What is Right to Dream for?
Simon C:
Probably one of the most successful "traditional" games I've played was about seven or eight years ago. It was a Traveller-inspired home-brew science fiction game. It went through several iterations, a couple of different game masters (I was one of them for a while), and stretched over a couple of years of weekly play. The exact situation changed a lot, but the characters were usually some variation on uncrupulous space mercenaries, kicking around in the Galaxy looking for jobs. I think it's a pretty common setup. We had a lot of fun play out of the game, fuelled, I think, by a strong shared creative vision of what "good play" looked like. The system we used shifted constantly, as we attempted to find a system that would adequately match our vision for the game. What we were looking for, I think, was a system that would give us the right mix of expected and unexpected results. We wanted things to come out "right", such that the decisions we made for our characters would have logical and consistent consequences. At the time we called this "realism", but I think what we really wanted was predictability and verismilitude (i.e the ability to match resolution to in-fiction causes).
So, it seems like we had a pretty coherant creative agenda, in the sense that we knew what we wanted (even if we didn't always know how to get it). Until recently I would have been super comfortable calling this agenda "Right to Dream", on the basis that we had this shared vision of the setting and a lot of play was about affirming the "rightness" of this vision.
But I've been thinking a lot recently. Luke Crane said a thing about how all roleplaying games have a moral dimension. At first I didn't really see how this was a useful insight into play, but as I play more, and having designed a couple of games and seeing what works and what doesn't, I'm coming around to his point of veiw. The question I'm coming to is this:
Are "Right to Dream" and "Step on Up" useful descriptors of play? I'm not arguing about whether they do exist or whether they can exist, I'm asking if they're a useful way of thinking about games.
Going back to my example of play. It seems to me now a far more powerful explanatory variable to think of this game in Story Now terms, as a game with a strong central theme that informed play. That theme was something like "How does a person make their way in an indifferent universe?" Many things start to make sense in the game viewed through this lens. Our insistance on predictability but also randomness in resolution, our desire for PCs to be no different from NPCs in the view of the rules. Our "you make your choices, and you live with the consequences" ideal of play.
A good example of this last was a moment in game when a player chose to pilot the spacecraft through an asteroid belt at high speeds. As GM, I laid out the possibilities. A skill roll would be required. Bad things would happen if they failed. They rolled a 1. I explained that they would collide with an asteroid, and that another roll could be made to mitigate the damage. They rolled another 1. The spacecraft was destroyed, and all the characters died. We all loved it. We were a bit disappointed, but the event, our willingness to let all the characters die, and the whole game come to nothing, affirmed our vision of an uncaring universe.
So I think that seeing this game as an exploration of Premise makes a heck of a lot of sense. But if this game is Story Now, what's left for Right to Dream? Thinking back, I can work out a premise for all my successful play. Now maybe I'm post-hoc justifying myself, and making those past games fit with my current preferences, but I don't think so. Maybe I've just never played Right to Dream, and so I can't imagine what it looks like?
Callan S.:
Hi Simon,
There may have been a premise there, but was it integral to the fun your group was having? Or was it more like a garnish?
I'm inclined to think that game sessions actually have a set of priorities rather than just one agenda. So you could have a first priority sim, second priority nar and third (or fourth?) priority gamism game. Indeed some of the essays refer to riddle of steel as having a sim 'spine', which means it supports things, but it doesn't come first. But to note, the current GNS essays don't describe a priority system - I'm just putting that idea out there myself.
I mean, you might also be able to think of a point in the campaign where you did a clever move or someone else did and you acknowledged it at the table - not your character making a clever move, but you, the player. But that doesn't make it gamist play either. Not primarily gamist, anyway. That's my take. This sort of thing has cropped up with Capes play as well, where since it has alot of currency strategising and even payoff, it seems confused on whether its a nar or gamist game session.
contracycle:
Yeah, I don't think this is exceptional for sim. But it doesn't look like Story Now. Sure meaning can be atrributed to events, they can validate your sense of the experience of play, of the purpose, but thats not really creating morally signifcant, premise adressing moments right there in front of you. I don't think Sim means a complete absense of meaning anyway.
Jeff B:
Simon,
I think you present mainly two questions:
1. Was the campaign you described an example of Right to Dream, or was it Story Now?
2. Are the expressions "step on up" and "right to dream" useful descriptors of play.
1) My opinion is that you were describing the strength of Simulationist play (Right to Dream). Of course, it may have included Narrativist (Story Now) content and activity, but the part you're talking about seems like Simulationist to me. A key element is wanting reasonable predictability (but not total predictability) in the dice system -- you wanted some consistency in the game and a good chance of having the game system support the story and actions of the players. If I have understood Ron's essay on Simulationist Gaming correctly, that is classic Right to Dream stuff. The great thing is, you had a whole group wanting to share that simulation.
You consider whether that story-sense is actually Story Now instead. In terms of GNS theory, you are perhaps confusing Story with Setting. What you had was great Setting, in which great story could take place of course. But the setting enabled by the simulation is what really made things move for you.
2) I wonder this myself. It took me quite a while to understand why these expressions were applied to the styles of play. I believe now that I understand the intent, but I'm not 100% convinced that they are the best descriptors. It was Vincent Baker's spin on the concepts that helped things finally fall into place for me. To paraphrase his paraphrasing, regarding the three styles of play:
A. Player wants to Prove something (Gamist)
B. Player wants to Say something (Narrative)
C. Player wants to Be There (Simulationist)
I found these more meaningful than the descriptors like "Step on Up". I also wonder if Narrativist and Gamist aren't both merely different expressions of "Step on Up", and if "Setting Now" wouldn't be more appropriate than "Right to Dream" for Simulationist play. While some might say that Setting is a component of Scene, I'm of the opinion that the game system acts as a meta-setting, in which other settings (those associated with scenes) can be portrayed.
A fondly-remembered RPG campaign is a many-splendored thing!
Simon C:
I'm not trying to say "I don't think this was Right to Dream". I'm really not invested in diagnosing the game as a particular agenda.
I think my point is more that calling it Right to Dream doesn't give me any tools for examining play, working out what the fun parts were, and finding out how to make other games similarly fun. Treating it as if it were Story Now, and looking at the premise of play, does give me those tools. It's more useful to me to ignore Right to Dream as a thing, and just treat all my play as Story Now for the purpose of examining my play.
In other words: Cool. It's Right to Dream. What use is that to me?
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