"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room

[Umbran]

Assuming the validity of the GNS stuff, the OP's basic argument is that a game cannot be all things to all people.

I've long held that one game (one finite, useable ruleset), cannot be all things to all people. For any finite set of rules, there will be optimum paths and suboptimum paths, things the system does well, and things the system doesn't do well. I hold the idea for genre/style, though, not creative agenda.

GURPS, for example, for all it's claim to being Generic, is good at being gritty, but it isn't too good at doing more cinematic styles well.

It looks like WotC is dodging my skepticism, but staying in one genre family (fantasy), and then making a system that isn't really just one game, but several, depending on what knobs and switches you throw.

I don't know if it can be done, but the concept is novel, to me.

In that case, it's better to focus on the underserved marked (NS) than the overserved market (G).

I think that's a reasonably valid statement.

Well, there's an entire indie market that grew up around the Forge discussions, for just that purpose. Some of those are good games.

Put it this way: If GNS applies only to full games, and not game decisions, then by the theory there are only three sorts of games.

Not quite. What I read in the original GNS was that *good* games are really only one of the three, and games that tried to be multiple things ultimately fail at greatness, because of internal conflicts.

Basically, Edwards seemed to claim that a game that tries to handle all three agendas is the moral equivalent of "Ludwig's House of Brick Oven Sushi" - at conflict with itself over what it was going to accomplish.

Think of it as if Edwards wanted to be the Freud of RPGs - able to sit a game down, talk to it, and reveal where it's pathologies lie, by revealing its inner conflicts. Interestingly, Freud's work was similarly not backed by empirical data, and while his work is studied for historical context, his theories are largely discredited now.

 

[pemerton]

When writing on GNS, Edwards claimed that a gamer held one of three mutually exclusive aims.

This claim is made about aims in a given episode of play. And the notion of "episode" is deliberately (and perhaps unhelpfully) left vague and open-ended.

But edwards says explicitly Umbran's citation that an RPG can't do all three at once.

The essay Umbran cited is an earlier one. His view develops over time. This is a reasonable, indeed typical, thing for any thinker.

Here is another passage from his essay on gamism:

Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:

*Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.

*Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.

*More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.

*Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.​

Which is a really long-winded way of saying that one or the other of the two modes has to be "the point," and they don't share well - but unlike either's relationship with Simulationist play (i.e., a potentially hostile one), Gamist and Narrativist play don't tug-of-war over "doing it right" - they simply avoid one another, like the same-end poles of two magnets. Note, I'm saying play, not players. The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily.​

He gives Tunnels and Trolls, and Marvel Super Heroes (the 80s version) as two examples of games which support both gamism and narrativism with minimal drift. I personally would add D&D 4e to that list.

The list of four dot points is quite important here. It identifies those features of a mechanical system that both (i) signal its departure from simulationist priorities, and (ii) enable metagame input - whether gamist/strategy or narrativist/aesthetics - in the course of play. So he is not, here, departing from the claim that System Matters. He's elaborating on it, in the light of reflection on gaming texts, the play experiences they claim to deliver, and the play experiences that actual play shows them to have delivered.

The passage I've quoted also reinforces the point that the GNS division is about episodes of play, not players. In my own experience, the observation that with the right system in place, and the right group, play can shift quite easily from narrativism to gamism, or vice versa, is true.

Needless to say, I think Edwards was incorrect. I think WotC's market research in 1999 rather blows that part of GNS out of the water.

I personally think that this is an open question, but incline to the opposite view from yours.

Edwards' sociology follows a roughly Weberian approach - posit ideal types, and use them as interpretive aids in trying to understand a range of closely described social situations. (Hence Edwards' emphasis on rich accounts of actual play.)

The WotC approach is (fairly obviously) more in keeping with contemporary methods of market research.

For a range of reasons, most of which probably can't be stated without violating the "no politics" rule, I think the current state of political discourse in English-speaking countries, and the degree of sociological (mis-)understanding that lies behind it, gives us at least some reason to think that the contemporary method is not all that it is cracked up to be, and that Weber might have been on to something.

