Why do RPGs have rules?

[pemerton]

This is not at all similar to what Baker talked about in the Flow of the Game section.

<snip>

I don't need to be convinced that Baker did a good job of this in regard to literary terms and collaborative storytelling with Burning Wheel.

Vincent Baker did not design Burning Wheel. Luke Crane did.

As to the point of my comparison of the BW passage to Gygax's passage: Gygax uses the theatrical term "thespian" to point to one feature of AD&D play. I've never heard it suggested that this means that a good AD&D player has to be familiar with, and think in terms of, theatrical concepts.

The use of the notion of "protagonist" doesn't mean that the Burning Wheel player needs to think in terms of literary concepts. It's just an attempt to convey something about how the game plays: in the play of the game the PCs are "main characters".

From reading the rest of Burning Wheel it is an important underlying design philosophy behind the mechanics and procedures he created for Burning Wheel.

Obviously Luke Crane has some familiarity with literary concepts. My point is that, in order to play his game, the participants don't need to think in those terms.

Similarly: the person who designed the bike I ride clearly used engineering concepts to do that. But when I ride the bike I don't need to think in engineering terms. Likewise with regard to the computer I'm typing on.

Because so far you demonstrated a lack of understanding as to what makes Sandbox Campaigns distinct compared to "Story Now" Campaigns.

<snip>

This is where having a correct understanding of my use of a trip analogy would help you understand the distinction between "Story Now" campaigns and Sandbox campaigns.

I'm pretty familiar with both. I have a pretty good sense of what makes them distinct.

I don't know how much Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World you've played.

I assume that your use of Edwards' concept of "internal cause is king" is a criticism of the Sandbox Campaign's neutral arbiter.

I'm not criticising (in the sense of identifying error or departure from norms). I am noting that the "neutral arbiter" approach is one method for ensuring that "internal cause is king".

And I reiterate that the different approach taken by the GM - ie whether or not the GM is a neutral arbiter - is the fundamental difference between a sandbox campaign and a "story now" campaign of the sort one gets by playing Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World.

I would not be surprised if you would consider this unmediated collaboration. But you would be incorrect as it requires the group to know how to listen and participate in small group discussions. Anybody who dealt with small group discussions on a regular basis knows that there are a variety of techniques one can use depending on the type of discussion. For sandbox campaigns only the basic skill is needed.

I am at a loss, here, as to why you think that sandbox campaigns are unique or distinctive compared to other approaches to RPGing in involving small group discussion. I'm also not clear what you take the medium to be such that those discussions become mediated rather than unmediated collaboration.

 

[pemerton]

I went back to pages 10-11 of Burning Wheel Gold (2011), under the heading "The Flow of the Game", and lo-and-behold what did I find:

Burning Wheel is best played sitting around a table with your friends - face to face. It is inherently a social game. The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book.​

The first paragraph is not especially distinctive of BW. It would not be out of place in any RPG rulebook. (Though it is also perhaps a bit dated, given the contemporary prevalence of video-conferencing.)

The second paragraph is where we see something more distinctive - not the stuff about playing NPCs, pacing and rules interpretation, which again are reasonably generic (though there is some RPGing, like some dungeon-crawling, where pacing is not a relevant notion), but the bit about challenging the players.

This is fleshed out in the third paragraph. That the PCs are main characters in the events of play is not that remarkable; nor that the players use their PCs' abilities to overcome obstacles. These remarks would be perfectly fine in RuneQuest, 30+ years earlier then when they were published by Luke Crane.

But we see, in this third paragraph, how the GM is to challenge the players: by presenting them with problems based on their priorities. This is fundamental to Burning Wheel. It is non-neutral GMing. All the rest of the game is built on this foundation.

If a GM who thinks of themselves as running a sandbox is doing this - that is, is challenging the players by presenting them with problems based on the players' priorities - then whether or not they know it, they are probably playing in a manner that those of us who care about the term would label "narrativist". But my impression is that most self-proclaimed sandbox RPGers are not doing this, and rather are adopting a "GM as neutral arbiter" approach, in which the challenges the players confront are constructed out of the GM's setting elements, worked out primarily in accordance with the GM's priorities (which include the GM's views about what would logically happen next).

