A neotrad TTRPG design manifesto

[pemerton]

Well, IMHO, wouldn't 'strong' neo-trad simply be a type of neo-trad play where the GM is simply used to play the NPCs and act out the parts which allow the PCs to fulfill the player's desires? I mean, there could also be somewhat of a split where SOME aspects of play are under true GM authority, but other parts are relegated to players to regulate. There then just has to be a mechanism for the two parts to be brought into harmony with each other (IE if the GM decides the city falls to the orcs, then the player's wish for his PC to build his clan's fortunes has to get worked out in light of that, maybe they ally with the orcs somehow?). Who or what brings about that harmonization would surely be a major point of design there!

But in any case I think that all could exist and NOT fall under "play to find out" which I think is the necessary signature of Narrativist play.

Perhaps, and perhaps this is an example of what @clearstream has in mind?

 

[clearstream]

I mean, if the players and GM are all playing to find out, in Baker's sense, we have a "story now" game. But if the players and GM are, in some fashion, pre-loading - so they are not "finding out" in the strictest sense because in their play they are exploring, in detail, whatever it was that they pre-loaded - then what has happened to the general RPG form? Eg are the players still declaring actions for particular characters located in particular situations presented to them by the GM?

I'll need to back up a bit and check our levels of agreement to speak to this. I claim play to find out is fundamental to what counts as a game. If we don't play to find out our moves in chess, we're not playing a game. Thus I understand GNS as dividing along the lines of play to find out what. G wants to find out if they can master the challenge. S wants to find out their elevated appreciation. N wants to find out how they will address a problematic feature of human existence.

If it's a game at all, we're playing to find out. This basic claim leads to two obvious dissatisfactions those with narrativist ambitions may have with trad. Firstly, we're prioritising story but we're not playing to find out story. Secondly, the best kind of story is felt to be that resolved by dramatic protagonism: we're not playing to find out how dramatic protagonists resolve problematic features of human existence if all the authoring is done in advance by someone else.

So I claim that the problems cited are similar to those that incited rifts for a time between ludologists and narratologists. It's basic to games to play to find out. And the problem was that habitual precanned linear storytelling was infecting games with narrative that was not play to find out. In defense of that, not much was known about the techniques to do otherwise, and it was satisfying immersing in bubbles of play to find out who my character is and what they might do within the story I'm enjoying being told.

With that in place,

What I am still a bit puzzled by is what a RPG actually looks like that counts as strong neotrad but is not just "story now".

I mean, if the players and GM are all playing to find out, in Baker's sense, we have a "story now" game. But if the players and GM are, in some fashion, pre-loading - so they are not "finding out" in the strictest sense because in their play they are exploring, in detail, whatever it was that they pre-loaded - then what has happened to the general RPG form? Eg are the players still declaring actions for particular characters located in particular situations presented to them by the GM?

Your questions and @AbdulAlhazred's comments here and elsewhere have led me to adjust my thinking

I am not entirely sure what a 'storygame' is in this context as opposed to a narrativist one. I would expect if a game is intent on telling a specific story or type of story, and doing so as an inherent part of its process, then it falls within the 'S' part of RE's model of play, which is "games which focus on producing/evoking specific types of play or outcomes." N focus games OTOH are concerned with characterization and playing to discover what sort of story arises out of the juxtaposition of character and situation. BUT I can agree that sometimes aiming for a particular KIND of story can overlap heavily with N play.

