The Internet Home for Independent Role-Playing Games
    [1]The [2]About the Forge | [3]Support The Forge | [4]Articles |
    Forge  [5]Reviews | [6]Resource Library | [7]Forums


    Applied Theory
    by [8]M.J. Young

     Introduction

    There are among gamers those who like to theorize, to attempt to
    understand and explain our hobby, why we do what we do, and why it works
    when it does. For some gamers, this makes no sense. We play to have fun;
    we design games in whatever way seems to be the most fun. Some despise
    theory, and see no use in it. If you have no use for theory, then this
    material's only offering is that perhaps someone else might. I am among
    those for whom theories are fundamental, so I would be interested in
    theories if they had no practical value to anyone. However, since I
    think that theory is the foundation for action, I can't imagine any
    theory that would have no practical application. I am thus exploring the
    practical application of role playing game theory.

    Specifically, I'm looking at the theory commonly known as GNS. This
    theory suggests that role play styles divide into Gamists who enjoy
    facing the challenges of play, Narrativists who enjoy great stories that
    involve themes or issues, and Simulationists who seek to know what
    another reality might be like. The theory, which owes much to many
    people over many years including the discussions on the
    rec.games.frp.advocacy newsgroup, first took this form with these names
    when formulated by Ron Edwards in his article [9]System Does Matter,
    originally published on [10]Gaming Outpost, but since lost and
    republished at The Forge. Mr. Edwards has expanded on this theory with
    [11]several other articles, and debates and discussions of the details
    have been held on the forums of several gamer web sites. Periodically in
    those discussions, someone suggests that the theory isn't much use,
    because it doesn't tell you how to design a better game.

    In response to this, it can be and often is answered that this is not
    really a theory about how to design games. It's a theory about what
    gamers are seeking when they play, and as such has its most effective
    application as a diagnostic tool for play groups that seem to be
    internally at odds. In this context, if we have players who are trying
    to get different things out of the game, having some terminology and
    definitions by which to discuss what each is seeking can be invaluable
    in resolving conflict. If all GNS theory did was resolve such conflicts,
    it would be valuable. However, one cannot read so much as the title of
    that first article, System Does Matter, without absorbing the idea that
    game design itself is part of the problem, and therefore could be part
    of the solution. Those who are asking how to do narrativist, or gamist,
    or simulationist design are asking valid questions; the answers
    generally given to these budding designers have been inadequate, as they
    in essence amount to telling people to design whatever they like and
    then test it through play to see how it works.

    Answers need not be quite so nebulous in this area. Once the theory is
    understood, there are aspects to it which suggest practical approaches
    to designing consistent games that support particular sorts of play.
    This isn't about rules heavy versus rules light design, or about setting
    detail, or even about things like whether you play your character in the
    first person or the third person or have control over things beyond the
    character. It's about how to create games which support and facilitate
    one approach to play under the theory. Once you have the basic concept
    of a game idea, application of the theory can greatly aid many of the
    design details.

    Game design has many areas; no one area will completely control how the
    game is played, nor is it necessary for design priorities to be
    considered in relation to all of these areas to be effective. The social
    context of the gaming group playing the game can have a significant
    impact on whether the game works at all, and whether it is played as
    designed. Once it is agreed that a particular group of players is
    interested in playing a particular kind of game, designing to that
    desire need not be so mysterious as some imply. Character generation,
    resolution mechanics, credibility distribution, advancement, and rewards
    are some of the aspects of design through which particular GNS
    preferences can be facilitated, and designers can devise approaches to
    each of these through such considerations long before test play begins.

    Underpinning this article, which will be somewhere on the edge between
    theory and practice, is this basic principle: conduct will be preferred
    if it is rewarded, and avoided if it is penalized.

    There's a lot to cover, so coverage will of necessity be sketchy;
    however, it is hoped that this will provide some foundation for
    practical applications of the theory to game design.