(Or, for a different treatment of what I nevertheless see as a similar point - about aesthetic and literary understanding - see Hely's "How I Became a Famous Novelist".)

I don't expect any of the above to persuade you. I'm just trying to give a brief explanation of how reasonably intelligent people might prefer Edwards' analysis to a market research style of analysis.

I'll finish with a further hypothesis of my own: I think the biggest reason for hostility to Edwards' analysis is that he treats White Wolf and 2nd ed AD&D-style play - "storytelling" play - as a version of simulationism that misdescribes itself.

High concept simulationism is the "official" term for this sort of play, in which theme and plot are pregiven (generally by the GM or the module author), and the players then taking their PCs through that plot, contributing a bit of characterisation and other colour but not fundamentally shaping the story. It should be noted that Edwards is not per se hostile to this sort of play (and nor am I): as he says, Call of Cthulhu is the poster child for this sort of game, and (at least in my experience) a well-GMed CoC game is hard to beat.

Now for some players, there is already trouble at this point - because, for them, high concept play is seen as radically different from mechanics-heavy play of the RQ/RM variety - and so they balk at it being put in the same category as purist-for-system simulationism.

But that is an issue mostly just of terminology. Where the real trouble starts, I think, is with the "storytelling" idea - what Edwards' diagnoses as the self-misdescription of certain essentially high concept simulationist games. A misdescription, because in fact it is crucial to these games (as presented, at least) that the GM have control of the story, and that the players' contributions be colour only. (Of D&D modules, I would put a number of Planescape modules in this category - especially Dead Gods and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits - and also a number of 2nd ed Ravenloft modules.) These games therefore tend to produce illusionism (ie the GM controls things from behind the screen, while creating the illusion of player choice mattering to the story).

Now, for many players it seems that this sort of play is highly enjoyable. It is very common for illusionism of various sorts to be defended on these boards, for example, or even put forward as an inevitable feature of all RPGing. But, although Edwards' states that his essays are meant to be neutral as to playstyles, and although there is nothing in his definitions of high concept simulationism and illusionism that is inherently pejorative, it is obvious (I think) that he regards illusionist play as tending very strongly towards dysfunctionality (and Edwards elaborated his views on this in the notorious "brain damage" episode.)

I personally share Edwards' view that illusionism, or the railroading that it can tend to collapse into, is one of the least enjoyable ways of playing an RPG. And I think part of my liking for his analysis is that it interprets for me, in a way that the WotC market research utterly fails to do, why I dislike that 2nd-ed style of play so much, and has also helped me become much more self-conscious about my approach to GMing, and the sorts of techniques (mechanical and otherwise) that will and won't help my game.

But for those players who like illusionist, "storytelling", "adventure path" type play, then an analysis and interpretation founded on the rejection of such playstyles is probably always going to fail to move them. Just as, presumably, those who would deny that modernity is in any interesting and important way different from premodernity, or that those differences are just a sign of moral failure, would find little of value in Weber.

My own view is that value-free sociology is not possible, and hence that these sorts of disagreements over interpretation, and the viability and suitability of interpretive frameworks, are inevitable. Obviously others may have, and probably do have, different views.

EDITED TO ADD:

It is no surprise that the model was flawed - it was a theoretical construction, without empirical underpinnings or support.

This is not true - or, at least, not true for certain values of "empirical".

The construction is based on extensive actual play experience, plus extensive close engagement with others' episodes of actual play, plus extensive close reading of RPG game texts.

This is not the method of natural science. It is the method of a certain part of the social "sciences" and the literary disciplines. While issues of methodology in the humanities are, of course, vexed, for quantity and quality of insight I will put Weber up against contemporary market researchers any day of the week!

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm not looking to win. I'm not looking to tell a story. I'm not looking to "interact with the game world". Yeah, I think from different perspectives all of those things could be happening during play, but they are more cherry-on-top pleasures for me than why I show up.