Storynow differs from other sub-modes of neotrad, because the former is focused on N. It wants rising tension, the crucible, all that. @Manbearcat already described this.

where they diverge is that, in Story Now play its to ensure play is about the crucible of "PC motivations/goals being opposed aggressively by threats/dangers/antagonism"

Assuming agreement that playing to find out and the lusory-duality is fundamental to game qua game, the design space for neotrad may be illuminated as follows

lusory-duality + sim = neosim, where emotional and noetic satisfaction is found in achieving an elevated appreciation​

​

lusory-duality + skilled play = neoOSR​

​

lusory-duality + freeform = neoFKR​

​

lusory-duality + sandbox = neosandbox​

​

If storytelling is definitional to trad, then I wind up in agreement with your intuition

lusory-duality + trad = storynow, where satisfaction is found in achieving ludonarrative​

​

lusory-duality + lyric = neolyricism, where satisfaction is found in achieving the ludonarrative comparatives of wider narrative forms (beyond dramatic protagonism)​

​

For all modes, neotrad ampifies the author facet of the player lusory-duality; playing to find out in earnest. Strong-version neotrad is differentiated from weak-version by degree of renegotiation with GM. Implying that there are weak-versions of storygames, for instance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll need to back up a bit and check our levels of agreement to speak to this. I claim play to find out is fundamental to what counts as a game. If we don't play to find out our moves in chess, we're not playing a game. Thus I understand GNS as dividing along the lines of play to find out what. G wants to find out if they can master the challenge. S wants to find out their elevated appreciation. N wants to find out how they will address a problematic feature of human existence.

I don't want to get bogged down in it, but G is about challenge, you're not playing to find out what happens, you are playing to find out who wins/if the player can achieve their win cons. S is about the concept but not PRIMARILY about what happens. So you might be simulating characters traveling in Middle Earth, or whatever. N is really uniquely PURELY about 'what happens', where nobody knows what will happen, the outcomes are unplanned and exploring them is the primary goal of play. I mean, sure, TRIVIALLY we always find out SOMETHING.

If it's a game at all, we're playing to find out. This basic claim leads to two obvious dissatisfactions those with narrativist ambitions may have with trad. Firstly, we're prioritising story but we're not playing to find out story. Secondly, the best kind of story is felt to be that resolved by dramatic protagonism: we're not playing to find out how dramatic protagonists resolve problematic features of human existence if all the authoring is done in advance by someone else.

Trad play is fundamentally a process of revealing pre-authored fiction to the players. We WILL discover what aspects of that fiction are revealed, and there may be varying degrees of 'extemporization' which lead to previously not imagined fiction. Anyway, I don't disagree with you here in some sense, but we don't generally use 'finding out' in the sense of revealing something already determined.

So I claim that the problems cited are similar to those that incited rifts for a time between ludologists and narratologists. It's basic to games to play to find out. And the problem was that habitual precanned linear storytelling was infecting games with narrative that was not play to find out. In defense of that, not much was known about the techniques to do otherwise, and it was satisfying immersing in bubbles of play to find out who my character is and what they might do within the story I'm enjoying being told.

Well, it clearly was not sufficiently satisfying for many of us. I recall all through the years when trad play was essentially all that was known being disappointed by the lack of any kind of reliable dramatic coherence to play.

With that in place,

Your questions and @AbdulAlhazred's comments here and elsewhere have led me to adjust my thinking and undo my deconflation of storynow from N

Storynow differs from other sub-modes of neotrad, because the former is focused on N. It wants rising tension, the crucible, all that. @Manbearcat already described this. Assuming agreement that playing to find out due to the lusory-duality is fundamental to game qua game, the design space for the strong version of neotrad may be illuminated as follows

lusory-duality + sim = neosim, where emotional and noetic satisfaction is found in achieving an elevated appreciation​

​

lusory-duality + skilled play = neoOSR​

​

lusory-duality + freeform = neoFKR​

​

lusory-duality + sandbox = neosandbox​

​

If storytelling is definitional to trad, then I wind up in agreement with your intuition

lusory-duality + trad = storynow, where satisfaction is found in achieving ludonarrative​

​

lusory-duality + lyric = neolyricism, where satisfaction is found in wider narrative forms (beyond dramatic protagonism)​

​

For all modes, neotrad ampifies the author facet of the player lusory-duality; earnestly playing to find out. Requiring a renegotiation with GM. Weak-version and strong-version neotrad is observed across games today. "Neotrad" - perhaps now an oxymoron - is an umbrella label for all of them.


