What exactly does narrativist mean in the context of /tg/? I just don't see how it fits when the player and GM do not have interactions or possibilities limited by lines of code. Can't you RP heavily and spin any type of tale even in combat heavy systems?
>>47036985
GNS theory is largely defunct anymore, but the point of GNS Is in reference to the mechanics specifically.
(In)ability to roleplay isn't what narrativism cares about, the question is "how much are the actual mechanics of the game founded in narrative expectation and 'story logic,'" as opposed to gamist (how much are the mechanics founded in being a fun game for their own sake) or simulationist (how much are the mechanics founded in faithfully recreating the 'physics' of the fictional world).
Here's an example:
If a system had a mechanic where groups of weaker enemies were globbed together as a single mechanical enemy, that's probably a narrative mechanic ("swarms of goons" are not actually as threatening as 100 dudes would imply because they're not as cool) or a gamist mechanic ("swarms of goons" represented as 100 actual dudes is a fucking horrible game to play), but isn't a simulationist one unless it's an actual in-universe law of physics that people get less competent the more of them group together.
>>47036985
Narrativism is basically rules more influenced by narrative then narrative influenced by rules.
Example; in movies the bad guy often does something or acts like a fucking idiot just so that he doesn't realistically waste the hero and win the day himself. This is narrative of course, and some narrative systems have things like that, things impelling the antagonist to act out his character flaw and leave himself vulnerable.
Of COURSE you can RP in combat-heavy systems, but that's not what those terms are about, rather relating to pure rules.
Simulationism: Rules trying to be "realistic" as possible, narrative of game thusly more realistic as influenced by rules.
Gamism: Rules are fairly arbitrary and following codified but not necessarily realistic ("why can you only attack once a turn? Because it's in the rules"). Not necessarily bad, but the lack of realism might put off some guys who are into that and the lack of narrative control (as the rules will explicitly prevent some things) might put off some guys into that as well.
Narrativist: Rules are based off of the sort of genre or style of story the group is telling and usually aren't realistic at all. Rather then the limitations of rules changing some aspects of the story, the rules are used to DEFINE the story you are telling.
>>47036985
It means that Ron Edwards has no fucking career.
>>47036985
>Can't you RP heavily and spin any type of tale even in combat heavy systems?
You certainly can. Narrativist rules try to support telling a good story, regardless of whether it's realistic. Simulationist rules try to be realistic, regardless of whether it fits into a narrative. You can certainly use a rules heavy, simulationist, combat focused system to run a low-combat story based game, or vice versa. But using the right system for the job is like wearing the right shoes for the sport. Might not be necessary, but it will usually help.
>>47037035
To be fair, swarms of people are an odd case. It's realistic that, if attacked by 100 people, they will break and run if 5 people are killed, and even disciplined attackers will likely flee if 10 are killed.
Otherwise, that's a good breakdown.
Another good example of narrative or simulations is traveling. If you track miles, rations, marching order and making camp, it's more simulationist. If you track days of travel and roll random encounters, it's more gameist. Narrivitst skips over travel with a paragraph or so, going from one scene in the story to the next.
>>47036985
In the extreme positions it looks like:
>simulationist: a swing a this specific angle with this kind of sword versus this kind of armor does this much damage
>gamist: you have several different attacks with a sword with various cooldowns on them which you weave into chain combos
>narrativist: bringing flashbacks of childhood training with a sword helps you fight right now, individual sword swing is just a trait of a roll for scenic consequences.
ANd yes of course you roleplay and have narrative with any GNS position. In Narrative the mechanics just get plugged straight into it, rather than being called up by the events when needed.
>>47037581
>To be fair, swarms of people are an odd case. It's realistic that, if attacked by 100 people, they will break and run if 5 people are killed, and even disciplined attackers will likely flee if 10 are killed.
Well obviously you can run 1vs100 in simulationist. Simulationist will bring up positioning so you'd only be fighting the few on bordering hexes and the like. Intimidate checks may as well be available.
Narrativist/gamist is turning 100 "single goon" tokens into 1 "an assload of goons" token on the field.
