Images of the Three-Way Tension (Part 1)
The last bit of this descriptive stage for the three-way tension theory pulls the concept into a more graphical format so that readers can observe the concept from a visual perspective. I'm doing this because I'm more of a graphical/visual thinker, and because sometime text can be a bit dry.
Let's look at what we've discussed so far...
The whole things fits onto a triangular grid.
We can probably break down the types of games into that grid. Of course there's going to be debates over the labelling of the types of games, because if there's one thing we always debate about in game design circles, it's terminology, but bear with me for the moment...
GM/Narrators (I really should find a better single-word descriptor here) may aim to facilitate a game, tell a story with their players, provide an immersive setting experience, or some combination of the three.
Players may be looking to complete the session by winning it (or at least ending up with characters in a better state than when they started), by telling a story that is worth retelling at a later time, or by escaping into a fantasy that lets them experience a world different from their everyday world.
Rule systems may provide a foundation for any one of these (ludonarrative synergy)... or may claim to support a style of play while actively hindering it (ludonarrative dissonance).
I haven't really explored it much in this series of posts, but let's look at the rules
I did a post years ago, I can't remember the specific date, and as I'm writing this I can't even remember the year but it has to be 15 or more years ago. The general gist of the post said that you can tell what a game is aiming toward based on the number of pages it dedicates to certain elements of play. If the majority of the pages are dedicated to a combat resolution system, then it's probably safe to say that it's a combat game and therefore sits pretty firmly in what I've described as the "gamist" camp. Such a game would be all about the competition between players, and between the group versus the monsters they might encounter. It doesn't deviate much from that if the page-count of the game is focused on conflict resolution, task resolution, a magic system, or minutiae of how the systems work. The more non-diegetic rules there are, the more regulated the gameplay becomes (especially if played "rules-as-written"). However, if the game has a lot more setting description, and rich lore that governs the way interaction might happen within the unfolding story, things like factions and they way they feel about each other, descriptions of places and people, then it leans more into the "simulationist" camp. Sets of rules that lean into the idea of forcing interesting and dramatic character choices push further toward the "narrativist". More complex character generation systems can go any way, depending on what they reveal about the characters being built...better and more complex ways to manipulate the session around them might be "gamist", more integration with the setting through a life-path system might be more "simulationist", and more goals or decisions to make might be more "narrativist". Minimalist game systems rely on the GM/Narrator and the players bringing more to the table, they aren't inherently one style or another, they just tend to exert less tension on the session. Conversely, heavy rule systems exert more tension on the session, and can tend toward more "gamist" styles of play because of the more extensive coverage of situations in the rules.
Some groups may take a set of rules and twist it's agenda by adding secondary source material as inspiration. They may say "this will be played in the Sengoku era of Japan", "this is set in a world that looks just like our own", or may even get more specific with "We will be playing Robin Hood and his merry men". Each of these adds new restrictions to what can or can't be encountered in the session. Pulling toward a more "simulationist" agenda, because the specified setting gains importance through stronger diegetic rules. This also factors in the idea that the more structured the rules and setting are, the more restrictions are imposed on the possible storytelling. That all works with the idea of the tension, so no prob;ems with the theory from that perspective.
(Remember that this whole thing is just my theory of how TTRPG sessions work, based on the ideas of many folks who've come before and have proposed their own theories, along with my own studies into linguistics and sociology.)
Comments
I generally agree with you, but for one detail: "If the majority of the pages are dedicated to a combat resolution system, then it's probably safe to say that it's a combat game and therefore sits pretty firmly in what I've described as the "gamist" camp."
My game strays nowhere near that point of the triangle, and yet the majority of rules (by page count and complexity, not by amount) have to do with combat. That is, however, because it's firmly in the simulationist camp, and that's a common trend with many other (older) games, like GURPs or The Riddle of Steel, who want to give a very specific experience with combat that has nothing to do with Gamism. On the other hand, a lot of games nowadays don't have nearly as many combat rules (mostly because people aren't into reading...) and yet are firmly entrenched in Gamism *exactly* because of the way they treat combat.
P.S. A more weird nitpick, but for "Costume LARP with no Contact rules" I would probably put "with no contact and also no rules", as there are some very game-heavy parlor LARPs I've played.
"What's in the empty hexes?" I was seriously tossing up whether or not to write the types of games I'd encountered in every single hex...perhaps even naming specific games and suggesting where I think they might fit in the scheme of things. Everyone is going to have some different opinions of what goes where, so I figured I'd work in vague generalities to give an idea of the types of games I'd encountered and generally where I think they fit.
The "page count" metric was an early way of measuring games, it wasn't a perfect fit but generally worked as a starting point. There's always going to be a social element where the players ad GM pull their own tensions on the session based on how they interpret the game, or the types of session they are looking for. Some elements from Forge theory might still be useful for determining the agenda of the text (what does the game reward? how do those rewards manifest? etc..)
Arguably I can look at Cyberpunk 2020, where most of the page count is describing the world and the cybernetics, yet many treat is as a "low sci-fi combat game".
As for that final nit-pick, yeah, I'll accept that. I had some trouble trying to think of a good way to write the type of game I was thinking of here. I eventually settled on what I wrote, but I've definitely played in LARP sessions that are very competitive, even if that competition was more social and regimented along lines of diegetic etiquette rather than written mechanisms of play.