Long before RPG theorists talked about gamist, narrativist, and simulationist attitudes, there were typologies that sorted players by their interest in simulation, competition, and so on, even in the wargaming community before D&D. https://t.co/4ROc5PY2EL #dnd #rpg #theory pic.twitter.com/oJLNm5XiFw
— Jon Peterson (@docetist) January 11, 2021
Bouncing off this:
I feel very strongly that the Forge replacement of RGFA (USEnet era) “Dramatism” with it’s own “Narrativism” made it a markedly worse tool for understanding modern streaming play, which is very *much* a Dramatist undertaking. Would be interested to hear that fleshed out more.
— Jon Peterson (@docetist) January 12, 2021
Mostly I was reacting to the “Threefold became GNS bit” by grumping a bit, but happy to unpack!
Okay, so Threefold and GNS agendas obviously *did* connect that way, but. They differ first in that GNS agenda is theoretically a group construction, spoken or not, while 3fold (+)Could be group or individual.
So, going from that, Narrativism is a group aesthetic ideal of "We're making story together", while Dramatism is "I/we are playing as *performance.*"
(+)
— Levi Kornelsen (@levikornelsen) January 12, 2021
And modern streaming… Often isn’t collaborative story-making any more than any other roleplay, but it IS play as performance. I see your point. 1980 Blacow is very much on the "group" note, in the sense that he is talking about the forms that campaigns take, not individual player attitudes. Others quickly applied his model to players, and then systems, naturally.
— Jon Peterson (@docetist) January 12, 2021