>Another good example of narrative or simulations is traveling. If you track miles, rations, marching order and making camp, it's more simulationist. If you track days of travel and roll random encounters, it's more gameist. Narrivitst skips over travel with a paragraph or so, going from one scene in the story to the next.
That's a pretty good breakdown, I agree.
>>47036985
GNS theory is terrible and the only way to fix it is to purge it from your brain and get back to playing rpgs based on what you like, not based on arbitrary sides.
>>47036985
From what I can tell, "narrativist" means the game is bogged down with meta-game mechanics that do the same thing to immersion that landmine fields in the Third World do to the careers of aspiring soccer players; cripples it beyond hope of recovery.
Seriously, this shit is all using Moves to Compel Aspects and then they get a bennie to up the ante of the conflict at the risk of a bigger failure and blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah. Narrativist systems handle actual narratives like an autist's homebrew, more 'realistic' rules-hack of GURPS handles simulation, clumsily.
>>47036985
"Narrativist" (later re-termed as "Dramatist") is about games whose mechanics support dramatically interesting stories, primarily ones that entail realistic emotional struggles.
>>47038307
>Seriously, this shit is all using Moves to Compel Aspects and then they get a bennie to up the ante of the conflict at the risk of a bigger failure and blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.
Not all narrativist systems use terms like that.
I guess all the reasonable people wake up early; opened this expecting to see a massive flamewar, instead you only have a few dumb interspersed with actual answers.
>>47037741
^This, it promotes factionalism and undue elitism (I'm better because I love/hate narrative/simulationist rpgs).
I use these games to get a release from hyper-politicized ideologies, not reify them.
Nothing's a bigger red flag for me than strong opinions on the, of all things, metatheories of tabletop games. If you can't cool your jets on that, how can I expect to run a fuckin' campaign with you?
>>47039711
>it promotes factionalism and undue elitism
GNS theory was just an attempt to classify player preferences in order to get at the heart of "what you like" and explain why some people like some games and not others.
People who promote factionalism and elitism are going to do it with whatever means they have necessary. If it's not "My creative agenda is better than your creative agenda," then it's just going to be "My system is better than your system" or "Min-maxing is better than roleplaying." Don't blame the theory because assholes use it to be assholes.
>>47036985
>Can't you RP heavily and spin any type of tale even in combat heavy systems?
This is a gross oversimplification.
What's more often the case is that combat heavy systems don't operate with anything approaching realistic levels of danger or realistic numbers of options (You can't do that, there's no rule/ability for it, or "you get stabbed 3 times, you take some damage")
This means that the combat mechanics of the game affects player character decision making, since someone who knows he can just solve something with violence without much risk of permanent consequences will do just that. Also, a lot of combat heavy systems are often underdeveloped on the social interaction side and a lot of stuff is basically left up to "role-playing" rather than rules.
This invariably results in players defaulting to violence as a much more common solution to problems and situations because A: it works better than it would in the real world and B: it's much more fleshed out and the players are more capable of predicting the results.
The thing that people seem to lose sight of is that the rules in role-playing are there to give the players agency and to avoid the game devolving into "nu-uh, I blocked it!" arguments like kids having fights about favourite superheroes.
The rules let you know your capabilities, lets you gauge it compared to the capabilities of others, and make assumptions about what level of influence you can successfully assert over the world.
If you are X good at something, that means something that you can put in the context of the rest of the setting.
But when there are one bajillion values that specifically quantify how good you are at violence, and social skill is to a larger extent left to role-playing, you basically surrender your power in those situations since role-playing social stuff without any rules for it leaves you at the mercy of the GM.
>>47038307
>From what I can tell "Gamist" means the game is bogged down with videogame mechancis that do the same to immersion that landmine fields in the third world do to the careers of aspiring soccer players; cripples it beyond hope of recovery"
You're not the only person who can use stupid analogies to promote your entirely subjective opinion.
At the end of the day it all just comes down to what part of the story you're interested in. Do you want an adventure on rails where you get to make cool tactical choices in combats or do you put more importance on being part of the storytelling process?
