Johns FAQ, Part 1
Magnus Lie Hetland
The rec.games.frp.advocacy FAQ
==============================
PART I: The Threefold Model
1) What is the Threefold Model?
2) Which one am I? A Dramatist, a Gamist, or a Simulationist?
3) Stop beating around the bush!! What is it already?
4) Don't those categories overlap?
5) But I produce stories that are *always* believable. Aren't my
games both fully dramatist and fully simulationist?
6) So dramatism is ham actors playing through arty nonsense,
gamism is munchkins who want to beat the GM, and simulationism
is rules-lawyers who argue over ballistics?
7) I don't think I'm either dramatist or simulationist. I like
gaming, though, so I must be gamist, right?
(Part II of this FAQ deals with "plot", and Part III deals
with "diceless roleplaying")
Copies of this FAQ can be found on the WWW at:
"http://www-e815.fnal.gov/~jhkim/rpg/styles.html"
The FAQ is posted bi-weekly to rec.games.frp.advocacy by
Magnus Lie Hetland <Magnus....@idi.ntnu.no>
1) What is the Threefold Model?
The Threefold Model is one way of grouping many aspects of
group contracts into logical categories. Full group contract
includes every facet of how the game is played: not just the
mechanical rules, but also how scenarios are constructed, what
sort of behavior is expected of PCs, how actions not covered by
the rules are resolved, allowance of outside distractions, and
so forth. The Threefold divides up many of these into categories
known as Dramatist, Gamist, and Simulationist.
An important part of the model is recognizing that there are
valid different goals for gaming. Many models of RPGs or gamers
tend to have derogatory categories of "munchkin," "poseur," "rules
lawyer," etc. which are contrasted with "true role-players". The
Threefold model is intended to promote an understanding of diverse
interests; it is not meant to single out one style as better or
worse than another.
Role-playing games don't simply classify into good and bad.
The exact same game which one player enjoys, another might dislike.
Rather than say that one or the other has bad taste, it is more
useful to try to make sense of patterns of what different players
and GMs enjoy.
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2) Which one am I? A Dramatist, a Gamist, or a Simulationist?
Most likely, none of the above. Your individual style cannot
be pigeonholed into a single word. More to the point, you probably
use a mix of different techniques, and work towards more than one
goal. You may tend more towards one corner of the triangle, but
you probably value a mix.
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3) Stop beating around the bush!! What is it already?
OK, here is the short definitions:
"dramatist": is the style which values how well the in-game action
creates a satisfying storyline. Different kinds of stories
may be viewed as satisfying, depending on individual tastes,
varying from fanciful pulp action to believable character
drama. It is the end result of the story which is
important.
"gamist": is the style which values setting up a fair challenge for
the *players* (as opposed to the PC's). The challenges may be
tactical combat, intellectual mysteries, politics, or anything
else. The players will try to solve the problems they are
presented with, and in turn the GM will make these challenges
solvable if they act intelligently within the contract.
"simulationist": is the style which values resolving in-game
events based solely on game-world considerations, without
allowing any meta-game concerns to affect the decision.
Thus, a fully simulationist GM will not fudge results to
save PC's or to save her plot, or even change facts unknown
to the players. Such a GM may use meta-game considerations
to decide meta-game issues like who is playing which character,
whether to play out a conversation word for word, and so
forth, but she will resolve actual in-game events based on
what would "really" happen.
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4) Don't those categories overlap?
True, these goals are not *constantly* at odds. On the
short term, a given conflict might happen to be both a fair
challenge and realistically resolved. However, every game
will have problems, including undramatic bits, unrealistic
bits, and unbalanced bits. The Threefold asks about how much
comparative effort you put into solving these.
Even a perfectly simulationist or gamist campaign will have
dramatic bits in them. After all, people will tell stories
about things that happened to them in real life, or even about
what happened in a chess game they were playing. Similarly, a
dramatist campaign will have some conflicts that are a fair
challenge for the players, and some events that are realistic.
But an equally-skilled gamist GM, who doesn't put effort into
the quality of the story, will be able to make better
challenges. Similarly, a simulationist GM, who focusses only
on in-game resolutions, will be able to make things more
"realistic" for that game-world.
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5) But I produce stories that are *always* believable. Aren't my
games both fully dramatist and fully simulationist?
Simulationism is not defined in terms of believability, it
is defined in terms of method. For example, you as GM you could
have a storyline in mind, and set up the background and characters
so well that during the game, the storyline occurs without your
having to noticably fudge. A very simulationist player might not
notice that you constructed the events to produce that story.
However, if she found out, she would feel cheated: you would
have violated her preferred contract.
Rightly or wrongly, a pure simulationist isn't simply trying
to produce a story that is believable. He is trying to actually
find out what would "really" happen by modelling what is in the
game world. Of course, it is impossible to perfectly simulate
this, but he finds interest and value in the attempt.
For example, say the PCs are know that a target is hiding in one
of eight hotels, but they cannot find out which except by searching
them. A dramatist GM might decide based on pacing to have the
second hotel they search be the right one, so that the game doesn't
drag as they go through one after the other. This is perfectly
believable, but a pure simulationist GM will refuse to do this.
Most likely, she will decide on one in advance and let the players
choose what order they search in. The players might find it
immediately, or they might have to wade through seven others.
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6) So dramatism is ham actors playing through arty nonsense,
gamism is munchkins who want to beat the GM, and simulationism
is rules-lawyers who argue over ballistics?
No, those are rabid stereotypes. Even if the stereotypes
have some truth to them, the Threefold is not about just the
lowest common denominator. There are good and bad examples of
each type of game.
A pure dramatist might run a gritty, low-key drama where
the PCs are true-to-life characters who perhaps concentrate on
their work. In this case, the dramatic story might be framed
around how they relate to each other and the tension produced.
A dramatist campaign could also include comedic campaigns,
where the in-game action is tailored for humorous effect
rather than classical "drama". The key is that in-game events
are tailored based on how satisfying the storyline of the
campaign is.
A gamist could run a mystery game where the PCs are
challenged to find the killer based not just on physical clues,
but also on the personalities and motivations of the suspects.
Note that this is similar on the surface to a dramatic story,
but the emphasis is on making it solvable yet challenging to
the players. A purely dramatist mystery might make a better
story, but a purely gamist mystery will be a fairer test of
the player's wits.
Simulationism by definition is going to try to be "realistic"
within the game-world, although it may have natural laws different
than the real world. However, the players are not neccessarily
obsessed with rules or physics. A simulationist game could just
as well focus on political discussion between important figures,
or rebels fighting a propaganda war to win over the masses.
Several posters have run diceless simulationist games.
A purely simulationist mystery would start with determining
how the crime was carried out based only on in-game factors.
The logical consequences of this might mean that the players can
solve it easily, or that they can't solve it at all, or that
they can only solve it by turning it over other authorities. An
absolutely pure simulationist GM won't go back and change things
to make the mystery work better for the PCs.
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7) I don't think I'm either dramatist or simulationist. I like
gaming, though, so I must be gamist, right?
Gamist was *not* intended as a catch-all for anything that
isn't included in the other two categories. It is specifically
about setting up fair challenges for the players to face. The
Threefold is not intended as a be-all and end-all of gaming,
nor is it neccessarily complete. Several people suggested a
fourth group of styles, which was "Social". However, discussion
died down as there was no consensus about what that meant in
contrast to the other styles, or even whether one could even
discuss it on the same level.
Many aspects of gaming are not covered by the Threefold. For
example, any of the three can vary from "Light" to "Serious".
"Beer-and-pretzels" usually refers to Gamist dungeon-crawls, say,
where you are trying to beat the monsters. However, there are
also non-serious dramatists, say who run cheesy superhero plots
where the hero always beats the villian. Note that this is
not gamist since there is no challenge to it -- the hero always
wins, it's just fun seeing how she does it.
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Brandon Blackmoor
>
> Threefold is not intended as a be-all and end-all of gaming,
> nor is it neccessarily complete. Several people suggested a
> fourth group of styles, which was "Social". However, discussion
> died down as there was no consensus about what that meant in
> contrast to the other styles, or even whether one could even
> discuss it on the same level.
There is also a small but nonzero number of people who don't think the
"threefold" really applies to role-playing games in any meaningful sense,
and that using it only encourages misunderstandings.
But those people don't write the FAQ, and probbaly don't post as much to
rec.games.frp.advocacy as people who think the "threefold" model is in some
way useful.
BBlackmoor
Triad3204
In article <77of68$d9j$1...@winter.news.rcn.net>, "Brandon Blackmoor"
<BBlac...@sff.net> writes:
>There is also a small but nonzero number of people who don't think the
>"threefold" really applies to role-playing games in any meaningful sense,
>and that using it only encourages misunderstandings.
You feel that the decision-making process is unimportant in roleplaying games?
You feel that munchkins and "real roleplayers" both like the same type of game?
Expand.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Frank T. Sronce
I expect that what he meant is "Stereotypes and classification schemes
oversimplify the issues and cause more conflicts than they solve."
Kiz
Brandon Blackmoor
Triad3204 wrote:
>
> In article <77of68$d9j$1...@winter.news.rcn.net>, "Brandon Blackmoor"
> <BBlac...@sff.net> writes:
>
> >There is also a small but nonzero number of people who don't think
the
> >"threefold" really applies to role-playing games in any meaningful
sense,
> >and that using it only encourages misunderstandings.
>
> You feel that the decision-making process is unimportant in
roleplaying games?
> You feel that munchkins and "real roleplayers" both like the same
type of game?
"Gamist/simulationist/dramatist" describes role-playing games as
accurately as "blue eyes/red hair/hates Star Trek" describes human
beings. In both cases, the three "axes" chosen are not sufficient to
represent reality to any reasonable degree, nor are they mutually
exclusive, nor are they more meaningful than any other randomly chosen
trio of attributes.
The "threefold" model is a *bad* model, because it does not illuminate
the reality it represents: it obscures it.
BBlackmoor
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Nightshade
>"Gamist/simulationist/dramatist" describes role-playing games as
>accurately as "blue eyes/red hair/hates Star Trek" describes human
>beings. In both cases, the three "axes" chosen are not sufficient to
>represent reality to any reasonable degree, nor are they mutually
>exclusive, nor are they more meaningful than any other randomly chosen
>trio of attributes.
>
>The "threefold" model is a *bad* model, because it does not illuminate
>the reality it represents: it obscures it.
All you've demonstrated, Brandon, is that it doesn't work for you.
Any social descriptive tool is going to look bogus from some people's
point of view, and likely it's going to fail for someone. As far as
I'm concerned, a tool is useful to the extent it allows you to
manipulate things. In the case of the threefold axis, it's allowed me
to analyze and approach problems I did not previously have a way to
approach. I'd say that's the sign that it does not obscure, but
illuminate.
Of course, it's not perfect; any light source tends to cast shadows.
That just means you have to be aware of them, and ideally, improve
your lightsource. But it doesn't make an imperfect lightsource bad or
useless.
Triad3204
In article <36C99DC2...@myriad.net>, "Frank T. Sronce"
<fsr...@myriad.net> writes:
> I expect that what he meant is "Stereotypes and classification schemes
>oversimplify the issues and cause more conflicts than they solve."
This is an interesting comment. The only real conflict caused by the Threefold
in my recent memory here would be conflicts which either:
a) Are discussing ways of expanding/modifying the models in question;
b) When someone comes in and says "You guys are all intellectual snobs!" and
says that we'd all be better off if we ignored the classifications.
When the terminology is used correctly in actual discussions my experience has
been that it generally DECREASES tensions. (Imagine, for example, if people
over on r.g.f.m discussing the AD&D game could simply step back and analyze why
they are expecting different things from their games. Someone did this in a
recent post, and it was a very good post in my opinion and cast a lot of light
into why the argument exists -- focusing on the underlying problems instead of
all the minor things people are debating.)
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Peter Lanore
>
>In article <36C99DC2...@myriad.net>, "Frank T. Sronce"
><fsr...@myriad.net> writes:
>
>> I expect that what he meant is "Stereotypes and classification schemes
>>oversimplify the issues and cause more conflicts than they solve."
>This is an interesting comment. The only real conflict caused by the
Threefold
>in my recent memory here would be conflicts which either:
>a) Are discussing ways of expanding/modifying the models in question;
>b) When someone comes in and says "You guys are all intellectual snobs!"
and
>says that we'd all be better off if we ignored the classifications.
>
Those who group people into two types
and those who don't.
Frank T. Sronce
>
> In article <36C99DC2...@myriad.net>, "Frank T. Sronce"
> <fsr...@myriad.net> writes:
>
> > I expect that what he meant is "Stereotypes and classification schemes
> >oversimplify the issues and cause more conflicts than they solve."
>
> This is an interesting comment. The only real conflict caused by the Threefold
> in my recent memory here would be conflicts which either:
>
> a) Are discussing ways of expanding/modifying the models in question;
> b) When someone comes in and says "You guys are all intellectual snobs!" and
> says that we'd all be better off if we ignored the classifications.
>
> been that it generally DECREASES tensions. (Imagine, for example, if people
> over on r.g.f.m discussing the AD&D game could simply step back and analyze why
> they are expecting different things from their games. Someone did this in a
> recent post, and it was a very good post in my opinion and cast a lot of light
> into why the argument exists -- focusing on the underlying problems instead of
> all the minor things people are debating.)
>
> Justin Bacon
> tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Actually, I'd say that the problem comes when someone misuses the
scheme by overapplying it. ie- assuming that all gamers will fall
neatly into one of those 3 categories, without any overlap. That's
using the scheme wrongly- the scheme was intended to model the world;
the world is under no obligation to match up to the scheme. :-)
That said, I _like_ the scheme and also find it very useful. But we
should never forget that there are other ways of looking at the
situation besides it.
Kiz
John Morrow
>When the terminology is used correctly in actual discussions my experience has
>been that it generally DECREASES tensions. (Imagine, for example, if people
>over on r.g.f.m discussing the AD&D game could simply step back and analyze why
>they are expecting different things from their games. Someone did this in a
>recent post, and it was a very good post in my opinion and cast a lot of light
>into why the argument exists -- focusing on the underlying problems instead of
>all the minor things people are debating.)
Everyone needs to bear in mind that the advocacy group was created for
the "I hate D&D" and "Hero is better than GURPS" threads. For quite a
while, it served that role. Then people did exactly what you are
talking about. They stepped back and analyze why they did or didn't
live various types of games and it turned this group from a flamefest
into a home for theory discussions. No one sat down and designed a
group called "rec.games.frp.ADVOCACY" to discuss theoretical models
of role-playing. It evolved into that from genuine advocacy postings.
John Morrow
Mary K. Kuhner
>Everyone needs to bear in mind that the advocacy group was created for
>the "I hate D&D" and "Hero is better than GURPS" threads. For quite a
>while, it served that role. Then people did exactly what you are
>talking about.
See how insidious the Threefold is! It turned a solidly on-topic
.advocacy group into the monster we know today. We haven't had
an on-topic post in months. Obviously this abomination must be
stopped before it's too late. (Hm, what kind of PCs would you ask
for in a scenario like that?)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
woodelf
<BBlac...@sff.net> wrote:
> "Gamist/simulationist/dramatist" describes role-playing games as
> accurately as "blue eyes/red hair/hates Star Trek" describes human
> beings. In both cases, the three "axes" chosen are not sufficient to
> represent reality to any reasonable degree, nor are they mutually
> exclusive, nor are they more meaningful than any other randomly chosen
> trio of attributes.
>
> The "threefold" model is a *bad* model, because it does not illuminate
> the reality it represents: it obscures it.
ok, now you've lost me. either your analogy overdoes the hyperbole, or i
really don't see where you're coming from. are you saying that you've met
gamers for whom *none* of the concerns embodied in the threefold have
*any* bearing on how they play (conscious or otherwise)? because i can
certainly envision someone who has none of "blue eyes" "red hair" or
"hates Star Trek" in their makeup.
it seems to me that you and i are perhaps trying to use the threefold to
describe completely different things. i see it as a tool for analyzing
why a gamer does what she does during a game. it is not, by any means, a
*complete* analysis, but it does give me a bit of a handle. frex, i can
look at my roommates' gaming preferences. Pete can be described as being
fairly balanced, but with more interest in dramatist and gamist concerns.
thus, in the game he's about to run, i can safely predict that if the
players figure out the Grand Scheme [gotta be obscure in case any of them
are around] he expects them to start acting upon it, whether or not their
characters could have figured it out. Chuck, OTOH, is very gamist. he is
currently playing in a Return to the Tomb of Horrors game, and he spent an
evening recently digging through gaming books looking up such things as a
demi-lich's stats (something his character has no way of knowing), and
figuring out the most outrageous uses for spells he has that don't violate
the letter of the descriptions. he has been known to bitch about players
who won't override their character's goals/motives in order to go along
with the party and engage in the plot of the evening. in his case, the
most concrete prediction i've bothered to make is that there's no way he
could ever enjoy a game i run: he tends to bitch about exactly the things
that i think are most important/interesting, and actively persues gaming
in a style that i find somewhere between pointless and competitive. Steph
is pretty much a dramatist. she is engaged in a Vampire LARP and they
spend perhaps more time "out-of-game" discussing what is going on, and the
ramifications, and who knows what, and what is going to happen, and
elaborating their characters' motives to one another, and generally doing
stuff for the express purpose of setting up "cool scenes" and the like,
than they do playing. for her, and many of her fellow players, the
primary concern is participating in a good story, and secondarily
maintaining consistency of character (frex, i've heard about players
arranging for their character to be absent when something was going to
happen that would put them in the dilemma of either "messing it up" or not
reacting in-character). Steph, however, would probably enjoy gaming with
me, and vice versa. our only disagreement is that i prefer not to give
players knowledge that their characters don't have, thus making OOC
discussions impossible, while she doesn't mind having the info, but
assumes that players will not operate on it.
now, i realize that i've not given wholly complete descriptions of their
gaming preferences. i haven't the time or space, and i'm not sure that i
know any of them (as gamers) any better than the at the level the
threefold provides (which is very abstract)--i've never been in a game
with any of them, though Pete and i have come close. but given my
examples, how do you contend that the threefold is not of use? are you
saying that i've misused the threefold? that i've misjudged my
roommates? that i've become too enamored of the model and shoehorned
their descriptions into a form that fits it? [you are welcome to make
these or any other accusations, if you sincerely believe them; i'm open to
criticism here.] i readily acknowledge that using it to describe a gamer
is rather like trying to describe a person by giving her Myers-Briggs
personality type--it may give you some broad feel for the gamer, but
doesn't tell you much of the details.
woodelf <*>
nbar...@students.wisc.edu
http://www.upl.cs.wisc.edu/~woodelf/
I did not realize that similarity was required for the exercise of
compassion. --Delenn
Brandon Blackmoor
>
> are you saying that you've met gamers for whom *none* of
> the concerns embodied in the threefold have *any* bearing
> on how they play (conscious or otherwise)? because i can
> certainly envision someone who has none of "blue eyes"
> "red hair" or "hates Star Trek" in their makeup.
You understand me correctly.
BBlackmoor
Triad3204
In article <7ak6fq$o6m$1...@lore.eur.sprynet.com>, "Peter Lanore"
<peter....@ci.seattle.wa.us> writes:
>There are two types of people in the world:
>Those who group people into two types
>and those who don't.
Somewhere, deep inside, there is a point buried there....
