What Kind of a Player Are You?

[Peter Newman]

Other - Simulationist/Method Actor

I'm a simulationist in that the game is modeling a reality. I play my characters as people who live in this reality and react to it as people.

A Narrativist will go for what will work for the story, while a Gamist will go for what will solve the problem, but I tend to go for 'What would my character do in this situation?' The results probably come across as more gamist but the decisions are based more on what the character would do to resolve the situation they're in, and less on what I, as the player, see as the ideal way to resolve the situation nor on what would be best for the storyline (unless of course the storyline involves a cause that that character supports.) My characters are not me, nor are they each other.

If two of my characters react in the same way to the same problem it's because I think that _they'd_ see it as the best solution, and not because I see it as the best solution. OTOH their may be other better solutions that my characters don't see because they're played by me and I don't see them.

 

[aramis]

As your current, recent, and many years GM, you're very much right about being simulationist, Peter... but you border on Simulationist-Narrativist. I've seen you complain about mechanics interfering with story on several occasions...

 

[JAFARR]

Don't know, don't care (well, I care, I just don't know). I reserve the right to do any and all of these, based upon the game, the referee, the day, the hour and how I feel at that particular time.

Besides, I really don't know.

Ditto! In spades!

 

[Cryton]

Dont know, Dont care. I have and do use all three styles in gaming, HOWEVER, as I'm usually the Game Master and not the player, and usually prefer it that way, I cant really make a judgement about myself as a player.

If you want to know what sort of player I am, ask Aramis ( passes the buck)

 

[aramis]

Dont know, Dont care. I have and do use all three styles in gaming, HOWEVER, as I'm usually the Game Master and not the player, and usually prefer it that way, I cant really make a judgement about myself as a player.

If you want to know what sort of player I am, ask Aramis ( passes the buck)

Tendency towards narrativist-simulationist, but not hard on to it, but really about middle of the graph... This also leads to your not finding rulesets terribly problematic... except when taken to the "Rules as written or else"...

 

[Finarvyn]

I'm all three, but I marked Gamist-Narrativist because the action and story and playability are more important to me than realism. This is always a tough discussion because it always seems to dissolve into an argument about what all of the words mean, and somehow folks get insulted when their style of game play is slighted.

 

[Vile]

Narrativist-Simulationist. Damn, I'm conventional.

 

[MarianLH]

For Traveller and most of the other RPGs I like best, I think I'd fall under simulationist. But there are a few RPGs where I embrace a gamist approach.

I'm all three, but I marked Gamist-Narrativist because the action and story and playability are more important to me than realism. This is always a tough discussion because it always seems to dissolve into an argument about what all of the words mean, and somehow folks get insulted when their style of game play is slighted.

For the purposes of this thread I think the OP defined the terms well enough. Case in point, this thread hasn't devolved into an argument about what the words mean, unlike every other GNS thread ever.

 

[Agemegos]

I have found that actually enhances the dramatic sense by ensuring that the players know, for instance, that if they do something really nuts that they have a good chance of getting killed.

I like all three in ways. I'm probably pretty much center of the graph.

Don't know, don't care (well, I care, I just don't know). I reserve the right to do any and all of these, based upon the game, the referee, the day, the hour and how I feel at that particular time.

I picked "Other, please explain" mostly because my group and I can really cover all of the bases, depending upon what the system is, who is in the group at the time, what sort of mood we are in, etc.

Back when the Threefold (fore-runner of GNS Theory) was being thrashed out on rec.games.frp.advocacy, I made myself rather unpopular as a dissenter from the whole trichotomy. Game, simulation, and narrative are three legs of a stool, and no description of RPGs matches observations that does not take into account the presence of all three. To a certain extent this reflects something from fiction: stories fall flat if the protagonists don't front the conflict at maximum appropriate capacity, steadfast to a core motivation, or if the world or characters are inconsistent or unfathomable. Likewise I find that for me an RPG disappoints if either the story, or the challenge, or the consistency of setting and characters is sacrificed for the others.

So I try to play with simulation, gaming, and narrative all pulling in the same direction. When I bungle things and the bundle comes apart in my hands I stick to simulation because in my experience that is what salvages most out of the failure to make things better next time: just as Sabredog said.

 

[bromdenlong]

simulationist-gamist

As a ref-to-be, I am really too much of a simulationist. I keep wanting to rewrite the hit tables for weapons and armor, and am worried about coming up with stories when I run out of published adventures.

As a player, I am a gamist struggling to be a method actor. I don't think I'm a munchkin. I just figure my character is going to try to solve the problems in front of him/her, unless they have another agenda besides surviving and succeeding with the group. I haven't really played a character with a hidden agenda, but I'll be playing two of them as ref-controlled PCs/NPCs.

 

[oldgamergeek]

I choose other because I have mixed several types at times.

 

[Hemdian]

Interesting trend in the breakdown: Putting the non-categorised groups (“don’t know/don’t care”, “planet X”, and “other”) to one side for the moment, it seems that ‘x’ number of Traveller players consider themselves NS, while the GN, GS and GNS camps each have x/2, and all other groups are x/4. Only 89 votes so make of that what you will.