 

[pemerton]

Continuing this line of thought, here is a long quote from Gamism: Step on Up:

1. The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world. . . .

2. The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world. . . . Challenge is merely plain old Situation - it only gets a new name because of the necessary attention it must receive in Gamist play. Strategizing in and among the Challenge is the material, or arena, for whatever brand of Step On Up is operating. . . .

it's good to look inside Gamism to see the game there - what is it? It's a recreational, social activity, in which one faces circumstances of risk - but neither life-threatening nor of any other great material consequence. All that's on the line is some esteem, probably fleeting, enough to enjoy risking and no more. Think of a poker game among friends with very minor stakes, or a neighborhood pickup basketball game. Taking away the small change or the score-counting would take away a lot of the fun, because they help to track or prompt the minor esteem ups-and-downs. This is Step On Up. . . .

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.

How does conflict of interest relate to Step On Up and to Challenge? The crucial answer is that it may be present twice, independently, within the two-level structure.

*Competition at the Step On Up level = conflict of interest regarding players' performance and impact on the game-world.

*Competition at the Challenge level = conflict of interest among characters' priorities (survival, resource accumulation, whatever) in the game-world.​

Think of each level having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. Therefore, four extremes of dial-twisting may be compared.

1. High competition in Step On Up plus low competition in Challenge = entirely team-based play, party style against a shared Challenge, but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people, such as levelling-up faster, having the best stuff, having one's player-characters be killed less often, getting more Victory Points, or some such thing. . . .

2. Low competition in Step On Up plus high competition in Challenge = characters are constantly scheming on one another or perhaps openly trying to kill or outdo another but the players aren't especially competing, because consequences to the player are low per unit win/loss. . . .

3. High competition in both levels = moving toward the Hard Core (see below), including strong rules-manipulation, often observed in variants of Dungeons & Dragons as well in much LARP play. . . .

4. Low competition in both levels = strong focus on Step On Up and Challenge but with little need for conflict-of-interest. Quite a bit of D&D based on story-heavy published scenarios plays this way. It shares some features with "characters face problem" Simulationist play, with the addition of a performance metric of some kind.​

That last sentence provides the key to identifying three different sorts of RPGing that are, in their basic subject matter and the likely content of their fiction, quite similar

The first is character-and-situation focused Simulationism: the situation is created by the GM, expressing a sense of what "fits" or is appropriate for the agreed genre, setting etc; the players engage the situation via PCs that are generated via a process that ensures those PCs likewise "fit". The motivation for the players to engage the situation via their PCs is itself an element of the "fit".

Perhaps the most classic example of this approach is a good Call of Cthulhu scenario - the PCs are, by design, curious antiquarians and the like; and the situation is something that would pique the interest of such persons.

Some Classic Traveller scenarios (eg Shadows and Annic Nova, both in Double Adventure 1) adopt this approach, but are apt to be weaker on the PC-engagement aspect of "fit", thus creating the risk of fizzling.

When (as often happens) I read an ENworld poster saying that players have an obligation to create PCs that are ready to adventure, I generally extrapolate to this sort of play approach being intended.

The second sort of RPGing is the particular sort of Gamism that Edwards identifies. The PCs face a challenge, but without competition between them for resources. The players have to "step on up", but they don't have to compete with one another for XP or VP or similar advancements or success-indicators.

This approach doesn't give rise to the same PC engagement problem, as the players have an external motivation to have their PCs tackle the situation, namely, that that's where the challenge is! Provided the characters and situation make this plausible without too much lampshading, the game will go. 4e D&D seems like it could be played this way. Other versions of D&D aren't quite as good for it, because they create a conflict of interest between character (and hence perhaps players) around rest-and-recovery.

The third sort of RPGing is the sort of Narrativism described by Eero Tuovinen and suggested by the intro text to Burning Wheel. The players build PCs in accordance with a system that will ensure those PCs have player-selected goals and aspirations ("priorities"). Then the GM frames a situation that directly engages those goals and aspirations. This sequence of authorship ensures that there is no "fit" problem as far as PC-engagement is concerned.

The fact that this PC-engagement problem arises only in the first approach is a manifestation of the fact that only on the first approach is it the case that "internal cause is king".

Sandboxing is more setting than situation focused, but it has its own well-known version of the PC-engagement problem, at least if the testimony of ENworld posters is to be accepted: it not being clear what the players are expected to do to make the game go. Again, this is a direct manifestation of "internal cause is king".

Obviously there are solutions. Some of them may tend to drift play towards narrativism or gamism.