There's no right or wrong way to have fun, and turning games design philosophies into ideologies is never going to be anything but retarded.
Are you trying to summon virt?
>>47037741
I think that the point of GNS basically was that there are different things that people like and that having people with different goals on same table might not mix well so having some kind of formalized language on what kind of play people at table like and want helps to get everyone on the same page.
>>47037035
>GNS theory is largely defunct anymore
What does that even mean? Further research disproved it?
>>47043125
It was only ever Ron Edwards talking out of his ass, and a load of people on one forum believing him.
Over time, it became clear that nobody - not even Edwards - had a useful, coherent definition of the three terms that actually matched up with other people's definition, making the terms fairly useless.
(To say nothing of the colossal stupidity of thinking that different styles of gameplay need to be locked in separate ghettoes, away from each other...)
>>47036985
>If a system had a mechanic where groups of weaker enemies were globbed together as a single mechanical enemy, that's probably a narrative mechanic
So D&D 3.5 is a narrative game? Nice argument.
>>47043851
sorry meant to quote
>>47037035
>>47037035
>>47043125
It's like Freud's theories, except in regards to game design. They're "not even wrong" yet evocative and divisive enough to keep people talking.
>>47039711
>This, it promotes factionalism and undue elitism (I'm better because I love/hate narrative/simulationist rpgs).
As opposed to when people just say "my RPG is better than yours"? GNS theory is saying that different RPGs are trying to accomplish different things, and arguing over which is better is often a pointless apples vs oranges comparison.
>>47043851
First, he said it was a narrative OR gamist mechanic
Second, having a single narrative mechanic doesn't make something a narrative game.
>>47043125
It's not like it was ever more than someone jerking off way too much to his own definitions of things that never really benefited from the strict definitions anyway.
>Hey guys, we can totally sort all rpgs into A, B, or C.
>Whoa, I agree, I'm more of an A player.
>I'm a B, fite me faggot.
>>47037035
Even this definition can be questioned, which is a prime example of how useless the terms are.
Bunching 100 people into a goon blob could be argued to be;
Gamist: A way to make the game mechanics streamlined and fun rather than overly tedious and concerned with detail.
Narrativist: A way of focusing on the storytelling aspect of what the outcome of fighting the goonblob is, or making the goonblob adhere more closely to storytelling tropes.
Simulationist: A way of focusing on what the realistic outcome of fighting the goonblob is by abstracting it into a single event with a certain number of likely outcomes, rather than risk running into the problem of the emergent game dynamics giving you a highly unlikely outcome because of player abuse of the rules.
In the end they're basically an attempt to define something that's not actually dependent on specific game mechanics or any set games design philosophy and all about what kind of attitude you have when you look at a situation.
It's like sex or art, it's not about what it looks like but about what the person looking at it reads into it.
Granularity vs Abstraction is not inherent to any one specific style of game. You can run a super abstract gamist or simulationist game depending on what scale or time frame you are going for.
Guys, how freaking difficult is it? There is a glossary, you know.
Narrativism is when the premise is addressed in the game. What is the Premise?
>Within GNS Narrativist play, a moral or ethical question concerning human interactions -- adapted by Ron Edwards from the writings of Lajos Egri. Within fiction writing, this starts as an ideological challenge or question. The course of the plot then answers this challenge with a message or theme -- a judgmental statement about how to act, behave, or believe.
So, DND isn't narrativist, because your paladin knows why he's slaying undead like that, and he will do that. Golden Sky Stories isn't either, it doesn't offer moral quandaries: "combat" has nothing to do with that.
In Kagematsu, the question "what will you do in this situation? What will you do to save yourself/your village and possibly for love?" is answered by playing the game.
It's not rocket science, it's not about "narrative", and it's not elitism.
I like simulationism
If I wanted gamism I would be playing a PC/console game
if I wanted narrativism I would be reading a gamebook
>>47044705
Well, one could suggest to try out once or twice just to see if you like it. If not, no problem, but you might be missing out something.