But I am failing to see it.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Triad3204
>"Gamist/simulationist/dramatist" describes role-playing games as
>accurately as "blue eyes/red hair/hates Star Trek" describes human
>beings. In both cases, the three "axes" chosen are not sufficient to
>represent reality to any reasonable degree, nor are they mutually
>exclusive, nor are they more meaningful than any other randomly chosen
>trio of attributes.
Your analogy is nonsensical. The Threefold/Fourfold in no way attempts to
explicate everything there is to know about roleplaying games or even personal
styles (which is why other terminology has also been crafted and why additional
terminology is continually being crafted).
>The "threefold" model is a *bad* model, because it does not illuminate
>the reality it represents: it obscures it.
Okay, put your money where your mouth is. The Threefold/Fourfold is designed to
describe the decision-making process of the GM when resolving actions within
the game. Show me a decision made in resolving actions which was made using
criteria which would NOT be somehow classifiable under the Fourfold (we'll
throw in the Social apex because its one that I subscribe to personally).
If you can find an example where the model doesn't hold then I will gladly
modify it and/or discard it.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Arcady
Frankly; I think discussions on the 'esoterics' of gaming. Such as the
threefold model etc... have a much better place in the forum than the
subjects for which it was created.
Maybe we should just rewrite the groups charter to match what is
actually discussed here.
Despite's the rest of the RPG world viewing us as pompus (sp?) as***, I
rather enjoy reading and posting in here.
.misc is must better served by the 'D&D sucks' or 'atheism vs.
agnoticism vs. christianity' stuff. Let's let them keep it.
No need to go back to 'on topic' in here. Unless we change what 'on
topic' means. :)
--
Arcady WebRPG Town Hall Magistrate townhall.webrpg.com <0){{{{><
Alluvia FreeRPG: http://www.rad-inet.com/~rook/alluvia/AlluviaRPG/
/.)\ Projects: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Portal/1865/
\(@/ Homepage: http://www.jps.net/arcady/
Peter Lanore
>In article <7ak6fq$o6m$1...@lore.eur.sprynet.com>, "Peter Lanore"
><peter....@ci.seattle.wa.us> writes:
>>There are two types of people in the world:
>>Those who group people into two types
>>and those who don't.
>Somewhere, deep inside, there is a point buried there....
>But I am failing to see it.
There are people who see the truths in an threefold world analogy depicted
as a model.
There are people who see the places where the analogy breaks down.
Debate at cross purposes yields little.
Two-grouper: There are those who group people in two groups, and those who
don't.
Non-grouper: No there aren't, there are lots of different groups of people.
Two-grouper: But some group people into two groups.
Non-grouper: and some group them into three, four, a hundred, or only 1.
Two-grouper: But those are all in the second group.
Non-grouper: Why should they be grouped in the second group? They are all
individual groups...
Two-grouper: But anyone who doesn't group people into two groups is a
non-two-grouper and
that puts them in the second group.
Non-grouper: Your model doesn't allow for people who sometimes do and
sometimes don't and doesn't treat all of the other groups as groups.
Two-grouper: They're not other groups, they're all non-two-groupers.
and on it goes.
woodelf
<BBlac...@sff.net> wrote:
> woodelf wrote in message ...
> >
> > are you saying that you've met gamers for whom *none* of
> > the concerns embodied in the threefold have *any* bearing
> > on how they play (conscious or otherwise)? because i can
> > certainly envision someone who has none of "blue eyes"
> > "red hair" or "hates Star Trek" in their makeup.
>
> You understand me correctly.
please elaborate. i'd love to hear an example of a GM decision or series
of decisions that embodied none of the threefold. i honestly can't think
of one.
Brandon Blackmoor
woodelf wrote in message ...
>>
>> You understand me correctly.
>
>please elaborate.
No. I've spent more time on this "threefold" nonsense than it
deserves. I would not have mentioned it *this* time, except
someone asked a specific question about something I posted weeks
ago.
BBlackmoor
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Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
>are you saying that you've met gamers for whom *none* of
>the concerns embodied in the threefold have *any* bearing
>on how they play (conscious or otherwise)? because i can
>certainly envision someone who has none of "blue eyes"
>"red hair" or "hates Star Trek" in their makeup.
>
>or series of decisions that embodied none of the threefold. i
>honestly can't think of one.
Whether or not it's possible to classify a game in terms in terms
of the threefold says little about whether or not it is profitable
to do so. For example, I do not find it useful to analyze my current
game, _End of the Line_, in terms of the threefold.
The setting is loosely insprired P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books
and Richard Knaak's odd little book _Dutchman_. The idea is that
there are a large number of parallel worlds, each connected to
two others like links in a chain. From somewhere outside reality
an entity called Legion has entered the Chain of Creation and
begun to destroy the worlds one by one. After it consumes each
world, it moves down to the next one and repeats.
When a world is invaded by Legion, certain people gain a connection
to and begin to embody archetypes that exist in that world's
collective unconsciousness. These empowered people are the primary
opposition to Legion's advance. (Obviously, at the start of the
game they have consistently failed to stop Legion.) When each world
is destroyed, some of the archetypal heroes are able to flee to
the next world, where they must recruit and train the heros of the
new world to try and stop Legion once more.
Now, since these people to some extent embody archetypes, one of the
things that they can expect to happen to them is that events that
happen to them will tend to fall into the patterns of the myth-cycle
they belong to. And they know this -- it's perfectly in-character
for a PC to decide that investigation is not bearing fruit and that
it makes sense to wander around and try to discern omens and
foreshadowing in what happens to them. (It's not a great idea to
rely too heavily on this, though -- Legion comes from outside the
Chain of Creation and it and its agents aren't consistently subject
to the mythic patterns.)
The distinctions that the threefold makes are not very useful for this
game because of the high level of reflexivity of the narrative, i.e. the
characters know that events tend to fall into a pattern that looks like
a plot. So I don't find it very productive to try and separate out world
and story in this case.
Neel
Triad3204
<BBlac...@sff.net> writes:
>woodelf wrote in message ...
>>>
>>> You understand me correctly.
>>
>>please elaborate.
>
>No. I've spent more time on this "threefold" nonsense than it
>deserves. I would not have mentioned it *this* time, except
>someone asked a specific question about something I posted weeks
>ago.
Translation: He can't and he has this sinking feeling that maybe the Threefold
isn't a failure after all.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Triad3204
Krishnaswami) writes:
>Whether or not it's possible to classify a game in terms in terms
>of the threefold says little about whether or not it is profitable
>to do so. For example, I do not find it useful to analyze my current
>game, _End of the Line_, in terms of the threefold.
Sure, for this particular game the Threefold is unimportant (although it can
still be applied). How does this negate the usefulness of the Threefold? It's
like saying that in measuring the speed of a pitcher's throw the law of gravity
is unimportant -- this is true, even though the law of gravity is *still*
useful and gravity is *still* acting on the ball.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>In article <7avfs1$2uv$1...@antiochus.ultra.net>, ne...@alum.mit.edu (Neelakantan
>Krishnaswami) writes:
>
>>Whether or not it's possible to classify a game in terms in terms
>>of the threefold says little about whether or not it is profitable
>>to do so. For example, I do not find it useful to analyze my current
>>game, _End of the Line_, in terms of the threefold.
>
>Sure, for this particular game the Threefold is unimportant (although it can
>still be applied). How does this negate the usefulness of the Threefold?
I don't mean this to sound snide, but I can't see how you get from the
first sentence in that paragraph to the second.
It is a true fact that Richard Stallman has brown eyes, but that has
no relevance at all to my use of Emacs as a text editor. Likewise it
may be true that _EotL_ has a spot somewhere in the threefold, but
that doesn't help me run it or even describe it to other gamers.
>It's like saying that in measuring the speed of a pitcher's throw the
>law of gravity is unimportant -- this is true, even though the law of
>gravity is *still* useful and gravity is *still* acting on the ball.
No, the threefold is a taxonomy; it organizes the space of possible
games according to features some people find useful. This is not a
unique or privileged division, however -- many of the games I want
to run are interesting because of features that aren't well-
characterized by the threefold's taxonomy.
Here are some games I would like to run that I think are ill-suited
to description in terms of the threefold.
1. End of the Line -- I described this in my prior post.
2. A superhero game in the style of Astro City; that is, the
four-color stuff would exist but the focus of the game would
be on the small-scale consequences and repercussions of those
elements. It would not necessarily be realistic -- the idea
is to see what the intrusion of superheroics into a world a
lot like our own. This mandates that a) the world couldn't be
drastically different from ours and b) that superheroics
nonetheless be a familiar part of the public consciousness.
(I don't think that this is possible to do both self-consistently
btw.)
3. Exodus II -- this would basically be an RPG version of
of the book of Exodus, except that Egypt would be replaced
with a Golden Age SF style utopia, and the androids who
maintain this utopia would stand in for the Jews. The idea
is to build a game with a lot of philosophical "kick" to
it -- God, slavery, ideas of the good society, the rights of
the alien, and machine consciousness are all potent ideas,
and I'd be interested to discover how they mix.
I don't think that I run a really wildly unusual set of games,
but I find that thinking about the games that I run in terms of
the threefold is not helpful to me. This is because the three
characteristics chosen in the threefold are not the ones that
are significant to my game. (They are kind of like regression
variables that are only weakly correlated with the dependent
variable, to make an analogy with statistics.)
Neel
Amber, Dan, Dare, or Julie
>
> In article <19990301164124...@ngol05.aol.com>, tria...@aol.com (Triad3204) wrote:
> >Sure, for this particular game the Threefold is unimportant (although it can
> >still be applied). How does this negate the usefulness of the Threefold?
>
> I don't mean this to sound snide, but I can't see how you get from the
> first sentence in that paragraph to the second.
Because it will help a number of others which is significant to us? It
may not be significant to you, you may not happen to like many games
that have a significant position of the Threefold, but that's why the
Threefold is one mechanic of many. The Aquinian Angels game, for
instance, had nothing interesting to do on the Threefold, but had
fascinating stance issues.
Actually, going back to DejaNews, because of the Threefold I know I
wouldn't like End Of The Line: I'm a simulationist, and I don't think I
could play its premise as a simulation. Certainly not without more data
on how these archetype-people feel that they come by their archetype
knowledge.
> >It's like saying that in measuring the speed of a pitcher's throw the
> >law of gravity is unimportant -- this is true, even though the law of
> >gravity is *still* useful and gravity is *still* acting on the ball.
>
> No, the threefold is a taxonomy; it organizes the space of possible
> games according to features some people find useful. This is not a
> unique or privileged division, however -- many of the games I want
> to run are interesting because of features that aren't well-
> characterized by the threefold's taxonomy.
Which is why it isn't a unique(one may argue priveleged, depending on
how you consider controversey) taxonomy.
> Here are some games I would like to run that I think are ill-suited
> to description in terms of the threefold.
>
> 1. End of the Line -- I described this in my prior post.
>
> 2. A superhero game in the style of Astro City; that is, the
> four-color stuff would exist but the focus of the game would
> be on the small-scale consequences and repercussions of those
> elements.
<snip>
>
> 3. Exodus II -- this would basically be an RPG version of
> of the book of Exodus,
<snip>
>
> I don't think that I run a really wildly unusual set of games,
> but I find that thinking about the games that I run in terms of
> the threefold is not helpful to me. This is because the three
> characteristics chosen in the threefold are not the ones that
> are significant to my game. (They are kind of like regression
> variables that are only weakly correlated with the dependent
> variable, to make an analogy with statistics.)
Hm. You seem to be looking for something outside the Threefold; I think
its original purpose was to find player/game discontinuities. For
instance, EotL is probably mid-Threefold, so non-extreme players will
probably fit, the superhero game is probably between the middle and the
sim end, so middling simulationists will fit best but mid-Threefold and
strong sim players will probably fit(I would), Exodus II will probably
be run dramatist, so dramatists and middling dramatists will probably
fit.
Actually, Exodus II could easily be done simulationist, but you
described an interest in story-type aspects. If you did it
simulationist, then I would probably fit.
Mind you, I don't mean the "I would fit"s literally, because I'm a very
bad player, and prefer to GM. But if you had someone like me as a
potential player, the Threefold would tell you to avoid bringing them in
to EotL and Exodus II as I think you'd run it, but would be one green
light for the superhero game. (We'd next look at other issues, like
plotting methods.)
It also works if an existing game is showing friction, as a diagnostic
tool. If you had a player who was good in the superhero game, then
bombed in EotL, you might look at the Threefold and find that he's
simulationist, and provide stronger simulationist support, consult one
of the other tools and provide more support there, or decide you don't
want to change the game(maybe everyone else loves it) and ask him to
leave.
- Dare, GURPSist extraordinaire and plenipotentiary
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Hi! I'm a .sig virus! Join the fun and copy me into yours! :)
* Spammers looking for addresses? Try these: jamey...@hotmail.com,
ja...@hotmail.com Spam me and get your address here today!
Triad3204
Krishnaswami) writes:
>>Sure, for this particular game the Threefold is unimportant (although it can
>>still be applied). How does this negate the usefulness of the Threefold?
>
>I don't mean this to sound snide, but I can't see how you get from the
>first sentence in that paragraph to the second.
A physicist is attempting to calculate how long it will light to reach the
Earth from the Sun. For this particular problem the Law of Gravity is
unimportant (although it can still be applied). Should the physicist,
therefore, conclude that the Law of Gravity was created by a bunch of snobs
interested only in creating models of the physical universe for the sake of
creating meaningly terminology? Of course not.
> No, the threefold is a taxonomy; it organizes the space of possible
> games according to features some people find useful. This is not a
> unique or privileged division, however -- many of the games I want
> to run are interesting because of features that aren't well-
> characterized by the threefold's taxonomy.
Let me say it again: SO WHAT? Just because it isn't useful in all situations
you cannot conclude that it is therefore a complete waste of time --
*especially* since the Threefold was never designed to BE useful in all
situations. You're setting up a complete straw man, demonstrating that the
Threefold doesn't accomplish it, and then concluding that the Threefold is a
waste of time.
Similarly I want the Newton's Laws to calculate my taxes. They don't. Therefore
Newton's Laws are a waste of time.
> 1. End of the Line -- I described this in my prior post.
> 2. A superhero game in the style of Astro City; that is, the
> 3. Exodus II -- this would basically be an RPG version of
In none of your descriptions do you ever discuss your resolution process for
the games in question -- so what's your point exactly? That the Threefold can't
be used a catch-all description for a campaign? No kidding. The Second Law of
Thermodynamics is lousy at explaining why my friend broke up with his
girlfriend last week.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
> Actually, going back to DejaNews, because of the Threefold I know I
>wouldn't like End Of The Line: I'm a simulationist, and I don't think I
>could play its premise as a simulation. Certainly not without more data
>on how these archetype-people feel that they come by their archetype
>knowledge.
I'm happy to talk about my game, and will gladly take any excuse to
do so. :)
The archetypes typically learn what they are from archetypes fleeing
the destruction of the previous world; they discover that they have
abilities beyond what ordinary people can do; and they can observe that
the shape of their experiences tend to fall into mythic patterns; and
they often have dreams and visions that (often obliquely) hint at the
nature of their powers. Archetypes also have an ability to sense one
another, and this sense gives an impression of each others' nature.
It's also possible for a person to embody an archetype that they don't
want, and they can try to fight it. For example, the person embodying
the Assassin might actually have a horror of killing. She will still
be really, really good at killing from stealth, and routinely find
herself in situations where murder can simplify things for her, but
if she perseveres and finds peaceful solutions to her problems she
can weaken the power of her type, and its hold over her life.
Conversely, if she chooses to accept her archetype and kill precisely
and without remorse, then she can strengthen it and grow stronger
mystically. She will be better at hiding and killing, more and more
of her problems will be solvable through bloodshed, her insight into
death will grow, etc. Note that the *way* she kills will also shape
her archetype -- her powers as the Assassin will be different if she
always tries to get her victim to love her before betraying them than
if she blows them up with truck bombs.
In game, the players are the subject of a full-scale police manhunt
right now -- they broke the avatar of the Trickster out of jail in
a very flashy way. But whether or not the police are successful in
finding them depends somewhat on their archetype.
The Cursed Swordsman, for example, is almost certain to run into the
cops. The Cursed Swordsman is doomed to (against his own wishes) fight
and kill good men, especially if they represent the forces of authority
and civilization. His archetype will tend to put him in situations that
result in bloodbaths, and the manhunt is a perfect chance.
Things are different for the Trickster, however. If he runs into the
authorities, it's a chance for him to fool them; trying to avoid them
is a demonstration of their inability to catch him. Therefore his
archetype won't tilt the odds of whether or not he runs into the cops.
It will depend on what he does and where the cops are looking. (I'm
currently looking up statistics of police coverage to estimate what
the odds should be.)
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>>
>> 2. A superhero game in the style of Astro City; that is, the
>> four-color stuff would exist but the focus of the game would
>> be on the small-scale consequences and repercussions of those
>> elements.
>
>its original purpose was to find player/game discontinuities. For
>instance, EotL is probably mid-Threefold, so non-extreme players will
>probably fit, the superhero game is probably between the middle and the
>sim end, so middling simulationists will fit best but mid-Threefold and
>strong sim players will probably fit(I would), Exodus II will probably
>be run dramatist, so dramatists and middling dramatists will probably
>fit.
I'll concentrate on just one example and explain why imo the superhero
game blows up the threefold.
You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
world of Astro City is internally inconsistent. For example, if 4-color
superscience exists, how come it doesn't spread into the wider world?
For example, in _Watchmen_ Dr. Manhattan's ability to transmute elements
led to a wide-scale adoption of lithium-battery powered cars. Or if
powerful, reproducible magic exists, why isn't commonly used in the
world at large? Or how come superheroes from outside the US are always
national-theme superheroes?
The reason, of course, is that it's not possible to follow the chain
of causality without either a) changing the world into one very unlike
ours, or b) making superheroes act in secret or be a very new
phenomenon. Since the point of the game is to see how comic-book style
superheroics shape perceptions of familiar, everyday life, the decision-
making process must get twisted to make sure that everyday life
remains the same and that superheroes are well-known.
Likewise, the focus on the experience of everday life means that it's
important to avoid trying too hard to fit the events of the game into
a well-structured narrative. Everyday life is full of anticlimaxes and
dangly bits, and if they get dropped then we again lose the experience
of "everday life plus superheroes." Except that this time we lose the
shape of everyday life, whereas before we lost the familiar conventions
of the superhero genre.
Now, I think it's also obvious that this campaign doesn't have any
expectation of an interesting set of resolution points -- a perfectly
valid scenario might be "You are at the filming of a television show
when Lex Luthor takes it hostage. You are forced to applaud his live-
broadcast rant until Superman shows up and rescues you." The PC is
/literally/ a member of the audience in this story; there's no conflict
of any sort that can be characterized as a game. The whole point is to
create a situation that gives the PC a superhero-flavored experience
to digest.
None of the three poles (or the spaces in between) really capture
what is going on; my belief is that there are a lot of games like
that.
Neel
Brian Gleichman
<7c4gqb$l8n$2...@ligarius.ultra.net>...
>You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
>world of Astro City is internally inconsistent.
Simulation doesn't require consistency of the nature you refer to. A
simulation of of the 4-color world of comics needs only to be consistent
with 4-color comics, the rest be damned.
Of course a player's or GM's ability to deal with the idea of simulating a
4-color world may be questionable. People have a very hard time dealing with
something that violates their own personal view of reality.
You seem to know this as you state:
>The reason, of course, is that it's not possible to follow the chain
>of causality without either a) changing the world into one very unlike
>ours,...
I imagine this means you don't want to run a simulation of 4-color more than
you think a simulation of 4-color isn't possible, so...
