Indie Games Introduction / Discussion

[H]

Hi, and welcome back to the discussion glad you missed it enough to make you wanna return to it

Hey, it’s a fun debate. I’m finding a lot of great perspectives in your posts.

Besides, I’ll be staying with an indie designer in a couple weeks and can use the sparring practice…

[quote=“Auburney”]Lots of interesting stuff culminating in:

Besides, it doesn’t exactly conform to the principle of player empowerment, does it?

of course not, but it’s not about player empowerment, in this case. Simulationist systems of the kind I rant about above are not about player empowerment to begin with, and neither are their supposed fixes.[/quote]
This sort of thing isn’t just used as a fix in simulationist systems, though. There are plenty of true indies that use such methods and call it player empowerment.

Agreed about patches, games providing their own motivation, etc.

In that sense, I suppose I should rephrase my earlier statement (which you quoted above) to say: “it’s a great way to make people act in character and care about their ingame fluff… IF you need to resort to that, let’s say because for some reason the rest of your game doesn’t do this already anyway…”

Agreed, agreed. In terms of realpolitik, as it were, it can be a dandy way of doing things. I just don’t like the principle … purely out of principle.

(As a side note, I’ve never understood why so many people say that traditional games are more suitable for beginners, while indie games require some experience. Things like this make it seem like the exact opposite is often true.)

Having mentioned Creative Agenda in there, (hah! way to make you read my extended ramblings in brackets, eh? ) there’s a reason we call the Simulationism-Narrativism-Gamism triangle that. Each of these (Sim, Nar and Gam in the following) is a possible Creative Agenda, not a One True Way of RPGing!

I agree that there’s a reason: It’s a great justification for cutting corners on certain aspects of a game.

That triangle is one of the core concepts of the indie movement, isn’t it? And it simply doesn’t make sense.

It’s a bit as if, when making my shopping list, I made a triangle out of “spicy,” “inexpensive” and “nutritious.” They all have something to do with food, and it looks good at first glance, but it’s completely meaningless. Since those three things aren’t correlated, making a triangle out of them would be pointless.

Simulationism, narrativism and gamism aren’t points on a triangle, either. One is a prerequisite, one is a goal, and one is an attribute. Triangle? What triangle?

Yet while that triangle is meaningless, it’s not pointless. The point is to suggest that narrativism and simulationism are opposite ends of an axis, and that therefore, if you concentrate on narrativism (which is clearly a good thing), then the internal logic of your game must by definition decrease.

And that’s just not true. It’s simply an excuse.

[quote]Auburney wrote:
That’s where Simulationsim and Narrativism tend to clash - each follows their own logic, and the approaches are ultimately incompatible (as your example nicely demonstrates)

This is something I simply don’t understand.

Perhaps the most basic tenet of the indie movement is just this: simulationism and narrativism clash. They’re mutually incompatible. They’re opposite ends of a scale (or points on a triangle, or whatever). And so on.

Yet this makes no sense. Internal logic is not the opposite of good storytelling - it’s the prerequisite for good storytelling. Without internal consistency, there is no story. (Well, aside from parody, absurdism, and so on.) None. Without internal logic, any attempt at telling a story is doomed to hopeless, ridiculous failure.

I love the indie movement’s attempt to facilitate good storytelling. But when exactly did the logic and consistency that provides the foundation that all the drama rests on become the enemy?

Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand this, but it strikes me as completely nonsensical. I can’t even imagine a thought process that would lead to this conclusion.[/quote]

All of this makes a lot of sense. Let me clarify: ultimately incompatible was used to mean “you can’t have them both running on 100% and still both work”. That’s when they clash. And yes, then it is unavoidable, and they are mutually incompatible…

But why? I’ve never heard anything approaching an explanation for this should be the case.

[quote=“Auburney”]… and of course internal logic is a prerequisite and a vehicle for good stroytelling! It’s just that traditional RPGs needed to cut back on their (unspoke and unwritten but oftentimes clearly perceived) assumption of 100% internal logic, namely in order to allow the storytelling to come to the foreground a little more.

You know those groups who do play out a lot of “everyday life” type stuff in their games? Going strictly by Simulationism, this is what everyone would have to do an absolute majority of the time. Because only then is it “100% internally logical”
Instead, however, most groups (=GMs) skip to the “juicy parts” of the game, i.e. they tend to e.g handwave or greatly accerlerate issues such as shopping, resting, researching and other everyday stuff in order to get to the adventure part of the story a bit quicker!

