GNS - which are you?

[Mokona]

I'm somewhere between Situation Simulationist and Narrativist.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Might I suggest replacing GNS with PSB => "Proving, Saying, Being"? Because, yes, the labels are exactly what everyone gets hung up on. Of course those still aren't exclusive categories.

Cute.

Way, way too many words have been spent on GNS. It seems clear that even here, the consensus is that it's a flawed model. I suspect that any system which tries to describe roleplaying gamers according to a three-category Venn diagram is ultimately doomed to break down under examination. The issues just aren't that simple.

Pursuing a better model would be a worthwhile goal.

 

[John Morrow]

Cute.

Actually, I'm quite serious. Like I said, I think there are some interesting ideas in there but they get lost in the terminology. Rather than borrowing terminology designed to describe a different breakdown, why not create new terminology that actually fits what's being described?

I think those categories illustrate that the GNS is, at it's heart, a model about control and since most role-playing games have a fairly predictable model of control (i.e., GM, players, rules, and dice), it also illustrates that the GNS model slices the data to distinguish "N" from the majority of other games rather than picking top-level slices that would more evenly split the styles.

Pursuing a better model would be a worthwhile goal.

Absolutely. But it needs to be done by someone who isn't an evangelist for a particular style of play or someone who has an axe to grind against other styles of play.

 

[TerraDave]

I know I am a gamist because I am playing a game and not writting a story and certainly not "simulating" anything. As for the GNS, by the nature of their definition all three come into play, as they do in every RPG I know of, at least as actually played.

 

[Ourph]

Are you talking about core GNS or the whole Forge family of models? This thread is asking about "G", "N", and "S".

I'm talking about the entire model laid out by Ron Edwards in his 4 essays GNS And Other Matters of Roleplaying Theory; Simulationism: The Right To Dream; Gamism: Step On Up; and Narrativism: Story Now. I don't think the individual labels Gamism, Narrativism and Simulationism are useful (or even make sense) without the context of the rest of the model.

As for Laws model looking at different aspects of the experience and then creating categories, can you name some categories (at the same level of abstraction as Laws' other categories) that you can represent in the GNS but not Laws' model?

Certainly, to name one example, I think the Storyteller category is flawed because it's lumping Narrativism in with Simulationism focused on Setting, Situation and Color. As defined by GNS, Narrativism is about creating a story with a moral point or Theme, whereas Simulationism focused on Exploring Setting, Situation and Color is (usually) about reproducing a "feel" found in a body of literature, film or other media.

Call of Cthulhu, played by people who really want to recreate the atmosphere and "feel" of Lovecraft's stories is a perfect example of the latter. While creating a "story" in this manner may look superficially like Narrativism, the defining difference between the two is that there is no moral question being asked by the Simulationists. The purpose of play isn't to ask and answer a moral question through resolution of the story; it's to play out the story in a way that's consistent with the outcome and "feel" of the literature.

Laws model lumps those two types of play together, even though they can be extremely incompatible. If you stick someone interested in Narrativism in the Simulationist game described above, and the Narrativist wants the "good guys" to win because they've done the "right thing", it's going to tee-off the other players because such an outcome isn't "true" to the simulation. This can occur even though all players at the table appear to be superficially dedicated to "story".

For the sake of defining these two different types of player "at the same level of abstraction as Laws' other categories" (as you put it), we'll call the Narrativist the "Author"-Storyteller type and the Simulationists the "Re-enactor"-Storyteller type.

Again, this thread asks about "G", "N", and "S", to the sub-categories. And the "G", "N", and "S" part of the GNS is about as far as most people who are not Forge regulars get. My concern is whether that top-level division is sensible or not. I don't think it is. I think it's designed to give a very specific form of play (called Narrativist) it's own privileged high-level category.

