Originally posted by Cad Lad:
[QB] Mal, I think you are ignoring the article's whole " Used properly, the terms apply only to decisions, not to whole persons nor to whole games. " part of the article. And quite frankly, I've never met a GM who has followed the Grade 12 naval gazy one line themes suggested by the early WW products. I think we are mistaking the part for the whole.
I've been talking about approaches here, not people or games. I don't think I've ignored or misunderstood what the article is saying.
And you not meeting a GM who has followed the so-called 'navel gazy' aspects does not mean that they don't exist. There's a big chunk of people - especially on the Forge - who do nothing but that style of play.
Granted, this is an issue with the article itself which I think has a tendency to grab a single aspect of playing as a narrativist (and probably a simulationist or gameist) and beat us over the head with it over and over.
Um, this article DEFINES what GNS is. You can disagree with it, sure, but you can't say it's "wrong" because this is where the very definition of the term comes from.
Theme is probably the thing that most clearly differentiates some narrativists from some simulationists, but it is not the only element.
The article doesn't imply that it is the only element though. It's a MAJOR element though.
In other words, I wouldn't treat the author's attempt at defining these styles of play as having the same certitude as say a law of physics.
But this article
defines the terms used in this paradigm though! I'd say that if we're looking at games purely in the GNS paradigm (which is what I'm doing here), then this is the definitive way to define these styles of play. You can't say "well, I define it differently" - if you do that, you're not talking about GNS.
It's not a perfect paradigm by any means, and it's arguably incomplete. But it's a good place to start, at least.
And here's the thing. No game, mechanically, is, in and of itself, G, N, or S. Some lend themselves more to one style than another but thats really about it.
Some are though. The Forge is full of experimental games that were set out to be
entirely narrativist.
Now the first LBB's are not narrativist friendly, but let's face it the OTU is a huge part of Traveller and I think that it does leave room for a lot of different kinds of stories.
Well, let's be clear about something here - CT is not synonymous with the OTU. CT is books 1-8, or arguably just books 1-3. Certainly in 1-3 (which a lot of people seem to define as being all you need to play CT), there is no mention of an OTU in there at all.
The OTU came later on. Bits of it were hinted at in background material in books 4-8, and a lot of it evolved from the adventures and supplements.
But that is not what we're talking about here - we're talking about the
rules, and what sort of games they're set up to encourage. Games that are designed to encourage narrativist decisions and a narrativist approach are specifically set up that way, either through rules that encourage the dominance of the story over reality, or by providing advice for GMs and Players to run it that way. Ditto for simulationist and gamist RPGs. CT (as in, the core rules) provides no advice at all on how to run the game in itself, and the engine strongly implies a simulationist model where players are expected to take what they're given that's randomly rolled up on tables because that's just the luck of the draw.
I've seen players saying that they don't care about accurate trade models or realistic planets or tech design, just as long as they can run good stories. Well, they're taking a narrativist approach to traveller. I've seen players that do care about all that and GMs that are merciless about what they throw at the characters because they feel they have to take what's given them. That's a simulationist approach. And then you get the gamist types who want to 'win' at chargen or who just hurl faceless bad guys at the characters for them to prevail against.
However, as a system, I think CT is very simulationist. The roleplaying game aspect of it doesn't lend itself too well to gamism or narrativism, and it provides no advice at all on how to run any games at all. It's not necessarily a problem to support all styles of play, but if you dont provide advice or incentives to do that then you just end up with a confused mess I think.
And the problem is that T5 is probably going down exactly the same path.
At any rate, I can see that we are going to probably disagree on this issue and could argue the tiniest details for hours. But I don't have time this evening and, as a wise person once said: "you can only argue with those you fundamentally agree with."
Well that's the thing. I don't think we're actually disagreeing at all.
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