Threefold model
Jim Henley
Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>
> The PCs make a powerful enemy, who is capable of capturing them
> essentially without a fight, and motivated to do so. Does the GM
> allow this to happen?
>
> Game analysis:
>
> It's not fair or game-appropriate for the PCs to have no say in
> their own fate: they should have the opportunity, even if it's a
> slim one, to evade capture (or perhaps a chance to escape promptly).
>
> Comments?
Everything else made a good deal of sense to me, but I wonder at this
one. It would seem to me that an equally plausible gamist response would
be, "So long as the players had a fair chance to avoid making this
enemy, the enemy is itself a consequence of their play, and they deserve
what they get." This becomes the equivalent of "taking the stairs to the
seventh level" even though you are all first level characters.
That would make this a bona fide trifold agreement, then, which you had
been searching for, no?
I thought of a possible example of gamism in drama -- classic superhero
campaign, episodic format, script immunity, no catastrophic failures
(the city blows up; the planet blows up; the very fabric of reality
blows up). If it comes to it the GM will have Superman fly in at the
last moment, or the death machine misfire, or whatever. The game element
for the players is to avoid triggering the script immunity/failure
sprinkler system. If it goes off during the game, the players know that
they "lost."
Best,
Jim
Mary K. Kuhner
I haven't found a three-way differentiating question, so I've had to
settle for three two-way questions in my attempt to clarify my ideas
about gamist, simulationist and dramatist values. I would like to
make clear that I don't regard *any* of these terms as perjorative.
I am a fence-sitter and prefer mixtures; but I still find it useful to
know what the pure forms are like, in order to be able to make more
functional mixtures.
I have tried to stay away from hot-button issues like character death,
inter-player conflict, etc. because I think they muddy the water: many,
many games are "simulationist except with script immunity" or "dramatist
except the GM mustn't kill someone purely for effect."
All of these will be, of necessity, slight oversimplifications of
their respective positions, but I have tried to avoid caricature. I
would be willing, given the right game, to defend any of these
positions, though I certainly have preferences.
***
Simulation vs. drama/game:
Situation:
The PCs are setting up to make a daring raid into the enemy fortress
when one of them decides it would be better for them to ask an NPC
group to make the raid instead. On world considerations, it would
be reasonable for the NPCs to agree. Do they?
Simulation analysis:
If that's what would happen, that's what would happen: world
considerations are more important than the possible anti-climax and
player disappointment. (Maybe try speeding up the pacing to keep
the disappointment brief.)
Drama analysis:
Is there some way to make the players' proposed continuation interesting?
If so, it can be allowed: this may mean, for example, having the NPCs
fail and need rescue, or hurring past this scene into a PC/NPC rivalry
built on the event. But if it's headed hopelessly for anticlimax,
better disallow it and have the NPCs refuse.
Game analysis:
Having the NPCs do the challenging raid while the PCs sit around is
pretty clearly bad for the game, as game, and should be avoided if at all
possible; the NPCs should refuse. (And you may want to talk to the
player who made the original suggestion; it was inappropriate.)
***
Game vs. simulation/drama:
The PCs make a powerful enemy, who is capable of capturing them
essentially without a fight, and motivated to do so. Does the GM
allow this to happen?
Game analysis:
It's not fair or game-appropriate for the PCs to have no say in
their own fate: they should have the opportunity, even if it's a
slim one, to evade capture (or perhaps a chance to escape promptly).
Drama analysis:
As long as the GM can find interesting, engaging continuations after
the capture, there is nothing wrong with capturing the PCs and giving
them no chance to avoid it. (Cf. David Berkman's Star Trek example.)
Simulation analysis:
To be true to the NPC, the GM has to follow through with the plan the
NPC would use, even if it's so good that the PCs have no chance. (A
simulationist is perhaps more likely to play this out and see, whereas
a dramatist may just fiat it and go on.)
***
Drama vs. game/simulation
The GM has in mind an interesting continuation involving the PCs being
defeated and captured in combat. However, the players surprise her
with luck and/or guile when the scene is actually played out, and it
looks as though they are going to get away. Does she give the
opposition additional forces in order to ensure the capture?
Drama analysis:
Yes; this will produce an interesting storyline, and as long as the
players don't notice it should do no harm. (Some players won't mind
even if they do notice.)
Game analysis:
No; the GM has no right to take away the players' hard-earned victory.
Simulation analysis:
No; the GM's initial idea about the strength of the enemy was presumably
appropriate and natural for the game-world, and should not be changed
just to further the GM's ends.
***
It should become apparent from these examples that I believe the three
"isms" here are in fact distinct. I like the threefold model a lot
better than our old twofold model. When we were working on our two
current campaigns, my husband and I ran into trouble repeatedly because
we assumed that if I didn't want a strict simulationist game (and I
didn't) that I must want more dramatist elements (which I didn't
either). I was actually looking for more gamist elements such as
appropriate challenges for the PCs, and I was willing to give up
both some dramatic and some simulation values in return.
Comments?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Steven Howard
In <5p9ji0$3...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>Comments?
Just one:
>***
>
>Simulation vs. drama/game:
>
>Situation:
>
>The PCs are setting up to make a daring raid into the enemy fortress
>when one of them decides it would be better for them to ask an NPC
>group to make the raid instead. On world considerations, it would
>be reasonable for the NPCs to agree. Do they?
>
[Snip Simulation and Drama]
>Game analysis:
>
>Having the NPCs do the challenging raid while the PCs sit around is
>pretty clearly bad for the game, as game, and should be avoided if at all
>possible; the NPCs should refuse. (And you may want to talk to the
>player who made the original suggestion; it was inappropriate.)
Hmm. I think this is "dramatism" masquerading as "gamism."
A purer "gamist" response might be something like "The NPCs are a
part of the game world -- interaction with NPCs is modeled by
game rules. Play out the scene between the PCs and the NPCs
using the normal procedure for such interaction. If the party thus
accomplishes their goals without substantial risk to themselves,
more power to them."
========
Steven Howard
bl...@ibm.net
What's a nice word like "euphemism" doing in a sentence like this?
Fenyx3204
> A purer "gamist" response might be something like "The NPCs are a
> part of the game world -- interaction with NPCs is modeled by
> game rules. Play out the scene between the PCs and the NPCs
> using the normal procedure for such interaction. If the party thus
> accomplishes their goals without substantial risk to themselves,
> more power to them."
Agreed, but it could just as easily go the way Ms. Kuhner describes it as
well -- it depends on what flavor of "gamist" we are talking about.
Does the gamist see the value of the game in direct PC interaction with
challenges? Or does the gamist see the value of the game in terms of
outthinking situations?
Of course, this distinction horribly complicates matters. Are there
different "flavors" to dramatists and simulationists as well?
Justin Bacon
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <33b86...@news2.ibm.net> bl...@ibm.net writes:
>In <5p9ji0$3...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>>Having the NPCs do the challenging raid while the PCs sit around is
>>pretty clearly bad for the game, as game, and should be avoided if at all
>>possible; the NPCs should refuse.
>Hmm. I think this is "dramatism" masquerading as "gamism."
>A purer "gamist" response might be something like "The NPCs are a
>part of the game world -- interaction with NPCs is modeled by
>game rules. Play out the scene between the PCs and the NPCs
>using the normal procedure for such interaction. If the party thus
>accomplishes their goals without substantial risk to themselves,
>more power to them.
I would see that as a relatively simulationist approach; in my
experience one of the metalaws of gamist games is "The players
are here to play, not to watch the GM play. Don't do anything
which takes the action out of the hands of the PCs."
But I do see your point: the example's not as clear-cut as I hoped.
How about changing it so that, rather than being requested by the
PCs, the NPC help simply emerges naturally out of the setting
logic? That is, the PCs don't need to lift a finger to get the
NPCs to do their dirty work; it will just happen. At that
point I think most gamist GMs really would balk, using the
principle "Don't give the PCs successes they haven't earned" as
well as "Don't take the action away from the PCs."
Certainly a gamist GM who sees this kind of thing happen repeatedly had
better consider that he's designing his scenarios badly or letting
his players buffalo him. If the group wanted to do challenging
combat scenes, but all of them are being short-circuited by NPC
intervention, something is wrong.
Suggestions for improving or replacing the examples happily accepted!
_Radiant_ is an interesting case. At first blush it sounds very
non-gamist because the PCs always try to manuver the NPCs into
doing the fighting, and neither GM nor player lift a finger to
stop them. But the main reason is that combat is not the player's
chosen arena of challenge: we *do* take some care to insure that
the NPCs don't get all the juicy negotiation, persuasion, etc. scenes.
Which is, in my opinion, a value shared by dramatists and gamists
and in contrast to simulationists.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Bryan J. Maloney
I had exactly a situation in which the players outsmarted me. I was
running a superheroic GURPS campaign, in which the Funster was holed up in
a maze that he had made out of junked cars.
It just so happens that one of the PCs actually *did* turn out to be
strong enough to simply bash his way through the walls of the maze right
to the center.
Instead of being an anal git, and making up reasons why this perfectly
good idea wouldn't work, the idea worked, and the ending was a very funny
PC victory wherein the Funster ranted and yowled about how horrible the
heroes were for cheating.
Furthermore, it gave the Funster a REAL reason to hate the PCs from that
point on. Up until then, it was only fun and games for him. The PCs were
merely opponents. Now they were "dirty cheaters" and had to be dealt
with...
So, what is my religion? Am I of the Church of Dramatism? I used the
situation to add greater dramatic tension to my campaign. Am I of the
Holy Temple of Simulationism? I did not make alterations to the setting
_post hoc_ in order to maintain the original dramatic path I had planned.
Am I of the Vile Evil and Unspeakable Cult of Gamism? I permitted the
players to "win" in a game context by outwitting me and letting them use
the game model to gain their current goal more easily than I had expected.
Maybe these three approaches don't deserve to be dignified with dogmatic
names. After all, we don't have Wrenchism, Screwdriverism, or Hammerism
in the construction trades, do we?
--
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Psychohist
Justin Bacon posts, in part:
... it depends on what flavor of "gamist" we are talking
about.
Does the gamist see the value of the game in direct PC
interaction with challenges? Or does the gamist see the
value of the game in terms of outthinking situations?
Of course, this distinction horribly complicates matters.
Are there different "flavors" to dramatists and
simulationists as well?
I think yes, but the flavors break down differently. Where gamist
preferences might run to things like 'tactical' (player characters should
do the fighting) or 'strategic' (okay to get the gamesmaster characters to
do your work for you), dramatist preferences might be things like
'tragedy' or 'slapstick'. A simulationist more interested in societal
interaction might design a high population density world with a well
developed civilization, while one more interested in ecology might do the
opposite.
Warren Dew
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <bjm10-01079...@potato.cit.cornell.edu> bjm10@c$or$ne!ll#.e&du (Bryan J. Maloney) writes:
[the PCs cheat the Funster]
>So, what is my religion? Am I of the Church of Dramatism? I used the
>situation to add greater dramatic tension to my campaign. Am I of the
>Holy Temple of Simulationism? I did not make alterations to the setting
>_post hoc_ in order to maintain the original dramatic path I had planned.
>Am I of the Vile Evil and Unspeakable Cult of Gamism? I permitted the
>players to "win" in a game context by outwitting me and letting them use
>the game model to gain their current goal more easily than I had expected.
>Maybe these three approaches don't deserve to be dignified with dogmatic
>names. After all, we don't have Wrenchism, Screwdriverism, or Hammerism
>in the construction trades, do we?
<shrug> If you don't find the names useful, by all means don't use
them. They've been terrifically helpful to me.
I don't think your particular example is particularly of one or the
other; in your situation, game, simulation and drama values were all
pulling in the same direction, so of course you could label it any
way you chose.
I wish I knew, though, why even though my original post was *very*
emphatic that I don't consider any of these tools to be bad, I still
get responses like this one. Do you just unquestioningly assume that
no one ever gives something a name except to praise or disparage it?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Steven Howard
In <5pb5up$f...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
[snip one of Mary's fine examples, and my "goal-oriented gamist"
quibble]
>But I do see your point: the example's not as clear-cut as I hoped.