More that I claim play to find out for all games. What narrativism resisted were the non-ludic qualities of some modes, and shortcomings against the yardstick of one compelling form of traditional linear narrative.

Well, I am not sure all of what is NOT said here... That is, I see Narrativist play as fundamentally different from Neo-Trad in exactly the way that is meant by Narrativists when they talk about 'Play to find out what happens'. That is, the 'what' is UNKNOWN and requires a process of play to elucidate. Neo-Trad play, by contrast, involves the players ALREADY HAVING that answer, and TRAD play involved the GM ALREADY HAVING that answer. Now in both of those later modes there may well still be SOME things unresolved as to how the situation plays out (IE do the PCs survive White Plume Mountain or are they slain). But the premise of a trad game is never something that we fundamentally learn about, nothing is staked on it. In Narrativist play the nature of the characters and/or their relation to the premise or the nature of the what is premised are fundamentally in doubt. Neo-Trad again this is not in doubt, the players define the nature of the characters or other thing of interest and and play is simply about enjoying it or highlighting it, or watching it 'be itself' in some fashion.

And, again maybe this is simply outside the scope of what you are discussing, Story Now is closely related to much of Narrativist play as it defines very little and thus leaves a LARGE field of things to be discovered, making play unusually flexible and able to evolve in various required directions as appropriate. I don't, for instance, at all understand your statement that Story Now is 'ludonarrative + trad' as this entirely misses the point! Story Now has nothing of trad in it!

 

[clearstream]

I don't want to get bogged down in it, but G is about challenge, you're not playing to find out what happens, you are playing to find out who wins/if the player can achieve their win cons. S is about the concept but not PRIMARILY about what happens. So you might be simulating characters traveling in Middle Earth, or whatever. N is really uniquely PURELY about 'what happens', where nobody knows what will happen, the outcomes are unplanned and exploring them is the primary goal of play. I mean, sure, TRIVIALLY we always find out SOMETHING.

Trad play is fundamentally a process of revealing pre-authored fiction to the players. We WILL discover what aspects of that fiction are revealed, and there may be varying degrees of 'extemporization' which lead to previously not imagined fiction. Anyway, I don't disagree with you here in some sense, but we don't generally use 'finding out' in the sense of revealing something already determined.

Well, it clearly was not sufficiently satisfying for many of us. I recall all through the years when trad play was essentially all that was known being disappointed by the lack of any kind of reliable dramatic coherence to play.

Well, I am not sure all of what is NOT said here... That is, I see Narrativist play as fundamentally different from Neo-Trad in exactly the way that is meant by Narrativists when they talk about 'Play to find out what happens'. That is, the 'what' is UNKNOWN and requires a process of play to elucidate. Neo-Trad play, by contrast, involves the players ALREADY HAVING that answer, and TRAD play involved the GM ALREADY HAVING that answer. Now in both of those later modes there may well still be SOME things unresolved as to how the situation plays out (IE do the PCs survive White Plume Mountain or are they slain). But the premise of a trad game is never something that we fundamentally learn about, nothing is staked on it. In Narrativist play the nature of the characters and/or their relation to the premise or the nature of the what is premised are fundamentally in doubt. Neo-Trad again this is not in doubt, the players define the nature of the characters or other thing of interest and and play is simply about enjoying it or highlighting it, or watching it 'be itself' in some fashion.

And, again maybe this is simply outside the scope of what you are discussing, Story Now is closely related to much of Narrativist play as it defines very little and thus leaves a LARGE field of things to be discovered, making play unusually flexible and able to evolve in various required directions as appropriate. I don't, for instance, at all understand your statement that Story Now is 'ludonarrative + trad' as this entirely misses the point! Story Now has nothing of trad in it!

Let's start with what it means to play to find out. The ontologist Espen Aarseth once defined games as ergodic literature, implying inter alia narrative that was effortful to traverse. Trad would fit the bill, as would say The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I don't agree with that definition (and I'm not sure Espen now would, either.)

