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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8592902" data-attributes="member: 42582">Quoting <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">Ron Edwards</a>:Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things: <ul style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.</li> </ul> Which is a really long-winded way of saying that one or the other of the two modes has to be "the point," and they don't share well - but unlike either's relationship with Simulationist play (i.e., a potentially hostile one), Gamist and Narrativist play don't tug-of-war over "doing it right" - they simply avoid one another, like the same-end poles of two magnets. Note, I'm saying play, not players. The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily. Obviously, if the group is disinclined to do this, it can't happen. So in Gamist vs. Narrativist play, absent Simulationism, it may be a matter of "what we wanna do," and a very easy adjustment to system to reflect that in many cases, because how we "do" things is very similar already. The key to the shift seems to be the reward system, not resolution - not about "how we decide what happens" so much as "how we decide that we're having fun." How a group plays Toon, for instance, depends wholly on whether Plot Points are used for scoring or whether they're employed as a multiple-author cartoon-story creation device. Similarly, the weak endgame of Once Upon a Time is resolved locally per group based on whether the group acceptance of the Ending card or the emptying of one's hand is the metric for ending the game. If the reward system is less abstract and embedded deeply into the rest of the game, as with Sorcerer and Rune, shifting priorities becomes less easy. The Dying Earth provides a phenomenal example of Narrativist play using previously-Gamist methods, minimizing Drift with three things: non-spiraling game interactions (rock-paper-scissors), limiting returns (e.g. negative exponential improvement), and overwhelming rewards that promote an alternative metagame priority better suited to Narrativism. The history of Tunnels & Trolls offers, I think, one of the most powerful examples of the phenomenon in the theory of game design ever, back around 1980. I cannot recommend reading and playing T&T highly enough to the student of Gamist and Narrativist play.In his <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">later essay</a> he reiterates that:As I've tried to show at various points so far, Gamist and Narrativist play are near-absolute social and structural equivalents, sharing the same range for most Techniques save those involving reward systems. They differ primarily in terms of the actual aesthetic payoff - what's appreciated socially and aesthetically. That difference is extremely marked. Happily, therefore very little if any chance exists for these modes of play to come into conflict with one another - a group simply goes one way or the other.He goes on to consider a 2003 Marvel Universe RPG and concludes thatthe key point for me is that the same game system is usable alternatively for Narrativist or Gamist (or Hard Core Gamist) play, rather than simultaneously. Also, the text includes very little mention of or attention to Simulationist play per se. Enjoying "being a Marvel hero" in this game is not Simulationist at all, but merely the foundational Explorative expectation for either of the two focused options.To tie this back to My Life With Master: does a group set out to compete over who gets to kill the Master? Or is the reward in engaging with the pathos of the minions' fates? I think Edwards is right to say (in the later essay) that "Whether the Gamist and Narrativist modes may be played "congruently" [ie simultaneously without conflict] is controversial . . . I remain skeptical." I share his scepticism. But if the whole table is into one way or the other, I don't see any problem.</blockquote>

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