You mean the post where you define Simulationism, Gamism, and Story Now? Okay, so either you define Story Now and Narrativism the same, or I'm not seeing your paragraph on Narrativism. Also, the definition of Narrativism has evolved within this thread as different posters have joined the conversation and asked for clarification. So if you could provide an actual up to date definition of Narrativism that would actually be helpful. Preferably one that other supporters of Edwards and GNS theory actually agree with.
Narrativism and Story Now are the same thing. The description in post 4 is accurate. You confuse people trying to find different ways to explain the same concept as different concepts.
Weird. I'm literally holding the book in my hands. And it definitely shows the receipts. The Elusive Shift. I'm not even half-way through the book. What I've read literally reads like a summary of all RPG forum conversation, including all talk of theory...only they're all quotes from zines and luminaries of the scene back in the '60s and '70s. I guess I could quote from it at length, but then I'd be just copying & pasting the majority of the text, which seems like a bad idea.
Cool. I'll 100% agree that it does so if you can define narrativism in your own words, or quote it from that book. Because, if you cannot, then you do not have any receipts for that discussion.
Narrativism was new with the Forge. It was cobbled together and formalized there in a way that let other people actually use the concept to make games that did not look like any games that existed before. You claim the discussion has never changed, but that's clear evidence it did -- the proliferation and
success of games rooted in the concepts explored by the Forge. PbtA is one of the most influential games. Even D&D nods head to it on occasion.
I'm asking you to define it because you're an advocate for it. I want to give you the opportunity to put the best version forward you possibly can rather than talk about my misunderstanding of what you mean. It's worth noting that over the course of this now 32 page thread other proponents of GNS have come along and disagreed with each other (and you) as to what these terms mean and how to properly use them. So you know, it's not like there's one universal definition to point to...unless you try to decipher Edwards' faltering attempts.
I did. You've misunderstood. What am I supposed to do with that now? And no, none of the people I'd agree are actual proponents of narrativism as a thing have disagreed with me. You're reading different attempts to explain the thing as different ideas entirely. If you go back through, we're all liking each other's posts. We do have differences, and we've argued, but not about the core concepts of what narrativism is. I know this because I play these games with many of them. If we disagreed on what it was, how is it we have so much fun playing these games!
I'm not theorycrafting here. I actually practice, weekly, what I preach.
Oh, no. I can make the argument against the Forge with 100% accuracy and perfection. I understand it fully. Because I used to make that argument. I'm not denying that play exists at all, or characterizing it as a subset of play I engage in. That's your argument, in that a discussion about D&D or wargames is the end of the discussion -- it happened 30, 40, 60, 100, 300 years ago and hasn't moved on since. It has, though, you just aren't seeing it.
Quite the opposite. I'd like to hash this all out so we can maybe finally move on to more fruitful conversations about actually new topics. Because, as I said, these exact conversations have been circling the hobby since before it was a unique and separate thing.
According to you, though, there are no new topics to be discussed. They've already been discussed.
Not at all. It's hostility to the man, the pedestal his advocates put him on, and the willful ignorance of history that's required to put him on that pedestal.
I don't put Edwards on a pedestal. He's crass. He's tends towards language that's harmful to his intent. He makes mistakes. I disagree with him strongly in areas. But he said some very interesting and thought provoking things, and because he said those things, other people made games that I very much enjoy. Edwards doesn't have to be worthy of a statue for me to respect his contribution. You seem to think that you have to dismiss or lionize Edwards. I pick a middle path.
Sorry, no. Sources absolutely matter. Are you taking auto repair advice from a 6-year-old or a car mechanic who's got 20 years on the job?
If the 6-year old is a savant and gives the correct advice, it's not suddenly incorrect because it comes from a 6-year old. This is a version of the appeal to authority argument that says that only authorities have weight. Here, though, it's very weird because Edwards does have decades of both designing and discussing games (he still does, and is heavily involved with the Nordic RPG community) and his thoughts have been massively influential in the hobby, spawning multiple popular RPGs that work in ways very different from D&D. In this regard, the source has the merit you're attributing to the 20 years-on-the-job mechanic. He's been there, done that, got the shirt.