An obvious objection is - what counts as effort of the right kind? Suppose that for each page I turned of Wuthering Heights, you forced me to perform a hundred push ups. It seems obvious that there must be some relation between the effort and what is found out. That implies that we mean something more than just investing effort, when we say play to find out.

But suppose we are playing, what about what we find out? Is it enough that is generated as a product of play. Suppose I spectate play of Apocalypse World. As a spectator I find out the story as play generates it. That doesn't seem like enough. Implying we mean something more than simply finding out what play generates, when we say play to find out.

Consider next the MDA/DDE/PDE framework discussed up thread. The framework asserts that the game design does not directly author the player experience. And I have just pointed it out that it doesn't exist solely in their knowing what happens, either. Rather, player experience ("aesthetics") subsists in playing. Playing to find out a story means experiencing that story as play.

Picture a standard, old-fashioned adventure videogame. You can diagram it like this - story > game > story > game > story > game. I get a snippet of story - perhaps a cutscene - and then I get to play. If I overcome the challenges, I unlock the next snippet of story. Am I in that case playing to find out the story? Not according to what I just said above. This is somewhat descriptive of a traditional adventure path.

We can use playing rather loosely to mean everything that happens from session start to session end. Applying a tighter definition of play, I claim that game-play and non-play are intermingled along that timeline. Playing to find out only refers to such aspects and times as we are in fact playing, and to those experiences found in the play itself. We play storynow for the sake of experiencing ludonarrative, otherwise we could read a book. Similarly, reading a history book doesn't mean we've experienced playing to find out about the Sengoku period, even if at the end we know some of the same things.

The reason play to find out is a useful lense, and not just a synonym of playing, is that it reminds that play is experienced in the process, not the product. So in sim, my emotional and noetic satisfaction (MDA aesthetics!) in achieving an elevated appreciation is found not in the end product, but in the play itself. In gamism, my emotional and social satisfactions in beating my foes is found not in the end product (of those foes being beaten) but in the play itself. (This is easily seen by offering a gamist nothing but gimmes. Offering nothing but gimmes normally discourages repeat play.)

This is what unlocks for every mode the opportunities of neotrad. Why it's worth bothering with. Storynow is fortunate enough to have been forced to declare it as an overt intent. Probably because sim and gamism had always been more about the process - they were a good way there - while stories before contemporary games had ordinarily been received as product.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Let's start with what it means to play to find out. The ontologist Espen Aarseth once defined games as ergodic literature, implying inter alia narrative that was effortful to traverse. Trad would fit the bill, as would say The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. I don't agree with that definition (and I'm not sure Espen now would, either.)

Well, all 'ergodic' means is a system in which all possible paths will be, or at least realistically could be, traversed. In game terms it would imply that every valid game state can be reached. This has further implications in terms of representative sampling, etc. So I am not sure I agree that the implication of 'effortful' is implied. OTOH I'm unclear how this really relates to the rest of the argument anyway, but I'm reading on....

An obvious objection is - what counts as effort of the right kind? Suppose that for each page I turned of Wuthering Heights, you forced me to perform a hundred push ups. It seems obvious that there must be some relation between the effort and what is found out. That implies that we mean something more than just investing effort, when we say play to find out.

Yes, we mean specific things beyond "all games are played and it is uncertain which trajectory any specific one will take without playing it" which is trivial and I think we can assume VB does not mean this!

But suppose we are playing, what about what we find out? Is it enough that is generated as a product of play. Suppose I spectate play of Apocalypse World. As a spectator I find out the story as play generates it. That doesn't seem like enough. Implying we mean something more than simply finding out what play generates, when we say play to find out.

I feel like you're beating a dead horse here, this should all be a given.

Consider next the MDA/DDE/PDE framework discussed up thread. The framework asserts that the game design does not directly author the player experience. And I have just pointed it out that it doesn't exist solely in their knowing what happens, either. Rather, player experience ("aesthetics") subsists in playing. Playing to find out a story means experiencing that story as play.