What I crave and find certain RPGs can give more than any other form of entertainment is the "eureka moment". It's that moment when your anticipations are gratified, when your long work and labor to comprehend pay off, when you have sudden understanding of a previously incoherent concept and want to run outside naked down the street like Archimedes. (Tip: Don't do this by the way.)

It's quite a simple thing, but it's difficult to pull off without a good game referee. When everything they say is in referential code, not to our real world but to the fantasy one, then the entirety of their script is clues. Piecing the clues together is the game and eureka moments the payoff. These things start small too. For instance, when you go into that dungeon and start counting paces. You come to a 4-way intersection and walk forward 50 paces, then left 50, then left again 50, then left again until you reach...? What?

The key to a great RPG puzzle game is the players don't tell the DM "Say we're in the same 4-way intersection!" What happens is the ref describes something the players are anticipating, without having been told to do so, and Bang! there's the pay off. Anticipation is built into the world. And, if you have a particularly good and capable referee, those eureka moments pile up and up and up and tie together more and more. But, and this is also key, no player ever reaches an absolute decoding of the fantasy world. Not in part, not in whole. Those overwhelming realizations keep on happening over and over as more pieces fall into place as you simply focus, listen intently, and attempt different actions into what is being shared. There is no end to the magic or the mystery. And that is why a game of D&D or any reality puzzle game designed and run to this end is the greatest game ever created. Well, at least for me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Pemerton, thanks for the thorough post. I can only speak for myself but can positively say my dislike of GNS has nothing to do with the reason you stated. I gamed a lot in the 90s and agree with many of Edward's attacks on the kind of storytelling/railroading 2e and ww advocated. Lots of people who disagree with edward's agree that this was a legitimate issue.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'm genuinely trying to see how the following isn't a fair and accurate summary of Innerdude's post:

Gamists are people who have badwrongfun. And they should stop having badwrongfun and become like the people who have fun I like or just go away. And the same social contract holds at my table as holds everywhere else.
​

And a quick answer: Pure gamists IME don't tend to play tabletop RPGs - it's board games and computer games. But pure simulationists also find sims are much more effective on computer. And pure narrativists have Improv Drama and collaborative writing. And tabletop RPGs appeal to some gamists (such as Gygax and Arneson) because they are so open ended.

As for "playing to win", in character you bet I'm playing to win. Because the wages of failure are death (or worse). Out of character, it depends.

And "power gaming" is mostly derided because a lot of high crunch RP designers manage to create rules that simultaneously suck and blow. Take the 3.X druid. He has two class features in the PHB (wild shape and animal companion) that are as strong as the entire fighter class even before he starts casting spells. Sucks to be the fighter alongside a druid. But a druid fighting for his life is going to worry about swords and axes first, and the fighter's feelings later. Which leaves the "power gamers" as the people keeping simulationist game designers honest and pointing out the man behind the curtain. Of course a lot of people who like simulationism don't like this.

 

[Umbran]

I personally think that this is an open question, but incline to the opposite view from yours.

Edwards' sociology follows a roughly Weberian approach - posit ideal types, and use them as interpretive aids in trying to understand a range of closely described social situations. (Hence Edwards' emphasis on rich accounts of actual play.)

The WotC approach is (fairly obviously) more in keeping with contemporary methods of market research.

For a range of reasons, most of which probably can't be stated without violating the "no politics" rule, I think the current state of political discourse in English-speaking countries, and the degree of sociological (mis-)understanding that lies behind it, gives us at least some reason to think that the contemporary method is not all that it is cracked up to be, and that Weber might have been on to something.

I'll put it this way: That's what they want you to think. For a variety of reasons, many forces in the world put a lot of energy into making us focus on our differences, rather than on our similarities.

Now, we've only seen summaries of the WotC research, so you may take it with a grain of salt if you wish, but let me remind folks of what they found:

They did a segmentation study, which means they looked for groupings of preferences among gamers. And yes, they found them. They are a bit, even notably, different from the GNS creative agendas, but they seem to be there.

