Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory

[Ovinomancer]

But the whole premise of how to GM such a game is based on dramatic logic.

It isn't, and please show your work on how you come to this conclusion.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It isn't, and please show your work on how you come to this conclusion.

"Frame things that challenge the dramatic needs of the characters" is obviously following dramatic logic. And this is basically the core idea of the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

GNS Sim includes genre emulation. Contrary to how its presented, genre emulation is not mostly about world integrity; its about a certain look and feel that supports some kinds of story. GDS Sim was very much about world integrity; having things that were not intrinsic (and potentially visible) in the world just for look-and-feel dramatic purposes was tantamount to original sin from their point of view.

I always took it that GNS 'Sim' is about systems in which the environment is a source of constraints. Whether in Process Sim where the game may attempt to use mechanical and game design features to impose realistic real-world (or alternate world) constraints, or in terms of High Concept Sim where the game may attempt to impose or prioritize specific concepts and focus play around them. There ARE important differences, but each of the 'S' sub-agendas does share certain key traits. Playing in a way that focuses on those agendas tends to have key similarities for this reason. Again, I'd appeal more to @pemerton here, as he seems to have all the relevant citations near to hand.

Genre emulation might not have been a primary concern to GDS dramatists, but it was very much in their wheelhouse and they recognized it as such. At least hard genre emulation (i.e. things beyond time-and-situation) was anathema to GDS simulationists.

Sure, and GNS also separates these things, while recognizing that they do share the trait of imposing constraints. While they may do so for fairly different ends, the means are functionally similar and lead to similarities in play, as well as (probably more importantly from Ron's perspective) similarities in game design.

I mean, GNS actually REALLY WELL describes 3e D&D! And for exactly the reason that its various agendas all seem to fall within 'S' primarily. The way some people see it as a purist-for-system process sim, and others see it as high concept fantasy genre sim is quite well explained this way. Problems also get some spotlight, as you can see how the process sim kind of agenda can clash pretty harshly with HCS too! That is, optimizers are focusing on the process, and someone that wants their character to emulate a high fantasy character is focusing on a concept. They both want constraints/structure to bring these things about, but you run into the classic "I created my character full of drama and the dice killed him off!"

I'm not entirely sure how, for example, GDS approaches explaining that. I'm not saying it can't, but TBH it doesn't seem to really go there at all AFAICT.

 

[Ovinomancer]

"Frame things that challenge the dramatic needs of the characters" is obviously following dramatic logic. And this is basically the core idea of the game.

You'll need to walk that through. How does that require dramatic logic.

 

[pemerton]

if you are devising a terminology then you are working on something, you have a need to describe things. It may be that you don't need to describe other things in so much detail, and maybe you don't capture all salient aspects of those things. Others encountering your terminology may have different needs, and may be in a different context.

<snip>

I'd also say that in the specific case of Edwards and 'simulationist' that I am not sure the criticism, and especially the charge of bias, is very well-deserved. I think @pemerton has pointed out that Ron is not uninterested in games other than Narrativist ones, and that he directly and extensively addressed them in his writing. So maybe the charge that GNS only really relates to 'N' is simply a misperception. In the thread which spawned this one I saw much discussion of Simulationist (in GNS terms) agenda related questions which seemed to be directly discussed in Forge articles, and not just as some addendum to a discussion of something else. I'd fall back on @pemerton here again in terms of being much better at citing things than I am, but I know I have read such.

I think Edwards is very interested in a wide range of games. His account of purist-for-system play is excellent. (I don't know how much RM he had played, but obviously he is drawing on deep experience with Champions and RQ.) His account of high concept simulationist play seems to me to pick out key features one sees discussed in relation to CoC, 5e D&D, etc: how to manage scene transitions, how to manage differences in character capabilities, how to make sure the "adventure" unfolds "as it is meant to".

I thought the original GNS essay specifically excluded genre from consideration.

I think you're referring to this:

Why "genre" is not part of the lexicon
I do not recommend using "genre" to identify role-playing content. A "genre" is some combination of specific setting elements, plot elements, situation elements, character elements, and sometimes premise elements, such that by hearing the term, we are informed what to expect, or in role-playing terms, what to do. On the face of it, the concept would seem to be useful.

The problem is that genres are continually being deconstructed and re-formed, with elements of one being re-combined with others. This is occurring as a non-planned or non-managed historical phenomenon throughout all media. Therefore "genre" may be a fine descriptive label for what is or has been done, but it's not much help in terms of what to do or what can be done.

In many cases, a given genre label will convey to a close group of people a fairly tight combination of values for these variables. However, the same genre label loses its power to inform as you add more people to the mix, especially since most labels have switched meanings radically more than once. And even more importantly, new combinations of values for the key variables may be perfectly functional, even when they do not correspond to any recognized genre label.

Therefore when someone tells me that a game (or story, or whatever) is based on a certain genre, I have to ask a few more questions - and sooner or later, I get real answers in terms of Character, Setting, Situation, or Color. Only then can an initial Premise be identified, and then the next step toward functional, enjoyable role-playing may occur.​

(By "premise" here, Edwards means "whatever a participant finds among the elements [character, setting, situation, colour, system] to sustain a continued interest in what might happen in a role-playing session." That is, it's what we're having fun imagining. Later on he uses "premise" more narrowly, to mean the theme that is addressed/at issue in narrativist play.)