No, he's not being dismissed because he lack relevant experience or accomplishments, he's being dismissed for purely ad hominin reasons. Source doesn't matter for good information.
Because it's: 1) framed in a terrible way up to and including calling those who disagree brain damaged; 2) the theory itself is incoherent and ignores large swathes of preferences, and; 3) the same conversations have been going on for decades if not centuries.
Ah, here's the ad hominin stuff in 1. 2 is a bald assertion that has to ignore that games like Apocalypse World not only exist, but are good and work like they say they do. The 3rd is just saying "people have talked about games, so since that happened, no one says anything different." It's a bogus argument on it's face. People have been talking about physics for the entirety of humankind, but new things are said almost every day. The claim that since discussion has happened no new discussion matter is bogus.
Weird. Because it literally does make that argument. It's filled with sources and quotes from people and zine and other publications from the '60s and '70s talking about these exact topics.
Which ones, the ones you can't articulate and continue to confuse? How could you recognize them, then?
And really? A gamer recoiling from the cost of a book?
Ah, finally, and ad hominin directed at me. I must be cheap because I don't rush out to buy a book and read it so I can talk to you about it. It's an interesting argument, given the OP and repeated demands that I explain myself without outside reference and do so to some as yet undetermined level of acceptance by you.
I can't even get any two of the people defending GNS and Edwards and the Forge to agree on the definitions of these things. How am I supposed to have a better grasp of it than you lot?
What do you mean? Go back, we all like each other's posts. Again, you confuse different attempts to say the same things using different words as being fundamentally different. As for having a better grasp, you could do what I did -- consider that maybe we're not idiots wrapped up in a joint delusions about things that don't exist, extend some benefit of the doubt, and start from the question, "okay, if that's true, how could that work" and abandoning your preconceptions. The way you grasp a new idea is to clear the way of old ideas.
I never claimed Edwards exact phrasing was precisely repeated decades ago. I said that these conversations (about preferences, game and gamer types, which of simulation/realism, game as game, character, or story should be primary) have been circling the hobby since before it began because they have. Along with immersion, how best to RP a character, what it means to be in character, the authority of the referee, the creative input of the players, etc. It's all decades old conversation. Even the phrase "One True Way" has been with the hobby since 1976.
Well, good, I didn't say that either. Strawman roundly thrashed!
Yes, those words have been, but the conception of narrativism isn't those things. Character exists in all RPGs, so of course it's discussed. Simulation is obviously a thing. Immersion is another. These are blandishments. The Forge actually put together something new -- a way of playing that certainly didn't formally exists prior to that, and might, maybe have some scattered an uncertain pockets of existence prior. Certainly not in any mainstream discussion -- if they showed up there they were very likely attacked. Kind of like they still get attacked when they show up, only there's not some structure to hang things on and enough people that know about it that the majority can't just roll them over. Although they certainly seem to still try. Now it's just move to argument by exhaustion. There's more of them, so they can take turns and even walk away knowing that someone will keep up the fight and eventually the attrition or moderation will close the discussion.
Thank you. Exactly. Even fans of the Forge, Edwards, and GNS completely disagree about what the theories and jargon even mean. Thank you for clearly making one of my points for me.
What? I don't have any idea how you got this from this:
I'll freely admit that there were pieces of narrativism floating around prior to the Forge. But they weren't brought together and formalized until the Forge. There's nothing talking about this way of playing prior or games that aim to support it. You can bend some older games to do so, but they aren't designed with this concept in mind, they just got there. For all @pemerton's championing of Prince Valiant as a proto-Story Now game, when I read it I see it leaning more towards Trad play and simulationism, and only if you bring a narrativist lens to the interpretation do you get a game that leans that way. It's a post hoc realization -- I do not think that a contemporaneous player would have reached that conclusion, or only a small number might and they'd not have any framework to hang their play upon conceptually.
I guess that's what you get for pointing out a nuanced bit of how people can disagree at the edges while agreeing in the middle. People leap on it to claim that you've discredited the whole thing.