Gumshoe, its genus of RPGs, and distancing mechanics

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

(At the risk of sliding back into a GNS discussion, this is one of the reasons I dislike comparing "Dramatism" to "Narrativism." The latter is about the sort of scenario you describe, which isn't very immersive. It requires a sort of meta-thinking about the story, while most Dramatists actually want deep immersion, which narrativism tends to harm.)

Is that how people use the term "Dramatism" (it ought to be "Dramaticism," but never mind)? My experience has been that my players with a theater background mostly have a performance focus, where they're thinking about the impact of their characters' actions on the other players, even when they're very caught up in their roles.

I had one player who seemed to be trying for immersion, to the point where he didn't communicate what was going on with his character during play, but then he would write up the game afterward and describe this amazing thought process that was how his character had experienced the game. It really didn't work very well for the game I was running, and I asked him to reveal a bit more of what was going on. That is, it was precisely not effective drama.

There also seems to be an ambiguity about "narrativism," between "what would this character do in this situation?" and "what does this type of plot require this character to do?" I very much favor the former over the latter.

Bill Stoddard

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There also seems to be an ambiguity about "narrativism," between "what would this character do in this situation?" and "what does this type of plot require this character to do?" I very much favor the former over the latter.

My impression is that that separation is just what Mailanka's getting at: under the overall label "narrativist", some games promote character-driven emergent plots while others seem to channel characters towards the latter approach (e.g. with a hypothetical police procedural game like the one Anaraxes was talking about, where all the procedural stuff you're doing is not to gain information for the players but to build up a stock of case resolution tokens).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

My impression is that that separation is just what Mailanka's getting at: under the overall label "narrativist", some games promote character-driven emergent plots while others seem to channel characters towards the latter approach (e.g. with a hypothetical police procedural game like the one Anaraxes was talking about, where all the procedural stuff you're doing is not to gain information for the players but to build up a stock of case resolution tokens).

That part I get. I'm just baffled at calling one approach "narrativist" and the other "dramatist."

There is also the other difference, between people who strive for character-driven emergence by experiencing things as if they were the character, and people who do so by thinking about what is fitting to the character as seen from outside.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

It is indeed the sort of mechanic you're complaining about, Brett. It's a narrativistic mechanic, one where the mechanics let the story shape the world, rather than the world shape the story. Fate does much the same thing.

I reckon that when mechanics dominate the result is gamist, regardless of whether the tokens being manipulated represent things that concern the character or things that would concern a hack writer. In narrative and drama both, characters do things because of their character and situation. a story in which characters do things "to make a good plot" has a bad plot, and the same is true of one in which they do things, or succeed or fail, because the player spends or has run out of tokens.

"System does matter" is a gamist credo.

[PK]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Normally the only abilities that have pools are the investigative abilities, and this raises another point: having the ability at all is enough to let you find the clue.

And this is actually one of my biggest complaints with GUMSHOE. If you want to play an incredibly intuitive, perceptive investigator, you can design a character that's better at finding clues -- but the player is still expected to come up with the brilliant deductions that put it all together. There's no real separation between "player analysis" and "character analysis," so if you suck at solving mysteries, your character is going to suck at it, no matter your build.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

A better mechanic for that sort of thing would be to build up a positive modifier as you conduct the investigation, so that your early answers are likely to be misleading or wrong and your later ones will put you on the right track.

I couldn't agree more, as I hope my Clue/Deduction system in GURPS Monster Hunters 2: The Mission shows. Yes, it's aimed at "hunting monsters," but the core framework works just as well for totally mundane mysteries and investigations.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Since the bad guy is traditionally someone you interviewed earlier, only to think they were innocent, how about a rule that if you take a negative modifier against a subject, you can (later) take that, or double that, as a positive modifer against that same subject once, later. This should incentivize players to interview the likely candidates early, before they have the modifer actually to nail them, chase some red herrings and run down intermediate leads to build up their positive modifer, and then come back with that plus their one-time bonus to nail the real killer.

I definitely like this, particularly if the GM is going for a more "narrativist" approach.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Brett

I reckon that when mechanics dominate the result is gamist, regardless of whether the tokens being manipulated represent things that concern the character or things that would concern a hack writer. In narrative and drama both, characters do things because of their character and situation. a story in which characters do things "to make a good plot" has a bad plot, and the same is true of one in which they do things, or succeed or fail, because the player spends or has run out of tokens.

"System does matter" is a gamist credo.

This is exactly why GNS irritates me, actually: All well-designed RPGs are "gamist" in one form or another, in that all well-designed games tend to have goals and a variety of strategies to get to them. The GNS stance is that a Gamist game is a game you can "win," but you can "win" any game that has goals.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

This is exactly why GNS irritates me, actually: All well-designed RPGs are "gamist" in one form or another, in that all well-designed games tend to have goals and a variety of strategies to get to them. The GNS stance is that a Gamist game is a game you can "win," but you can "win" any game that has goals.

