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Simulationism vs. Trad
Nov. 10th, 2017 08:18 pmI had a realization today that not all simulationist games are trad games.
The term simulationist refers to one of the three genres developed by Ron Edwards, the man behind The Forge. Trad, on the other hand, has become more prevalent on Story Games. Of course it was always obvious if you cared to look, but I only discovered it after I started analyzing those two genres.
In a trad game the gamemaster (GM) makes the adventure and the players react to it. In a story game the players make the adventure and the GM reacts. Yes, there are exceptions, and the genres are quite a bit more involved than just that, but that's the main point. These two diverge in terms of their characters' sources of motivation.
Simulationist games are about exploration. This is contrasted with narrativist games, which focus upon a theme, and gamist games, which are about competition. These three diverge in terms of what sort of activities the characters engage in.
Note that none of these genres say anything about the age of the game, despite trad being short for traditional. If you really want to get into temporal arguments, try parsing whether 1st edition D&D is an example of the Old-School Renaissance genre. But this is just a digression.
Most trad games are also simulationist, but not all simulationist games are trad. Thus, while Dungeons & Dragons and Fiasco are both simulationist, D&D is trad, while Fiasco is a story game. Similarly, Over the Edge would be considered a trad game, but it was, at least initially, called a narrativist game. I'll have to think about whether it would still be considered a narrativist game under the more recent definitions.
Anyways, that realization put a real crimp in my dissertation plans, but it does make comparing much easier as I can describe two different games instead of one. I do, however, have to make sure that what I'm analyzing are actual trad and simulationist games. There's elements of narrativism in Call of Cthulhu (politeness) or Vampire (power), and Vampire, when played in live-action form, consists of mostly player-driven plots.
The term simulationist refers to one of the three genres developed by Ron Edwards, the man behind The Forge. Trad, on the other hand, has become more prevalent on Story Games. Of course it was always obvious if you cared to look, but I only discovered it after I started analyzing those two genres.
In a trad game the gamemaster (GM) makes the adventure and the players react to it. In a story game the players make the adventure and the GM reacts. Yes, there are exceptions, and the genres are quite a bit more involved than just that, but that's the main point. These two diverge in terms of their characters' sources of motivation.
Simulationist games are about exploration. This is contrasted with narrativist games, which focus upon a theme, and gamist games, which are about competition. These three diverge in terms of what sort of activities the characters engage in.
Note that none of these genres say anything about the age of the game, despite trad being short for traditional. If you really want to get into temporal arguments, try parsing whether 1st edition D&D is an example of the Old-School Renaissance genre. But this is just a digression.
Most trad games are also simulationist, but not all simulationist games are trad. Thus, while Dungeons & Dragons and Fiasco are both simulationist, D&D is trad, while Fiasco is a story game. Similarly, Over the Edge would be considered a trad game, but it was, at least initially, called a narrativist game. I'll have to think about whether it would still be considered a narrativist game under the more recent definitions.
Anyways, that realization put a real crimp in my dissertation plans, but it does make comparing much easier as I can describe two different games instead of one. I do, however, have to make sure that what I'm analyzing are actual trad and simulationist games. There's elements of narrativism in Call of Cthulhu (politeness) or Vampire (power), and Vampire, when played in live-action form, consists of mostly player-driven plots.