>How about changing it so that, rather than being requested by the
>PCs, the NPC help simply emerges naturally out of the setting
>logic? That is, the PCs don't need to lift a finger to get the
>NPCs to do their dirty work; it will just happen. At that
>point I think most gamist GMs really would balk, using the
>principle "Don't give the PCs successes they haven't earned" as
>well as "Don't take the action away from the PCs."
Yes, I think you're right. The "gamist" in me, along with
the "dramatist" would be thinking "So why is this even in the
game? If the West Coast Avengers were going to stop the Frightful
Four anyway, what's the point of bringing them up?"
Bryan J. Maloney
In article <5pbbla$h...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> I wish I knew, though, why even though my original post was *very*
> emphatic that I don't consider any of these tools to be bad, I still
> get responses like this one. Do you just unquestioningly assume that
> no one ever gives something a name except to praise or disparage it?
The "-ism"/"-ist" suffix in English usage is very highly marked. That is,
it is strongly associated with a particular connotation. "-ism" indicates
a sort of dogmatic, often a religion or religion-surrogate. It does not
merely identify a tool, but an entire worldview.
What is being identified by "-ism" in this group appears to actually be a
set of tools, not religions. Like it or not, we react to words
viscerally, even if we think we don't--ESPECIALLY if we think we don't.
The easiest people to manipulate with cunning use of language are those
who think they don't have gut-level emotional reactions to language that
strongly influence their thinking.
"He is a gamist." "He is a simulationist." "He is a dramatist." These
statements classify and pigeonhole PEOPLE, they do not describe different
methods of play that can be picked up or put down as the situation and/or
personal taste may call for them.
Whether that is the intent of the terms is irrelevant. The "-ism"/"-ist"
morpheme is so heavily marked in modern English usage that you cannot
escape undesirable effects.
)
Mary K. Kuhner writes:
| I haven't found a three-way differentiating question, so I've had to
| settle for three two-way questions in my attempt to clarify my ideas
| about gamist, simulationist and dramatist values. [Acknowledgement
| that these are a bit oversimplified. Summary follows]
| Simulation vs. drama/game:
[Example of GM upholding an original NPC concept but breaking drama,
versus breaking NPC concept to improve drama.]
| Game vs. simulation/drama:
[Example of inhibiting NPC use of power to render the players
powerless, versus just going ahead and playing it out.]
| Drama vs. game/simulation
[Example of players pulling a rabbit out of a hat to escape capture
and the GM choosing to quash the initiative, or not.]
What I find most interesting about these examples is that they all
highlight:
* where the balance of player/GM power lies in a single game
determination
* when the GM will make player concessions
* what justification the GM will use if the choice is challenged
* where a GM's strongest fears of failure might lie
In practice, I don't think that the sorts of decisions above are
usually made as a blanket rule, nor are the three basic principles clear
in what they advocate. In my experience, determinative power flows
around the game dynamically, rather than being tied up in a single
principle. For instance, a GM who's come down hard on players in an
earlier scene is far more likely to find an excuse to be lighter in the
next scene. The excuse might be an excuse of simulation, drama or game
dynamics, but the outcome is likely to be the same regardless.
Likewise, a GM who is worried that players have taken an overly strong
hand in an earlier scene is likely to compensate in a later, perhaps
unrelated scene.
A dynamic view of the flow of power may well be more indicative of
the GM's choices than a static threefold theory, once you take GM and
players personalities into account. I can't persuade myself `dramatic',
`simulation' and `game-oriented' reasons for asserting or relinquishing
power are anything more than excuses. The reason I feel this way is
that you can use each reason to justify either asserting GM power or
relinquishing it in *any* decision.
For instance, in a simulation decision you can always find
sufficient reason to reverse or weaken your decision simply by choosing
to examine the simulation more or less closely. As an example: A mugger
fires a gun at the chest of a victim from point blank range. The basic
sim says that given his skill alone there's a sixty percent chance of
the victim being hit. The roll is made, the hit is determined. Oh,
woops! We didn't take into account lighting or the weather. And the
guy is strung out on drugs, and we were using the skill for a `generic
mugger'. And the player was dodging, and we didn't take that into
account. And weren't there people nearby? Why didn't we roll for the
chances of someone intervening?
You've probably seen this kind of play. Ultimately it's a referee's
decision when the simulation is sufficiently accurate, and it's always
possible to argue that it's not accurate enough. It really comes down
to a flat assertion of GM versus player power, and sometimes GMs will
assert this, and sometimes they won't, and sometimes they'll side with
the players and find a simulation-consistent way out of an outcome.
In a dramatic or game-oriented focus you can do the same, depending
on how widely you place your perspective. Dramatic perspective: The
mugger shoots the victim. This is terrible! It's interfering with the
climax! Must abort. Or: the mugger shoots the victim. This is great!
It's such an unexpected shock that the backlash later can be used to
energise more story.
Game perspective: The mugger shoots the victim. This is awful! The
players didn't expect it! Must abort. Or: the mugger shoots the
victim. Great! The players will be outraged! And they'll be so
delighted when I reveal unexpected consequences!
What I find valuable about the three perspectives is not that
they're any good for telling you what to do -- ultimately, I think you
can get just about any game outcome through any perspective with a bit
of work. What I find valuable about them is that are *each* worth
considering any time a difficult decision is made. I think that all
players want their games to be credible (within the rules of cause and
effect of their game world). All players want great drama if they can
get it at no cost to anything else, and all players want a game that's
socially fun to play (whatever `fun' means to that group of players).
It seems clear to me that if you ignore any of these perspectives
when you make a difficult decision, then you risk losing an important
element of your game, and alienating some of your players. Moreover,
when players come to ask you `Why did you go this way', you should be
able to address all three perspectives, and explain the reason for your
choice. Deliberately sacrificing one perspective for the sake of
another is not the way to go. Ideally you want to keep touch wherever
possible with all three.
And I think that most GMs will agree that it's not always easy to do
this. It's a three-ball juggling act with sloppy, wet clay balls,
keeping credible cause-and-effect, keeping strong drama, and making sure
that the social purposes of the game are also met. I don't think
there's a good priority system for which perspective to sacrifice first.
Sometimes it comes down to -- which will the players most tolerate
losing in this instance? Sometimes it's -- can I find another way
through this problem, without dropping anything at all?
I'd be very interested to see if there are other GMs who feel this
way, and what kinds of techniques we can use to keep all three balls in
the air at the same time. I've some vestigial ideas myself, but I want
to save these for another posting.
Anyway, they were good examples for me, Mary, because they really
helped me think the ideas through.
---
Dr Mark Grundy, DCS, Phone: +61-6-249 3785
Education Co-ordinator, Fax: +61-6-249 0010
CRC for Advanced Computational Systems,
The Australian National University, Web: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Mark.Grundy
0200 Australia Email: Mark....@anu.edu.au
George W. Harris
In Wed, 02 Jul 1997 10:39:40 -0500 of yore, bjm10@c$or$ne!ll#.e&du (Bryan J.
Maloney) wrote thusly:
=In article <5pbbla$h...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
=mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
=> I wish I knew, though, why even though my original post was *very*
=> emphatic that I don't consider any of these tools to be bad, I still
=> get responses like this one. Do you just unquestioningly assume that
=> no one ever gives something a name except to praise or disparage it?
=The "-ism"/"-ist" suffix in English usage is very highly marked. That is,
=it is strongly associated with a particular connotation. "-ism" indicates
=a sort of dogmatic, often a religion or religion-surrogate. It does not
=merely identify a tool, but an entire worldview.
You mean like in the bloody Cubism and Surrealism
purges in Europe in this century? I think you overstate the
degree to which this suffix is associatied with fanatical beliefs.
It is also used in reference to schools of artistic style, as
expressionism, realism, cubism, etc., and it is more in this
meaning that it is used on this newsgroup. Why do you not
feel compelled to harass the users of the various arts
newsgroups for their dogmatic, tyrranical and intolerant beliefs?
=What is being identified by "-ism" in this group appears to actually be a
=set of tools, not religions. Like it or not, we react to words
=viscerally, even if we think we don't--ESPECIALLY if we think we don't.
=The easiest people to manipulate with cunning use of language are those
=who think they don't have gut-level emotional reactions to language that
=strongly influence their thinking.
Well, actually it is being used to described a number of
techniques which when combined form a style. Do you feel the
same visceral reaction to discussions of the French
Impressionists of the 19th Century? How about the German
Expressionist filmmakers of the '20s and '30s? Does analysis of
Fritz Lang set off your alarm bells?
="He is a gamist." "He is a simulationist." "He is a dramatist." These
=statements classify and pigeonhole PEOPLE, they do not describe different
=methods of play that can be picked up or put down as the situation and/or
=personal taste may call for them.
And they are also almost never used in such an absolute
manner in this newsgroup, except by people attempting to
deconstruct the newsgroup and who feel compelled to set up
straw men for this purpose. They are used to describe styles of
play, and styles of play are almost always described as
combinations, leaning more heavily toward one or more of the
three vertices of rpg styles that this group has settled upon.
=Whether that is the intent of the terms is irrelevant. The "-ism"/"-ist"
=morpheme is so heavily marked in modern English usage that you cannot
=escape undesirable effects.
The intent of the author is irrelevant...are you a Usenet
Deconstructionist? The only undesirable effect that seems
inescapable is an invasion by Usenet Deconstructionists who
are convinced that the language used in this newsgroup is evil
and dehumanizing when the only evidence for this is in their
imaginations.
--
They say that there's air in your lungs that's been there for years.
George W. Harris For my actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
Fenyx3204
Brian J. Maloney said:
> Whether that is the intent of the terms is irrelevant. The
"-ism"/"-ist"
> morpheme is so heavily marked in modern English usage that you cannot
> escape undesirable effects.
So although all of us in this newsgroup use this terminology equally
(typically when "-ism"/"-ist" is being used negatively (e.g.,
"Republicanism") it is *not* used by those it applies to (e.g., "I am a
Republican" not, "I am a Republicanist")), and none of us (except you) see
a negative connotation to it . . . the connotation is still there?
> "He is a gamist." "He is a simulationist." "He is a dramatist." These
> statements classify and pigeonhole PEOPLE, they do not describe
different
> methods of play that can be picked up or put down as the situation
and/or
> personal taste may call for them.
Now there I'll kinda agree with you. To say "s/he is <anything>" is to
draw this discussion immmediately into extremes -- although I think in
general most of us reading such a statement in regard to this discussion
understand the statement to be nothing more than a statement of a
preternatural inclination.
Justin Bacon
Irina Rempt
After hours of trying to find a satisfactory example of a three-way
decision, I finally came up with this:
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ * \ * = Irina's estimated position
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
Oh, and call the points whatever you like, and turn the triangle any
way you want.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
III. "Scis quod dicunt: hodie adsit, cras absit."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Psychohist
In response to Bryan J. Maloney:
"He is a gamist." "He is a simulationist." "He is a
dramatist." These statements classify and pigeonhole
PEOPLE, they do not describe different methods of play
that can be picked up or put down as the situation and/or
personal taste may call for them.
George W. Harris responds:
And they are also almost never used in such an absolute
manner in this newsgroup, except by people attempting to
deconstruct the newsgroup and who feel compelled to set up
straw men for this purpose.
Well, actually, I've explicitly described myself as a 'strict
simulationist', and I don't think I was attempting to "deconstruct the
newsgroup" (though I'm not clear on exactly what that would mean). And
I'd like to take a moment to explain why I think there's some value to
pigeonholing myself, sin though that may be.
Much of the value of r.g.f.a to new readers comes from getting a
crystallized understanding of the concepts that are represented by
specialized jargon in the newsgroup.
Most readers come in with some vague ideas about various types of games
and players - but they only know a few characteristics of these types.
They might think, 'Dave likes to play to win', or 'Larry and Warren run
similar games, but they are very different from Bill's game'. They
generally won't, however, have come in with a clear understanding of the
factors that cause Dave to play as he does, or that cause them to like
games like Bill's more than those like Larry's and Warren's.
