Quote from: Justin Alexander;466509I frequently find the Threefold useful. GNS, on the other hand, is basically worthless (particularly in comparison to its progenitor). Unfortunately, GNS has so thoroughly poisoned the well when it comes to the terms "gamist" and "simulationist" that it's difficult to have a meaningful public discussion using the Threefold.

That's my position as well.

Re:OP: I have not seen it used much lately. It is sometimes still invoked in debate or mentioned casually, but it fortunately does not dominate discussion any longer, and is not considered inviolable.

Or maybe people have just become more adept at hiding their porcine leanings.

Quote from: KrakaJak;466493Is GNS still a thing? On the internet I mean?

I friend of mine recently told me he thought he was either "Simulationist or Gamist". He treads lightly on the internet, but apparently long enough ago that he would say something as written above. I thought that wrong headed bullshit died a long time ago. Are there still sites or message boards or (god forbid) game designers that use that terminology?

To a large extent GNS is dead -- I'm including The Big Model here, as well -- since its creators have ceased to defend it and because its explicit link to concepts like "Some RPGs cause BRAIN DAMAGE" have been widely publicized.

That said, people with only a passing familiarity with it still make reference to it -- usually using the terms in an incorrect manner.

Most of the people who used to champion GNS have largely abandoned it because the whole Brain Damage thing was embarrassing and it eliminated the primary use of the theory: insulting majority gamers with a (somewhat) plausible claim that they weren't really being offensive.

1) GNS was never very good at categorizing players; its concepts were never sharp enough to really distinguish one play style from another
2) GNS was never well-defined enough to be useful for designing games.

GNS / TBM theory was founded on the precept that the majority of gaming was horribly dysfunctional and the theory was the secret to fun gaming. They believed that, ultimately, traditional-model games would be surpassed in popularity by (in their view, much more fun and effective) indie games.

At this point, I think it's clear that that's not the case. The traditional model is alive and well, and remains uncontestedly dominant. Alternative models retain a niche standing for people who like that sort of thing, and the world continues to turn.

My advice is that when someone uses GNS terminology, it's best not to assume anything and just ask them, "what do you mean by that?" -- you usually get a coherent answer.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: Justin AlexanderI frequently find the Threefold useful. GNS, on the other hand, is basically worthless (particularly in comparison to its progenitor). Unfortunately, GNS has so thoroughly poisoned the well when it comes to the terms "gamist" and "simulationist" that it's difficult to have a meaningful public discussion using the Threefold.

This.

Quote from: Omnifray;466549The only thing I would ask is - if any of you do turn up on ukroleplayers.com, please be polite and don't flame or insult people there. The free-for-all style of conversation which works great on this site simply would not be welcome there.

No, it wouldn't.

Quote from: -E.;4665531) GNS was never very good at categorizing players; its concepts were never sharp enough to really distinguish one play style from another
2) GNS was never well-defined enough to be useful for designing games.

It's like Ron designed the salt, pepper, garlic theory of game design, and he won't admit that there's salt in just about everything (including chocolate chip cookies) and he was never able to explain what the paprika as doing, to say nothing of the onion (when he wasn't calling it drifted garlic).

Quote from: krakajak;466511oh god i wish. That would be delicious.

Okay, so it's still a thing and it's mere mention still brings about pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Gotcha. I had not heard it mentioned in a while and presumed it dead. Sorry for stirring that pot.

screeeeee!!!!

Quote from: pawsplay;466603It's like Ron designed the salt, pepper, garlic theory of game design, and he won't admit that there's salt in just about everything (including chocolate chip cookies) and he was never able to explain what the paprika as doing, to say nothing of the onion (when he wasn't calling it drifted garlic).

Ha!  Yeah, that's a good analogy.

And it underscores that GNS or TBM was never about analysis or game design. It was about advocacy.

Cheers,
-E.

Is Levi Kornelson (do I have that name right?) still working on his thing, creating terminology and paradigms to describe gaming preferences?

Some of my beefs with Ron's theory, as I understand it...

As JA said - Simulationism covers a huge amount of ground. If Toon (emulation of cartoon genre) and Phoenix Command or Aftermath are the same type of game, your classification system is in trouble.

From (say) the immersionist perspective the classification is largely  useless (quite apart from Ron being a behaviourist and considering  identification with a character a  severe psychosis...). His threefold  model isn't that useful for determining whether a given system is  immersive (by which I mean, you feel like you are your character), since while  many of the narrative systems basically kill any capacity to function as  if you were a character, many of the 'simulational' systems would as  well - either because the systems are super-heavy and require extensive  dice rolling, or because the system is a 'simulation' of a genre whose  tropes are in conflict with playing a character who acts like a human  being (Feng Shui?).

