We classify games according to GNS theory

>GURPS
Probably 5 at its default form. Optional rules can alter it to anywhere within the area of 10-2-14.

>DRYH
15 or maybe 9, but if definitely doesn't get out of the Narrativist corner.

>D&D4e
4. Solidly gamist with a tiny hint of narrativism and an unabashed abandonment of un-high-action un-high-fantasy simulationism.

>M&M
4, 8, or 9. It's very very gamist but with a focus on a metacurrency to facilitate capeshit-like plots. On that note, is metacurrency gamist or narrativist? It's very gamist in practice (it's another resource to manage) but I almost always see it being used to to reward or otherwise facilitate in-genre actions. For both M&M and DRYH, I've been splitting the difference; Hero Points make M&M more narrativist while Despair/Hope Coins make DRYH more gamist despite filling basically the same role.

Those are the only four systems I've played enough in recent memory to really comment on. I could also add 3.PF but I have no clue where to put a game that tries so hard to be simulationist but can't simulate shit.

I have thought about making this thread many times now, OP. I refrsined among other things because you need clear definitions of the agendas. Please note, for example, that Simulationism is composed of two sub-agendas: Realism/Real World Simulation and Genre Simulation. The latter can be very similar to Narrativism.

So to produce a really useful final result you need a legend that gives some additional information. Genre, for example.
An Entry might read
>15 Star Wars FFG, Sci-Fi, Genre Simulation
Or you denote some things with color.

Also, I would reframe Narrativism. Narrativist elements are elements in which players have agency over something other than their PC's actions. Example: FFG Narrative Dice, Fate Points, many of PbtA Move results, etc.
Simulationism then means mechanics that aim at recreating something - be it something something real or some genre convention. Here it gets blurry because recreating a story-writing element might be considered narrativist.

So sorry for posting complications, I think this is a very worthwhile endeavour.

Props for re-using my image.

Yes, but the gamist on the left claims that only to powergame.

Agreed on D&D. I would also classify 5E and Pathfinder as Gamist-Simulationist. All in the Areas 2 or 3. I think most fantasy heartbreakers and D&D alternatives fall there. Rolemaster, most OSR, also Dragon Age and SIFRP.

Harnmaster, otoh, is more simulationist than gamist. It's probably a 5. Never got deep into it's spiritual successors, TRoS and Song of Swords.

Shadowrun is a bit difficult to assess. It's wide range of tech options, firing modes, etc. are simulationist.It also cares about being playable and somewhat balanced, I think. I think it lives somewhere on the range of 2, 6, 5, 11. oWOD is way more gamist than that and has little in the way of narrativism, in spite of calling itself storyteller system.

CoC isn't very narrativist. The only real narrativist mechanic is Sanity. It is simulationist as it clearly tries to emulate Lovecraft but as (Purist mode) Trail of Cthulhu shows - CoC doesn't try very hard toi be accurate. On the other hand, the great old ones are next to useless from a gamist POV, as you can't really fight and defeat them, for the most part. So i'd rate CoC between 6 and 7?

The 3 creative agendas is all about PRIORITIES. All RPGs have game elements, try to recreate some reality and create story. But gamist systems ditch, for example, realism for the sake of ease of use - see Hit Points. Other systems might have an elaborate wound system like Harnmaster (pic related) - this is more simulationist in nature. And if you consider PbtA... it doesn't have ANY circumstantial modifiers at all. It cares more about story than about simulating a world.

So it's about all about priotities.

Rule-light doesn't have to be narrative though. DSA/The Dark Eye 1E is rules-light OSR and gamist with a slight touch of simulationism.

More games....
CP 2020 is 2 or 6.
RIFTS is 2 or 3.

Quick correction on Shadowrun: Karma to influence ongoing events could be considered a narrativist mechanic. It enshrines the status of the PCs as protagonists.

That's also why WFRP/40K RPGs would be a bit more narrativist than D&D 3.x, etc., for example.

Btw, OP, wouldn't it be easier if people just had an image template and could freely drop point wherever they wanted to within the pyramid? As-is, you're losing a lot of nuance.

>FFG Star Wars
Probably around an 8, the dice are narrativist but the rest of the game is way more gamey. I guess it can "simulate" the movies but the movies have little internal logic so it basically just simulates the shallow aesthetics.

>World of Darkness
Sells itself as 16, is actually 1. Second edition of CofD does introduce some narrativist elements.

>Microscope RPG

Probably straight up 16, right?

