Continuing from Part One, we can zoom in on the two prominent Chimera heads: Make Believe & Mechanics. Returning to the GNS (‘Gamist, Narrativist, & Simulationist’) model of RPG-style analysis is valuable here.
[What (I believe) Ron Edwards meant by ‘Game’, I will still call, ‘Mechanics’ (because ‘game’ doesn’t necessarily have to refer to elements from the board game or miniature wargaming end of things. Playing Make Believe with no mechanics whatsoever could still be called a game.)]
Briefly, the Mechanics head includes numbers, algorithms, ‘rules’, dice, and arguably the binary of ‘winning’ vs. ‘losing’. In short, all of the elements which we associate with board games/miniature wargames fall into this category.
The Make Believe head can be seen as encompassing the other two pillars of the RPG Triad (as I interpret them, at least): Narrative & Simulation.
The Narrative component obviously concerns the story undergirding the world, the characters, & the transpiring events.
The Simulation component concerns how ‘real’ the Secondary World and the cause/effect chains within it feel.
But we also have a wide array of differences within each element of the Triad. Obviously, no two RPG’s mechanics are identical, and some are radically different.
Within the Narrative component we see large disparity as well. Some groups commonly expect their GMs to craft a tale with an extensive, rich world & scenario while others expect a skeletal backdrop which no one examines too closely. Some groups accept/expect some degree of (to use the pejorative term) ‘railroading’, while other only want ‘emergent’ story, where the choices of the characters & natural cause/effect chain create the tale.
In the Simulation component, some groups care deeply about how logically consistent the world is, along with the same consistency with their actions in that world. Some players love delving into all of the minutia of scenarios (a practice I call, ‘Detailism’). Others care very little, focusing instead on the other elements.
Lastly, we have the strength of focus on these elements, which may alternate through your sessions. Some campaigns may focus heavily for some time on narrative and mechanics, then alternate to a focus on mechanics & simulation, and so on. And of course, we have a myriad of smaller elements contributing & mixing with the larger ones.
What’s vital here is to recognize that, whether using the analogy of the Chimera or the brewing of our “RPG-stews”, how we play (the kinds of elements that we employ, & the strength/focus we give to them) steers our gaming experience.
Why does this matter so much? Because we aren't locked into any preset proportions of these components. We can see the effects they produce, & then alter them in order to meet our particular gaming appetites.
I suspect that most who play RPGs inherited not just a system, but a host of unspoken presuppositions about how RPGs are supposed to be played. But the truth is that we can, by understanding the aforementioned dynamics affecting us, alter them in order to move towards the gaming experiences we want.
This requires us to sacrifice some of our “sacred” RPG habits, some of the (50 year-old) blindly-accepted traditions handed down from gamer-to-gamer since it started. This can seem uncomfortable to many veteran gamers, for seriously changing any long-ingrained habit feels strange, and even “wrong”. That’s just the nature of change.
But if you’ve reflected on what experience you actually crave and have concluded that you really do want the feel of your games to change, then breaking whatever habits you inherited is necessary.
As Einstein is (erroneously) credited with saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”
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