>Likewise, the focus on the experience of everday life means that it's
>important to avoid trying too hard to fit the events of the game into
>a well-structured narrative.
The Drama side of the threefold doesn't require a well-structured narrative
anymore than movies or books require a well-structured narrative.
One might say that well-structured narrative is required for 'good' drama,
but even that is open to opinion.
All the Drama side of the threefold indicates is a willingness to manipulate
the game in order to produce the events/results that are desired by the GM
and/or the players.
The requirement of well-structured narrative exists only if the GM/players
require it to exist as a goal motivating the above. In fact, the desire for
a poorly structured narrative may even be the goal.
>Now, I think it's also obvious that this campaign doesn't have any
>expectation of an interesting set of resolution points
If such examples as you give were not rare, I would agree with you that
gamist would be a poor fit. The everyday life point you make also speaks
against gamist.
John Kim
Threefold model, in particular the example of his "Astro City"
style superhero game which focusses on small-scale consequences
and repercussions. Bear in mind I know nothing about "Astro City",
and I am thus not sure just what sort of stories these are.
In general, I would like to look at what *does* work in
analyzing such a game. I do happen to think that the Threefold
(in particular simulationism) still applies, but of course there
is more to looking at the game then just saying where it lies
between simulationism/dramatism/gamism.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
>world of Astro City is internally inconsistent. For example, if 4-color
>superscience exists, how come it doesn't spread into the wider world?
>For example, in _Watchmen_ Dr. Manhattan's ability to transmute elements
>led to a wide-scale adoption of lithium-battery powered cars. Or if
>powerful, reproducible magic exists, why isn't commonly used in the
>world at large? Or how come superheroes from outside the US are always
>national-theme superheroes?
Well, by this logic, a science fiction game cannot be a
simulation unless the GM can explain in detail how the faster-than-
light drive works, why lasers are used instead of kinetic cannons.
A fantasy game cannot be a simulation unless all the social
consequences of magic on all fields and walks of life are worked
out in detail, etc.
Simulationism is defined in terms of in-game decision
making -- i.e. if you define that superheroes outside the US are
national-theme superheroes, then that is a law of the game-world
regardless of exactly how you explain it. In the same way, I could
define how an FTL drive functions for a simulationist sci-fi without
having to calculate the exact physics which allow it to work.
The important question here is, within the game, how do these
four-color features impact the way that you make decisions?
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>The reason, of course, is that it's not possible to follow the chain
>of causality without either a) changing the world into one very unlike
>ours, or b) making superheroes act in secret or be a very new
>phenomenon.
>
>Since the point of the game is to see how comic-book style superheroics
>shape perceptions of familiar, everyday life, the decision-making
>process must get twisted to make sure that everyday life remains
>the same and that superheroes are well-known.
My general impression is that you are saying that it isn't
possible to follow the chain of causality *throughout the world*.
However, is it possible to follow the chain of causality within
the framework of the campaign. i.e. You said that this game was
about "small-scale consequences and repercussions." How much do
you as GM follow in-game causality in your decisions? For example:
1) One of the features of four-color comics is that they are morality
plays. That is, if the hero acts morally he will win out even if
his actions are mind-numbingly stupid on a practical level. Can
the players count on this?
1.5) If the players cannot count on this, what keeps them acting
like superheroes, if anything?
2) Taking your example from above, let's say that one of the PC's is
a super-scientist and the player says she wants to market one of
her inventions for mass-production. How do you deal with this?
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Likewise, the focus on the experience of everday life means that it's
>important to avoid trying too hard to fit the events of the game into
>a well-structured narrative. Everyday life is full of anticlimaxes
>and dangly bits, and if they get dropped then we again lose the
>experience of "everday life plus superheroes." Except that this time
>we lose the shape of everyday life, whereas before we lost the
>familiar conventions of the superhero genre.
One of the things that I emphasized in my FAQ definition of
"dramatism" is that there is not a single universal storyline that
all games are looking for. The only thing you are specifying here
is that you want your stories to not have the typical Hollywood/
Aristotilean dramatic structure.
The question is, what if your story started wandering away
from the "everyday life" that you were picturing -- i.e. perhaps
the PC's start dropping their mundane ties to commit themselves to
some movement or such. Would you manipulate events to get back
to the sort of stories about everyday life that you want?
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>None of the three poles (or the spaces in between) really capture
>what is going on; my belief is that there are a lot of games like
>that.
Well, I think it is absolutely clear that the game has
no or very little Gamist element, which says something. I further
think that others might learn more about how the game works by
probing the balance between Simulationism and Dramatism -- i.e.
how and to what extent you produce four-color elements in the
game, say.
Mary K. Kuhner
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>The archetypes typically learn what they are from archetypes fleeing
>the destruction of the previous world; they discover that they have
>abilities beyond what ordinary people can do; and they can observe that
>the shape of their experiences tend to fall into mythic patterns; and
>they often have dreams and visions that (often obliquely) hint at the
>nature of their powers. Archetypes also have an ability to sense one
>another, and this sense gives an impression of each others' nature.
>It's also possible for a person to embody an archetype that they don't
>want, and they can try to fight it.
The Threefold may not be helping you here, but certainly the main
question I would have as a player presented with this premise would
be "Do you want me to play this straight, purely from my PC's point of
view, without thinking about how to contribute to the archetypal
qualities of the game? Or do you want me to cooperate with you in,
for example, insuring that the Cursed Swordsman does get pushed into
fighting goodly men?" This is, from my point of view as a player, the
Drama/Sim dichotomy (though one could also look at it from the
Actor/Author/Audience/IC perspective, equally usefully). And this
would be absolutely the key thing for me to figure out as a player,
since a mistake in this regard would probably be a disaster.
For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting her
archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the pressures
upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as she
would fight? If I do one and you expect the other it will probably
not work out well at all.
Maybe the names have too much baggage to be helpful to you, but I think
if we did a jargon-free discussion of how to manage this game, a lot
of the same issues would come up.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>Likewise, the focus on the experience of everday life means that it's
>important to avoid trying too hard to fit the events of the game into
>a well-structured narrative. Everyday life is full of anticlimaxes and
>dangly bits, and if they get dropped then we again lose the experience
>of "everday life plus superheroes." Except that this time we lose the
>shape of everyday life, whereas before we lost the familiar conventions
>of the superhero genre.
I think this is the same misconception of "dramatist" that Brett Evill
and the rest of us went round and round with, and I think it's an
unhelpful way to look at it. I'm not surprised that you find the
Threefold useless if you have that definition of "drama" as one of the
points.
You're interested in this game very specifically for an experience,
one with a certain flavor and color and shape. It's not an experience
that you trust to fall naturally out of simulation: you're right, this
is not a simulationist game. It's a story. It's not a "dramatic"
story with a well-structured narrative: it's a slice-of-life story
illustrating "everyday life plus superheroes". The world background
exists in order to support that, not for its own sake as in a
simulationist game (if it existed for its own sake, I doubt you would
be happy for it to be internally inconsistent).
You're going to admit things into this game to the extent that they
serve that goal, and exclude them to the extent that they undercut it;
you'll probably expect the players to do the same.
That's what I'd need to know in contemplating playing in it. You may
choose against the label "dramatist" and I can certainly sympathize with
that; but somehow, you'd have to get across to me what you were aiming
for. If I don't know that you have "slice of life plus superheroes"
as a goal, I am almost surely going to have inappropriate characters,
inappropriate expectations, and inappropriate reactions.
For me, "dramatist" gets that across concisely. I don't think this example
breaks the Threefold at all, unless you let people like Brett and
David Berkman define "drama" for you.
The thing that sorted that issue out for me was comparing a game I played
in with the novella that I wrote based on it. I put things in the
novella to make it a better story *in my eyes*: those same things I would
not have wanted in the game: it was a non-dramatist game not by
Hollywood or Theatrix standards of drama, but by my *own* standards of
how a good story about that situation would work.
(That said, if you find the newsgroup's reaction to use of those terms
unhelpful, by all means drop them: your descriptions are extremely
cogent on their own and don't need the help of jargon.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Brian Gleichman
>Assuming that super-science is reproducible, there is no in-world
>reason for it not to proliferate
Two points:
First:
Tech in the 4-color world basically comes in three levels- real world (most
common), Superheroic (Iron Man for example) and watered down Superheroic
(SHIELD Manroid).
One can come up with any number of good reasons for this type of structure.
Examples abound in the real world of amost this very same structure, they
need only be exaggerated for use in the 4-color one.
-------
Second:
Why does one even need an in-world reason. One doesn't have to understand
what causes gravity to use it in a campaign.
Just tell the players up front that they need characters, who like most
people in this world, don't go looking for such explanations either because
they don't care or already know and accept whatever explanation there is.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
> A reply to Neel's comments about the application of the
>Threefold model, in particular the example of his "Astro City"
>style superhero game which focusses on small-scale consequences
>and repercussions. Bear in mind I know nothing about "Astro City",
>and I am thus not sure just what sort of stories these are.
You should definitely look for it; it's an excellent and consistently
high-quality series.
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
>>world of Astro City is internally inconsistent. For example, if 4-color
>>superscience exists, how come it doesn't spread into the wider world?
>>For example, in _Watchmen_ Dr. Manhattan's ability to transmute elements
>>led to a wide-scale adoption of lithium-battery powered cars. Or if
>>powerful, reproducible magic exists, why isn't commonly used in the
>>world at large? Or how come superheroes from outside the US are always
>>national-theme superheroes?
>
> Well, by this logic, a science fiction game cannot be a
>simulation unless the GM can explain in detail how the faster-than-
>light drive works, why lasers are used instead of kinetic cannons.
>A fantasy game cannot be a simulation unless all the social
>consequences of magic on all fields and walks of life are worked
>out in detail, etc.
>
> Simulationism is defined in terms of in-game decision
>making -- i.e. if you define that superheroes outside the US are
>national-theme superheroes, then that is a law of the game-world
>regardless of exactly how you explain it. In the same way, I could
>define how an FTL drive functions for a simulationist sci-fi without
>having to calculate the exact physics which allow it to work.
This is not at all the same thing. I can imagine a PC scientist in your
sf game investigating the physics of FTL. I don't think the same can be
said of the conventions of a four-color universe: no superhero ever
wonders -- can ever wonder -- why why London's chief supervillains are
Guy Fawkes and Cromwell Z, and LA *doesn't* have Valley Girl and
The Surf Monster.
>2) Taking your example from above, let's say that one of the PC's is
> a super-scientist and the player says she wants to market one of
> her inventions for mass-production. How do you deal with this?
I honestly have no idea -- I expect it would break the game if it
were to come to this.
Assuming that super-science is reproducible, there is no in-world
reason for it not to proliferate. However, it is an observable fact
that in four-color comic books it *doesn't* proliferate. No one uses
hovercars to get to work; construction workers don't use power armor
and force fields to build buildings; no power plants are designed
that tap the "cosmic flow."
I can't imagine a mechanism that simultaneously preserves the four-
color conventions and satisfies the demands of consistent resolution.
If a player asked me to deal with this, I would be stumped.
The main ways that I have seen "realistic" superhero games deal with
super-science are as follows:
a) Placebotech/black-box tech. For some reason, only the inventor of
the supertech can get it to work. Perhaps the "tech" is just junk that
the super uses as a focus for their powers, or perhaps it is just so
fantastically complex and tempermental that only the superhero himself
can build and understand it.
This precludes that staple of the genre, the super-inventor made wealthy
by his inventions. It also prevents the various secret agencies from
having access to jet packs and ray guns and spy beams. (Not to mention
helicarriers!)
b) Novelty. Superpowers are a very new phenomenon, and super-science
has not had time to permeate modern life. I don't think I've seen this
as often as the others, but it is still an effective way of preventing
super-science from transforming everday life.
One thing that I really like about four-color comics is their parallel
history of superheros. The old guard who were active in World War II,
the disco heros from the 70s with bell-bottoms and Afros, the vacuum
tubes and fins of supertech from the 50s, etc. I would miss this, and
it would be a serious loss to a game that has as a major thread the
impact of superheros on the public consciousness.
c) Super-science *DOES* change the world. The previously mentioned example
of electric cars in _Watchmen_ comes to mind here.
Of course, this is an obviously unacceptable solution for a game that
requires everday life to be as familiar as possible to the *players*.
What I *would* do is ask the players not to create characters who think
about mass-producing supertech, so that I am never put in a position of
having to choose between the four-color-ness and real-ness of the world.
Obviously, however, if they are changed by their experiences then we are
stuck: the point of the game are the changes the characters experience,
and it would be no fun to be unfaithful to them.
> The important question here is, within the game, how do these
>four-color features impact the way that you make decisions?
The interface between the real and the four-color worlds is a very
uneasy one, which is what makes it so interesting to game in and
around. Having to come down definitely on one side or the other will
(imo) destroy a lot of the appeal of the game concept.
Rather than constraining how events are decided, I'd try to encourage
characters who can fit the game. (It's not all gloom, after all: the
genre convention of secret identities creates an excellent way of
switching between the "super" and "real" worlds.)
> My general impression is that you are saying that it isn't
>possible to follow the chain of causality *throughout the world*.
>However, is it possible to follow the chain of causality within
>the framework of the campaign. i.e. You said that this game was
>about "small-scale consequences and repercussions." How much do
>you as GM follow in-game causality in your decisions? For example:
>
>1) One of the features of four-color comics is that they are morality
> plays. That is, if the hero acts morally he will win out even if
> his actions are mind-numbingly stupid on a practical level. Can
> the players count on this?
Yes, but only if the "focus of action" is on a superheroic plane; the
ordinary life has the regular moral consequences and ambiguities of real
life. So two superheroes can fight and level a city block, and no one
will be hurt (unless the moral is "avoid needless violence") -- but
a truck bomb of exactly equal destructive force *will* kill dozens.
There are seams in the gameworld, that can't be fixed and will tear
if pressed. The only thing that can be done is to not press on them.
> The question is, what if your story started wandering away
>from the "everyday life" that you were picturing -- i.e. perhaps
>the PC's start dropping their mundane ties to commit themselves to
>some movement or such. Would you manipulate events to get back
>to the sort of stories about everyday life that you want?
Again, this is something that I would try to avoid by convention,
as it were. I'd ask for characters that wouldn't do this, but if it
happened that this was the way the game was developing, I would talk
out-of-game with the players. I would then either start over with new
characters, change the focus of the game to follow the PCs, or change
the characters so they don't do this, depending on the players'
preferences. It's clearly possible to come up with situations that
can't be salvaged, but I think they can mostly be avoided through
careful wriggling.
Neel
Nightshade
>I can't imagine a mechanism that simultaneously preserves the four-
>color conventions and satisfies the demands of consistent resolution.
>If a player asked me to deal with this, I would be stumped.
>
>The main ways that I have seen "realistic" superhero games deal with
>super-science are as follows:
>
>a) Placebotech/black-box tech. For some reason, only the inventor of
>the supertech can get it to work. Perhaps the "tech" is just junk that
>the super uses as a focus for their powers, or perhaps it is just so
>fantastically complex and tempermental that only the superhero himself
>can build and understand it.
>
>This precludes that staple of the genre, the super-inventor made wealthy
>by his inventions. It also prevents the various secret agencies from
>having access to jet packs and ray guns and spy beams. (Not to mention
>helicarriers!)
>
There's a comprimise position on this I use in my Koln Campaign;
supertech can be distributed, but it typically can't be maintained at
the same level as for the inventor. A relatively normal 4-color style
campaign can survive the impact of good batteries, available but
expensive energy weapons, and the occasional construction exoskeleton
while still looking fundamentally like our world. Of course in the
long run it'll change dramatically, but that's not out of keeping with
the 'futures' we see in many superhero comics.
This even works retroactively, as long as you pick your
super-scientists carefully. As an example, Tesla was one in my game,
and he even manufactured bulky energy projectors the French had set up
on the Maginot Line. In practice they were finicky, and required too
much attention by too skilled a workers to be workable at the time,
and were ignored for many years. The real world is full of
technologies like this; in comics, it's just that some people can cook
the books on this sort of thing more than a little.
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>In article <7c4g46$l8n$1...@ligarius.ultra.net>,
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>>It's also possible for a person to embody an archetype that they don't
>>want, and they can try to fight it.
>
>archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the pressures
>upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as she
>would fight? If I do one and you expect the other it will probably
>not work out well at all.
I'm not sure these two are as distinct as you seem to think they are,
at least in this setting. The psychology of the character has a large
impact on the shape of the events that happen to her, and either way I
would need to listen to a fair amount of post-game talk about the
character to figure out what the Right Thing is.
Obviously, the framing could be different, depending on what you find
more comfortable. For example, you-the-player might be more comfortable
talking about how your PC feels, how she understands what is happening
to her, and what she expects to happen; or you might feel more
comfortable sketching out the future in terms of potential plotlines
and core tensions and levels of dramatic irony. But I think that
more or less the same ground would be covered either way.
One of the neat things about this setting is that it is relatively
flexible about how a player can approach it. Of the four players,
here's a style breakdown:
o One is interested in playing his PC straight, and has no interest in
out-of-character stuff. He was relieved when he discovered that
his PC would /know/ that he was an archetype, because it meant that
he could in-character make plans based on the idea that events have
a certain narrative form.
o One regards his character as a tool for creating a neat story; he's
very willing to develop what happens in a cooperative fashion, and in
fact chose his character on the basis of "what character would make
an effective foil for the other PCs to play off of?"
o One is intermediate between the first two; he runs fairly tightly
developed characters, but does this by starting with an outline and
running with the offers I make at the start of game. So the amount of
meta-game authorship is starting off high for him and dropping down
as the game (and his PC) develops -- later on simply following
repercussions can give him enough spotlight.
o The fourth is not so much interested in narrative or characterization
as the others -- instead he's looking for neat bits, memorable scenes
focused on his character. Supporting his style is largely a matter of
playing up opportunities for his PC to look good, and glossing over scenes
where his PC is incompetent or simply looks bad. (Where "looks good"
means "matches his internal image of his character.")
It's a really interesting game to GM. I'm doing everything from writing
simple traffic-flow simulations in order to build models of police response
to collaboratively figuring out storylines to exhaustively designing
characters -- balancing the mix of different approaches is frankly kind
of exhilarating.
>Maybe the names have too much baggage to be helpful to you, but I think
>if we did a jargon-free discussion of how to manage this game, a lot
>of the same issues would come up.
Certainly many of the same questions would arise, but I think the
threefold has created expectations of oppositions where they don't
exist, and causes other questions to be overlooked -- I see this is
the tenor of the questions being asked. I'll try to explain further
in another post -- this one isn't exactly the right place.
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
>You're interested in this game very specifically for an experience,
>one with a certain flavor and color and shape. It's not an experience
>that you trust to fall naturally out of simulation: you're right, this
>is not a simulationist game. It's a story.
No, I don't think it is a story. A story is something an audience -- a
reader -- can appreciate, and I am extremely confident that this game
will not produce it. This is something that depends on the internal
experience of being the character and making his or her choices.
Let me come down to Earth and make this concrete:
The game world consists of two parts, the everyday world of ordinary
experience and the gaudy, iconic world of the superhero. These two
worlds are stitched together, but imperfectly -- in some places the
seams show and in other parts it looks ok but cannot support any
weight. Nevertheless, the real interest of the game comes from the
interaction of the stylized and larger-than-life world of superheroes
and the complicated, and painstaking world of real experience. Note
that this game's reason for being is the interaction of these two
elements, and neither one can be slighted without risking the whole
game.