>it's funny how few gamist RPGs there are out there, anyway
>>47044622
If people used actual clear definitions for things then they wouldn't be able to get into stupid arguments about what they mean. So I'm sure you can see why people who have nothing useful to add to a conversation but still want to participate for some reason would avoid that.
>>47044852
It is quite clear. I just see that you don't want to read it and instead chose to believe in whatever banter you heard about that.
>banter, to be fair, partially derived from a long-time absence of formal and accessible definition from The Forge
>>47044622
>Lawful Good
>>47045102
In DND, you don't have moral quandaries like that: you ecounter a full grown and quite bad orc.
Sure you could as a GM introduce, but 1) it's not what the players agreed to, and that will be a problem 2) you can have tactical problems even in motherfucking Bliss Stage, if you want to.
>>47044342
>Second, having a single narrative mechanic doesn't make something a narrative game.
Okay then what does? Is it some majority vote?
>>47046478
Originally the three poles weren't really meant to describe games, but creative agendas of the players, "what they're in it for," so to speak. Games up until then had mostly been "incoherent," that is, not supporting any one specific creative agenda.
GNS's lasting legacy, even if you disagree with it or think it's debunked or whatever, is that a lot of people started designing coherent games based on it, ones that were built to support a specific creative agenda.
Most games pre-GNS were very heavily simulationist, even if there weren't a theory informing their design as such. This makes sense when you consider the origins in wargaming and wargamers' interest in modeling historical conflicts, and how that carried over to RPGs (they brought their creative agenda with them).
>>47046904
The interesting part in retrospect is that for all the roots in wargaming there weren't/are many gamist (competitive) RPGs out there.
At least ones in which the players actually compete with each other.
There was Agon, which was sadly broken in battles.
>>47045102
>Detect Evil
>>47047084
But when he stops being a baby he'll ping evil!
>>47044577
>Simulationist: A way of focusing on what the realistic outcome of fighting the goonblob is by abstracting it into a single event with a certain number of likely outcomes, rather than risk running into the problem of the emergent game dynamics giving you a highly unlikely outcome because of player abuse of the rules.
That's a tenuous connection at best. If you're abstracting something in order to limit the range of potential outcomes that's the opposite of trying to simulate it accurately.
>>47048809
listen fuckface, I'm a very busy paladin trying to smite all the evil I can find, if this fucker doesn't ping evil then I got bigger fish to fry. Gotta at least make sure I've got job security.
>>47049106
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/glossary/alphabetical/S.html
tl:dr simulationism is "playing for realism", in the sense that in Middle Earth a dwarf could be trained to make magic items.
I don't know what he smoked to imagine this thing about "abstracting". He's almost certainly baiting.
>>47049106
sim·u·late
ˈsimyəˌlāt/Submit
verb
verb: simulate; 3rd person present: simulates; past tense: simulated; past participle: simulated; gerund or present participle: simulating
imitate the appearance or character of.
"red ocher intended to simulate blood"
synonyms: imitate, reproduce, replicate, duplicate, mimic More
antonyms: real
pretend to have or feel (an emotion).
"it was impossible to force a smile, to simulate pleasure"
synonyms: feign, pretend, fake, sham, affect, put on, give the appearance of More
antonyms: real
produce a computer model of.
"future population changes were simulated by computer"
Is Dungeon World really narrative?
>>47049887
It's boring is what it is.
>>47036985
>Can't you RP heavily and spin any type of tale even in combat heavy systems?
Yes, Narrativist is the one true game. You don't even need rules.
You can play a game based on this gif.
As alluded to by Doc Brown: "Rules? Where we're going we don't need rules."
>>47049887
No, it's heavily gameist, it's designed to play very fast at the expense of near everything else, if speed is what you need then it's great.
>>47049887
It's simulationist, perhaps has a hint of gamism, if you really want to use the GNS nowdays. Certainly not narrativIST.
>>47049887
It depends.
