I just had a weird thought. Vogons are poets. At first when you hear about Vogon poetry you think of poor tormented artists toiling away. In reality the Vogons are artists, like violent muggers are tribbles. It's their way of giving the whole universe a big fat middle finger.

I'm just hoping that no forgers are named Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

P.S. I'm joking. I don't really think any forgers are as bad or worse than Vogons. Least I'm really really really hoping.

Regarding dice mechanisms:

It´s definitely a perception thing. If you guys all are perceiving it differently, then of course there is no real difference between dice mechanisms as we talk about them right now.

I have to believe you guys, although my experiences and anectdotal evidence tell me a different story.

Quote from: SettembriniRegarding dice mechanisms:

It´s definitely a perception thing. If you guys all are perceiving it differently, then of course there is no real difference between dice mechanisms as we talk about them right now.

I have to believe you guys, although my experiences and anectdotal evidence tell me a different story.

Is this meant to be in the GURPS thread?

Hi Joe,

Burning Wheel does allow for each play priority to become manifest according to the tastes of individual players and the whole group.

As for my wrongitude, who knows. I did not write any of my games with this theory in mind. I design my games for specific effect, though -- good games encourage and reward certain behaviors while disincentivizing others.

However, the basic GNS article  seems pretty clear to me. Though, there's one section that is confusing.

Quote from: The Infamous ArticleFor a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism. The primary and not to be compromised goal is what it is for a given instance of play. The actual time or activity of an "instance" is necessarily left ambiguous.

Over a greater period of time, across many instances of play, some people tend to cluster their decisions and interests around one of the three goals. Other people vary across the goals, but even they admit that they stay focused, or prioritize, for a given instance.

To my eye, it says: "You're not doing all three at once in any given moment. You're probably prioritizing one set of goals over another in each situation. But over a longer course of play you may find that your goals stay consistently focused, or stray from mode to mode."

I suppose I shouldn't have said, "moment to moment." Ah English. So fickle!

Anyway, I'm glad we could otherwise agree.
-L

Quote from: MoriartyLet me tell you about my D&D character who is a Ranger that dual-wields a hammer and sickle and who's Favorite Enemy is the Bourgeoise...

Someone needs to do that D20/OGL book just for  laughs.

Quote from: lukeHowever, most of the games with forums on the Forge have very strong Gamist components to them. They are probably more ardently gamist than DnD or it's numerous children -- they demand you play the game by the rules and play to "win."

I haven't got a great deal of experience with Forge games, but I'll give my opinion nonetheless. When I read Dogs in the Vineyard (I haven't played it), I felt there was a lot of game there, the way you have to manipulate your dice, you know. I'll say more, D&D is often presented as an example of gamist game, but I'm not so sure of that.

Quote from: joewolzWhy is Narrativist play now the main focus of the Forge?  It's not that it's as marginal (on the internet at least) as it once was, so where's the Forgey love for the other two play styles?  Do they not deserve any sort of serious innovation with a solid theoretical basis?

I think that Narrativist is the main focus of The Forge because of history and experience. Weirdly there's a tone of violent revolution in a lot of the historical works of The Forge (nuking the apple cart, Ron's war-stories, the language of the Big GNS Essay, etc.).

From the terms that are used, I think some people have sort of "chosen sides" (whether it be indie-vs.-mainstream or Nar-vs.-Sim or whatever) and that choice colors everything from design to discourse.

-Marco

Correct luke, Elliot and I disagreed with your definition because of the "moment to moment" qualifier.  No big.  It's funny how the entire meaning of a sentence can change with the addition of a phrase.

Quote from: droogI think by 'just being' Tony's talking about the sort of play where your aim is to experience life as another person in another world. For instance, Calithena's example of sitting around having a meal (I have a similar story about planning and throwing a birthday party in RQ). I'm really not sure how common this style of play is.

Wow, that game would really suck.  At least to me as the gamer.  I have never played a game like that.  There was always a point, even if it was thin or transparent.  I've never played in a session (that I remember) like that.

Quote from: joewolzWow, that game would really suck.

Now, now!

Quote from: Ron EdwardsWhat's fun or good about that? Simulationist play looks awfully strange to those who enjoy lots of metagame and overt social context during play. "You do it just to do it? What the hell is that?"

However, contrary to some accusations, it's not autistic or schizophrenic, being just as social and group-Premise as any other role-playing. The key issues are shared love of the source material and sincerity. Simulationism is sort of like Virtual Reality, but with the emphasis on the "V," because it clearly covers so many subjects. Perhaps it could be called V-Whatever rather than V-Reality. If the Whatever is a fine, cool thing, then it's fun to see fellow players imagine what you are imagining, and vice versa. (By "you" in that sentence, I am referring to anyone at the table, GM or player.) To the dedicated practitioner, such play is sincere to a degree that's lacking in heavy-metagame play, and that sincerity is the quality that I'm focusing on throughout this essay.

Sincere shared creativity: all role-playing has to have it. For some, it's the whole point.

Quote from: joewolzCan you explain by what "just being" means as the point of an RPG?

