I will say that I like a certain balance of gamist and simulationist elements, because they are good ways to convey ideas. I know exactly what those sentences mean, and people around me know exactly what those sentences mean, and if you are the only one disturbed because you read all kind of implied meanings into them, that's on you.

Our chief disagreement is contained in this earlier phrase of mine:



People like the words. Saying they like the concepts is a stretch, because there no non-equivocal concepts behind these terms. When someone says f.ex. "I like narrativist games" because they feel "this word sounds like it fits my personal definition of narrative game", the word is NOT helping them get an idea across - the only good response to that is "what do you mean by narrativism?". The alternative is to replace each instance of "narrativism" with narrative (and each instance of "simulationism" with simulation and each instance of "gamism" with game-like), but these are not clearer. Each of these terms has problems of usage to the point where I am forced to ask, how exactly are people finding them useful?

to me, that phrase is clear enough and effective enough at conveying its meaning.
what would you use instead to express the same concept?

My favorite thing about this thread is that I have no idea what the forge is or what GNS is, and coming to see what you are talking about has given me no idea other than, "Not even worth talking about." I will now be on my way, taking the implied advice of those who do know about it and not learning.

I came into this thread with no idea what the forge or gns was, and i googled it to be able to figure out why vahnavoi was so mad about it. i read about half a page, before concluding it wasn't really important. and then vahnavoi started referring to specific elements of it.
this is like streisand effect. by trying to kill the theory, vahnavoi is spreading knowledge of it to people who would have never known it in the first place.

[Vahnavoi]

.
to me, that phrase is clear enough and effective enough at conveying its meaning.
what would you use instead to express the same concept?

I have no clue, since nothing in context allows me to decipher it. You just read me explaining that these words have usage problems and what that means, without understanding that this is what it means.

Go on. Put these terms in a dictionary search. See what happens. Word not found. Did you mean narrative? If not, did you refer to GNS? Silly me, of course you didn't refer to GNS since by your own admission, you don't know anything about it.

So it must be narrative, then. Which meaning of narrative? Which kind of narrative? And why would it make sense to talk of narrative games in contrast to simulations or games, since nothing in the common usage suggests these are contrasting or mutually exclusive terms?

[Satinavian]

And why would it make sense to talk of narrative games in contrast to simulations or games, since nothing in the common usage suggests these are contrasting or mutually exclusive terms?

Common usage suggests that narrative games are story focused. So people expect a plot, a dramatic arc and story conventions. All things not expected from common usage for simulation which implies modelling something mechanically and then following where that naturally leads.

That alone is already pretty useful, don't you think so ?



And if we go to people actually using those terms as shorthands - honestly, when was the last time they didn't understand each other ?

Language is a living thing. The words are used and understood. That alone is enough to validate them. Sure, it is a lingo of some niche group that won't ever enter the language at large because most people don't have any need to use special vocabulary to distinguish ways to roleplay. But that doesn't matter at all.


I tend to avoid these terms because of the GNS association, but it is not as if (similar but not identical) alternatives like Immersion, Drama and Challenge are so much better at getting your points across. And some like "Realism" are strictly worse.

[Vahnavoi]

@Satinavian: it's useful up to the point where someone points out "waitaminute, we can simulate narration". We can, in fact, get plot, dramatic arcs and story conventions from modeling things mechanically and following where that leads. "Narrative simulation" is coherent compound word in English.

EDIT:

As far as "when was the last time people didn't understand each other?":

How about today. If I go to a game shop and ask for a "narrativist" game, there are two options:

1) They give me a Forge game.
2) They have to do the bit about clarifying whatever the hell I mean, as just explained, because outside the theoretical framework it's a Hail Mary guess otherwise.

Sure, language changes. That doesn't mean it is always changing for good reasons or that we are neutral parties in its change. Here's some humorous takes on the topic that nonetheless serve to carry the relevant point across. If your argument for using these terms is based on their usefulness in communication, I should be able to see a bit more useful communication with them.

[Satinavian]

@Satinavian: it's useful up to the point where someone points out "waitaminute, we can simulate narration". We can, in fact, get plot, dramatic arcs and story conventions from modeling things mechanically and following where that leads. "Narrative simulation" is coherent compound word in English.

And ?

I never said those things were mutually exclusive nor does common usage say so. GNS is dead.

How about today. If I go to a game shop and ask for a "narrativist" game, there are two options:

1) They give me a Forge game.
2) They have to do the bit about clarifying whatever the hell I mean, as just explained, because outside the theoretical framework it's a Hail Mary guess otherwise.

The same happens when i ask for an OSR game. Does that mean OSR is not a useful category just because only people deeply invested in RPGs might have heard of it ? (Also, even if i were to go to some rpg specialist store to ask for a narrativist game, i would probably get Fate or something powered by the apocalypse, not an actual Forge game. I might even get recommended WoD over a Forge game.)