Any time we jigger around with the consequences of actions in the
everyday half of the world, we risk doing grave harm to the whole
game, because it risks making the everyday experience seem false
and forced. Choosing results based on drama (however described) is
a really bad idea for the human half of the game. Creating something
like a real experience is tricky, and the best way I know to do it
is to be as faithful as possible to the underlying mechanisms of
real life. (The opposite is true too -- the superheroic half of
the game has to run on the morality play logic of the comics; Dr.
Chaos should not die of a sniper round unless that's the point.
Otherwise it won't feel like the comics. But for some reason I
suspect that this half will be easier to accept for most people.)
See how things get tricky? It's not legitimate to force character
choices for metagame reasons, when they have strong repercussions
in the everyday world. But there are /also/ sections of the gameworld
that can't support the weight of a PC walking over them (or even
examining them closely).
This is why I wouldn't know what to do in John Kim's example of a
PC trying to mass-produce some super-science device, if it arose
out of natural character motivations. There's no right solution in
this case, because it is a case of a superhero trope penetrating too
deeply into the real world for the four-color genre response to
be acceptable. It's an action that breaks the world, simple as that.
If the PC were attempting to build a killer robot to fight a giant
monster, it would be legitimate for it go berserk, because it is
fully in the superheroic realm. Likewise a sleep-deprived PC's
attempts to keep his boss from noticing his exhaustion should be
immune to plot-grabbing by the superheroic half of the game. (This
can be subtle: using it as overt comic relief intended for the
audience is bad because it subordinates the real to the superheroic,
when they should be in tension. It's okay for the players to see the
humor in a character whose efforts to save the world result in him
getting fired, and it's okay for the PCs to think it's funny, but it
should be /played/ as straight as would happen.)
>The world background exists in order to support that, not for its own
>sake as in a simulationist game (if it existed for its own sake, I doubt
>you would be happy for it to be internally inconsistent).
I'm not happy now -- the inconsistencies represent a danger to the
continued existence of the game. I think it's a /manageable/ danger,
though; the perfect should not become the enemy of the good, and I
don't think there's a better way to do the same thing.
Most of what regulation happens will need to happen in character
creation -- the players will need to know what spots should be
glossed over and so what sorts of characters will and won't work
well in the game. A comic book has the advantage that the writers
can avoid zones of weakness; in an RPG with dynamic and unpredictable
characters things are much trickier. But it's still worth trying.
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote in message
>
>>You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
>>world of Astro City is internally inconsistent.
>
>simulation of of the 4-color world of comics needs only to be consistent
>with 4-color comics, the rest be damned.
This is exactly the problem -- the game is *about* the interface of
Real Life(tm) and Four-Color Heroics(tm), and these two realities
have rather different axioms. It's still worth doing, because watching
them mix is a lot of fun, but it's definitely not possible as a sim.
(I'm going to skip the long detailed explanation since I've done it a
couple of times already.)
>All the Drama side of the threefold indicates is a willingness to manipulate
>the game in order to produce the events/results that are desired by the GM
>and/or the players.
This is one of the keys sources of difficulties: the real life stuff
works best when the lives seem, well, real. And IME players are generally
quite perceptive about noticing manipulations. So if I want to evoke
the experience of real life it's not possible to run in an interventionist
style in the real-life half of the game. The four-color stuff demands
lots of interventions to keep things the way they should, however, which
creates many difficulties when the two mix.
Neel
Brian Gleichman
>In article <7c5r4e$q...@dfw-ixnews11.ix.netcom.com>,
>This is exactly the problem -- the game is *about* the interface of
>Real Life(tm) and Four-Color Heroics(tm), and these two realities
>have rather different axioms. It's still worth doing, because watching
>them mix is a lot of fun, but it's definitely not possible as a sim.
Why not?
Threefold Simulation is nothing more than a refusal to use metagame reasons
to decide in game events.
There is no reason that even a pure 4-color game can't be ran in that style
let alone a mixed 4-color/Real Life game. One need only come up with a
mechanic structure (i.e. the physical laws of the game world) to support it.
More importantly, there's nothing preventing you from using threefold sim in
places and threefold drama in others.
[ As an aside, I'd argue that a correct definition of Gamist is nothing more
than sim at the resolution point and drama elsewhere (to get interesting
resolution points). Thus the threefold is an incorrect model that should be
replaced with a simple Meta-game yes/no scale with various styles of play
defined against it. But that's just me.]
>(I'm going to skip the long detailed explanation since I've done it a
>couple of times already.)
I've seen that explanation and don't agree with it in the least. By the
judgements given there, our own 'real life' wouldn't meet simulation
requirements.
>This is one of the keys sources of difficulties: the real life stuff >works
best when the lives seem, well, real. And IME players are generally
>quite perceptive about noticing manipulations. So if I want to evoke
>the experience of real life it's not possible to run in an interventionist
>style in the real-life half of the game. The four-color stuff demands
>lots of interventions to keep things the way they should, however, which
>creates many difficulties when the two mix.
I think that would depend more on how people view the mix than the actual
mix itself. If they can accept the duel nature of real life HERE (Sim) and
4-Color THERE (Drama), there would be no problem.
If they can't, there is a problem. One I tend to resolve in my games by
telling the player "that's just the way it and it will never change. Live
with it." They can take it or leave it at that point.
John Morrow
>See how things get tricky? It's not legitimate to force character
>choices for metagame reasons, when they have strong repercussions
>in the everyday world. But there are /also/ sections of the gameworld
>that can't support the weight of a PC walking over them (or even
>examining them closely).
You want to have your cake and eat it, too.
You recognize that there is a point where simulation comes into
conflict with drama and you are trying to walk the fine line between
the two without violating either. Ultimately, however, if you do have
a situation where a PC starts to walk where they aren't wanted, then
the game will fall to one side or the other of that line. If either
you or the player pulls the PC back and forces them act a certain way
for metagame reasons (to get away from the weak seams of the game),
then you've erred on the side of drama because you've required a
metagaming reason based on tone, mood, or theme to make the decision.
If, on the other hand everyone simply lets the PC act as they would in
the situation regardless of whether it blows the game apart or not,
then you've erred on the side of simulation.
Where the threefold should push you to think about where you will err
and for what reasons. This way, people won't be surprised when you
pick one way or the other. Personally, I'd rather sacrifice the tone,
mood, or theme in order to maintain logic. The very fact that you are
willing to set up a situation bound to conflict with logic (and don't
seem to want to adjust it to make it more logical) leads me to believe
that you might prefer to fiddle with logic in order to preserve the
other elements. This is what the threefold is meant to help determine
up-front. So, when logic conflicts with tone, mood, and theme, which
way to you intend to err?
>This is why I wouldn't know what to do in John Kim's example of a
>PC trying to mass-produce some super-science device, if it arose
>out of natural character motivations. There's no right solution in
>this case, because it is a case of a superhero trope penetrating too
>deeply into the real world for the four-color genre response to
>be acceptable. It's an action that breaks the world, simple as that.
OK, so it happens in your game. What do you do? There is no "right
answer" because you want to have both drama and simulation and you
can't. So which do you pick? That ultimately determines what kind of
game it is. If a players are expecting you to catch the game with an
injection of Drama and you don't, you've got a problem. If the
players are expecting you to keep your hands off and just let things
play out and you don't, you've got a different problem.
>Most of what regulation happens will need to happen in character
>creation -- the players will need to know what spots should be
>glossed over and so what sorts of characters will and won't work
>well in the game. A comic book has the advantage that the writers
>can avoid zones of weakness; in an RPG with dynamic and unpredictable
>characters things are much trickier. But it's still worth trying.
This means that you are attempting to run a simulationist game with a
dramatist set-up in an illogical world. I suspect that dramatist
set-ups to simulationist games are pretty common, actually, and even
die hard simulationists like myself can generally cope with them if
they are not too flakey. Yes, this is worth trying but it also helps
for you to let you players know what you are going to do if a conflict
does happen between the setting and simulation. Are you going to let
things just happen naturally or are you going to step in and toss
around some drama to fix things? I think it is useful for your
players to know this. I think it is useful for you to know this. And
I think the threefold is useful for just this reason.
John Morrow
John Morrow
>More importantly, there's nothing preventing you from using threefold sim in
>places and threefold drama in others.
Actually, I'd say that games run simulationist (i.e., without
metagaming issues) by default. Every metagaming issue has a trigger
or threshold that must be hit before it kicks in. The easier it is to
hit triggers, the more Dramatist or Gamist the game is.
>[ As an aside, I'd argue that a correct definition of Gamist is nothing more
>than sim at the resolution point and drama elsewhere (to get interesting
>resolution points). Thus the threefold is an incorrect model that should be
>replaced with a simple Meta-game yes/no scale with various styles of play
>defined against it. But that's just me.]
I disagree. Drama and Game have different aethetic sensibilties. As
someone with more tolerance of Gamism than Drama, I can see the
difference prety clearly. For example, a series of perfectly balanced
encounters, a focus on mechanical character development and
optimization, and little or no differentiation between player and
character can work fine in a Gamist game and could be satisfactory for
all looking for such a game. But it would make a crappy story.
Similarly, a series of forced choices, miraculous coincidences, and
unbalanced encounters could make a great story but a horrible game
from Gamist perspective.
Yes, there are many types of metagaming considerations but Game and
Drama (and perhaps Social) seem to incorporate the vast majority of
reasons why people introduce metagaming concerns into the decision
making process. For that reason, I think it is a servicable model for
most purposes.
>I've seen that explanation and don't agree with it in the least. By the
>judgements given there, our own 'real life' wouldn't meet simulation
>requirements.
If physics takes aesthetic concerns about plot, story, theme,
morality, balance, challenge, and tone into account, I'd be stunned.
Or would that metagaming rules prohibit me from noticing?
>If they can't, there is a problem. One I tend to resolve in my games by
>telling the player "that's just the way it and it will never change. Live
>with it." They can take it or leave it at that point.
Have you ever seen a player rebellion?
John Morrow
Brian Gleichman
>Actually, I'd say that games run simulationist (i.e., without
>metagaming issues) by default. Every metagaming issue has a trigger
>or threshold that must be hit before it kicks in. The easier it is to
>hit triggers, the more Dramatist or Gamist the game is.
Off hand, I would agree with this. Some games would have a very low
threshold however and the interesting thing is the finding of them.
>As
>someone with more tolerance of Gamism than Drama, I can see the
>difference prety clearly.
All well and good. Sadly however, I don't seem to agree with what you pick
as differences.
> For example, a series of perfectly balanced
>encounters, a focus on mechanical character development and
>optimization, and little or no differentiation between player and
>character can work fine in a Gamist game and could be satisfactory for
>all looking for such a game.
The gamist definition I proposed a little while back wasn't concerned with
these concepts in the least although it wouldn't oppose them as such.
The above is a very narrow and limited view of gamist and leaves out a large
number of players for whom these concepts hold no or little interest. Not to
mention that it concerns itself with only common (but not universal) RESULTS
of gamist play, not the actual gamist MOTIVATION itself.
The above does however make up good examples for the FAQ version of gamist.
It's no secret that I consider the FAQ worthless on this matter.
> But it would make a crappy story.
Who says so? Some people might think the above was a edge of your seat, high
thrill adventure ride with true unknown outcomes.
>Similarly, a series of forced choices, miraculous coincidences, and
>unbalanced encounters could make a great story but a horrible game
>from Gamist perspective.
Who says so? The above can be seen by some as boring sterotypical
boiler-plate story without merit while the gamist may well view it as the
nature result of poor choices made by the players involved.
>Yes, there are many types of metagaming considerations but Game and
>Drama (and perhaps Social) seem to incorporate the vast majority of
>reasons why people introduce metagaming concerns into the decision
>making process. For that reason, I think it is a servicable model for
>most purposes.
The gamist side of the present FAQ is hopelessly flawed. The rest is too
often viewed incorrectly.
Proper definitions:
Sim- Desires no use of meta game influence whatever.
Drama- Will use meta-game influence to drive meta-game desired results,
whatever they are.
But due to the labels in use, people want to associate Drama- Good Story and
Simulation- Realistic World Modeling. Both of which are meaningless
statements to make as they vary depending upon who is making the call.
>>I've seen that explanation and don't agree with it in the least. By the
>>judgements given there, our own 'real life' wouldn't meet simulation
>>requirements.
>
>If physics takes aesthetic concerns about plot, story, theme,
>morality, balance, challenge, and tone into account, I'd be stunned.
Vast numbers of people in this world would disagree with you. But that is of
no matter and isn't even the point of the discussion.
The original point I was responding to here was the assertion that good
valuable high tech will disperse throughout a culture if it was a proper
simulation. Since that doesn't happen all (or even most of ) the time in
real life, real life doesn't meet the requirements of a proper simulation.
Of course that means that the original assertion was a incorrect requirement
because real life should be considered a proper simulation.
>>If they can't, there is a problem. One I tend to resolve in my games by
>>telling the player "that's just the way it and it will never change. Live
>>with it." They can take it or leave it at that point.
>
>Have you ever seen a player rebellion?
One. It was a new group I attempted to put together here in Dallas a few
months ago.
The rebellion was driven by the players requiring Friday night games, a
desire for quicker advancement with more treasure and a need to tinker with
homegrown rules I've used for 19 years.
They asked me to change. I said hell no (except to the Friday thing, which
ruined my ability to prep for the game- I should have said no to this as
well). End of gaming group.
No loss.
Frank T. Sronce
>
> In article <7c6k6a$k...@news.service.uci.edu>, jh...@cascade.ps.uci.edu (John Kim) wrote:
> This is not at all the same thing. I can imagine a PC scientist in your
> sf game investigating the physics of FTL. I don't think the same can be
> said of the conventions of a four-color universe: no superhero ever
> wonders -- can ever wonder -- why why London's chief supervillains are
> Guy Fawkes and Cromwell Z, and LA *doesn't* have Valley Girl and
> The Surf Monster.
>
It doesn't? Are you _sure_? Seems like the sort of thing that's BOUND
to appear eventually, if the series runs long enough and passes through
the hands of enough writers... :-)
> >2) Taking your example from above, let's say that one of the PC's is
> > a super-scientist and the player says she wants to market one of
> > her inventions for mass-production. How do you deal with this?
>
> I honestly have no idea -- I expect it would break the game if it
> were to come to this.
>
> Assuming that super-science is reproducible, there is no in-world
> reason for it not to proliferate. However, it is an observable fact
> that in four-color comic books it *doesn't* proliferate. No one uses
> hovercars to get to work; construction workers don't use power armor
> and force fields to build buildings; no power plants are designed
> that tap the "cosmic flow."
>
> I can't imagine a mechanism that simultaneously preserves the four-
> color conventions and satisfies the demands of consistent resolution.
> If a player asked me to deal with this, I would be stumped.
>
A fairly simple excuse is to say that you CAN mass produce an
acceptably reliable and useful copy of the super science, but it's too
expensive for common use. Then "super-agencies" like S.H.I.E.L.D. may
occasionally show up with hover cars and robot warriors, but your
ordinary citizens won't. You can even try a plotline where a visionary
builds "the apartment complex of the FUTURE!" using all your
super-science... up to the point where (inevitably) something goes
horribly wrong. :-)
Marvel also used the "this technology is just too prone to abuse"
technique, which was the explanation for why Tony Stark never even
copyrighted the technology at the core of the Iron Man suit. This is
also known as Ye Olde "Man Is Not Ready for This Knowledge" technique.
And finally, you can use the "unrealiable super-science" technique.
The techie managed to make it work ONCE, but attempts by him to make
more prove problematic. "The second super computer I designed went mad
and attempted to destroy the world! Apparently this AI stuff is
trickier than I thought."
Kiz
Frank T. Sronce
I suspect part of the problem is that some people are fighting to get
their "personal" scheme adopted as _the_ scheme. But there isn't a
single scheme- it's kind of pointless to fight over which of two
perfectly valid definitions of "gamist" should be accepted. "Gamist"
has no real meaning- it's just a label people have used a lot. If this
were a science, there'd probably be five or six "standardized" measures
out there, each with unique labels. :-)
There are, of course, a lot more than 3 ways of looking at a game.
"Does this event seem to ring true in terms of the game world we're
trying to emulate?" - the big concern is whether or not it fits in with
the game world, not whether or not the game world is logical. I've seen
this called both Simulationist (simulating the game world) and Dramatist
(trying to do a slice-of-life story in a particular game world).
They're both accurate descriptions, just different labels. I ran into
this one once, with a Champions adventure where it said that if the
villains defeated the heroes in this scene, they killed them all. Big,
big violation of the comic-book world it was trying to emulate.
"Is this logical?" - the big concern is removing all illogical elements
from the game world, to make it as realistic as possible. If there are
"fantastic elements", they must be dealt with logically, and all logical
consequences explored.
"Does this help the adventure flow in a pleasing fashion?" - the big
concern is flow of story. If the bad guys manage to escape, should the
PCs be able to find a clue to where they are headed? The big concern is
not allowing anything to really derail the game plot.
"Is this a sufficient and appropriate challenge?" - the big concern is
challenging the players. The GM shouldn't fudge results or add new
clues, otherwise the challenge is illusory.
"Is this fun?" - anything goes, so long as it makes the game more
enjoyable. A recurring villain who always trips over his own shoelaces
at a climactic moment? Great, as long as it's funny, and dumped the
moment it gets dull. Fudging is perfectly acceptable if it makes the
game more fun.
"Does this help me explore/develop my character's personality better?"
- the big concern is character development. Plot twists should be
intense, emotional, and dramatic.
"Does this give every PC a chance to shine?" - the big concern is
player satisfaction and fairness in meta-game issues.
There's 7 right there. You could try and classify one or more of 'em
as subsets of other ones, but I see 'em as all valid potential concerns,
regardless of what labels you slap on 'em.
Kiz
Brian Gleichman
> I suspect part of the problem is that some people are fighting to get
>their "personal" scheme adopted as _the_ scheme. But there isn't a
>single scheme- it's kind of pointless to fight over which of two
>perfectly valid definitions of "gamist" should be accepted.
While this is perfectly true, it is also true that some definitions are
better than others.
IF THE GOAL IS TO HAVE ONLY A FEW BLANKET DEFINITIONS: then the best and
preferred choice should be that which covers the most ground without
creeping into areas covered by another definition
By that measure, the FAQ definitions are far from idea. My own gamist
definition is even worse as it admits to being nothing more than a specific
mix of Sim and Drama.
In this case I think the Threefold should be abandoned in favor of a simple
Meta-game influence allowed yes/no scale. Someone else can come up with a
name.
Discussion then can revolve around if a specific game style uses Meta-game
methods and where/when. If desired, labels for common types of games can be
determined. Although I don't see much long term use for them (they'll be
forgotten or disputed), making them up could be fun.
IF A FEW BLANKET DEFINITIONS ARE NOT DESIRED: then the Threefold should be
abandon completely and replaced with something more complex. The replacement
model will then be promptly completely forgotten about as it would be too
unwieldy to use.
Or we could blow the whole thing off as a waste of effort.
The last option is the rational one. However a discussion about either of
the other two would be interesting and even useful. Even though it would go
no where in the end, the trip might be fun to watch.
> "Does this event seem to ring true in terms of the game world we're
>trying to emulate?" - the big concern is whether or not it fits in with
>the game world, not whether or not the game world is logical. I've seen
>this called both Simulationist (simulating the game world) and Dramatist
>(trying to do a slice-of-life story in a particular game world).
>They're both accurate descriptions, just different labels.