Seen it run as a straight crawl. Seen normal campaigns, and a few political games out of it. The only thing I can imagine that's truly narrative about it is that the mechanics are so light (on the table, not in the core book) and you have some generous assumptions (the rogue probably doesn't need to roll to sneak past the distracted guards in the dark hallway, the fighter probably doesn't need to roll to flourish his blade impressively, the wizard doesn't need to roll to make harmless sparks, etc.) that it frees up time to describe shit, so if it's not narrativist in the mechanical sense, it's certainly played that way in spirit most of the time. Also, spout lore and other things where players get to collaborate on worldbuilding. A good spout lore role is almost like "action points" for setting information and quirks of the campaign world, players start to call the shots (in reason, how exactly you handle this is up to you).
>>47036985
>Gamist, Narrativist, Simulationist? But aren't they all Narrativist?
Some of them are Half-Fae Catboys, nya~h
>>47050063
Colette pls go.
>>47049887
REEEEEEEEE
Narrativist with strong mechanics, like ffgs star wars
>>47047084
Thankfully no longer exists. It's detect Fae, Undead and Demons now.
>>47052997
Why is 5e killing our epin alignment debates?
>>47050063
>boy
>tits
>>47053567
Hey, it worked for Bailey Jay and Gwyndolin.
>>47052997
>green thing in crib is not a demon
>green thing in crib is not an undead
>green thing in crib is not a fae
'Our work here is done! Grab the loot and let's high-tail it!'
>>47053558
4e killed it first.
>>47053840
But we could just dismiss that one as WoW!
>>47053558
Because they finally realized the tired dinosaur of alignment shouldn't matter in the game
Now if only we could excise the other ones.
>>47049106
A simulation is the use of a model that represents the key characteristics of something in order to imitate something or predict it's results, or for any number of reasons.
A horse riding simulator for training purposes might only concern itself with modeling the motions a horse makes during it different gaits, it does not need to concern itself with how the horse smells or what it eats.
A simulation of a group of people for gaming purposes might only concern itself with the likelihood of them running away or choosing to start a conflict, or the amount of damage a mob consisting of a certain number of people could do in a given time frame.
Simulation does not mean that you automatically get mega detailed about every aspect of something.
Limiting the range of potential outcomes TO THE LOGICALLY POSSIBLE OUTCOMES (as opposed to weird fringe scenarios that come about because of weird rules interactions, for instance) is definitely not the opposite of simulating something.
You can simulate the risk of getting hit in the head by using a super complex model with tons of variables, OR by just giving different types of attacks or dangers a % value.
Simulationism vs gamism or narrativism is not about level of detail, it's about whether or not the system is skewed towards narrativist, gamist or simulationist outcomes.
Are the possible outcomes of an action skewed towards producing fun results, results that produce interesting character choices or plots, or are they just the most likely outcomes of the action being attempted?
A wound table that focuses on things like skipping "actions" or adding multipliers or skipping turns or whatever can be said to be gamist, a wound table that focuses on dramatic events or where player authorship of the character plays a part can be said to be narrativist, and one that is just a rundown of the most likely injuries can be said to be simulationist.
>>47049399
Read John Kim, "Clarifying simulationism"
The main problem with GNS theory is that it presents itself as equlateral triangle
While it's not
N and R are way closer to each other than any of them to G. They're differing aspects of basically simmilar thing, while gamism is kind of in sharp opposition to both.
>>47061790
This.
Gamism is basically taking the "necessary evil" of rules (they're just there to give you the answers to "what happens if I do this" without having to handwave everything) and making them the point of the activity, elevating them to the same or higher level of importance as immersion and cooperative storytelling.
Gamism very easily turns into "role-playing is for faggots, I need to be entertained by having more mechanically distinct options for how to hit something with my weapon", something that pen and paper role-playing games are just way worse at providing than other options like videogames or rpg-flavoured boardgames like Arcadia Quest or similar are.
>>47036985
pretty much everything works based on these three. theyre just not ever black and white. for example. Pathfinder is primarily gamist. there are a very diverse ammount of simulation factors as well, but while they aren't common, there are still narrativist elements like hero points, rerolls.
pretty much no system is only one kind unless it is very very simple.
>>47061525
>John Kim, "Clarifying simulationism"
Not a single mention of "abstraction".
