Ruminations on the Impossible Dream Before Breakfast
masqueradeball:
Daniel... Why was the Vampire example not Sim? Because he addressed challenges and felt satisfaction from success? A Prince consolidating power and managing his city is very in setting for Vampire (though I have problems with that example based on the way that I understand Cainites behaving, but I don't know what The Package was for the players in that game). Tactical decision making can be an element of Sim play, especially when tactical decision making is part of The Package.
Example: We were playing an OWoD Vampire game and we're the last surviving Camarilla vampires in a city that's just feel victim to a Sabbat crusade. We need to be able to get out of the city. The whole game revolves around addressing tactics to escape and use against the Sabbat.
If your playing a game set in the Star Trek universe and you come across some alien life form or technical problem with the ship, it seems very in agreement with the Star Trek (sorry, talking TNG here) to problem solve and plan in order to come up with the right tactic to address the problem. It also makes sense that the characters, and thus the players would feel a sense of accomplishment when they succeeded. Now, this could be Gam or even Nar, but if the main joy in playing out the engagement is that the outcome FEELS RIGHT, that it feels STAR TREK, than I think there a clear Sim agenda.
But what is it exactly that your looking for. No offense, but it seems that we aren't talking about the impossible dream anymore, but getting into a discussion on looking for a table top technique that will recreate the learn as you go approach that you enjoyed so much in BK? Is that correct.
contracycle:
Quote from: Daniel B on September 23, 2010, 10:52:23 PM
Anyway, I digress. I would claim that maybe you need things such as logical consistency, but you're not there expressly for them. It's like claiming you went to watch Firefly mostly to see if they would treat Anti-gravity engines with the respect they deserved. This makes little sense. In fact, you went to see Firefly just because it's a damned good movie.
Well, surely this is for me to judge? Ater all I don't know that a movie is great until after I've seen it, so the best that could be said was that it was reputed to be good. And the whole AG thins is simply a pet bugbear of mine, but the point remains that I do take note of it in a way that most other people seemingly do not.
Quote
I'm going to make several claims here: I feel like you're having to twist to fit the existing definition of Simulationism. This is not an example of it (or at least, I'm highly skeptical)...
But sim as a priority doesn't totally preclude the presence of challenge, so I don't see a necessary distinction. Plus, I'm having trouble seeing how Q&A with the GM, which is all this consisted of, really constitutes challenge. In addition, the point remains that having come to this view, it would certainly be incorporated at any future portrayal of vampire princes that I did in the future, and probably impacted those of the other players as well. So sure, the reason I was pursuiing this line of inquiry was because I had in-game reason to, but its significance was much greater in the real world, among the players, than it was in the game among the characters.
Quote
In any case, as valid as your example of "true Simulationism" is, it is off the mark from what I'm describing.
Well that may well be the case, but then, I don't know what you're describing. You asked for examples to work from and I provided some. But I'm having trouble seeing why they don't meet your criteria of "allow the player to learn the moves and grow with the characters, feeling the same sense of achievement that the characters themselves might feel if they weren't fictional." Admittedly the island expedition didn't constitute learning a move as such, and is perhaps an example of a negative achievement, but it certainly explored the boundaries of what a character like this could do, and offered insight into what he should do. Not only was playing god-king inherently unsatisfying, but it also wasn't contributing to the conflict against the Technocracy. So instead of being pushed into that conflict simply becuase "that's the plot" or "thats what we do", the character now had a personal perspective on whether it was possible to drop out of the war, and had decided it was not, and returned to the fray all the more motivated.
The point is that in each of these cases I learned something larger about the setting than simply what goes where; I learned something about how it works, how it fits together. That was constituted the "win" for me. That may not be the same kind of win that you meant, but it is the kind I have to date found most memorable. As above though, I don't really see the difference; the stuff I learned may not be "moves" in the sense they are in a computer game, but there were in the sense that I was exploring the possibilities inherent to the character, either through powers or privileges. You'll have to be more explicit about what you mean for me to understand it.
Daniel B:
@ CC
My response to you is mostly implicit in my answer to Nolan, so I'll just continue from there. However, I did want to say one thing: you mentioned Sim doesn't totally preclude the presence of challenges. True. So what? Narr doesn't totally preclude the presence of mano-a-mano bloodythirsty Gamist combat, either. By the same token, if there are Gamist activities going on, maybe these activities aren't supporting the main priority, but are the player's main agenda!
@Nolan
Quote from: masqueradeball on September 24, 2010, 12:12:44 AM
Daniel... Why was the Vampire example not Sim? Because he addressed challenges and felt satisfaction from success? A Prince consolidating power and managing his city is very in setting for Vampire (though I have problems with that example based on the way that I understand Cainites behaving, but I don't know what The Package was for the players in that game). Tactical decision making can be an element of Sim play, especially when tactical decision making is part of The Package.
Example: We were playing an OWoD Vampire game and we're the last surviving Camarilla vampires in a city that's just feel victim to a Sabbat crusade. We need to be able to get out of the city. The whole game revolves around addressing tactics to escape and use against the Sabbat.
If your playing a game set in the Star Trek universe and you come across some alien life form or technical problem with the ship, it seems very in agreement with the Star Trek (sorry, talking TNG here) to problem solve and plan in order to come up with the right tactic to address the problem. It also makes sense that the characters, and thus the players would feel a sense of accomplishment when they succeeded. Now, this could be Gam or even Nar, but if the main joy in playing out the engagement is that the outcome FEELS RIGHT, that it feels STAR TREK, than I think there a clear Sim agenda.