 

[clearstream]

If you are assuming that A can't achieve goal X without having a concept of what it would be to achieve goal X, then I disagree. To go back to the OP, and also to point to more general work on the function of rules (in particular Rawls, "Two Concepts of Rules): one function of well-designed rules can be to ensure that those who follow them achieve a given goal or purpose, although none of those who are doing the following are required to have regard to that goal or purpose.

To give a simple example: if the traffic engineers have done a good job, then if everyone follows the instructions that are posted on the road (eg keeps to their correct lane, turns only when the lane markings and traffic lights permit it, etc) the flow of traffic will be optimised (at least within some practical limits of what is possible) even though the individual drivers, in making their own decisions, are not having any regard to the problem of optimising traffic flow (and may not even have a concept of such a thing).

I'm not making any assumptions in that direction, although I do not see that as terrifically salient. I am thinking of a GM who intends to facilitate simulationist play, responsive to the claim that

The concepts the GM needs, in a game like BW or AW, are various forms of what would fulfil this player's aspirations for their PC, and what would thwart those aspirations?

This is where the difference from sandboxing is found. It is why, in these games, internal cause is not king. It is why the notion of "neutral arbiter" is not part of the GM role in these RPGs.

It strikes me that one could take both our sentences to be addressing unwitting GMs from the perspective of designers. I don't see that making any difference, because they need those concepts and they make them non-neutral.

The second sentence here is not correct: you are not describing a narrativist technique. You are describing the goal of narrativist play.

Maybe that sentence parses misleadingly? I'm echoing Tuovinen,

Immersion is still a technique, not an agenda mode, albeit one particularly relevant to Simulationism the same way “player makes choices” is a relevant technique for Narrativism.

Similarly, "internal cause is king" is not a simulationist technique. It's a goal of simulationist play, and hence a constraint on simulationist design.

There could be some obscuring semantics here. I take "internal cause is king" to be a element of a simulationist creative agenda. A related element is its purpose.

attempts to experience a subject matter in a way that results in elevated appreciation and understanding.

the bolded words form dividing lines between central technique (the attempt) and driving purpose (anticipated results). Both are part of a creative agenda. Maybe I'm misusing some of those terms? Gaming lexicons are in a state of flux anyway. None of that concerns me too much because what I'm aiming to convey isn't about those semantics.

My sense is that Edwards - lacking empathy for simulationism - performed a strong analysis yet was unable to get to the heart of the matter. Or to put it from another perspective, each time I read Edwards "Right to Dream" I find myself feeling that yes, this is all interesting and in many places accurate, but that's it. It leaves me dissatisfied... empty of emotional response and without intellectual fuel. (Contrast with "Story Now" which from about the third read on I found thrilling!) I read Tuovinen and his analysis resonated, drawing strong emotional response, plenty of head nodding, a great deal of - yes, I recall observing that too, and oh, that's perceptive, I can do some work with that.

I don't recall him saying that in the essay. Do you have a passage in mind?

I should have said "in accord with" as I'm articulating what I take to be the upshot, consciously phrased to mirror yours provocatively. I'm not too concerned if it's not dead-on. It's the forceful resistance and provocation I'm most interested in. However, I found this continuation of Eero's thoughts (in comments) interesting. I'll quote it extensively here as it's rather buried on the original page.

OK, so the psychological basis for Narrativism is artistic self-realization, right? I think that the best argument for the CA modes not being distinct modes all around is probably in this territory: the distinction between Narrativist self-realization and Simulationistic elevated understanding is sort of subtle; it’d be credible to argue that they in fact can cohere creatively in the right circumstances. (This would be distinct from technical Hybrid design; this is saying that Nar and Sim overlap as CA categories rather than there being some technical trick to make creative needs align in play.) The modes can be much more distinct if you specifically contrast subject matters, but a Simulationistic game about human psychology and a Narrativist game about human psychology can seem awfully similar. I think that the distinction lies solely in whether you’re pursuing an understanding of the subject or a personal artistic pronouncement; that is, if you’re looking to learn, or to transform yourself.

So the question about whether Nar and Sim are true modes is sort of academic, and I’d personally consider it disappointing if a person completely ignored the very real artistic questions involved in how to implement these kinds of creativity, simply because they were completely obsessed with proving or disproving the GNS cohesion claims. The cohesion claims are arguably not that practically important for most roleplaying, they’re just theoretically radical and far-reaching; it’s s moderately interesting question as to how absolute the modality of the GNS modes is, precisely; does a Creative Agenda just mostly fall into a single mode, do two modes just mostly conflict? Is the GNS modality that Ron observes in his essays a qualitative or statistical phenomenon? We can consider the question, which is what I was doing in that part of the essay: given two players playing together, one pursuing a Simmy agenda, the other a Narrativist one, does agenda conflict necessarily occur?