Actual I don't think either of them are accurate descriptions according to
the FAQ. The question there is much more simple- if the event wasn't caused
by meta-game influences, it's simulation. If it was caused by meta-game
influences, it's drama or gamist.
I agree with you that it is impossible to split the difference in all cases
between FAQ drama and FAQ gamist.
> I ran into
>this one once, with a Champions adventure where it said that if the
>villains defeated the heroes in this scene, they killed them all. Big,
>big violation of the comic-book world it was trying to emulate.
Who's comic-book world? I've read a comic when every hero dies was the core
concept for it's entire run. Had quite a character turnover rate as one
might expect. Worthless comic by my tastes, but a comic-book world none the
less.
----------
Just as a note, does anyone here but me think that the Threefold would have
faded into the past (much the same as the axis model) if people didn't keep
on attacking it for some reason?
Nightshade
>----------
>Just as a note, does anyone here but me think that the Threefold would have
>faded into the past (much the same as the axis model) if people didn't keep
>on attacking it for some reason?
Not really. While I understand some of your problems with it, Brian,
I still think it actually approximates the majority of games I've seen
in broad strokes...and as such I've found it a useful tool in
evaluating them. Quite a few of my gaming friends have agreed, and
they aren't .advocacy types for the most part. One of the things
people tend to forget is that even a tool that appears flawed from
some perspectives can be perfectly useful in a lot of cases.
Paul Andrew King
ne...@alum.mit.edu (Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
>This is exactly the problem -- the game is *about* the interface of
>Real Life(tm) and Four-Color Heroics(tm), and these two realities
>have rather different axioms. It's still worth doing, because watching
>them mix is a lot of fun, but it's definitely not possible as a sim.
>(I'm going to skip the long detailed explanation since I've done it a
>couple of times already.)
It seems to me that the sensible way to do such a game would be primarily
dramatist. The GM and players would work on the basis of avoiding the
"broken" parts of the internal logic - note that this requires the players
to be explicitly dramatist in running their characters. Simulation would
be used when dramatically appropriate - which is the case in practically
all dramatist games anyway.
I really don't see why you feel that this game can't be classified. The
threefold was never intended to be restricted to "pure" examples of the
three axes - in fact I'm sure that the vast majority of games use all
three elements in varying quantities.
As far as I can see the only unusual factor is that while it would be
*strongly* dramatist most of the time it would sometimes be strongly
simulationist. Unusual but hardly unclassifiable.
--
Paul K.
Brian Gleichman
>One of the things
>people tend to forget is that even a tool that appears flawed from
>some perspectives can be perfectly useful in a lot of cases.
I'm not saying it isn't useful for some people. I actually like two of it's
three corners myself even if I have no respect for the third.
It's just that it seems to me that the only time it comes up is when someone
disputes it. I'd have to reach to remember the last time it was used in a
manner outside of an attack/defense thread.
That seems to be the only reason it keeps coming up. Without these constant
assaults, I have little doubt it would go the way of other useful thread
outcomes- forgotten except for the old timers. I consider it a interesting
twist that it's detractors are the ones responsible for it's prominence.
Frank T. Sronce
> >this one once, with a Champions adventure where it said that if the
> >villains defeated the heroes in this scene, they killed them all. Big,
> >big violation of the comic-book world it was trying to emulate.
>
> concept for it's entire run. Had quite a character turnover rate as one
> might expect. Worthless comic by my tastes, but a comic-book world none the
> less.
>
> Just as a note, does anyone here but me think that the Threefold would have
> faded into the past (much the same as the axis model) if people didn't keep
> on attacking it for some reason?
Well, it was Champions 3rd Ed, and it was definitely the traditional
4-color comic book world, with death traps and evil organizations with
dumb names like "Cobra" or "Hydra." And lots of people in spandex.
Y'know, I can't even remember the name of Champ's "generic" evil
group... just about everyone in our group had them after us, though.
:-) I mean, even the GM was boggled at the fact that the bad guys
didn't have a death trap to stick the PCs in if they beat them.
Kiz
-actually, I think it was V.I.P.E.R. :-)
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message
<7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>
>For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting
her
>archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the
pressures
>upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as
she
>would fight?
Does anyone other than aThreefold Missionary make an either-or
choice like this? Would it even *occur* to most role-play gamers
that their choices in this matter fall into so few (and such
narrow) options?
BBlackmoor
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Brian Gleichman
> Well, it was Champions 3rd Ed,
This was a published adventure? Which one?
And yes, it's Viper.
Brian Gleichman
>Does anyone other than aThreefold Missionary make an either-or
>choice like this?
I doubt anyone here considers me a 'Threefold Missionary' and this is one
major question I would have if considering this game. It would come shortly
after "Can I pick my own archetype?". Although it wouldn't be phrased in
threefold jargon, it would in part use it's concepts.
And yes, it would be an either-or choice that would decide if I hand any
interest in continuing.
> Would it even *occur* to most role-play gamers
>that their choices in this matter fall into so few (and such
>narrow) options?
Many choices are few and narrow. Especially after taking into account limits
of personal ability and desire.
Consider, I have only a few options when choosing my reaction to what seems
to be a mindlessly hostile post by you.
I don't really do flame wars well, so I'll pass. I do killfiles very well,
it's being considered but I like giving someone a chance first.
That leaves me with only the option of asking if you really wanted to come
across as badly as you just did. In short, are you here to explore/share or
fight? I expect the answer will leave me with only the killfile option.
Mary K. Kuhner
Brandon Blackmoor <BBlac...@sff.net> wrote:
>Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message
>>For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting
>her
>>archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the
>pressures
>>upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as
>she
>>would fight?
>Does anyone other than aThreefold Missionary make an either-or
>choice like this? Would it even *occur* to most role-play gamers
>that their choices in this matter fall into so few (and such
>narrow) options?
If I'm a missionary it would seem to be by birth, rather than
conversion: the particular dilemma above (do I cooperate with
the GM to construct the character's responses, or do I remain
strictly within the character's viewpoint?) has been a really
fundamental one for me since about '85, when I first became
aware of the issue, and well before the birth of .advocacy.
The main thing the discussions here have given me, besides
vocabulary (useful but not indispensible) is an appreciation that
other people have other opinions on the point, and those
opinions are self-consistent and valid.
I am not, personally, capable of playing a character until I
decide whether I am strictly inside her head or not. I just
can't do it: there is no slack on this point for me: if I
am strictly in her head I get horrendously upset by being asked
to make metagame decisions that affect her, and if I am not
strictly in her head there are things I just cannot do.
(I don't see the Threefold discussion as being key to this insight,
incidentally: Sarah and Kevin's stances model was much more
illuminating.)
I think I could play in Neel's game, however: he equivocates
between the two, but he doesn't require each player to equivocate,
so that would be okay. (I am much less picky about other players'
stances than I am about my own.) I couldn't run it, though.
I'm content to let Neel find the model unhelpful; he's content, I
think, to let me find it helpful; we don't seem to have a problem
with each other on that point. You do seem to have a problem,
to the extent that postings like the one above are most of what
you produce. How about something interesting, like one of Neel's
examples of a real game with real issues?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message
<7c9l3a$jpu$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>
>I am not, personally, capable of playing a character until I
>decide whether I am strictly inside her head or not.
I don't believe I have ever chosen to play an rpg with anyone
with such a limited ... I want to say "imagination", bit that's
inaccurate. You may well be very imaginative. In the poetry of
psychology, it might be called "functional fixedness" (not being
a psychologist or one that puts much stock in them, I may be
using that phrase inaccurately, as well).
>How about something interesting, like one of Neel's
>examples of a real game with real issues?
I am curious what sort of "issues" you might mean. The games I
play in and run are generally not experimental or weird: just
your basic, ordinary role-play games.
A game I recently started playing in is set in the far-off
future, after the Terran Empire has expanded and then
fragmented. My character is a petty bureaucrat who was, through
a computer error, assigned to leave the Earth and infiltrate an
alien (though human) society. The society he is from is
regimented and bureaucratic, and authority is rarely questioned,
so although the orders are peculiar, it didn't even occur to him
that they might be in error. Think of how most people respond to
a police officer's "Would you step out of the car please?" or
"Do you mind if we come in?" -- it doesn't even enter most
people's minds that these are *questions* rather than *orders*.
They just do it.
So he locked his desk, switched off his terminal, packed his
bags, went to a warehouse to pick up his assigned "mission
equipment", and left the planet for deep space. He has not the
slightest clue what he is supposed to be doing or why he was
told to go, but this is the first time he has been off-planet,
and he's both scared and excited. I'm not sure how he is going
to pretend to be a spy pretending not to be a spy, but I think
it will be interesting. The Adventures of Roahl the Assistant
Project Manager. I've never played someone who is both trying to
get into trouble and is obviously unprepared for it. I'm looking
forward to seeing how he deals with the challenges the universe
throws his way.
The tone of the game is semi-lighthearted, but not slapstick or
outright comedy. It has tension, senseless violence, and the
occassional tragedy. The storyline is based around the decisions
the characters make, for the most part, although there are
pre-existing conflicts in the setting that will restrict their
freedom of action a bit (political machinations, hooks built
into the characters' backgrounds, and so on).
The social structure varies depending on where you are. The area
my character is sent to infiltrate is, by comparison with his
native society, downright anarchic. I don't know a whole lot
about the greater area, but it strikes me rather like TV Old
West, with pockets of civilization separated by wilderness
(space), and connected by trade routes, and authority is largely
a local phenomenon.
Technologically, it is pretty limited and realistic within the
parameters required by a space-faring game setting. There are no
teleporters, for example, or lightsabers. I think there may be
force fields, but I have not seen one yet, other than on star
ships (and he hasn't actually seen those, but he's heard them
referred to). Aliens may possess technology that is unavailable
within the region of space we're in -- that would be in
character for the guy running the game (as well as being
appropriate to the genre).
There are, so I'm told, thousands of alien species out there,
but most of them can't survive in the same biosphere as human
beings. For the most part the NPCs are human, because we're in
an area historically human-dominated. Of the alien species he
has actually seen, three are actually offshoots of homo sapiens,
one is a blob of plasma in a big scary suit of powered armor (he
doesn't know what is actually in the armor, but I do), and one
looks like a crystal spider. The crystal spider and the
blob-in-a-can are both very hard to communicate with, to the
point that they might as well be robots that are programmed to
pretend to be sentient. For the most part, they keep to
themselves. I imagine it's even more hard for them, to be
surounded by humans (he assumes that humans are as strange to
the aliens as the aliens are to us).
This description doesn't do justice to the creativity of the GM
running it, but that's the gist of it. Nothing outre, just a
fairly typical SF game.
BBlackmoor
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Mary K. Kuhner
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>, mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>>For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting her
>>archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the pressures
>>upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as she
>>would fight? If I do one and you expect the other it will probably
>>not work out well at all.
>I'm not sure these two are as distinct as you seem to think they are,
>at least in this setting. The psychology of the character has a large
>impact on the shape of the events that happen to her, and either way I
>would need to listen to a fair amount of post-game talk about the
>character to figure out what the Right Thing is.
Okay, I can grasp that, though I could never run a game that way--as
a GM, as well as as a player, I need to be working more within one
model or the other. I can see that if you're really comfortable sliding
from one model to the other, the distinction between them may seem
much less important.
What *are* the important issues of this game for you? How to make the
archetypal stuff work out without seeming to pull too many strings--
making it feel natural, inevitable? I know that's where I would probably
be putting my energy if I were doing something similar.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>The game world consists of two parts, the everyday world of ordinary
>experience and the gaudy, iconic world of the superhero. These two
>worlds are stitched together, but imperfectly -- in some places the
>seams show and in other parts it looks ok but cannot support any
>weight. Nevertheless, the real interest of the game comes from the
>interaction of the stylized and larger-than-life world of superheroes
>and the complicated, and painstaking world of real experience. Note
>that this game's reason for being is the interaction of these two
>elements, and neither one can be slighted without risking the whole
>game.
I see what you are talking about. An interesting structure. It
seems like a game that would be on the knife's edge of disaster
throughout its whole lifespan, but interesting while it lasted.
Our Ars Magica campaign has certain aspects of this, in a much more
limited way, in that there are areas of the rules/world interaction
which I *know* are broken. We don't want to put too much stress
on those parts, and yet the interaction between magic and society
is a central part of the game and can't be pushed into the background.
There's some pressure to adopt what I would think of as dramatist
solutions--certainly metagame ones--where the PCs are nudged away
from stressing broken things. There's some pressure to adopt simulationist
solutions--fix the damned rules, or else accept the rule-based
changes necessary for internal consistency of the gameworld. (Alas,
they seem to lead to world domination by mages or mages and the
Church, and that's not the world we wanted.)
>See how things get tricky? It's not legitimate to force character
>choices for metagame reasons, when they have strong repercussions
>in the everyday world. But there are /also/ sections of the gameworld
>that can't support the weight of a PC walking over them (or even
>examining them closely).
Gotcha. I think we're in agreement on everything except nomenclature.
It's a devilishly tricky game to run, and its whole energy comes
from the fact that it's a bundle of internal contradictions, yes?
Like writing a story whose juice comes from being half horror and
half humor--you can't drop either, that would lose the point, but
boy are they uneasy bedfellows.
>This is why I wouldn't know what to do in John Kim's example of a
>PC trying to mass-produce some super-science device, if it arose
>out of natural character motivations. There's no right solution in
>this case, because it is a case of a superhero trope penetrating too
>deeply into the real world for the four-color genre response to
>be acceptable. It's an action that breaks the world, simple as that.
Breaks the game, more to the point. You could stop it from breaking
the world via metagame coercion of the PC, but that would damage
one of the goals you want from the game.
>Most of what regulation happens will need to happen in character
>creation -- the players will need to know what spots should be
>glossed over and so what sorts of characters will and won't work
>well in the game. A comic book has the advantage that the writers
>can avoid zones of weakness; in an RPG with dynamic and unpredictable
>characters things are much trickier. But it's still worth trying.
Characters change, blast them. We had few problems early in the
Ars Magica campaign, but in recent years Kayleigh has become quite
interested in "how do Auras work?" and "what is the soul?" and
Kevin has developed a general curiousity about the limits of Hermetic
magic. Hard (and often undesirable) to stop this from happening; hard
to deal with it when it happens.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>It would come shortly after "Can I pick my own archetype?".
This is not on-message, but I wanted to mention that this question
would have suprised me a lot: it literally never occurred to me that
this wouldn't be a player choice. As a GM I've never really run (or
played in) a serious game in which the players didn't have strong
control over character creation.
The most I've done is hand out fat setting packets and say "This is
what the world is like and if you are wondering how plausible a character
type would be, just ask me." I'm guessing that you have, in order
for this question to come up. I guess that for a high-continuity Middle-
Earth game (this is what you run, right?) character ideas need to
fitted pretty carefully into the game world.
One of my rules as a GM is "don't pull on character hooks before the
PC gels," because I don't want to smash the still-tentative ideas that
a player has. So the game openings I run are either very low-key (PCs
just wander around the setting and don't have any specific mission),
or they are of very high epic-level (if the world is about to go foof,
any character will feel inclined to try stopping it, regardless of
the specific details of their personality).
Hm. How do you start games?
Neel
Nightshade
I tend to use it in passing a lot; I just do most of my posting on
.misc rather than in here. It's only one descriptive tool, however,
so it only gets used irregularly. Stance is much the same; it only
gets mentioned when it's relevant.
John Kim
superhero game. I think I am getting more of an idea of how the
game works, so let me try phrasing in my own way my impression of
the game -- which may be wrong. (I don't read _Astro City_.)
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>This is one of the keys sources of difficulties: the real life stuff
>works best when the lives seem, well, real. And IME players are generally
>quite perceptive about noticing manipulations. So if I want to evoke
>the experience of real life it's not possible to run in an interventionist
>style in the real-life half of the game. The four-color stuff demands
>lots of interventions to keep things the way they should, however, which
>creates many difficulties when the two mix.
As I am reading it, the campaign has the PC's going through
four-color, dramatically-run superhero adventures (i.e. the GM
arranges for the superhero stuff to be dramatically interesting
and form a story), while at the same time there is Real-Life
stuff which is run without any dramatic liscense (i.e. the GM
doesn't manipulate at all to get dramatic results).
If this is accurate, I would tend to describe this as a medium
between dramatist and simulationist -- i.e. superhero stuff run in
dramatist style, while real-life stuff is run in simulationist style.
Of course, another campaign might also be a split between dramatist
and simulationist which draws the line differently.
My Star Trek campaign I described as being also split between
the two. However, I would dramatically create a contrived situation
for an "episode" which has both a sci-fi hook and a social/moral
dillema. However, once the situation was presented, we would have
no dramatic fudges to save the situation except a limited PC script
immunity (Fortune Points). The point was that none of the moral
challenges had a right answer -- that being the point. Acting
morally would in no way guarantee that things would work out.
I would note that the Threefold model is in no way a
complete description. My Star Trek game and my understanding of
your superhero/real-life game are both a split of dramatist and
simulationist -- but they split in different ways, and how they
split is very important for describing the game. However, I found
viewing my Star Trek game in terms of that split as helpful in
analyzing how it worked.
Mary K. Kuhner
>In article <7c9lgi$f...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>, "Brian Gleichman" <glei...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>It would come shortly after "Can I pick my own archetype?".
>This is not on-message, but I wanted to mention that this question
>would have suprised me a lot: it literally never occurred to me that
>this wouldn't be a player choice. As a GM I've never really run (or
>played in) a serious game in which the players didn't have strong
>control over character creation.
I have played in such a game. The GM gave us a very small amount
of archetype choice, in that he mentioned a one or two word description
for each possible character before asking us to choose: but no
player input into powers or history. My pick was "seventh son",
which was not all that informative. The characters turned out to
be amnesiac and had to find everything out in play.
I think this could have worked: the campaign was about discovering
what the archetype meant, and there's enough flexibility in "seventh
son" to make me feel pretty comfortable about ending up with an
interpretation I could live with. However, it turned out that the
GM had strong opinions about what the PCs were like, and expected
the players to somehow divine these. Of course, this didn't happen
and we got into a lot of player/GM control struggles.
>One of my rules as a GM is "don't pull on character hooks before the
>PC gels," because I don't want to smash the still-tentative ideas that
>a player has. So the game openings I run are either very low-key (PCs
>just wander around the setting and don't have any specific mission),
>or they are of very high epic-level (if the world is about to go foof,
>any character will feel inclined to try stopping it, regardless of
>the specific details of their personality).
We feel the same way, except we don't (for campaign-length games)
ever try the epic-plotline startup: it's always the other
one. There might be a specific mission, but it is general and low-key.
Rainbow Vale started with "Let's check out Rainbow Valley and see
how it looks as a settlement site." Haven Hill started out with
everyday life at the Hill.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Brian Gleichman
>In article <7c9lgi$f...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>, "Brian Gleichman"
<glei...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>It would come shortly after "Can I pick my own archetype?".
>
>This is not on-message, but I wanted to mention that this question
>would have suprised me a lot: it literally never occurred to me that
>this wouldn't be a player choice. As a GM I've never really run (or
>played in) a serious game in which the players didn't have strong
>control over character creation.
I've heard of games where the players would have only a limited choice of
character types or even none. One of them was similar in some respects to
parts of your campaign description. So, the question came to mind.
>I guess that for a high-continuity Middle-
>Earth game (this is what you run, right?) character ideas need to
>fitted pretty carefully into the game world.
That is true to some degree. Not everything is possible in Middle Earth
(although more is than many seem to think) and additional limits on
character conceptions are in place due to the game's Interaction Model
limits (or to phrase it simply, no evil characters need apply). I do have to
veto character concepts once in a while.