     Character Generation

    Nearly all role playing games include a section on how to create a
    character. Very few give more than a line or two to considering what you
    are creating when you do so. Failure to consider this aspect leads to
    design problems; in GNS terms, an understanding of what you are creating
    is far more important than how you are creating it. Put another way, if
    you know what you're creating, how to do that will more often than not
    fall into place. Too many games create characters without thought to
    what they are. Characters are not really people; they are functional
    components of a game world which are manipulated by players to achieve
    goals. They are, in a word, tools. It is at this point in play that you
    are attempting to guide the players into designing the right tools.

    Put that way, it becomes obvious that GNS considerations are very
    important to the question of what you are designing. If you guide the
    players into designing hammers, they're going to wind up with tools that
    are very good for hitting things; if you want them instead to write
    stories, you need to have them design pens. You need the right tool for
    the job; if you don't have it, there will be a tendency to try to make
    the job fit the tool.

    So what kinds of tools are needed for the major types of jobs?

    Gamist tools are easy to recognize and easy to design. A gamist
    character has to be up to the challenges which lie ahead. What that
    means in detail depends on the nature of the game in play and the
    preferences of the designer. Some gamist characters can be extremely
    focused on the central challenges of the game. Combat is the most common
    example of this, and a character's effectiveness in a certain type of
    gamist design would be measured by his abilities to deal damage and
    survive damage, to stand up to the fight. In a very different sort of
    game, racing could be the challenge, and character design would be
    narrowly about how fast the character is without reference to much else.
    However, skill-driven games can also have a strong gamist design
    foundation, if the skills are geared to meet potential in-game
    challenges. Driving or piloting skill, medical skill, hacking, picking
    locks, and hiding are all candidates for gamist design, because they are
    there to provide the player with options, ways to beat challenges
    presented in play.

    That's not to say that narrativist characters can't have either power or
    skills; they can. However, narrativist characters need to be connected
    to the world. They need to be built such that things matter to them, and
    they matter to things.

    Just as there are multiple ways to design a character effective against
    the challenges ahead, so too there are multiple ways to integrate a
    character into the world. Creating relationships with other characters
    is a valuable factor; giving the character beliefs or principles which
    will be challenged by events is also useful. Character history and
    character goals might matter, provided these are of a sort from which
    issues arise. A long-standing feud might be merely fodder for another
    fight; done right, it might become an issue for exploration. To build a
    narrativist tool, you should have something that is already tied in to
    the ideas you hope to explore.

    Simulationist tools are perhaps the most difficult to see or to design.
    There is a sense in which no words which describe a simulationist
    character don't apply equally well to another sort. He must be
    effective, able to change his world; but then, gamist characters must be
    effective in that sense. He must be human, seeming like a real person;
    this is true of narrativist characters, certainly. Perhaps the most
    important characteristic of a simulationist character is that he must be
    accurate, that is, he must clearly express something real and credible
    within the setting such that he has exactly the amount of impact on
    events and persons around him that he should have, no more and no less.

    This does not mean and should not be confused to mean that a
    simulationist character is more detailed than any other. A simulationist
    character could have history, principles, character, goals,
    relationships, skills, and all the things that support other forms of
    play; he could as easily be three numbers on a statistics sheet defining
    his effectiveness. What matters is that he is given form as an
    integrated part of the world, where he fits as if he were born and
    raised within it. To understand him is to understand the essentials of
    the world in which he lives, and vice versa. He is what he is, and in
    some sense not what anyone outside his world wants him to be. He is in
    the world and of the world, and as a tool he reveals the world to us
    through himself.

    Now that we've got some idea of what kind of tool, what sort of
    character, we're trying to create, how do we create him? Do we use point
    systems for gamist characters, lifepaths for narrativists, and dice for
    simulationists? Wrong on all counts. Those methodological considerations
    in themselves have nothing to do with what we are creating. You can
    create any sort of character with any of them.

