GNS / Big Model Open House

[benlehman]

Hi.

I know that a fair share of RPG theory interested folks read this blog.

I'd like to test my own understanding of GNS / Big Model.

So:

I will answer any questions about the Big Model or GNS that you have, if you ask them in response to this post or in a private e-mail to me.

It would help if you would first read the essays here and here. These other ones won't hurt. Just the top part of the last two is fine.


a few ground rules:

1) I'm going to try to explain a theoretical model to you. I don't want to argue whether it is right or wrong. You can come to your own conclusions about that. If you post, I will assume that you are trying to understand the model, no more, no less.

1a) If you want to destroy the model, may I suggest that understanding it is a good first step?

1b) So no "that's stupid," stupid though it may be. "That doesn't make sense, please explain it a different way" is fine.

2) I will not diagnose GNS goals of games I've never played. I will not discuss any theory applying to LARPs, because they are complicated. I will not discuss books, movies, plays, improv theatre, ballet, or any other artform in the context of GNS, because doing so is stupid. I will discuss games which I have played, as examples, but pretty much only at the request of the GM who ran said game.

2a) If you ask about the GNS of your game, do not take a diagnosis that isn't what you want it to be to be an insult. It isn't.

3) I may add ground rules as things progress.

Comments

[keirgreeneyes.livejournal.com]

Doyce's Theory wiki (http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/HomePage) might be helpful too.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, although the actual Big Model stuff on there is not as great as it really could be.

(Stop looking at me like that. I know I could go update it! I'm hoping to at some point.)

yrs--
--Ben

[evilmagnus]

Well, I've read several articles on GNS, and I think I understand what they're getting at... it seems to me that the defense of the theory/model rests on what seem to me to be straw man arguments - synecdoche. Thoughts?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I am not even going to start trying to write an apologetics for some of GNS's defenders. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people with a tenuous grasp on the model, a lot of misunderstandings and bitterness about old play, and a chip on their shoulders the size of Belgium.

But.

In the original context, Edwards is right. Synedoche can be a serious problem for a lot of people approaching the model for the first time. People think, say, "Simulationism *is* realism." I've seen it before. And it's wrong.

As far as I am concerned, the model does not need serious defense. What it needs is decent explanation. Anyone who has any concern for RPGs can look at their own play and see if they find it right or wrong.

yrs--
--Ben

[chgriffen.livejournal.com]

Here's my question, inspired by the above comments:

If I am having fun creating stories with my RPing that are not necessarily thematic, that don't worship any particular genre or source restrictions, and that are not competitive in nature, what am I enjoying?

In other words, does the GNS model have a place for playing based on the simple enjoyment of collaborative creativity?

I understand N to be focused on a premise, a theme, a question, whatever. Something meaningful. Something particular.

G is competition/achievement/overcoming challenges/showing off, which does not usually apply to what I'm talking about.

S is the closest, but the articles make it sound like I would try to be true to something, like source material, realism, etc. I want to explore characters and settings, but I am not obsessed with making them absolutely coherent or establishing a detailed world.

I want to play conflicts and drama. I just don't care if it has an overarching theme or premise to it, it can be anything about human drama and interaction that's interesting and intense.

What is that? Dramatic character exploration in Sim? Unfocused Nar? What? :)

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Enjoying making things with your friends isn't really at the creative agenda level of the model at all. It's way more important -- up there at the Exploration level, or maybe even Social Contract (if you're mainly enjoying hanging out with your friends.)

So, in other words, you're playing an RPG and having fun. How are you having fun? Not a clue. Would need to play the game with you, probably.

yrs--
--Ben

Story

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

In Narrativism's "Story Now," what exactly is meant by "story"? I understand it isn't the transcript of the events in the game. Edwards seems to make "story" synonymous with "theme" in Story Now (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html), but is that all it is?

And am I supposed to put the question mark in the first sentence inside or outside the quotations? ;)

Re: Story

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Ugh. As a novelist, "Story Now" is one of my least favorite terms to emerge from GNS / Big Model.