This is already a small dose of Narrativism in practice. (One which I don’t doubt many gaming tables out there regularly see.) Because really, this can be identified as the Creative Agenda of “why are we all here guys and girls? Oh, that’s right - to play an exiting and wonderful story together!”
And it is exactly this goal that is pursued by a GM who “wings it” for the more boring parts in order to focus everyone on the next exiting thing to happen (“yeah, you can get all that… let’s say it’s the next day and you are all refueled and ready to go?”).
And any player who doesn’t actively protest “but hey, my shopping list would include three more talks with various merchants across the city! Let’s stay realistic, here, shall we?!”[/quote]
That’s a great example of narrativism, and one that I had never considered as such. Nice one.

It’s also, however, a good example of what I’m saying. Omission does not cut down on simulationism; the internal logic of the game world remains unaffected. Adding narrativist elements to a game in no way means that you have to switch to storytelling logic.

And in fact, I think that the history of RPG development over the last couple of years has been comparable to a swinging pendulum, wildly seeking out different directions and only slowly finding its middle ground. The initial “push” on this “pendulum” was, of course, the emergence of the first few “radically indie” games. (and the “preachings” of their authors make no mistake, i am a fan of the indies, but Ron Edwards is a raving lunatic nonetheless I kinda see him as being for RPGs what Sigmund Freud was for psychology… an inspired groundbreaker, but certainly not the sanest or most easily digestable theorist… )

I’d go one step further: Good indie games are good not because of these game design theories, but in spite of them.

gotta go, quote more from you later

Looking forward to it!

(And again, sorry if any of this comes across as harsh. It’s all in good fun.)

[Alrik]

[quote=“Auburney”]This is a game that asks the player (not the character, notably!) “what would you do [in certain situations emergent from the gameplay] if you were judge, jury and executioner? How would you use that power, if you did not have any repercussions to fear - because you are the law!”

I have always felt that these were the core themes of DitV, with the investigative play (escalation and all) as a mere lead-up to the really juicy themes…[/quote]
I think right there lies the heart of the matter. In retrospect the last time I played DitV (and became disappointed) was a time in which I had some stunning experiences with PtA that got me and my group very emotionally invested in the game to an extend to which the religious-wild-west theme of DitV just didn’t live up to my expectations. You know, DitV was supposed to be THE indie game, but in the end I just wasn’t very happy with the result. I didn’t care about the setting, about these fanatic watchdogs. What happened was that I simply saw the mechanics and tried to get the most fun out of them… resulting in escalation, fallout, blabla…

Hmm… ok now thinking about that, I really need to play DitV again! Maybe the towns weren’t good enough either…

Btw: Very interesting debate between you two indeed, especially the point about bennies being a way of keeping players on the GM’s track! However, I personally prefer the method in which there’s a common pool and anyone can assign bennies to anyone at the table. For a lot of games that may conflict with the math of reward cycles, but for relatively loose games like Savage Worlds that works just fine. That way any enrichment of gameplay (not just from the GM’s point of view) can be rewarded and players get direct feedback from their fellow players.

[H]

However, I personally prefer the method in which there’s a common pool and anyone can assign bennies to anyone at the table.

I prefer the method in which bennies are made of candy (as in QAGS) so that most of them wind up getting eaten rather than used.

[Alrik]

That actually came up at my table as well, but it got dismissed out of fear that too many bennies might be wasted for nothing just because players were hungry

[Alrik]

Does anyone have experience with Archipelago (or other so-called Norwegian Style games)? Sounds very intriguing and reminds me of the beautiful Polaris.

Are there other games like that in which phrases determine how the story develops?

[H]

Having thought about this a bit more of late, a few further thoughts:

Yes, narrativism is a good thing. I disagree - and disagree quite strongly - that you have to cut down on realism to achive it, but I think we can all agree that narrativism is a fine goal for which to strive.

Having said that, it seems to me that the highest degree of narrativism to be found in RPGs lies not with indies, but with highly traditional games, particularly in the period up until the mid-80s. In those days much of the creative effort that designers put into games went toward adventures rather than rules, resulting in many memorable scenarios that have become familiar parts of our gaming lore.

They didn’t just give us rules. They gave us stories. And that’s the very definition of narrativism.

[Auburney]

Yes, narrativism is a good thing. I disagree - and disagree quite strongly - that you have to cut down on realism to achive it, …

I thought this over, based on something you said earlier, and I think I now agree with you on this:

Omission does not cut down on simulationism; the internal logic of the game world remains unaffected. Adding narrativist elements to a game in no way means that you have to switch to storytelling logic.

