The Six Cultures of Play

[J1M]

Perhaps I don't understand how simulationist is different.

In a simulationist game, which is a category to which RPGs and their superset, wargames, belong, the rules are meant to simulate how things work in the gameworld, and the player enacts change upon the gameworld through the characters under his control. In a narrativist game, the category of which storygames are the embodiment, the rules are intended to facilitate the collaborative creation of dramatic stories, and the players are usually granted some means by which they may enact change upon the gameworld directly, such as Fate Points allowing a player to dictate some aspect of the current scene.

In a nutshell, consider a character running out of ammo for his firearm. In a simulationist game, this happens because it would make sense in the gameworld for him to run out: either shots are tracked individually, or, in a less granular game, some randomized mechanic is used to approximate the vagaries of live combat. In a narrativist game, he runs out because it would be dramatically appropriate: perhaps the GM may spend Fate Points of his own to cause the characters "complications", or the player got some doom results on the game's special dice, or maybe the player volunteers to have his character run out of ammo in order to be rewarded with some metacurrency. In some systems, this may even involve direct negotiation between the player and the GM.

Maybe the categories should be different, but OSR as distinct from how Gary did things when it's just about playing the way their older brother did instead of the dorm at community college makes no sense.

I am also unsure of that one. I'm not old enough to have played in the very early years, and there are conflicting reports concerning what Gygaxian play was actually like. I have noticed, however, that there is a rules-lite trend in the OSRsphere, which at times seems dangerously narrativist and certainly incompatible with Gygaxian gaming.

How do you view simulationist as distinct from what Gygax did? My understanding from that era is that you had all sorts of rolls and tables to serve that purpose and if you did something that would result in death then you died. It was highly lethal because a "real" wizard maze would be as well.

[WhiteShark]

How do you view simulationist as distinct from what Gygax did? My understanding from that era is that you had all sorts of rolls and tables to serve that purpose and if you did something that would result in death then you died. It was highly lethal because a "real" wizard maze would be as well.

Gygaxian is simulationist, which is what gave rise to the term "Gygaxian naturalism". My point was that narrativist != rules-lite, which is why I objected to your categorization of the cultures of play based on a ratio of "dice" to "narrative". A storygame like Blades in the Dark, for example, has lots of rules, but they're all designed to create dramatic situations and not simulate a world. It's common to conflate simulationism with high crunch and narrativism with freeform, but the simulationist/narrativist/gamist aspect is tangential to the amount of rules and dice-rolling. An example of a low crunch, high simulation game would be one of those old hex-and-counter wargames with relatively simple rules intended to model a real conflict.