Ron's essential point is that Narrativist play isn't about looking back and going "Hey, that was a cool story" the same way that we construct stories about most everything in our lives (including game sessions.) The point is that the act of play is like the act of hearing a story -- you are engaged, emotionally and creatively, in the themes and the decisions of the protagonist.

Does that make sense?

yrs--
--BEn

Re: Story

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

And, yes.

Techniques

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

Edwards lists a handful of Techniques:

The panoply of Techniques being employed over time either satisfy or fail to satisfy one or more Creative Agendas. Techniques include IIEE, Drama/Karma/Fortune, search time & handling time, narration apportioning, reward system, points of contact, character components, scene framing, currency among the character components, and much more. Each of these terms represents a range of potential play-methods. I consider the two most important Techniques to be reward system and IIEE (see glossary).

What other techniques are there?

Re: Techniques

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Uhm, there are a great many? And, by "a great many" I mean a physicist's "a great many" which is not only an infinite number, but a large infinite number?

Polaris divides up GM responsibility into Mistaken/Full Moon/New Moon/Heart. That's a technique. D&D, and many games inspired by it, divide up GM responsibility into GM/Player/Player/Player/Player..., which is also a technique. Dogs in the Vineyard has the thing where you roll for your pseudo-NPCs to limit GM power. That's a technique. PrimeTime Adventures uses Story Arc and Screen Presence to divide focus over PCs. That's a technique.

Get the idea?

yrs--
--Ben

[psychotropek.livejournal.com]

The more I read about gaming theory, the more I want to ignore it.

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

That's fine. Most players really don't need this stuff, if the game designer did his job.

But it's easier for the game designer to do his job if he understands this stuff, or at least has a similar design model that helps to solve the same problems the Big Model helps to solve.

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

But see Rule 1. =)

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Please do so!

Like literature theory, or film theory, one does not need to be a theorist to enjoy the medium.

yrs--
--Ben

[evilmagnus]

I think it's like lit crit. Or film crit.

There's some kernels of truth in it, but the signal to noise ratio isn't very good. It's like an Art House film - people In The Know say that it's good, but the plot is apparently non-existent and consists of a woman at a table smoking and looking at a half-eaten cupcake. You prefer a film with, you know, plot and exposition and character development and stuff, but when you mention this you're told you're being 'too superficial', but that's ok, because it's not for you.

It's a little annoying.

[russiandude.livejournal.com]

Hey,
Reading through these essays, I have found myself getting bogged down in a lot of terminology that did not seem to address what I was interested in from my roleplaying. My current driving interest is to construct a realistic persona and see how they would act in a set of given circumstances. Yes, it sounds simplistic - but that is what I am looking for. I am pretty sure that is not a Gamist philosophy, but I have issues classifying that into either N/S.

Your thoughts on where that fits into the theory?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

*If* you are doing what you describe, you are absolutely carrying a Simulationist creative agenda for the games as you describe them. However, it may be more complicated than that.

Do you want to get at the more complicated bits? It may involve me try to tear down your assumptions about your own play?

yrs--
--Ben

[adamdray.livejournal.com]

Ben,

I'm very interested in your breakdown of Polaris in Big Model terms. I assume you think its design is Coherent. Why? How do the Techniques advance your design goals?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

No idea! Polaris wasn't really designed with the Big Model in mind at all.

I'm dead serious.

Vincent (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=15176) is convinced that it is strongly Narrativist, and has a lot of other theory stuff going on as well. I believe him.

I imagine that there is a huge amount of subconscious stuff going into the desing. I'd be happy to analyze it in that respect, but only from a distance, once I'm done.

yrs--
--Ben

yrs--
--Ben

[lordsmerf.livejournal.com]

You did ask for it... this is less an "I don't know" and more of a "I think, but have been told differently" thing.

My understanding is that any single decision point can be recognized as being primarily made from the standpoint of one of the three Creative Agendas. This seems logical, right-thinking, and entirely plausible to me. On the other hand I have been told that GNS can't actually be applied to a single decision and is instead a look at an overall trend in play (over a session or two perhaps). This seems insane to me, and I'm curious to hear your answer:

Does GNS measure Creative Agenda (or at least which of the three modes is primary) for each decision, or is that impossible and it can only look at trends? If it can only look at trends, what are they trends of if not decisions?

