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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8266521" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=6698278]@Emerikol[/USER], I think Ron Edwards described your approach to RPGing pretty well in an essay he wrote back in 2003: <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">The Forge :: Gamism: Step On Up</a>He describes the practitioner of your style as "bitter" because of the likelihood of the play goals being disrupted by RPGers with other agendas. But if we put that label to one side, I think this is a pretty accurate description (based on our own posts about how you play):A few paragraphs back, I promised a definition for Gamism and here it is. It operates at two levels: the real, social people and the imaginative, in-game situation. <ol style="margin-left: 20px"> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The players, armed with their understanding of the game and their strategic acumen, have to Step On Up. Step On Up requires strategizing, guts, and performance from the real people in the real world.  . . . </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The in-game characters, armed with their skills, priorities, and so on, have to face a Challenge, which is to say, a specific Situation in the imaginary game-world. Challenge is about the strategizing, guts, and performance of the characters in this imaginary game-world. . . .</li> </ol> Gamist play and design is very diverse, partly due to the relative emphases of these two layers . . . If person A's performance is only maximized by driving down another's performance, then competition is present. In Gamist play, this is not required - but it is very often part of the picture. Competition gives both Step On Up and Challenge a whole new feel - a bite. . . . Think of each level [ie the Step on Up real world level, and the Challenge in-game level] having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. . . . The Hard Core occurs when Gamist play transmogrifies into pure metagame: Exploration becomes minimal or absent, such that System and Social Contract contact one another directly, and, essentially, all the mechanics become metagame mechanics. It's usually, although not always, the result of high competitive actions at the Step On Up level, which then "eats" the Challenge level such that it is literally and nakedly an extension of Step On Up and nothing else. Role-playing in the Hard Core is very much like playing competitive video games . . . Meet the low-Step On Up, high-Challenge Gamist, with both "little red competition" dials spun down to their lowest settings. This person prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. . . . His preferred venue for the Gamist moments of play is a small-scale scene or crisis embedded in a larger-scale Exploration that focuses on Setting and Character. In these scenes, he's all about the Crunch: Fortune systems should be easy to estimate, such that each instance of its use may be chosen and embedded in a matrix of strategizing. Point-character construction and menus of independent feats or powers built to resist Powergaming are ideal. As for playing the character, it's Author Stance all the way. He likes to imagine what "his guy" thinks, but to direct "his guy" actions from a cool and clear Step On Up perspective. The degree of Author Stance is confined to in-game imaginative events alone and doesn't bleed over into Balance of Power issues regarding resolution at all. Related to the Stance issue, he is vehemently opposed to the Hard Core, even to any hints of it or any exploitable concepts that it seizes upon most easily. For instance, reward system that functions at the metagame level is anathema: not only should solid aesthetics should be primary, but he is rightly leery of the Hard Core eye for such reward systems. "Balance" for him consists of the purity of the Resource system and unbroken Currency. It's consistent with the Simulationist Purist for System values and represents further defenses against the Hard Core.That's very much the picture of your RPGing that I feel you've painted.</blockquote>

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