*laugh* Why do people tinker with anything? Because it doesn't work for them!
To an extent, the BM Nar (and to an extent, Gam) definitions are superior to what came before--they put gamism and narrativism on the same spectrum, give a point to nar rather than just "I want it to have a story", and conciously exclude gming-by-railroad as not-nar. OTOH, probably because of who was involved, as you mention, the depiction of simulationism is -awful-, mixing sim up with bad gaming, and constructing reasoning why you can't mix sim and nar that doesn't make much sense.
Now that I think on it, this may be because the thing identified as uniting the three ? Doesn't.
As you mention, the key point of simulationism is exploring -- the shared reality. "What if I go here?" "put ghost rock in acid?" "ignore the nonsense with the king and head for a ship to the indies?"
Similarly, the key point of narrativism is to explore the story, and by an extention, the characters.
But gamism, while quite worthwhile, is only pushed into an "exploration" mold by extreme force; if you want exploration with your gamism, you have to get it somewhere else than your urge for conflict and real opposition.
Basically, I think the Big Model idea of having different "skews" that bind together the different components of roleplaying is a good one. But I'm not at all convinced that Gamism, Simulationism, and Naratativsm are all the same -kind- of skew.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-04-11 12:21 am (UTC)To an extent, the BM Nar (and to an extent, Gam) definitions are superior to what came before--they put gamism and narrativism on the same spectrum, give a point to nar rather than just "I want it to have a story", and conciously exclude gming-by-railroad as not-nar. OTOH, probably because of who was involved, as you mention, the depiction of simulationism is -awful-, mixing sim up with bad gaming, and constructing reasoning why you can't mix sim and nar that doesn't make much sense.
Now that I think on it, this may be because the thing identified as uniting the three ? Doesn't.
As you mention, the key point of simulationism is exploring -- the shared reality. "What if I go here?" "put ghost rock in acid?" "ignore the nonsense with the king and head for a ship to the indies?"
Similarly, the key point of narrativism is to explore the story, and by an extention, the characters.
But gamism, while quite worthwhile, is only pushed into an "exploration" mold by extreme force; if you want exploration with your gamism, you have to get it somewhere else than your urge for conflict and real opposition.
Basically, I think the Big Model idea of having different "skews" that bind together the different components of roleplaying is a good one. But I'm not at all convinced that Gamism, Simulationism, and Naratativsm are all the same -kind- of skew.