What I suggested in that bit you quoted is that it seems to me that there are some grounds to believe that a fundamental creative conflict exists, although I would expect it to remain unrealized in many practical situations simply because people aren’t playing hard enough.

The specific conflict I predict is that a Simulationist query will be unsatisfied by a Narrativist answer because the Narrativist answer pertains to the worldview, the creative self-expression, of the narrator, while paying only notional respect to the background material as a context. This could come as a surprise for even a practiced Narrativist, but we do fudge the SIS a bit in the interest of making the thematic statement, and it’s because the statement is so much more important than respect for the material. I believe that the Simulationist query into the material is ultimately disappointed by the Narrativist self-expression because the causes for the Narrativist choice arise from the artist and not the material.

This too - by my lights - emphasises that making internal cause is king isn't why simulationists sit down to play.

 

[clearstream]

I went back to pages 10-11 of Burning Wheel Gold (2011), under the heading "The Flow of the Game", and lo-and-behold what did I find:

Burning Wheel is best played sitting around a table with your friends - face to face. It is inherently a social game. The players interact with one another to come to decisions and have the characters undertake actions.​

​

One of you takes on the role of the game master. The GM is responsible for challenging the players. He also plays the roles of all of characters not taken on by other players; he guides the pacing of the events of the story; and he arbitrates rules calls and interpretations so that play progresses smoothly.​

​

Everyone else plays a protagonist in the story. Even if the players decide to take on the roles of destitute wastrels, no matter how unsavory their exploits, they are the focus of the story. The GM presents the players with problems based on the players’ priorities. The players use their characters’ abilities to overcome these obstacles. To do this, dice are rolled and the results are interpreted using the rules presented in this book.​

The first paragraph is not especially distinctive of BW. It would not be out of place in any RPG rulebook. (Though it is also perhaps a bit dated, given the contemporary prevalence of video-conferencing.)

The second paragraph is where we see something more distinctive - not the stuff about playing NPCs, pacing and rules interpretation, which again are reasonably generic (though there is some RPGing, like some dungeon-crawling, where pacing is not a relevant notion), but the bit about challenging the players.

This is fleshed out in the third paragraph. That the PCs are main characters in the events of play is not that remarkable; nor that the players use their PCs' abilities to overcome obstacles. These remarks would be perfectly fine in RuneQuest, 30+ years earlier then when they were published by Luke Crane.

But we see, in this third paragraph, how the GM is to challenge the players: by presenting them with problems based on their priorities. This is fundamental to Burning Wheel. It is non-neutral GMing. All the rest of the game is built on this foundation.

If a GM who thinks of themselves as running a sandbox is doing this - that is, is challenging the players by presenting them with problems based on the players' priorities - then whether or not they know it, they are probably playing in a manner that those of us who care about the term would label "narrativist". But my impression is that most self-proclaimed sandbox RPGers are not doing this, and rather are adopting a "GM as neutral arbiter" approach, in which the challenges the players confront are constructed out of the GM's setting elements, worked out primarily in accordance with the GM's priorities (which include the GM's views about what would logically happen next).

Consider

1. GM is non-neutral because they make choices that present players with problems based on their (players') priorities
2. GM is non-neutral because they make choices that present players with problems based on their (GM's) priorities
3. GM is non-neutral because they make choices based on the game designers' priorities (as their proxy*)
4. And other such permutations...

What's required would be to reach a definition in common of what it means for GM to be neutral. For instance, "GM is most neutral when they set aside their own priorities and follow players interests, because not advocating for your own interests is characteristic of neutrality." If all "non-neutrality" means is "players have priorities, and GM follows them" then it becomes a label for just those words.

So to me, it looks like you are defining neutrality in terms of what side GM is on, where there is only one side - players'. Sim-GM should be counted among sides because they have a stake in the results of play. Or to look at it from another perspective, by your lights, what other than siding with players will make a GM non-neutral?

Somewhat relatedly, what semantic difference do you have in mind between "neutrality" and "impartiality"? In past comments you've implied that GM isn't (possibly even can't be) impartial. Implying that they may or must be "neutral but partial"... which I assume means that you do not take them to be direct antonyms.

