What is Right to Dream for?
Eero Tuovinen:
Yes, I think that I'm getting what Simon's saying. Let me paraphrase for added understanding: All roleplaying necessarily has an "ethical dimension" in the sense that we will for the most part only care to play games that discuss human issues: whether narrativist or simulationist (or gamist, I guess), the game will regardless center on the human condition. There are exceptions that are sort of important in demonstrating that this isn't an inherent property of Creative Agenda, but it seems that the great majority of roleplaying is focused on discussing humanity.
If the above is a correct understanding, then I'll have to agree with the basic observation: we don't usually play games that don't have interesting content, and for the most part the interesting content can be considered to rise from the human condition. However, I don't know that this'd make Simulationism a mis-categorization; we've known for a long time that simulationistic games can and often will deal with the human condition, the ethical dimension: what makes it qualitatively different from narrativism is exhaustively analyzed by the premise-theme model of Narrativism; simulationistic games might have - and often do have - a theme, but it's preset and the purpose of the game is to express that theme, not to create it.
Bringing this back to Simon's original Traveller example, the question is pretty simple: did the game have a theme saying that "the universe is uncaring and what we do only matters to us", or did it have a premise of "how do we react to an uncaring universe?" In other words, insofar as the game dealt with the human condition, was it affirming an unstated ethical viewpoint, or was it looking to elicit an ethical statement from the players? The difference is usually pretty simple to observe in actual play by looking at the choices made by the players: do they choose how to interpret the game's style into concrete fiction, or do they make choices as to what the theme should be by observing the fiction?
If this is addressing Simon's point in a meaningful way, then a further observation can be made: correctly recognizing a simulationistic, themeful game as such is useful because then we can ask the right question: how can we make this game expose the theme more naturally, reliably and powerfully? Some basically simulationistic games, such as Call of Cthulhu (played as sim) go to great lengths in their game texts to answer this question. The equivalent thematic question for narrativism is different - namely, how can we make this game address (in the technical sense) this premise more efficiently. It's a different question, with different techniques in answer.
The interesting theoretical question here seems to be whether themeful simulationism and a presumably existing themeless simulationism are actually appreciably similar, contiguous and compatible in actual play; many people have, with varying degrees of understanding on the basic issues, criticized GNS-simulationism as a concept exactly because they think that it's actually miscategorizing several Creative Agendas under on umbrella term. Probably beyond the scope of this discussion, that.
Silmenume:
For myself only, well said!
Simon C:
Eero, I'm really glad you posted this. I think you make a good summation of my basic point, which is helping me to pin down exactly what I'm getting at. I'm still feeling my way through this discussion.
I'm hanging on to the idea that theme IS inherant to creative agenda, and that the concept of Right to Dream (and by extension Step on Up and Story Now) isn't a useful concept for describing play. I think a far more useful concept is the idea of phatic versus engaging theme.
By phatic, I mean that the theme is present, but there's no expectation of meaningful challenge to the theme, we are less interested in what statements are made about the theme, and more interested in the process of making those statements.
By engaging, I mean the theme is a genuinely challenging proposition for the players. We don't know how we feel about the issue, and in the course of play we find out. We're interested in the statements that the players will make about the theme, through play.
This looks a lot like Right to Dream vs. Story Now, but there's an important difference. A theme can exist on a continuum between phatic and engaging. Some aspects of a theme can be engaging, and others not. Players can be more or less engaged by the theme. This, I think, encapsulates my experiences of this kind of play in a way that the "seperate and distinct" GNS categorisations do not.
How does that work for you?
Simon C:
Oh, also Eero, I'm interested in examples of "Themeless Sim". I don't have a good idea what that would look like. Are we talking about Turku school stuff?
Eero Tuovinen:
That's interesting what you say about accepted and challenged theme. Speaking strictly of definitions, it seems to me that if there is the sort of continuum you propose, then your initial claim that "sim doesn't exist, it's all really narrativism" is also correct. So let's look at that:
The usual claim about the separataness of the experience in simulationism versus narrativism is that strongly themed simulationism wants to celebrate and affirm the theme, not challenge it. My own best experience in this comes from when I've played a few short sessions of Vampire: the Masquerade, which is chock-full of a priori theming and theme affirmation as the content of play. I suck at playing that game! I just become extremely disruptive even if I don't want to be because I never seem to come upon the game truly willing to swallow the pre-delivered theme and the "right way" of doing things. As a consequence my character doesn't obey his betters, plot and betray, or even sit dimly in some corner angsting about the beast within. This, of course, is bullshit in that game's context, the idea is not for your character to walk into a research lab and donate his body to science. It just seems disruptive if you play the game without honoring the genre.