Phoenix Command 10

Fate Core has got to be region 9 or something

>As-is, you're losing a lot of nuance.
I wasn't going for nuance, I was going for clear-cut options and forcing you to make decisions. Also, modifying images usually gets you less response than just plain text.
But if you want, you can whip up a template yourself, it would be interesting to see.

So far.
Feel free to adjust. I'm mostly interested in seeing the blanks filled out and finding a game for every slot.

Here goes
>5e DND
9

>4e DND
3

>3.5 DND
6

>Cypher System
Easiest one, 14.

>Shadow of the Demon Lord
12

>World of Darkness
7

>5e Shadowrun
8

>MAIDS (you said all RPGs)
15

>Ryuutama (loved gming for it, wish I could play it more)
13

> ADND
5

thanks, I'll use this when recruiting for WoD.
I intend to run it like 8 or 9 though.

OD&D, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1E?

cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

Aesthetics model > GNS model

Id say that Shadowrun is much more simulationist. Its BAD simulationism, but the way the game micromanages everything really fits simulationism more than game-ism. In fact, there are very few abstract non-diagetic "game-y" elements in SR.

MDA is useful for breaking down where games fail, not for classifying games as a whole. Also, I think that any perspective based model is doomed to fail, as once you become aware of your own perspective you can account for it. In most games I design, lame as they are, I often flip things around and consider whats necessary from a thematic perspective rather than a purely mechanical one.

Rifts is more sim, it is notoriously autistic

>not for classifying games as a whole
I don't know, maybe it's less snappy and markettable than a three-choice one-word-each model, but I have a clearer understanding of what kind of game my players want from me if we communicate through aestethics than through three broad cathegories.
Or maybe I'm using that wrong.

>once you become aware of your own perspective you can account for it
Can you please elaborate more on this? I'd like to understand better.

> I often flip things around and consider whats necessary from a thematic perspective rather than a purely mechanical one

I think that lore and fluff comes before mechanics, and mechanics need to translate fluff and lore in game terms, not the other way around. So yeah, I completely agree with you on this one.

So, in any theory which is based on perspective, that perspective can be subverted by knowledge of the theory. If I tell you that people are more likely to buy gold in a depressed economy, so the price goes up, you should know its a bad investment and NOT buy it.

If I tell you that designers view a game one way, and players view it another, it becomes in your best interest to alter your perspective so it matches the players and you can more accurately curate the experience you want them to have.

This isnt always the case, but in general theories based on assuming what people's assumptions are always fall apart once those theories become well known enough that people alter their assumptions so as not to be defined by the theory for one reason or another. Im sure there's a sociological/economics term for the effect, but Im not aware of it.

GNS is about mechanics in the context of game design. So it is not in contradiction of MDA.

Personal experience on games not added yet:

>Shadowrun: Anarchy
9

>Everyone is John
Probably a 9, too. There's no simulation in it, so a 15 would be wrong.

>Splittermond (some german system I've played a oneshot of)
2

Please elaborate on the difference between the models

I think I get what you mean: if the subject of the experiment is aware of the experiment he would not conform to the expectation like one who is not aware of it, or something.
I don't remember an economic term for that so I'll let psychologists answer on that.

As I said before, I am having good results at using MDA with my players in session 0 to better communicate what kind of game do they expect from me, or what kind of game should I create for them. Results I could not achieve with a GNS model simply because I think that "narrativist" or "gamist" may mean many things, actually bringing more confusion and arguing than answers.
But then again, I did economics and not game design at the university, so I probably don't really understand the purpose of both models.

the problem with any model is that using it as a discussion tool requires both parties to actually understand it. I think that GNS works really well not because it models the entire space perfectly, but because it models the priorities of RPGs as a unique artifact. RPGs have two priorities: to be fun, and to tell a story. Each of those breaks down to give you the components of GNS

For some people fun requires game-y elements and mechanics for them to interact with, for others its all about the roleplaying elements, and for others a narrative cannot be compelling if its not true to life, and a game cannot be fair or represent an achievement if its not governed by complex but comprehensive rules.

>Eclipse Phase
>Hard simulationist

Holy shit that's stupid. First, it's a rip-off of GURPS Transhuman Space, which is rock hard sci fi and genuinely simulationist. Second, it adds stupid psi powers and cartoon physics.

But the difference between the two illustrates the problem with this classification system. You can classify particular campaigns that way, or even gaming groups. But while game settings and systems have a tendency one way or the other, where a given system winds up depends on the players and the campaign.

