Gumshoe, its genus of RPGs, and distancing mechanics

[RogerBW]

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 suspect the conventional approach is that if there's a TPK all players lose. But if one guy can struggle back to town with one hit point left, he can recruit people, and in some sense it's still "the same party".

Much the same seems to apply, similarly as an unwritten rule, in Call of Cthulhu.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

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.

Even 'libertarian' is not exactly clear-cut (e.g. it does not necessarily indicate whether a person is an abolitionist or not; but that's way off-topic).

Originally Posted by Mailanka

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."

At this point, the statement that narrativist systems are also gamist in a reductionist sort of way (i.e. hoarding plot points until the plot-essential moment, roughly speaking) starts to look all the more convincing.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

At this point, the statement that narrativist systems are also gamist in a reductionist sort of way (i.e. hoarding plot points until the plot-essential moment, roughly speaking) starts to look all the more convincing.

Not just that, but different narrativist games can support different "builds." In HotB, one player focused on adding as much romance to the story as possible and had a bunch of abilities that focused on controlling NPCs. Others, like myself, focused more on applying truths and facts to the world around us, and using that to facilitate our interactions. One guy built his character as miserably as possible to max out his Style flow so he could use his Style whenever it counted. It gave him a strong '7th Son" feel of a bumbling idiot guy who somehow keeps stumbling into victories.

So we had a win-condition, a lose-condition, and multiple strategies to go about acquiring those conditions. That's just good game design, but it's what GNS would call "gamist," even though it calls HotB "Narrativist."

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Even 'libertarian' is not exactly clear-cut (e.g. it does not necessarily indicate whether a person is an abolitionist or not; but that's way off-topic).

Libertarians have said for a long time that if there are three libertarians in a room there are at least four opinions. Usually as a joke, but we're actually a bit proud of it, I think. Of course the Jews made the same claim before us.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

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."

That certainly seems to be the case of simulationism. I've seen the things that GNS classifies as "S," and they include things that are not merely not simulationist as I understand it, but are the diametric opposite of valid simulation. I have in mind, in particular, the idea that if you want to have result X, to be like your source material, you simply dictate that X shall happen, and if the embodiment of the world model in the game mechanics gives result Y, you set it aside. In scientific simulations, at that point, you have to either predict that something unexpected is going to happen, or decide that your world model is wrong in some way and come up with a different one; simply reporting the result that you think you ought to have gotten is fraud.

And from looking at GNS discussions of "S," I've gotten the sense that the undercurrent is, "We really don't like this sort of thing and don't care to understand what its practitioners think they're doing."

As for N, there seems to be a difference between, "At this point the rules are going to say that the player gets to tell a story, and will get credit for telling a plausible story," and, "At this point the rules are going to say that the player should follow a mechanic, and the mechanic should generate a plausible story regardless of the player's intent"—but both seem to be called N, unless I'm confused, which could easily happen with GNS.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Libertarians have said for a long time that if there are three libertarians in a room there are at least four opinions. Usually as a joke, but we're actually a bit proud of it, I think. Of course the Jews made the same claim before us.

Bill Stoddard

And where you meet two Ukrainians, you'll soon notice that three of them are trying to be rulers . . . (Два українця = три гетьмана. Or whatever variation you want to pick.)

More seriously, this likely applies to almost any group imaginable to one extent or another. Which is precisely why simplistic 'GNS' categorisation only works on the far far zoom-out.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And where you meet two Ukrainians, you'll soon notice that three of them are trying to be rulers . . . (Два українця = три гетьмана. Or whatever variation you want to pick.)

Two Ukrainians = three hetmen?

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Two Ukrainians = three hetmen?

Yeah. (Insert obligatory rant about arbitrary h/g transformations between Germanic/Romance and Slavic languages. OTOH, the tidy transition between totally different systems of plurals is comforting.)

[ak_aramis]

GNS in its early incarnations was much clearer than the muck that Edwards has devolved into spouting in his "big model"...

The original essay, as reprinted in the back of Sorcerer, was pretty clear.

Narrativism is about the mechanics driving story control
Simulation is about the rules attempting to mimic reality (possibly not OUR reality)
Gamism is pretty much the absence of the other two. Any rule justified by "It's just a game" falls into that realm, too...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Narrativism is about the mechanics driving story control

I'm not sure what that means. Can you offer examples?

Bill Stoddard