Yes! You have gotten halfway!

Picture a standard, old-fashioned adventure videogame. You can diagram it like this - story > game > story > game > story > game. I get a snippet of story - perhaps a cutscene - and then I get to play. If I overcome the challenges, I unlock the next snippet of story. Am I in that case playing to find out the story? Not according to what I just said above. This is somewhat descriptive of a traditional adventure path.

Story in this case is INCIDENTAL, it may indeed have aesthetic value, but there are no arrows between story and game here. Not to say this is entirely the case for all computer games of course, some do ask you to make judgments which may be necessarily aesthetic (IE you lack information that would be required to make them in a gamist fashion). Point is the word 'to' in 'Play to find out' is actually carrying real water!

We can use playing rather loosely to mean everything that happens from session start to session end. Applying a tighter definition of play, I claim that game-play and non-play are intermingled along that timeline. Playing to find out only refers to such aspects and times as we are in fact playing, and to those experiences found in the play itself. We play storynow for the sake of experiencing ludonarrative, otherwise we could read a book. Similarly, reading a history book doesn't mean we've experienced playing to find out about the Sengoku period, even if at the end we know some of the same things.

I don't think it is necessarily critical to make a hard and fast distinction, but OK.

The reason play to find out is a useful lense, and not just a synonym of playing, is that it reminds that play is experienced in the process, not the product. So in sim, my emotional and noetic satisfaction (MDA aesthetics!) in achieving an elevated appreciation is found not in the end product, but in the play itself. In gamism, my emotional and social satisfactions in beating my foes is found not in the end product (of those foes being beaten) but in the play itself. (This is easily seen by offering a gamist nothing but gimmes. Offering nothing but gimmes normally discourages repeat play.)

I think there's a bit more here. What your gamist parenthetical says to me is that the gamist isn't playing to find out what happens, they are playing to gain some sort of an achievement, that the appreciation is NOT of story/narrative, but of success/failure in the face of difficulty, and probably in the practice effect that comes from repeated attempts culminating in success. I think there is a significantly different type of experience in 'sim' play as well, as the appreciation is OF THE CHARACTER OF THE SIMULATION, and perhaps that is incidentally in the narrative, but it is usually found in other elements of the process of play, as any of the many trad GMs who comment on these threads will quickly point out!

This is what unlocks for every mode the opportunities of neotrad. Why it's worth bothering with. Storynow is fortunate enough to have been forced to declare it as an overt intent. Probably because sim and gamism had always been more about the process - they were a good way there - while stories before contemporary games had ordinarily been received as product.

Yeah, I think the problem, IMHO, is you are generalizing too much and from this 10,000 meter level it may seem like all the houses are the same, but its a bit different when you descend to street level, each one has unique character. While neo-trad play certainly can be posited to share many mechanical contrivances with narrativist play (including Story Now/Low Myth techniques, potentially) they're used for genuinely different purposes. When I say "Play to find out" I have already posited an orientation towards a narrativist agenda in which the 'what?' is of the nature of how the characters evolve/behave under pressure and what that brings. I'm specifically interested in that. Yes you can completely recontextualize the statement and talk about "Play to find out" if the halfling thief escapes from the GM's diabolical trap, but you ALREADY presupposed a different agenda which makes that entire phrase not equivalent. Context matters!

 

[clearstream]

Well, all 'ergodic' means is a system in which all possible paths will be, or at least realistically could be, traversed. In game terms it would imply that every valid game state can be reached. This has further implications in terms of representative sampling, etc. So I am not sure I agree that the implication of 'effortful' is implied. OTOH I'm unclear how this really relates to the rest of the argument anyway, but I'm reading on....

Espen expressly defined ergodic to mean "literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text." (Emphasis mine.)

