If you designed your own rpg system, you've probably heard of GNS Theory. GNS stands for Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist, and was developed a little more than fifteen years ago, mostly on a website called The Forge. We can talk a lot about GNS Theory (particularly if we want to be really geeky about our hobby), but for the most part, the people who developed it have moved on to other models, and the rest of us (including myself) just use it because Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist are useful terms. For the players of Ubi Sunt, these terms give us a common language to describe different perspectives on how to play our game.
A quick breakdown:
- The Gamist perspective is best described as "goal-oriented." You have a goal, you have obstacles, and you're trying to win. Usually, people focus on mechanics when they discuss gamism (particularly min-maxing), but I personally feel that this is terribly inaccurate: the individual who is rigorously pursuing political goals is just as gamist as the player who creates the world's greatest swordsman and fights a lot of enemies. Both are pursuing goals as efficiently as they can. A personal observation: amongst larpers, there seems to be a sense that the gamist perspective is less valid than other perspectives. I think this is inherently untrue… not only are all perspectives valid, but undermining the gamist perspective ignores the fact that mutually exclusive goals are the primary causes of conflict in larps, and the gamist perspective is vital for in-character conflict.
- The Narrativist perspective focuses on story and character development. This approach emphasizes internal motivations, and presenting situations where players have internal conflict. When you write long character backgrounds, set up tragic circumstances, and make "bad decisions" in-character, you're dancing with the narrativist perspective. While narrativist storytelling is apparently emphasized by most parlor larpers, your intrepid storyteller is extremely dubious of the Narrativist perspective. Part of my personal reservations about Narrativism is the tendency to privilege "story" above other approaches, without regard for the structure of stories, or how the construction of narratives in a collaborative sense requires strong simulationist and gamist elements. (Translation of that incredibly pedantic sentence… the difference between writing a story and playing it out in a larp is that a larp requires both strong context and game elements to work when there's multiple people telling the story).
- Your storyteller is a very strong Simulationist, and if you look under the hood, Lloegyr is an incredibly Simulationist game. The Simulationist is primarily concerned with genre simulation: verisimilitude is the most important aspect. An vital element, however, is that this is genre simulation, not historical simulation. (The specific genre we're trying to recreate, by the way, is that of the HBO Game of Thrones series… your play experience should feel like those shows). A personal opinion: Simulationists are like the middle children of the GNS world… we can easily allow for both games and drama within our construction, as long as the genre is selected to allow for this. This is not to say we're without problems. I would argue the individuals who get the most angry with decisions made during a chronicle are Simulationists… all it takes is for one thing to just not make sense and everything is ruined. If you find yourself hung up on what day it is in character, and travel times, you're probably a Simulationist. And when the storyteller handwaves travel times and what day it is, you feel vaguely unsatisfied, because the storyteller just muted your genre simulation somewhat.
Note that no player or storyteller is squarely in any of these camps. Everyone has all three tendencies to some degree. However, recognizing which tendencies we have, and to what degree, allows us to discuss what we like or dislike about a particular design choice, and also to agree on what sort of game we're playing.
So, I guess I'll take the first stab at this. Pun intended. I go back and forth between the Gamist and Narrativist camps, mostly. That's one of the reasons why I stick with the Storytelling system with most games. The system design and conflict resolution systems tend to angle the game away from specifics. I'm one of those old school writer types that feels that details simply get in the way of a good story, unless they're busy enhancing it. If it doesn't enhance the story you're telling, it's a bad detail. In Lloegyr, there's 30-some stories being told. That means alot of details are going to be good details. At the same time (and I believe this was one of the big criticisms of the model portrayed) The Gamist perspective has also been termed the Realist perspective, because of the goal orientation, rather than the rules focus portions. But that only holds true from a player perspective. People are generally goal oriented. Those people who we deal with everyday who are not goal oriented we usually have not so nice terms for, like crazy. Now, there's nothing wrong with playing a crazy character, but having some knowledge of psychology, biochem, and neuroscience stuffz, crazy is complicated. People tend to make crazy simple, when it's being normal that's relatively simple. And I guess that part of me is Simulationist? In any case, when I'm playing a character, I want to know what my characters goals are, I want to have them ordered and structured, so that when my goals compete with each other, I can make bad decisions.
ReplyDeleteI largely agree, except for one thing... I find the storytelling system, particularly in its most recent form, very simulationist... it just doesn't have the level of detail generally associated with simulationist systems (I always put Shadowrun 3rd Ed as the ultimate simulationist game... the rules were clunky and weird, but they were consistent and covered everything). With the storyteller system, I have a system geared more towards verisimilitude and internal consistency than anything, which is why I like it.
DeleteI think the best thing I get from being a simulationist is that I'm so often neglected as a player in various larps that I've been in that I've learned to look at play styles and try to pay attention to when the game isn't doing what the players want it to do.
Hmm, there are a few games which I find exemplify those aspects. For Simulationism, I think GURPS tends to beat out Shadowrun 3rd for that. It's been termed "Gaming for Engineers". For Gamist, I'd point someone towards Dungeons and Dragons. Very much the "I'm making a game out of this" viewpoint. For Narrativist, I'd say the FATE system. Or Amber. There might be a reason why I love those games... hmm.
DeleteAs far as the storyteller system goes, just like people, they won't fit into a single category, and different people will see different things in each conflict resolution system. Because, when it boils down to it, all a game system really tells you, is how do you resolve a conflict. Whether that conflict is player versus player, player versus non-player, or player versus environment. The nature of resolving that conflict is what you're looking at. So, scenario... you want to survive a night in the wilderness. It's raining. It's cold. You don't have a tent. Here is what I generally envision ensuing:
Gamist: Of course you survive the night, it would be boring to die. But a monster attacks you in the night!
Narrativist: Of course you survive the night, it would be a poor story to have you die to rain, but, let's focus on the difficulties you have in order to do that, and how each of those gets resolved, and how it may change the character.
Simulationist: You died. Because you don't know how to find shelter. Or start a fire. And you weren't prepared. You didn't even have a pocket knife. And as I write this, I'm thinking of Traveller, where you can die during character creation.
That may seem a bit harsh on the Simulationist type of games, but simulationist games are mostly supposed to be harsh in those types of situations. Oh, you've found yourself in a situation where a normal person would normally die? Well, there's a good chance you'll die, too. Well played, Oregon Trail, well played.