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"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5781819" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I think winning, or something like it, is pretty central to <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">Edwards' conception of gamist play</a>:</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Competition is best understood as a productive add-on to Gamist play. Such play is fundamentally cooperative, but may include competition. That's not a contradiction: I'm using exactly the same logic as might be found at the poker and basketball games. You can't compete, socially, without an agreed-upon venue. If the cooperation's details are acceptable to everyone, then the competition within it can be quite fierce. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Role-playing texts never get this straight. For them, it's always either competition or cooperation, one-other, push-pull, and often nonsensical. . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">So what is all this competition business about? It concerns conflict of interest. If person A's performance is only maximized by driving down another's performance, then competition is present. In Gamist play, this is not required - but it is very often part of the picture. Competition gives both Step On Up and Challenge a whole new feel - a bite. . .</p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">I might as well get this over with now: the phrase "Role-playing games are not about winning" is the most widespread example of synecdoche in the hobby. Potential Gamist responses, and I think appropriately, include: </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">"Eat me," </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">(upon winning) "I win," and </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">"C'mon, let's play without these morons." </p></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">I'm defining "winning" as positive assessment at the Step On Up level. It even applies when little or no competition is going on. It applies even when the win-condition is fleeting. Even if it's unstated. Even if it's no big deal. Without it, and if it's not the priority of play, then no Gamism. </p><p></p><p>He does make room for "everyone being a winner" - if there is Step On Up without competition - but suggests that a lot of satisfying gamism will involve competition, and hence losers as well as winners.</p><p></p><p>I can't reallly agree with this at all. It's hard to judge some one's priorities for play when you're reading a few lines they wrote on a messageboard, but a version of exploration-heavy gamism seems to me the default assumption for play here at ENworld. Every time someone posts, for example, that D&D play without the risk of PC death isn't satisfying, or isn't meaningful, and everyone posts about the importance of scenario design that creates options for "meaningful choice" - where by meaningful choice that mean choices that increase or decrease the risk of PC death, and the likelihood of PC enrichment - they are advocating gamist play.</p><p></p><p>Gygax himself, in the AD&D PHB, presents a version of gamism - he calls it the ideal of "skillful play" - as the point of playing D&D.</p><p></p><p>Somewhere in the 80s and 90s simulationism emerged as the dominant priority in (at least mainstream) RPGing, and this Gygaxian stuff got downplayed in D&D rulebooks. But I can't agree gamism in the hobby is somehow less deserving of accommodation.</p><p></p><p>To finish this post, here is another passage from Edwards' essay, under the heading "The bitterest role-player in the world":</p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">Meet the low-Step On Up, high-Challenge Gamist, with both "little red competition" dials spun down to their lowest settings. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">This person prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. This view, and its problematic qualities, are extremely similar to that of the person who wants to see full-blown Narrativist values "just appear" from a Simulationist-play foundation. It's possible, but not as easy and intuitive as it would seem. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">His preferred venue for the Gamist moments of play is a small-scale scene or crisis embedded in a larger-scale Exploration that focuses on Setting and Character. In these scenes, he's all about the Crunch: Fortune systems should be easy to estimate, such that each instance of its use may be chosen and embedded in a matrix of strategizing. Point-character construction and menus of independent feats or powers built to resist Powergaming are ideal. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">As for playing the character, it's Author Stance all the way. He likes to imagine what "his guy" thinks, but to direct "his guy" actions from a cool and clear Step On Up perspective. The degree of Author Stance is confined to in-game imaginative events alone and doesn't bleed over into Balance of Power issues regarding resolution at all. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">Related to the Stance issue, he is vehemently opposed to the Hard Core, even to any hints of it or any exploitable concepts that it seizes upon most easily. For instance, reward system that functions at the metagame level is anathema: not only should solid aesthetics should be primary, but he is rightly leery of the Hard Core eye for such reward systems. "Balance" for him consists of the purity of the Resource system and unbroken Currency. It's consistent with the Simulationist Purist for System values and represents further defenses against the Hard Core. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">He probably developed his role-playing preferences in highly-Drifted AD&D2 or in an easily-Drifted version of early Champions, both of which he probably describes as playing "correctly" relative to other groups committed to these games. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">This man (I've met no women who fit this description) is cursed. He's cursed because the only people who can enjoy playing with him, and vice versa, are those who share precisely his goals, and these goals are very easily upset by just about any others. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p><p style="margin-left: 20px">*His heavy Sim focus keeps away the "lite" Gamists who like Exploration but not Simulationism. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">*The lack of metagame reward system keeps away most Gamists in general. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">*Hard Core Gamists will kick him in the nuts every time, just as they do to Simulationist play. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">*Most Simulationist-oriented players won't Step Up - they get no gleam in their eye when the Challenge hits, and some are even happy just to piddle about and "be." </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">*Just about anyone who's not Gamist-inclined lumps him with "those Gamists" and writes him off.</p></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px"></p> <p style="margin-left: 20px">I've known several of these guys. They are bitter, I say. Imagine years of just knowing that your "perfect game" is possible, seeing it in your mind, knowing that if only a few other people could just play their characters exactly according to the values that you yourself would play, that your GM-preparation would pay off beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Now imagine years of encountering all the bulleted points above, over and over.