(*Maybe unwitting-GM is a thing, and the side they take is that of the designers. Is being a proxy the same as neutrality? Regardless, I'm speaking to GMs who intend to facilitate sim play. Their choices are biased in favour of certain interests... which works either way.)

 

[pemerton]

Consider

1. GM is non-neutral because they make choices that present players with problems based on their (players') priorities
2. GM is non-neutral because they make choices that present players with problems based on their (GM's) priorities
3. GM is non-neutral because they make choices based on the game designers' priorities (as their proxy*)
4. And other such permutations...

Your 2 and 3 don't seem to make sense to me.

Neutral, in this context, means something like neutral as to what the player wants for their PC, and what the NPCs are imagined to want. "Playing the setting according to its own logic" is one way that neutral GMing might be described. But of course that's not neutral to the priorities of the designer of the setting!

My sense is that Edwards - lacking empathy for simulationism - performed a strong analysis yet was unable to get to the heart of the matter.

This repeated claim about a lack of empathy for simulationism is without foundation.

I've not read any theorist of RPGing who has more empathy for Champions or RuneQuest than Ron Edwards.

 

[clearstream]

Neutral, in this context, means something like neutral as to what the player wants for their PC, and what the NPCs are imagined to want. "Playing the setting according to its own logic" is one way that neutral GMing might be described. But of course that's not neutral to the priorities of the designer of the setting!

The second part of the bolded words (after the comma) is something I'm advocating sim-GM must be decidedly non-neutral about. Unless doing what the game text demands is GMing neutrally? If so, it's unclear what's special about sim here? as it applies in any mode to the extent that GM upholds the designed agenda, principles and rules.*

The part before the comma I'm not grasping yet. Are you saying that in order to be non-neutral, GM must tell players what to want for their PCs? I feel pretty sure that you are not saying that... but then, what are you saying?

This repeated claim about a lack of empathy for simulationism is without foundation.

I've not read any theorist of RPGing who has more empathy for Champions or RuneQuest than Ron Edwards.

Well, that's how his words come across to me. Tuovinen puts it that

The earlier Simulationism: Right to Dream is much less obviously satisfactory; don’t take my word for it, but I get the sense that Ron’s detailed exegesis of mechanical rules systems (System Purism vs High Concept, etc.) is not usually considered a satisfactory answer to what Simulationism is, and, what’s worse, what justification it carries as a human endeavour. Sometimes it seems like Ron himself doesn’t really know, either. It’s no wonder that there’s perennial interest for fixing this part of the theoretical corpus.

Nothing turns on question of empathy of course. What counts is getting a satisfactory answer to what simulationism is. The fault for the digression is mine.


*It just occurred to me that upholding subject is of specific importance to sim, maybe parallel to premise for nar, so that should be listed here.

 

[pemerton]

@clearstream

In his "Story Now" essay, Ron Edwards quotes from the rules for Maelstrom Storytelling, and then reflects on them:

A good way to run the Hubris Engine is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. ... focus on the intent behind the scene and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or emotional reaction to the scene, and in so doing it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It is then no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. ... If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game.

The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.​

The "doesn't interfere" matches to my "prioritization." The "narrative flow and enjoyment" matches to addressing Premise. The "whole point of the story" and "intent behind the scene" are Premise itself, expressed in this scene as a Bang. More topically, I can think of no better text to explain the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest.​

RQ is a game premised on "neutral" GMing. The resolution of a declared action is not sensitive to how important it is to, or how emotionally laden it is for, a PC (or their player). The GM, in framing and in narrating consequences, is expected to extrapolate from the fiction - the fiction as established, together with unrevealed fiction in the GM's notes, maps, keys, etc - without having regard to how important something might be to, or how emotionally laden something might be for, a PC (or their player).

HeroWars/Quest, on the other hande, is not premised on "neutral" GMing. Players can incorporate into their action resolution elements that reflect importance, emotional weight and the like - eg via including relationships as augments, by spending Hero Points, etc. And the GM both in framing and in consequences narration is expected to have regard to such considerations.

Or consider the following instruction to GMs, found in Burning Wheel (Revised p 109):

If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create situations in play. If you're hunting a Vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!​

This is an instruction to GM in a non-"neutral" way. It would not be appropriate in RuneQuest, or in Gygax's AD&D.

The neutrality in question is - as these examples show - primarily neutrality (or, if your prefer, disinterest) as to what the players want for their PCs. It extends to neutrality as to what NPCs want - eg in the neutral approach, this should be worked out by extrapolation from established fiction, by rolling on a chart or whatever. Whereas in (say) HQ or BW, as the example I just quoted shows, the GM is to work out what NPCs want by brining that into deliberate relationship with what the players want for their PCs.