    Take lifepaths for an example. We could start a character in his teens
    and move him, by a combination of die rolls and choices, through
    military training, education, private sector work, and other areas
    through which he builds up skills that prepare him for the challenges
    which will come. We might instead start a character younger, take him
    through his early years, develop school friends, relationships, family
    connections, life partners, coupled with the sort of moments that form
    opinions and beliefs, and so derive someone ready to explore the themes
    of the game. We could have a much broader selection of options, creating
    characters who have far less focus and more breadth of background and
    experience, who thus feel more real, as the tools we will use to explore
    the world. The idea of using lifepaths didn't matter; it was the way we
    used them that made the difference. It isn't how you build the
    character, but what kind of character you build. You'll certainly have
    to adjust the character generation system to build the right sort of
    character, and you might find that you have more luck making one
    mechanic type work than another for what you wish to do, but the answer
    isn't so much in the type of mechanic as in the targeted result.

    I make some suggestions on character generation systems in [12]Game
    Ideas Unlimited: CharGen (which gives some general thoughts and focuses
    on freeform design) and [13]Game Ideas Unlimited: Negative Points (ways
    to smooth out some of the problems in dice and points systems).

     Resolution Mechanics

    Mr. Edwards has said that system within a game is the equivalent of
    time. To understand this, you have to understand something about time:
    it is the medium for change. Without time, nothing changes. In the game,
    the system determines what happens, what changes; without it, nothing
    changes. Thus the system determines and controls change, and therefore
    is effectively time for the imagined world.

    Yet this, too, can be very important in supporting or impeding GNS
    preferences. How outcomes are resolved matters very much.

    Although it has been said many times, it is worth saying again that
    diceless systems don't in themselves support narrativist play. They may
    be used for narrativist play, but they may equally be used for gamist or
    simulationist play. So, too, such general matters as dice pools, bell
    curves, granularity, and the other aspects of system which garner so
    much discussion (particularly from system monkeys) are not in themselves
    relevant to GNS concerns. As with character generation, it is what you
    do that matters, and not these questions of how you do it.

    What are you attempting to do? The function of system is to provide the
    medium for change; more specifically, resolution mechanics are there to
    empower players to make the kinds of changes they wish to make within
    the game world and to interact with the consequences. To the gamist,
    resolution mechanics are in a sense both the obstacles to overcome and
    the means by which to overcome them. To the narrativist, they are the
    means by which the theme impacts the character and the character
    addresses the theme. In simulationist play, these are both the
    limitations on change and the power to explore it.

    For gamist mechanics, you want something resolute; there usually needs
    to be clear victory conditions, clear failure conditions. It also helps
    if the system is responsive to player choice, that is, if there are ways
    that the player, through his character, can impact the probability of
    success. This could arise from strategy, or from skill or equipment
    choice, or from any decision which should and does give the character an
    advantage. Few things are more frustrating to gamist play than for the
    character to do things that seem to the player to make sense as ways to
    improve the odds, only to have these amount to no effect.

    Even unrealistic strategies are helpful as gamist tools. A game that
    gives combat bonuses for sound, conservative defensive strategy can be
    very gamist, but so can one which gives combat bonuses for brash and
    brazen boldness, charging, screaming, doing over-the-top stunts. What
    matters is not how the bonuses are earned, but that in fact it is
    possible to manipulate the chance of success through character choices.

    Although combat is the example here, it should not be thought that it's
    only in combat that such things matter. If a character can improve his
    chance to pick a lock or hack a computer or repair a wound by taking
    particular actions, this gives support to gamist play. There is a
    challenge to meet. The resolution system will tell whether or not the
    player succeeded, with certainty, but the player has the ability to
    tweak his chance of success through his approach to the problem.

    Although it may sound strange to say that a resolution mechanic need not
    be resolute, for narrativist play it is often better that it not be. A
    gamist wants to know whether he succeeded or failed; a narrativist wants
    to know whether his efforts had an impact. In a combat mechanic for the
    use of guns, it is quite sufficient for a gamist system to determine
    whether the shot hit the opponent and how severe the injury is; for a
    narrativist system, things are probably a lot fuzzier (from a certain
    perspective). The shot should have the power to frighten the opponent
    and cause him to flee, for example. From the gamist perspective, that
    would be a miss; from a narrativist perspective, that's a success. Thus
    it helps narrativism if the resolution mechanic provides more of a
    degree of success rather than a strict success/failure determination.