For a more general take, Star Trek gaming seems to suffer from this break in experience a lot, as does Call of Cthulhu. The idea in these games is not to take a human choice at face value, it is to affirm the theme by making the choice ascribed to your character role by genre convention. Superhero rpgs tend towards this direction often enough as well, I used to get into trouble with ill-conceited simulationistic superhero games that other players fucked up by grabbing at nar-style choices, killing villains and doing other no-no things. This sort of thing could be just crossed genre expectations (something that can happen within a single CA easily enough), but there is a clear dividing line: when your genre determines what your protagonist choices are about and therefore what the theme will be, then there's no narrativism possible, and only simulationism is left.
OK, so let's assume that everybody gets that part - why sim and nar can clash in that sort of exercise. Simon speculated above that what I describe above is not a binary condition but a continuum where a theme actually exists from the start, and it's just a matter of how engaging the theme is as a target of critique for the players; on the one end of the continuum we have a fully internalized theme (phatic theme) that is executed as a matter of course, while on the other we have a very contentious theme (engaging theme) which the players want to comment on and rebel against. To me the key question here is whether the latter is functional in the first place: what does it mean that we have an "engaging theme" that is, however, a theme and not a premise like in the narrativistic model? By asking this question I mean, how is it possible for this thing to be a theme if it is not being accepted, celebrated and affirmed by acting it out? Is the term "theme" meaningful as an art critique concept if we do not require the outcome of the play procedure to actually affirm this theme?
A supposition about the idea of continuum between phatic and engaging themes: it seems to me that a theme that is worthy of the name is necessarily completely phatic - that is, internalized by the group and enforced in play. If the group allows breaking the theme as a matter of procedure (such as by allowing player characters to kill villains without being villains themselves), then the theme loses its authoritative structuring power over the process of play and actually turns into a premise: no longer is the point of play in Exploring this fiction, theme included, but rather a new choice is entered: the GM obviously allows and appreciates it if I break the theme, so should I? It's an important choice, and if the group considers it an interesting one, then the game is well on its way towards narrativism.
The above might misunderstand something about Simon's idea, but assuming I got it correctly, I think that I'll have to disagree about the idea that there is a continuum from simulationistic thematic adherence to narrativistic creation of theme through play. At best we can say that there is a continuum in simulationistic play over how well-verbalized and abstracted a theme is; some games only have an implicit theme that emerges by correctly using the game mechanics (or setting), while others have clear mission statements posted in the game's introductory foreword. Similarly we might say that there is a continuum in narrativistic play from a focused universal premise pre-loaded into the game into a situation where the premise is only isolated through play and addressed organically. As an example of the latter, in Sorcerer you basically know in rought terms what the premise is and what you need to do to bring it to the fore, while in The Shadow of Yesterday you actually don't when the game begins; you'll only find it out through play, as players get into their roles.
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Themeless simulationism: I agree that it's probably not possible to create a play experience that is completely themeless, insofar as we understand the term to mean human significance that makes us interested in fictional events (drama). Still, it seems to me that the existence of theme is fruitfully rejected by certain types of simulationistic play; we pretend that there is no theme, in other words. Perhaps it would be more exact to say that the concept of theme is creatively counter-productive to a game like Twilight 2000, as a big part of the game's enticement is an uncompromising objective realism that the players need to trust to get their kicks out of imagining the barren post-war anarchy painted by the game. Bringing up something like theme in a game like this would be a direct reminder that a narrative cannot be the same thing as objective reality.
Then there are the situations where a roleplaying game doesn't get concerned with the human condition at all. (Remembering here that I'm operating from the Big Model definition of what a roleplaying game is - it'd be entirely fair to decide that these edge cases are no longer roleplaying games.) This might be controversial, but I've been thinking lately that a certain sort of weird genre simulation seems to be the order of the day in 4th edition D&D: some groups seem to play the game not from a gamist viewpoint, but with the idea that the DM's duty in the game is to achieve a "perfect dungeoneering adventure experience", specifically limiting the idea of "challenge" into a simulation of the same by carefully balancing (balancing tools are probably the largest break these newer D&D editions make with the old) and cheating his way into the proper outcomes in play. This is simulationism insofar as I can see, but it's a very system-focused sort that doesn't have much in the way of engaging fictional theme. To play this sort of game you don't have to be concerned with the human experience of a dungeon adventurer, you just have to be able to visualize the dungeon environment correctly to use it to your advantage. Theme or no theme?
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