Narrativist games like Vampire the Masquerade (a huge chunk of the main book was devoted to advice on narrativist gaming). But many groups played VtM in a very gamist way. So there's a difference between how the game is positioned as a product and the style of play that the devs encourage, and how the game actually plays out at the table.

Narrativism is all about the gaming group, and to a lesser extent about the setting write-ups.

Gamism and simulationism are enabled by the setting and system, but not defined by it. IOW, a system puts limits on how simulationist or gamist a campaign can be.

So GURPS with the right group can be VERY narrativist. Or gamist, or simulationist. D&D's versions can be very gamist, and/or narrativist, but don't work terribly well as simulations. SR and BattleTech depend on the edition. WoD was designed for narrativism and was genuinely revolutionary for encouraging it but ultimately how narrativist a VtM game actually turned out was in the players' hands. NWoD expanded the frontier of possible play by making more gamist Chronicles possible.

Which gets us back to Eclipse Phase. It's a shitty game for gamism and arguably narrativism, but that doesn't automatically make it simulationist by default. It's just weak in all three categories. Other games can be and are strong enough overall to support all three. The triangle only makes sense if you assume that overall quality among games is the same.

In the event we need a more HD solution I felt an impulse to make this

Sword Path Glory is so simulationist you can use your real life stat to create an character version of yourself.
The only stats that wont be perfect is, ego, charisma, leadership, telepathic sentitivity, intelligence, willpower. There is also weapon skill that wont be perfect match but will be close enought

The problem with "Simulationist" is that people talk about it like "settings" are meant to be tone or intent neutral. Like a setting is just a bunch of random historical facts and random physics ideas crammed together and no genre or idea is suppose to guide them when that's not the case at all.

What people argue is "simulationist" more or less just means that the rules are diagetic in nature. That is to say: "Magic Points" are an actual substance and a point is an actual measure of them. Which personally I think is dumb to build an ENTIRE GENRE of RPG's around that idea when it feels like you could just... I dunno work those in when appropriate?

To me, simulationist play seems like the vacuum left over when no one steps in (GMs, usually) to make the game dramatic or a fair challenge.

That is, when you take away the need to "tell a story" (overruling what would probably happen in the setting for some heroism or some such), or the need to "make this game fair", you're left with what the setting lets you do: a lack of intervention that makes things play out as they "should" on a more probabilistic scale.

My real interest is whether having/obeying more rules and granularity will always lead to more simulation.

How narrativist a game is depends entirely on the players, not the system.

> a lack of intervention that makes things play out as they "should" on a more probabilistic scale.

See the problem here is that in tabletop RPG's all actions are filtered through the perspective of the GM and the players.

What "should" happen in a probablistic scale is more than likely being influenced consciously or subconsciously by the their desires. Whether that be "I wanna be an action kung-fu hero" or "I want this setting to be dark and grim".

The only time you might get something like that is, again, if the rule is literally just THERE for no better reason than because it's just a random thing in the setting and you do it just cause.

>My real interest is whether having/obeying more rules and granularity will always lead to more simulation.

Usually whenever you simplify a ruleset you tend to get to the "core" of a situation. That being: what kind of story do you want to tell or what kind of interaction do you want to occur. You could make the argument that the latter can be done "simulationist" style by saying what should 'realistically' happen but then that just expounds that your setting is 'realistic' and all that infers.

I admit I've only ever played a couple sessions of Exalted, both of which were run by a GM who didn't seem to care much about the rules, and I didn't learn shit about the game.
Despite all that, that feels like the wrong place for Exalted. Considering how much of the rules are dedicated to cool flashy abilities and tricks, I'd have guessed that it was more Narrativist. Simulationist is more about immersion and rules for daily life things, no? That's not what my (minimal) experience tells me.

Its not only that the rules are diagetic, its that everything diagetic has a rule. A simulationist game seeks, for various reasons, to create a game-space that is fair and a narrative space that is grounded through the use of mechanics which are lent a degree of impartiality by verisimilitude.

>There are some systems which have mechanics designed to promote a robust narrative.

Do you take issue with that statement?

>entirely
Sure, players and how the GM runs his game change these factors, but some games are specifically designed to push the narrative forwards. That's what we're discussing here, the focus of the system.
If you can't think of these differences in systems, you might want to try some different rpgs.

OP here, won't be able to update this today, so if anyone wants to fill it in before this thread goes under, be my guest.