Then there's the matter of the players needing to come up with something
that doesn't conflict too much with characters of long standing existence...
Also, due to the nature of the campaign (long-term Generational), I don't
use a free form character creation method. Stats are rolled for example, not
purchased and classes (more like templates with a bite) are enforced.
But I still offer a lot of freedom. For example, even though I require you
to roll the 10 primary stats, you can assign them as you wish for example.
Overall, I think I'm really only slightly more restrictive than any group
that has a 'party must reasonably work together' clause in their game
contract.
>Hm. How do you start games?
If we limited ourselves to the Middle Earth campaign, I've only started
three gaming groups as such. Unless you consider the first adventure for a
new 'generation' a start. I wouldn't.
The last one was low-keyed. It had the worst result as it failed to attach
the characters well enough to the setting. Of course, this may be more the
fault of the players than the game...
The others have been fairly epic like. The first group starting with the
destruction of their home village and most of their families. This was after
pre-game work establishing the characters/NPCs and a half a night of 'normal
life' gaming.
Every Morrow Project game I've start begins much like this...
Amber, Dan, Dare, or Julie
>
> In article <36DFF9...@geocities.com>, "Amber, Dan, Dare, or Julie" <delph...@geocities.com> wrote:
> >Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
> >>
> >> 2. A superhero game in the style of Astro City; that is, the
> >> four-color stuff would exist but the focus of the game would
> >> be on the small-scale consequences and repercussions of those
> >> elements.
<snip>
> >probably fit, the superhero game is probably between the middle and the
> >sim end, so middling simulationists will fit best but mid-Threefold and
> >strong sim players will probably fit(I would), Exodus II will probably
>
> I'll concentrate on just one example and explain why imo the superhero
> game blows up the threefold.
>
> You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
> world of Astro City is internally inconsistent.
That's like saying GURPS: Magic magic will never work in a
simulationist game that doesn't have Wells Of Infinite Mana. True, it
will never work in the ultimate simulationist game, but the Threefold is
more than a trio of axes - it's also got a space in the middle where
games like this go.
Astro City seems to me to be designed to be run as a simulation with
gaps. Such a game is still simulationist, just not extremely so; as I
said, between the middle and the sim end. I've run games like this,
where certain parts are handwaved but it's still otherwise aimed at a
simulationist payoff, where you follow causal chains but not as far as
otherwise.
- Dare, GURPSist extraordinaire and plenipotentiary
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Hi! I'm a .sig virus! Join the fun and copy me into yours! :)
* Spammers looking for addresses? Try these: jamey...@hotmail.com,
ja...@hotmail.com Spam me and get your address here today!
Frank & Jennifer Sronce
Oh, I can't remember any more- it was so long ago, and I didn't run it. Um...
I seem to recall that the villains included someone who threw spears and a
mentalist and the "scenario" basically consisted of the PCs being sent in to a
building that they had occupied and fighting the badguy group.
This is all _very_ fuzzy, though. I can't even remember if I was in High
School at the time, or if it was before that... :-)
Kiz
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>In article <7c7c9v$t9p$1...@ligarius.ultra.net>,
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>In article <7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
> mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>>I'm not sure these two are as distinct as you seem to think they are,
>>at least in this setting. The psychology of the character has a large
>>impact on the shape of the events that happen to her, and either way I
>>would need to listen to a fair amount of post-game talk about the
>>character to figure out what the Right Thing is.
>
>Okay, I can grasp that, though I could never run a game that way--as
>a GM, as well as as a player, I need to be working more within one
>model or the other. I can see that if you're really comfortable sliding
>from one model to the other, the distinction between them may seem
>much less important.
It's not so much a case of switching between models as my not being
*able* to see the difference.
An example:
Yesterday, I ran another session of _End of the Line_. At one point
in the game, Jack Shade (embodiment of the Trickster) and Armatad
(the embodiment of the Cursed Swordsman) were wandering around
Boston trying to locate another archetype who might have made the
crossing to Earth.
Now, Jack and Armatad were wanted by the police, and Jack thought
that they would be less noticeable and better able to cover ground
if they were in a car. This was an especially important concern
because the cops are mostly honest servants of a mostly decent
regime, and this is Armatad's curse -- to kill good men fighting
for a good cause, against his will. (One of the NPCs thought that
sharing a safe house with Armatad was risky, because his presence
made the odds of discovery much worse. He then briefly lamented that
the government wasn't corrupt.)
So Jack waited for someone to park their car on the side of the
street, and then he picked that person's pocket for his keys and
the two of them drove off in that person's car. There was no trouble
with this; Jack is so good at this sort of thing that I didn't even
bother requiring a roll.
Jack decided that it would be worth the cost of time to visit a
chop shop he knew to get a new set of license plates, and he did
so. He wanted to maintain his disguise, and again, things went
smashingly well for him -- the owner mistook Jack for some other
criminal and his pet thug, so that any investigation of the two
would lose the trail at this point.
Now, all of this had gone really well for the PCs because casual
theft and misdirection are what both Jack Shade and his archetype
are extremely good at. So far so good. But Armatad was with Jack,
which added a wrinkle to things.
His presence meant that events would tend to arrange themselves
so that killing everyone around him is an attractive course of
action. But this whole business with stealing a car and changing
license plates and so on is something that falls under Jack's
type.
So I asked for the two players to make an opposed Magic roll.
(The Magic attribute is a measure of how strongly the character
channels his or her archetype, and therefore how strong his
or powers are, and how much they warp events.) Armatad beat
Jack's roll, which I took to mean that there needed to be
some sort of event in which the easiest course of action would
be for Armatad to kill someone.
So I ruled that they were pulled over by a police officer for
speeding. Unfortunately, Jack didn't have a license. (Actually,
he had several licenses -- it's just that he didn't resemble
the picture on any of them.)
Now, I thought that there were several ways they could deal with
the situation. They could kill the man and drive off, or they could
try and fool him. Armatad didn't *want* to kill the cop, so he
told Jack to deal with him.
Here's what happened: when the police officer came up to ask Jack
for his license, Jack claimed to be a businessman on his way to
an important meeting and that he had lost his wallet. He was
convincing, but then Jack made an attempt to bribe the officer
into letting him go. The cop refused politely, but since he
genuinely thought Jack was what he claimed, he chalked this up
to nervousness and decided to forget it.
Then he asked Jack for his car registration. Jack didn't want to
give this information, because the name on the car registration
didn't match the name he had given the officer. So he said that
he usually kept the registration in his wallet, in case the car
got stolen. The police officer still basically believed Jack, but
was annoyed enough by the bribe attempt that he asked Jack to
come with him back to the police station for questioning.
Since there was no way the two of them could survive questioning,
a high-speed car chase ensued, in which the police officer and
an innocent bystander were killed; the PCs wrecked their car and
had to steal another one. Jack pulled into the wrong lane to
let the police officer get parallel to their car, and then Armatad
tried to throw his sword so as to knock out the police officer.
Unfortunately, the police officer flubbed the defense roll and
ended crashing into a telephone poll, and Jack manage to crash
the PC's car into a car that unexpectedley pulled into the lane
I'm describing what happened quite badly -- it had a kind of
weird inevitability to it, because it was entirely unclear
what would happen until it happened,at which point it seemed
inevitable. I don't mean that the outcome was fixed; if Jack had
checked the registration before talking to the cop, or if he had
not tried to bribe him, he could probably have managed to talk his
way out of a ticket.
But what happened somehow seems appropriate -- it's *right* for
the Trickster to end up in trouble because he overlooks a small
detail or because he assumes that everyone's motives are base. It
was *right* that Armatad's qualms about cold-blooded murder end
up resulting in an even greater tragedy.
But I can't see how I would have run this scene any differently
if I had been thinking "what is the best plot" instead of "what
is the most natural continuation" -- I'd need to consider the
same factors in either case.
>What *are* the important issues of this game for you? How to make the
>archetypal stuff work out without seeming to pull too many strings--
>making it feel natural, inevitable? I know that's where I would probably
>be putting my energy if I were doing something similar.
For me, this is game is an experiment in learning how to run a finite-
length game successfully. The premise of the game is that the archetypes
are the heroes defending this reality from an invading, alien force. If
you've read P.C. Hodgell's Kencyrath books, then thinking of Perimal
Darkling will give you a good grasp of what the entity Legion in my
game is like. (Except that in this game, the speed at which Legion
has been erasing realities has been speeding up as it advances; Earth
is the last chance to stop it before it builds up an unstoppable
amount of momentum.)
There's a very short time span -- the whole campaign is slated to last
six weeks of game time from the arrival of the heroes to the final
confrontation with Legion. The PCs being archetypes is a device for
making the PCs vivid, distinct characters right from the start.
So is the nature of the crisis they face. Legion stands to destroy
the world in a matter of weeks, and the entire action of the game
is confined to the city of Boston. (This is a high intensity threat,
which means that it will motivate most any character type.)
The archetypes' mythic nature also gives me a reasonable way of
using coincidence as needed to keep up the pace and intensity of
the game. (If the pace flags or the players get completely stymied,
they can
Neel
Frank & Jennifer Sronce
Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
> The archetypes' mythic nature also gives me a reasonable way of
> using coincidence as needed to keep up the pace and intensity of
> the game. (If the pace flags or the players get completely stymied,
> they can
>
> Neel
They can what? Just when I was getting interested... Actually, I'm curious-
what rule system are you using for this? Completely homebrew, or a modification
of another game?
Kiz
woodelf
(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
> I'll concentrate on just one example and explain why imo the superhero
> game blows up the threefold.
>
> You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
> world of Astro City is internally inconsistent. For example, if 4-color
> superscience exists, how come it doesn't spread into the wider world?
> For example, in _Watchmen_ Dr. Manhattan's ability to transmute elements
> led to a wide-scale adoption of lithium-battery powered cars. Or if
> powerful, reproducible magic exists, why isn't commonly used in the
> world at large? Or how come superheroes from outside the US are always
> national-theme superheroes?
>
> The reason, of course, is that it's not possible to follow the chain
> of causality without either a) changing the world into one very unlike
> ours, or b) making superheroes act in secret or be a very new
> phenomenon. Since the point of the game is to see how comic-book style
> superheroics shape perceptions of familiar, everyday life, the decision-
> making process must get twisted to make sure that everyday life
> remains the same and that superheroes are well-known.
we have very different ideas of a "simulationist" approach to gaming. to
my mind, you've just described an archetypal example of one--the game that
is meant to accurately capture a particular genre. sure, using
rules/decisions meant to simulate Real Life(TM) wouldn't work, but
simulationism can pick any model for its basis. i agree that the
dramatist and gamist elements in this game are minimal-to-non-existent.
but i've yet to see anybody post a better example to this newsgroup of a
non-real-world simulationist game. so why do you think that your game
isn't simulationist? it's about simulating the feel of a particular
genre, right (that of the mundane world in 4-color supers)? is there some
element of the FAQ definition of "simulationism" (the closest thing we
have to an "authoritative" version) that i'm forgetting?
> Likewise, the focus on the experience of everday life means that it's
> important to avoid trying too hard to fit the events of the game into
> a well-structured narrative. Everyday life is full of anticlimaxes and
> dangly bits, and if they get dropped then we again lose the experience
> of "everday life plus superheroes." Except that this time we lose the
> shape of everyday life, whereas before we lost the familiar conventions
> of the superhero genre.
agreed: not appreciably dramatist
> Now, I think it's also obvious that this campaign doesn't have any
> expectation of an interesting set of resolution points -- a perfectly
> valid scenario might be "You are at the filming of a television show
> when Lex Luthor takes it hostage. You are forced to applaud his live-
> broadcast rant until Superman shows up and rescues you." The PC is
> /literally/ a member of the audience in this story; there's no conflict
> of any sort that can be characterized as a game. The whole point is to
> create a situation that gives the PC a superhero-flavored experience
> to digest.
agreed: not appreciabley gamist
> None of the three poles (or the spaces in between) really capture
> what is going on; my belief is that there are a lot of games like
> that.
woodelf <*>
nbar...@students.wisc.edu
http://www.upl.cs.wisc.edu/~woodelf/
I did not realize that similarity was required for the exercise of
compassion. --Delenn
woodelf
(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
> There are seams in the gameworld, that can't be fixed and will tear
> if pressed. The only thing that can be done is to not press on them.
[story "wanders" away from "everyday life."]
> Again, this is something that I would try to avoid by convention,
> as it were. I'd ask for characters that wouldn't do this, but if it
> happened that this was the way the game was developing, I would talk
> out-of-game with the players. I would then either start over with new
> characters, change the focus of the game to follow the PCs, or change
> the characters so they don't do this, depending on the players'
> preferences. It's clearly possible to come up with situations that
> can't be salvaged, but I think they can mostly be avoided through
> careful wriggling.
both of these concerns/responses lead me to think that i need to revise my
earlier estimate. i'm now in agreement with John Kim that your Astro City
game is about equal parts dramatist and simulationist. both of these
responses are very clearly, to me, dramatist responses: you know that if
either of these things happen, it will spoil the kind of story you want,
so you don't want these things to happen.
woodelf
<ACB128D47E6F0646.29C15207...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
"Brian Gleichman" <glei...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Just as a note, does anyone here but me think that the Threefold would have
> faded into the past (much the same as the axis model) if people didn't keep
> on attacking it for some reason?
well, i don't think so. i find it *extremely* useful for conceptualizing
RPing and the differences between my and other people's styles, and thus
figuring out what i can steal and how. i agree that it needs revision,
perhaps wholesale revision, but i don't think it's useless. so long as it
is defined somewhere, however, i think it is of some use. most of the
arguments seem to stem not from the definitions themselves, but from
perceived incongruities between the definitions and the labels. it's
sorta like lit crit labels--"post-modernism" doesn't make sense in
conventional terms, since *now* is always "modern" in general terms, so
for something to be post-modern it would have to be written in the
future. yet, due to a mostly-agreed-upon definition based upon
specialized meanings for "Modern" and "post-Modern", it is a useful
shorthand in the context of lit crit. or, for that matter, the
distinction between "Classical" music as understood by Joe Public and
"Classical" music as understood by a music historian--not to mention
"Classic" music as understood by DMX (the "classic" channel is short for
"classic rock", which means 70s and 80s to them).
now, i think that, if people are having too many problems with the current
threefold, it should be "fixed" if possible. in particular, i'd love to
see it get slightly more specific so that we can at least agree on how to
classify a given game/situation, even if we can't agree on the definitions
("i think the threefold's version of "gamism" is bunk, but my game fits
that definition very strongly"). that way, it can be a useful shorthand
for all, even if it's only a useful tool for some.
woodelf
(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
[snip]
> the Assassin might actually have a horror of killing. She will still
[snip]
> The Cursed Swordsman, for example, is almost certain to run into the
[snip]
> Things are different for the Trickster, however. If he runs into the
[snip]
i readily recognize the Trickster as a mythological archetype, and i can
see the Assassin as at least a literary archetype. but the Cursed
Swordsman is news to me--i not only wouldn't have thought of it as an
archetype, i can't think of a single example off the top of my head. so,
can you give a list of the archetypes? and/or perhaps the sources or
kinds of sources you're drawing from to derive them?
woodelf
> Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message
> <7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
> >
> >For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting
> her
> >archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing the
> pressures
> >upon her--or playing solely from her point of view, fighting as
> she
> >would fight?
>
> Does anyone other than a Threefold Missionary make an either-or
> choice like this? Would it even *occur* to most role-play gamers
> that their choices in this matter fall into so few (and such
> narrow) options?
well, i find the Threefold rather useful, so perhaps i'm not a good
example. but long before i ran across it, i was constantly having
problems in games of this sort. one game that i finally dropped out of
had almost exactly that problem--i thought i saw the GM tweaking scenes to
make them dramatically interesting, so i created a revenant character
whose driving purpose was killing the bad guy. i figured that the GM
would tweak things just enough so that i had numerous chances to wound
him, but he'd get away. instead, i tracked him down and killed him in the
first session (series of unusual circumstances that neither i, the player,
nor my character could have forseen, combined with a lucky die roll that
he let stand). which immediately meant my character leaving the game,
since there was no plausible reason to keep him around. in retrospect
(and from talking to him afterwards), i think he was tweaking the scenes
to make them more appropriate challenges and keep player frustration at
just the right level. so he naturally assumed, when i retired one
character and made a character that was relatively immune to the main
badguys special powers, and focused specifically on killing the main
badguy, that it was time to let him get killed (i'd call this gamist).
while i naturally assumed that, since this badguy had been the main focus
of the game for ages, and he was of a power level where killing him just
wasn't feasible, creating a character who would, no matter what, stick
around until the main badguy was killed, was a perfect way to guarantee a
role in the game for as long as it lasted (i'd call this dramatism).
however, i know i'm a bit prone to latching onto ideas that make sense to
me, and discovering Truth (whether or not it's actually there to be
discovered), so i'll check this one out. i have numerous gamer friends
who never read this group and who don't seem real philosphical or
theoretical about gaming. i'll ask a few of them, and see.
meanwhile, what would *you* see as the choices in this scenario? i'm
particularly intrigued because my initial reaction on reading you is that
Mary's choices are few but *broad*--that is, while they might not be as
specific as they could be, everything she could do, play-style-wise, is
encompassed by those two choices (though if you are more specific, several
choices fall under each of them).
woodelf
(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
> In article <7c9lgi$f...@sjx-ixn8.ix.netcom.com>, "Brian Gleichman"
<glei...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >It would come shortly after "Can I pick my own archetype?".
>
> This is not on-message, but I wanted to mention that this question
> would have suprised me a lot: it literally never occurred to me that
> this wouldn't be a player choice. As a GM I've never really run (or
> played in) a serious game in which the players didn't have strong
> control over character creation.
>
> The most I've done is hand out fat setting packets and say "This is
> what the world is like and if you are wondering how plausible a character
> type would be, just ask me." I'm guessing that you have, in order
> for this question to come up. I guess that for a high-continuity Middle-
i can see another reason for it coming up: within the game reality, you
said that the archetypes tend to be thrust upon people, rather than
chosen. so i'd consider it a natural question as to whether the
archetypes will be similarly thrust upon the players. it is not at all
inconceivable for the game to be run such that people create "mundane"
characters, pre-archetype, and are free to tailor them however they want,
including specifically for a particular archetype, but that the GM
ultimately decides what archetype they get.
woodelf
(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
> In article <7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> >Maybe the names have too much baggage to be helpful to you, but I think
> >if we did a jargon-free discussion of how to manage this game, a lot
> >of the same issues would come up.
>
> Certainly many of the same questions would arise, but I think the
> threefold has created expectations of oppositions where they don't
> exist, and causes other questions to be overlooked -- I see this is
> the tenor of the questions being asked. I'll try to explain further
> in another post -- this one isn't exactly the right place.
well, i certainly agree with you on the tensions/oppositions part. i
definitely find use for the threefold, but prefer to visualize it as the
X, Y, and Z axes (i.e., you can increase or decrease any quality without
affecting the others), rather than as a triangle. i'm just not convinced
that any meaningful RPG [1] can get anywhere near enough to a boundary
condition, if there is one, so that limiting relationships between the 3
begin to show up.
i'm much more concerned about the possibility of questions overlooked due
to the threefold. i agree that tainting discussion in that way would be
bad. what sorts of things do you see getting short shrift that you think
are worthwhile?
