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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9243182" data-attributes="member: 42582">Do you mean in what it is designed to support or in what it is capable of supporting, within reasonable tolerances?In that case, 4e D&D is an example: there is ample actual play testimony on this board as to its support for narrativist play, and gamist play (especially a fairly "light" gamism of "showing off my cleverness in deploying my PC resources in this encounter here-and-now); and in this thread there has been discussion of how, if you dial down the opposition, it might support neo-trad (ie high concept sim).(No way, no how is 4e D&D going to support purist-for-system simulationism.)If you mean why can't play be simultaneously gamist, narrativist and simulationist? then my view is the same as Edwards: they're different things to be aiming at, and so to aim at one is therefore not to aim at the other. To put it fairly crudely, gamist play requires subordinating values to expedience; narrativist play requires being proactive about values; and simulationist play is defeated by being proactive about values.And a particular illustration, focusing on the classic D&D paladin: when the alignment stuff is treated basically as a constraint on the means available to the player, in their pursuit of treasure and hence XP, we have gamist play and the paladin/honour/religion stuff is just a veneer; if the alignment stuff is foregrounded, and the player looks to definitions of alignment and to the GM's guidance to know how to play their PC, we have high concept sim and the player is no longer playing gamist, as they are not playing for the win with the GM as neutral referee; if you want narrativist paladins then the GM has to be taken out of the role of "playing god" and telling the player what honour and goodness demand (see eg DitV), and so there's no sim, and no gamism either given the player's focus is now on what does honour demand of my PC? rather than how can I beat the adventure and get the loot?As I posted, 4e D&D is an example. I've mentioned Agon 2e upthread as togglable, too. (I don't think it is very good for gamist play.)Edwards gives examples of RPGs that toggle between gamism and narrativism: T&T, Champions, and Marvel Super Heroes.Upthread I mentioned a purist-for-system simulationist approach to Classic Traveller. As I've posted often on these boards, with reference to actual play examples, I also think it requires only a small amount of drifting (and changing the approach to star map creation) to play Classic Traveller in a narrativist style drawing on PbtA techniques.I don't see this as very helpful, at least without some explanation of what is meant by these "elements".S, G and N are ways of characterising approaches to play by reference to goals and desired experience. The very same elements (eg particular techniques) can support both. Eg The Rolemaster PC build and advancement rules were invented to support very detailed and gritty, purist-for-system, "realistic" PC creation. But I know from experience they can also support narrativist play: I have played a lot of vanilla narrativist Rolemaster, and the PC-build rules allowing players to use their PC skill development to provide "flags" as to the sorts of situations they want their PCs to be confronted by.Like RM, Burning Wheel uses a very detailed and gritty skill list. So these elements are very similar. But it is intended to support narrativist play, and if the skill list and basic rules for setting obstacles were used, but all the other features that make for narrativist play abandoned, all you would have is a poxy version of RM (because the dice pools would make success against harder-than-average tasks crushingly hard, whereas RM uses linear d% further buffed by open-ended rolls).I think it makes sense to look at how a given RPG system be used to support a particular creative agenda (S, G or N). But this is about the way various elements - techniques, mechanics, etc - come together, including informal aspects of that (eg informal currency rules or principles, such as those that are needed to make vanilla narrativist RM or PbtA-ish Classic Traveller work).</blockquote>

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