Sobre la GNS

GNS (Gamism/Narrativism/Simulationism)

Aquí voy a desglosar los diferentes elementos que me llamen la atención sobre la disertación de
Zack. S. para incluirlos en mi blog en una multitud de entradas y quién sabe, igual y fijar mi propia
postura teórica sobre el rol.

Colossus has achieved a "simulationist" (or is it dramatist?) goal of acting in character

plus arguably a narrativist goal of being in a story of overcoming insecurities about his
contributions by seeing teamwork as the answer. What a thematically satisfying moment.

Wolverine has achieved a "gamist" goal of devising a strategy to take down Mr Sinister.
Challenge defeated. Plus also maybe a "simulationist" one because that's how Woverine
acts: he kicks things asses.

They've also done this in a system (Marvel Superheroes/FASERIP) that Ron Edwards had
not only played but recommends in his essays. (And they didn't even have to--they could
easily do it in most systems without the Karma points.)

Was a goal prioritized? Well maybe ten minutes before Colossus was so full of self-doubt
he wouldn't have thrown Wolverine for fear of hurting him--prioritizing dramatic
simulation. But then he shifted focus--was that within the same instance of play or not? If
we adjust the time scale so the "instance" where the amount of time Colossus had self-
doubt to matches exactly the amount of time he fought Mr Sinister did we just prove the
theory wrong?

Sobre esta cuestión Zak habla sobre el ejemplo de Colosus y como en esta situación se
demuestra que un escena de rol puede estar compuesto por más de una emoción, objetivo y
acciones al mismo tiempo...

We want the conflict of Party A and Party B to lead to crazy complications.

Whether these complications are purely tactical (as in an early Jackie Chan
movie) or emotional and tactical (as in a Frank Miller Daredevil comic) or are
tactical, thematic and emotional (as in the Godfather) is a separate matter. The
point is, the people often referred to as "gamists" are often really just people who
think a story that is only tactically or strategically complicated is not just a
perfectly acceptable story, it's a perfectly acceptable goal. That is, the rube
goldberg/roadrunner and coyote dance of this falling on that and then this
resulting from it and then getting zapped by that is a story and it's the point.

In other words, what's important to the story for this narrativist is whether or not
a man's killing a goblin. What's important about a story to the DIY D&Der is
whether he's killing him with an axe or a barstool.
This is important, because whether you fight a goblin or not is often a GM call,
whereas what you hit it with is a player call. So if hitting a goblin with a barstool
seems like an important part of the story to you, then you'll see the player as
obviously having an important role in "shaping the story". In other words,
players control the story's style, and style is, by many lights, the real point of a
story.

Aquí se continua con la situación de como se habla de la forma de narrar una historia y Zack
sostiene que lo más importante es el estilo...

The real issue here, I think, is that most RPGs, because of their serial nature,
produce picaresques--largely themeless, largely directionless stories of events tied
to gether more by the personalities and coping strategies of the characters than
by any over-arching plot or moral concerns.

And Edwards consistently doesn't see picaresques as "stories".

Importancia de la picaresca como la forma en la cual se suelen desarrollar las historias largas o
campañas en el rol

GNS folks see you customizing the game as evidence the game is broken, everyone else sees
you customizing the game as evidence the game is wildly successful.

Also: the idea that customization is a kludge to fix a problem and not an immediate and
assumed job of the GM is difficult for a lot of GNS folk to get in line with.

You don't put candyflake paint on a car you don't love.

Sobre lo bello de hackear un sistema

The "series of games from that company" includes Call of Cthulhu which shouldn't work at
all by GNS principles, as it is Runequest, (which is D&D + % skills)+ insanity rules +
suddenly the goal isn't to "win" anymore but to maybe win and maybe simulate going
insane or dying. Aaaand which has changed very little since it was invented and
which continues to baffle GNS theorists to this daywho don't get how one guy can want to
solve the mystery and another can want to go nuts and they can change their mind in the
middle and the rules work well for both of them and they don't get why you don't just play
Cthulhu Dark--where you make your character really fast and don't get attached, or Trail
of Cthulhu--where you don't have those tests of player skill (ie challenge/gamism) or
Dread--where the player skill is pulling Jenga blocks and you know in advance you'll all
die and there's none of this terrible GNS uncertainty.

