Confessions of a SIM

[teh bunneh]

Part 1: Philosophizin'
No, I don't mean someone who plays The Sims. :lol: Simulationist – one of the triad of gamer-types (which also includes Narrativists and Gamists). That's me all over, SIM to the core.

Forgive me if I babble, and forgive me if I'm going over well-trodden ground. I'm really only now starting to think philosophically about my gaming, so this is all rather new to me. :)

Oh, there's a hint of NAR and a touch of GAM in my soul too, but it's time I admit it to myself and the world – I'm a Simulationist. It's time I embrace it with pride, and stop trying to apologize to the NARs and the GAMs that my way of gaming is different than theirs – not better, not worse, just different. It's time to embrace and celebrate those differences. It's time to play to my strengths.

My joy in gaming is to create a world. I love being a GM. I'm taking a year or so off of GMing because I need the time for other pursuits, but I'm still spending several hours of spare time a week building a fantasy world for a game I plan to start late this year/early next year (I'm actually writing this screed during a slow moment at work). My goal is to create a complete, detailed, internally-consistent high(ish) fantasy world – one in which the players can ask me any question and get a well-considered and logical answer – an answer which will be consistent with last week's answer; an answer which will follow naturally from the rest of the assumptions of the world.

So I'm going to be writing a series of observations, mostly to try and codify my own thoughts (and of course, to elicit comments and feedback from my fellow GMs and players). They're probably going to be rambling and unfocussed, which is fine since these are all thoughts in the process of development. I welcome y'all's insights.

More to follow.

[Cancer]

Top-down world design. This should be good. Looking forward to more installments.

[AliceTheOwl]

Is there a description somewhere of these three types of gamers?

[Vondy]

Is there a description somewhere of these three types of gamers?

There are several on the net, but different people use the terms different ways. Especially on the Forge. In general, my take on it is:

A simulationist focuses on a fully conceived world with a strong sense of versimiltude that is true to the genre and or period it is trying to represent. Character's and stories will be heavily impacted by the world.

A narratavist focuses on plot and story and character more than other elements. Indeed, the world will be heavily impacted by these elements, or even tailored to them.

A gamist is a number cruncher and die roller - mr. mechanics (I'm not using these terms as negatives, really). This is the guy who wants to tweak his builds all the time.

Others might define them differently, or better. As for me: I'm a "narratavist" with a strong "simulationist" streak. I want fully conceived characters in interesting stories, but feel a world with versimiltude is necessary to put those things in context. I burnt out on mechanical tweaking a long time ago.

[AliceTheOwl]

Ah, okay. Just based off the vocabulary, I was figuring on my being a narrativist. That kinda nails it down.

Thanks.

[teh bunneh]

Yup, Von D-man's got the right of it. :)

[teh bunneh]

Part 2: My Last Game
I'm going to start out with a bit of "Lessons Learned" (to use a popular phrase from one of my old jobs).

The last game I ran (UNITY 2010, for those keeping track) was a really great game, up until the end. I thought (and my players pretty much agreed) that the game fell apart in the final few episodes. I've struggled to figure out why. I'm sure the reasons are myriad, but the one thing I keep coming back to is a simple fact: at the beginning of the game, I established certain rules about how the universe worked. At the end of the game, I ignored or subverted those rules – and that change made for a very unsatisfactory gaming environment. I look back and I can see at exactly which points I violated my own rules.

Now, breaking the rules of the genre/game can be fun I'm sure. I see GAM groups doing it to themselves all the time, and everyone seems to have a blast. But in a SIM setting it seems like a terrible mistake – a violation of the unspoken agreement between GM, Players, and the Game itself.

Of course, it's not all bad. The game was fun (up until the end, when it just became frustrating), and at the very least I can take away from it some lessons learned:

1. If at the beginning of the game you set up important rules regarding the genre or setting, don't break those rules, even if you've got a story reason.

2. Make sure you've got buy-in from all your players regarding those rules. Always make sure your players understand the guidelines that that setting takes place under.