</p><p></p><p>I agree with Edwards that this is a genuine type. I would add that it is, to some extent, one logical extension of Gygaxian play (but adopting a less metagamey XP system than XP for treasure). While Edwards exaggerates the bitterness for rhetorical effect, if you go to (for example) the ICE boards you will see this sort of approach to play articulated by many posters. And I think it is an approach to play that any design of D&D should at least have in mind as a mode that should be viable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5781819, member: 42582"] I think winning, or something like it, is pretty central to [url=http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/]Edwards' conception of gamist play[/url]: [indent]Competition is best understood as a productive add-on to Gamist play. Such play is fundamentally cooperative, but may include competition. That's not a contradiction: I'm using exactly the same logic as might be found at the poker and basketball games. You can't compete, socially, without an agreed-upon venue. If the cooperation's details are acceptable to everyone, then the competition within it can be quite fierce. Role-playing texts never get this straight. For them, it's always either competition or cooperation, one-other, push-pull, and often nonsensical. . . So what is all this competition business about? It concerns conflict of interest. If person A's performance is only maximized by driving down another's performance, then competition is present. In Gamist play, this is not required - but it is very often part of the picture. Competition gives both Step On Up and Challenge a whole new feel - a bite. . . I might as well get this over with now: the phrase "Role-playing games are not about winning" is the most widespread example of synecdoche in the hobby. Potential Gamist responses, and I think appropriately, include: [indent]"Eat me," (upon winning) "I win," and "C'mon, let's play without these morons." [/indent] I'm defining "winning" as positive assessment at the Step On Up level. It even applies when little or no competition is going on. It applies even when the win-condition is fleeting. Even if it's unstated. Even if it's no big deal. Without it, and if it's not the priority of play, then no Gamism. [/indent] He does make room for "everyone being a winner" - if there is Step On Up without competition - but suggests that a lot of satisfying gamism will involve competition, and hence losers as well as winners. I can't reallly agree with this at all. It's hard to judge some one's priorities for play when you're reading a few lines they wrote on a messageboard, but a version of exploration-heavy gamism seems to me the default assumption for play here at ENworld. Every time someone posts, for example, that D&D play without the risk of PC death isn't satisfying, or isn't meaningful, and everyone posts about the importance of scenario design that creates options for "meaningful choice" - where by meaningful choice that mean choices that increase or decrease the risk of PC death, and the likelihood of PC enrichment - they are advocating gamist play. Gygax himself, in the AD&D PHB, presents a version of gamism - he calls it the ideal of "skillful play" - as the point of playing D&D. Somewhere in the 80s and 90s simulationism emerged as the dominant priority in (at least mainstream) RPGing, and this Gygaxian stuff got downplayed in D&D rulebooks. But I can't agree gamism in the hobby is somehow less deserving of accommodation. To finish this post, here is another passage from Edwards' essay, under the heading "The bitterest role-player in the world": [indent]Meet the low-Step On Up, high-Challenge Gamist, with both "little red competition" dials spun down to their lowest settings. This person prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. This view, and its problematic qualities, are extremely similar to that of the person who wants to see full-blown Narrativist values "just appear" from a Simulationist-play foundation. It's possible, but not as easy and intuitive as it would seem. His preferred venue for the Gamist moments of play is a small-scale scene or crisis embedded in a larger-scale Exploration that focuses on Setting and Character. In these scenes, he's all about the Crunch: Fortune systems should be easy to estimate, such that each instance of its use may be chosen and embedded in a matrix of strategizing. Point-character construction and menus of independent feats or powers built to resist Powergaming are ideal. As for playing the character, it's Author Stance all the way. He likes to imagine what "his guy" thinks, but to direct "his guy" actions from a cool and clear Step On Up perspective. The degree of Author Stance is confined to in-game imaginative events alone and doesn't bleed over into Balance of Power issues regarding resolution at all. Related to the Stance issue, he is vehemently opposed to the Hard Core, even to any hints of it or any exploitable concepts that it seizes upon most easily. For instance, reward system that functions at the metagame level is anathema: not only should solid aesthetics should be primary, but he is rightly leery of the Hard Core eye for such reward systems. "Balance" for him consists of the purity of the Resource system and unbroken Currency. It's consistent with the Simulationist Purist for System values and represents further defenses against the Hard Core. He probably developed his role-playing preferences in highly-Drifted AD&D2 or in an easily-Drifted version of early Champions, both of which he probably describes as playing "correctly" relative to other groups committed to these games. This man (I've met no women who fit this description) is cursed. He's cursed because the only people who can enjoy playing with him, and vice versa, are those who share precisely his goals, and these goals are very easily upset by just about any others. [indent]*His heavy Sim focus keeps away the "lite" Gamists who like Exploration but not Simulationism. *The lack of metagame reward system keeps away most Gamists in general. *Hard Core Gamists will kick him in the nuts every time, just as they do to Simulationist play. *Most Simulationist-oriented players won't Step Up - they get no gleam in their eye when the Challenge hits, and some are even happy just to piddle about and "be." *Just about anyone who's not Gamist-inclined lumps him with "those Gamists" and writes him off.[/indent] I've known several of these guys. They are bitter, I say. Imagine years of just knowing that your "perfect game" is possible, seeing it in your mind, knowing that if only a few other people could just play their characters exactly according to the values that you yourself would play, that your GM-preparation would pay off beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Now imagine years of encountering all the bulleted points above, over and over.[/indent] I agree with Edwards that this is a genuine type. I would add that it is, to some extent, one logical extension of Gygaxian play (but adopting a less metagamey XP system than XP for treasure). While Edwards exaggerates the bitterness for rhetorical effect, if you go to (for example) the ICE boards you will see this sort of approach to play articulated by many posters. And I think it is an approach to play that any design of D&D should at least have in mind as a mode that should be viable. [/QUOTE]
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