GNS Theory: Good, Bad, or Ugly

[Kaelik]

I hate it when people like souran do something stupid like say, "I totally agree with you Frank." Then go on to present a ridiculous series of bullshit that is pretty much exactly contrary to Franks point.

[mean_liar]

I think the German comment is a tie in with the psychological comments.

I actually think its a comment about boardgaming.


http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Eurogame

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Ameritrash

[PhoneLobster]

Souran? What the hell?

'GNS is right because I can make up this other thing called GFKS instead, then claim with no evidence whatsoever that it applies to wargaming!"

You just made up your own arbitrary set of definitions it isn't GNS, it is not similar to GNS, it is NOT proof that the "real world" is screaming "Yes yes yes" to GNS the way it does to you know, fucking science like you claim it does.

Indeed "The real world" does not even scream yes yes yes to YOUR arbitrary definitions. Story telling DOES play a part in board games and war games. Your arbitrary definitions overlap and make as little sense as the ones from GNS and tell us as little about what we should be doing in game design.

How is KISS a distinct and separate goal on the same axis as historical or gamist? How is Historical somehow distinct from gamist? How the fuck is Historical distinct from simulationist?

Look you can sit down and make up arbitrary simple sounding categories and try and put these massively complex real world things into them. But you will have to do a LOT better than that to get it even remotely right. I'm not saying "oh niggling little category difficulties" I'm say fucking giant ones your GFKS variant is SO useless it is worse than just NOT creating those arbitrary categories.

Just like GNS proper.

[Maxus]

Well, I think this thread has come up with a couple of useful things.

1) GNS Theory, as written by Ron Edwards is a waste of server space and should be taken down to make the prices for a new website drop a fraction.

2) Despite it being completely useless in the 'official' version because of the wanky terms and vaporish writing and Capital letters of Importance, there maybe a couple of ideas that people find useful to keep in mind.

The thing is, what are those ideas?

I think it's worth keeping in mind what you want a game to do/model and who it'll appeal to. But whether that's Gaming or Simulation or Narrative is hard to tell.

[Kaelik]

I think it's worth keeping in mind what you want a game to do/model and who it'll appeal to. But whether that's Gaming or Simulation or Narrative is hard to tell.

Do you just enjoy pissing people off?

The lesson to be learned is that gaming/simulation and narrative are not real categories.

The lesson to be learned is that whatever trait you think defines you audience doesn't, and that everyone everywhere wants a complex interaction of traits, and so instead of picking a trait and trying to design a game around it "my game is for people who are blueists" you should ask:

"What does my game do?"

It will be for people who like what it does.

Shadowrun is a scifi/fantasy game about the big heist. It is for people who want to play scifi fantasy games about the big hiest, not for people who like "simulation" or "games" or "stories"

All games are games that simulate while allowing you to tell a story.

You need to find out what story you want to tell, what world you want simulate, and what game you want to play.

[Maxus]

Maybe I'm not explaining it right, but that's pretty much it.

The only useful idea I got from reading up on GNS and the comments here is "Keep what you want to do in mind."

Which really is so intuitive that it doesn't warrant hundreds of thousands of words to try to tell you how to do it, like what's found on the Forge.

[Sir Neil]

"Ron Edwards has declared victory and will move the Forge into it's final, winter stage."

This puzzled me, moreso when I read Mike Mearls say, "The simple truth is that few in the gaming industry put any real, useful thought into their work. The Forge is really the crucible for a lot of the real examination and exploration of the underlying structure of RPGs. Outside of the Forge, there are few other designers who think of games in a useful, interesting way."

It sounded like they were talking about the Den, and I wondered why I'd never heard of it before.

[TheWorid]

Edwards has a long history of unwarranted self-importance and impenetrable goals in his writing; he doesn't even define the "battle" he supposedly won. Sounds like a grab for attention now that almost no one cares about him anymore.

[Koumei]

Well if a prominent figure like Mike Mearls says it, then... chances are good that it's worth ignoring.

[K]

Ummm, who is Ron Edwards and why should we care? As far as I can tell he's just some guy who self-published an RPG.

Considering that I've never heard of this RPG, I'm confused why anyone pays attention to him.

[PhoneLobster]

Wait... didn't he do this ALREADY like, years ago?