“Omission” being the key concept here^^

Perhaps that is why games like Mouse Guard don’t sit so well with you, because the simulationist elements are not just omitted, but actively thrown out the window in order to make way for crazy narrativist elements to take their place?
(judging from your earlier example with the mouse suddenly being dead just because you searched for it…)

[quote]Having said that, it seems to me that the highest degree of narrativism to be found in RPGs lies not with indies, but with highly traditional games, particularly in the period up until the mid-80s. In those days much of the creative effort that designers put into games went toward adventures rather than rules, resulting in many memorable scenarios that have become familiar parts of our gaming lore.

They didn’t just give us rules. They gave us stories. And that’s the very definition of narrativism.[/quote]
I don’t know about the “highest degree”, but then I have very little firsthand experience with games from this area… would you care to name a few examples?

From what I’ve read, however, I don’t doubt that the main focus was more on adventures (and thus, stories) for many games of the early decades. It was only later (during the 90ies, I’d say) that this changed dramatically in favor of producing “new rules” instead of “new stories”.

Might be due to the fact that creating a cool adventure is undoubtedly more work than spitting out a few new feats and powers.
You know, a “good” adventure has to fulfill many different criteria, it should be playable by many different groups, should be customizable to these groups’ characters at least to some degree, but should at the same time be specific enough that it doesn’t become “just another generic dungeon crawl buffed with some highly forgettable background story justification”…

Coughing up a few new rules and powers, then buffing that out with some fluff and setting minutiae, is cheap and easy compared to that. (D&D, I’m looking at you in case you did’nt pay attention )
Oh, and don’t forget to let some power creep ensue, that ensures your new sourcebook will sell well enough that you can do it all over again in a couple months

It seems to me that the more of an industry RPGs became, the more the publishers’ focus shifted from “story” to “rules”.

Then again, several of the newer games (still talking 90ies here) probably had a more narrow focus to begin with, and thus publishers may have felt that the “story” aspect of them was half taken care of already anyway. So you might wanna focus more on the rules if you see it that way…?

Of course, games such as Vampire or Shadowrun were nowhere near as focussed as, say, Life with Master or Dogs in the Vineyard or InSpectres or Leverage are… but there was maybe already a little move in that direction?

(Such as, in Vampire, you are basically a Vampire, doing vampire-y things all night… but those things, while apparently very wide open and diverse, really break down into rather few categories of what you can actually meaningfully do… (fight in the Jyhad, mourn over your lost humanity, consolidate your standing in intra-clan bickerings, feed.)
Likewise, in Shadowrun, there are very clear messages as to whom you play, what you do, and what it all is supposed to be about. I mean sure, you can go play whatever you like using Shadowrun rules, but if you’re doing a Che-Guevara type eco-rebel troupe on some mystical search for arcane enlightenment in the Amazon jungle… the core rulebooks of Shadowrun (any edition) will give you very little useful support for that… because there are no Johnsons, no runs, you’re not in a big sprawling cyberpunk/posthumanist cityscape… you get the idea…)

No idea whether this theory holds true with the “earlier games” mentioned by you, though?
Were they more specific as to their focus, or more open in general?

I imagine them to maybe be a lot like DSA? (Das Schwarze Auge, aka The Dark Eye in english).

For that game (which was originally conceived to be a D&D killer for the german market, but developed to have it s own distinct flavor over time), the designers gave you a complete continent, ripe with very detailed descriptions of landscapes, cultures, nations, animals, plants, languages, magic spells and academies, combat techniques and weapons, etc. etc… but they never told you what you were supposed to do in it, or even who you were supposed to play!

I mean, okay, there were character classes and stuff, so you could be a fighter or a mage or a rogue… but you could also be a witch or a shaman, a Thorwaler [viking] or a Maraskani [indigenous south american], a jester or a medicus…

The complete focus on combat (that e.g. D&D or Shadowrun has) was absent from this game, and so you could basically play everything with it, from courtly intrigues to mass battles against invading hordes of whoever… or you could be “adventurers” who just drifted through the world from one village to the next, until either some epic plot caught their fancy, or they kept on doing various small-scale things for or against various small-scale people…

Ultimately, this game needed its adventure modules, and direly so.
Because without them, you wouldn’t know what to do with (or in) it
Too many options and too little focus.

Were the olden days anything like that?

And in that sense, can it be said that what would have been an adventure module in those days, tends to be a whole game in its own right these days?
(In the indie publishing community, anyways - games like Dogs in the Vineyard or InSpectres are so narrow in focus they would probably make an adventure module out of them for other, broader games )

Does anyone have experience with Archipelago (or other so-called Norwegian Style games)? Sounds very intriguing and reminds me of the beautiful Polaris.

nope, I don’t sadly. Would try them in a minute, though

[Alrik]

As mentioned before, I’ve pretty much closed the The-Big-Model file for myself, cause I think that at a certain point I incorporated all the important information for my game, which helped me to improve it and more importantly helped me to get an idea of gaming and agendas in gaming in general. After that I went back to the table and started to play and was satisfied with it once again… cause, you know, that’s why I got into all the theoretical discussions in the first place.