Rule number two can be summed up by saying, "Don't let the Punisher into your Avengers group" (which I knew), but it turns out there's more to it than that. It's not enough for your players to know the rules/guidelines. You need actual buy-in from them; they need not just knowledge of the rules, but actual understanding of them and the reasons behind them. They need to agree to play by the rules – or, failing that, to agree to establish new rules that everyone can agree to.

And there's even more to it than that – you, the GM, need to understand why you want to apply these rules. Even if the reason is just "This is a genre trope that we'll be implementing in play," you need to know that reason and (if possible) communicate it to your players.

This is one of the places where I fell down. Lucky for me, now that I see it (hindsight and all that), I can work to correct it in my future games.

So far in my gaming career, establishing setting rules and communicating them to players has been mostly by osmosis. I need to try and figure out a way to establish these rules… and to do it without boring my players with a lecture on philosophy. :think:

More to follow.

[teh bunneh]

Part 3: Being a SIM in a NAR World
Right now, I'm playing in a couple of games that are considerably more NAR than I usually like (Exalted and 7th Seas). I'm enjoying the games themselves, but I can't help but see some major flaws in the systems. I've been wracking my brains to try to come up with a way to define the flaws, and it finally occurred to me – they aren't NAR enough for this SIM. That is to say, they aren't internally consistent with what they claim their goals are – for the mechanics to get out of the way of the story.

For example, in Exalted I'm playing a courtly samurai – not real great with a sword, but he knows all about flower arranging, writing poetry, and getting involved in court intrigues. In a SIM game, you might take skills consistent with that vision – PS: Flower Arranging, KS: Poetry of the First Age, etc. In a NAR game, I expect all those things to be glossed over; I'd take a single skill called "Courtly Samurai Stuff" and it would cover whatever things might be considered reasonable under that skill. Likewise, the battlefield samurai character would take "Samurai Warrior Skills" and gain the ability to fight with a sword or a bow, ride a horse into battle, etc. Instead, you've got dozens of different skills to choose from, each one defined fairly narrowly.

(As a side note, our group tried a short Risus game once and found the system rather limiting – though I expect that would be easily solved by just giving the characters more points to buy skills with and a broader base of skills).

The point is, in a NAR game, a precise list of skills shouldn't be important – what should be important is the story that your character is attached to. And I think that's where Exalted and 7th Seas fall down – they claim to be NAR systems, but they cater far too heavily to the SIM gamer. It ends up leaving no one satisfied.

I think both games would work far better as straight-up SIM games (like Hero – there's nothing in either game that wouldn’t work equally well or better in Hero, with absolutely no changes to their setup), or a straight-up NAR games (like Risus – again, there's nothing that they can do that Risus couldn't do better… and I say that as someone who's not a great fan of Risus). At least, that's my take on their failings.

Just one humble bunny's opinion, and YMMV. Comments are welcome. More to follow.

[Curufea]

Sorry, saw a lot of abbreviations and labels - and blanked. Strangely, while I work in a library, forcing things into pigeon holes has never appealled.

[Vondy]

I have one nitpick: generally narratavist games are plot centric (meaning the story rules all), but its possible to run a game where the character drives the plot, in which case you often need to know exactly what the character can and can't do. It doesn't mean the character sheet becomes preeminant, but it does help some people to stat it all out before play begins (and then barely reference the sheet at run time, which is how my games tend to run). You could accomplish the same thing with a list of descriptors instead of mechanics (masterful flower arranger, gifted poet, passable swordsman...), but they often express the exact same thing using different 'languages' for the player or gamemaster. I agree many games claim to be story centric while having overly crunchy mechanics, but this is also a style issue. You can use a crunchy system (like hero) and still run a very strong narratavist or simulationist style game. Its a question of storytelling. I could be out of touch as I run PBEM and only use the mechanics to build the characters these days, but my table-top games tended that direction as well (rarely referencing the mechanics and relying on description and good storytelling). Also, I'm not a big fan of labelling. Labels are only useful in that they describe and idea. When they limit our conception (and this is often the case), however, or cause of to narrowly stereotype broad groups of people or spectrums of ideas, then they work against their intended purpose. In this case, I think we tread very close to counter-productivity and introduce a number of tenuous (at best) assumptions into the hobby. Most people are a little bit of all three of these things, and emphasise different aspects of each at different times.

