|
I’ve moved on to Ron Edwards’s essay “Simulationism: The Right to Dream,” and whether you agree with the GNS categories or not, there is a lot to chew on in this essay.
Here’s one passage that got me thinking: “Historically, the [Simulationist] System has been based on task resolution, not conflict resolution, regardless of scale. Don’t mistake ‘conflict’ for ‘large-scale task.’ “ In the more traditional games, task resolution is a big thing. In fact, in games with Skill lists and in which doing a task, whether it affects the narrative or not, comes with a roll, combat itself is really nothing more than a set of tasks (roll to hit, roll to parry, roll to dodge, etc.). One of the brilliant parts of the moves system as presented and used in the Bakers’s Apocalypse World is that it turns that whole paradigm on its head. In the traditional games, all conflicts are reduced to tasks whereas in Apocalypse World, all tasks are turned into conflicts. No matter what your character does, it is either accomplished without question (the command first voiced (to my understanding at least) in Dogs in the Vineyard to “roll dice or say yes”) or it is a move with the likelihood that new trouble will arise from the situation.
0 Comments
"Rules bloat can also result from the design and writing process itself. Cogitating about in-game causes can transform itself, at the keyboard, into a sort of Exploration of its own, which results in very elaborate rules-sets for situational modifiers, encumbrance, movement, technology, prices of things, none of which is related to actual play of the game with actual people. During the writing process, 'what if' meets 'but also' and breeds tons of situational rules modifiers. . . . Don't spin your wheels defending your design against some other form of play."
-Ron Edwards, from "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" “The key for these games is GM authority over the story’s content and integrity at all points, including managing the input by players. Even system results are judged appropriate or not by the GM; ‘fudging’ Fortune outcomes is overtly granted as a GM right.
“The Golden Rule of White Wolf games is a covert way to say the same thing: ignore any rule that interferes with fun. No one, I presume, thinks that any player may invoke the Golden Rule at any time; what it’s really saying is that the GM may ignore any rule (or any player who invokes it) that ruins his or her idea of what should happen.” -Ron Edwards, from “Simulationism: The Right to Dream” One of my favorite paragraphs in Apocalypse world is right at the beginning of the Master of Ceremonies section: “There are a million ways to GM games; Apocalypse World calls for one way in particular. This chapter is it. Follow these rules. The whole rest of the game is built upon this.” The character moves are the lauded darlings of the Bakers’s game, but the MC rules are every bit as critical to the Apocalypse World engine. As they say, the whole game is built upon it. The conversation, while it plays out smoothly and organically, is actually tightly structured. Moreover, it is the MC’s moves that create all the narrative movement in the story, and you can’t force that story on the players unless they make a move or look to you to make their lives interesting. In a surprisingly short text, the Bakers codify an entire system of creating a cooperative story—and not just any story, but one that is dramatic and riveting and cool. "System is mainly composed of character creation, resolution, and reward mechanics."
-Ron Edwards, form "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" "'Role Levels': (1) The player's social role in terms of his character - the mom, the jokester, the organizer, the placator, etc. (2) The character's thematic or operational role relative to the others - the leader, the brick, the betrayer, the ingenue, etc. (3) The character's in-game occupation or social role - the pilot, the mercenary, the alien wanderer, etc. (4) The character's specific Effectiveness values - armor rating, weapon attributes, specific skills and their values, available funds, etc."
-Ron Edwards, from "Simulationism: The Right to Dream" Ron Edwards spends some time tearing into the incoherent design of Vampires: The Masquerade in "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory." He ends his discussion with these two sentences, which made me laugh:
"One may ask, if this design is so horribly dysfunctional, why is it so popular? The answer requires an economic perspective on RPGs, in addition to the conceptual and functional one outlined in this essay, and is best left for discussion." Ron Edwards on designing reward systems:
"What is being rewarded? Attendance? Role-playing per se? Player actions? Outcomes of conflicts? In-game moments? "Who is being rewarded, the player or the character? "Are reward systems necessary? At what scopes or time-frames of play are they more or less important? "If we are talking about character improvement, how does it proceed? Linearly or exponentially? If exponentially, is the exponent positive or negative?" -from "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory" Delving into the history and theory of RPGs and am currently enjoying Ron Edwards's pieces from The Forge. He is a rigorous thinker and a clear writer. I am currently on "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory," which has shifted the way I have been understanding Apocalypse World and other games.