While Edwards caution is helpful - genres are slippery - I don't think it does any harm to say that high concept simulationism is concerned to provide a RPG experience that reinforces the experience of "being there" inside the genre, that is, one or more distinctive sorts of character, setting and/or situation.

One thing I find interesting there is that the GNS model did recognize many differences, even incompatiblities or outright competing agendas, within its Simulationist category (more than just process vs. high concept), even as it huddled them all up under that umbrella to claim that they did all share the same specific contrasts in comparison with Gamism and with Narrativism.

It does the same in the context of gamism: the way that competition is (or is not) implemented, and the way that this relates to the presentation of challenge both to the players and in the fiction; and in the context of narrativism, looking at different approaches to prep, and to player vulnerability.

Its quite possible that D&D has much the same social function and form that it did in 1981. Discussion of that, which seems to be pretty adjacent to the whole "taxonomies of players" thing

<snip>

I just don't even see the sort of taxonomy-like stuff that is embodied in things like the WotC survey and discussions of 'Timmies' and 'Optimizers' and 'Actors', and 'Explorers' even relates much to what guys like Edwards are talking about. I mean, certainly player and game agendas connect with these classification schemes in some sense, but a set of analytical tools like GNS is aimed at understanding the actual form and process of play, whereas debates about whether people want to fight or explore (all inevitably had within the structural assumptions of Trad D&D generally) don't even relate to that much at all.

Agreed. "Market segmentation" is important from the point of view of commercial product design, including commercial game design.

But we don't distinguish (say) different schools of painting, or different sorts of music, by reference to how they made the "market" feel: we know that the Impressionists shocked Paris, but we don't classify them as we do because they shocked Paris.

I agree that Apocalypse World probably represents the fulcrum or pivot point where modern RPGs emerged in their present form. Games like Sorcerer and Everway and whatnot definitely presaged that, but AW is really the game which presents all the parts in a fully realized cohesive form which can be replicated and elaborated on as a pattern. This is really almost the first time an enduring pattern of game design has arisen which contrasts with the paradigm of D&D at all levels. I mean, there are definitely many variations of mechanical structure (skill systems instead of leveling systems, dice pools, etc. etc. etc.) but with AW you finally get a fundamentally reimagined RPG paradigm in a mature form that isn't just a sort of weird one-off experiment. The coining of the term PbtA itself signifies the final coming out of a revolution in RPGs.

Yep. As you know my favourite is actually Burning Wheel, which predates AW, but I agree that AW is the "pivot point".

I don't know if Peterson, Torner, White, etc. are actually out there playing these various games or not, but if they aren't acknowledging the significance of this evolution, then they're missing something that feels pretty significant to me!

Well, I quoted from some of the chapters in the Routledge collection upthread. As I said, to me they don't seem to be across it. They have definitions of "system" and "setting" and "adventure" that don't seem able to capture the development at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You'll need to walk that through. How does that require dramatic logic.

What part you don't get? What is framed is based on creating situations that create a dramatic conflict. The game runs on dramatic logic, it is plain as day.

 

[niklinna]

"Frame things that challenge the dramatic needs of the characters" is obviously following dramatic logic. And this is basically the core idea of the game.

What do you mean by "dramatic logic"? It seems to imply a pre-set idea of how things must go.

Challenging dramatic needs is about putting the player/character on the spot, right now, with no obvious answer dictated by dramatic tropes. The action decision and its outcome are not bound by such things, in Blades in the Dark.

 

[pemerton]

I'm actually re-reading the GNS essays right now—specifically Simulationism: The Right to Dream. It definitely examines games in terms of the model's creative agendas and other components (System, Setting, Situation, Character, Color). Also, even though GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory explicitly disavows '"genre" as part of the lexicon', this later essay does talk about it (although not as an essential element, as best I can determine). So that's a likely source of confusion there that I'm in the middle of trying to untangle for myself.

See my post just upthread.

 

[pemerton]

I'd appeal more to @pemerton here, as he seems to have all the relevant citations near to hand.

See my post not far upthread!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which would be a sensible definition... except if we understand this "internal logic" so broadly that it also encompasses genre and dramatic logic. At that point we might as well say that a story now game qualifies, as it follows dramatic logic of events that challenge the dramatic needs of the characters happening, or a gamist game qualifies at it follows the internal logic of the characters happening to meet exiting level appropriate challenges!

But you CANNOT split out different INTERNAL sources of this logic! Because a game world is PRETEND there is no ACTUAL physics for example. So if a game is trying to impose physics as a realistic constraint, it is really imposing ITSELF, or the conception of the participants, just like if you impose genre logic as a constraint, which is also going to be how it is conceived by the participants. So there is no CORE fundamental difference, they are all "imposition of a conception of how play should proceed" with the details of what that is determining the sub-type of the agenda.

Meanwhile GDS, IMHO doesn't really relate to the activity of play at all, as a framework it simply categorizes features of system, game artifacts, and to a degree the associated behaviors/conceptions of the players. Thus GDS's 'S' splits away genre emulation based on what I would consider to be less substantive attributes.