[1] i can picture activities that are near the boundaries, but they don't
seem like RPGs any more. they tend to look more like Dungeon or Once Upon
a Time or some such.
k...@rica.net
mor...@dillinger.io.com (John Morrow) wrote:
> If either
> you or the player pulls the PC back and forces them act a certain way
> for metagame reasons (to get away from the weak seams of the game),
> then you've erred on the side of drama because you've required a
> metagaming reason based on tone, mood, or theme to make the decision.
You seem to be implying, John, that any game that resorts to meta-game
decisions will be dramatist. In other words, you seem to want to define
"dramatist" as "requires metagame reasosn based on tone, mood, or theme to
make a decision."
That does not strike me as a satisfactory definition of dramatist, although I
will grant that some self-consciously dramatic games will resort to this kind
of decision making (think of David Berkman, for example).
Best,
Kevin
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k...@rica.net
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> You're interested in this game very specifically for an experience,
> one with a certain flavor and color and shape. It's not an experience
> that you trust to fall naturally out of simulation: you're right, this
> is not a simulationist game. It's a story. It's not a "dramatic"
> story with a well-structured narrative: it's a slice-of-life story
> illustrating "everyday life plus superheroes". The world background
> exists in order to support that, not for its own sake as in a
> simulationist game (if it existed for its own sake, I doubt you would
> be happy for it to be internally inconsistent).
I think it is important to emphasize that Drama is a subset of Narrative (or
Story).
It is possible to imagine a game world that is not organized around a
narrative--it would be, from an rpg perspective, a very strange beast indeed.
Most games are narrative because the vehicle via which we enter the game is
that of a particular character--we experience the world from the point of
view of a character. And moreover, the motif is naturalistic, in the sense
that we experience that character moving forward, more or less continuously,
through time. The experience of the game world is chronological, and hence
narrative. (To put this another way, very few non-narrative genres are
chronological, and very few--perhaps none--focus on the experience of
characters.)
Narratives become dramatic when they self-consciously emphasize the resolution
of conflict. Non-dramatic narratives do not use conflict as the central
organizing framework of the story.
k...@rica.net
mor...@dillinger.io.com (John Morrow) wrote:
> I disagree. Drama and Game have different aethetic sensibilties. As
> someone with more tolerance of Gamism than Drama, I can see the
> difference prety clearly. For example, a series of perfectly balanced
> encounters, a focus on mechanical character development and
> optimization, and little or no differentiation between player and
> character can work fine in a Gamist game and could be satisfactory for
> all looking for such a game. But it would make a crappy story.
> Similarly, a series of forced choices, miraculous coincidences, and
> unbalanced encounters could make a great story but a horrible game
> from Gamist perspective.
Perhaps.
From my perspective, a story is powerful because it evokes powerful empathy
between character and audience. To some degree I would thus argue that all
dramatist games have to be appreciated from the stance of audience--which has
generated some confusion on this board, I think.
In classical analysis of drama, a story works by inducing its audience to
identify with the protagonist of the story--once that happens, the story will
then produce an emotive response in the audience. As the dramatic line of
tension increases, so will the corresponding tension in the audience.
IME player resistance to coercion (forced choices) interferes strongly with
player/PC empathy--and hence dramatist rpgs which rely on player
coercion produce crappy stories.
For some players, I would imagine, this means that all attempts by the GM to
structure the narrative will of necessity be self-defeating.
Sam Chupp
> Characters change, blast them. We had few problems early in the
> Ars Magica campaign, but in recent years Kayleigh has become quite
> interested in "how do Auras work?" and "what is the soul?" and
> Kevin has developed a general curiousity about the limits of Hermetic
> magic. Hard (and often undesirable) to stop this from happening; hard
> to deal with it when it happens.
and yet, I suppose there *are* simulationist sort of 'error traps' in the
game rules - for example, the Limits of Hermetic Magic can be pushed, but
only with Divine magic, or perhaps through Twilight. Once you get into the
open-ended power of the Divine or of Pure Magic, then you aren't as
limited.
Of course, as you said, those are patches only.
*grins* I remember GM's who had little elves with signs that said "This
Area Under Construction Come Back Later" when you tried to go where he
wasn't ready for you to go.
...Sam
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Some background...
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message
<7c6uqs$m9s$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>
> For example, if I am playing the Assassin and she is fighting
> her archetype, should I be cooperating with you in framing
> the pressures upon her--or playing solely from her point
> of view, fighting as she would fight?
I wrote ...
> Does anyone other than a Threefold Missionary make an
either-or
> choice like this? Would it even *occur* to most role-play
gamers
> that their choices in this matter fall into so few (and such
> narrow) options?
(And let's assume for the moment that my tone was exasperation
rather than hostility.)
Then woodelf wrote ...
>
> what would *you* see as the choices in this scenario?
What I see is that making a choice between "I have to play the
character *solely* based on what I think that character would do
in that situation" and "I have to play that character *solely*
based on what the GM has in mind for the game is (I can't think
of a way to put it gently) ludicrous. You are playing a game
with other human beings. Of *course* you keep in mind the goals
and expectations of your fellow players (including the GM), and
of *course* that affects how you play. If you did not, you be a
dismal player, not to mention a pretty sorry excuse for a human
being. You are also playing a certain character. Of *course* the
mindset, background, personality, and so on, of that character
will affect how you play. If you did not, what would make one
character different from another? You'd play them all the same!
On the other hand, Mary is in a rather unique situation: she has
only one GM, and she is the only player. I gather this has been
the situation for quite some time. I think it's plain that her
experience in that situation can't be extrapolated to more
typical games and game groups.
BBlackmoor
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Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>
>i readily recognize the Trickster as a mythological archetype, and i can
>see the Assassin as at least a literary archetype. but the Cursed
>Swordsman is news to me--i not only wouldn't have thought of it as an
>archetype, i can't think of a single example off the top of my head. so,
>can you give a list of the archetypes? and/or perhaps the sources or
>kinds of sources you're drawing from to derive them?
The name for the Cursed Swordsman is just an invention of my group,
but it's a gloss from a very common character type from Westerns
and samurai and martial-arts movies.
The character type is basically the man with no name -- a person
with a tremendous ability for violence, who uses his powers to
uphold a social order that ultimately he has no place in. Think of
the sheriff ordering the gunfighter to leave town by sunset, even
though he just saved it from destruction -- because his violence
becomes a threat to civilization just as soon as the crisis passes.
There's also the idea that mastery (particularly of violent skills)
exacts a terrible cost, cutting the master off from ordinary humanity
and depriving him of the human contact he desperately needs. (The
old gunfighter, sick to his core at the prospect of killing another
bravo trying to make a rep. The martial artist, cut off as a child
from family and friends and civilzation so that he can master kung fu.)
For this game, however, there's no requirement that the archetypes be
drawn from myth or literature, though. I was more concerned that the
type be something that resonates for the player than with drawing
types strictly from legend. This is part of the reason that the game
universe was had many parallel realities -- this way a player who
had a vision that didn't fit one of Earth's common archetypes could
play decree that his character type was an archetype of a different
world.
There are about 15 or 20 archetypal PCs and NPCs in this game, so I'm
hesitant to post them all here -- it would end up getting quite long.
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>Neelakantan Krishnaswami wrote:
>> The archetypes' mythic nature also gives me a reasonable way of
>> using coincidence as needed to keep up the pace and intensity of
>> the game. (If the pace flags or the players get completely stymied,
>> they can
>>
>> Neel
>
Sorry, that should read "...they can wander around looking for omens
and coincidences with both a reasonable chance of success and as an
in-character action." The utility of this technique is limited by
the fact that Legion does not necessarily obey the mythic patterns --
trusting entirely to chance is a good way to lose the fight, but it
can be a reasonable thing to do if you don't have any better ideas.
>Actually, I'm curious- what rule system are you using for this?
>Completely homebrew, or a modification of another game?
It's run using a version of FUDGE. For character creation:
There are 6 attributes: Body, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Will,
and Magic. (If I were to run the game again I would drop Intelligence;
it doesn't see any use in play.) The skill list is basically taken from
Feng Shui, and the power system comes from Everway.
Other than that it's basically straight FUDGE.
Neel
Neelakantan Krishnaswami
>In article <7c4gqb$l8n$2...@ligarius.ultra.net>, ne...@alum.mit.edu
>(Neelakantan Krishnaswami) wrote:
>
>> I'll concentrate on just one example and explain why imo the superhero
>> game blows up the threefold.
>>
>> You can't run it as a sim. There's just no way. This is because the
>>
>> The reason, of course, is that it's not possible to follow the chain
>> of causality without either a) changing the world into one very unlike
>> ours, or b) making superheroes act in secret or be a very new
>> phenomenon. Since the point of the game is to see how comic-book style
>> superheroics shape perceptions of familiar, everyday life, the decision-
>> making process must get twisted to make sure that everyday life
>> remains the same and that superheroes are well-known.
>
>we have very different ideas of a "simulationist" approach to gaming. to
>my mind, you've just described an archetypal example of one--the game that
>is meant to accurately capture a particular genre. sure, using
>rules/decisions meant to simulate Real Life(TM) wouldn't work, but
>simulationism can pick any model for its basis.
But the model is inconsistent -- the premises don't add up to the
conclusion. John asked how I would deal with a PC super-scientist
trying to mass-produce his gadget, say a healing ray that can heal
diseases and repair trauma.
By hypothesis the healing ray obeys the physics of the comic reality,
and since there are other super-gadgeteers who are rich industrialists
through their talents (eg Tony Stark), there is no fundamental reason
why this should be impossible.
However, if we permit this to work, then the history of the world
falls apart -- why didn't all the super-gadgets of other gadgeteers
revolutionize the world? In short: why is the world a lot like
real-world Earth?
There's no way to resolve these contradictions in any way that I
can think of as simulation.
Neel
Frank T. Sronce
>
> In article <nbarmore-150...@karahkan.cs.wisc.edu>, nbar...@students.wisc.edu (woodelf) wrote:
> >
> >i readily recognize the Trickster as a mythological archetype, and i can
> >see the Assassin as at least a literary archetype. but the Cursed
> >Swordsman is news to me--i not only wouldn't have thought of it as an
> >archetype, i can't think of a single example off the top of my head. so,
> >can you give a list of the archetypes? and/or perhaps the sources or
> >kinds of sources you're drawing from to derive them?
>
> The name for the Cursed Swordsman is just an invention of my group,
> but it's a gloss from a very common character type from Westerns
> and samurai and martial-arts movies.
>
> The character type is basically the man with no name -- a person
> with a tremendous ability for violence, who uses his powers to
> uphold a social order that ultimately he has no place in. Think of
> the sheriff ordering the gunfighter to leave town by sunset, even
> though he just saved it from destruction -- because his violence
> becomes a threat to civilization just as soon as the crisis passes.
>
Yes, that one appeared in Unknown Armies as "The Masterless Man", I
believe. Hm. They also used "The Executioner" which sounds a bit like
"The Assassin". But they also had some weird ones that didn't resonate
with ME at all- like "The Flying Woman." Dunno where _that_ came from.
Kiz
Mary K. Kuhner
Neelakantan Krishnaswami <ne...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>I'm describing what happened quite badly -- it had a kind of
>weird inevitability to it, because it was entirely unclear
>what would happen until it happened,at which point it seemed
>inevitable. I don't mean that the outcome was fixed; if Jack had
>checked the registration before talking to the cop, or if he had
>not tried to bribe him, he could probably have managed to talk his
>way out of a ticket.
>But I can't see how I would have run this scene any differently
>if I had been thinking "what is the best plot" instead of "what
>is the most natural continuation" -- I'd need to consider the
>same factors in either case.
I wonder whether it would still have felt inevitable, if you had
been thinking "what is the best plot?" I know that I'm much more
surprised by my play (both as GM and as player) if I don't think too
much about plot construction, whereas it can stand an infinite
amount of thinking about natural continuations (or at least, it can
stand more than I ever give it).
However, if it works for you you're under no obligation to analyze
it!
>There's a very short time span -- the whole campaign is slated to last
>six weeks of game time from the arrival of the heroes to the final
>confrontation with Legion. The PCs being archetypes is a device for
>making the PCs vivid, distinct characters right from the start.
I'd love to hear further updates on how this works out. It's not
something I know much about: I tend to run big, sprawling, interminable
games.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Joshua Macy
... snip ...
> However, if we permit this to work, then the history of the world
> falls apart -- why didn't all the super-gadgets of other gadgeteers
> revolutionize the world? In short: why is the world a lot like
> real-world Earth?
>
> There's no way to resolve these contradictions in any way that I
> can think of as simulation.
>
The problem lies in the way you think of simulation, not in the
definition of simulation given in the FAQ. Refusal to let "meta-game"
considerations influence in-game outcomes of decisions has absolutely
nothing to do with whether the world is internally consistent. This
objection comes up frequently--hence its being in the FAQ: the claim is
advanced by a die-hard dramatist that his world is just as internally
consistent as any simulationist's world; possibly true, but completely
irrelevant. According to the three-fold model as defined in the FAQ,
the decision that in an Astro City-esque world super-science cannot
produce wide-spread visible change in the day-to-day life of the
majority of the world is a perfectly simulationist one. The rule is
part of the model of the world, just as super-powers and supernatural
entities are. As long as the particular decision not to let technology
X propogate is based on appeal to that model of the world, and not to a
dramatic or gamist metagame consideration (e.g. it would produce an
inaesthetic resolution to the current plot-line on the one hand, or it
would rob the players of interesting resolution points on the other),
it's a simulationist decision.
The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ, and
according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations of
internally inconsistent models.
Joshua
Mary K. Kuhner
Joshua Macy <amu...@webamused.com> wrote:
> The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ, and
>according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations of
>internally inconsistent models.
In theory: in practice I wouldn't be able to begin to run such a
thing. For me, simulation implies "going to the world model to find
out what happens next." If the world model doesn't provide an answer--
and with an internally inconsistent model, this is bound to happen
sooner or later--there's nothing within simulation to rescue me, and
I would have to resort to drama or game considerations.
Are you envisioning an internally inconsistent gameworld that you could
referee without ever finding any of your questions undecidable due
to the inconsistency? Can you give an example? I sure can't.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Joshua Macy
I can give at least one easy example: a game-world in which real world
physics (at least as I understand it) holds true. I could tell the
players the result of doing certain experiments demonstrating the
wave/particle duality, but I need never come up with a consistent
interpretation (a good thing, too, since I note that whether there is or
can be such an interpretation of quantum theory is still a subject of
heated debate in recent letters columns in Physics Today).
To get back to the Astro City example, if a character tries to
introduce a super-scientific breakthrough that would have a profound
effect on people's everyday lives, you can go to the world model to find
out what happens next: it fails. It will always fail. As GM you can
make up various ad-hoc reasons why it might have failed in a particular
instance (too expensive, too fragile, too many unwanted side-effects, a
secret campaign by a mind-controlling supervillain, whatever), but the
question is never undecidable.
Now, if the players elect to keep poking at the basic assumptions of
the model, they might very well ruin everybody's fun, but that strikes
me as a game-contract problem, not a three-fold taxonomy problem.
Suppose I ran a game set in the modern day, and one of my players who
knows more about physics than I do elects to play an experimental
physicist. If he keeps having his character perform experiments the
outcomes of which are currently unknown in the real world, sooner rather
than later he's going to trip me up: I'll either create an apparent
inconsistency or I'll violate the feature of the model that the
gameworld is supposed to behave exactly like the real world in that
respect. I don't think that's enough to make it a non-simulationist
game, as long as the criteria for deciding the outcomes of the
experiments are carefully shielded from meta-game influences.
Joshua
John Kim
simulationism in a game-world which has internal inconsistencies.
This is in regard to Neel's Astro-city-style superhero game, which
he said could not be run as a simulation at all because of internal
inconsistencies. One example is super-technology: i.e. there are
super-gadgeteers, but none of them mass-market or proliferate their
inventions. If a PC gadgeteer tried to do so, the GM would not
have any in-world answer to this.
As far as I have seen *all* game-worlds have internal
inconsistencies of this sort, as a direct consequence of finite GM
knowledge. Every game-world, whether fictional or not, has a point
where the GM will be unable to explain why something works the way
it does. A direct parallel to Neel's super-gadgeteer might be a
PC in a real-world campaign who presents to the GM a plan he has
to destabilize the gold market. The GM knows that shouldn't be
possible, but she has no idea *why* the plan should fail.
-*-*-*-
As another example, suppose that there are low-level PC's
in a fantasy world who are supporting a siege operation. The GM
describes the defenses, and the PC's come up with a plan using a
set of common spells which will break the defenses. Now, each of
the steps (A+B+C) that they reasoned out are sensible. However, the
end result if true would have severe consequences for the world. If
this was true, why are fortifications in this world built the way
they are?
At this point, the GM resorts to "bottom-up" logic -- i.e.
she knows the features of the game world, but not the principles
which cause those features to exist. i.e. She knows that the
mass-marketing or the siege-breaking shouldn't work, and either
(A) tells the players outright that it doesn't work but she
doesn't know why, or (B) invents a new principle to make that
plan not work.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu> wrote:
>Joshua Macy <amu...@webamused.com> wrote:
>> The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ,
>> and according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations
>> of internally inconsistent models.
>
>In theory: in practice I wouldn't be able to begin to run such a
>thing. For me, simulation implies "going to the world model to
>find out what happens next." If the world model doesn't provide an
>answer--and with an internally inconsistent model, this is bound to
>happen sooner or later--there's nothing within simulation to rescue
>me, and I would have to resort to drama or game considerations.
Hmmm. Let me give another example at this point. I ran
a original-series-era _Star Trek_ game for a long time in a fairly
simulationist manner. A sticking point here was the technology,
of course. Original series didn't have nearly as many of the
extravagances here that the Next Generation does, but there is
still too much technology to possibly explain top-down.
In regards to technology, I first rigidly defined the
basic devices and how they were used: the phaser, tricorder,
transporter, and so forth. Past that, I set out two basic
principles for modifying equipment which were explicitly
"bottom-up":
If you (the player) have an idea for a device to invent or
jury-rig, consider the questions "What are the drawbacks?"
"Why isn't this standard procedure for Star Fleet?"
This is the essence of "bottom-up" simulationism, in my mind.
It is not working from the logic of drama or game -- but rather
just working directly "bottom-up" from established game-world
details rather than "top-down" from defined principles. Answers
would sometimes stem from the pattern of Star Fleet usage of
technology rather than from how the gadget actually worked,
such as:
1) It is extremely easy for a culture to lapse into depending
entirely on robots and computers, and lose its drive to
explore and grow. Star Fleet avoids this in its basic task
philosophy: if a job *can* be done by hand without undue
loss of efficiency, it *should*. Equipment is designed to
be used by hand, not to operate remotely or automatically.
2) Star Fleet draws on dozens of worlds for its officers, with
populations in the billions for a naval force significantly
smaller than the current U.S. Navy. Star Fleet officers are
thus the elite of the elite and highly valued, but they are
replaceable. Thus, technology will err on the side of
effectiveness over safety.
This is working "backwards" from effects to causes -- i.e.
figuring out technology on the basis of how it is used, rather than
defining how tech is used based on how it works. However, it is
still reasoning strictly from within the game-world. i.e. You
don't need to know anything about the story, who the PC's are, etc.
to follow these lines of logic.
Psychohist
The problem lies in the way you think of simulation, not in the
definition of simulation given in the FAQ. Refusal to let "meta-game"
considerations influence in-game outcomes of decisions has absolutely
nothing to do with whether the world is internally consistent.