 

[ThisIsZen]

I'm gamist-narrativist, both as a GM and as a player, I think. As a player, I enjoy tinkering with my various mechanical options and coming up with the best way to express the concept I have in my head of the crunch of the character I'm currently running (though this tends to depend on how familiar I am with the system and how much choice is afforded to players - I enjoy building 4e characters in the character builder up to 30, for instance, but am far less focused on trying to figure out optimum or theme builds in Traveller. I guess it depends on how the system emphasizes things). At the same time though, I get the most actual enjoyment in the session out of the interaction between characters and making decisions and laying groundwork for the future evolution of my character's narrative - which then reflects in how I optimize the build while tinkering. So they feed into each other well.

Now, granted, part of this might come from the fact that if I was purely gamist, I'd hate playing, as our MapTool server dice-roller seems to hate me with the fury of a star's heart. But it's more that I come from an extensive freeform RP background instead of a gaming one - I enjoy RPG gaming a lot more now than forum freeform, granted, but habits die hard.

As a GM, it's based around the sort of experience I want to be able to afford to my players - though I'm relatively inexperienced and therefore this is more speculation on how I would handle situations than actual experience. But my main concerns as far as the session and the game goes are that the rules facilitate fun, before everything. This means that while an option might add narrative flavor, if it seems like it'd bog down play, I'm liable to scrap it. That's actually why I got rid of MgT's space combat system in favor of something standardised - the system lent itself perfectly to colorful narration of the battlefield, but I felt it'd be a nightmare trying to figure everything out and would slow down the game in anything more than one on one combat.

However, while planning the session, or the campaign, or writing backstory for the world or any number of things, I'm not looking at how I can give the players the most challenging dungeon (or robbery, or etc.) run, or where I can create mechanical excitement. I'm looking at where I can create narrative hooks and story seeds (making the mechanical part of it Fun comes when I'm planning specifics). Once I've got PCs for this game I want to run, I expect I'll be doing a lot more work connecting their backstories and personalities to the game I want to run than I will building stuff that mechanically suits them (because I largely think that's the easier task).

I'm also a bit of a simulationist gearhead, at least when it comes to Traveller, but that touches more on designing the setting than it'll ever come out in game - once the session starts, the Gamism/Narrativism mix is gonna take over. Or so I think, at this point at least.

 

[FreeTrav]

I'm not sure that this should be considered surprising, though; to me, Traveller - in all of its incarnations - seems to me to be oriented strongly toward simulationist play, with the natural support for narrativism that pretty much comes with the mere concept of the rôle-playing game. There's very little support for gamism in Traveller; arguably, the only version that has any significant elements that would encourage gamism would be T20.

Were you to ask this question to a bunch of players of FATE-based games, I suspect that you'd get results skewed much more strongly to the pure-narrativism corner. Ask a bunch of D20 players, and you'll probably be all over the map, but with more weight toward gamism than you'd see with e.g., Traveller or GURPS.

 

[aramis]

Jeff, GURPS tends to draw a surprisingly large amount of Simulationist-Gamist and gamist types, too... There is a lot of room and reward in GURPS for gamist approaches.

 

[FreeTrav]

I haven't really played enough GURPS to comment on that, beyond saying that my impression was as I indicated in my prior post. I've been known to have incomplete information, though...

 

[JimMarn]

As some of you know, I haven't played Traveller yet. I hope to some day;

However,

I have played Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1E from 1980-1985, DMed AD&D 1e and Toon. Played Everquest MMORPG, solo and with an NPC merc, since 2004.

The few referees I like and get along with, tell the players what their characters see, so do I.

I consider myself to be a gamer. But I like to be told that there is a yawning chasm, open hatch, at my character's feet. And not be told I fell in when I should have been told its there. Which has happened.

As for simulation... don't care for it. I was bored for days on end when I was on active duty, even when I worked every day. So simulation for me would include daily activity that I find boring.

Now, if I was the engine room crew on a Traveller ship, refueling, under attack, that would be interesting.

 

[Enoki]

Narrative - simulation

In my mind first and foremost, the game has to be one of good interaction between the participants. If it isn't fun, why bother? That leaves out rules lawyers and trying to game the system. So, just because it isn't in the rules doesn't mean you can't do something that is reasonable within terms of the game's intent and plausible within the technology and reality the game is trying to create.
A good narrative / story is critical to the game. Without that you end up with pointless stuff going nowhere. Maybe a bunch of NEETs would understand that, but...

The simulation portion should be a draw for a Traveller game. You don't get to be a Hollywood "super soldier" or such. You have to deal with problems and issues within the game with solutions that could actually work or are at least reasonably plausible.

So, you need a referee who is a good storyteller to keep the players interested and by keeping it a simulation in terms of what you can and can't do you avoid having the "level 500" invincible super character that dominates everything.
Rules lawyers need not apply...