Well, I'm not a Forge regular (I rarely look at the forum), but I have made an effort to thoroughly read and understand Ron's work because I find it interesting. I don't necessarily agree with everything his model covers and see it as a work still in progress, but I think it has a lot to offer beyond the superficial divisions of G, N and S. From my understanding of his ideas, the reason Ron makes the divisions G, N, and S is based on their interaction with the activity of Exploration. I think it's unfortunate that so many people focus on these divisions, when I think it's really his ideas on Exploration and it's division into the 5 categories of Character, Setting, System, Situation and Color that are the most intruiging part of the model. IMO, the reason Ron chose the G, N and S categories, rather than broader categories like the Laws or GDS model is that they express different ways of approaching Exploration.

Gamism - Exploration for the sake of Competition.
Narrativism - Exploration for the sake of creating Theme.
Simulationism - Exploration for its own sake.

I can understand why it might seem unsatisfactory to make such divisions, because they are greatly unbalanced in the amount of actual roleplaying time dedicated to each one in the typical game and probably throughout the roleplaying community. Simulationism wins hands down in terms of "what are most people doing most of the time when they're roleplaying". Gamism comes in a distant second and Narrativism is about as last as you can get. The model doesn't propose to divide roleplaying activity in to 3 fairly equal parts. It makes the divisions based off of the idea that Exploration is the fundamental activity of roleplaying and that "approach to Exploration" is the first fundamental question to ask when starting to divide roleplaying activities into their different categories.

I would argue that most people, if they are looking to improve the taste of their pizza, would find a discussion of supermarket ingredients more useful than a discussion of chemisty.<snip> As such, I think Laws model is more useful for most people.

I'm not going to disagree with you there. As I said above, I don't find either model particularly useful in terms of solving problems, that's an interpersonal thing that gets resolved through negotiation and compromise between people and unlike the Laws model, the GNS model isn't about describing people it's about describing instances of play. I'm not arguing that the Laws model is or is not useful; or that the GNS model is MORE useful.

My original point (several posts back) was that there doesn't need to be an either/or. Both models can be applicable, accurate and useful at the same time because they're describing different things (or, as you pointed out, they're describing a more general thing on two different levels of detail). I, personally, find the extra detail informative - not necessarily in terms of resolving problems within my games - but in terms of choosing game systems and creating game activities which appeal more strongly to my tastes and the tastes of my players.

I'll also point out that the Laws model will be INFINITELY more useful than the GNS model to anyone who hasn't take the time to really read and understand the entirety of Ron's model. Simply throwing around the labels G, N and S as if they mean something outside the context of the whole model is useless and confusing.

More accurately, I'm saying that enjoyment or problems occur because of style clashes. A model that doesn't distinguish styles that clash from each other isn't terribly useful in diagnosing problems or improving game quality.

Yeah, I agree. See the above. If you're not willing to get any further into GNS than the G, N and S it's probably going to do more harm than good.

Which still goes back to the point that just the "G", "N", and "S" don't tell you very much if you need to rely on sub-categories to make the important distinctions. And if the GNS thinks that all power-gamers are Gamists, I think it may be making an even more fundamentalist mistake, though the tendency to never attribute a negative style of play to the Narrativist camp makes that unsurprising.

I don't understand this attitude that Ron's writings are somehow out to slander a certain style of play. The articles certainly don't take that stance. They don't even take the stance that all Powergamers are somehow "bad" (in fact, the articles I cited above don't mention Powergamers as a subject of discussion at all IIRC). They do identify a certain form of Gamism (The Hardcore) which is destructive outside of certain groups where it's the default mode of play, but even that "value judgement" is within the context of "this is a very rare form of roleplaying that's generally incompatible with most other forms", not "people who do this just don't 'get' roleplaying".

I also can't recall seeing Narrativism set on any particular pedastal either. If anything, Narrativism is given short shrift in the model because it's so narrowly defined and therefore doesn't require a lot of discussion.