    Simulationism wants to know what would actually happen, given the
    assumptions of the setting. That doesn't mean realistic, in the ordinary
    sense; it means believable within the bounds of the imagined world. A
    fighter putting his spear in the ground and then using it as a bracing
    point as he runs across the chests of his adversaries kicking them is
    not terribly realistic, but it does fit the imagined reality of a
    certain sort of world, and thus could be incorporated into simulationist
    play in that world. In fact, if it has been established that a
    particular fighter can do that, simulationist play would dictate that he
    do so in any situation in which that would be the obvious response,
    unless there is reason to think he would do something else at that
    moment.

    Thus resolution mechanics which support simulationist play are those
    which make outcomes correct within the setting. Much as with
    narrativism, this is often served by some form of relative success and
    relative failure, a determination of how well the character did; but
    like gamism, this generally needs to be resolute. A simulationist
    doesn't just want to know that he missed; he wants to know how close he
    came to hitting.

    It might help put the entire question of resolution mechanics in
    perspective by imagining that a character runs, perhaps fleeing from an
    attacker. The gamist wants to know whether he ran fast enough. The
    narrativist wants to know how running mattered. The simulationist wants
    to know how fast he ran. Although in a sense, all three are concerned
    about escaping the adversary, they view this in different ways.

     Credibility Distribution

    Before anything can be said about credibility distribution, some
    explanation of what this means is important.

    In roleplaying theory, it is recognized that there is within the game a
    shared imagined reality in which actions occur. Players, including the
    referee, contribute to the content of this reality through statements
    made to each other. These statements amount to, "This is what I want to
    have happen in our shared imagined world."

    Of course, player statements may be contradictory; after all, players
    have different aims. Bob's character and Bill's character might get into
    a fight, and Bob might say that his character hits Bill's in the nose,
    to which Bill answers that his character ducks that punch and knocks
    Bob's to the floor. Now we need to know what actually happens in our
    shared imaginative space, or we're no longer imagining the same reality.
    Game systems must apportion credibility to address these issues.
    Credibility is the degree to which any person at the table has the power
    to define what is happening in the shared space.

    You might think that in traditional games, only the referee has
    credibility. That is incorrect. All players have a measured amount of
    credibility. The referee rarely is able to say what actions any player's
    character would take--only whether he succeeded in that action. Thus
    non-referee players have credibility, too, even in such games, as they
    get to state what their characters attempt. Credibility means someone
    gets to decide what rules apply to the situation, when resolution
    mechanics are used, what the dice mean, and ultimately what happens in
    the shared space; it also means stating what actions characters are
    attempting, what they are saying to each other, and how they are
    reacting. Credibility is always shared. The issue is how it is shared.

    This is sometimes confused with something called narration rights, that
    is, who gets to describe the scene. There is some connection between the
    two, but it is not absolute. For example, a game could state that each
    player at the table is allowed to contribute one fact which must be
    included in the outcome of the event, and then the player who has the
    narration rights must state what happened in such a manner that all of
    these facts are included. He himself might not have determined anything
    that happened despite narrating all of it. In most instances, narration
    rights include credibility; yet even in games which pass narration
    rights around, it may be the case that the referee can veto something
    stated in the narration if it goes counter to something known to him but
    not revealed to the players.

    Gamist play is best supported in most cases by narrowly and clearly
    delineated credibility. Because the point of play is to overcome the
    challenge, it is not usually effective for the player facing the
    challenge to decide that he was successful. Since it is also possible
    that the players may find themselves in competition, it would be equally
    problematic for that decision to be made by a potentially opposing
    player. It is important to gamist play that credibility be clearly
    distributed, and that the player who determines the outcome does not
    himself have a stake in the outcome. This is why traditional games
    placed this power with the referee. He was viewed as the neutral
    arbiter, and as long as the players trusted his neutrality he could
    determine what occurred in the game world without problem. It is not
    impossible to eliminate the role of the referee from gamist play, but to
    do so the design must clearly establish who has credibility under each
    circumstance, so that disputes do not occur over success and failure.
    Too much player credibility can actually thwart gamist play preferences,
    since a player who can merely decide his character has been successful
    has lost all sense that there was any challenge to the victory.