One of the best brief studies on this that I know is Vincent Baker's explanation, in In A Wicked Age, of how to establish "best interests" for PCs and NPCs, and of how the GM can the combine best interests with framing to set up or approach conflict in different sorts of ways. Reading that discussion will be helpful for an GM of HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World. But it's of no help at all for preparing to run RuneQuest.

I continue to assert that the difference that Edwards notes between RQ and HW/Q, which I have elaborated on in this post, is the principal difference between the sandbox approach that @robertsconley is describing, and "story now".

 

[clearstream]

The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities ... Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.

The "doesn't interfere" matches to my "prioritization." The "narrative flow and enjoyment" matches to addressing Premise. The "whole point of the story" and "intent behind the scene" are Premise itself, expressed in this scene as a Bang. More topically, I can think of no better text to explain the vast difference between playing the games RuneQuest and HeroQuest.​

RQ is a game premised on "neutral" GMing. The resolution of a declared action is not sensitive to how important it is to, or how emotionally laden it is for, a PC (or their player). The GM, in framing and in narrating consequences, is expected to extrapolate from the fiction - the fiction as established, together with unrevealed fiction in the GM's notes, maps, keys, etc - without having regard to how important something might be to, or how emotionally laden something might be for, a PC (or their player).

When players sit down for some earnest sim-play of RQ, they're there for the subject. What is important to their PC is their siting and acting within subject, exploring in directions they're curious about (including emotionally curious). In a sense, each player choice can be framed as a question. One that every RuneQuest character should have in mind is "can I become a Rune hero?" which for the player translates to "what does it mean to become a Rune hero?". That's put plainly in introductory text to the 2nd edition (1979)

Acquiring a Rune by joining such a cult is the goal of the game, for only in gathering a Rune may a character take the next step, up into the ranks of Hero

7th edition (2018) expands upon the core exploration

Mythology is more than old lies and stories, pseudo-scientific explanations for natural phenomena, or hidden secrets of forgotten lore. It is a state of mind and a way of life. It has a sentience and life of its own: a power. RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha lets you experience that state of mind and explore that way of life through the mythic realm of Glorantha.

I think the world and cultures of Glorantha are all part of subject, all worthy of exploration. Although the magical relationship of person to god is central, players might just want to find out "what it's like to live in a bronze-age citadel, such as Dykene." Wherever the focus falls, the approach is almost always more playful than academic.

Such interests make the bolded text up to the comma inaccurate. GM is assiduously sensitive to how important each action is to the player characters. The difference is in the allowing of what counts as important. In no surprise to anyone who has read our exchange to this point, I will say that we can't tie the label to just one take on what's important, unless we narrow it to "just our label for that play in which X is important to PCs" which to me only works from the perspective of some preferences, in the way they are of interest to one mode of play. The label then just implies that we're playing in that mode.

Here's testimony from an earnest, new RuneQuest GM (7th ed I believe)

I began by just having them walking through Apple Lane and seeing a sign advertising the need for a group of heroquesters to protect local cattle. This was a good opportunity to emphasize some culture of Glorantha and I had them make some culture and homeland rolls. The fruits of these rolls were gaining some reasons as to why their characters would want to take risks to protect cows. I tied these reasons to their passions as well, particularly loyalty and devotion to temples. This provided a further opportunity to talk about passions and augmentation.

I portrayed Heortarl as written in the text, being a bit overeager towards heroquesting. I went and had him express marriage interest in one of the Adventurers as a way to introduce the "forwardness" of Glorantha social custom. My players did a great job of playing off of what I was doing. I was able to include in the information that Heortarl is designed to give the players about ignorance of the ruins, as well as setting up the Orlevings as an antagonist.

Possibly this doesn't give enough evidence on the responding side, but if this care in feeding interests in subject is pursued faithfully I'd expect that to fall in line. If the player characters decide to grasp hold of some of that forwardness, then that sets our direction for play. Righteous sim-GMing must be sensitive to player character engagement with subject; which will amount to players saying what's important to them... what they are curious about, want to stress, get involved with, gather up.

Or consider the following instruction to GMs, found in Burning Wheel (Revised p 109):

If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create situations in play. If you're hunting a Vampyr, of course it's your wife who is his victim!​

This is an instruction to GM in a non-"neutral" way. It would not be appropriate in RuneQuest, or in Gygax's AD&D.

