It took a while to really get started untangling the threads, but here is a further step in the direction I am thinking. First some groundwork
- As we know, GDS through to GNS identified three purposes of play. Gamist, Dramatist/Narrativist*, and Simulationist. Uniquely, GNS claims these purposes conflict. Intriguingly, GNS has another category of play - Zilchplay, or play without a creative purpose - which potentially applies to the vast majority of actual roleplayers. (*I'm aware that these aren't quite the same thing.)
- GEN took a different approach: positing a bottom tier of mechanics and techiques scaffolding a top tier of intent, style of play and limitations, in all combinations.
- You identified a fourfold, expressed in pairs. Score|Achievement, Groundedness|Simulation, Conceit|Emulation, and Values|Issues.
- A quite influential blogpost categorised play into six cultures. Classic. Trad. Nordic Larp. Story Games. OSR. Neo-trad.
- A few elements have been claimed more or less by all sides. Exploration. Immersion. Story (whether in the telling or the creating.) To the extent that TTRPGs are games, one can feasibly add Game.
- I've observed other purposes. Such as the Construction|Perfection that I advocated should be added to your fourfold.
Recently, I have been influenced by an essay by Eero Tuovinen about simulationism. He says that
Tuovinen also writes that
In a recent exchange, a poster here on Enworld characterised simulationism in the following ways - setting tourism, touring, leisurely, breezy free play.
I think the utility of GNS is that it offers purchase on an otherwise impossibly diverse and nuanced subject. If your fourfold was more widely shared, it would serve equally well. Speaking in terms of norms, I can see at least a fivefold at this point (this is where immersionism comes in.)
- Gamism, nearest your S|A and Classic, OSR wants in, too
- Dramatism, nearest your V|I and Story Games, and from its own unique angle Nordic Larp.
- Simulationism (per Tuovinen) nearest elements of your G|S and C|E.
- Immersionism, which I will now label "Tourism", nearest other elements of your G|S and C|E.
- Storytelling, nearest Trad and Neo-Trad
Additionally, there's some reason to believe that certain mechanics and techniques best serve some purposes or intents and styles of play, in part through how they limit it. Various positions are taken on agency and authorship, sanctity and interest; sometimes unhelpfully conflated with purposes.
So! To put it provocatively,
1. is where we started, and
4. and
5. are what the vast majority of actual RPG play has been to date. Zilchplay. Exploring worlds and stories. Dramatism has been busily breaking things and making discoveries that benefit everyone. Simulationism has been hiding its light under a bushel. And notice that everyone is still going to want a slice of exploration, immersion, story, and game... they can't easily do without those things.
Using this fivefold for purchase, I've observed satisfying play in all of the following cases
- Purism - drive one so hard that there isn't space for the others.
- Diversity over time - move between purposes as fits your exploration.
- Hybridisation - reconstruct your play around your purposes
- Casual tolerance - make space for each participant to focus on purposes that satisfy them
- Differential emphasis - some purposes are muted, such as my C|P, while others are emphasised
So that's immersionism relabelled now as "tourism". I'd like to close on this from Tuovinen
Okay. I'm still not entirely clear on what makes Tourism different from Simulationism, other than that it is....for lack of a better term, "casual" in a very specific, narrow sense? That is, it sounds like the distinction you're drawing between Simulation and Tourism is that Simulation delights in the nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts process, while Tourism delights in a low-resolution, "how does it
feel" process--but both ultimately want the same thing.
To use a video game comparison, I'm seeing a similarity to the spectrum that computer real-time strategy games lie on. At one end, you have
incredibly deep and complex "grand strategy" games with a zillion moving parts meant to really catch all the nitty-gritty about something, like the recent
Victoria 3. At the other far end, you have relatively "basic" strategy games that gloss most details and focus almost totally on the simple build base, exploit resources, get units, defeat enemies process, e.g.
Command & Conquer or
StarCraft. In the middle, you get things like
Age of Empires on the moderately "low detail" end since you still have eras and techs and such but it's much closer to
C&C,
Stellaris on the moderately high-detail end, etc. But, ultimately, they're all in there for the same core value, engaging strategic thinking in the careful use of resources, infrastructure, units, and territory.
I, personally, think that treating "grand strategy" as a totally separate thing from, for lack of a better term, "operation strategy" (your strategy is focused on winning each
conflict), is putting too fine a point on things. The two mix and blend because there's not really a
distinction here, just a question of intricacy and focus within the same fundamental core value. Not to overextend a metaphor, but I think this is useful for looking at your quotes from Mr. Tuovinen too. There, I think he may be risking a conflation between "these are actually just the same" and "these things have shown
convergent evolution."
Back to the video-game analogy, it would be like saying that because
tactics games (like modern
X-COM, Fire Emblem, and many many others) that do any kind of resource management e.g. money/home base structures can start to resemble the "operational strategy" end of the strategy-game spectrum, then REALLY tactics and strategy are just slightly different lenses for doing precisely the same things. I consider that almost completely incorrect when it comes to tactical games vs strategy games,
other than to note that in specific contexts meeting the needs of one end can
resemble meeting needs of the other and thus
possibly satisfy fans of either thing. Likewise, I consider his argument that because Narrative and Simulation may end up at the same place, they must be the same thing, to be almost wholly incorrect--not useless, since it's good to remember that the same game might thus satisfy distinct user interests, but
very wrongheaded if it's meant to be a reason to ignore or downplay a distinction. To use a crude cuisine metaphor, a really good
charcuterie board is going to welcome something palate-cleansing like fruit (sweet, acidic, moist) to cut through the fat and richness of meat and cheese, and a fruit platter welcomes something solid and grounded to contrast the fruit (such as meat and cheese!), but that doesn't mean that "fruit platter" and "
charcuterie board" are
really exactly the same thing. The two can complement one another, and advanced, nuanced applications of either can show similarities, but they aren't the same.
So, because that got a bit long: (1) I still don't see how Tourism actually differs from Simulation, other than being more relaxed about how nitty-gritty specific you get, and (2) I don't consider "how nitty-gritty specific you get" as a meaningful differentiator of game-design-purposes. Conversely, (3) Narrative and Simulation can certainly have some convergent evolution going on--note how Tuovinen makes specific mention that this really only holds when you have the same topic or theme--but (4) their fundamental core values remain different, they just (semi-)coincidentally happen to lead to similar ends some of the time.
I'm also really not clear on Zilchplay, neither what it means, nor (especially) how it relates to what you've said here. Finally, because it's been a hot minute, could you explain your Construction and Perfection again? Purely from the words themselves, that sounds like a (for lack of a better term) meta-category. It's not a goal in itself, but a goal about
how you achieve the goals. Maybe?