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Celebration is the core of one of the definitions for Simulationism within the GNS Model. This definition was suggested in August 2004 by Ron Edwards in a thread started by Ralph Mazza entitled "Narrativism: Not a Creative Agenda...", where he argued that player empowerment was a Technique and not truly a part of the Creative Agenda. As he writes: Simulationist play is defined by confirming one's input, via the output.
You're a Star Trek fan? OK, then, let's play Star Trek. Whatever the agreed-upon important input is, its effect during play is supposed to get us Star Trek.
That input might be the funny-physics of the show. Fine - we work out what those are (or read them in the sourcebook, whatever) and put them into action via System.
Or that input might be the distinctive character interactions or political tropes of the show. Fine - we dedicate ourselves to depicting and reinforcing those issues through what our characters do, which is also System.
Or ... and so on. Whatever angle you choose as the motor for input, i.e. processing through System, the output should confirm that this is, indeed, Star Trek. To play in this fashion is a celebration of Star Trek.
It is absolutely irrelevant to the general concept of Simulationism whether a story is produced or not. It is, however, very important in terms of an applied instance of Simulationism whether a story is taken as one of our going-in constraints.
For instance, one group might be more interested in "being kitty-people fighting with ray-guns" than in "doing Star Trek." Their play-experience and attention to "doing the story right" will be very different from that of the Star Trek fans. However, the guiding aesthetic is the same: agreed-upon input, processing, confirmatory output.
Narrativist play, like Gamist play, is not confirmatory of anything that "goes in." In Gamist play, play itself determines who wins or does best in terms of personal strategy and guts. Similarly, Narrativist play is that in which only play itself determines how Premise is transformed into Theme.
To clarify about Narrativist play, think in terms of any story created by any person or group in some familiar medium like movies or novels. It is absolutely irrefutable that at some point in time, there was no story of this particular sort (medium, presentation, details, etc). But at some point in the creative process, a story did indeed appear.
Whatever happens at that transition is what happens during Narrativist play. It cannot be agreed-upon beforehand, nor can it be imposed by a single person in an "ah-ha" sense upon the others during the process.
There are were a series of threads where this came out.
This is Ron's attempt at an explanation of how he views Simulationist play, from a thread start by Ralph/Valamir, "Narrativism: Not a Creative Agenda".
In a discussion on "What are we talking about when we say 'Creative Agenda'?", Ron cites the first post, saying "That's it, people. That's what Simulationist play is."
In a discussion on "Splitting Simulationism", Ron again cites the first post followed by a little more commentary and discussion. M. J. Young explained that he identified Simulationism instead by "curiosity toward discovery", echoing similar thoughts earlier by Ralph Mazza (aka Valamir).
Sean's commentary on Ron's second quoting of the definition.
In a thread on examples of "One True Way" affecting gaming, Christopher Kubasik describes a group which he played with who enjoyed emulating genre and pursued it as an exclusive goal, which convinced him to quit gaming for a while.
A summary of prior threads.
The following year, Ron elaborated further on another thread started by M.J. Young, entitled "Exploration Is *REALLY* King". As he expressed there, Just because the phrase "prioritized Exploration" seemed to make no sense as an explanatory device does not mean that we weren't trying to describe something real. All the stuff about celebration of source material (of which genre-focus is only one example) through confirmation of what we put in - that's just a better way to phrase it.
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