[CCarter]

Wait... didn't he do this ALREADY like, years ago?

Years ago apparently there was a theory subforum on the forge that they shut down since everything knowable was known, apparently. Now thankfully the whole thing appears to be going.

As far as Edwards' significance goes - I wonder how much Edwardsianism may be responsible for the 4E debacle. I don't think they would have made it such a game-emphasized, dissociative-mechanics mess if they hadn't had GNS theory telling them that any realism (Simulationism) at all was "Bad" because it was "incoherent design".

[PhoneLobster]

I don't see how it could have been altogether responsible for anything.

Yes, GNS tells us if you make a "Game-ist" system you should shun all "Simulationist" junk to make some sort of GNS purity wank-fest.

The problem is that not only is that you know, STUPID but it is even more stupid because the definition of Game-ist and Simulationist overlap, conflict and mean anything and nothing at the same time.

So maybe GNS told 4E that is should include "something" and exclude "other things" but all those things could have been any bloody thing at all.

At that point about the only responsibility GNS can take is in encouraging and providing broad excuses for general poorly defined stupidity.

[Sashi]

Obviously the "victory" is that he is going to pull an L. Ron and turn The Big Model into a religion: Rpgology.

Considering everyone who thinks they know what GNS stands for and how to apply it things something completely different from everyone else, he's on the right track.

[Username17]

Well, the theory is still incoherent, but Mike Merles claims to understand and subscribe to it. He doesn't of course, since he can't even make a cursory statement that is in accordance with any of the "deeper" forge crap.

That being said, the games which The Forgeists actually made were heavy on simplistic repetition propelled by an apparently unwavering belief that games were not supposed to appeal on multiple levels. And that does sound like 4e, in a sense. Certainly, Mike did go on about GNS (although not, of course, in any deep manner or in any detail that would indicate he had ever read the Ron Edwards essays about what any of those terms mean). It is not altogether impossible that the so far worst edition of Dungeons and Dragons is that way in small part because it is partly Forge inspired.

But really, I still say that the reason it's bad is because they've written and rewritten the Skill Challenge rules more than twenty fucking times in 3 years and can't even figure out how to use game mechanics to encourage players to volunteer actions.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

That being said, the games which The Forgeists actually made were heavy on simplistic repetition propelled by an apparently unwavering belief that games were not supposed to appeal on multiple levels. And that does sound like 4e, in a sense.

It all makes sense now. It all makes sense now.

Actually, I think that it might be worth starting a thread linking GNS theory to 4th Edition and mapping the fuckups of that to 4th Edition. It'll do for game design and lulz as to what Super Mario Bros. did for video games.

[Koumei]

Well I can't pretend to know what the fuck the GNS theory is *really* banging on about - no-one can, it seems. But I get the idea that they took "Some games have more fluff and words, others have more crunch and numbers. Some people like these in different ratios" and wrote a thesis on it, for which I hope they failed and had to repeat the class.

So my guess is it has these vague concepts like "You have board games that are all about the rules, and rolling dice. Like Snakes and Ladders. Also you have Magical Tea Party. AND GET THIS, SOME GAMES ARE MORE SIMILAR TO ONE THAN THE OTHER. And ultimately you want your game to be entirely one or the other, not a blend, otherwise you'll keep no-one happy."

Note that that's only "Rules and dice/numbers" (which is probably "Gamist" except my example there does not cover tactics and choices, Gamist presumably also covers tactical thinking and decision making, but isn't that Simu- I AM CONFUSE) versus "Tell a story without rules" (which might be Narrativist OR Simulationist, and making choices that are good for the character probably falls under Gamist so seriously what the fuck?) so my vague explanation here falls apart because I can only "sort of" define two of them, and one of them is kind of folded into the other.

But there's a point. 4E does try very hard to be a board game. As though it saw Hero Quest and said "When I grow up, I want to be a crappy version of that!" Hell, the reason they haven't made it into a basic Flash game is simply that their web team is incompetent (or really fucking lazy), as opposed to the "You need a human brain to adjucate this effect" of earlier editions.

So Frank might be on to something there. "GNS says to be a Board Game or MTP and not blend them. Mearls is an idiot who listened to that. Mearls made the worst edition yet, and you can see the link to where they decided they wanted a board game."

[Sir Neil]

Ummm, who is Ron Edwards and why should we care?

That was my reaction.

According to the RPGnet thread, his gentle guiding hand is responsible for all indie games ever printed. Wisdom shines forth from every word he types. The cave-dwelling troglodytes who had been crudely hammering out primitive RPGs with rocks became enlightened when they saw his shining face, and began producing elegant RPGs for a more civilized age.

It was pretty silly.

[TavishArtair]

Ummm, who is Ron Edwards and why should we care?

That was my reaction.

According to the RPGnet thread, his gentle guiding hand is responsible for all indie games ever printed. Wisdom shines forth from every word he types. The cave-dwelling troglodytes who had been crudely hammering out primitive RPGs with rocks became enlightened when they saw his shining face, and began producing elegant RPGs for a more civilized age.

It was pretty silly.

Keep in mind, that's just what he is marketed as. A lot of people regard Ron Edwards as ridiculous on RPG.net too, he just has enough people to market him on RPG.net that they aren't completely laughed out. And even they get kinda sheepish when you bring up the whole "VtM is BRAIN DAMAGE!" bender he went on once.

[Sir Neil]

Oh, oh, I forgot! The Forge also made publishing your own RPG possible. Who knows what Gygax and Arneson would have done without them.

[schpeelah]

As far as I can tell GNS says there are 3 distinct kinds of gamer, divided by what they look like forums:

Gamists are the ones who talk about mechanics and tell you about odd and unorthodox things they did to acheive success. They want to be awesome, acheive things, and the mechanics to make sense.

Simulationists bitch about things being unrealistic and discuss setting fluff. Thay want a cool setting that makes sense from the fluff standpoint and the mechanics not to disturb that.

Narrativists are drama queens and railroady GMs. They want attention and the session to go in the way they deem most dramatic (read: exactly how they planned it to).

[FatR]

No one can tell what the fuck GNS says.

No, scratch that. Many people can tell. Just no two of them tell it quite the same way. I keenly remeber titanic flamerwars entirely devoted to figuring out what GNS says, where its proponents still failed to produce any clear answers. GNS terminology is supremely confusing, and not even properly defined, and this is probably an intentional move to both conceal the fact that the core ideas of GNS are bullshit and shield the whole "theory" from any attempt of criticism, by forcing attempts to argue GNS into the terms of GNS itself.

[TavishArtair]

No one can tell what the fuck GNS says.

No, scratch that. Many people can tell. Just no two of them tell it quite the same way. I keenly remeber titanic flamerwars entirely devoted to figuring out what GNS says, where its proponents still failed to produce any clear answers. GNS terminology is supremely confusing, and not even properly defined, and this is probably an intentional move to both conceal the fact that the core ideas of GNS are bullshit and shield the whole "theory" from any attempt of criticism, by forcing attempts to argue GNS into the terms of GNS itself.

You forget.

Ron Edwards has posted articles which suggest that people who play games not developed under his theory are brain-damaged. That they cannot imagine stories, because playing VtM makes it impossible to make one anymore.

Edwards' debate tactics are entirely to imply that you are doing it wrong in some unspecified way and if you don't get it, you are brain damaged and thus unworthy of his time. He may have at one point argued honestly for some ideas, but at some point he passed the event horizon and went into a singularity of hatred - if you don't get it, you are anathema to him.

Thus, why people want to pretend to get it.

[mean_liar]

The only Forge game I've seen is 3:16CAtS. It's decent. It is not what I would call a robust game, but it is fun for what it is.

What's a good example of a Forge-related game that actually had some ambition?

[TheWorid]

The only Forge game I've seen is 3:16CAtS. It's decent. It is not what I would call a robust game, but it is fun for what it is.

What's a good example of a Forge-related game that actually had some ambition?

That's the thing about Forge games: they're dedicated to the idea that a game should only be about one thing ever, so having "ambition" and making a broadly useful, well-developed game is anathema to them. You have to make very narrow games with dice mechanics that are unusual for their own sake to be a cool kid.

I would say one of the most interesting Forge games is Dogs in the Vineyard, due to the PCs being Mormon templar gunslingers, which is cool. Dice system is wonky, though.