El miedo a lo no predecible debe ser atacado con fuerza, ya que muchos juegos de estilo
"narrativo" lo encierran todo ....o al menos esta situación genera controversia...
In essence, both 80s D&D and GNS want you to have options about how you roll: it's just
GNS wants to lay them out clearly in a multiple choice palette of different TV dinners (this
is the low-carb high-fructose one, this is the gluten-free one...) while TSR just gave you the
keys to the farm and figured you'd decide how to pick an apple or butcher a hog yourself.

The first is clearer, but more limiting, the second offers less guidance, but many more
options.

La diferencia entre estilos o tipos de juego

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. Examples include Castle
Falkenstein and Hero Wars.

 Pre-play developed characters (protagonists), in which case the setting develops

into a suitable framework for them over time. Examples include Sorcerer,
Everway, Zero (in an interesting way), Cyberpunk 1st edition, Orkworld, and The
Whispering Vault.

I have observed that when people bring a Narrativist approach to Vampire, Legend of the
Five Rings, or other game systems which include both detailed pre-play character creation
and a detailed, conflict-rich setting, they must discard one or the other in order to play
enjoyably.

This is interesting: what he's saying is if you want to play Narrativist games you
need some room for players to invent a conflict: either the characters need to be
formed during play or the setting does.

However, he couches this not as an absolute axiom but an observation of how thing
usually go.

Ok pues es interesante porque puede ayudar a platicar sobre temas relacionados con juegos
llamados narrativos.

Philosophical question: indie narrativist games are generally considered less-popular for
long term play.

Is this because:

-Being sure you're gonna address a heavy Premise requires certain assurances of reasonably
quick resolution?
-The games are embedded in a culture of Indie Game Design where trying and sharing and
talking about and making a variety of new games a lot is encouraged so games have high
turnover?

-The creators are obsessed with film and its attendant structures rather than books?

-The narrative control generally granted means players get what they are conscious of
wanting relatively quickly and burn out most questions on the table?

-They don't do Fat Game-style library content and so there's not all this promise of
"all the parts of the game we haven't tried yet" locked inside?

-They're consciously or subconsciously adapted to the "minimum social footprint"

model which assumes adults are busy and don't have time to game?

-The games kinda suck even for many of their own fans and don't repay sustained
examination? (Hey, the option has to be on the table, even if your answer is "no")

-Some mixture?

Juegos narrativos y su relación con las campañas largas...más de 10 sesiones

D&D is a bad design. And OSR games that try to get the desired play experience by emulating a known bad
design are thus themselves bad designs. And therefore OSR gamers who demand D&D-esque clones, are
essentially demanding bad design....I could go on for pages re bad design. You have a linear probability
curve where only a narrow range of possible results are in play.

You have a play culture that encourages simulationist thinking and a rules structure that is so abstract there
is no stimulative [sic?] value to it whatsoever. You have movement rates traditionally given in inches because
the game was meant to played with miniatures...but it didn't bother to give any rules for them...

[it goes on like this for a long time, not answering any questions or challenges, then ends with the following
Get Off My Lawn]

...no one under the age of 40 gets to lecture someone whose been gaming since the mid 70s on not
understanding Old School. Us old timers get lots of laughs listening to 30 somethings try to tell us what
gaming was like back in the day.

Let's emphasize: this is usage now --state-of-the-art GNS by someone who was there from day one, thanked in
the intro, still designs games, whom nobody associated with the Forge has disavowed in any way, who
read and enthusiastically recommendedVornheim and still thinks OSR products are emulators and that
rulings not rules is about wanting bad rules instead of simply shorter rules they cn customize.

If a GNS expert would like to come and claim this is fringe usage of GNS theory I'm fine with that. But this is a
completely everyday example of where GNS talk tends to go when wielded by someone who actually has read
and believed it in 2018--and, again, if you'd like to dispute that: let's talk.