But, another thing they found is that there are a few core likes and desires that are common to most gamers. Not only common, but in fact more important to the individuals than the things that make them different. In short, to RPG players, pretending to be an elf is generally more important than being gamist, or narrativist, or part of whatever sub-segment of the gamer population.

This is part of why, to those who don't play the games, we all look pretty much the same. The differences between us are smaller than the similarities.

This is why I personally, and in my moderator capacity, find edition warring, what I call "dichotomy warring" (like new school/old school), or any other heated arguments so galling. They drive wedges between people based on small differences, ignoring what is shared.

It is like two folks who really love pizza. They love pizza in general. But one has a leaning towards anchovies, and the other to pepperoni. They have a knock-down, drag out fight over the anchovie/pepperoni divide, they refuse to eat with each other, and start labeling restaurants based on how much they cater to one side or another. And they forget that all those places offer *pizza*, and that with a little forethought, they could manage their preferences - say, by getting a pie that has half pepperoni, half-anchovie, or maybe this week they both have sausage, because the pizza is the central thing they actually like, the toppings are merely accents.

Now, in politics, people drive these wedges and amplify differences and claim that compromise is impossible as power plays. I don't think that was Edwards - I think he just didn't realize that the commonalities were more important than the differences. He didn't have the scope of data, or the detached perspective, to see it.

If he did actually soften his position over time, as it seems to me he did, I give him some credit for doing so. That shows that he was at least revising some in the presence of new information, in the form of people arguing with him.

EDITED TO ADD:
This is not true - or, at least, not true for certain values of "empirical".

The construction is based on extensive actual play experience, plus extensive close engagement with others' episodes of actual play, plus extensive close reading of RPG game texts.

"Extensive" is a vague term. There are very few, if any, people with sufficiently broad gaming experience to claim to have a representative sample. I've seen no sign that Edwards' personal experience was so extensive, or that he took any pains to not self-select or remove bias from his observations, such that we can call it anything other than his personal anecdotal experience. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

 

[Balesir]

Now, we've only seen summaries of the WotC research, so you may take it with a grain of salt if you wish, but let me remind folks of what they found:

They did a segmentation study, which means they looked for groupings of preferences among gamers. And yes, they found them. They are a bit, even notably, different from the GNS creative agendas, but they seem to be there.

But, another thing they found is that there are a few core likes and desires that are common to most gamers. Not only common, but in fact more important to the individuals than the things that make them different. In short, to RPG players, pretending to be an elf is generally more important than being gamist, or narrativist, or part of whatever sub-segment of the gamer population.

This is part of why, to those who don't play the games, we all look pretty much the same. The differences between us are smaller than the similarities.

This is why I personally, and in my moderator capacity, find edition warring, what I call "dichotomy warring" (like new school/old school), or any other heated arguments so galling. They drive wedges between people based on small differences, ignoring what is shared.

As long as I have been reading GNS and its incorporating theories, it has never tried to segment or classify people; it has been about agendas. Even if a questionnaire were to ask explicitly whether I preferred Gamism, Narrativism or Simulationism (and described each in GNS terms) I would answer at least both G and S (and maybe N, too). And my experience is very much that they do not mix. But they do not mix in the same session - or even instant - of play; this has nothing to do with them mixing as likes by the same individual. This, in fact, is the real "take away" I got from GNS. Just because I like roleplaying in one way does not mean I won't also like roleplaying in another way.

GDS, or the "threefold model" (which was not a creation of Edwards, incidentally, but came out of discussions on the rec.games.frp.advocacy boards - in the mid-nineties, if memory serves me well) did talk about 'types of player' and 'types of system' - GNS doesn't.

What GNS says about systems is that they will tend to support or not support specific agendas. What it claims about the agendas themselves is that an individual player may well enjoy more than one of them, but any 'instance' of play will prioritise one of them, simply on the basis that you cannot, logically, "prioritise everything" (unless you are a pointy haired boss ).