Also, it appears to be useless as far as actual design. The basic premise  has to assume that the 3 styles are in conflict ('incoherent') in order  for it to be worthwhile to even attempt to design a 'pure Nar' or 'pure  Sim' game. Ron's Trollbabe for example sucks IMHO, because it  deliberately dispenses with 'gamist' elements like character death or  any sort of advancement system. Also, while he rips on D&D (e.g. 2E)  a bit for being incoherent a bit, its mixture of elements (good gaming +  enough realism +some roleplaying through alignment/kits/NWPs) its  mixture of elements is what I like about it, and part of it (and  successors up to say 3E)  broader appeal. The wheels seem to have fallen off  the incoherence argument after Riddle of Steel and more lately, though, with more and more systems designed by friends of Rons being described as 'functional hybrids'.

As far as the traditional model being alive and well...
while 'Narrativist' play remains niche, I think its arguable that the GNS theory may have had an impact on the development of the latest iteration of D&D, which is strongly 'Gamist' in focus. While some of the fans like it, the alienation of a significant portion of the fanbase by some estimates has been a great experiment for proving that GNS is worse than useless - whether or not the edition was directly influenced by the theory...

Quote from: KrakaJak;466493Is GNS still a thing? On the internet I mean?

I friend of mine recently told me he thought he was either "Simulationist or Gamist". He treads lightly on the internet, but apparently long enough ago that he would say something as written above. I thought that wrong headed bullshit died a long time ago. Are there still sites or message boards or (god forbid) game designers that use that terminology?

I'm a game designer, and even publish a few. I've never given a shit about GNS. I much rather play and create games, then put them under the scholarly microscope, and that is what GNS always seemed to be for me.

Richard

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;466651As far as the traditional model being alive and well...
while 'Narrativist' play remains niche, I think its arguable that the GNS theory may have had an impact on the development of the latest iteration of D&D, which is strongly 'Gamist' in focus. While some of the fans like it, the alienation of a significant portion of the fanbase by some estimates has been a great experiment for proving that GNS is worse than useless - whether or not the edition was directly influenced by the theory...

A lot of people have credited GNS as providing design guidance for their games. I have no idea if the D&D 4e people do or not, but I'd recommend looking at any such claims skeptically:

For one thing, GNS is hardly the first body of theory that has suggested people enjoy tactical and competitive elements of RPGs. It's not even the first theory to call that realization "Gamism." To the extent that someone credits GNS with that observation, it's just a lack of familiarity with the theories which GNS was built on and lifted nomenclature from (it's sort of like giving the guy who wrote your college text book credit for discovering Calculus because it's the first place you encountered it).

And while GNS claims to be useful for designing games, it doesn't actually provide any real insight in practice, beyond incredibly vague guidance (e.g. if you want your game to be fun for Gamist players, reward Gamist decisions).

Think of GNS-in-game-design as a bit like astrology in game design. Someone might assure you that their game turned out how they wanted because they wrote the combat section when the sun was rising in the House of Leo, and the Social Jujitsu rules when Jupiter was in the House of Orion... and they might well /believe/ it -- but you'd probably be dubious about following their approach. Same with GNS.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: RI2;466653I'm a game designer, and even publish a few. I've never given a shit about GNS. I much rather play and create games, then put them under the scholarly microscope, and that is what GNS always seemed to be for me.

Richard

Nothing beats real play IMO.

Quote from: -E.;466654A lot of people have credited GNS as providing design guidance for their games. I have no idea if the D&D 4e people do or not, but I'd recommend looking at any such claims skeptically:
-E.

More or less just my opinion (though I've also heard it from a number of other people hereabouts) - so feel free to dismiss this as 'tinfoil hat' speculation if you like ...Circumstantially, there's discussion of 'narrativist' techniques in about Martial Power 2 or thereabouts IIRC, and IMHO I'd say most modern game designers will have bumped into a reasonable amount of Forge discussion, but I can't prove anything definitively.  

Certainly around WOTC's boards now there's a certain amount of posthoc derision of older D&D's simulational aspects:  I do think it'd be difficult to design something like 4E without actively attempting to remove 'simulational' elements (in accordance with something like Ron's 'mixing the three types is bad' theory).

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;466663More or less just my opinion (though I've also heard it from a number of other people hereabouts) - so feel free to dismiss this as 'tinfoil hat' speculation if you like.

Mike Mearls, the head of R&D for D&D, was a regular voice at the Forge. I don't think he ever officially drank the kool-aid, but he sure hung around in the punch-bowl a lot. The fact that D&D 4e seems a definitive "Gamist" game, it could just be Rob Heinsoo (the lead designer) was more in to boardgames then RPGs.

It's worth pointing out that the Forge consistently gives at least one piece of terrible advice due to GNS theory, which is to focus on a singular "creative agenda" - one of G, N or S - and create games that are "coherent", whereas any sort of empirical examination of the most popular and beloved games in all of roleplaying shows that they are "incoherent".