I think there's a bit more here. What your gamist parenthetical says to me is that the gamist isn't playing to find out what happens, they are playing to gain some sort of an achievement, that the appreciation is NOT of story/narrative, but of success/failure in the face of difficulty, and probably in the practice effect that comes from repeated attempts culminating in success.

I disagree. The gamist does not simply want the achievement, they want to achieve the achievement. Say the achievement is my king is in checkmate: you win. A gamist does not simply want the board to be in that state. As the great boardgame designer, Reiner Knizia, once said

When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning...

The gamist wants to achieve checkmate only through playing. Finding out through play whether they or I will win... most importantly experiencing the cut and thrust of the moves we will make to get there.

Yeah, I think the problem, IMHO, is you are generalizing too much and from this 10,000 meter level it may seem like all the houses are the same, but its a bit different when you descend to street level, each one has unique character. While neo-trad play certainly can be posited to share many mechanical contrivances with narrativist play (including Story Now/Low Myth techniques, potentially) they're used for genuinely different purposes. When I say "Play to find out" I have already posited an orientation towards a narrativist agenda in which the 'what?' is of the nature of how the characters evolve/behave under pressure and what that brings. I'm specifically interested in that. Yes you can completely recontextualize the statement and talk about "Play to find out" if the halfling thief escapes from the GM's diabolical trap, but you ALREADY presupposed a different agenda which makes that entire phrase not equivalent. Context matters!

Is your thought here that the catchphrase "play to find out" ought to be preserved for narrativism? To the extent that there is some justice to that, I would refer to Edwards' observation that

Narrativist play makes special use of the general role-playing principle that the participants are simultaneously authors and audience.

(Emphasis mine.) Playing to find out as audiences of our in-the-moment authorings is a general role-playing principle. It is that principle that is promoted and leveraged in strong-neotrad.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Espen expressly defined ergodic to mean "literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text." (Emphasis mine.)

OK... Seems like an odd choice of terms to use, but that's OK.

I disagree. The gamist does not simply want the achievement, they want to achieve the achievement. Say the achievement is my king is in checkmate: you win. A gamist does not simply want the board to be in that state. As the great boardgame designer, Reiner Knizia, once said

The gamist wants to achieve checkmate only through playing. Finding out through play whether they or I will win... most importantly experiencing the cut and thrust of the moves we will make to get there.

I'm not hostile to the idea, though I think the 'experience of winning' is the core aspect. I mean, why are so many people willing to cheat? The sin qua non of the experience is standing at the apex of victory, and how you got there may well be interesting, but how that experience LEAD TO VICTORY is its salient feature. I consider this qualitatively different from what is meant by Narrativists. I won't continue to argue semantics with you, but these are different things, qualitatively. Drawing conclusions from their identity would thus be a category error.

Is your thought here that the catchphrase "play to find out" ought to be preserved for narrativism? To the extent that there is some justice to that, I would refer to Edwards' observation that

(Emphasis mine.) Playing to find out as audiences of our in-the-moment authorings is a general role-playing principle. It is that principle that is promoted and leveraged in strong-neotrad.

Oh, I am not going to die on the hill of trying to force everyone to use it in only one way, but I think it is doing some disservice to the utility of the term in describing N-type play to constantly reinterpret it. Granting RE acknowledged your point, he STILL used it to refer to 'agenda N' and CERTAINLY VB et al have consistently done so in their work. I personally will continue to use it in that narrow sense. Again, I think drawing conclusions based on identities drawn from using that phrase in significantly different contexts is likely to lead to categorical mistakes.

I would suggest that the ESSENCE of the big 3 agenda types is:

G: Play to Win (discovery involves finding out if that is possible/happens).
S: Play to Experience (discovery involves the exploration of the material, with the exact type of material determining what is being explored).
N: Play to Find Out (discovery involves exploration of character and situation in order to illuminate the premise of play).

I think those are pretty succinct and give the best breakdown.