Parallel advice would be entirely appropriate in RuneQuest, taking into account the differing purposes of play. If one of your relationships is your wife in the village, the GM is supposed to use this to create situations in play. What obligations might marriage entail in the Gloranthan subculture that play is situated in? That's at the heart of sand box GMing: explore your subject in the directions your players have chosen. I want to be clear though, that it's not the specific goal to dramatically engage with problematic features of human existence.

Elevated appreciation certainly includes emotional appreciation, possibly falling often into Tuovinen's category of "subjective experience".

Subjective experience seems to be most utilized by games with emotionally oriented subject matter. Princess play and GM story hour are common strategic combinations, as both delivered content and developed character can be focused imaginatively quite naturally.

So regarding the text I bolded in your quote above, coming after the comma, the concern isn't really how emotionally laden it is for the player character, but whether it has the potential to elevate our appreciation of the subject. Either way, GM is far from disinterested. It strikes me at this point that something sim-leaning GMs often say about their prep is that they enjoy doing it for its own sake. I take this to be a sign of something Tuovinen also comments on, which is that sim-GM sits down with the group with the same if not more curiousity about subject as those who decide to play characters do. They're invested: holder of interests and responding to players in light of them.

By my lights, the mistake is to say it's neutral if it's not solely about player character, i.e. when it's about player character as situated within and engaged with subject. Truth be told, I don't think narrativism is solely about player character either: it's about player character dealing with this particular problematic feature of human existence (I'm thinking of Apocalypse Keys as I write this.) I'm not forgetting that our scope of play could encompass multiple problematic features or even serve as an engine for generating them!

The neutrality in question is - as these examples show - primarily neutrality (or, if your prefer, disinterest) as to what the players want for their PCs. It extends to neutrality as to what NPCs want - eg in the neutral approach, this should be worked out by extrapolation from established fiction, by rolling on a chart or whatever. Whereas in (say) HQ or BW, as the example I just quoted shows, the GM is to work out what NPCs want by brining that into deliberate relationship with what the players want for their PCs.

This again to my reading is just narrowing the list of what interests are the right ones. It also - to my reading - makes assumptions about what players want for their PCs that exclude that they might want to be situated within and engaged with subject in particular ways meaningful to simulationism.

One of the best brief studies on this that I know is Vincent Baker's explanation, in In A Wicked Age, of how to establish "best interests" for PCs and NPCs, and of how the GM can the combine best interests with framing to set up or approach conflict in different sorts of ways. Reading that discussion will be helpful for an GM of HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World. But it's of no help at all for preparing to run RuneQuest.

I unfortunately don't own and haven't played IAWA. If you have time to quote the text that'd be appreciated. Or I suppose I will buy it at some point. (I'm always very happy to contribute to the continuation of Vincent's work!)

I continue to assert that the difference that Edwards notes between RQ and HW/Q, which I have elaborated on in this post, is the principal difference between the sandbox approach that @robertsconley is describing, and "story now".

I feel unsure if you intend a switch here? If you're attributing "neutrality" or "disinterest" to ideal sim-GMing, then count me resolutely opposed for reasons I hope I have outlined sufficiently well.

 

[Manbearcat]

Extremely time limited, so a focused response on just a few things that you can engage with if you'd like.

Am I blurring boundaries? Yes: I'm philosophically skeptical about stable identities and boundaries in the domain of TTRPGs.

There can be no doubt about this. From the very first time I interacted with you through this conversation, this has been abundantly clear.
If these priors were a flag that you planted on earth, it would be visible from Neptune!

There are process differences, but it can't be denied that bringing Duskvol and the game's engine to life are very much on the agenda for simulationist-GMing. Simulationist-GM willingly follows players' leads and deploys their own capacities. A divider might be found in player authorship, but sim-players can author (as discussed in several posts up-thread).

Simulationist-GM don't get to introduce whatever crap they want to. They must be responsive to subject and players engagement with it.

By contrast to Story Now GMing, the vast majority of content in these games is GM-led, not player-led. The GM devises the premise of the game and sites the protagonism via what:

(i) they "pre-load" (that phrasing!) the setting with...

(ii) what they load their encounter tables or events tables with and how they mathematically devise the distribution of such events when rolled...