I enjoy games/campaigns/sessions focussed primarily on both Sim and Gamist agendas. My experience, however, is that trying to address both in one session tends strongly to end in tears. It is, as you said, similar to food. I like icecream, and I like lamb balti. Experiments at mixing the two in the same mouthful, however, have not ended well...

"Extensive" is a vague term. There are very few, if any, people with sufficiently broad gaming experience to claim to have a representative sample. I've seen no sign that Edwards' personal experience was so extensive, or that he took any pains to not self-select or remove bias from his observations, such that we can call it anything other than his personal anecdotal experience. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

True, but all data consists of anecdotes, in the end.

Sadly, no-one is likely equipped or funded sufficiently to really collect the data needed for this or any similar study. As [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says, it is instances of actual play that need to be counted and studied - and nothing so far attempted in the way of "surveys" even approaches that.

 

[Umbran]

As long as I have been reading GNS and its incorporating theories, it has never tried to segment or classify people; it has been about agendas.

I think that depends upon your interpretation of some of Edwards' wording.

"Three player aims or outlooks have been suggested, in that a given player approaches a role-playing situation pretty much from one of them, with some, but not much, crossover possible," leaves only a little room for interpretation. If Edwards had intended to note that a person was likely to change agendas from one situation to another, he could have done so with addition of one word ("...approaches a particular role-playing situation..."). Without that distinction, the implication that it is a general behavior of the individual is pretty strong.

But then, we've already identified that his language use was not actually all that great, so that's not surprising. That, if nothing else, sometimes leaves me wondering why so many folks like his work - the guy's not a very clear writer, honestly.

And I think there's also an argument that if categorization is not explicit, it is implicit. There is no such thing as an agenda without a person that has it. If a good system focuses on one agenda, and that system is played for extended time, or with some preference by a given player, the player probably enjoys that agenda, no? The whole point of identifying the agendas, and focusing a game on a particular agenda, is to produce a game that will be enjoyed by folks who like that agenda, no? Or, is there some objective, non-player-preference-focused reason to stick to one agenda of which I'm not aware?

Even if a questionnaire were to ask explicitly whether I preferred Gamism, Narrativism or Simulationism (and described each in GNS terms) I would answer at least both G and S (and maybe N, too).

Yep. Which is part of why I say that in this, Edwards was wrong, and that the model does not match reality well in this regard. That is a possibility, you know - that his model isn't very close to reality.

There's a bit of a bugaboo out there about classifying people. Here's the thing - there's nothing wrong in general with taking a large group of people, and finding clusters of likes or dislikes among them, and then using that information to try to better serve people in one or more of those clusters. The issues arise when you try to treat individuals as if membership in a group is the most important thing about them.

Statistics about people in aggregate are an information source. Treating a person as if they are a statistic is stereotyping.

True, but all data consists of anecdotes, in the end.

As a physicist, I disagree with that statement, but don't feel it'll be valuable to this discussion to go down that rathole at this time.

 

[innerdude]

I'm genuinely trying to see how the following isn't a fair and accurate summary of Innerdude's post:

Gamists are people who have badwrongfun. And they should stop having badwrongfun and become like the people who have fun I like or just go away. And the same social contract holds at my table as holds everywhere else.

That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that as a genre, RPGs provide a much more unique venue for Simulationist and Narrativist explorations than they do for Gamism.

I don't have a problem with Gamists wanting to have fun in their RPGs. I'm more than willing to admit that I derive satisfaction from well-designed character builds, and then seeing the benefits of those designs come to fruition in play.

However--that sense of "Gamist" satisfaction should be subsumed within the broader goals of Narrativism and Simulationism in RPGs. I said it earlier--even if there's enjoyable Gamism to be had in an RPG, an RPG is an RPG (and not something else) precisely because it inherently contains "spaces" or "venues" within its accepted play structure and social contract that aren't Gamist.