This newsgroup has done a lot of exploration of what factors are likely to
be correlated, and why, and has assigned names to these correlated groups
of factors. This can help new readers better understand campaigns and
other players. For example, they might realize that they prefer Bill's
game oriented campaign to Larry's and Warren's world oriented ones because
they prefer to play in surrogate mode rather than immersively. One key
point of understanding is that there is no perfect style - that certain
enjoyable elements of different games can only coexist through
compromises, or are even mutually exclusive.
Now, I think that my gamesmastering style comes pretty close to the world
oriented, simulationist vertex of the space defined by the threefold
model. By identifying myself as such - pigeonholing, if you will - I also
identify all the examples I give and arguments I make based on my own
campaign to be things that are consistent with this style of play. I
think this can be useful to new readers of the newsgroup since they now
get a bigger space of examples from which to draw an understanding of the
terms 'simulationist' or 'world oriented'.
Now, I agree that there are very few pure examples of world oriented,
story oriented, or game oriented campaigns. However, I think it's easiest
to get an understanding of the space these terms define by first
understanding the extreme cases represented by the vertices.
Warren J. Dew
Irina Rempt
Irina Rempt (ir...@lamarkis.uucp) wrote:
> After hours of trying to find a satisfactory example of a three-way
> decision, I finally came up with this:
> World
> /\
> / \
> / \
> /* \ * = Irina's estimated position
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> Story ---------------- Challenge
> Oh, and call the points whatever you like, and turn the triangle any
> way you want.
Rather embarrassed to have to follow up on my own post, but I realize
that some people prefer a thousand words. I think World is the most
important thing in my games, both as GM and player; Story is an extra
(sometimes necessary, sometimes pleasant, most of the time both); I
don't absolutely exclude Challenge, but it's not at all important to me
and I could do without if my players were willing to go with that.
To see if it works for other people, I now invite comments from Mary,
Sarah, Warren and Mark, whose opinions have been clearest to me:
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \ * = Mary's estimated position
/ * \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \ * = Sarah's estimated position
/ \ (with the proviso that it may be
* \ one or two notches more towards
/ \ World)
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
World
/\
/* \
/ \
/ \ * = Warren's estimated position
/ \ (or even completely World, but
/ \ there's no room at the top ;-)
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \ * = Mark's estimated position
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ * \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
Note: this is not to state the inherent superiority of one thing over
another, just to see if my own opinions are clear and I've understood
everybody else properly.
I've been half-lurking lately because every time I thought I had
something to say little flame battles broke out before I could get into
it (net lag here has been horrible) but I can't keep from contributing
my two (still virtual) eurocents now.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
XVIII. "Id imperfectum manet dum confectum erit."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net
On Thu, 3 Jul 1997 11:14:51 GMT, ir...@lamarkis.uucp (Irina Rempt)
wrote:
>Oh, and call the points whatever you like, and turn the triangle any
>way you want.
Sorry to be a stick in the mud, Irina. I think I understand Story and
World, but I'm worried about the relationships implied when you treat
them as points on a single diagram. That implies that (say) the
closer you get to one apex, the further you are from the others. And
I don't see things that way.
I view them more this way:
World (setting):
I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I
Schematic Detailed
Low verisimitude High Verisimitude
Reactive to the Players
Independent of the players
^
Me
Story (Drama)
I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I
Diffuse Focussed
Reactive Proactive
^
Me
I'm not sure what I understand the third axis is, so I won't comment
on it.
Anyway, your diagram would seem to imply that I can't be both
world-intensive and proactively dramatic. And that just does not jive
with my experience. My strongest, most detailed worlds have also been
developed in my most proactively dramatic games.
Have I misread you?
Best,
Kevin
Mary K. Kuhner
> It seems clear to me that if you ignore any of these perspectives
> when you make a difficult decision, then you risk losing an important
> element of your game, and alienating some of your players. Moreover,
> when players come to ask you `Why did you go this way', you should be
> able to address all three perspectives, and explain the reason for your
> choice. Deliberately sacrificing one perspective for the sake of
> another is not the way to go. Ideally you want to keep touch wherever
> possible with all three.
Mark goes on to say "And of course this is hard." But I'd go further.
I tried to run this way for many years when I was a new GM, and I felt
like a failure whenever my decisions couldn't simultaneously be
correct by simulation, drama, and game standards. Whenever I had to
slight one aspect I felt I was doing something wrong. This was
intensely demoralizing, and in fact many of the problems that plagued
my early games (being bullied by strong players, having trouble sticking
to rulings) were clearly, in retrospect, morale problems.
My notebooks are full of games I started that went for five or
ten sessions and foundered--because I couldn't simultaneously get
the drama and the simulation and the game to work, and whenever I
bungled one of them I'd feel I'd blown it. (And frequently I had--
often the failures were quite clearcut.)
I have had a much easiler time GMing since coming to the realization
that sometimes the three goals are incompatible and I have to choose;
and the realization that the standards I should use in choosing are
not some abstract "ideal play" but the game contract of my own group
*for this specific game*.
I've given myself permission to say "I'm going to run the Honolulu
game Feng Shui style, and thus world considerations just aren't
going to get the kind of priority that they usually get--it
would make getting the gamist and dramatist aspects (fast pacing,
interesting and challenging combats, splashy color) to work
out the way we want much too difficult."
And, honestly, if Jon decides he wants rock-solid setting values,
then we'll pitch this game and start another, one where it's understood
that he *won't* get a challenging fight every week without fail.
Both players and GM need to be aware of the tradeoffs, and not
expect the impossible.
Sometimes ideals can be a useful guideline. But this particular
ideal, for me, has been a burden instead. I think I'm better off
setting priorities, not trying to make the game work in all respects
all the time. And the threefold model is an improvement over our
homegrown models for discussing how to set those priorities--
particularly because it lets us unconfound "I want you to break
simulation so as to reduce the frequency of unwinnable fights and
dead-end investigations" and "I want you to break simulation so as
to increase the frequency of gripping scenes and subplots." It
may sound obvious in retrospect, but when we thought of the
difference in style as a single axis, any attempt to break simulation
in the first way tended to be accompanied by what proved to be
unwanted and harmful attempts to break it in the second way as well.
I'm not saying that simulation is always damaging to drama, or
game values always damaging to either. But I think there will
always arise situations where you have to favor one at the
expense of another, and it's better to have a plan in mind (as
a group!) for how you'll decide.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Psychohist
Irina Rempt posts, in part:
World
/\
/* \
/ \
/ \ * = Warren's estimated position
/ \ (or even completely World, but
/ \ there's no room at the top ;-)
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
Hey, how come my triangle's imperfect? (Just kidding.)
I think you're pretty close. I'd make one minor correction to the
position:
World
/\
/ *\
/ \
/ \ * = Warren's estimated position
/ \ (a small amount of game and
/ \ an even smaller, though still
/ \ nonzero, amount of story)
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Game
The non-world part comes not in my actual adjudication of the game, but
rather in what I encourage and discourage in my players.
I occasionally encourage the players to, and more frequently fail to
discourage the players from, causing their characters to make marginal
decisions in a way that will result in less metagame strife.
A recent example is when I failed to discourage Stan from having his
character Owain stay with Earl Janistaar, rather than allowing himself to
be hired away by Duke Arn, because staying with Janistaar would be less
likely to result in tension between Janistaar's player Kim and Arn's
player Spencer. This was despite the fact that Stan felt that without the
metagame considerations, Owain would probably have taken Arn's offer.
Actually, I later regretted this decision mildly, since the in game
tension between Janistaar and Arn would have been very realistic given
typical relationships between nobles, and the players involved are
probably mature enough to handle it.
The only example I can remember of my being dramatist is when I once
rather strongly discouraged a specific action on the part of a player
character because the obvious alternative would result in a better, though
politically incorrect, story. In fact, I hinted that the player might
want to take back the character's action - a strong hint coming from me,
since I've never even allowed such a take back on any other occasion.
This doesn't mean I can't enjoy other stories that happen naturally in a
world oriented game - just that I don't do anything to encourage them.
And some of the players are more interested in the challenge than the
simulation, though I don't do anything to specifically insert it.
Looking at Mary's triangle, I do think 'challenge' is not the right word.
After all, the game elements Mary seems to like - in particular, mild
script immunity - aren't the ones that increase the challenge.
Mary K. Kuhner
psych...@aol.com (Psychohist) writes:
>Looking at Mary's triangle, I do think 'challenge' is not the right word.
>After all, the game elements Mary seems to like - in particular, mild
>script immunity - aren't the ones that increase the challenge.
Irina's triangle, not mine. I'm terrible with ascii art.
I think "challenge" is not a perfect word, though "game" isn't either.
But the script immunity example is not so clear. The choice for
me may be between no script immunity and very conservative play,
so conservative that it avoids most potentially challenging situations;
or mild script immunity and more bold play, engaging challenging
situations, but not allowing the challenges to include death as
an outcome. Script immunity may be penny-a-point poker, but that
is still more challenging than solitaire. The second half of the
_Radiant_ campaign, with script immunity, has seen the characters
tackle many more difficult problems than they did in the first.
There was some really good analysis of "turtling", players adopting
a purely defensive, conservative strategy, in _The Wild Hunt_. I
turtle easily if provoked, but dislike the resulting games quite
a bit.
I'd say my game values are:
--the player should have something to do all the time, and not
get completely stuck.
--the game should keep going, and not stop due to character
death or other intractable situations.
--each PC should have something to do reasonably often.
--the player should be able to make plans and see them
through, and make decisions and see their consequences.
--the mix of action, conversation, and other activities should
be one the player likes.
--the problems posed shouldn't be so hard that the player feels
stupid or helpless, nor so easy that there is no sense of challenge.
--if the player does everything right, the results should not be
disasterous. (I.e. no situations where, unbeknownst to you, doing
the best you can must lead to a worse outcome than doing nothing
would have.)
There are no guarantees of any of these with a pure simulation,
unless the player is willing to change characters whenever something
goes wrong, which I'm not. (A limitation of develop-in-play; it
takes a while for the character to be enjoyable.)
I guess I need a disclaimer: these are *my* game values. If they're
not yours (generic "you" here), that's okay.
I'd put myself fairly close to the middle of the triangle, but
displaced somewhat towards the "world" point and a very little
bit towards the "challenge" point. It varies from game to game,
though.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
scott....@3do.com
In article <ECqp...@lamarkis.uucp>,
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl wrote:
>
> After hours of trying to find a satisfactory example of a three-way
> decision, I finally came up with this:
>
> World
> /\
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> Story ---------------- Challenge
>
> way you want.
>
Very interesting. Unlike Kevin, I think this does show some merit.
Judging by the positioning i would place myself about...
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \ * = Scott ruggels' estimated position
/ \
/ * \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
Makes sense...
Scott
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
Mark Apolinski
Irina Rempt wrote:
>
>
> World
> /\
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / * \
> / \
> Story ---------------- Challenge
Actually, I rather thing of myself as being smack in the center of such
a diagram.
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ * \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
I'm fairly simulationist, yet dramatist too. I strive for high
verisimilitude in my games, but I also pay attention to genre and prefer
'happy endings'. Depending on the game, I might detail the World quite
a bit and allow events to follow their natural, logical development, but
events will tend to center on the players mostly for reasons of economy.
(ie. I don't have time to work out the Chinese political situation when
it won't get used in the evening's game.) And I've never run a game in
as obviously story-oriented a manner as, say, Feng Shui.
Mark
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net
On Thu, 03 Jul 1997 18:36:15 GMT, krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net
wrote:
Oops. When I saw the actual post, I realized that my reader
reformatted what I had written:
>World (setting):
>
>I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I
>Schematic Detailed
>
>Low verisimitude High Verisimitude
>Reactive to the Players
> Independent of the players
>
>^
>
>Me
This should have been over here ..................^
instead--that is, I value detailed, high-verisimilitude, independently
existant settings, AND I also value dramatic games too:
>Story (Drama)
>
>I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I-----I
>Diffuse Focussed
>
>Reactive Proactive
I think Scott has over-stated my position. Its not so much that I
find it without any value at all--its rather that I cannot seem to
locate my preferences on your diagram. It does not seem to have any
way of reflecting them--I'm way off to one end of the spectrum on BOTH
scales.
All my best,
Kevin
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net
On Thu, 03 Jul 1997 19:41:13 -0600, scott....@3do.com wrote:
>In article <ECqp...@lamarkis.uucp>,
>Very interesting. Unlike Kevin, I think this does show some merit.