That actualy describes me pretty well. Realizing that Laws' categories are not exclusive or "pick only one", I'd call him a Method Actor and Butt Kicker. In fact, I'd argue that the GDS, GNS, and other models don't work very well as exclusive categories, either.

You'd be right when it comes to categorizing individual gamers. The difference is that the Laws model purports to identify instances of individual gamers whereas the GNS model only purports to describe instances of individual play events. The reason I find the Laws model fairly useless is because it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know or couldn't already describe.

The GNS model dissects the roleplaying experience into non-obvious components, whereas the Laws model divides gamers into pretty obvious categories. The difficult part isn't saying "Storytellers want more Story" (Duh!). The difficult part is figuring out why, when you give the Storyteller more Story, he still isn't happy (because he wants a Narrative, where the story asks and answers philosophical/moral questions and you're just giving him detailed Simulation of Setting and Character, which does nothing to scratch his creative itch and actually bogs down the push toward a conclusion with what he considers inconsequential details).

The way the three-way models generally solve the same problem is by defining the categories as a triangular space that a point can be placed within, which is simply another way of saying 50/50 or 60/40.

I'm not intimately familiar with the GDS model, for which the above statement may hold true, but that's definitely not what the GNS model describes. First, Ron Edwards specifically states that the GNS model isn't a mathematical model and that attempting to describe the model in terms of a geometric organization or coherent visual arrangement based only on the G, N and S divisions is not useful. Second, the GNS model describes individual instances of play, not entire gamer personalities. The best way to describe an individual player in terms of the GNS model (IMO) isn't by enumerating what they DO LIKE; because, of the myriad possibilities of instances of play described by GNS, we probably all like lots of different ones.

In addition, we may like different types of play based on what system we're playing or who we are playing with (As a personal side note, I have one group I play with where I get to engage in my "favorite" forms of play (mostly Simulationist). I have another group of friends I enjoy playing with where I actively avoid pushing the play toward Simulationism because they don't enjoy it and they're not good at it. With them, I don't enjoy Simulationism because (to me) it's not Simulationism "done right". Just an example of how people's creative agenda can change based on things that fall outside the spectrum of the GNS model.)

Anyway, back on track....I think the best way to use the GNS model for describing individual players is based on what they DON'T LIKE. For example, I'm pretty open to any style game, but I HATE Simulationism based on Exploring Character and Gamism with a heavy emphasis on Gamble resolution. Defining myself as 75/25 Sim/Gam isn't useful, because there's a significant amount of both Sim and Gam that I really hate. I'd rather be engaging in Narrativism than either of the two options I pointed out above.

Which is exactly why so many people not only reject but resent the GDS and GNS. The styles that they place in opposition are not always in opposition.

Two responses. First, Ron Edwards point out several times in his articles that some styles of one creative agenda mix naturally and constructively with styles from other creative agendas. Gamists who enjoy Crunch resolution and Simulationists focused on System and Situation work wonderfully together. Gamists who get their kicks not from "winning" in game, but from peer accolades for "doing well" can be happy as clams in a Narrativism focused game as long as they know what the conditions are for "winning their laurels" from the other players (in other words, they get a kick from getting props for helping to create a good Theme during play). The distinctions among creative agendas are important for understanding the whole model, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're always important at the gaming table.

Second, I can't understand anyone resenting the model for making ephemeral distinctions between gamers. It's not like Ron Edwards is coming to anyone's house (or messageboard for that matter) and demanding they stop playing together because they don't fall under the same creative agenda heading. That particular attitude strikes me as incredibly strange.

It's that insistence of exclusivity that makes so many people, including well-respected authors of role-playing material, reject the GDS and GNS. <snip> The person who likes a little of this and a little of that can't be defined in any exclusive model.

Of course not, because the model isn't designed and doesn't purport to exclusively define individual players in terms of the three big creative agendas. Defining individual gamers is much more complex. GNS does a great job of describing individual game activities and (from that) it's sometimes useful in determining specific things about specific players.