I don't think most people sit down to play a pen-and-paper RPG simply because they want the challenge of creating the "awesomest character ever," and then "running around and pwning stuff with it." If that's all a player is really after, I'd say to them, "Cool, sounds like a lot of fun!" (and I'd be telling the truth when I said it--in the right context, it's an immense amount of fun). But I'd follow it up by saying, "Why don't you take up that challenge in WoW, or SW:TOR, or Skyrim, or Magic: The Gathering, or any of dozens of other venues that really let you get to the 'meat' of that desire? If that's really all you want, an RPG is kind of roundabout way of getting there."

Mechanically, Diablo the CRPG and tabletop D&D have many, many similarities. But you're going to have an awfully hard time having the kind of "Eureka Moments" HowandWhy99 describes in his earlier post in Diablo.

Why? Because at its core, Diablo is Gamist--it's entire function is to create ever-increasing challenges based on the mathematic formulas that determine the player character's capabilities against the "world" that Diablo creates. That's certainly a valid way to play a game that doesn't functionally present other options for doing so.

Diablo can't create Narrativist or Simulationist challenges. But RPGs do.

I'm more than willing to admit that an RPG can "Drift" with Gamist tendencies from Narrativist or Simulationist roots, and that such drift can provide satisfaction for players who like Gamism. But I think RPGs as a genre require more than just Gamism to really work in ways that don't end up being "dysfunctional." As I stated in my original post, pure Gamism is inherently antithetical to the social contract of RPGs.

 

[chaochou]

Anyway, I'm really interested in seeing what else people think.

I read this recently on another forum and it seemed vaguely appropriate:

To even discuss things like terminology you basically need to accept certain postmodern tools to even be comprehensible: there is a need to understand that words by themselves do not have objective definitions, but rather language is a social construct - words mean what we agree upon for them to mean. Often this social coordination of communication becomes an authority struggle: you can show your loyalty to a given tribe by the way you use words, and you can display your authority by influencing others to use words your way.

Furthermore, even if we're all being egalitarian and objective, with no tribalist bull**** getting in the way, there's still the issue of useful frameworks of thought: people use words for different purposes, and for this reason they have different needs for what those words mean. This is easy to see everywhere around us: words are constantly being repurposed to make them more useful for different situations. The important lesson here is that it's wrong to ask what a word "means". The useful question is, which framework of thought is most useful for my purposes in this situation, and therefore, what do I want words to mean?

Basically all discussions about rpg terminology in the Internet become such cluster****s because of those issues: on the one hand we have people fighting to brand "roleplaying" as a term according to their own wishes on what to include or exclude, and then on the other hand we have people who actually need to use words to think, and they're obviously trying to find words for concepts of utility.

And that's just a discussion on what 'roleplaying' means, let alone more precise terminology like 'creative agenda' or specific techniques or elements of design which promote a certain style of play.

By and large, I think an internet discussion on the merits of GNS is going to hit these major roadblocks, and rarely move on. Threads at The Forge only got anywhere because 'objective definitions' were accepted, or enforced by moderation (although detractors might call this a sort of intellectual dishonesty or censorship) and dissent based on a perception of 'tribalism' was also heavily modded (although detractors might say this created, or helped create, its own tribalism).

That's not to say I don't find GNS useful - I've just found over time that I don't find it very useful to talk about. I can look at games in GNS terms and it might help me think about how to run a game or play a game, or analyse why some things went well and others less so. It just doesn't really help communicate, certainly with people I don't know on a forum.

Finally, The Forge, GNS, and its offshoots did actually produce games and I think it's worth trying out things like Sorceror, Dogs, Apocalypse World (or the Dungeon World hack) just to see what happens.

The Forge was originally about supporting small scale publishing and I think it is healthy that there are publishers like Burning Wheel HQ or Vincent Baker trying to innovate and take risks which larger corporations can't, or guys like John Harper giving away stuff like Lady Blackbird and Danger Patrol for free (one.seven design studio).