>Judging by the positioning i would place myself about...
I think Scott has over-stated my position. Its not so much that I
find Irina's diagram to be without any value at all--its rather that
I cannot seem to locate my preferences on it. It does not seem to
have any way of reflecting them--I'm way off to one end of the
spectrum on BOTH the Story and World axes . . .
My best,
Kevin
Mischa Damon Krilov
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net wrote:
: Sorry to be a stick in the mud, Irina. I think I understand Story and
: World, but I'm worried about the relationships implied when you treat
: them as points on a single diagram. That implies that (say) the
: closer you get to one apex, the further you are from the others. And
: I don't see things that way.
In an attempt to understand Irina's diagram, I think it would help if you
didn't think of it in terms of a triangle, a plane. I'f you've ever used a
graphics prog that gave you a little three-dimensional view of the color
you used on an RGB axis, you'll see what I mean.
I'm not looking at the point as a measure of value placed on the axes so
much as attention focused on the axes as an aspect of a game. I'm not
entirely convinced that you can do without one entirely.
Me.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Mischa Krilov | I have seen the future
mkr...@tiger.lsu.edu | and it works.
http://wwwlfpl.forestry.lsu.edu/mischa/ | - Lincoln Steffens
Irina Rempt
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net wrote:
> Anyway, your diagram would seem to imply that I can't be both
> world-intensive and proactively dramatic.
Of course you can:
World
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
* \ * = Kevin's estimated position
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
> And that just does not jive
> with my experience. My strongest, most detailed worlds have also been
> developed in my most proactively dramatic games.
The above puts you as close to World as to Story, and without any
Challenge (or Game) at all. Kind of like Sarah, as far as I can see,
and indeed you seem to have a lot in common from *this* point of view.
(You may want more Challenge, but we weren't talking about that).
> Have I misread you?
I may have misread myself; perhaps I should have labelled the axes, not
the points. Like most of my ideas that turn out to have something
(anything, even if it's only controversy) in them, it was just an idle
thought to start with - remember it was me came up with the Gathering
idea? And you're also free to *stretch* the triangle any way you like,
but that's hard to do in ASCII :-)
(Now you're someone I *enjoy* arguing with - it's just that we've never
had anything to argue about before. Are you coming to the Gathering, so
we can do it in person over a drink? :-)
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
XVI. "De stella Martis vere venisti."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jered Moses
ir...@lamarkis.uucp (Irina Rempt) writes:
>krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net wrote:
>> Anyway, your diagram would seem to imply that I can't be both
>> world-intensive and proactively dramatic.
>Of course you can:
> World
> /\
> / \
> / \
> / \
> * \ * = Kevin's estimated position
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
>Story ---------------- Challenge
Perhaps rather than a triangle, it would be better to map one's
position in 3-space (or, if you prefer finite spaces, into a cube):
*(0,0,1)
W |
o |
r |
l |
d |
|
|(0,0,0)
*---------------* (0,1,0)
y / Challenge
r /
o /
t /
S /
/
* (1,0,0)
Now, it admittedly is a bit trickier to display one's position on such
an ascii-graph, but one could then simply describe oneself as, say,
(.1, .2, 1.0). I think this adequately addresses Kevin's concern, and
maintains the basic structure of the original model...
--Jered (The Artist Formerly Known as Kid Kibbitz)
--
"From childhood's hour I have not been | |
As others were -- I have not seen | "Alone," a poem by | je...@purdue.edu
As others saw -- I could not bring | Edgar Allen Poe |
My passions from a common spring." | |
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <ECqrJ...@lamarkis.uucp> ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl writes:
>To see if it works for other people, I now invite comments from Mary,
>Sarah, Warren and Mark, whose opinions have been clearest to me:
> World
> /\
> / \
> / \
> / \ * = Mary's estimated position
> / * \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> / \
> Story ---------------- Challenge
It really depends on the game, lately, and whether I am GMing or
playing, so I get to have more spots on my diagram than anyone else:
World
/\
/ \ 1 Honolulu Feng Shui game
/ \ 2 _Radiant_
/ \ 3 about where I'm aiming for
/ 3 2 \ the Gathering
/ \
/ \
/ 1 \
/ \
Story ---------------- Challenge
But Irina's original guess is probably my normal working style: if
the game elements are taken care of well enough that things move
along, I don't worry much about story--it seems able to take care
of itself.
Ah, it's murkier than even the three-prong diagram captures, of course.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Psychohist
Mary Kuhner notes that there are sometimes some unavoidable tradeoffs
between the different styles of gaming. And, indeed, Irina's triangle
diagram seems to emphasize tradeoffs.
I wonder if there's some significance to the fact that the the three
people who thus far seem to see the triangle diagram as most useful - I'm
thinking of Mary, Irina, and myself - all place their normal gaming styles
closer to the world apex than to the story or challenge/game apices. Is
there some reason why simulationists should see tradeoffs where others do
not?
I think, perhaps, that there is. In a strict simulation, the world should
run by itself, independent of any input from the players or gamesmaster.
Any attempt by, say, the gamesmaster to improve the story or improve the
game necessarily involves some gamesmaster input - some bending of the
world - that necessarily compromises the independence, and thus accuracy
and credibility, of the simulation. So while a tolerant simulationist
might introduce such improvements, he is aware of the compromises
involved.
A fundamentally dramatic viewpoint, however, might not recognize such
tradeoffs. Indeed, a more consistent background ought to improve most
stories, rather than detracting from them. Any tradeoffs only become
apparent when world consistency gets so much emphasis that it begins
interfering with the authorial freedom of the gamesmaster - and dramatists
don't stray that close to the world oriented apex.
This tolerance may also apply, though perhaps less strongly, to a
dramatist's view of game elements. Appropriate challenges, for example,
can improve the story. From a dramatist's standpoint, the only threat
from a game orientation comes from players and characters who try too hard
to 'win', at the expense of characterization and other elements of a good
story; thus the abhorrence of munchkins, powergamers, and optimizers.
The more consistent background of a world orientation ought also improve
game play, to a point. It's only when the simulation begins to make too
many things impossible - and most of the remaining things trivial - that
the game becomes less enjoyable; again, this only happens when the
simulationist apex is approached very closely.
A gamer might feel more threatened by a story orientation, however. A
good game challenge requires a broad range of potential results - a big
difference between success and failure. If the results that don't make
good stories are removed from this range, the game can lose depth.
Any comments from avowed gamists and dramatists?
Warren J. Dew
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net
On Fri, 4 Jul 1997 10:15:17 GMT, ir...@lamarkis.uucp (Irina Rempt)
wrote:
>(Now you're someone I *enjoy* arguing with - it's just that we've never
>had anything to argue about before. Are you coming to the Gathering, so
>we can do it in person over a drink? :-)
I am so sorry that I cannot. I'm teaching a course in Summer School,
which will be occupying all my time. So raise a glass to me at the
Gathering, and know that I'd be there if I possibly could!
Best,
Kevin
Steven Howard
In <19970705071...@ladder02.news.aol.com>, psych...@aol.com (Psychohist) writes:
>The more consistent background of a world orientation ought also improve
>game play, to a point. It's only when the simulation begins to make too
>many things impossible - and most of the remaining things trivial - that
>the game becomes less enjoyable; again, this only happens when the
>simulationist apex is approached very closely.
I think this depends on the nature of the game world. We play many
different games, but our "standby", which we come back to again and
again, is Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu does not easily lend itself to
"simulationism." The world of CoC is cold, chaotic and alienating. The
basic underlying horror is that there really are no rules -- or if there are,
they're far too alien and complex for the human mind to grasp. The
minute any Cthulhu investigator feels that he understands "how the
world works" he's either mistaken or insane.
There might be some utility in looking for a correlation between
preferred game style (i.e. drama/simulation/game) and preferred
genre. I suspect you'll find very few "simulationist gothic horror" games.
>A gamer might feel more threatened by a story orientation, however. A
>good game challenge requires a broad range of potential results - a big
>difference between success and failure. If the results that don't make
>good stories are removed from this range, the game can lose depth.
This seems about right. If, as you say, especially "dramatic" outcomes
are selected for, this can feel like a "rigged game." I see this "(almost)
anything can happen" attitude as one of the main strengths of the
"gamist" style, so removing it definitely weakens the game-as-game
experience.
Mark Grundy
I write:
> It seems clear to me that if you ignore any of these perspectives when
> you make a difficult decision, then you risk losing an important
> element of your game, and alienating some of your players. Moreover,
> when players come to ask you `Why did you go this way', you should be
> able to address all three perspectives, and explain the reason for
> your choice. Deliberately sacrificing one perspective for the sake of
> another is not the way to go. Ideally you want to keep touch wherever
> possible with all three.
mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
| Mark goes on to say "And of course this is hard." But I'd go further.
| I tried to run this way for many years when I was a new GM, and I felt
| like a failure whenever my decisions couldn't simultaneously be
| correct by simulation, drama, and game standards. Whenever I had to
| slight one aspect I felt I was doing something wrong.
The intellectual, the emotional and the social are all cornerstones
of a good game, and they're brought out by sim, drama and game-focus.
So for this article, I'd like to try out the word `cornerstone' as a
replacement for the more cumbersome and `ismy'y `threefold model'. Also
we recognise that we might find more cornerstones to add later, and
that's fine too.
I guess every GM faces the problem Mary recounts, and probably quite
often too -- like, in every game. I'm not trying to suggest that it's a
failure to sacrifice one of these cornerstone elements at a particular
point. And invariably, if these cornerstones conflict in the GM's head,
and the conflict can't be resolved in the time available, one or more of
them has to go for that scene. I see no difficulty in doing that.
What I didn't explain very well in the para that Mary quoted was
that a static view of which one to sacrifice can lose a lot, and in
particular, a universal prioritisation method that repeatedly
deemphasises one cornerstone in favour of leaning on another seems to
(needlessly) undermine the foundations of the roleplaying. If we tell
ourselves that simulation is not important because we are dramatists
(say), they we'll trick ourselves into believing that we are always bad
at sim, and that having sim in the game won't ever help improve it. Yet
we know from earlier discussions that sim can be a useful consideration
in any game, some of the time.
| I have had a much easiler time GMing since coming to the realization
| that sometimes the three goals are incompatible and I have to choose;
| and the realization that the standards I should use in choosing are
| not some abstract "ideal play" but the game contract of my own group
| *for this specific game*.
This makes perfect sense. So let me ask -- should the contract be
based on static isms, or would it benefit more from the application of
dynamic principles? For example, here are some principles that get a
lot of reuse in some of my games:
* If time's running short and we can't get all the game played, I'll
often focus on drama to get a good story ending, even if it means not
joining all the causality dots, or exploring the sim in detail. I
also focus on ensuring that the players feel good when they leave the
game, so the endgame-drama in games that run overtime often has a
strong `feelgood' (game-oriented) element.
* If players are having trouble with character concepts, I often weaken
the sim a while, to help give more sensitive character focus.
* If players are having trouble with world concepts, I may about-face
and strengthen the sim -- by increasing the mechanics detail, or by
using more cause-and-effect explanations in my GM narrative.
* I notice that I worry more about social issues for new players than
for old players, and I'm quite likely to work up a player-oriented
plot thread for newbies if I think it will help increase their
involvement, or deepdn their character insights.
* When any players seem to be in personal conflict with each other or
with me, my game-focus glands ramp up, and I start thinking a lot more
about what brought this player to this game in the first place. In
some cases I've paused a game whose sim and drama was cruising quite
well, just out of concern for the playgroup dynamics.
So anyway, these are just some common principles I use in
game-mastering, and they show quite clearly that I'm not thinking about
all the cornerstone issues at any time -- I'm using observations and
principles drawn from experience to decide where I'm looking at any
time.
I don't think I'm unique in this. While I've met GMs who'll sit in
front of you and go with their original plan come hell or high water,
they seem to be pretty rare birds. Most GMs have an initial plan for
how to approach a game, but it undergoes change in response to the
group. Way back when in my `why stances don't work for me' post, I said
that ismising is underselling the strengths of the GMs who use those
notions, and I still believe that.