What I find not quite credible about the Laws model is that it purports to describe the entire spectrum of social interaction we refer to as "roleplaying games" (including individual personality, personal relationships, creative agendas, social contracts, approach to "fun" and all the rest) with 7 categories described in 1 paragraph each. That's entirely too simplistic an approach to such a complex subject IMO. YMMV.

 

[S'mon]

Gamist - as is everyone else who plays D&D. Now, get in your box!

I've often played D&D games that were almost entirely Sim or Nar-Drama. The system isn't designed to support those styles, but it can be used for them. Certainly the brief d20 Conan game I ran was almost entirely N-D.

While I may say I'm running my current game G/S, in fact I'm using the Conan game's Fate Point mechanic, which is an N-D mechanic designed to enable the player to set aside the rules-based result (usually "You're dead") in the interests of a better story & not having to roll up new PCs all the time. Use of Fate Points give the game a swashbuckling feel much more like a swords & sorcery story than you get from the default rules. But, and this is important, they allow me as GM to be a hardass playing the NPCs & environment with all the lethality I used to use in 1e. I really enjoy this, not pulling my punches, in 3e when I did that without FPs, PCs died all the time. So FPs both increase player enjoyment & GM enjoyment, for G & S reasons (I can play the environment objectively (Sim) and present tough challenges (Gam) ) as well as the opportunity for better character & story development.

 

[fusangite]

With definitions like Edwards', I could prove that the Pope was a Protestant.

I'm inclined to agree here. While there are things I can take away from the GNS model that I find useful, ultimately, it's too deeply flawed a theory for me to buy into its categorization system. For instance, the idea that games cannot be "narrativist" unless they engage theme in a particular way makes the definitions absurd.

I went onto indie-rpgs.com a couple of years ago, described the game I ran and asked the people on the site to categorize my gaming into one of these three. I answered every question they asked. But in the end, they split 33/33/33 over whether my game was G, N or S; Edwards himself stated that he couldn't possibly categorize my game unless he personally observed it.

I won't bore people with all my problems with the categorization system but I will just mention one example: even if you have a game mechanic that acts directly on story like Buffy, apparently it's not narrativist unless the players use the system to engage questions of theme/morality (e.g. is it right for one person to sacrifice his life for another?).

In my view, any good game should be able to accommodate players with all three orientations simultaneously and one has a weak/inflexible GM and players if accommodating different styles within a group becomes difficult to the point of dysfunctional.

Ultimately, the agenda of The Forge is to try and de-centre/distribute the role of GM; they label this "narrativist" play which they describe in glowing terms compared to the two other types of player they identify. I really disagree with games that try to do this; they are not fun for me.

All this stated, I understand that Edwards' original version of the theory was a lot better and conceptualized a tripartite division amongst people who were mechanics-focused, character-focused and story-focused. I think this is a basic observable general truth about play styles but I disagree with (a) the silly direction The Forge has taken this fairly self-evident truth in further theorizing and (b) the idea that these foci/agendas need to be in conflict. A good story/world/system should be able to accommodate all these play styles without significant conflict.

 

[Nathal]

Gygax did some research and came up with a series of Dragon Mag articles called "The Elements of an RPG". I have them here in alphabetical order, not in order of importance (obviously). Just for kicks, which system do you think would be easier to map to these elements? GNS, Laws player types, WOTCs categories, or what? Does it even matter? Does any of this help us to run a better game?

Building (construction, land acquisition, etc.)
Business (an occupation aside from "adventuring")
Character Development (detailing game persona s history )
Combat
Economics
Exploration (dungeons and for larger discovery)
Intrigue
Politics
Problem Solving
Questing
Random Chance (encounters, resolution of combat, etc.)
Role Assumption (staying "in character" in actions/thinking)
Role Playing (ditto, and speaking thus when playing)
Story (backstory and in play)
Strategy
Theatrics (occasional histrionics and sound effects)