It's funny, I recall a lot of old articles about types of players or DMs - what today we'd call playstyle - and they didn't generally call out this or that game as an appropriate place of exile for a disfavored one. It's interesting to see this one case where the author does just that: he exiles simulationists to C&S.
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I thought the idea that stylistic preferences should break up groups, sub-divide fanbases, build echo chambers, and segregate gamers into various option ghettos was a very new one, a child of the Edition War. I guess not.
I think you're looking at this too pessimistically.
While there was a reasonable amount of simulation snobbery of C&S, RM etc players against D&D, I think it was also healthy that there were flourishing systems and fanbases to support a variety of playsytles. I certainly read a lot of posts from self-describes "sim" D&D players (mostly 3E) on these boards and wonder why they aren't playing one of those other systems (HARP is probably the simplest of them currently on offer, at least of the ones I know, and it has a simple Fate Point mechanic to mitigate the worst excesses of random crit rolls against PCs).
A simulation isn't even a game. In a game, the goal is to have fun. In a simulation, the goal is to be accurate. They're often incompatible goals.
This is a little unfair. I've never played C&S (though I have a copy of one of the later editions). But I've played RQ, and I've played a
lot of RM. Pulsipher's characterisation of those systems, and also his comment that D&D can't deliver that, fits accurately with my experiences. And I know from experience that those systems can be fun!
I think the realism-sim + novel/story style might be CoC.
Interesting. As I said in my OP, I've tried to use RM for that, but there are problems. I can see how CoC avoids them: because the players aren't meant to exercise must agency, the fact that the system overrides that agency isn't a problem. And that loss of agency is precisely the story that is meant to be produced.
Now the (possibly inevitable) progeny of the triumvirate of wargaming + realism-sim + novel/story style has to be illusionism.
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I think the only way the perception of those things come together is if the GM suspends 1 (secretly) when required to attain 3, and suspends some or all of (a) or (c) in 2 as required to maintain the overall illusion of the three agendas working in harmony (rather than the total discord that inevitably emerges as they push against each other).
Looks right to me!
Also, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], I've probably been guilty of being that GM on occasions in the past - especially in my early RM days - as I haven't known properly how to keep all my balls in the air!
Illusionism is somewat derogatory; I prefer protagonism. Basically it is the same thing, but openly declared;
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The Paizo adventure paths, and specifically the players guides that come with them, are very much in this vein, so I think it can be said to be pretty mainstream.
I think you are correct that it is pretty mainstream. I think that mainstream-ness may be what informs your post upthread (and also [MENTION=5868]Olgar Shiverstone[/MENTION]) saying that a good RPG should do all 4 playstyles at once.
I guess my question is, in what sense is this sort of play really giving you wargaming or realism-sim? If the GM manipulates action resolution to produce the plot-appropriate outcomes, where is the wargaming? And how is the game being run as a sim? Those aren't rhetorical questions, they're genuine. But they're also sceptical to this limited extent: that when I've seen, or played under, GMs running this sort of game, it plays out pretty much as Pulsipher describes in his article: player skill and choice is subordinated to the GM's priorities.
But I'm sure I haven't seen everything there is to see under the sun!