Belasir it sounds like the GNS definition has found a common thread for the convenience of its categories but is totally missing the essence of simulationism. Really it sounds like the forge is just trying to define away anything that intrudes on its theory. It is overly reductionist in this case. RQ and Buffy are setting out to do two entirely different things. You can't just reduce them to Exploration. I also think the term Exploration is being used far too broadly here and artificially bounding two very different ideas unde the same notion.
Maybe - in which case, as I said before, we need someone to come and tell us what
is the "essence of simulationism"? What I see at this point are two cases:
1) A group gather to create a joint story and use mechanics and game procedures (
whether written in the rule book or not) to prioritise player input to that story from all players (including the GM, if there is one).
2) One person comes up with a situation and plotted "story arc" (by which I mean a set of intentions of the (NPC) protagonists and maybe an expected storyline if things aren't changed) and the players experience it in the alter egos of their characters, possibly pushing buttons and twisting dials in the fiction to see how that alters the 'story'/situation.
These seem to be fundamentally different; to "lump them together" as "Dramatism" seems to miss a critical distinction.
On the other hand, we have:
1) One person comes up with a situation and plotted "story arc" (by which I mean a set of intentions of the (NPC) protagonists and maybe an expected storyline if things aren't changed) and the players experience it in the alter egos of their characters, possibly pushing buttons and twisting dials in the fiction to see how that alters the 'story'/situation.
2) One person creates a game world setting, with NPCs and societies and such like and the players explore that setting using their alter ego 'characters', pushing buttons and twisting dials in that game world to see what effect that has in the game setting.
3) One person sets up a game world setting, with NPCs and so on to interact with, and the player(s) use that world setting as a foil to their character, which they try to "get into the head of" and identify with to the maximum degree, experiencing the game world from that character's point of view.
These three seem to me to have far more in common than the first two, even though they are clearly quite different themselves.
Just to add my two cents I think it is practical to distinguish between simulation, which strives for varying degrees of realism (RQ and Harn), and Emulation which strives to capture the feel and "laws" of genres (Buffy and Savage Worlds).
Why? Sure, there is a clear,
prima facie difference, but from the point of view of games that are very specifically about "other worlds", why should the one we somewhat thoughtlessly refer to as "real" hold any special position or significance?
Did somebody say it was an inferior way to play? I must have missed that.
[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] claimed that Simulationism was
treated as an inferior agenda in the post three below yours.
With that being said, it sounds like you're of the school of GNS thought that attempts to make the incoherent GNS Simulationism semi-coherent by defining it as "exploration" (usually by using multiple and mutually contradictory definitions of "exploration" to pull it off). (I believe this originates from a later Edwards essay, but it's been awhile since I really delved into this stuff.)
The drive to categorise people sits heavy with you, apparently. If all you are going to try and do is pigeonhole me as a strawman I'm not gonna play.
But, as you've noted, this doesn't actually solve the problem. In fact, it perpetuates it: Not only does GNS Simulationism remain a bizarre amalgamation of Threefold Dramatist and Threefold Simulationist agendas that's "too freeform" and "too variable" to be useful, but you've simultaneously scooped out large chunks of Threefold Simulationism and orphaned them completely.
"Threefold Dramatism" is a kludged amalgam already, as I pointed out above. GNS Simulationism can pretty much be described as "exploration" in all its forms - if you have examples that don't fit (these "parts of Threefold Simulationism that were 'orphaned', perhaps?) please explain them.
Exactly what is "explored" is certainly freeform and variable, but does classifying the elements of what is explored either (a) change the basic agenda of "exploration" or (b) consitute a useful exercise, as opposed to artificially limiting what we think of as "viable exploration targets"? I don't think so.
The result is a theory which is incoherent, confusingly labeled (since simulationism is no longer focused on simulation), and incomplete even within the simple boundaries of what it's trying to discuss.
Simulation is tied into exploration: if someone is exploring an imagined world, someone else has to "simulate" that imaginary world for them. As Hârn creator Robin Crossby put it "GMs build castles in the sky, and players live in them".
Ultimately, the only real way to "fix" GNS theory is to go back to the very beginning and fix the initial error of moving dramatist agendas (which are naturally related to other dramatist agendas) into simulationism. The theory would still have some problems, IMO, but it wouldn't be fundamentally flawed from square one.
No, it would be unrelated to GNS (as it always was - possibly Edwards' greatest mistake was the conflation of terminology) and still kludging together two fundamentally different forms of play:
1) One in which the GM makes in-fiction choices and resolutions in order to make "interesting" dramatic situations for the players to explore, and
2) One in which the group looks for mechanics and procedures that allow all of them collectively to fabricate a story without any preconceived situation or premise.
Someone pointed this thread out to me:
Here
I think it may shed some light on resentment by simulationists to GNS.
Also in post number three Ron says he classifies gamers using GNS.
And in reply 11 he makes it clear that this is discussion to try to uncover theories from a mess of opinions. Two points:
1) Agreeing that GNS is a useful set of classifications for thinking about RPGs and RPG systems is not the same as agreeing with whatever Ron edwards has ever said, and
2) If we start getting possessive and defensive about terms we identify with, or start searching through what other people have ever said to classify them as "bad people", useful discussion soon flies out the window.
I think we're skirting close to that last one already.
Story-telling railroads vs story-creation games.
I agree those are different. I tend to think story-telling-railroad* should be its own classification. However story-creation games can be Edwards-Narrativism, but don't have to be. They can be other sorts of Dramatist play. Edwards would happily lump in a non-railroaded 'Buffy' game with a pure-railroad game and call both Sim. Then he'd add in Runequest type world-simulation for good measure, and claim the players of all three had the same Creative Agenda: 'exploration'. :
*And the players who love them.
Leaving aside that I think a (non-railroaded) 'Buffy' game could easily pursue a Narrativist agenda, could you explain what a non-railroaded, non-Narrativist game of 'Buffy' could look like?
As an aside, an exploratory game does not have to be "railroaded"; you can change things as you explore them - a fact dramatically demonstrated by European explorers since the 1200's or so. That doesn't stop what you are doing being exploration.
Aside 2: railroads can, in my view, be useful in some situations (and by no means only in "Sim" ones). A game addressing a specific Gamist agenda concerned with encounters only (D&D 4E
could - but need not - be played in this way) can use a "railroad" story to tie together and add context/goals to the encounters, for example. By no means to everyone's taste (not to mine, to be honest), but nevertheless a valid use for the "technique".