So, the weight of reported evidence to the contrary, I'm still
reading `ism' posts in my own peculiar way. When someone says `I'm a
dramatist, so I do this', I reread this as `when drama is a
consideration for me, here's how I approach the problem' -- such a
rereading generally brings a lot of value, even if my experience says
I'd have tried sim or game first in the same case. It'd be a whole lot
easier though, (I think), and very useful if the self-confessed
dramatists came out of their closets and confessed exactly when game or
sim is a dominant issue, and likewise for the sim players who claim they
have no drama in the game, or the (hypothetically small) group of
players who claim that player satisfaction is the only measure.
See, I don't believe that a nifty intellectual model on its own can
sustain roleplay. I'm a scientist, and many of my peers are smart
modellers but lousy roleplayers. I also don't believe that a great
drama is enough on its own to sustain roleplaying -- I think that the
best drama also conveys some pretty scintillant thought, and you can
find some very sharp thoughts in even silly shows like the Simpsons.
And I know that player feelgood is important, but if it were all that
counted, you could give massages instead of GMing, and get more bangs
for your buck.
So that's not to say that every game has to have high intellectual
content, or put your guts through a wringer, or make you feel like a
Great Person afterwards. But I've yet to see a game that didn't benefit
from having its cornerstones all clearly visible to the GM, and
available for consideration at all times.
| I've given myself permission to say "I'm going to run the Honolulu
| game Feng Shui style, and thus world considerations just aren't going
| to get the kind of priority that they usually get--it would make
| getting the gamist and dramatist aspects (fast pacing, interesting and
| challenging combats, splashy color) to work out the way we want much
| too difficult."
We can dismiss all of the world except a single kitchen, and still
have a strong sim about that room. We can bend the rules of reality as
much as we like, but still have some world-guides for cause and effect
in place. Even when drama is driving our plot, sim is still doing work
in the wings, making sure the sets don't fall down while the curtain's
up. And there are still ushers in the aisles, feeding popcorn to the
audience, keeping them happy and open to the ideas in the story. :)
Cheers,
Mark
Mary K. Kuhner
>I think this depends on the nature of the game world. We play many
>different games, but our "standby", which we come back to again and
>again, is Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu does not easily lend itself to
>"simulationism." The world of CoC is cold, chaotic and alienating. The
>basic underlying horror is that there really are no rules -- or if there are,
>they're far too alien and complex for the human mind to grasp.
There are two concepts at work here.
One, the one I think most of us are calling "Simulationist", is:
What happens in the game is driven just by the gameworld and its
logic, not by dramatic concerns, nor by the desires of GM or players
for a good story or good challenge.
The other is the idea of a game where all of the rules are known to
the players, and the cosmology is known to the players in detail, and
there is no expectation that they will firewall.
I don't see why CoC is unsuitable for a game of the first kind,
except that it may be unlikely for any given character to get involved
with the Mythos more than once or twice, which might cause some
game-values problems. The usual complaints about simulationist
games--that they can lead to undramatic, arbitrary, or unfair
situations--seem unlikely to apply to CoC, actually. Arbitrary
death is expected and accepted.
The second kind of game is not good for CoC or for any kind of horror.
But I would tend to call it "gamist", actually, not simulationist;
a simulationist might well prefer that the players knew no more
than their characters did. The desire to know all the rules strikes
me as generally coming from a concern for game-as-game.
Please distinguish "The character knows X but the player doesn't"
assumption clash from "The character doesn't know X, and neither
does the player" rules ignorance. I find assumption clash really
annoying; I rather like appropriate ignorance, where it can be
handled gracefully.
The problem with CoC played in a simulationist style, I think,
would be that PCs might tend to encounter the Mythos just
once or twice, and then never again; this would force either a
lot of mundane roleplaying, or frequent retirement of characters,
which for gamist reasons I'd find unsatisfying. Running a
series of short stories rather than a long campaign could help
here. The GM might also regret losing certain mood-enhancing tools,
such as dramatic timing. But neither of these problems sounds
intractable to me. I've seen very effective horror scenes in
quite strongly simulationist games.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
Mark Grundy suggests that one would be better off adopting a dynamic,
flexible balance among the three points of the threefold model, rather
than making sweeping decisions about which one to prioritize.
This makes perfect sense to me in theory, and may well be sound
general advice. It doesn't work for me, and I'd like to tell a
story to try to illustrate why.
My husband Jon often expresses an interest in playing in a game
with a particular flavor, something close to certain Hong Kong
moves: lots of flashy action, fast-moving plotlines, vivid,
larger-than-life characters, and dramatic situations. This comes
up every couple of years; it's clearly something he'd like to
try.
Previous to our current "Honolulu" campaign, I'd tried to oblige
him four or five times, and every single one had been (by my
standards) a dismal failure. Either the game failed to get the
kind of action Jon wanted, or it became agonizing for me to run
and I quit. Sometimes both. The average lifespan was probably
under ten sessions, which for us is very short. Since he was
running wonderful 2-3 year campaigns for me during this period,
I felt very bad about this.
Somewhere early on in Honolulu (about the point Jon told me
that the initial scenario had been inappropriate for what he
wanted) I realized what I'd been doing wrong. Normally, I
use a strong sense of the setting in order to generate events
for the PCs to interact with: when the setting is well
developed, it's very easy for me to come up with continuations
as they just spring out of setting logic. Hm, what is
Kehalyn doing today? He's trying to frighten the populace
so that they'll accept martial law--okay, how? How might the
PCs notice?
If I am using this tool (I believe it is a form of "channelling")
I must not defy what pops out of the setting very often, or
things will rebel and stop popping out. This destroyed our
"Exiles" game, for example. I tried to increase the number of
challenging combats, and suddenly my sense of the setting
collapsed. Since I had designed the game under the assumption
that I would *have* a sense of the setting, this was a disaster.
Suddenly Jon was asking me what the palace guards were doing,
and what the nomads were doing, and the rebels, and *I had
no idea*. I could try to reason things out, or try to find
a dramatically sound answer that still made sense, but it turned
out to be way too much work and it felt very bad. (Having
a once-living world go dead, as Sarah said in a post a while
back, is horrible.)
What I did with Honolulu is to say to myself "I am not going to
have a living sense-of-setting for this game. It is not a
simulation. Now, how can I arrange things so that I'll be
able to come up with scenarios?" Suddenly it became possible to
make the game work, and it seems to be working fairly well--
certainly it is far more successful than any of its predecessors.
It is not as fun to run (I would rather have the sense
of the world) but it's not bad. Essentially, I've abandoned
the attempt to use my usual simulationist tools and esthetics,
in return for freedom to do a *lot* more stage-managing.
For me, at least, it is pyschologically impossible to keep the
simulationist tools and add stage-managing to them.
I'm not saying that Honolulu does not use setting logic for
anything; I don't believe that any game does that. (Remember
that simulation is hostile to drama, but not vice versa.)
But there are large parts of the setting that are arbitrary
to me. I don't know how the archvillain Smiling Buddha really
manages his gang, or even where it *is*, and to be honest
I don't really believe in Smiling Buddha--but he's a convenient
villain now and then. I don't worry about whether he can really
do the crimes attributed to him, or whether he could really
keep away from the police. I just try to keep track of
what I've said about him and keep it consistent, which is a
far less demanding standard.
The downside is that Buddha never, as it were, calls me up and
tells me what he's going to do next. I have to make up each
adventure out of whole cloth. But *knowing* that I would need
to do this, rather than seeing it as an unexpected disaster, has
made it much easier to take.
I have never been able to design a setting that would
naturally generate the "glamorous fight every session" style
that Jon wants from this game. I can get very violent
settings, but they are pragmatic about the violence; people
who fight for their lives every day don't get flashy and
cute about it, they use tactics that *work*. So for me there
is an inherent tradeoff which I can't straddle. Either I
have a sense of the setting as real, or I have the game/drama
elements my player wants.
Having destroyed five or so games on this particular straddle,
I really don't think it's something I could easily change.
Better, I think, for me to simply accept that this game is
not simulationist and our usual esthetics just don't apply.
And next game I will be free to go back to my usual running
style, and I will expect Jon not to bitch about not getting
a challenging fight every session.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Ennead
Irina Rempt wrote:
: To see if it works for other people, I now invite comments from Mary,
: Sarah, Warren and Mark, whose opinions have been clearest to me:
: World
: /\
: / \
: / \
: / \ * = Sarah's estimated position
: / \ (with the proviso that it may be
: * \ one or two notches more towards
: / \ World)
: / \
: / \
: Story ---------------- Challenge
Gosh. I just don't know.
Part of my problem evaluating this is that my "gaming
style" (by which I assume we mean GMing style?) just isn't nearly
static enough for this exercise.
I don't mean to be a trouble-maker, but the simple fact
is that I run different games *differently.* My repertoire
isn't unlimited by any means (I don't think I've ever run a game
that has moved too far towards that Challenge apex, for example),
but it's still far too variable for any single point on the
diagram to seem accurate as a summary of "my style."
At the risk of sounding as if I'm aping Mark Grundy, I'm
also a bit dubious about the utility of this classification
system as a marker of overall style. It seems to me that the
threefold model is a very useful means of analyzing the _process_
of prioritization that leads to specific game decisions, but
that as a marker of overall style, it could prove extremely
problematic, and even misleading.
It seems to me that two gamers, each of whom represents his
own style with precisely the same point on this diagram, might
easily play in deeply incompatable styles. The problem here
is that the classification system relies on a guesstimate of what
_percentage_ of game decisions are based on each priority, but
tells us nothing about under what circumstances each gamer chooses
to privilege each priority.
So GM X, for example, might strongly prioritize drama
in decisions relating to script immunity and character death,
yet give world higher position when asked to make a decision
about NPC intercession in the plot. This same GM prioritizes
Game during the character creation process -- insisting that
the players actively avoid schtick clash when they come up
with character concepts, enforcing point limits in an attempt
to keep all of the PCs at the same rough power level, and so
forth.
After consideration of these issues and others, after
a careful reckoning of how _often_ he prioritizes Game, Story,
and World, X decides that his style is fairly moderate, but
closer to both World and Challenge than to Story, and a tiny bit
more world-oriented than game-oriented. He therefore picks a
point right of center and above it.
GM Y, meanwhile, only grants script immunity for
game reasons: he will intercede to save a character only if
the death seems utterly unfair to the player, who in no way
could have avoided the in-game situation (in other words, no
lethal first shots from snipers, although consequent shots
that may be avoided are permitted to be deadly). This same
GM leaves character creation largely in the hands of the
players, advising only to ensure consistency with the world;
he doesn't care about power levels or schtick clash, and he
doesn't pay any attention to dramatic hooks. This GM will,
however, prioritize drama when faced with the question of
NPCs taking the plot away from the PCs: should this come up,
he decides whether or not to tweak the NPCs based on what
he feels will make for a more dramatic, tighter story.
After consideration of these issues and others, after
a careful reckoning of how _often_ he prioritizes Game, Story,
and World, Y decides that his style is fairly moderate, but
closer to both World and Challenge than to Story, and a tiny
bit more world-oriented than game-oriented. He therefore
picks a point right of center and above it.
Now, both X and Y have chosen their positions on the
graph with care and valid reasoning. Their gaming styles,
however, are _very_ different, and not terribly compatable.
A fan of X would likely have some problems with Y's game,
and vice versa, despite the fact that they occupy the same
position on the graph.
Furthermore, both X and Y are likely to feel that their
own analysis of style is the "right" one, and that the other GM
was incorrect in his own self-analysis.
Let us say, for example, that X and Y play in each
others' games.
Y has a strong aversion to script immunity on general
principle (even though he will allow gamist considerations to
overcome this aversion in his own games, he really _hates_
doing so, and he's glad that he doesn't have to do it too often).
X's more lavish approach to script immunity is therefore highly
noticeable to him; it stands out and grabs his attention.
"How could you put yourself _there_ on the graph," he
demands, "when you are such a dramatist? No one with your
approach to script immunity belongs that close to the World apex!"
X, meanwhile, is horrified by Y's approach to NPCs.
