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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9250871" data-attributes="member: 42582">Did he?From <a href="http://here" target="_blank">here</a>:As far as I can tell, Simulationist game design runs into a lot of potential trouble when it includes secondary hybridization with the other modes of play. Gamist or Narrativist features as supportive elements introduce the thin end of the metagame-agenda wedge. The usual result is to defend against the "creeping Gamism" with rules-bloat, or to encourage negatively-extreme deception or authority in the GM in order to preserve an intended set of plot events, which is to say, railroading. In other words, a baseline Simulationist focus is easily subverted, leading to incoherence. . . . Hybrids are much better off using Simulationism as a secondary design feature, rather than as the primary. The Riddle of Steel is a successful hybrid because its primary Narrativist emphasis is so mechanically influential and integrated with the reward system, that it cannot be ignored or subverted.From <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">here</a>:Simulationist play is an excellent "subordinate" mode for Gamist play. A game designed toward this sort of play is also open to functional Drift toward Sim-only as people toss out that "weird stuff" or that "powergamer" stuff. See Rifts, Shadowrun, and Age of Heroes. However, Gamist play is a terrible "subordinate" mode for Simulationist play, because it takes over in a heartbeat, for all the reasons listed above. I should clarify, however, that I'm talking strictly about play itself, not texts. Looking at texts through several editions, the overwhelming tendency is to Drift toward Simulationism. . . . Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things . . . <details elided> . . .  The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily.From <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html" target="_blank">here</a>:Simulationist play works as an underpinning to Narrativist play, insofar as bits or sub-scenes of play can shift into extensive set-up or reinforcers for upcoming Bang-oriented moments. It differs from the Explorative chassis for Narrativist play, even an extensive one, in that one really has to stop addressing Premise and focus on in-game causality per se. Such scenes or details can take on an interest of their own, as with the many pages describing military hardware in a Tom Clancy novel. It's a bit risky, as one can attract (e.g.) hardware-nuts who care very little for Premise as well as Premise-nuts who get bored by one too many hardware-pages, and end up pleasing neither enough to attract them further. . . . Can Narrativist play underlie and reinforce a primarily Simulationist approach? I consider this to be a very interesting question, because it's not like Gamism in this regard at all. What happens when Premise is addressed sporadically, or develops so slowly that the majority of play is like those hardware-pages? Whether this is "slow Narrativism" or "S-N-S" or just plain dysfunctional play is a matter of specific instances, I think. But I do want to stress that it's not the "N/S blend" as commonly construed, which is to say, both priorities firing as equal pals.No one is described as "deluded" at all.</blockquote>

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