Striking the middle ground between narrativist and gamist

[kyoryu]

So allow me to let y'all know how most people use the terms A DECADE LATER:

Narrative: focused kinda more on the story bits than other bits.
Gamist: focused kinda more on the mechanical game bits than other bits.
Simulation: focused kinda more on the setting and verisimilitude than other bits.

I really wish we'd go back to using GDS and getting rid of the Forge baggage.

That said, what you've described is a good summary of GDS. It is not, however, how I often see people use narrative. As an example: By that definition, a D&D game could be "narrativist", but I've never heard D&D described as so, even in terms of a specific game.

That's really all I said about Forge theory - that it was the origin of the term, and I found it ironic that very few people use it in anywhere near that context, especially given the lack of anything near a common definition.

Which is why my first post was literally just "define what you mean by narrativist". Because if I know what it means to the OP, then I can help them.

People seem to be struggling with the idea that you can use GNS "terms" without GNS definitions, and that without using the GNS definitions, they're not actually GNS terms, they're just WORDS. Words that have, if not rigorously defined meanings, at least vague popular conceptions of what they mean which have nothing to do with GNS at all.

I don't think that I agree with the bolded part. I think people often mean *very different* things when they say narrativism.

Like, when I say "gamist," I kinda get what that means. And I think if you took me and a random gamer, and asked if ten things were gamist or not, we'd probably be in 90% agreement.

If you said "narrativist", I wouldn't presume that we were over 60% or so.

That's the problem I've found with terms like this - people *think* that there's more agreement on what they mean than there actually is, and so they can nod along, not realizing that the two people are actually having different conversations.

Here's some things I've found to be common in what people mean by "narrative":

1) A moderate to high amount of Type 3 interactions
2) A game that is structurally closer to a movie or novel, or is more likely to contain the mix of activities of a movie or a novel.
3) A game that comes out of the game design thought process of the key contributors at the Forge
4) A game that allows some level of player authorship (arguably redundant with the first point)
5) Not using common, often wargame-derived, structures

Apocalypse World, for instance, is almost entirely Point 3 by definition (though it often includes a high amount of Type 4 by cultural assumption).

Fate is all about Point 2 and 4, though it really has pretty limited player authorship.

The real common ground is Point 5, though Fate hews closer to them than many other "narrative" games.

Yet they're both called narrative.

Not really -- it's more that these words get tossed into the discussion, and even in the specific context of gaming, we rarely know exactly what that particular person might mean.

....

That's the problem with "words mean whatever we want them to" linguistics and proliferating terms of art.

Yup. I have similar issues with words like "gritty". Everybody has a vague idea of what they mean, and assumes everyone else means the same thing, but all too often they don't mean the same thing at all.