Doesn't it require a game to end for you to win it? Or at least for there to be a clear condition of losing too. Character death is not necessarily a loss.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Doesn't it require a game to end for you to win it? Or at least for there to be a clear condition of losing too. Character death is not necessarily a loss.

D&D is usually cited as a "gamist" game, and it doesn't end when you win, and its conditions for losing tend to be unclear too.

I think this sort of thing is better described thus: You have a clear outline of what sort of goals you'll generally pursue ("Kill monsters and take their stuff!"). You'll have multiple possible strategies to best do this ("I'm a striker with a focus on high mobility and status effects!") and much gameplay will be about bringing those strategies against the changing face of the evolving arena of play. You'll also have penalties of some kind of if you lose ("Your character is dead, Bob, roll up a new one.")

But as Brett says, a "narrativistic game" has this too. It has clearly outlined goals ("Control the shape of the story", it has multiple possible strategies that you can use to do this ("Hmmm, I think I'll focus more on a surging benny economy with lots of intriguing disadvantages!") and penalties of some kind if I lose ("Awww, Jane got to control the story for that round, and no my character is in love with a wombat. Dang!")

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

D&D is usually cited as a "gamist" game, and it doesn't end when you win, and its conditions for losing tend to be unclear too.

I think this sort of thing is better described thus: You have a clear outline of what sort of goals you'll generally pursue ("Kill monsters and take their stuff!"). You'll have multiple possible strategies to best do this ("I'm a striker with a focus on high mobility and status effects!") and much gameplay will be about bringing those strategies against the changing face of the evolving arena of play. You'll also have penalties of some kind of if you lose ("Your character is dead, Bob, roll up a new one.")

But as Brett says, a "narrativistic game" has this too. It has clearly outlined goals ("Control the shape of the story", it has multiple possible strategies that you can use to do this ("Hmmm, I think I'll focus more on a surging benny economy with lots of intriguing disadvantages!") and penalties of some kind if I lose ("Awww, Jane got to control the story for that round, and no my character is in love with a wombat. Dang!")

Perhaps the most gamist one that've seen is BSG the card/board game. Well, it's not intended to be, but we played it with a noticeable RP element, often mimicking characters' speech patterns and/or behaviour from the series. And yet it had very clear win/lose conditions. So yeah, it was a sort of gamist RPG.

But yeah, the definitions are weird, and the lines are drawn in such a way as to prove some points, and all this reminds me a political tangent in some other thread, which concluded with a statement that political tags are there to bash people you disagree with, not for meaningful categorisation (because tags oversimplify). Thoughts?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But yeah, the definitions are weird, and the lines are drawn in such a way as to prove some points, and all this reminds me a political tangent in some other thread, which concluded with a statement that political tags are there to bash people you disagree with, not for meaningful categorisation (because tags oversimplify). Thoughts?

Well, politically, that's more true of the US than of, say, the Netherlands or other multi-party states. If I told you I tend to prefer to vote for VVD and the Pirate Partij, that tells you something about my politics and my interests (especially the tension between the two) and gives you a useful guide. In the US, I'd say "I vote Republican," and it doesn't give you nearly the clarity of those parties above. But when someone in the US says "I'm a libertarian," it tends to more cleanly highlight where they fall on a spectrum and, specifically, how they don't really fall in the same old categories.

It used to be RPGs were all basically a knock-off of D&D, with strong wargame roots and a focus on combat. Then a few other games trundled along: games that focused on a "more realistic" depiction of characters via more detailed, less abstract mechanics (like GURPS), and then a bunch of people made very evocative games that used basically a variation of the mechanics of the above two games but had a greater focus on "look how cool our setting/story is!" White Wolf games are typical for this.

We're starting to come up with new games with new concepts. Games like Fate and Gumshoe don't really work like either of the above. They're not really wargames-cum-RPGs, and they're not really these deep "simulation" games. So the GNS guys, in my opinion, came up with an entire theory whose sole purpose was to highlight this difference and to explain why they were different.

Before:
"I'm creating a narrativistic game."
"So you mean like World of Darkness?"
"No, that's... argh!"

Now:
"I'm creating a narrativistic game."
"Ah, like Houses of the Blooded."
"Yes."

So it's handy that way, but GNS's "simulationism" and "gamism" categories are really just strawmen to highlight this new form of game. They're not really useful descriptions in and of themselves.

So labels can be handy, but labels often have context, and that context may be "I've invented these two labels to bash two other things to the benefit of this other label, which will help me push this particular idea I have."