However, I feel that a couple of things need to be made clear regarding your understanding of what narrativism and simulationism is. Gamism (as I have seen back then) yields no ambiguous interpretation, which I still think is curious and tells us a lot about the competitive nature of mankind and hence our basic comprehension of what it means.

The other two on the other hand are really hard to grasp and often times the problem already lies within their terms. Which I guess is the reason why their alternate titles “The right to dream” (Sim) and “Story now” (Nar) seem to be more adequate to me. The realism term doesn’t really fit directly to any of these ideas and has a rather subtle influence on both styles.

Narrativism - Story now
The players deal with the moral and human (emotional) dilemma of the shared imagined space and take a stand as players, hence making a statement about their characters and the in-game world.
I have not played in any highly traditional campaigns. But I think it’s safe to say that human dilemmas were not the focus of these games. So, by the definition of The Big Model those were not narrativistic at all. NAR really boils down to central human conflicts that say something about the characters and mean something to the players combined with the motivation of players to actively influence these conflicts and their consequences.

Simulationism - The right to dream
The players experience the shared imagined space as something independent that is only partly controlled by them, but rather is controlled by someone else (GM, publisher, the law of cause and consequence). The exploration/immersion of the shared imagined space of course is part of every roleplaying game, but for this style it has top priority.
I think that a lot of those “wargames” in the early days developed because of the players’ interest in the exploration of the worlds their tabletop battles were situated in. Same for a lot of WoD groups that formed in the 90s, those storytellers, that were not really interested in the human conflicts the mere being-a-vampire/werewolf thing brought along, but were more interested in what it felt like to be a vampire (e.g. playing in dark rooms only with candles for atmosphere and a graveyard soundtrack playing in the stereo).

How “realistic” any of these styles are played is on a completely different page. For me personally, a certain degree of realism helps to make things more believable and, especially in the context of NAR, make conflicts more authentic up to a point were I (as a player) really care about what’s happening.

I honestly don’t wanna fight about which style is best, but I just want to emphasize that I think systems can positively and negatively influence how well some of the inherent goals can be achieved. DnD 4e - while having lots of rules support for GAM enthusiasts - doesn’t have a single set of rules that helps me to create NAR conflicts. PtA gives each character a central conflict during character creation, thus allowing for exploitation of NAR things, while any GAMist will most likely be disappointed. Of course it’s not impossible to use any given system and try to follow one’s favorite style, but I feel that there is some truth in “system does matter”. SIM is the everything else that doesn’t quite fit into any of the other definitions. It’s also the style for which this statement of “system does matter” might apply least. Sure, it might help to have extensive tables for purchasing items, probably a list of 150 different skills with more than 800 options for specialization may help. Also “realistic” and ingenious probability mechanics can be important for some, while for other SIM players they are quite meaningless because it’s all about the story.

You see, SIM and NAR are quite different, often get confused and sometimes games are being labelled as NAR while in reality they are more SIM-ish…

Sorry if what I’ve written makes no sense. Just one more thing: I am very interested in playing these indie games because most of them are NAR, in that they focus on very humane conflicts. I like that in a game, I like to care about what’s going on. I like to see characters suffer and having to deal with meaningful consequences. I like to watch The Sopranos, not because it’s a realistic simulation of how modern day mafia organisation is run in the US, but because I like to see Tony suffer, then rise strengthened after a really harsh situation only to fall even deeper in the next scene. Yeah… sounds rather cruel. But hey, those GAMists KILL people. Dozens, hundreds of poor goblins each session…

[edit] Oh, one last thing: Of course it’s possible to mix different styles and in fact most gaming groups are no pure manifestations of G, N or S. Also, the the definitions might be flawed and outdated. However for me personally the concept behind all this (Big Model, GNS, Creative Agenda etc) was an eye opener and helped me to understand why I didn’t have any fun in some of my old groups anymore, how to describe the problem and what to do about it.

[Auburney]

Yeah, I agree with you especially on this last point: the best thing about the GNS theory is that it encouraged a vocabulary to develop in which to talk about RPGs and their various playing styles. It helps to have some terminology if you wanna analyze something.

Then again, it is by no means a prescriptive kind of theory - having studied the GNS principles will not necessarily enable you to design better games.
It is more suited for a descriptive use - looking at games and playstyles and making sense of what happens and, perhaps, why it happens… and what other things might happen if certain things were done differently…