So, to take that one step further: Trad play can fall within either of 'G' or 'S' (and S is itself quite broad and admits of a lot of specific techniques, so 'Trad' is actually pretty expansive). In this form of play there is a 'limited script', formed by the existing 'myth', the setting typically, but also other related stuff like genre and such. In 'G' we have system designed to test player competency and an emphasis on victory conditions, often fairly developed currencies, etc. 'S' may also have some of this, depending on the sort of 'S' it is, but may focus much more on 'experiential' stuff, with exploration being generally a big driver, though it may not be environmental exploration.

When we start to talk about 'neo-trad', we are going to find the players (more) in control of the direction of play. However they could still be engaging in the Trad sorts of exploration, its just that where they end up is under player control (and there's a continuum with trad here on several axes). As noted, the use of some 'indie' type mechanics that are typically employed in 'N' type play might be employed to operationalize player control in a generally otherwise fairly trad structure. The means are wide-ranging though and often only focus on certain specific areas of play. The point is, this is essentially going to be 'S' type play as 'G' is fairly excluded due to the problems with players adjudicating their own challenges in a meaningful way (though there might be some ways to hybridize things). For a similar reason Neo-Trad won't be 'N' type play, because the players can't effectively manage obstacles and consequences which are employed in 'N' type play. Again, hybridization could be possible with the GM or another player getting involved, but there's still the issue of N-type Play to find out, which is hardly going to happen if the story arcs and such are player curated!

And then we have really Narrativist Story Now play in which nothing about the trajectory of play or of the characters is known ahead of time. At most the GM deploys some circumstances which are calculated to elicit interesting play WRT the premise. There CAN be a wide variety of premise here however. it needn't be focused on character exploration as much as it could be focused on the core premise of the milieu or something like that (IE a supers game which posits the question of whether or not super human individuals can live in human society ala The Watchmen).

 

[Pedantic]

I'm not hostile to the idea, though I think the 'experience of winning' is the core aspect. I mean, why are so many people willing to cheat? The sin qua non of the experience is standing at the apex of victory, and how you got there may well be interesting, but how that experience LEAD TO VICTORY is its salient feature. I consider this qualitatively different from what is meant by Narrativists. I won't continue to argue semantics with you, but these are different things, qualitatively. Drawing conclusions from their identity would thus be a category error.

This is a fundamentally misunderstanding (or perhaps mischaracterization) of the gamist agenda. Games in this sense are better understood through Sid Meyer's "series of interesting decisions." The agreement to seek victory is a razor that forces the decision space to a sharp point and allows players to live in that place of interest, and allows new and unusual board states to emerge which force new decisions that might require unexpected answers. The only thing worse than playing with a cheater is playing against someone who isn't trying to win; the former undervalues your decisions, the latter renders them meaningless.

The idea that games are fundamentally about winning is an outsider's perspective. The end is not important as a denouement, it just provides the context that allows a player to keep answering the question "what's my best play now?" Weighing risks, looking for outs, pushing an edge, anticipating a future opportunity, forcing a fork into an opponent...those are all the moments of gamist success and joy, not the victory or defeat that happens during final evaluation.

I found Leigh Alexander's essay about learning how to play a Netrunner, a competitive card game that offers nothing but a fundamentally gamist experience, quiet poetic about this kind of joy:

You build a deck, a wild risk, and it works, and it’s amazing — and then it doesn’t, really, not over the long term. You collapse, laughing, and build something else. You talk about it. It’s addicting to talk about it. People like to play Netrunner so they can learn about it. People like to lose Netrunner so they can learn about it, even though it can be occasionally heartbreaking to be destroyed. [...] I fell in love with this game because becoming good at it, and having fun at it, and making it mine, meant that winning stopped mattering at all.

 

[pemerton]

This detour through "play to find out" is surprising to me.

The phrase, used in the context of RPGing, has an origin: Vincent Baker uses it to describe a core element of the MC's agenda in Apocalypse World.