[Manic Typist]

I don't necessarily agree on the amount of skills and NAR worlds. I believe that the number of different skills to achieve a certain "feel" of a specific aspect of a character is directly proportional to the effectiveness that feel is supposed to have.

I.E. The powerful warrior, in a combat strong campaign, should buy a larger number of combat skills, with one or two all inclusive social skills.

vs.

The powerful warrior, in a court intrique game, should buy one or two all inclusive combat skills, with a large number of social skills. More accurately, he should buy a moderate amount. But, if his backstory is that he is a powerful warrior, that doesn't mean he has to buy up a ton of stats for it in a campaign that is not going to focus upon combat. Otherwise, you are discriminating against character concepts. Warriors can still be skilled political figures etc.

[Cancer]

I seem to have strong SIM tendencies, at least in my core beliefs of how things ought to be done.

I think it's worth pointing out that in the limit of pure SIM, you may get so wrapped up in the world structure that you end up producing a world which is a marvellous construct, beautiful in its internal logic and consistency, which leaves very little room for anyone else to tell a story in, or even allow characters to do much in. Players in your game-world can end up feeling more like the audience at a movie theatre than characters in a world, free to make choices within the context of that world.

In such a situation as a player, you could end up being the equivalent of Melkor during Iluvatar's first Great Music (to appeal to the situation at the opening of The Silmarillion). You try to introduce your own themes and ideas, and it becomes highly disruptive and puts you sharply at odds with the world-maker GM, at which point GM-Iluvatar out of disgust creates a secondary derivative world, far different from what he initially had in mind, that you can mess around with, and punts the PCs into it.

I've had that experience as a GM. Constructing an internally consistent world which leaves room for PCs to do as they wish is an art, one in which I have so far been a failure.

[Lord Mhoram]

Gamist

Gamist refers to a player who makes decisions based on what will make the most effective solution to the dilemma posed, or to a game which pits characters against successively tougher challenges and opponents without spending much time explaining why the characters should face them.

In contrast to a Narrativist, the gamist has a tendency to "let the dice fall as they may", and won't fudge things to better the story. In contrast to the Simulationist, the gamist has a tendency to ensure that encounters are a fair match for an adventuring party, instead of basing them entirely on what would be realistic in the setting.

Dungeons and Dragons is often classified as a Gamist role-playing game, as are Computer RPGs. Detractors of gamist play often accuse gamist players of trying to "win" a game whose purpose is to be enjoyed.


Narrativist

Narrativist refers to a player who makes a decision based on what would further a dramatic story, or a game which encourages this style of play.



Simulationist

Simulationist role-playing game refers to a player who makes decisions based on what would be most realistic within the game's setting, or to a game where the rules try to simulate the way that things work in the real world, or at least the way that they could be thought of working.

For example, to resolve combat (a rather common event in many of role-playing games) a simulationist approach might be to see if the character hits, then if the victim can parry, then how much 'damage' the weapon does, then how much of this the armour stops, then determine what part of the victim is hit, then see how much harm the remaining damage does.

The benefit of this method is that it is simple for the players to interpret the results and understand what must have happened. The drawback is that the process can take a long time to perform and the process is not always how the real world works, anyway.

That was wikipedia's take on the three.
By those definitions, I am an anti-gamist. A campaign where every combat was a walkover, and there was never any work to overcome the badguys would be ten times better (or more) than a game where I had to think and plan and strategise to win the fights.

Dunno how I fit in the rest, probably half/half - I want a internally consistant world, that you tell really cool stories in, but that fits.