    This does not mean that players cannot be given credibility beyond the
    control of their character actions. The credibility to add color and
    detail to a scene are not contrary to gamist concerns. What matters is
    that such credibility cannot provide ways to eliminate the challenge
    itself. As one of my sons observed, you can't give the gamist player the
    power to invent a plus four sword lying on the table within reach and
    expect the game to be functional at a gamist level. The challenge must
    be maintained.

    Narrativism usually requires more credibility in the hands of the
    players. Players are not competing with each other nor trying to beat
    the game, so giving them credibility is not detrimental to play in the
    same way it tends to be for gamist play. Rather, players need to be
    empowered to address the theme. Director stance, that is, the ability
    for the character players to add elements to the setting and events on
    the fly, is not uncommon in narrativist play. It is not essential to it,
    but works better with it than it does with the other preferences.
    Severely restricting credibility tends to stifle narrativist play, as it
    takes from the players their ability to make the statements they wish to
    make.

    It is much more difficult to address credibility distribution in
    simulationism. What matters here is the verisimilitude and consistency
    of the shared imagined reality; that is, all players must see the same
    thing and believe it. This does not preclude broadly shared credibility;
    it does require a solid agreement on the nature of the reality. If we're
    playing in a medieval fantasy world, exploring an abandoned castle, a
    player given credibility could announce that he saw objects on a table,
    and describe the objects he saw. As long as those objects do not upset
    the agreed nature of the reality, such credibility is not problematic.
    Thus it is evident that the objects could include bottles and lamps,
    perhaps swords and daggers, possibly jewelry, all things which would
    typically be found on such tables. Were the player to describe seeing
    laser guns or kinetic blasters there, this would clearly violate the
    agreed reality, and his credibility would cease at that moment. However,
    there are difficult cases here. The player might describe finding the
    famed lost jewel of Prince Balthazzar, or opening a bottle to release a
    djinni, or discovering a scroll with a map to a hidden treasure. These,
    too, are all plausible within the setting, but may be stretching the
    credibility of the player. For this reason, it is more common for
    simulationist games to prefer narrower credibility for the players and
    broader credibility for the referee. It is not a necessary arrangement,
    but it does tend to support simulationism better.

    Again, credibility distribution does not determine the sort of play that
    will occur in itself; it tends to support different preferences when
    configured different ways, and thought should be given to the amount of
    credibility players should have to facilitate reaching their goals.

     Advancement

    It must be asked whether it is necessary for characters to improve
    during play; the answer is that this is never necessary. It is not
    necessary for simulationist play, certainly not for narrativist play,
    and surprisingly not for gamist play. However, it is often desirable in
    each mode that characters have the power to improve and advance in some
    sense. The more significant question is, in what sense can the character
    advance?

    Most of us are conditioned to think of character advancement or
    improvement in strictly gamist terms: a character advances by getting
    better at what he does. That is, his ability to face the challenges
    increases. That there could be character advancement that has nothing
    whatever to do with this is surprising to many players. Yet
    consideration of this mode of improvement should give us some clues
    regarding how to improve characters for simulationist and narrativist
    play.

    In discussing character generation, it was recognized that the character
    was a tool which the player used to achieve goals. Improving a character
    means making it into a better tool. Thus if a starting character in a
    gamist game is a rubber mallet, improvement might take it through stages
    of being a tack hammer, claw hammer, ball peen hammer, sledge hammer,
    jack hammer, and ultimately pile driver. That is, the character gets
    more effective at meeting the challenge, because it is a tool designed
    to meet challenges.

    If we consider the function of the narrativist character, we find that
    it exists to enable the player to address the theme, and as such it has
    to be tied in to the issues of play. Improving the character means
    connecting it more deeply or in new ways with the theme. It can mean
    deeper commitments, stronger relationships, more determined moral
    positions; it could also mean greater conflicts, increased doubts, more
    personal connections. In a game exploring issues of sexual identity, a
    character who has always decried homosexuality as a moral perversion
    could be advanced by the discovery that his best friend is homosexual,
    creating a tension between his friendship and his beliefs. It's not
    impossible for narrativist characters to get better at things they do,
    but it is far more supportive of narrativist play for them to advance by
    becoming more integrated into the issues. The tool that started as a pen
    has advanced to becoming a word processor: it is now able to address the
    issues at new levels and in more facets.