Thomas

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking!

You're wrong. (Everyone, Thomas is a friend, so I can be this rude to him.)

The key thing to understand about GNS is that it about goals for play. Goals for play is all it is. It is the sum of the thing. GNS classifies each players goals for play into three distinct categories.

The essential point is -- what are you enjoying about your role-playing. This is apart from "hanging out with friends" or "seeing all the cute goth chicks" or anything like that. The point is, what enjoyment is the actual activity of role-playing (rather than its social context) providing for you. And how are you going about getting that fun?

Once you understand that GNS is about classifying your goals for play, the entire "single-decision" versus "trend" question becomes essentially moot. You should be able to answer it yourself. (If you can't, I will. But I bet you can. So I'm going to be an obnoxious writer and leave it as an exercise for the reader.)

yrs--
--Ben

CRISIS ON INFINITE AGENDA

[locke61dv.livejournal.com]

So, why are there 3 CA's, taxonomically breaking down into the G/N/S? If it's about the varied things your thinking at a moment, aren't they're an infinte number of CA's?

Also: imagine a game where everyone, all at once, switchs agenda gears. Like, we're all coherently on the same page for playing gamist-ly during one scene. Then the next scene, we're all playing into a major Nar agenda. Pretend this system also changes along with our agenda, and not getting in the way. Is this impossible, or just hard?

Re: CRISIS ON INFINITE AGENDA

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Why are there 3 CAs? Oh, lordy.

The proper Forge-theory answer to this is "Hey, well, no other CA types have been observed, identified, or anything like that."

I have my own. Which I think will go in a second post.

As to your second question: Yes. That can and does exist. I've done it, with a somewhat-modified version of Riddle of Steel. It is *way* more difficult than it seems.

First, you need to have a group with different preferences for play, that know and understand each other's preferences, and are willing to deal with less-than-optimal play as long as they will get their optimal play eventually. This requires, probably, at least a decade of playing together and built up trust.

Second, you need a GM who can masterfully craft situations that will appeal to one group or the other, and change gears without grinding them.

Lastly, and least importantly, it helps to have a system which doesn't actively hurt either CA.

If you understand that the absolute most important part here is the social bonds, trust, and mutual understanding between the players, then you're with me.

So, yes, you can switch CAs during play.

Can you write a system that somehow forces its players to switch CAs? No. Can any system, ever, force its players to play it in a certain manner? No.

You can write a system that supports this sort of play, I suppose, but any group that has been playing for that long will have probably found their own systematic devices to handle it.

yrs--
--Ben

GNS - really basic question

[(Anonymous)]

(The real question is at the very bottom, above my name. The rest is skippable.)

Superfluous introduction

On definite problem for a lot of people (me for example) is mixing GNS with ol' threefold. Before I heard of GNS, we who considered us to be immersionists more than anything else always saw the simulationist as the great enemy. With the gamist and the dramatist (as it was called) we felt quite closely related. But those simulationist were of a kind noone could understand. It was the anti-thesis of immersion.

Then GNS comes, picks the word 'simulationism', tries to avoid 'immersion', but when under pressure puts that as a part of simulationism. When put together with your old anti-thesis you get mad, of course. I gather this is way some of us always talk about GNS in curse words.

The point

Even if I'm still not a fan of GNS, (but that's beside the point) I now think that I understand the basis of GNS a bit better. But I'm not sure; so I ask.

I have read quite a bit about GNSm but it's hard to understand Edwars articles I must say. I'll give it a try, how correct is the following.

G,N and S respectively is three different decision rules for players regarding how the play their characters and should not be applied to all of the game.

In Gamism the characters actions are governed by the players whish to win or reach a certain goal.

In Narrativism...I can never understand this. But somehow the characters action don't always have to based in the actual SIS. (I don't want you to explain this, that is not the question.

In Simulationism (and this is the real question) characters actions are based in the SIS. *Is this a valid simplification of simulationism?*

/Sven Holmström - polyfem.blogspot.com (a quite Swedish take on role playing)