"What are you talking about?" He asks. "Script immunity is
just a little exception to the general rule; it's no big
deal. But look at _you_! Your NPCs are nothing more than
walking, talking plot facilitators! They aren't people; they're
slaves to the story! How could you put yourself so far from
the Drama apex? This game is _totally_ dramatic! It's got
a bit of gamism to it, I'll grant you that, but it sure as
hell isn't in the least bit world-based!"
"Oh, yeah, you're one to talk," sneers Y. "What
was all that crap about balanced power levels and schtick
clash, then? Yeah, THAT'S sure world-based. Why don't you
just admit that you're playing a board game, and be done with
it?"
And so forth.
Now, both X and Y are wrong (and rather unpleasant
sorts at that). Both of these gaming styles are really pretty
moderate. But because X and Y value different _aspects_ of the
game, and because they are accustomed to dealing with different
aspects in different ways, each of them sees the other's style as
less "moderate" than it really is.
The problem here, of course, is that X and Y chose to
focus on how _often_ they prioritized each of the three values,
rather than looking at _under what circumstances_ they prioritize
each of the three.
(If you think I am exaggerating here, try to cast
your mind back to the old definition wars over what a game
requires to satisfy people's various definitions of "simulationist."
What we have here seems to me to be just an additional two
"isms" for people to argue over.)
Don't get me wrong. I _like_ the threefold approach,
and I think it is a useful one for analysis of style. But I
suspect that this just isn't the right way to go about it.
Style seems to me to be more a matter of *when* each value is
prioritized than it is a matter of what percentage of game
decisions are based on which approach.
-- Sarah
Steven Howard
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
From: bl...@ibm.net (Steven Howard)
Subject: Re: Threefold model
Reply-To: bl...@ibm.net
References: <5p9ji0$3...@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <33bad...@nunki.anu.edu.au> <5pgv89$6...@nntp5.u.washington.edu> <5pmean$m...@alcor.anu.edu.au>
X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2.5
In <5pmean$m...@alcor.anu.edu.au>, ma...@cs.anu.edu.au (Mark Grundy) writes:
> It'd be a whole lot
> easier though, (I think), and very useful if the self-confessed
> dramatists came out of their closets and confessed exactly when game or
> sim is a dominant issue, and likewise for the sim players who claim they
> have no drama in the game, or the (hypothetically small) group of
> players who claim that player satisfaction is the only measure.
Only measure of what? How 'good' the game is? Because I'll state
unequivocally and without hesitation that, if we include the GM as one
of the players, then player satisfaction IS the only measure of how 'good'
a game is. And I don't think anyone here can honestly say otherwise.
Sorry to jump on your head over this. I suppose it really just points out
that "gamism" is still egregiously ill-defined.
> And I know that player feelgood is important, but if it were all that
> counted, you could give massages instead of GMing, and get more bangs
> for your buck.
See, I was SO willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but then you go and
write something like this. This snippy, dismissive tone toward what I consider
the most fundamental aspect of the game makes me wonder whether we're talking
about the same thing at all. This "player feelgood" is a big roundhouse punch
at a straw man. The fact that a game is fun and entertaining for the players
does not equate with some infantile fantasy where you just get everything you
want.
Whenever anybody says "Why don't you just do x instead of playing an rpg?" it
strikes me as aloof and elitist. It's akin to saying "Run along, children, and
leave the role-playing games for those of us who know how to do it properly." I
also think it's telling that you didn't dismiss "pure dramatism" with "Why don't
you go see a play?" or "pure simulationism" with "Why don't you go read an
atlas?" It's even more telling that you didn't say "Why don't you play
Monopoly?" You're not even comparing it with the same kind of activity. No,
you're equating the intellectual and social entertainment of playing a game with
purely physical pleasure, thus reinforcing the idea that game enjoyment is on a
more "base" -- even "animal" -- level than the other two concerns.
For all your talk of cornerstones, this seems to indicate to me that
you still view "game" considerations as less important than "drama" and
"simulation."
> We can dismiss all of the world except a single kitchen, and still
> have a strong sim about that room. We can bend the rules of reality as
> much as we like, but still have some world-guides for cause and effect
> in place. Even when drama is driving our plot, sim is still doing work
> in the wings, making sure the sets don't fall down while the curtain's
> up. And there are still ushers in the aisles, feeding popcorn to the
> audience, keeping them happy and open to the ideas in the story. :)
See, and here again, the enjoyment of the game is equated with mere physical
pleasure.
Steven Howard
> easier though, (I think), and very useful if the self-confessed
> dramatists came out of their closets and confessed exactly when game or
> sim is a dominant issue, and likewise for the sim players who claim they
> have no drama in the game, or the (hypothetically small) group of
> players who claim that player satisfaction is the only measure.
Only measure of what? How 'good' the game is? Because I'll state
unequivocally and without hesitation that, if we include the GM as one
of the players, then player satisfaction IS the only measure of how 'good'
a game is. And I don't think anyone here can honestly say otherwise.
Sorry to jump on your head over this. I suppose it really just points out
that "gamism" is still egregiously ill-defined.
> And I know that player feelgood is important, but if it were all that
> counted, you could give massages instead of GMing, and get more bangs
> for your buck.
See, I was SO willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but then you go and
write something like this. This snippy, dismissive tone toward what I consider
the most fundamental aspect of the game makes me wonder whether we're talking
about the same thing at all. This "player feelgood" is a big roundhouse punch
at a straw man. The fact that a game is fun and entertaining for the players
does not equate with some infantile fantasy where you just get everything you
want.
Whenever anybody says "Why don't you just do x instead of playing an rpg?" it
strikes me as aloof and elitist. It's akin to saying "Run along, children, and
leave the role-playing games for those of us who know how to do it properly." I
also think it's telling that you didn't dismiss "pure dramatism" with "Why don't
you go see a play?" or "pure simulationism" with "Why don't you go read an
atlas?" It's even more telling that you didn't say "Why don't you play
Monopoly?" You're not even comparing it with the same kind of activity. No,
you're equating the intellectual and social entertainment of playing a game with
purely physical pleasure, thus reinforcing the idea that game enjoyment is on a
more "base" -- even "animal" -- level than the other two concerns.
For all your talk of cornerstones, this seems to indicate to me that
you still view "game" considerations as less important than "drama" and
"simulation."
> We can dismiss all of the world except a single kitchen, and still
> have a strong sim about that room. We can bend the rules of reality as
> much as we like, but still have some world-guides for cause and effect
> in place. Even when drama is driving our plot, sim is still doing work
> in the wings, making sure the sets don't fall down while the curtain's
> up. And there are still ushers in the aisles, feeding popcorn to the
> audience, keeping them happy and open to the ideas in the story. :)
See, and here again, the enjoyment of the game is equated with mere physical
Steven Howard
In <5pmqfn$h...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>In article <33be8...@news2.ibm.net> bl...@ibm.net writes:
>
>>I think this depends on the nature of the game world. We play many
>>different games, but our "standby", which we come back to again and
>>again, is Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu does not easily lend itself to
>>"simulationism." The world of CoC is cold, chaotic and alienating. The
>>basic underlying horror is that there really are no rules -- or if there are,
>>they're far too alien and complex for the human mind to grasp.
>
>There are two concepts at work here.
>
>One, the one I think most of us are calling "Simulationist", is:
>What happens in the game is driven just by the gameworld and its
>logic, not by dramatic concerns, nor by the desires of GM or players
>for a good story or good challenge.
Yes, I understand that. I'm saying you can't do that and be true to Lovecraft.
Lovecraft's fiction does not posit a universe which follows understandable
"rules" or "logic." I don't think "simulationism" can model such a world.
"What's the logical thing for Nyarlathotep to do next?" is not a question that I
can answer, because Nyarlathotep's actions are not driven by anything
resembling human logic. "What's the creepiest thing for Nyarlathotep to do
next?" and "What can Nyarlathotep do next that's most inconvenient to the
investigators?" are answerable because they don't get into Nyarly's head, but
there I think we're over the line into "dramatism" and "gamism", respectively.
>The other is the idea of a game where all of the rules are known to
>the players, and the cosmology is known to the players in detail, and
>there is no expectation that they will firewall.
No, that's not quite what I mean. I mean "a game where the players can
safely assume that there *are* rules for the game world to follow and that
there *is* a cosmology." To the extent that players are aware of the GM's
style, I think players with "simulationist" GMs can and do make these
assumptions. Firewalling doesn't enter into it. I don't care whether the
characters think they are in such a world or not. In a horror game, I don't
want to scare the characters, that's easy. I want to scare the players. (Which
is damn hard, and I've only really done it a couple of times. Still, that's the
goal.)
Mark Apolinski
One way of looking at campaign design that has worked well for me has
been the difference between Top-down approaches and Bottom-up
approaches.
In a Bottom-up approach, one designes the foundation of the world first,
to near-completeness. Then once this foundation is in place and
extremely detailed, one can follow things up to where they encounter the
PCs of the game. This sounds like what most of the self-avowed
'simulationists' on this newsgroup do.
In a Top-down approach, one starts with the PCs and their lives and
generates connections to the world. In this approach, I would start by
saying, 'I want the PCs to get into a firefight this session. How could
one happen?' This would produce a chain of logic that is completely
rationalized and makes perfect sense for the setting and would be
finally anchored to the game world. This means that I might know
virtually nothing about the gameworld that is not affecting the PCs.
One can see how, even though the Top-down approach isn't what most
simulationists would call simulationist, it can still be very logical
and make perfect 'simulation' sense.
I've almost always GMed using the Top-down approach. My just-started
Legacy/Highlander game is the first time I'll be trying the Bottom-up
approach.
Mark
Mary K. Kuhner
I like your analysis of top-down versus bottom-up, Mark, except for
one thing.
The last time we had this discussion, we used the same pair of terms,
except that "top-down" meant designing the broad outline of the
world and then adding details, and "bottom-up" meant starting from
small details and working to connect them eventually into a big
picture.
I think gaming stance may affect which end one thinks is "up"....
In any case, can we come up with a pair of terms that aren't
confusing in this way? Maybe "broad picture" and "narrow focus".
I'm a "narrow focus" GM, not because I want to start with the PCs,
but because the world never comes alive for me if I start with
the big overview. I can do a little development work that way,
but I have to quickly anchor it to specific visualized scenes,
places, people or the world becomes abstract and dry. The scenes
often don't get into the actual game, just as a character's "tag line"
may never be spoken in play.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <33bfe...@news2.ibm.net> bl...@ibm.net writes:
[it would be easier to reply if you trimmed the lines a little shorter....]
>Lovecraft's fiction does not posit a universe which follows understandable
>"rules" or "logic." I don't think "simulationism" can model such a world.
>"What's the logical thing for Nyarlathotep to do next?" is not a question
>that I
>can answer, because Nyarlathotep's actions are not driven by anything
>resembling human logic. "What's the creepiest thing for Nyarlathotep to do
>next?" and "What can Nyarlathotep do next that's most inconvenient to the
>investigators?" are answerable because they don't get into Nyarly's head, but
>there I think we're over the line into "dramatism" and "gamism", respectively.
Ah! This makes sense. I have not tried GMing Nyarlathotep, but I'd be
willing to give it a try in a simulationist game--I would try to pull
Nyar's actions out of some squalid nightmare region of my subconscious,
and accept that as "simulation", since as you say logic is not really
going to work here. Doing so would feel quite different to me from
angling deliberately for creepiness or for challenge. Though I am not
a pure simulationist and would probably do a bit of angling for
creepiness, I wouldn't want that to become the main determinant.
A fundamental difference for me is that if I "channel" Nyarlathotep's
actions, they may scare *me*. If I design them to be creepy, I won't
find them so (just as a magician is never fooled by his own tricks).
My horror descriptions get much better when I'm scared or at least
feeling uneasy.
I recall in _Haven Hill_ doing an NPC from a one-line description in
my scenario notes, and only realizing, as the PCs questioned her,
that she was a mix of a dead woman and a supernatural cat, and the
woman didn't understand at all what had happened to her. The mix of
bewildered fear and inhuman preditoriness was a very disturbing thing
to hear. I have no idea where that conception came from, but it
worked awfully well (perhaps too well for the tone of the game it
was in....)
>In a horror game, I don't
>want to scare the characters, that's easy. I want to scare the players.
