Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9079644" data-attributes="member: 42582">Continuing this line of thought, here is a long quote from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">Gamism: Step on Up</a>:1. 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. . . . 2. 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. . . . Challenge is merely plain old Situation - it only gets a new name because of the necessary attention it must receive in Gamist play. Strategizing in and among the Challenge is the material, or arena, for whatever brand of Step On Up is operating. . . . it's good to look inside Gamism to see the game there - what is it? It's a recreational, social activity, in which one faces circumstances of risk - but neither life-threatening nor of any other great material consequence. All that's on the line is some esteem, probably fleeting, enough to enjoy risking and no more. Think of a poker game among friends with very minor stakes, or a neighborhood pickup basketball game. Taking away the small change or the score-counting would take away a lot of the fun, because they help to track or prompt the minor esteem ups-and-downs. This is Step On Up. . . . 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. How does conflict of interest relate to Step On Up and to Challenge? The crucial answer is that it may be present twice, independently, within the two-level structure. *Competition at the Step On Up level = conflict of interest regarding players' performance and impact on the game-world. *Competition at the Challenge level = conflict of interest among characters' priorities (survival, resource accumulation, whatever) in the game-world. Think of each level having a little red dial, from 1 to 11 - and those dials can be twisted independently. Therefore, four extremes of dial-twisting may be compared. 1. High competition in Step On Up plus low competition in Challenge = entirely team-based play, party style against a shared Challenge, but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people, such as levelling-up faster, having the best stuff, having one's player-characters be killed less often, getting more Victory Points, or some such thing. . . . 2. Low competition in Step On Up plus high competition in Challenge = characters are constantly scheming on one another or perhaps openly trying to kill or outdo another but the players aren't especially competing, because consequences to the player are low per unit win/loss. . . . 3. High competition in both levels = moving toward the Hard Core (see below), including strong rules-manipulation, often observed in variants of Dungeons & Dragons as well in much LARP play. . . . 4. Low competition in both levels = strong focus on Step On Up and Challenge but with little need for conflict-of-interest. Quite a bit of D&D based on story-heavy published scenarios plays this way. It shares some features with "characters face problem" Simulationist play, with the addition of a performance metric of some kind. That last sentence provides the key to identifying three different sorts of RPGing that are, in their basic subject matter and the likely content of their fiction, quite similarThe first is character-and-situation focused Simulationism: the situation is created by the GM, expressing a sense of what "fits" or is appropriate for the agreed genre, setting etc; the players engage the situation via PCs that are generated via a process that ensures those PCs likewise "fit". The motivation for the players to engage the situation via their PCs is itself an element of the "fit".Perhaps the most classic example of this approach is a good Call of Cthulhu scenario - the PCs are, by design, curious antiquarians and the like; and the situation is something that would pique the interest of such persons.Some Classic Traveller scenarios (eg Shadows and Annic Nova, both in Double Adventure 1) adopt this approach, but are apt to be weaker on the PC-engagement aspect of "fit", thus creating the risk of fizzling.When (as often happens) I read an ENworld poster saying that players have an obligation to create PCs that are ready to adventure, I generally extrapolate to this sort of play approach being intended.The second sort of RPGing is the particular sort of Gamism that Edwards identifies. The PCs face a challenge, but without competition between them for resources. The players have to "step on up", but they don't have to compete with one another for XP or VP or similar advancements or success-indicators.This approach doesn't give rise to the same PC engagement problem, as the players have an external motivation to have their PCs tackle the situation, namely, that that's where the challenge is! Provided the characters and situation make this plausible without too much lampshading, the game will go. 4e D&D seems like it could be played this way. Other versions of D&D aren't quite as good for it, because they create a conflict of interest between character (and hence perhaps players) around rest-and-recovery.The third sort of RPGing is the sort of Narrativism described by Eero Tuovinen and suggested by the intro text to Burning Wheel. The players build PCs in accordance with a system that will ensure those PCs have player-selected goals and aspirations ("priorities"). Then the GM frames a situation that directly engages those goals and aspirations. This sequence of authorship ensures that there is no "fit" problem as far as PC-engagement is concerned.The fact that this PC-engagement problem arises only in the first approach is a manifestation of the fact that only on the first approach is it the case that "internal cause is king". Sandboxing is more setting than situation focused, but it has its own well-known version of the PC-engagement problem, at least if the testimony of ENworld posters is to be accepted: it not being clear what the players are expected to do to make the game go. Again, this is a direct manifestation of "internal cause is king".Obviously there are solutions. Some of them may tend to drift play towards narrativism or gamism.</blockquote>

Verification