(iia) what conditions they decide triggers encounter or events table rolls

(iib) whether they decide encounter/events tables results should be ignored and subbed with an alternative, GM-chosen response or re-rolled

(iic) whether their procedure for any of the above is stable and predictable or whether its malleable and unpredictable whereby the GM decides on variance within triggers/results etc,,,

(iii) what they decide players know and can act upon vs what they don't know and is therefore degenerate metagaming...

(iv) what they outright decide happens with their abundance of unconstrained authority over "yes," "no", and "when to roll the dice"...

(v) "how that 'when to roll the dice' resolution is executed mechanically." And if their play isn't table-facing (an absolute abundance of it is not)...

(vi) whether they decide to manipulate results covertly "for the betterment of the game because this aspect of the game engine can deliver problematic (for whatever value of problematic is considered injurious to play by the GM) results and needs in-situ patching" (which is also at their discretion).

That is an enormous amount of "whatever crap they want to" period and definitely by contrast to an alternative model.

And its a feature of the style. Lets not pretend that the above isn't fundamental and that GMs and players don't consider the above a feature.

Yes, its a bug in alternative models of play, but that is just a clear, dividing line between the two (the kind of line that is a confounder to your "visible from Neptune" flag!).

I can only recoil in horror. Sterility, neutrality, goal-less wandering... if these are used to characterize simulationism (and I'm pulling them out of context to make my point, not saying this is @Manbearcat's point!) then we have a full-house of misapprehensions that arise from the struggle to put in words what made us care about simulationism in the first place. Returning to LRS, players (samurai) say they're obedient to the daimyo. Right then, let's get a visceral appreciation of that by putting it under stress.

Oh no, I quite meant sterile in the "type of framing where intentionally provocative toward propagating good (like offspring) or ill (like bacteria) content is fundamentally off the table." GM framing is meant to be considerably more neutral and the systems aren't possessed of PC build flags, action resolution widgets & levers (perhaps some of them meta), and reward cycles that expect/demand active, provocative GM framing and active, direct, explosive player moves to both direct GM framing and respond to obstacles/situations/consequences to generate a positive feedback loop of engagement with and resolution of this provoked content (provoked by the system to all the participants with the game engine and the game's premise > then provoked by the players onto the GM via PC build flags and overt blank-filling and answers during conversation > then provoked by GMs in their situation/obstacle-framing > then provoked by players in their decision-tree navigation and action declarations > then provoked by GMs in their consequence management > then provoked by players or the group at large when they manage the reward cycles/reflection aspect of play > rinse: repeat).

I meant sterile. I meant neutral. I meant "not provocative." You know what you see when Simulationist/Sandbox-inclined players (all participants) get a whiff of the inverse? You get an abundance of statements like this (of which you've been exposed to this over and over on here...and if you run in any other circles or visit any other boards you see it in abundance there):

* Contrivance.

* Unsatisfying to immersion perspectives (priorities)

* Cliche'

* Violation of internal causality (because of a conception that "what is onscreen" must follow some kind of frequency of "sterile x 9" + "provocative x 1" lest it be degenerate from a causality perspective)

* All fun/cool/action all the time = No fun/cool/action


This_commentary_is_everywhere. There is no way...none...that you or anyone else has missed it. This lament is as lamenty as laments get.

So sterile, neutral, not provocative or bust (bust being any of my bullet points above or any of the other denouncements of provocative framing and game engines where provocative framing > equally provocative/in-your-face response by players) is exactly what I meant.

And here is the thing. You see this when you run games for players who aren't used to this. They have no idea how to resopnd to aggressive, provocative GM framing. They turtle-up or they opt-out of even doing anything in response. Their gut instinct is "why is the GM being so aggressive and demanding big, bold action from me...that feels adversarial...I'm going to flip-the-script and not engage...I'm basically going to do nothing!" They expect to passively explore/wander (I've called this "Setting Tourism" in the past and we've seen robert conley called this "like a real world trip" upthread, I believe...same exact thing paradigmatically). Their instinct is to actively "not play" as a response to aggressive, provocative GM framing (which is fundamentally going against "the player meta" of these games where everyone plays to the game's premise, you signal to the GM your dramatic needs, then the GM has framing rights to engage with those two things aggressively and you respond with aggression in-kind).

So yeah. I mean exactly what I'm saying above. You see it in the organizing principles for Sim/Sandbox GMing. You see it in the organizing principles for Sim/Sandbox players playing. And you absolutely see it when you throw a Sim/Sandbox-oriented player into a game which features a fundamentally alternate paradigm (system meta, GM meta, player meta).

EDIT: For (i-vi) list above