Not very well.  Not yet.  That's part of the ongoing effort   But I'll give it a try:

   One of the things that we notice about stories, and about games, is the beauty of our own/group imaginings.  Some people describe that element as helping them to "be there," in a way that I don't fully understand.  But, for me, it's more akin to beauty.  I am moved by the heartbreaking rightness of the characters, and (usually to a lesser extent) the setting and situation.  They strike a chord in me ... a strong metaphor:  they are not a mirror, but something in them resonates with something in me, as chords on a piano resonate together.

Now, that beauty is present in pretty much every game.  But I don't consciously pay attention to it in every game.  I sometimes focus on that beauty only later, in the echoes of the moment.  Sometimes I never focus on it at all, because I'm paying attention to other things.  And that's fine.  Those other things are worthy too.  I'm not robbing myself of the one good thing on the menu, just picking and choosing what I want today.

To my mind, game rules can have an important impact on what people pay attention to (in a variety of ways beyond the scope of this thread).  You can draw people's eye to particular items on your menu.  I am intensely interested in figuring out how to make a game that focusses peoples attention not on pivotal moments of choice (deciding moral quandaries, gaming the system, etc.) but on the beauty of what they are creating through and between those moments of choice.  Of course, all of these elements still have to be happening, and still have to be balanced in the system (I think the notion that one has "priority" is a long-standing error, but again that tangent would be beyond the scope of this thread), but some are handled in the foreground, explicitly, and some are handled in the background, implicitly (through structures that often only emerge when you analyze the game quite closely).  In the game I'm trying to make some of the things that traditionally get a lot of explicit attention from rules-mechanics are going to be deliberately handled in a backgrounded way that structures them without focussing attention on them.  Contrary-wise, some of the things that often get handled in a backgrounded way (particularly some of the raw beauty of human relationships and uncertainty) are going to be foregrounded strongly.And that's, very roughly, how I would currently express what I'm trying to do in making a game that focusses on the "just being" part of the game.  Phew!  That turned out longer than I expected.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityWhich only goes to show, yet again, that Tony & Co. are unable to imagine Sim other than as the absence of Nar. So what else is new.

You've leapt to draw an awful lot of conclusions from two words on my part.  I'm interested to hear your thinking now that I've made an attempt at a more involved explanation.

Tony, my conclusions aren't based on two words by you but on following Forge discussions for quite a while. When it comes to Sim you guys got nothing. Not three years ago and, given your above post, not now.

There are two approaches to Sim: a) equipment lists and falling rules; b) absence of Nar ("nothing happening"). b) = your post.

Funnily enough, it reinvents Georg Lukacs's shtick on narration vs. description decades after the fact. Stalinists and Forgites have this in common: they like a good story.

If you really want to go for the Sim, dump the story. Which is to say: dump what passes for morality in middle-brow late twentieth-century genre fiction. Dump what passes for the "protagonist" in tacky ole Joe Campbell, whom nobody has ever taken seriously.

How come the Morte d'Arthur is such a boring "story"? How come, as Edwards admitted, he can't deal with the epic? Why do the Liaisons Dangereuses seem so "superficial"? What was a human, what was an experience, what was an event, what was a society, circa 600 BC, 200AD, 1300AD, 1750AD?

You want to do Sim, you go do some reading. Take it up a notch, from what you remember about Anthropology 101 to grad school proseminar level.

Some almost random reading suggestions:

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (on medieval literature)
Georg Lukacs, Theory of the Novel (chapter on epic vs. novel)
The Libertinage Reader (Zone Books, on the 18th century)
Peter Brown on the body and the holy man in late Antiquity / early Christianity

And you guys are still following the Gospel of Ron.

GNS is bollocks. The categories are arbitrary and meaningless. My daily horoscope in the newspaper has more insight into my game play style than does GNS.

Once you accept the three definitions (using the word "definition" in its most generously loose sense), then you basically have to accept that "Narrativist" is the only worthwhile approach to play. Trying to discuss "Simulationism" with a GNS fan is like trying to debate the Holy Ghost with a Catholic - it's an intrinsic part of the faith, yet at the same time is very foggy and undefined to most of them. Once you even talk about the Holy Ghost seriously, you may as well just give up and go and get yourself baptised at the local cathedral - you've become a Catholic.

Likewise, once you talk about "Simulationist" seriously, you may as well just sign out of all your forums and join the Forge and story-games. You're accepting all their definitions and terms, however vague and ill-conceived. You've joined the Revolution.

Oh noes! It's even more subversive then I thought! You catch it just by looking at it! Alert the internet.

Can it be cured? If I talked about it just one time, when I was curious, does that make me a convert? I just played a Forge game this one time in college...

The point is that when you discuss things using their sloppy terminology, they've already mostly won the argument.

It's sort of like trying to argue with a Catholic that the Pope doesn't speak infallibly, yet every time you mention the Pope, the Catholic insists you say, "His Holiness." Once you accept that he's "His Holiness", you've basically accepted that he can speak infallibly.

Likewise, once you get into the habit of saying Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism...

You can't argue an entire system is invalid while at the same time using all its terms and ideas. And if you want to say that "Simulationism" or "Gamism" are the red-headed stepchildren of GNS, then really you're arguing that the entire system is invalid. It's time for the Emperor to take off those invisible clothes and put on some real ones. Standing there trying to find the hem on the Simulationist blouse just makes you look silly.

The way to argue against GNS is to have your own ideas, expressed in your own words.