    Since simulationist play is about exploring the imagined reality,
    character advancement is best if it enhances that ability to explore.
    Our magnifying glass gradually advances to an electron microscope; our
    field glasses to become the Hubble telescope. The particulars of how
    this works are greatly dependent on what the game is exploring. If the
    exploration is of a physical world, greater mobility within that world
    is the logical route to improvement. Given exploration of a complex
    society, increased contacts and exposure within the society provide the
    answer. Exploration of historic or fictional events requires greater
    access to the events. Combat effectiveness or skill improvement can be
    simulationist if these empower the player to explore more difficult or
    dangerous areas of the game world. The variety of possibilities makes it
    difficult to be specific, but the answer in any situation is found the
    same way: identify what the tool facilitates, and how to make it
    facilitate this more effectively. One thing that is consistent across
    simulationist play in this area is that character advancement, like
    everything else, must mesh with the in-game reality. A character
    exploring the setting by working as a local reporter can advance through
    being assigned to a larger beat, but only if it makes sense in the
    context of the world that this character would receive that assignment.

    Again, it is not necessary in any style of play for characters to
    improve or advance. Gamist play can be about beating increasingly
    difficult opponents with the same resources with which you started.
    Narrativist play can interact with the world through a static character.
    Simulationist play can be limited to that which the character can
    access. All play styles can be enhanced by the ability to improve and
    advance characters within their own terms. More importantly, if a game
    design provides character advancement options, these will influence the
    way in which players approach the game.

     Rewards

    I have written elsewhere of rewards systems, and the necessity that they
    be two-pronged. I first considered the issue on the forums at The Forge,
    and later contributed a brief statement on it to RoleplayingTips.com.
    The clearest and most complete statement on the subject is in the
    aptly-named [14]Game Ideas Unlimited: Rewards; but as that is for Gaming
    Outpost subscribers only I'll recap some of it here.

    There are two aspects to rewards systems, both equally important. Many
    designers fail to realize this, and so design rewards systems that are
    internally conflicted--they encourage opposing play priorities.

    There is a clear example of this found in examining the popular
    experience points systems of games in which you kill monsters and get
    treasure, which gives you points, which raises your character level or
    skills, which makes you better able to kill monsters and get treasure.
    This is a coherent gamist rewards system: everything in it is geared to
    encourage the process of killing monsters and getting treasure, that is,
    overcoming the challenges of the game. It is a system that does not need
    repair, because it works extremely well at doing what it is supposed to
    do.

    However, there are many referees who don't like what it does. They think
    it encourages players to focus on killing monsters and getting treasure
    (which is correct, because that's exactly what it's supposed to do).
    They don't want that to be the focus of the game; they want to encourage
    role playing, or character development, or dialogue, or helping people,
    or any of uncounted other roleplay preferences. So they strip away at
    least some of the points gained for killing monsters and getting
    treasure, and instead give them for performing the desired conduct,
    whatever it is. Now a player character gains experience points by
    helping the poor, or pursuing his private hobbies; these points increase
    his level--which makes him better at killing monsters and getting
    treasure. The rewards are now given for one sort of play, but they still
    facilitate the other.

    It's not necessary to have a rewards system in a game. Stripped of such
    artificial rewards, many players will discover that play is its own
    reward. After all, players play because they enjoy the game. They enjoy
    different aspects of the game, but whatever it is that they enjoy is
    inherent in the play itself. Rewards systems, in the main, are icing on
    the cake. Done right, they encourage the desired form of play. Done
    wrong, they can clash horribly with the entire game.

    Thus when you design a rewards system, you need to look at both sides of
    it. What does this reward, that is, what does a player have to do to
    receive the reward? Winning, exploring the theme, and discovering the
    world are all goals and in a sense rewarding conduct; if you wish to
    encourage one of those, that is what you reward. You must then also ask
    what the reward facilitates. Does it make the character more powerful,
    give the player greater ability to address the theme, open up new areas
    of exploration?