[OddHat]

If the world doesn't make sense, I can't get into the story. If the story isn't entertaining, I stop caring about the world. The mechanics are there to describe the world; if the description they give makes no sense, it's the mechanics that are at fault, not the world. Readers of popular quantum physics books should remember this.

So, I guess I'm more simulationist-narativist than gamist, but I still like a good character design.

I've been there on screwing up a game by breaking the rules you yourself established. My problem in that area tends to be letting jokes or strangeness interfere with a story, especially after hour two or three of GMing. I try to deal with it.

I also sometimes end up creating wonderful, interesting worlds without remembering to leave room for the players. Again, I try to keep an eye on it.

[Lord Mhoram]

I find GNS to be a useful tool, but not the be-all and end-all of things. I do remember the first time I had a cross style problem, that after I read the GNS I thought "ah ha".

The game was spacemaster, I was running it. In the system your first batch of skill points are for what you know through childhood and adolescence and then the first level skill points are for what you learned as a "class". I had a character who wanted a background that he was from a technologically backwards planet who ended up joining with the modern society at 19 or 20. Specifically there were no lasers or blasters on his planet.

He bought up his laser pistol skill as high as he could with the adolescent points. Which caused a disconnect for me, as he had explicitly stated that his world had no lasers. When I mentioned it to him, he claimed I was meddling in his character creaton; whereas I thought he was breaking character background.
Classic Gamist/Sim conflict.

One of the shortest examples of the three styles:
Gamist: How do I win / how do I beat it?
Nar: What makes a good story?
Sim: What does my character do and think?

[Zeropoint]

I'm Simulationist/Gamist primarily, with a bit of a Narrativist streak. Unfortunately, both of my friends who are willing to GM are heavily Narrativist: they've got a Story to tell, and if the PCs start to stray, it's the GM's job to find a way to bring them back.

I hate that. If the GM wants to tell a Story, he should do the players a favor and write a book instead of running a game. The Simulationist in me says that the game's story should flow organically from the nature of the world and the nature and motivations of the player characters. Nobody has fun if the GM is constantly working to thwart the player's attempts to influence their own destiny.

[teh bunneh]

I find GNS to be a useful tool, but not the be-all and end-all of things.

Oh, I agree completely. I'm early enough in my philosophizin' career that I feel I need some tools to help me build a framework. Once I'm a bit more comfortable with "thinking about gaming" rather than just "thinking of gaming," I'll put the tools back up on the shelf. :)

I appreciate the insights from alls y'alls. Von D-man's "Build the character and then set it aside for the game" is a fascinating idea... though I'm pretty sure my group would balk -- we likes us some dice-rollin'. :D But it is something to think about.

[zornwil]

Nice posts, Bill.

I'm from a more simulationist background as well, the earlier majority of my time focusing on the setting and characters. I expected players to drive narrative by reaction to the setting, and of course I built narrative as well off those reactions.

However, when I started my campaign up here, the one that's run 5.5 years (been half a year break recently), I began with a narrative notion of what the campaign would be "about," as noted elsewhere, making it more about mutant-human relations and the character's interplay with that. This worked really well, and I've been more focused on it since. Then playing Dogs in the Vineyard really reinforced that. Bear in mind though that DitV is perfect for a simulationist GM, because that is the biggest focus for the GM in that game, specifically, as the narrative is much more player-driven. I find that a very comfortable mix. I think GMs driven to drive a narrative more, to be more responsible for the narrative flow, would not enjoy DitV so much.

[mayapuppies]

I'm Simulationist/Gamist primarily, with a bit of a Narrativist streak. Unfortunately, both of my friends who are willing to GM are heavily Narrativist: they've got a Story to tell, and if the PCs start to stray, it's the GM's job to find a way to bring them back.

I hate that. If the GM wants to tell a Story, he should do the players a favor and write a book instead of running a game. The Simulationist in me says that the game's story should flow organically from the nature of the world and the nature and motivations of the player characters. Nobody has fun if the GM is constantly working to thwart the player's attempts to influence their own destiny.
This is me.