Actually, I think most of the strong advocates of simulation on this forum
think failure to explicitly mention internal consistency in the definition of
simulationism is indeed a major problem with the FAQ - it causes no end of
confusion between simulation (requiring internal consistency) and
verisimilitude (requiring 'realistic' detail). In the big discussion about
simulationism a couple years ago, I was perhaps the strongest proponent of the
style, and I consider internal consistency to be the single defining element of
the style.
For a year or so, I pointed this out every time John's FAQ came out, but
eventually I gave up.
The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ, and
according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations of
internally inconsistent models.
Internally inconsistent models give ambiguous answers to some questions. If
you have nothing but the model to refer to, how do you pick which one of these
answers to use?
Warren Dew
Samuel Leming
Name's Sam, been three years since I've done any usenet posting. Looks like
you have a good group going here. Hope you don't mind if I jump in.
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <7cp85n$gs6$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>In article <36EFF009...@webamused.com>,
>Joshua Macy <amu...@webamused.com> wrote:
>
>> The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ, and
>>according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations of
>>internally inconsistent models.
>
>In theory: in practice I wouldn't be able to begin to run such a
>thing. For me, simulation implies "going to the world model to find
>out what happens next." If the world model doesn't provide an answer--
>and with an internally inconsistent model, this is bound to happen
>sooner or later--there's nothing within simulation to rescue me, and
>I would have to resort to drama or game considerations.
>
>Are you envisioning an internally inconsistent gameworld that you could
>referee without ever finding any of your questions undecidable due
>to the inconsistency? Can you give an example? I sure can't.
>
>Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Simulationist games. First of all, I'd have to ask what's being simulated?
In Neelakantan Krisnaswami's post, he appears to be simulating a world
based on the model presented by his game system(Hero, maybe?) & his
own considerable common sense. If the genre blocks these rules, than
he sees an inconsistency. I think Mary Kuhner's views may be similar, but
I could be wrong.
In the posts by Dew, Gleichman, & Macy, the simulation is modeling the
4C supers genre. Boiled down, their arguments seem to say that any
inconsistency caused by simulating an already inconsistent model does
not invalidate the simulation. Their arguments work for me.
OK, how can I have it both ways? Easy, you're talking about two different
kinds of simulation. I'll call them Genre Simulations & Sequitor
Simulations.
Genre Simulations:
This kind of simulation models a genre from an already existing art
form.
As long as the proper conventions are followed, then the simulation
holds.
The rules of the game used may or may not match the genre being
simulated.
I prefer it when they don't. Good examples have already been provided by
Dew, Gleichman, & Macy.
Sequitor Simulations:
The rules of the game and its correlaries are the model for this kind of
sim. The rules ARE the 'physics' of the world. Frex: an AD&D world in
this
kind of game probably would have few castles. Flying varmints &
pyrotechnic
magic would render them inefficient .
I'm in no way saying these are the only two kinds of simulations, and no, I
don't think that these two kinds of sim are opposites. I've seen both kinds
of games. Some of them actually worked :>
I'm tired. That's enough.
Good Luck.
Over & Out
Samuel Leming
Brian Gleichman
In a rare disagreement with Warren...
>Actually, I think most of the strong advocates of simulation on this forum
>think failure to explicitly mention internal consistency in the definition
of
>simulationism is indeed a major problem with the FAQ
I disagree. In part because (as Brett Evil once pointed out) types of drama
base games could just as well claim internal consistency. So could types of
gamist campaigns.
But the major reason is that internal consistency doesn't require
visibility.
Joshua has hit the mark here. If attempt y always produces effect x, that's
all the consistency one needs. You don't have to have the real CORRECT core
reason for the cause and effect.
If such was the case, real life would fail this test and thus be a poor
simulation. Not something I think you want to claim.
>For a year or so, I pointed this out every time John's FAQ came out, but
>eventually I gave up.
The thing is written is stone, it's bugs are now features.
>Internally inconsistent models give ambiguous answers to some questions.
If
>you have nothing but the model to refer to, how do you pick which one of
these
>answers to use?
How about the one that fits the GM's view of the world? After all weren't
you one of the proponents for 'channeling' answers to questions like this?
Ero...@aol.com
> Joshua Macy <amu...@webamused.com> wrote:
>
> > The bottom line is that you can have (both according to the FAQ, and
> >according to a more natural usage of "simulation") simulations of
> >internally inconsistent models.
>
> In theory: in practice I wouldn't be able to begin to run such a
> thing. For me, simulation implies "going to the world model to find
> out what happens next." If the world model doesn't provide an answer--
> and with an internally inconsistent model, this is bound to happen
> sooner or later--there's nothing within simulation to rescue me, and
> I would have to resort to drama or game considerations.
>
> Are you envisioning an internally inconsistent gameworld that you could
> referee without ever finding any of your questions undecidable due
> to the inconsistency? Can you give an example? I sure can't.
I think it's more a matter of whether or not one is able to accept genre
conventions as world-axioms or not. (E.g. the superhero conventions "even the
simplist disguises work quiet well at hiding a secret identity" and "attempts
to mass-market products based on 'super' technology will always fail.") If
the players - and the characters - are willing to accept these things as
given, then inconsistancies can be swept under the rug. But if they are
driven to overcome or work around these world-axioms then the axioms had
better have rigorous consistancy.
A real-world example might be Einstein's speed-of-light limit. People *don't
like* this, and so look for ways to overcome or worm around it - even to the
point of being willing to accept inconsistant "proofs" that FTL is possible.
Other examples might be 'squaring the circle' and 'trisecting the angle.'
Some people accept the proofs that these things can't be done, while others
refuse to accept this, keep digging at the problems, and even accept
logically inconsistant "proofs" that they can be solved.
So (IME) a supers game with an axiom like "attempts to mass-market super
gizmos always fail" will work as long as no one tries to overthrow, or work
around, or push the edge of the axiom. It's an emotional commitment as much
as anything else, a form of willing suspension of disbelief.
(I hope not to start a "gun-control" flame with this, but the axiom of
superheroes that bugs me the most is "firearm use and misuse is essentially
as gun-control advocates paint it to be." As a staunch opponent of "gun
control" I consider this to be another way in which a superhero world differs
from the real world. I accept that the axiom is necessary for a proper
supers-world (if normals have functioning 'equalizers' then the super's style
gets cramped) but I still wince whenever a comicbook stomps hard on this with
a story about 'evil gun-runners' or 'evil right-wing militias')
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com (mail drop)
Er...@ix.netcom.com (surfboard)
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
John Kim wrote in message <7cplcu$7...@news.service.uci.edu>...
>
> 1) It is extremely easy for a culture to lapse into depending
> entirely on robots and computers...
>
> 2) Star Fleet draws on dozens of worlds for its officers, with
> populations in the billions...
I like these. They make terrific sense, within the dramatic
structure of the show.
BBlackmoor
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Peter W. LaNore
>IME player resistance to coercion (forced choices) interferes strongly with
>player/PC empathy--and hence dramatist rpgs which rely on player
>coercion produce crappy stories.
>
>For some players, I would imagine, this means that all attempts by the GM
to
>structure the narrative will of necessity be self-defeating.
>
From my perspective, the active words in the above post were "player
resistance" and "coercion".
The one hand: If the player is resisting the forced choices, they will most
likely have difficulty with the design, development, execution, or choice of
the game. They will probably not play it long.
The other hand: One of the most humorous characters I've seen played was a
fellow named Skulker. Skulker had gone from being an obsessive burglar
(obsessive about never being photographed) to a semi-heroic role. However,
he had a nervousness personality quirk (if frightened, shoot gun) and an
adverse reaction to hidden cameras quirk (if notice hidden camera, get
nervous). Now, Skulker as a character, hated those incidents when he would
obsessively whip out his gun and blast a camera.. he tried to fight it and
usually succeeded. On the meta-level, the player enjoyed tossing poor old
Skulker into banks, security areas, embassies, just to see the reactions
(and trouble for Skulk) when that gun went off. It was certainly a coercive
mechanic, in that Skulker would not have chosen to open fire in the bank.
But the player resistance was non-existent (unlike the player laughter).
Peter W. LaNore
>Brandon Blackmoor wrote:
>> What I see is that making a choice between "I have to play the
>> character *solely* based on what I think that character would do
>> in that situation" and "I have to play that character *solely*
>> based on what the GM has in mind for the game is (I can't think
>> of a way to put it gently) ludicrous. You are playing a game
>> with other human beings. Of *course* you keep in mind the goals
>> and expectations of your fellow players (including the GM), and
>> of *course* that affects how you play. If you did not, you be a
>> dismal player, not to mention a pretty sorry excuse for a human
>> being.
>
>It's good to know that you just don't listen, no matter how
>many times you are told.
>Although the above quote does make it obvious why the
>dramatic and simulationism axes aren't important to you:
>you can enjoy yourself easily at any position on the axes.
>For some of us, this is not the case. Hence we consider
>the axes important.
I did not read Brandon's response in the same way. When I read it, I see
the "*solely*" as a zero-axis condition. This would be likened to a person
saying "I don't believe in the Meyers-Briggs test because it says I'm an
INTJ and I don't think I'm *solely* introverted (extroversion=0)".
A MB advocate will explain "I" doesn't mean 100% Introverted, it means more
introverted that extroverted". Or you can just say, "You're a bozo". One
response is probably more helpful than the other.
I see a term like Simulationist in the same way. If a person says, "I don't
believe in the Threefold because it says I'm a Dramatist and I don't think
I'm *solely* a dramatist (s=0,g=0)",
As for me, I can see the threefold viewpoint as a useful conceptual space
for localizing game focus and measuring how well it meets the desires of the
players. But I don't think that I would call a person who is
38%Simulationist, 22%Gamist, and 40%Dramatist as a Dramatist". Nor do I
think that I would design a game for a 100-0-0 personality.
I'm quite agreeable to the idea that most players do not play "*solely*"
from one of the three primary colors on your color wheel.
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Peter W. LaNore wrote in message
<7crv0t$jch$1...@lore.eur.sprynet.com>...
>>Brandon Blackmoor wrote:
>>> What I see is that making a choice between "I have to play
the
>>> character *solely* based on what I think that character
would do
>>> in that situation" and "I have to play that character
*solely*
>>> based on what the GM has in mind for the game
>I did not read Brandon's response in the same way. When I read
it, I see
>the "*solely*" as a zero-axis condition....
>I see a term like Simulationist in the same way. If a person
says, "I don't
>believe in the Threefold because it says I'm a Dramatist and I
don't think
>I'm *solely* a dramatist (s=0,g=0)",
FYI, I was not responding to or commenting on the "threefold"
model (nor do I plan to, for the foreeable future -- that horse
is quite dead, imo).
BBlackmoor
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Joshua Macy
>
... snip stuff that I agree with about willingness not to challenge the
axioms...
> (I hope not to start a "gun-control" flame with this, but the axiom of
> superheroes that bugs me the most is "firearm use and misuse is essentially
> as gun-control advocates paint it to be." As a staunch opponent of "gun
> control" I consider this to be another way in which a superhero world differs
> from the real world. I accept that the axiom is necessary for a proper
> supers-world (if normals have functioning 'equalizers' then the super's style
> gets cramped)
I guess I don't see this. As far as I can tell, in most super-hero
comics, neither the heroes nor the villains see gun-toting normals as
much of a threat. Putting on a costume, even if you have no
super-powers, means that you can pretty much dodge bullets with ease.
Joshua
Lee Short
> Lee Short wrote in message <36EF2DF9...@pro-ns.net>...
> >Brandon Blackmoor wrote:
> >> What I see is that making a choice between "I have to play the
> >> character *solely* based on what I think that character would do
> >> in that situation" and "I have to play that character *solely*
> >> based on what the GM has in mind for the game is (I can't think
> >> of a way to put it gently) ludicrous. You are playing a game
> >> with other human beings. Of *course* you keep in mind the goals
> >> and expectations of your fellow players (including the GM), and
> >> of *course* that affects how you play. If you did not, you be a
> >> dismal player, not to mention a pretty sorry excuse for a human
> >> being.
> >
> >Cool.
> >It's good to know that you just don't listen, no matter how
> >many times you are told.
> >Although the above quote does make it obvious why the
> >dramatic and simulationism axes aren't important to you:
> >you can enjoy yourself easily at any position on the axes.
> >For some of us, this is not the case. Hence we consider
> >the axes important.
>
> I did not read Brandon's response in the same way. When I read it, I see
> the "*solely*" as a zero-axis condition. This would be likened to a person
> saying "I don't believe in the Meyers-Briggs test because it says I'm an
> INTJ and I don't think I'm *solely* introverted (extroversion=0)".
> A MB advocate will explain "I" doesn't mean 100% Introverted, it means more
> introverted that extroverted". Or you can just say, "You're a bozo". One
> response is probably more helpful than the other.
> I see a term like Simulationist in the same way. If a person says, "I don't
> believe in the Threefold because it says I'm a Dramatist and I don't think
> I'm *solely* a dramatist (s=0,g=0)",
Since you're being reasonable about this, I'll try and be reasonable
too (note that things like "a pretty sorry excuse for a human being"
are not hallmarks of rationality, IMHO).
Some of the simulationist advocates in the group have explained
repeatedly that gaming is no fun for them if they must consider
the metagaming concerns Brandon mentions above. This is why
the simulationist axis is very important to them -- and why they
seek out games with like-minded players. Calling them names is
not going to change their minds.
----
Now to the actual substance of your comments: *OF COURSE*
there are people at all places on the axes, not just at the poles. I
considered this part of Brandon's post so obvious at to not warrant
a response. But I don't see how it counts against the usefulness of
the threefold, either.
My actual point was that Brandon has probably never played in
a game that made him say "Ick -- too much GM manipulation with
events to make his plot happen" or in a game that made him say
"when something going to happen?? I'm bored without a plot".
If he had, he would have a better understanding of why some of
us consider this important.
Lee
--
Lee Short
Software Commissar
Blackcat Solutions, Inc
blac...@pro-ns.net
Psychohist
If attempt y always produces effect x, that's all the
consistency one needs. You don't have to have the real
CORRECT core reason for the cause and effect.
If such was the case, real life would fail this test and
thus be a poor simulation. Not something I think you
want to claim.
There may be some confusion between having an internally consistent, 'correct'
world model, and someone's knowing what that model is. A purely simulationist
campaign needs the former, but not necessarily the latter.
I do claim that the player world is based on an internally consistent world
model. Just because we don't know all the details of it yet does not mean it
doesn't exist.
Me:
Internally inconsistent models give ambiguous answers to
some questions. If you have nothing but the model to refer
to, how do you pick which one of these answers to use?
Brian:
How about the one that fits the GM's view of the world?
After all weren't you one of the proponents for 'channeling'
answers to questions like this?
I only advocate channeling from internally consistent subconscious models - and
I have noted in the past that one of the drawbacks of this form of
gamesmastering for a world oriented campaign is the difficulty of verifying
internal consistency to one's satisfaction.
Channeling from an internally inconsistent model would leave the gamesmaster
with more than one possibility, unsure of the result, or worse, sure of two
conflicting results. This could cause major problems, for example when one
channelled a successful attack from a monster that had previously been killed
by the players.
Warren
Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Lee Short wrote in message <36F1A1B2...@pro-ns.net>...
>
>(note that things like "a pretty sorry excuse for a human
being"
>are not hallmarks of rationality, IMHO).
>
>Some of the simulationist advocates in the group have explained
>repeatedly that gaming is no fun for them if they must consider
>the metagaming concerns Brandon mentions above. This is why
>the simulationist axis is very important to them -- and why
they
>seek out games with like-minded players. Calling them names is
>not going to change their minds.
On the one hand, it did not occur to me that the "sorry excuse
for a human being" I was referring to would include anyone who
actually plays RPGs. I mean, I suppose it's possible, but
someone like that would be more likely to be robbing liquor
stores or running con games than pursuing an explicitly social
leisure activity.
On the other hand, if someone *does* exclude from consideration
any thought of their fellow players or what might be fun for the
people they are playing with, why would they bother seeking out
people with a similarly sociopathic viewpoint? By definition,
they don't care (or *want* to care) what the other players think
or feel. Sociopaths don't seek each other's company.
But even if someone like this does play RPGs (which I would be
shocked to find, honestly), I think there is little point in
basing one's analysis of a form of entertainment upon such
extreme aberrations from the norm (depending on why you are
analyzing it in the first place, I suppose).
BBlackmoor
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Brandon Blackmoor
Hash: SHA1
Joshua Macy wrote in message
<36F1D035...@webamused.com>...
>
> As far as I can tell, in most super-hero
> comics, neither the heroes nor the villains
> see gun-toting normals as much of a threat.
The only time I have really noticed an exception to this was in
a late 1980's Spider-Man. Two mercs named Styx and Stone were
kicking Spider-Man's butt all over New York, but Mary Jane
chased them off with a revolver!
BBlackmoor
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John Kim
simulationist players.
Brandon Blackmoor <BBlac...@sff.net> wrote:
>Lee Short wrote in message <36F1A1B2...@pro-ns.net>...
>> Some of the simulationist advocates in the group have explained
>> repeatedly that gaming is no fun for them if they must consider
>> the metagaming concerns Brandon mentions above. This is why
>> the simulationist axis is very important to them -- and why
>> they seek out games with like-minded players.
[...]
>On the other hand, if someone *does* exclude from consideration
>any thought of their fellow players or what might be fun for the
>people they are playing with, why would they bother seeking out
>people with a similarly sociopathic viewpoint? By definition,
>they don't care (or *want* to care) what the other players think
>or feel. Sociopaths don't seek each other's company.
Um, Brandon? By definition, a "pure" simulationist player
prefers not to take meta-game factors into account *FOR IN-GAME-WORLD
DECISIONS*. This doesn't mean that they don't care about other
players' feelings -- but rather that they don't enjoy a game where
they are expected try to assuage other players' feelings by changing
how things work in the game-world.
You have a fundamentally flawed logic here, because the
simulationist esthetic is *itself* a cause for player enjoyment and
thus a "meta-game" concern. As a simple thought experiment, imagine
that I got together a group of 100% pure simulationist players.
Suppose another person joins the group. He wants the others to enjoy
their game, so he sticks to their style -- i.e. not modifying in-game
decisions for meta-game reasons!
By *taking* meta-game reasons in his in-game decisions, he
would be disrupting other's enjoyment -- which is exactly the symptom
of "sociopathic" behavior that you mention.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
It has been charged before that simulationist or immersive
players are "uncaring" of other players' feelings. I feel that at
the heart of this is a double standard: You discount that immersion
or simulationist-preference are themselves causes for player
enjoyment.
To draw a parallel outside of RPG's, I would compare this to
two people playing chess. One of them claims to be playing "just for
fun", while the other one enjoys the intellectual/tactical challenge.
The "fun" player keeps insisting on takebacks, say "it's just a game,"
ignoring that this is disrupting the other player's enjoyment!
red
> It has been charged before that simulationist or immersive
> players are "uncaring" of other players' feelings. I feel that at
> the heart of this is a double standard: You discount that immersion
> or simulationist-preference are themselves causes for player
> enjoyment.
>
Which is exactly why it seems so odd that people deny the social element
of gaming. It is not that they are accused of being uncaring, this is
something they have claimed.
> To draw a parallel outside of RPG's, I would compare this to
> two people playing chess. One of them claims to be playing "just for
> fun", while the other one enjoys the intellectual/tactical challenge.
> The "fun" player keeps insisting on takebacks, say "it's just a game,"
> ignoring that this is disrupting the other player's enjoyment!
Yes, exactly - it woulds seem strange, and indeed difficult, to imagine
two players with conflicting styles and no interest in compromise ever
playing together again.