>(Which is damn hard, and I've only really done it a couple of times.
>Still, that's the goal.)
Indeed, though with Immersive players scaring the characters is a good
way to start.
The four or five times in my GMing career that I have succeeding in
scaring myself, I've had no trouble at all scaring my players; but
it's hard to manage that. Mainly when it's worked it's been because
I ended up "channelling" something that surprised and disturbed me,
though once I think it was pure GM/player feedback (that is, the players
were generating the horror and I was reacting to it as much as
vice versa; their PCs were *very* disturbed).
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mark Grundy
I wrote:
> It'd be a whole lot easier though, (I think), and very useful if the
> self-confessed dramatists came out of their closets and confessed
> exactly when game or sim is a dominant issue, and likewise for the sim
> players who claim they have no drama in the game, or the
> (hypothetically small) group of players who claim that player
> satisfaction is the only measure.
Steven Howard asked:
| Only measure of what? How 'good' the game is? Because I'll state
| unequivocally and without hesitation that, if we include the GM as one
| of the players, then player satisfaction IS the only measure of how
| 'good' a game is. And I don't think anyone here can honestly say
| otherwise.
I've emailed Steven on this posting, seeking clarification. I'll
post some followup thoughts later on.
Mark Apolinski
Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>
> I like your analysis of top-down versus bottom-up, Mark, except for
> one thing.
>
> The last time we had this discussion, we used the same pair of terms,
> except that "top-down" meant designing the broad outline of the
> world and then adding details, and "bottom-up" meant starting from
> small details and working to connect them eventually into a big
> picture.
>
> I think gaming stance may affect which end one thinks is "up"....
> In any case, can we come up with a pair of terms that aren't
> confusing in this way? Maybe "broad picture" and "narrow focus".
Well, the real definitions of Top-down and Bottom-up deal with Cause and
Effect. In a Bottom-up approach, one starts with Causes and Deduces
Effects. In the Top-down approach, one starts with Effects and Induces
Causes. So I suppose it depends on what one perceives as Cause and
what as Effect.
I see the PCs interactions with the game-world as the Effect. Mainly
because I'm trying to answer the question, 'What am I going to have
happen to the PCs in tonight's session?'
Mark
scott....@3do.com
In article <33bc7c5e...@news.washingtonian.infi.net>,
krhr...@washingtonian.infi.net wrote:
>
> On Thu, 03 Jul 1997 19:41:13 -0600, scott....@3do.com wrote:
>
> >In article <ECqp...@lamarkis.uucp>,
>
> >Very interesting. Unlike Kevin, I think this does show some merit.
> >Judging by the positioning i would place myself about...
>
> I think Scott has over-stated my position. Its not so much that I
> find Irina's diagram to be without any value at all--its rather that
> I cannot seem to locate my preferences on it. It does not seem to
> have any way of reflecting them--I'm way off to one end of the
Ah... point taken. Well, I think the value, is what issue do you take
priority on when making a decision? Different games may graph
differently, and different sessions may graph differently. The three way
axis, but it may be that the dot, it the center of a circle, of
decisions. However you may not feel that simulationism and Dramatism are
opposing, but for my, and apparently Mary's, experience, certain
decisions and defeat drama for the sake of world consistently.
Steven Howard
In <33c18...@nunki.anu.edu.au>, ma...@cs.anu.edu.au (Mark Grundy) writes:
> I wrote:
>
> > It'd be a whole lot easier though, (I think), and very useful if the
> > self-confessed dramatists came out of their closets and confessed
> > exactly when game or sim is a dominant issue, and likewise for the sim
> > players who claim they have no drama in the game, or the
> > (hypothetically small) group of players who claim that player
> > satisfaction is the only measure.
>
> Steven Howard asked:
>
> | Only measure of what?
> I've emailed Steven on this posting, seeking clarification. I'll
> post some followup thoughts later on.
I actually think my post was fairly clear. We may, in fact, be talking
at cross-purposes. Let's start over, and assume my reply consisted of
just the first sentence: "Only measure of what?"
Irina Rempt
Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) wrote:
> It seems to me that two gamers, each of whom represents his
> own style with precisely the same point on this diagram [that is, my
> reprehensible triangle, IR], might
> easily play in deeply incompatable styles.
Yes; consider Scott and Mary. (Mary, I was indeed thinking of the
_Radiant_ game, because that is what I feel I know most about)
> Furthermore, both X and Y are likely to feel that their
> own analysis of style is the "right" one, and that the other GM
> was incorrect in his own self-analysis.
No; I for one would think the other GM might also be right (or, more
likely, that we might both be wrong). But then I have twin daughters,
both at the same stage of almost-terrible-twos, and *extremely*
different in their way of expressing it :-)
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
XIII. "Non erravi perniciose!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Barlow
In article <33C194...@ix.netcom.com.spam>, Mark Apolinski
<apol...@ix.netcom.com.spam> wrote:
> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> >
> > I like your analysis of top-down versus bottom-up, Mark, except for
> > one thing.
> >
> > The last time we had this discussion, we used the same pair of terms,
> > except that "top-down" meant designing the broad outline of the
> > world and then adding details, and "bottom-up" meant starting from
> > small details and working to connect them eventually into a big
> > picture.
> >
> > I think gaming stance may affect which end one thinks is "up"....
> > In any case, can we come up with a pair of terms that aren't
> > confusing in this way? Maybe "broad picture" and "narrow focus".
>
> Well, the real definitions of Top-down and Bottom-up deal with Cause and
> Effect. In a Bottom-up approach, one starts with Causes and Deduces
I have to agree whole-heartedly with Mary on this.
I don't quite know what "real definitions" of top-down and bottom-up
you're drawing from Mark but in Computer Science (which I teach) they
have very definite meanings:
Top-down is an approach to problem solving which starts with a very
broad but ill-defined solution (in game terms the design of the world)
and progressively refines that.
Bottom-up starts with some low-level, detailed component of the entire
solution and continually extrapolates and broadens from there to derive
the entire solution.
As with Mary I think that the use of top-down and bottom-up is a bit
ambiguous, not because the terms are ill-defined but rather the frame
of reference against which they are measured (relative to the PCs or
relative to the game-world) is not implicit in the term.
Appropriate terms though seem a bit problematic though as they must
communicate BOTH a path of development/refinement and the frame of
reference:
broad picture | world down | abstract first | general-to-specific |
wolrd-to-character | ???
vs.
narrow focus | character relative | character up | specifics first |
specific-to-general | character-to-world | ???
Personally I prefer "World Down" and "Character Up" (thus maintaining
part of the original terms "top down" and "bottom up") but they may not
be applicable for all instances in which the terms should be employed.
Spike
Bun Bu RyoDo
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael Barlow (Spike) sp...@cs.adfa.oz.au
School of Computer Science http://www.cs.adfa.oz.au/~spike
ADFA/ Uni of NSW Canberra
Australia
Mark Apolinski
Michael Barlow wrote:
>
> As with Mary I think that the use of top-down and bottom-up is a bit
> ambiguous, not because the terms are ill-defined but rather the frame
> of reference against which they are measured (relative to the PCs or
> relative to the game-world) is not implicit in the term.
>
> Appropriate terms though seem a bit problematic though as they must
> communicate BOTH a path of development/refinement and the frame of
> reference:
>
> broad picture | world down | abstract first | general-to-specific |
> wolrd-to-character | ???
> vs.
> narrow focus | character relative | character up | specifics first |
> specific-to-general | character-to-world | ???
Oh, no!! I've created more jargon!!
> Personally I prefer "World Down" and "Character Up" (thus maintaining
> part of the original terms "top down" and "bottom up") but they may not
> be applicable for all instances in which the terms should be employed.
Actually that would be 'World Up' and 'Character Down'. :-)
Mark
Psychohist
Michael Barlow posts, in part:
Personally I prefer "World Down" and "Character Up"
(thus maintaining part of the original terms "top down"
and "bottom up") but they may not be applicable for all
instances in which the terms should be employed.
In particular, they assume that the big, general thing is the world, and
the small, specific things are the characters. That matches my own
approach, but I can see that if one believes that the focus of the game is
to engage the characters, a concept explored by David Berkman a few months
back, one might think of the character as the 'big, general thing', and
the details of the world as the 'small, specific things'.
Maybe this is another way of differentiating between the world oriented
and the story oriented approaches.
Warren Dew
Fenyx3204
>> Personally I prefer "World Down" and "Character Up" (thus maintaining
>> part of the original terms "top down" and "bottom up") but they may not
>> be applicable for all instances in which the terms should be employed.
Mark Apolinski wrote:
> Actually that would be 'World Up' and 'Character Down'. :-)
How do you work "up" from the World? To me the term "up" implies something
getting larger, not smaller. I.e., you work "up" from the small details to
the large details.
You can argue that the characters are more important in a particular game,
but the world is clearly the larger detail.
Justin Bacon
Russell Wallace
> Top-down is an approach to problem solving which starts with a very
> broad but ill-defined solution (in game terms the design of the world)
> and progressively refines that.
>
> Bottom-up starts with some low-level, detailed component of the entire
> solution and continually extrapolates and broadens from there to derive
> the entire solution.
>
> ambiguous, not because the terms are ill-defined but rather the frame
> of reference against which they are measured (relative to the PCs or
> relative to the game-world) is not implicit in the term.
I agree. May I suggest using the terms "forward chaining" and "backward
chaining" for the distinction Mark is making? I'm slightly adapting the
terms from their original meaning in computer programming, but the intent
is that "forward chaining" means you start with the situation you have now
and work your way forwards from there, from cause to effect, whereas
"backward chaining" means that you start off by thinking about where you
might end up, then work out what the current situation would need to be to
give that result.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Mark Apolinski
You say yourself:
> broad picture | world down | abstract first | general-to-specific |
> wolrd-to-character | ???
> vs.
> narrow focus | character relative | character up | specifics first |
> specific-to-general | character-to-world | ???
World Up is general-to-specific, world to character.
Character Down is specific to general.
The characters' lives and experiences are specific cases of the world as
a whole.
Mark
Mark Apolinski
Psychohist wrote:
> In particular, they assume that the big, general thing is the world, and
> the small, specific things are the characters. That matches my own
> approach, but I can see that if one believes that the focus of the game is
> to engage the characters, a concept explored by David Berkman a few months
> back, one might think of the character as the 'big, general thing', and
> the details of the world as the 'small, specific things'.
>
> Maybe this is another way of differentiating between the world oriented
> and the story oriented approaches.
In Painting, I spend more attention on the specific things and less on
the 'big,general thing'. Comments like 'Painting the world in broad
strokes.' That's why Bottom-up goes from World to Character.
I suppose if you spend a lot of time detailing the World, you might view
things oppositely. And it's not so much a 'story-oriented' approach as a
'character-oriented' approach.
Mark
kera...@ct1.nai.net
In article <5pmvfs$j...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>,
mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>
> Mark Grundy suggests that one would be better off adopting a dynamic,
> flexible balance among the three points of the threefold model, rather
> than making sweeping decisions about which one to prioritize.
>
> This makes perfect sense to me in theory, and may well be sound
> general advice. It doesn't work for me, and I'd like to tell a
> story to try to illustrate why.
<snip>
> If I am using this tool (I believe it is a form of "channelling")
> I must not defy what pops out of the setting very often, or
> things will rebel and stop popping out. This destroyed our
> "Exiles" game, for example. I tried to increase the number of
> challenging combats, and suddenly my sense of the setting
> collapsed. Since I had designed the game under the assumption
> that I would *have* a sense of the setting, this was a disaster.
> Suddenly Jon was asking me what the palace guards were doing,
> and what the nomads were doing, and the rebels, and *I had
> no idea*. I could try to reason things out, or try to find
> a dramatically sound answer that still made sense, but it turned
> out to be way too much work and it felt very bad. (Having
> a once-living world go dead, as Sarah said in a post a while
> back, is horrible.)
I'd understood what was meant by having a world go dead only in the
sense that it can be understood by someone who's never had it happen.
I've had it happen now, and it's violently disorienting. It can
happen to dramatists, too. I am one.
