What is Right to Dream for?
Eero Tuovinen:
I guess there's no non-assholish way of saying it, but there sure are a lot of weird viewpoints on the Big Model floating around here nowadays. I'm nobody to ruin anybody's terminological and theoretical entertainment, but I do suspect that Simon and everybody else would get more out of this thread with less fancy terminology and more transparent language. Simon's central question is not easily considered in concrete terms, but neither is confabulating new meanings for the Big Model terminology very useful; I'd rather see new terms or just plain language rather than incessant reinvention of the same heavily loaded terminology.
(I do realize that I'm just telling everybody to shut up and listen to my infinite wisdom instead - if anybody has a better suggestion of how to approach a thread that seems to be quickly devolving towards weird heterodoxy in how Big Model terminology is used, I'm all ears. On one hand I could just focus on the main issue and ignore the background noise, but on the other hand it's difficult to choose clear words to use when the same terms are being used any which way by other participants of the discussion. So by all means, don't let me ruin the discussion, just remember that I'm not building on the definitions and application expressed in the thread so far in my own answer to Simon.)
I can well understand Simon's fundamental question - exploring the nature and innermost workings of simulationist play is an exciting venue for many reasons, one of them being that we have less firm theoretical understanding of what happens in the agenda than we (Forge theory geeks collectively, I mean) have for narrativist or gamist play. When you say that categorizing a game experience as simulationistic is not actually useful, I think I understand what you mean: if we said that an instance was narrativistic, say, then we could formulate a clear picture of what each player's duties and goals in play seem like moment-to-moment. The same goes for gamism, we understand the viewpoint an individual player brings to the moment of play. Do we have this sort of understanding for a simulationistic case? I've played highly functional and fun simulationistic sessions, I think, but I have to confess that on my own part I wouldn't pretend to any deep understanding of the creative processes and motivations that go into it; definitely not when I compare to the way I understand and appreciate advocation-based narrativism or adventure model gamism or other such generic Creative Agenda frameworks. I might say that I can appreciate and successfully play powerful simulationistic games like Dread, Dead of Night or Time and Temp, but I couldn't really create such a game - or rather, I suspect that I could, and I have some things in my desk draver, but I've yet to formulate any firm and verbalized internal model of how simulationism "works" in any game I've played or am in the process of writing. Would you say that this is what you're after here, Simon? The idea that we do not, generally speaking, have quite the depth of perception and vocabulary on simulationism that we do with narrativism and gamism, and therefore categorizing an individual play experience as one of the latter is attractive simply because even ill-fitting data can be more comprehensively analysed by using the tools that exist for these other modes?
For what it's worth, Simon, I think that it's entirely believable to come to the conclusion that all of your roleplaying has, generally speaking, been narrativistic. I do not say this of you specifically, but as a general observation: many roleplayers have only ever experienced one Creative Agenda (while some haven't even gotten the one to work well). This causes obvious comparative difficulties in classifying play experiences, as it's pretty difficult to recognize something without prior context. The AP context you provide could believably be either simulationistic or narrativist, I think - I for one would be like a hound on prey on a nihilistic, cold space scifi narrativistic-realist roleplaying game with the premise you postulate, so I find it entirely believable that that might have been what you were about in this case. But then again, I could easily see the opposite case as well, it all depends on the actual focus of the players at the time; I know that I've myself played simulationistic games that have ended in a total party kill along the lines you describe.
Still, as you yourself said there, the specific CA categorization of your play experience is not really the point here, but rather: even if this is simulationism, is that useful for us as an analysis outside of sticking a label on it? Can we say something useful about simulationism, perhaps in the context of Traveller play? Do we actually have any understanding of simulationism beyond knowing it when we see it (or, as some say, knowing it by the absense of other agendas)? Perhaps something that would be useful in constructing new simulationistic games?
This is an interesting question and I might have some thoughts on it. I'll stop here for now, though - do tell me if I've phrased the central issue clearly, Simon! Also, if anybody actually has understanding of the internal framework of simulationism, something concrete and useful, I'd love to hear about it myself. I'll write a bit about how simulationistic games I know function and cause simulationistic fun in a bit, assuming I'm not just full of shit with my paraphrasing of the question.
Callan S.:
Quote from: Simon C on March 18, 2010, 08:59:19 PM
We have a lot of very useful tools for understanding Story Now play, and what I'm saying is that these tools are useful for understanding Right to Dream play as well
Are they? To me you've applied story now tools to understand a 'garnish' that comes with your play, not the heart of your play.
So I'm skeptical story now tools are really examining your campaign directly. I mean, you can tell me that they are, and I can't think of any method of proving beyond just taking your word for it. But are they?
contracycle:
I'd pretty much agree that we have very few tools for examining sim play, in the way that we have for Narr, but that doesn't suggest the category is not useful. There's no getting away from the fact that it is a form of play with different interests. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea that there might be a few things you can say of sim by analogy to insights about narr, but you would have to keep in mind that they are by analogy and not directly applicable.
Sure the state of the art for sim play wanders somewhat in the wilderness. Quite naturally, perhaps, the excitement of exploring narr overtook examination of a style that was in some ways fairly well known. I've proposed some concepts myself - imposition, alienation, didactism - but they have not gained much in the way of support and opportunity to discuss them is few and far between. We have not invested that much time in it at all; and we have fewer proponents of the style now than we used to, and so discussion is even less likely to break out.
Jeff B:
Eero, if you're going to criticize the discussion method, you need to be specific. Right now your just casting a blanket accusation over everyone in the thread of misusing Big Model language, and then continuing on to speak in very large, dense words about something that may or may not be on topic. If your goal is to clear communication, the attempt is backfiring.
That, combined with Simon's periodic re-structuring of his original question, is rapidly making this thread moot. It now appears the original post was simply a request by Simon for someone else (anyone else) to do more work on Simulationism, so that he can reap the benefit of that research.
Eero Tuovinen:
You are no doubt correct, Jeff - however, knowing that Fred's characterization of GNS theory in particular sounds weird to me isn't too pertinent for this thread, is it? I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that theory terminology is being mangled here - perhaps unnecessarily, when plain language would suffice - before engaging the actual topic. The basics of GNS can always be handled in detail in another thread if there is interest, there's no reason for me to start nitpicking about it in this thread. Let's rather hear more from Simon, I'm interested in whether I've understood his topical thrust correctly.
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