Player Motivations

 I had a breakthrough:

To recap, from There are only three gaming cultures, I stated that there are wargamers (simulationists), powergamers (min-maxxers), and storygamers (theater kids).  Now, this is in specific reference to the players, not the games themselves.  In this way, my theory differs from GNS theory which states there are three types of games (gamist, narrativist, simulationist).

I was reading a post by B/X Blackrazor, where he was saying how, for himself and the people he played with (back in the day), the rules were the point.  This made me think: could the same be said for all wargamers?

The answer to this, is yes. Why?  Aside from the evidences provided in Blackrazor's own post, I can also point to the Arduin grimoires, which contain seemingly nothing other than rules for the sake of rules.  As well, there is my own experimentation, a ~140 page document of just rule changes that I am constantly tweaking and changing.

This leads directly to another question: is there then not a different set of observations to be made about powergamers and storygamers, once again, I posit yes:

Wargamers are motivated to play for the rules themselves.

Powergamers are motivated to play in order to make their characters more powerful.

Storygamers are motivated to play by the unfolding of the narrative of the world/setting.

 (It should be noted that there is a fourth category of player, who is unmotivated by anything, and doesn't really want to play the game, so much as hang out with friends, but these can be discounted entirely as not being players.)

 

Notice how none of these are exclusive of one another, nor are they indicative of separate systems.  Indeed, I would argue that AD&D had all three of these motivations built into a unified rule-set.

In other words, all the players could be doing exactly the same thing, all while motivated for completely different reasons.  And it worked, like that, until it didn't.

 

The problems started with AD&D 2e, it simplified the rules of 1e, but was still compatible enough that these simplifications could be seen as optional.  D&D 3e/3.5e simplified the rules further (5 saves to 3, no rules for dungeon crawling, mass combat, or domain play), D&D 4e basically removed all detailed systems from the game except for combat, and 5e reduced the complexity of even that, and now, with the most modern set of rules, 'milestone' XP is the standard.

It has become a game that can only motivate storygamers.  And are any of the other hyper-simple games any better? (this is essentially a point taken from Blackrazor)

Pure wargames like W40k cannot motivate storygamers, games like Draw Steel and D&D 5e cannot motivate wargamers, and games like D&D 5.5e and Daggerheart cannot motivate powergamers.

These are only recent and high-profile examples, but the observations hold.

Shadowdark seems to be the absolute minimum that you can have and still motivate all three types of players.

I would argue, then, that ACKSII is one of the only TTRPGs in the last 30 some odd years to fulfill, maximally, every type of motivation:

-It has plenty of rules, and so motivates the wargamer.

-It has a number of systems by which a player may increase the power level of his character, and so motivates the powergamer.

-It places great emphasis on the continuity and verisimilitude of the world, as well as strict time-keeping, and so motivates the storygamer. 

 

Finally, I have a theory, which is a bit shaky:

When DMs/referees run a game, they tend to preference one of the three playstyles listed above, with the worst of these behaviors driving players of other playstyles away.

I believe that it is this process which created such divisions as TTRPGs divided themselves into, divisions stark enough to spawn the GNS theory, in order to categorize them.

 

The conclusion to all this, is that, if you want a game like what you had in the 80s, it cannot be done by focusing on only a single type of player, but rather, by incorporating each kind of motivation into your rules.