    Rewards systems, when they exist, are usually tied into character
    improvement. Thus if you've solved the one you've often solved at least
    part of the other. It need not be that way; you can provide rewards that
    advance player goals in one fashion and advancement that does so in
    another. For example, you could have a gamist game in which character
    advancement was built on improving skills by use, such that each time
    the player brought a particular skill into play in a significant way he
    received credit toward improving that skill. Independent of that, you
    could reward gamist play with success points, a small pool of points or
    dice on which the player could draw when he wished to improve his odds
    against a more daunting challenge or in a moment when success was more
    important. Rewards do not have to be tied to character improvement, even
    if character improvement is well designed for the goals of the game.
    Games with no character improvement at all may still have effective and
    functional rewards systems which facilitate the desired mode of play.

     Conclusion

    With sufficient consideration to what a game is trying to achieve, GNS
    theory can be very instructive in how best to achieve it. It does not
    dictate solutions to all of the questions that a designer must ask, but
    it does inform him of questions he needs to address which he might
    otherwise miss.

    In examining character generation, resolution mechanics, credibility
    distribution, advancement, and rewards, it was shown that there were
    some ways in which GNS theory could point us to the best solutions for
    the type of game we sought to build. It is clear that at times designers
    are asking the wrong questions in these areas, because some of the
    things which we expect would matter are not relevant, but others that we
    often overlook are significant.

    Although these five areas of game design are a significant portion of
    most games, they are not a complete consideration of all the areas which
    matter in all games. It is hoped that the consideration of these areas
    will not merely help the designer see that GNS can provide guidance on
    these game design issues, but also enable him to find the right
    questions and answers in areas not covered here.

    I look forward to seeing the application of the theory to more games in
    the future.

    M. Joseph Young is co-creator of the [15]Multiverser role playing game
    and author or co-author of its various supplements. His Internet
    writings are [16]indexed for convenience. He is available to discuss
    these ideas through the Forge forums and by e-mail.

    The author wishes to thank Ron Edwards, Mike Holmes, Clinton Nixon, Ryan
    Young, Fang Langford, and Ralph Mazza for their editorial suggestions on
    the draft of this article. To recognize all those whose contributions
    were made through discussions on the forums of this site and others
    would require a separate article; please accept my thanks.

    Similarly, there have been uncounted forum posts here and elsewhere that
    have contributed to the author's understanding of these issues. It has
    been wisely suggested that at least some of these be linked; alas, there
    are again more than can be acknowledged. Two stand out, however, as
    expanding on specific areas covered in the article, and in both of them
    the author here has made comments there which he hopes are of value. The
    concept of credibility appears to have been introduced by Vincent in
    [17]Vincent's Standard Rant: Power, Credibility, and Assent; this
    author's comments on the top of the [18]second page and near the bottom
    of the [19]third page may be helpful in elucidating the use of
    Credibility in this context, and there is much on the thread that is
    useful. It appears that the earliest suggestion of the two pronged
    nature of reward systems was in this author's post, the second, in
    [20]GNS and Player Rewards. The post illustrates by examples that games
    do not need reward mechanics for players to be rewarded, as play can and
    is often its own reward.
    The Forge created and administrated by [21]Clinton R. Nixon and [22]Ron
    Edwards.
    All articles, reviews, and posts on this site are copyright their
    designated author.

References

   Visible links
   1. file:///
   2. file:///about/
   3. file:///donate.php
   4. file:///articles/
   5. file:///reviews/
   6. file:///resources/
   7. file:///
   8. mailto:BestRPGis@multiverser.com
   9. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/11/
  10. http://www.gamingoutpost.com/
  11. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/
  12. http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=71050&publisherid=54849
  13. http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=71772&publisherid=54849
  14. http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=71532&publisherid=54849
  15. http://www.multiverser.com/
  16. http://www.mjyoung.net/writings.htm
  17. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3701
  18. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3701&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
  19. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3701&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30
  20. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4075
  21. mailto:webmaster@indie-rpgs.com
  22. mailto:sorcerer@sorcerer-rpg.com