But what is it exactly that your looking for. No offense, but it seems that we aren't talking about the impossible dream anymore, but getting into a discussion on looking for a table top technique that will recreate the learn as you go approach that you enjoyed so much in BK? Is that correct.
Look at how you've set up your response. "if the main joy in playing out the engagement is that the outcome FEELS RIGHT, that it feels STAR TREK, than I think there a clear Sim agenda". In other words, you're saying that if it matches the definition of Sim, it is Sim. How can anyone debate that?
I'm trying to guide you into recognizing that although everything you've shown me can be classified as a Sim priority if the player desires it, it need not be a Sim priority (nor Nar nor Gam). Take the example of running an engineer character on a Starfleet ship. If your priority is Sim, then that's enough. There is opportunity for another Agenda here, though.
I know you're asking what other agenda could there possibly be. I'm seeing the value of actual play examples, so let's try that again: what is your primary motivation to pick up and play a game of Mario? It's not a Nar game and it can't really be called Gam. Some people use it as Sim to explore setting. Others explore system, by trying to find bugs, easter eggs, hacks (or even just learn the physics). Even others use it to explore colour.
None of these describe the primary purpose for which it was designed. Like most people, I play just to play. The settings and boss-fights and colour are all interesting, but if it lacked good gameplay, it would fail at its intended purpose. Looking for "good gameplay" is too vague, and not at all helpful. So what do we call this kind of gameplay? Ultimately what I'm trying to show is that there exists some currently-unrecognized Creative Agenda, right here. I also suspect players feel "hungrier" to fulfill this agenda while playing RPGs, because RPGs offer a lot more promise at fulfilling it. The two systems I've had experience with are D&D and Shadowrun. These fail to fulfill that agenda without serious system drift.
Yes, the Vampire City Census example is not Sim because he addressed challenges and felt satisfaction from success. Sim appetites are fed in the imagined external, and there is no criteria for success. You just know you had a good time turning over rocks. E.G. If you truly love and want to experience the Star Trek setting, playing within a decently accurate imagined recreation is enough.
For Contra, however, exploration of the setting took a backseat to that something else, a different agenda. Exploration of the bureaucratic setting took a backseat to the actual in-practice management of that bureaucracy. (Well, for him, I have to assume, but I can imagine myself doing the same in his position.) He stopped trying to discover more for the sake of discovery, and instead put his knowledge into practice, only learning more to support the main goal.
Incidentally, Contra mentioned that the challenges weren't particularly challenging. My counter to that; a poor example of a Creative Agenda being expressed is not a denial of the existence of that Creative Agenda.
Nolan, it's not just about recreating the learn-as-you-go approach in the tabletop format, although that would be a foundational aspect of it. It's about a collection of challenges, puzzles, or even gamist combats, all of which are stepping stones towards some ultimate goal. Players might think that the ultimate goal alone defines their Creative Agenda when in fact its the journey that matters.
I think that the "Impossible Thing Before Breakfast" is, in fact, an expression of peoples' appetites for the as-yet-unrecognized Agenda. If so, by separating this Agenda from Sim, we can finally determine its true qualities and feed appetites that have been left hungry since the days of wargaming.
(Okay I hate it when I begin to sound epic.)
DB
masqueradeball:
Not sure how to phrase this, but if were talking Big Model, I think we should stay within it... its a closed system, there ARE 3 Creative Agendas, and thats that.
This is not at all to say that I think the Big Model is necessarily right or that what your talking about isn't just as important as the CA's.
Within the Big Model, what your talking about seems to be "Step On Up" lite or some version of "Right to Dream."
Outside of it... I'm not sure. I'm trying to find experiences in my own actual play that reflect what your talking about so that I can relate to the experience. Your use of video game references is helpful, but what about some of your play experience with D&D/Shadowrun?
Its funny and perhaps irrelevant but when trying to think of examples from my own RP-ing I keep having this instance come up from D&D where are PC's spent all this time sailing, so I decided to put all my skill points while leveling into ship related shit... for some reason that was a really rewarding experience for me, just because I had these points on my sheet that I could look at and go "oooh, thats all the stuff I learned while we were sailing." Contra's example of the vampire Prince reminded me of this too, because it seemed like what he did there was all about reinforcing the SIS. For him, figuring that little bit about vamp politics reinforced the SIS, for me looking at my char sheet and having that in character reminisce (which was very much just me internally thinking out how my character might feel) also reinforced the SIS, I got to put my imagination into action, as did Contra...
Also, please note that the shit I said about the Big Model may be totally bogus and is in no way meant to be a "Your doing it wrong" type of pronouncement. I really want to have this conversation with you, I think theres something important here to talk about, but I think tagging things as "Sim" or "not-Sim" will be misleading when the goal is defining/expressing this experience you're having. Lets figure out what the experience is and then figure where (if anywhere) it fits within the Big Model or any other theoretical system of RPG classification.
Adam Dray:
I think The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast is borne of strong Illusionist techniques ingrained at a deep level and expressed by Sim-preferring game designers in their "how to role-play" sections of their rulebooks.
I suspect they don't actually mean that the players have complete control over their characters. I think they do often have fine-grained control over developing that character (via chargen and advancement rules). I suppose players might think they have complete control within the illusion of play, as long as the GM keeps the Force covert. Add a strong Sim agenda and oft-related techniques and this can work pretty well. But the player control is just an illusion (one that the Impossible Thing promised, mind you).
I suspect they don't actually mean that the GM has complete control over the story, either, but they say it anyway. But a lot of those books offer GMs advice that teaches them illusionism and subtle and not-so-subtle GM Force.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page