The essay is a great introduction to the different aspects of RPG design and a great presentation of the language and concepts at issue in the games we play. "I do not recommend using 'genre' to identify role-playing content."
-Ron Edwards, "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory" That one was surprising, but it makes sense in the theoretical structure presented in the essay. Moreover, it got me thinking about genres and how a game can embrace a genre but simultaneously needs to be flexible enough to rise out of it. Apocalypse world does this by leaving all the details of the world, the apocalypse itself, and the psychic maelstrom undefined. But Vincent and Meguey Baker balance that openness by using their mechanics to nail down the specific type of story that Apocalypse World games will tell, namely stories about interdependent members of a community surviving in a land of want. The game is simultaneously incredibly focused and unbelievably broad, which makes for wonderful play. "In most Narrativist designs, Premise is based on one of the following models.
--A pre-play developed setting, in which case the characters develop into protagonists in the setting's conflicts over time. --Pre-play developed characters (protagonists), in which case the setting develops into a suitable framework for them over time." -Ron Edwards, "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory" To create a satisfying story, you either create characters who fit into a pre-made setting in such a way that they can become protagonists in those conflicts, or you have strongly defined characters suitable to be protagonists and let the story build up around them. Again, beautiful in its simplicity. Obviously AW and pbta games go for the second option: here are pre-made, already-awesome characters (to a degree), and now let's play the world to figure out what their story actually is. Ron Edwards provides a list of ways that GMs can prepare for a session, and it's a good breakdown of the common ways different RPGs demand to be played. Your game is probably making one of these demands (or an entirely different demand) even if it doesn't explicitly say so in the text:
"Linear adventures, in which the GM has provided a series of prepared, in-order encounters. "Linear, branched adventures, in which the GM has done the same as above but provides for the players proceeding in more than one direction or sequence. "Roads to Rome, in which the GM has prepared a climactic scene and maneuvers or otherwise determines that character activity leads to this scene. (In practice, 'winging it' usually becomes this method.) "Bang-driven, in which the GM has prepared a series of instigating events but has not anticipated a specific outcome or confrontation. (This is precisely the opposite of Roads to Rome.) "Relationship map, in which the GM has prepared a complex back-story whose members, when encountered by the characters, respond according to the characters' actions, but no sequence or outcomes of these encounters have been predetermined. "Intuitive continuity, in which the GM uses the players' interests and actions during initial play to construct the crises and actual content of later play." -from "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory," October 2001 "A great deal of intellectual suffering has occurred due to the linked claims that role-playing either is or is not 'story-oriented,' and that one falls on one side or the other of this dichotomy. I consider this terminology and its implications to be wholly false. . . . Story-stuff and/or character stuff is so important to all these approaches that the difference in processes and point of role-playing are easy to miss, or, disastrously, easy to deny." - Ron Edwards, "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory
"Unfortunately, I think that many RPG designers were and are flying entirely by the seat of their pants. Their attention was on in-game named elements like 'strength' and 'percent to hit' rather than Effectiveness. Such an approach to character design allows latitude for all sorts of emergent properties, such as point-mongering in Champions or the mini-maxing in most late 80s games, or any number of other 'take-over' elements of play that subvert the stated goal of the design." - Ron Edwards, "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory"
This makes me think of the simplicity and beauty of AW's stats (+2, +1, 0, -1) as pure measures of Effectiveness. You know precisely how those numbers will work and their relative strengths, even if it's your first time picking up the game. Ron Edwards on Incoherent Design
"All of these games are based on The Great Impossible Thing to Believe Before Breakfast: that the GM may be defined as the author of the ongoing story, and, simultaneously, the players may determine the actions of the characters as the story's protagonists. This is impossible. It's even absurd. However, game after game, introduction after introduction, and discussion after discussion, it is repeated." -from "GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory" |
Jason D'AngeloRPG enthusiast interested in theory and indie publications. Archives
April 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed