The intent here is to exactly look at principles we can use with any simulationist ruleset. It isn't to design a set of rules of simulation.

Generally speaking, many simulationist rulesets abstract skills. There may be an incredible set of simulationist farming rules out there that will make the simulation of farming a deep and multifaceted experience in and of itself, for instance, but such matters are beyond the intended scope of this thread.

And yes, of course you CAN actually put to use the advice that I and others have offered. That is the point of advice... If you couldn't do it, and in pretty much any simulation based game, it wouldn't be very good advice!

Quote from: Manzanaro;896364The intent here is to exactly look at principles we can use with any simulationist ruleset. It isn't to design a set of rules of simulation.

I believe the intent should go further and specify means to achieve such principles. I believe many of us have a good understanding of what is needed, the question is how. This goes in hand in hand with the title of the thread "How to get good narrative from rules of simulation". It isn't "Principles to get good narrative from rules of simulation". If it were so I'd agree with your intended scope, but it isn't, and so I believe we should move forward to address such "hows".

Allow me to take a step in that direction.

You mentioned developing a character a bit more. So I believe a first step is to be able to convert prose into mechanics. For example a two paragraph description of your character into something that can be used in the game, instead of a list of discrete skills. You narrate what your character is "His name is Sauron Dorian, he's in his thirties, after high school he left the family farm, enlisted, and went to war for two years. After he came back he went to law school, passed the bar exam and practiced law for about two years before the apocalypse hit.", instead of "farming: 12, farm tools: 8, farm administration: 7, rifles: 10, handguns: 8, hunting: 9, contracts: 11, litigation: 8"

The next point is a means to leverage such prose in the game. A mechanism that can help us simulate farming, law, combat, etc. Situation + character effort + background modifiers => outcome.

"Damn it, the combine broke down again. What now? We're almost upon harvest day!"... what follows? How do I make the decision of the next steps? How do I estimate it's better to take a peaceful resolution through a contract than by stealing? And not because we're all advocates of peaceful RPGs, I mean how do I create an expectation of best outcome?

Then I actually follow through on a plan looking for such an expected outcome. Is the real outcome in line with the expected one? I mean there can be unexpected outcomes as well, for better or worse. Things might not go as planned, but was it because of a poor die roll (a flaw in the simulation) or did it "just happen" (as expected due to player interaction)?

Okay, well, you raise some interesting points and I'll take a stab at some of them in a few days when I am back to my computer.

In the meantime maybe somebody else will care to comment.

Okay.

Quote from: Saurondor;896366I believe the intent should go further and specify means to achieve such principles. I believe many of us have a good understanding of what is needed, the question is how. This goes in hand in hand with the title of the thread "How to get good narrative from rules of simulation". It isn't "Principles to get good narrative from rules of simulation". If it were so I'd agree with your intended scope, but it isn't, and so I believe we should move forward to address such "hows".

So, the thing is, you don't really 'achieve' principles, so much as you operate under them, and the sad fact is that operating under a given set of principles is still not a guarantee of good results. GMing is, in my opinion, both an art and a craft. Imagine parallel topics such as, 'How to Paint a Good Fish Using Pointillism' or "How to Build a Good Deckchair out of Balsa Wood" which invite other craftsmen/artists to speak of their opinions and experience... but don't actually guarantee satisfactory results to anyone who reads up on the topics (which is not to say that the topics are inherently useless).

QuoteAllow me to take a step in that direction.

Sure.

QuoteYou mentioned developing a character a bit more. So I believe a first step is to be able to convert prose into mechanics. For example a two paragraph description of your character into something that can be used in the game, instead of a list of discrete skills. You narrate what your character is "His name is Sauron Dorian, he's in his thirties, after high school he left the family farm, enlisted, and went to war for two years. After he came back he went to law school, passed the bar exam and practiced law for about two years before the apocalypse hit.", instead of "farming: 12, farm tools: 8, farm administration: 7, rifles: 10, handguns: 8, hunting: 9, contracts: 11, litigation: 8"

Hmmm. The problem is: What does that text mean in terms of simulation? You say, "He went to war for two years," and apparently that leaves you with a fairly precise idea of the character's implied capabilities. For me, not so much, and I question whether the picture this sentence gives you of the character's capabilities is the same picture it gives someone else.

Very often, we seek to simulate a given thing by first abstracting it and then quantifying it. And one idea that we often end up with is that things like skills and abilities can be given numeric ratings so that one person has Farming skill 3 and another has Farming skill 5. Does this map precisely to how things work in reality? Of course not, but a) it is certainly more precise than a verbal description of equivalent length and b) numbers tend to lend themselves to processes of simulation much better than text descriptions do.

QuoteThe next point is a means to leverage such prose in the game. A mechanism that can help us simulate farming, law, combat, etc. Situation + character effort + background modifiers => outcome.

Doesn't this assume that farming, law, combat, and etc. all work the same way? I mean, we can maybe say that all rolls are about conflict, whether that be farmer vs. nature, lawyer vs. other lawyer, or warrior vs. opponent... and I don't really have anything against this idea. I think this would end up leading towards a system based on conflict resolution as a single roll rather than task resolution, but personally I don't have an issue with that. I think some people see conflict resolution as less of a simulation than task based resolution, but I don't really think that is true; it is just a matter of scale and proportion. How much do we want to zoom in?

Quote"Damn it, the combine broke down again. What now? We're almost upon harvest day!"... what follows? How do I make the decision of the next steps? How do I estimate it's better to take a peaceful resolution through a contract than by stealing? And not because we're all advocates of peaceful RPGs, I mean how do I create an expectation of best outcome?

So how did you arrive at the determination that the combine broke down? I think there are basically two possible ways:

1: A process of simulation. So, maybe you have a certain percentage chance that it breaks down that you check as appropriate.

2: A narrative decision. You just decided it broke down as the GM. This may have been in response to a failed skill roll or it may just have sprung form your forehead like Athena because you wanted something interesting to happen.

As far as analyzing courses of action for the 'best' outcome: why is this important to you? And would this be immediately obvious to the character in question? I am not a big fan of players making decisions for their characters based on meta analysis.

QuoteThen I actually follow through on a plan looking for such an expected outcome. Is the real outcome in line with the expected one? I mean there can be unexpected outcomes as well, for better or worse. Things might not go as planned, but was it because of a poor die roll (a flaw in the simulation) or did it "just happen" (as expected due to player interaction)?

I still am not following you in terms of this 'expected outcome' thing. What would your expected outcome be in your example situation?

I also don't agree that a poor die roll means that there is a flaw in the rules of simulation. As I have said earlier, dice rolls in a simulation represent unquantified variables and we need them in TTRPGs exactly because our simulation is incomplete. The only time it is a flaw is if the the simulation process which interprets the die roll outputs some ludicrous result.

On a further and more general note, related to some of what you are talking about:

Let's say I want to get really in depth in an RPG in terms of, oh I don't know... farming. One of the PCs is a farmer and I want to get some really interesting and realistic seeming gameplay out of the farming stuff. I want to zoom in the focus on farming in the same way we almost always zoom in the focus on combat.

Problem: I don't know shit about farming.

So, how the heck do I come up with mechanics of simulation for farming? It would be pretty damned hard to do unless I want to stop the session, do a bunch of research on farming, and then write up a bunch of rules for a farming simulation.

So, how about a narrative approach? Well, it is sort of the same problem. It is pretty hard to do in depth narration relating to a subject you know nothing about.

Given these limitations, I think that for starters? You don't zoom in on stuff that you can not simulate or narrate effectively. You keep it fuzzy and abstract. Given this, I think you still have 2 broad categories of approach, narrative and simulation:

1. Simulation. You look up the heading for the Farming skill. Hopefully it gives you enough info to get acceptable results based on your model and the rules of simulation which govern it. However, it must be admitted that there are a lot of games which don't facilitate zoomed in simulation for much other than combat (and usually a few other areas depending on the game, like magic, or sanity, or whatever).

2. Narration. You basically make up some interesting farming related developments, or you just gloss over it as unimportant. Gameplay can be tied into this by treating farming as a conflict and having a game mechanic that outputs things in narrative terms. You know, all that "yes but" and "no and" stuff? Basically getting the results in narrative terms where we author in exactly what the "but" or "and" actually means.

I am not sure how well I explained myself there, but eh... What's writ is writ.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137Okay.
So, the thing is, you don't really 'achieve' principles, so much as you operate under them, and the sad fact is that operating under a given set of principles is still not a guarantee of good results.

Right, but what are these principles to begin with? I can't operate under them if I don't know them. Sure, operating under them doesn't guarantee good results, but I can also obtain good results without knowing them explicitly right? I could be working under them in an implicit understanding of their existence, but can I identify such principles, highlight them and communicate them to others?

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137Hmmm. The problem is: What does that text mean in terms of simulation? You say, "He went to war for two years," and apparently that leaves you with a fairly precise idea of the character's implied capabilities. For me, not so much, and I question whether the picture this sentence gives you of the character's capabilities is the same picture it gives someone else.

Versus say +4 combat? Sure, it's vague in the sense of not knowing the specifics, but it's a good starting point to crystallize from. There's also the point of usability. What does +4 combat mean to me if I don't know the rules?

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137Very often, we seek to simulate a given thing by first abstracting it and then quantifying it. And one idea that we often end up with is that things like skills and abilities can be given numeric ratings so that one person has Farming skill 3 and another has Farming skill 5. Does this map precisely to how things work in reality? Of course not, but a) it is certainly more precise than a verbal description of equivalent length and b) numbers tend to lend themselves to processes of simulation much better than text descriptions do.

I'd challenge that on the grounds that while it may seem more "precise" it might not be so complete and there can be other ways to represent such "precision". The issue with creating a list of numeric values associated with skills and abilities is that it can get very long when we seek to make it complete and keeping within "equivalent length" can lead to many "holes" in it (things not covered). Going back to the statement "He went to war for two years", and start building from it. If he was front line then there's implicit weapon usage knowledge as well as combat experience. Where was he deployed? This can lead to extra languages, survival techniques, friends and relationships, as well as items owned that something like +4 combat does not provide. With a little extra character development that I can add during the first session there's more to the character than +4 combat, +2 pistol, +3 M4, +2 mountain survival, +3 desert survival etc.


This might not seem as "precise" just like you mention, but it sure as hell is more "interdisciplinary". So much walking around those two years, maybe he gained some insight into Afghan farming techniques being a farmer himself. So in the future if the party enters a village with a particular problem with irrigation his skills may come in handy and a conflict can be resolved without firing a single shot, and without using violence at all. Here I'll help you with the irrigation dam and you provide us with food or with information about the group we're pursuing, etc. This is quicker and shorter than remembering to add afghan farming techniques +2 during character creation. The issue though is the numbers to simulation point of b, and I'll address that in the following section.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137Doesn't this assume that farming, law, combat, and etc. all work the same way? I mean, we can maybe say that all rolls are about conflict, whether that be farmer vs. nature, lawyer vs. other lawyer, or warrior vs. opponent... and I don't really have anything against this idea. I think this would end up leading towards a system based on conflict resolution as a single roll rather than task resolution, but personally I don't have an issue with that. I think some people see conflict resolution as less of a simulation than task based resolution, but I don't really think that is true; it is just a matter of scale and proportion. How much do we want to zoom in?

Yes, it does mean that there has to be some unified underlying mechanism to resolve a situation. The way I address this in my games is by opposed die rolls, one roll represents the players intent to change the events to their favor and the other nature's or the setting's intent to change it in it's favor. In the case of combat it's the player's intention to hit vs the target's intent not to get hit, in the case of law and contracts it's the player's intent to write a thorough contract without loopholes and the odds of missing something or introduce error, in the case of the combine case it's the player's intent to fix the combine and the combine's intent to remain broken.

So skill has adjectives such as skilled, experienced, etc. and tasks have adjectives too such as trivial, hard, difficult, etc. and these in turn are tied to die rolls such as 2d4, 2d6, 2d8, etc. (not actual rolls, but it's easier to explain). The higher the skill or more difficult the task the higher the roll. You roll, I roll and the outcome is interpreted from the difference in a non binary manner. There's no need to write combat +4 because the character is "experienced" in combat and I pick up the "experienced" dice to roll. The character may be skilled (lowest skill level) in Pashto and Dari and expert in English when it comes to holding a conversation with locals, but unskilled when reading and writing Pashto or Dari. The skill level is ruled from the character's background instead of being looked up on a list of skills. Does he know how to fire artillery? Probably, he was in a fire base after all. Maybe not as well as a professional artillery guy and FO (forward observer), but in some cases it may be all that is needed.

Detail arises from modifiers and adjustments added to this base system. Weapons may have modifiers for range, precision, rate of fire, etc., but this is specific to the act of combat, if your game wants to be centered around JAG and legal work knock yourself out. I don't know shit about it, but maybe someone will find the equivalent modifiers so that skill plays out an interesting court martial. Farming is the same. You can play it really vanilla with simple stuff or if you're big into farming, chemicals, tools, etc. you can create all sorts of details around the farming techniques, seeds, chemicals, tools, machines, seasons, latitudes, etc. Knock yourself out!

There is though a constraint I like to keep. Modifiers and adjustments and all should fit within the character sheet to reduce lookup during play and applying these should take five to fifteen seconds so as not to slow down the game. I strongly believe there's a human aspect to maintaining a good simulation and that's our minds ability to recreate detail as long as this is coming in fast enough to maintain the illusion of the simulation. If it takes too long the mind wanders and the illusion is broken.  

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137So how did you arrive at the determination that the combine broke down? I think there are basically two possible ways:

I just decided it because I thought it would be cool for the adventure at hand and it also makes a kick ass example for this thread as it's not combat related. Anyway, that aside, do remember that I do find myself to be part of the simulation and as I've said before I find no use in simulating myself to simulate the simulation decisions simulated within my simulation.

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Quote from: Manzanaro;897137I still am not following you in terms of this 'expected outcome' thing. What would your expected outcome be in your example situation?

I also don't agree that a poor die roll means that there is a flaw in the rules of simulation. As I have said earlier, dice rolls in a simulation represent unquantified variables and we need them in TTRPGs exactly because our simulation is incomplete. The only time it is a flaw is if the the simulation process which interprets the die roll outputs some ludicrous result.

On a further and more general note, related to some of what you are talking about:

Let's say I want to get really in depth in an RPG in terms of, oh I don't know... farming. One of the PCs is a farmer and I want to get some really interesting and realistic seeming gameplay out of the farming stuff. I want to zoom in the focus on farming in the same way we almost always zoom in the focus on combat.

Problem: I don't know shit about farming.

That's not a problem if your players don't know shit about farming either. The issue arises when one of your players has a PhD in agronomy and you've not even stepped on a farm once in your life. That player may have "expected outcomes" of some actions of which you're not even aware of.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137So, how the heck do I come up with mechanics of simulation for farming? It would be pretty damned hard to do unless I want to stop the session, do a bunch of research on farming, and then write up a bunch of rules for a farming simulation.

Yes, it would be hard. Although instead of stopping the session I'd suggest you be due diligent and research prior to the game (if you know farming is coming up in the session), wing it if you think nobody else will notice or delegate to the PhD player to handle that stuff and assist you in the GMing.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137So, how about a narrative approach? Well, it is sort of the same problem. It is pretty hard to do in depth narration relating to a subject you know nothing about.

Really? Well we dissected frogs in highschool, but never dragons. Got good grades in physics, but never took a magic 101 course. That never stopped me from narrating some pretty awesome fantasy adventures. Not until the advent of youtube did I become aware of all the bullshit regarding long swords and full plate. As players we were choosing the weapons based on game stats and not reality. One of the drawbacks of being a cleric was not being able to use bladed weapons, but maces are awesome against plate armor, they're just not that awesome against plate armor in D&D. So we were all drinking this coolaid and loving it.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137Given these limitations, I think that for starters? You don't zoom in on stuff that you can not simulate or narrate effectively. You keep it fuzzy and abstract. Given this, I think you still have 2 broad categories of approach, narrative and simulation:

1. Simulation. You look up the heading for the Farming skill. Hopefully it gives you enough info to get acceptable results based on your model and the rules of simulation which govern it. However, it must be admitted that there are a lot of games which don't facilitate zoomed in simulation for much other than combat (and usually a few other areas depending on the game, like magic, or sanity, or whatever).

2. Narration. You basically make up some interesting farming related developments, or you just gloss over it as unimportant. Gameplay can be tied into this by treating farming as a conflict and having a game mechanic that outputs things in narrative terms. You know, all that "yes but" and "no and" stuff? Basically getting the results in narrative terms where we author in exactly what the "but" or "and" actually means.

You keep separating simulation from narration. Why can't you unify it? What's stopping me from using narrative terms such as "yes but" and "no and" on simulations? The way I see it "yes but" and "no and" are just mechanics to skip timelines. It's the tactical time weapon of some games. I can perfectly simulate the shot that hits your character or the locust infestation that destroys your fields and the game can then allow me to skip the timeline. Can I say no to the locust in exchange for polluted water table due to fracking? Pollution that can be simulated too, but seems to belong to another timeline.

Now, you use the term "acceptable results" in point 1 Simulation, how do you decide is something is acceptable or not? Isn't this like the "expected" issue you didn't quite follow? Isn't acceptable in this case a synonym for expected?

You mention that farming can be seen as a conflict, why? You might expect it to be seen as a conflict, but players may say fuck the farm, fuck the combine, lets go pillaging! The conflict has just been resolved by simply ignoring it and taking another course of action that in many cases can be seen as "more simulationist" due to more explicit rules.

Aside from task resolution and aside from conflict resolution there's one simple question: how player actions affect the setting and by doing so how they affect the story. Why do you keep breaking it down into task or conflict resolution? Why not some mechanism from the point of view of "effects"? It's totally different if the party heads north than if it heads south. It affects who the party comes in contact with and what actions are taken. Such an action affects the story just like my arrow hitting the goblin affects the story. Why then do we handle the arrow against the goblin through an X resolution mechanism (X can be task or conflict or whatever) and going north or south as a simple decision?

This may seem like a stupid question because obviously as a player I decide and hitting the goblin is a chance thing, bla bla bla. The whole round of explanations again. The underlying fact though is that both are two unknowns. As a GM I don't know if you're going to go north or south and as GM I don't know if you're going to hit the goblin or not. Now, what if going north means taking on the farm and fixing the combine, something of which you admittedly know nothing of, and going south means raiding the goblin settlement for their grain and combine, and raiding goblins is something I'm sure you know nothing off since goblins don't exist and any "knowledge" may be that gained through gaming experience and such knowledge may be null if you're a novice player.

Now lets take a step back and touch on your point about "protagonists don't die". If protagonists don't die, or at least are not observed to die (more on such black swans later), why am I even rolling for the goblin attack? Any action on the goblin's part is a facade, I've already decided that the protagonists can't die because protagonists are observed not to die.

Question, do protagonists die? Or is it that protagonists are not observed to die in the episodes you've seen? Much like black swans. They were thought not to exist until they were discovered in Australia, but it could have been possible for one such swan, improbable as it may seem, to fly all the way from Australia, island hopping, crossing Asia and Europe and land in England. How do you rule, simulate or narrate this? Do you create a simulation? With what odds? What dice do you roll and how? Or do you just narrate "a black swan lands on the castle's moat that morning"? Do you use some "narrative" element like "Yes, you amass your army, but a black swan lands on the castle's moat that morning. Such a strange bird has never been seen before and is interpreted by your soldiers as a sign of ill omen".

I apologize if the past few paragraphs have been a bit confusing as I'm exposing a myriad of situations. On one side there's the simulation and on the other the narrative, yet they both seem to intermingle. So choosing one over the other seems a bad choice because it excludes the benefits of one in favor of the other, right? I'd like to cut off right now and leave this as a starting point for another post that touches on what makes each point of view interesting and beneficial and in which ways they can be made to reconcile one with the other.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897137So, the thing is, you don't really 'achieve' principles, so much as you operate under them, and the sad fact is that operating under a given set of principles is still not a guarantee of good results.

Well, let's apply this idea to the goal of "getting a good story" in general.

As I say time and again, the purpose of the "narrativist" spin-off of RPGs, at least for a lot of people, is to achieve a good story. But it's not like you can say, "RPG, give me good story" and then you have it. RPGs present a process. A set of principles, if you will. And I think the great fallacy of narrativist gaming is that you can achieve good story just by intending to, or just by playing a game that intends to do that. It's not intention that gets you there. It's the process that does it. A set of principles.

The set of principles I find make for the best stories are the principles of simulation. To understand why, I don't need to analyze a bunch of different competing systems. I simply have to recognize that a story falls flat if it doesn't flow logically from the premises. I realize there's an element of subjectivity here. But on the other hand, I can point to common literary devices and show how they're enhancing the logical flow. So it's a pretty wide audience that agrees. To the extent that in the face of such subjectivity the phrase "good story" means anything, this is how you get it.

But you're right. Good principles by themselves are not sufficient to getting a good story. Just necessary. If principles guide the story to flow logically from its premises, then the other thing we need to look at are the premises themselves. This is the stuff the GM typically throws together at the outset, whether it's a story adventure or a sandbox. This is where the answer to the thread's topic lies. It's in the premises. I'm working on a new campaign right now, developing the game world, so I can look to what I'm doing right now to lend some insight here.

First, I develop the world in broad strokes. From there, I begin to imagine all the different stories that would work great in this world. Then I ask myself, what would things have to be like in order for this story to play out the way I imagine it. This is how I'm developing my premises. But then I take a second key step. I recognize that this is not a storybook but a role-playing game. So the story doesn't have to play out the way I imagine. So then I think what are some of the most disastrous things story-wise that could happen? And then I develop the game world further, so we have different but still interesting stories if things go awry.

It's important to note, there's a distinct method to what I'm doing. The "rules of simulation" as it were are actually guiding me here. Because I have to say, "Where does point A have to be in order for me to get to point B?", essentially applying the simulation in reverse. Then I plot point A. Then I ask myself, "Where can things go from point A?" And just like how rules of simulation can take a certain input "I attack the werewolf with my moonblade" and produce multiple results "Hit, miss, crit, fumble, kill, etc" there can be multiple point A's that get me to point B. So from even just one story spring a half dozen A's, and for each A a half dozen B's. Before you know it, I've got 20 different potential stories.

Saurondor. You're not even trying dude. You go from saying, "I think we all understand the principles you have been talking about, now how do we achieve them?" to "What are the principles you are talking about?" in the VERY NEXT POST YOU MAKE.

You go from complaining about semantics to demanding that I explain the difference between narrative and simulation a-fucking-GAIN... like you just popped into the thread. I honestly have no idea at this point what you are hoping for, other than to apparently hype your own game system (in which I notice that descriptions correlate to die values or other numeric values [picture that]), but my nigh superhuman and oft demonstrated patience has pretty much reached it's limit in terms of deliberately obtuse and bad faith arguments.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897202Saurondor. You're not even trying dude. You go from saying, "I think we all understand the principles you have been talking about, now how do we achieve them?" to "What are the principles you are talking about?" in the VERY NEXT POST YOU MAKE.

You go from complaining about semantics to demanding that I explain the difference between narrative and simulation a-fucking-GAIN... like you just popped into the thread. I honestly have no idea at this point what you are hoping for, other than to apparently hype your own game system (in which I notice that descriptions correlate to die values or other numeric values [picture that]), but my nigh superhuman and oft demonstrated patience has pretty much reached it's limit in terms of deliberately obtuse and bad faith arguments.

I'm not asking, much less so demanding that you to explain the difference between narrative and simulation again. It seems to me that you might feel compelled to want to enumerate the differences because it fits your agenda of perpetuating the divide between simulation and narrative. It seems to me that you came to this forum to present your question in a rhetorical way because you then (after 100+ pages) revealed a list of what you thought were means to achieve the goal presented by the opening statement. Now that's fine with me IF you show me how to do it. The focus on my game mechanics is not to hype, champion or sell them in volume, but rather to present concrete and functional examples. If you have your own, well great, bring them forward. But it's one thing to talk theory abstractly and quite another to present a working prototype.

The question here, and I've brought this forward to your eternal rage, is can we tell the difference and how? As an external observer how can you distinguish a narrative from a simulationist source? If you're reading the transcript of an adventure and without seeing the mechanics played out, how can you tell one from the other? The whole point of this exercise is to work back from the effect to the process that leads to such an effect. As you've mentioned before, there are vast rules and mechanics for combat, but few, if any, for farming. Is simulating the flight path of a bullet really important to obtaining its effect? Does the story move forward based on the detailed description of the flight path of a bullet and it's cavitation through your character's body or by the effect of all this on your character?

What moves your story forward? Information. Bits and pieces that you add that change the current state of events to a future state of events. Be this as damage or movement in combat, or yield in farming, to mergers in business, etc.. Whatever your game's focus may be.

What makes a story interesting? Scarcity. It is scarcity that marks the divide between pure authoring and simulation in a game. Not every outcome is as easy to attain. That's at the core of your narrative mechanics, it's the "but" after the "yes", you can't say yes to everything any more than you can hit everything with your bow. When the combine is broken we can move forward to a state in which it's fixed or remains broken, or is fixed temporarily, or is fixed for good, etc. Your character's actions lead to a change of state, a state picked from a multitude of possible outcomes none of which are absolutely certain nor equally probable. The ideal and more desired outcomes should be scarcer. It's easier and more probable to keep the combine broken and it's harder and less probable to fix it.

How do you model this? By simulating my character's mechanic and farming skills at the task of repairing the combine or by narrating that the combine is fixed but the farm's horse or cow dies?

Saurondor, it isn't honestly rage, it's frustration. You seem to just want me to say the same things over and over again, only to act a page later as though you haven't the slightest recollection or comprehension of answers I already gave you.

It's fruitless trying to explain shit to you. You either can't understand, or more likely, since I don't think I've been inconsistent or unduly complex, you just don't WANT to understand. Either way, eh.

Jesus Christ, this thread is gold. For the record: I WAS HERE.

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Quote from: Manzanaro;897222Saurondor, it isn't honestly rage, it's frustration. You seem to just want me to say the same things over and over again, only to act a page later as though you haven't the slightest recollection or comprehension of answers I already gave you.

It's fruitless trying to explain shit to you. You either can't understand, or more likely, since I don't think I've been inconsistent or unduly complex, you just don't WANT to understand. Either way, eh.

Manzanaro, I do understand. I also realize you're repeating the status quo. If you want to move forward you need to stop enforcing the status quo. That means listening to positions that don't seem to ' understand you' because quite honestly (and with no attempt to be rude) they don't give a shit about your distinction between narrative and simulation.

Quote from: Saurondor;897229Manzanaro, I do understand. I also realize you're repeating the status quo. If you want to move forward you need to stop enforcing the status quo. That means listening to positions that don't seem to ' understand you' because quite honestly (and with no attempt to be rude) they don't give a shit about your distinction between narrative and simulation.

A: I support women's rights.

B: Marsupials carry up to a dozen babies in a pouch and climb trees. How do you respond to that?

A: What the fuck are you talking about?

B: Stop supporting the status quo and move forward!

And dude? If you don't give a shit about my distinction between narrative and simulation? For fuck's sake stop asking me stupid questions like:

QuoteThe question here, and I've brought this forward to your eternal rage, is can we tell the difference and how? As an external observer how can you distinguish a narrative from a simulationist source?

Because asking about stuff you don't give a shit about just makes you look fucking whacked in the head.

Quote from: Manzanaro;897279A: I support women's rights.

B: Marsupials carry up to a dozen babies in a pouch and climb trees. How do you respond to that?

A: What the fuck are you talking about?

B: Stop supporting the status quo and move forward!

Very funny, but I'm beginning to realize you have little intent to get more narrative out of rules of simulation. You are after all pursuing a definition, valid as it may be, that separates both into distinct groups. How do you expect to obtain good narrative from rules of simulation if you keep enforcing definitions that separate them rather than reconcile them?

I'm also noticing a trend that you disregard posts whenever you're presented with something that moves the conversation towards actually getting good narrative from rules of simulation. Unfortunately, it seems that you're whole position is built upon a loud "you're not listening to me!!" argument when indeed we are, and at least in my case my position is quite distinct from yours although the goal is similar: to get good narrative from the rules of simulation. Of course anything but your definition would undermine your narrative mechanics, such as those you presented as "yes, but". Personally I believe you're scared shitless that someone can obtain good narrative from simulations without using "yes but" and "no and".

Quote from: Manzanaro;897279Because asking about stuff you don't give a shit about just makes you look fucking whacked in the head.

Now, hear me, hear me and don't get all worked up like that. It's not that I don't give a shit literally, it's that you've said it before to challenge my arguments by saying that I don't understand what you're saying. I do. I do understand your definition and what you're saying. I don't give a shit about it because you can't bring up such made up "misunderstanding" as an argument. It seems that whenever you don't have a fucking clue as to what to reply with you come around with this "misunderstood rant", and this is what I don't give a sit about, this rant and the lack of any points that actually address what I'm saying. Address my points with your own arguments, and if you come around ranting that you're "misunderstood" the be certain I won't give a shit.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;897228Jesus Christ, this thread is gold. For the record: I WAS HERE.

And here is the guy who solemnly vowed to read and post in every thread on this site. About time you showed.