Sobre la típica forma en cómo la escena de AW desprecia a los juegos relacionados con D&D

And this is the hidden-in-plain-sight thing: plot is the thing Edwards is so obsessed with that he
forgets to say. He is obsessed with plot (all the old narrativists are) and when GNS says "story now"
they mean "plot now" and GNS is actually about evaluating games and gamers
concerning their relation to plot and so this is why it says all gamers are:

"Need to help make an interesting plot" (Narrativist)

"Need a plot that provides hard stuff to overcome" (Gamism)
"Don't need the plot to be anything in particular" (Simulationism)

Sobre lo que resulta más importante para la GNS...plot...la trama....la ambientación ???

A key part of Edwards' vision of gaming narrativism is something like: the GM drops a moral
question in front of PCs and they use their part of the game to give an answer and shape the game
around their answer. This is pretty much straight up the formula for Dogs In The Vineyard.

Why do this? Luckily, the next line says:

Otherwise it will fail to engage anyone.

Oh.

Es cierto que sin carga moral? no es posible generar un tipo de historia que involucre a los personajes??
Solo una motivación moral, les movilza??

Edwards, in the same series of posts:

A brief list of the specific features, or telltales, of the damaged story-capacity.

- The person cannot distinguish between "hopping over a fence" and conflict, between "this guy
meets that guy" and a decisive plot event, or between "dramatic close-up" and character decision-
making

- The person cannot summarize any story in simple four-point structure (conflict, rising action,
climax, conclusion) - they typically hare off into philosophical or technical interpretations, or
remain stuck in narrating the first ten minutes of the story in detail

- The person will devote many hours (and can talk for many hours) to commenting on the details
of the story's presentation, either feverishly supportive or feverishly dismissive, but entirely
uncritically

Leaving aside the issue that all of those sound like descriptions of early David Foster Wallace or Jon
Barth stories, let me try to match that not with "specific features, or telltales" but with a list of things
story-parsing things post-GNS people disproportionately don't or can't do:
-Imagine wildly morally different scenarios that could all lead to the same event.

-Notice equivocation from a sympathetic narrator: that is, one word is being used in multiple ways
or vaguely.

-Notice a double standard used by a sympathetic narrator.

-Avoid using received phrases uncritically.

-Acknowledge any parallel rhetoric being used by both a sympathetic and unsympathetic narrator.

-Notice and name most of the basic verbal propaganda techniques which standardized tests expect
middle schoolers to recognize (bandwagon, testimonial, etc--except "emotional appeal") especially
when used by a sympathetic narrator.

-Ignore tone.

-Acknowledge that two narrators--both sympathetic and sympathetic to each other--have mutually-
exclusive stories or philosophies.

-Spontaneously bring up a not-genre, not-assigned-regularly-in-high-school piece of fiction they

read. Especially a hard one.

etc.

Believe it or not, this late in the essay: I have no ill will toward the games or the players of them. I
have only a suspicion that this rhetoric about how stories were simple-acting moral forces, in the
context of the angry angry early internet, added and validated and solidified a tendency to point
fingers at any story the fingerpointer didn't want to hear.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the creators of the most Paladins & Princesses style wish-
fulfillment game then went on to massively botch their relationship to-, and investigation of- a
sexual abuser they hired (3). I don't think it's a coincidence that the author of the most bland and
poorly-written of the popular Indie games, who lashed out at games for being allegedly rapey then
hid in a hole when pressed for clarification for "mental health reasons", went on to plow their
advertising money into supporting a site that decried rape culture while harboring rapists. I don't
think it's a coincidence that the people who were repeatedly told what they had in common was
stories and that stories mattered and that stories were simple things turned out to be consistently
gullible and panic-stricken in the face of any reality more complicated than "The person you like did
a good thing" or "The person you don't like did a bad thing".

Pues los puntos de vista de los narrativitas es tan rígido que no les permite adaptarse a la realidad

And this is the hidden-in-plain-sight thing: plot is the thing Edwards is so obsessed with that he
forgets to say. He is obsessed with plot (all the old narrativists are) and when GNS says "story now"
they mean "plot now" and GNS is actually about evaluating games and gamers
concerning their relation to plot and so this is why it says all gamers are:

"Need to help make an interesting plot" (Narrativist)

"Need a plot that provides hard stuff to overcome" (Gamism)
"Don't need the plot to be anything in particular" (Simulationism)

Una definición las diferentes escuelas que busca definir la GNS en relación al plot