What does color refer to?
From the opening of
chapter one of Edwards' first essay setting out his ideas:
When a person engages in role-playing, or prepares to do so, he or she relies on imagining and utilizing the following:
Character,
System,
Setting,
Situation, and
Color.
- Character: a fictional person or entity.
- System: a means by which in-game events are determined to occur.
- Setting: where the character is, in the broadest sense (including history as well as location).
- Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.
- Color: any details or illustrations or nuances that provide atmosphere.
Just about everything else that Edwards says about RPGing deploys these concepts, and the idea that RPG play is all about the relationships between these phenomena.
pemerton said:
The reason that high concept sim and that purist-for-system sim are both sim is because both focus on heightening exploration as the main priority of play. That's it.
Then, as I have said before, I see this as a fault built on reifying a union of distinct ideas arising from a quirk of the language we use, rather than the actual character of the things involved. Like someone saying that, because I would the same verb in the phrases "I love ice cream," "I love my boyfriend," "I love my homeland," and "I love the design of 13th Age," these things must all fundamentally be the same in some core sense, whereas "I enjoy long walks among the trees" must be fundamentally different because it doesn't.
This is just wrong.
Edwards defines
exploration. I quoted the definition in a post that replied to you:
In a
subsequent essay, he explains that
Obviously the thing to do is to get as clear an understanding of "Exploration" as possible. It's our jargon term for imagining, "dreaming" if you will, about made-up characters in made-up situations. It's central to all role-playing, but in Simulationist play, it's the top priority. . . . unlike Narrativist and Gamist priorities which are defined by an interpersonal out-of-game agenda, Simulationist play prioritizes the in-game functions and imagined events.
The essence of purist-for-system sim is to heighten the imaging about
how events arise from one another in the fiction. Because
system is used by Edwards to label "
a means by which in-game events are determined to occur", he calls RPGing that prioritises that sort of imagining "purist for system".
It is also possible to heighten the imaging of character, situation or setting.
He explains why he calls this "high concept":
In cinema, "High Concept" refers to any film idea that can be pitched in a very limited amount of time; the usual method uses references to other films. Sometimes, although not necessarily, it's presented as a combination: "Jaws meets Good Will Hunting," or that sort of thing. I'm adopting it to role-playing without much modification, although emphasizing that the source references can come from any medium and also that the two-title combo isn't always employed.
The key word is "genre," which in this case refers to a certain combination of the five elements as well as an unstated Theme. How do they get to this goal? All rely heavily on inspiration or kewlness as the big motivator, to get the content processed via art, prose style, and more. "Story," in this context, refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of recognizing and enjoying the genre during play.
As Edwards goes on to say, "The formula starts with one of Character, Situation, or Setting, with lots of Color, then the other two (Character, Situation, or Setting, whichever weren't in first place), with System being last in priority." Upthread I explained why, and why it is significant, that system comes last. Without repeating that, I'll just note that we can see the phenomenon exemplified in 5e D&D: "rulings not rules" is a deprioritisation of system, relative to the other elements that are being imagined.
There is no equivocation or confusion here. "Exploration" is a technical term. It's meaning is set out. The different ways it can be prioritised are identified and analysed. And a host of recurring phenomena in RPG play are explained. The fact that RQ players get "put out" by being shown to have something in common with CoC players (both prioritise a certain sort of imagining over the more metagame agendas that characterise narrativist and gamist play) is a weirdness that tells us nothing about the explanatory power of the analysis. (Some people get put out that humans are taxonomically located with other primates - "Do you take after the monkey on your grandmother or grandfather's side?" - but that doesn't tell us anything about the explanatory power of the taxonomic theory.)
Man, at least from the essays I've read thus far, I never got any sense of this! It very very much read like Sim is a monolithic thing that is fundamentally united with minor, perhaps even irrelevant details, not a vast category containing multitudes that could conflict internally. Same with the other creative agendas. This is...really really getting into territory of "why on earth did Edwards use the terms he used if this isn't what he meant?"
It seems to me that you're responsible for your own reading. But if you read
an essay with sub-headings like "The diversity of Simulationist game design[/url]" and with observations like "In play, these [purist-for-system] games offer a lot of diversity because both the character-to-player relationship and the GM-to-outcomes relationship are fully customizable" and "Character generation text and methods are extremely diverse within each GNS mode", yet reach the conclusion that the author views simulationist play as a "monolithic thing", then that's on you. I don't think the author was concealing the fact that he sees it very differently.
when it's pretty clear how negative Edwards thinks "incoherent" game design is, to the point that he seems to struggle to speak positively about "hybrids" etc. even when outright trying to do so, it doesn't seem like much of a leap (or, indeed, a leap at all) to see incoherence as being the defining reason why these things separate from each other.
I really think you are projecting here, or reading in something that is not there.
Here is Edwards's absolutely glowing review of The Riddle of Steel.
Here is his discussion of it in the "right to dream" essay:
The Riddle of Steel is a successful hybrid because its primary Narrativist emphasis is so mechanically influential and integrated with the reward system, that it cannot be ignored or subverted. Even so, it's interesting to observe the consistent Simulationist reading of TROS' text, rife with suggestions for repair of "obviously" inappropriate elements, by people who have not played the game.
I see no sign of any struggle.
Here is Edwards's talking about incoherence in the same essay:
As far as I can tell, Simulationist game design runs into a lot of potential trouble when it includes secondary hybridization with the other modes of play. Gamist or Narrativist features as supportive elements introduce the thin end of the metagame-agenda wedge. The usual result is to defend against the "creeping Gamism" with rules-bloat, or to encourage negatively-extreme deception or authority in the GM in order to preserve an intended set of plot events, which is to say, railroading. In other words, a baseline Simulationist focus is easily subverted, leading to incoherence.
This is not an evaluation. It's a diagnosis. It's an explanation of why we have endless threads about fudging in the context of D&D, but none about fudging in the context of Apocalypse World. It's an explanation of why the complex PC gen process in RQ, or even moreso RM, which leads to a high-concept-style attachment to the character, can be an awkward fit with the brutal process-sim resolution of those games, also leading to pressure to fudge crit results.
He elaborates in the context of particular high-concept-oriented RPGs:
[M]ost incoherent game designs are partly or even primarily High Concept Simulationist as well, with AD&D2 and Vampire (first edition) as the best-known examples. . .
AD&D2, Vampire, and Legend of the Five Rings are especially good examples of incoherent design that ends up screwing the Simulationist. You have Gamist character creation, with Narrativist rhetoric (especially in Vampire). You have High Concept Simulationist resolution, which is to say, easily subverted by Gamism because universal consistency is de-emphasized. And finally, you have sternly-worded "story" play-context, which in practice becomes game-author-to-GM co-conspiracy. The net result is a fairly committed Simulationist GM presiding over a bunch of players tending toward more agenda-based play of different kinds.
What happens? All the wedges widen, and the unfortunate thing is that the more everyone likes the basic, fun interest of the topic ("genre") at hand, the worse the rift becomes.
- The aggravated Narrativist leaves the play situation after butting heads with the GM over the "story." Arguably, the early White Wolf games in general are responsible for what amounted to a mass exodus of Narrativist-oriented role-players from the hobby in the mid-1990s.
- The Gamist runs rampant, moving from sportsmanlike challenge/competition (as would be found in a coherent Gamist design) to "break the system" vs.-game, vs.-GM challenge/competition. The group typically either dissolves or evicts the Gamist player . . .
- The Simulationist, whether GM or player, fights a losing battle against the Gamist, often feeling betrayed and desperate. . . .
Champions, especially second and third editions, presented a fascinating case of this same phenomenon for a game design that could functionally Drift in any of the three directions (in all cases requiring severe rules-interpretation and "fixing"). Thus Champions play could be observed in all three modes, all of which were emphatically incompatible and socially segregated.
In case it's not clear what Edwards has in mind, here are a couple of simple illustrations: the subversion of resolution that Edwards refers to, arising due to a lack of universal consistency in resolution, is exemplified by, eg, a spell like fireball that was originally intended to be useful in small-unit combat being used to burn down whole navies or villages; or a spell like charm person, originally designed to be useful against ogres and enemy wizards in dungeon exploration, being used to control the monarch or the mob boss. Both Rolemaster (purist-for-system but echoing many D&D tropes) and D&D (high concept in its post-dungeoneering form) display this issue. The problem doesn't arise in (say) Marvel Heroic RP, or 4e adjudicated using skill challenges, precisely because of the universal consistency in resolution. (Of course, those systems generate complaints from RPGers who favour purist-for-system-simulationism, because the universal consistency in resolution prioritises metagame structures for generating the fiction over "internal cause is king".)
Now, have you ever encountered a "story"-oriented Dungeon Master (and I'm using that phrase in its strict, D&D-oriented sense) complaining about "powergamers" or "optimisers" who are a problem? I've seen heaps of that, in the context of 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e (look at the standard solution to the GWM/SS issue: "don't play with powergamers"). Edwards is explaining how and why the game design produces that outcome: you have PC build rules (gambling in AD&D 2nd ed, plus spell load-outs and usage; intricate combos selected from endless lists in 3E, and to a lesser extent in 5e) that are highly attractive for and encouraging of gamist priorities, attached to a system that - in its overall text - encourages an "experience the story with a touch of characterisation" gamism. And you have characters-face-problem high-concept simulationism as the basic mode of play suggested by the text, but also the issues with fireball and charm person I described in the previous paragraph, which permit gamist-inclined players to subvert the simulationist story expectation and just go straight for the win! (Less egregious examples, but also mostly driven by the spell system, include using teleport or similar magic to subvert journey-oriented "story"; using protection magic to subvert weather or similar environmental challenge-oriented "story"; using tiny hut to subvert it's-risky-to-camp-oriented "story".)
This is what Edwards means when he described D&D in its post-dungeoneering mode as incoherent: it exhibits the phenomena, and similar ones, that I've just been describing.
Of course a lot of people think it is a
virtue of D&D, or similarly-designed RPGs, that it has something to offer those who love gamism and something to offer those who love "story", and that a GM can try and pull that off in the same session at the same table. Those people, so far from disagreeing with Edwards about incoherence, are
agreeing with him: they are exploiting the very features of the system that he has identified under the label "incoherence", and they are deploying the technique of game-author-to-GM co-conspiracy ("GM empowerment", "ruling not rules") that he identifies as the way to try and make the situation work: to try and keep the "story" on track, to try and make the "setting" verisimilitudinous, despite the presence of charm person and fireball and teleport and tiny hut and all the rest.
But none of this discussion of incoherence, and why simulationist play and simulationist-oriented RPG designs are especially vulnerable to it, puts any pressure on the taxonomic classification of both purist-for-system and high concept as different modes of simulationism. It reinforces the explanatory power of the taxonomy!
This reads, to me, like some logical pedantry (not that I have much room to complain about pedantry in others, but still.) That is, if we have defined system so broadly, then literally all activities are now an RPG system. Some are just awful stinkers.
I suspect that, by "system",
@Manbearcat means much the same as what Edwards does:
the means by which in-game events are determined to occur. Every RPG has a system, in so far as every RPG involves (among other things) establishing that events have occurred in the shared fiction.
To say that some are stinkers, and some are not, is to move from analysis to preference.
To say that some are not well-suited to certain play goals is to stick to analysis. Think about how social interaction is often resolved in D&D and similar play: the players say what their PCs say, the GM says what the NPC says, and this goes back and forth until someone says something that brings the situation to a conclusion. We might add that the player may be bound (informally, at least) by an expectation that they will play their character consistently (alignment and personality descriptors can play a role in establishing or reinforcing those expectations); and the GM may be bound by an expectation to stick to some descriptors that they have written down in their notes, or made up in their head, about how this NPC will behave.
This is a system for resolving social interaction. It is relatively well-suited for some high concept sim play: it will give you exploration of character, and perhaps exploration of situation, or even of setting if the NPC is really just a vehicle whereby the setting expresses itself (like a knight of Cormyr or a cleric of a particular god or a reeve of a village). It is not especially ideal for purist-for-system play, as this sort of thing doesn't really let us explore, in loving detail and immersion, the process whereby things unfold in the fiction. It may work for gamist play, if the GM is giving clues through their play of the NPC and the players are essentially solving a puzzle. It is pretty hopeless, I think, for most "story now" play, because it does not allow for open-ended resolution driven by players' thematic/evaluative priorities: there is never a point at which the situation is forced to resolve one way or the other in relation to whatever it is that is at stake.
I guess I need to go diving in the "provisional glossary" again to get all these underlying terms defined because I thought I understood them (due to them being natural language stuff...) and am now seeing that no, it's turtles terms of art all the way down. Never, ever assume you know what a GNS term means on sight. Because it probably diverges, sometimes a lot!
I don't think the provisional glossary is particularly helpful. You can't really learn what a car is by reading dictionaries. It will be tricky to do so even reading encyclopaedias. You need to actually see one in action: then it becomes clear.
Edwards is basing his analysis primarily on the actual experience and observation of the play of RPGs, and how that relates to the rules and designs set out in RPG texts. The way to understand what he's talking about is to engage with play and with texts. Look closely at moments of play - your own, or others' that you encounter - and consider how decisions are being made. How is the shared fiction being established at any given moment? What element is being prioritised - system? character? setting? situation? How do these relate.
You can get a fair way considering stock examples: how often have you read complaints about the player of the thief trying to pickpocket the king, the mayor, a random person when the GM was just setting the scene? The GM is typically trying to focus on
setting, probably as part of the lead-in to a rather constrained
situation which is absolutely indifferent to any particularities of
character (eg the king as quest-giver). The player, on the other hand, is focused on
character ("my guy is a CN thief!") and is trying to immediately establish
situation ("my CN thief has an opportunity to pick a pocket") and doesn't really give a toss about fidelity to
setting ("no one would try and pick the king's pocket, it's lese majeste and will see you exiled, imprisoned or executed").
The analysis isn't hard or mysterious, but it does require a certain honesty about what is going on in play.