The world in question was the setting for a MUX, rather than a table
-top style RPG. For reasons that would probably have to be described as
'gamist'--they have to do with the operation of the game as a game, not
the world or the story--I ended up breaking the simulation too often and
too drastically, and my world model has crashed (and my character model,
too; I think probably the character model crash brought about the world
model crash, rather than the reverse, because my main character tends to
be my eyes on the world and an inconsistent sense of the character's
connections to the world brings about an inconsistency in the world).
This is intolerable to the point that I'm changing the game's format
to an online real time RPG because an RPG makes fewer 'game' demands
on the setting. I think I can probably resurrect the world if I pare
away everything extraneous and go back to world design.
From my perspective, the gamist elements are the ones that feel
extraneous. The drama comes with the characters; the characters'
development depends directly and intimately on the world; picking
a main character who has the inherent tension I'm interested in also
brings a world that has inherent dramatic potential with it. In contrast,
the gamist considerations feel to me as if they arise from outside
of the world (the players' natures) and as if they have no necessary
connection with it.
Perhaps the reason for the asymmetry in the gamist-simulationist-
dramatist triangle is that the order of operations for entry into
the game is important. If you start with the dramatic tension, then
the world that yields that dramatic tension must yield it organically,
and they're a unity. If you start with the world, however, you get
drama by artificially selecting pieces of it for reasons that are
foreign to it, and you break the world model with the foreign
selection process.
> What I did with Honolulu is to say to myself "I am not going to
> have a living sense-of-setting for this game. It is not a
> simulation. Now, how can I arrange things so that I'll be
> able to come up with scenarios?" Suddenly it became possible to
> make the game work, and it seems to be working fairly well--
> certainly it is far more successful than any of its predecessors.
> It is not as fun to run (I would rather have the sense
> of the world) but it's not bad. Essentially, I've abandoned
> the attempt to use my usual simulationist tools and esthetics,
> in return for freedom to do a *lot* more stage-managing.
> For me, at least, it is pyschologically impossible to keep the
> simulationist tools and add stage-managing to them.
I can see this. I don't sense the dramatic elements in my game
as stage-managing, because they're part of the nature of the
world; but I do see the gamist elements that way because they're
imposed from without.
I have no idea whether there's a correlation to be made here or
not, but I'm also an immersive player. However, I think it works
a bit differently for me than it does for you and Scott, if I
remember correctly. I'm under the impression that you both find
author-stance play something that breaks the immersion, because
authorial considerations have to be firewalled.
I slip back and forth between author and immersive stance with
comparative ease, perhaps because the authorial considerations
don't feel like foreign elements to me. What I'd call game
manager considerations are foreign, and therefore if I have to
engage in them, they break immersion and are highly distracting.
Authorial considerations, on the other hand, slide
indistinguishably into playing the (drama-born) world and the
character and form the mesh between them. (I may have done a
certain amount of violence to the term 'author stance' by
subtracting from that perspective what I called 'game manager'
considerations; I strongly suspect that they're lumped in
together there. In that case, say that I mean a subset of
author stance (perhaps the 'deep author' the group has been
groping toward intermittently.))
Shazemar
kera...@mail1.nai.net
Keranset.telmaron.com 5252
http://nw3.nai.net/~keranset
Brian Wong
Mary K. Kuhner (mkku...@phylo.genetics.washington.edu) wrote:
: In article <33be8...@news2.ibm.net> bl...@ibm.net writes:
: One, the one I think most of us are calling "Simulationist", is:
: What happens in the game is driven just by the gameworld and its
: logic, not by dramatic concerns, nor by the desires of GM or players
: for a good story or good challenge.
The idea of simulationist gaming has great appeal on the surface for
me. However I find such games tend to get boring for all but the most active
players. Countless trips to the tavern, then the inn, then the baron's for
tea, then back to the inn, then to the market to buy food, then....
Every little detail explored.
I found myself in countless games of this nature where I just wanted
to hit the fast foward button.
But as I said, the idea of letting things be ruled by the world
appeals to me. So how does one keep it interesting? How do you justify
fast fowarding to the next scene; or whatever...
: The other is the idea of a game where all of the rules are known to
: the players, and the cosmology is known to the players in detail, and
: there is no expectation that they will firewall.
Ok, what do you mean by firewall? I'm new to this group's terminology.
I'm assuming the ability to block player knowledge from character action.
: The second kind of game is not good for CoC or for any kind of horror.
: But I would tend to call it "gamist", actually, not simulationist;
: a simulationist might well prefer that the players knew no more
: than their characters did. The desire to know all the rules strikes
: me as generally coming from a concern for game-as-game.
Then in this aspect I would be both a gamist GM and player. As
a player I prefer to understand the rules. I had trouble playing
Paranoia when I was younger. As a GM I tend to want my players to know
the rules. Ignorance of them irks me. I try to teach the individual as
much as I can.
I do not hold this view with the setting, just with the rules. In
the setting, my player should know what their character's know. If they
know more, they should block it. If they know less, they should learn more.
Somebody had a wonderful triangle I failed to capture...
On that triangle I'd put myself dead center. I've always felt everything one
does should be equally balanced.
Something I picked up from studying Taoism and Buddhism. Not from
reading the AD&D alignment table :-)
--
Rook
Editor of the Super-Hero Networld project for Living Legends at:
http://www.infinex.com/~rook/liv_leg.htm
Also, check out the new version of Villians & Vigilantes at
http://illusionmachines.com/personal/jeff/vandv.html
Mary K. Kuhner
> The idea of simulationist gaming has great appeal on the surface for
>me. However I find such games tend to get boring for all but the most active
>players. Countless trips to the tavern, then the inn, then the baron's for
>tea, then back to the inn, then to the market to buy food, then....
> But as I said, the idea of letting things be ruled by the world
>appeals to me. So how does one keep it interesting? How do you justify
>fast fowarding to the next scene; or whatever...
One way to deal with pacing is to make it a collaborative effort among
GM and players. If the GM says "We're going to skip the next three
weeks" sooner or later the players, who'd been thinking they might do
something during that time, will get upset. Similarly if the players
have complete control. ("But that's when the ambush was going to
happen.") For us it works better if someone says "I don't think the
PCs are going to be doing much this week, are they?" and the GM says
"It doesn't look like any major events are going to occur, no: what
do the PCs do during the week?" and you abstract from there.
You have to be careful of players like Sarah, who use times when
"nothing is happening" to refine their grasp of character interactions;
but if Sarah is in the loop presumably she'll insure that enough of
the down time is played out to suit her.
I think the cardinal rule is "don't push." You can abstract a great
deal and not lose the simulation flavor, as long as there's no sense
that you're rushing towards your goal without regard for what might
intervene. You want to abstract times when, if you played them out,
it's really true that nothing important would happen. And you need
to keep an eye on the PCs' definition of importance; as Sarah
pointed out earlier, if you abstract away a PC's intense interests,
even if they are rather undramatic to play out (i.e. lab time for
a mage) you can undercut the PC badly.
Another helpful technique is to play out a scene of a given kind (i.e.
questioning witnesses to the crime) *once*, to get a flavor of how the
PCs do it; then the next time you can abstract ("Here's what the
witnesses eventually come up with") and not lose the sense of what
must have happened, because you have previous experience to fill in
the missing details. Jon, who is reading over my shoulder, notes
that you don't want to do this if the players are still learning
how to do that kind of scene, because it short-circuits the learning
process. But once the players have it down, this can be a useful
approach.
I tend not to abstract enough, in large part because I rely too much
on watching the NPCs to see what they do next, and this doesn't mix
well with "Cut to next week...." I would do better if I sat down
and drew up timetables for what the NPCs would do if undisturbed;
then if the player asked "Does anything happen this week, supposing
we just spend it recovering?" I would know the answer.
The other tricky thing about abstraction is that if you abstract
times when nothing is happening, the players have to firewall
tenaciously or they'll immediately know that something *is* happening
when you stop abstracting. You may want to do an everyday scene
now and again, both to retain flavor and to lessen this problem.
A couple of my characters in the _Radiant_ campaign are outside the
main flow of events at the moment, and have been for a month. We
keep saying "Let's just run a scene or two for Christine, so that
we get a flavor of what she's doing." But it never seems to work
out, partly because it takes me too long to get in character for a
PC I'm not playing much, and partly because it's hard to come up
with a scene when neither GM nor player really knows any details.
(Christine is serving as the visiting diplomats' gofer, but what
does that mean?) I'm not sure what's to be done about this.
Just some rambly thoughts. Simulation-style games certainly
don't have to be a long series of trips to the market, if you
don't want them to.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Psychohist
Brian Wong posts, in part:
The idea of simulationist gaming has great appeal on
the surface for me. However I find such games tend to
get boring for all but the most active players. Countless
trips to the tavern, then the inn, then the baron's for
tea, then back to the inn, then to the market to buy food,
then....
Every little detail explored.
I found myself in countless games of this nature where I
just wanted to hit the fast foward button.
Then hit it! You might want to play out one or two trips to the market,
but after that, you should be able to say, "I go to the market and pick up
twenty ells of rope and thirty days' worth of cram", and have the
gamesmaster reply "ok" (or prehaps, rarely, "you can only get twelve ells
of rope - there's been a run recently because of all the ships making
repairs from that recent storm").
Abstraction is not a problem for a simulation. The idea is that
everything is still going on in detail in the world, but the players are
ignoring some of that detail.
But as I said, the idea of letting things be ruled by
the world appeals to me. So how does one keep it
interesting? How do you justify fast fowarding to the
next scene; or whatever...
I generally abstract when two conditions are satisfied.
1. None of the players wants the detail.
2. I, as gamesmaster, feel comfortable that I can generate an appropriate
result without going through the detail - that is, that it won't make a
difference to the results what level of detail I use.
Warren Dew
Jeff Stehman
Brian Wong (ro...@infinex.com) wrote:
> But as I said, the idea of letting things be ruled by the world
> appeals to me. So how does one keep it interesting? How do you justify
> fast fowarding to the next scene; or whatever...
Does hitting the fast forward button require justification? Unless
you're going through your character's day in real time, you're already
abstracting time. Making that abstraction grainer during the boring
parts doesn't necessarily violate the simulation any more than is
already done.
> Ok, what do you mean by firewall? I'm new to this group's terminology.
> I'm assuming the ability to block player knowledge from character action.
Correct.
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
Irina Rempt
kera...@ct1.nai.net wrote:
> Perhaps the reason for the asymmetry in the gamist-simulationist-
> dramatist triangle is that the order of operations for entry into
> the game is important. If you start with the dramatic tension, then
> the world that yields that dramatic tension must yield it organically,
> and they're a unity. If you start with the world, however, you get
> drama by artificially selecting pieces of it for reasons that are
> foreign to it, and you break the world model with the foreign
> selection process.
I'm not sure I agree. I started with the world, and when I set up a
game I look for something in the world that might affect the PCs, or
that they might be interested in, much like a journalist looks for
events to write about. Those things are in the world already (though
*I* might not even know unless I specifically look for them) and my
only "dramatic" concern at that moment is how to get the PCs and the
event in touch with each other.
For example: my Gathering game starts with a teacher calling her old
pupils to her death bed and entrusting an unresolved conflict to them.
This is a clear dramatic plot hook, and yet it feels perfectly natural
to me: she *is* dying, those people *have* been her pupils, and she
*wants* to do this. No motivations that don't spring from the world
itself.
I have to trust my players to want to take up the hook, of course, and
I probably wouldn't select *this* particular event in the middle of a
campaign, but then in the middle of any campaign of mine the PCs
usually have enough interests and motivations of their own that I know
of to present the right "news" to them.
> I don't sense the dramatic elements in my game
> as stage-managing, because they're part of the nature of the
> world; but I do see the gamist elements that way because they're
> imposed from without.
I suppose I would feel the same way. I balk at making a particular NPC
more or less dangerous to "cut the challenge to measure", because the
NPC already exists; I can't change them any more than I can change my
own height. I *can* have another thug appear from around the corner
when the PCs seem to be able to avoid or overcome the ones already
present too easily, because additional thugs *do* sometimes appear in a
real world (note that I didn't write "the real world").
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
XX. "Heu, modo itera omnia quae mihi nunc nuper narravisti,
sed nunc Anglice."
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