From p 102, under the heading "Setting Expectations":

I’m not out to get you. If I were, you could just pack it in right now, right? I’d just be like “there’s an earthquake. You all take 10-harm and die. The end.” No, I’m here to find out what’s going to happen with all your cool, hot, . . . kick-ass characters. Same as you!​

Then from p 108, elucidating the instruction, to the MC, to Play to find out what happens:

It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them, or to get them through your pre-planned storyline (DO NOT pre-plan a storyline, and I’m not [mess]ing around). It’s not your job to put their characters in double-binds or dead ends, or to yank the rug out from under their feet. Go chasing after any of those, you’ll wind up with a boring game that makes Apocalypse World seem contrived, and you’ll be pre-deciding what happens by yourself, not playing to find out.

Play to find out: there’s a certain discipline you need in order to MC Apocalypse World. You have to commit yourself to the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters. You have to open yourself to caring what happens, but when it comes time to say what happens, you have to set what you hope for aside.

The reward for MCing, for this kind of GMing, comes with the discipline. When you find something you genuinely care about - a question about what will happen that you genuinely want to find out - letting the game’s fiction decide it is uniquely satisfying.​

The repudiation of pre-planned storylines straight away marks the difference from APs, from most D&D modules since DL, from any planning that says "After the PCs do <such-and-such>, then <this> happens" or "If the PCs attempt <such-and-such>, then <this> happens". If someone (eg @clearstream) wants to argue that, in the play of Dead Gods, there is also "finding out" (eg finding out whether or not the PCs make it all the way to the end of the adventure; or finding out whether it is PC X or PC Y who delivers the killing blow to such-and-such an opponent) well that's their prerogative, but what does it achieve? All that means is that we need to find some new terminology to state Baker's point.

The fact that the focus is on the characters, and on things that the participants care about, marks the difference from gamist play. Certainly from WPM or B2, where the characters are irrelevant and interchangeable as play pieces, defined - as Gygax tells us in his PHB - by their distinctive class functions. But from any gamist play, where - as @AbdulAlhazred has posted - win conditions are established at the outset, as that towards which the players aim in the play of their PCs.

And AW is not purist-for-system sim either, for reasons that become obvious upon looking at how the game works.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a fundamentally misunderstanding (or perhaps mischaracterization) of the gamist agenda. Games in this sense are better understood through Sid Meyer's "series of interesting decisions." The agreement to seek victory is a razor that forces the decision space to a sharp point and allows players to live in that place of interest, and allows new and unusual board states to emerge which force new decisions that might require unexpected answers. The only thing worse than playing with a cheater is playing against someone who isn't trying to win; the firmer undervalues your decisions, the latter renders them meaningless.

The idea that games are fundamentally about winning is an outsider's perspective. The end is not important as a denouement, it just provides the context that allows a player to keep answering the question "what's my best play now?" Weigh risks, looking for outs, pushing an edge, anticipating a future opportunity, forcing a fork into an opponent...those are all the moments of gamist success and joy, not the victory or defeat that happens during final evaluation.

I found Leigh Alexander's essay about learning how to play a Netrunner, a competitive card game that offers nothing but a fundamentally gamist experience, quiet poetic about this kind of joy:

I'd hardly consider myself an 'outsider' having become fascinated with games at an early age and being quite competitive. While we all understand the 'sportsmanlike attitude' towards competition and winning you will still find that victory, actual victory, is an important component. That may be moreso for some than for others, but you would not find the experience to be the same were there no possibility of victory whatsoever, if it was simply practice.

So, gamism is about adopting a certain 'lusory attitude' to borrow a Clearstreamism, to victory and the pursuit of victory. Thus gamist systems are concerned, PRIMARILY with win cons and providing a mix of challenging elements requiring various mixes of skill to overcome. As I said to Clearstream, its not about 'exploration' or 'finding out', it is about DOING. You could achieve everything you want to achieve in an 'N' type game without those things being difficult personal accomplishments, you could 'fail' in every way and get everything you wanted out of that game, but that will not be true of 'G' type games!