Player categorizations

Player and game categorizations are a special case of terminology that is invoked in many different contexts.

Why player categorizations suck

Many player categorizations are derived from categorizations of play experience, by assuming that for each type of play experience there is a category of player who enjoys it the most. This therefore feeds into the very negative assumption that these player categories should be used as the main method to balance play experience.

This is invalid in itself. For example, sushi is a category of food that I enjoy very much. Alcthough I could be categorized as a "Sushi eater", that category would not be exclusive, as I would be in many other categories too; nor can my enjoyment of a coming meal be calculated entirely by measuring the amount of sushi it contains. I could also be categorized as a "Hamburger eater", but this does not mean I would enjoy a meal of sushi and hamburgers.

Known categorizations

Blacow, 1980

(Aspects of Adventure Gaming, Glen Blacow, in Different Worlds #10, October 1980)

Blacow defined four categories based on game experience:

• Power Gaming: playing characters with power, often defined within the system.
• Role-playing: acting based on the character's personality and speaking in-character.
• Wargaming: solving tactical problems in competition with the GM.
• Story Telling: interacting with an ongoing changing world independant of the characters (this definition is unusual but is the one Blacow used).

Allston, 1988

(in Champions: Strike Force, 1988, later appeared in Champions 4th Edition)

Allston defined a number of player categorizations with reference to superhero gaming.

• The Builder: player who focuses on changing the ongoing world.
• The Buddy: player who attends primarily to be with a friend.
• The Combat Monster: player who is highly focused on combat. (Context note: HERO system's rules are highly focussed on tactical combat.)
• The Copier: player who wants to play as a character from other media (Context note: this originally related especially to superheroes.)
• The Genre Fiend: player who wants play to follow genre tropes (again, in this context probably relevant to superheroes)
• The Mad Slasher: player who kills everything available without regard to sense. (This would normally be considered disruptive.)
• The Mad Thinker: player who seeks clever solutions to problems and puzzles.
• The Plumber: creates characters with involved backstories and wants to explore them within the game plot.
• The Romantic: focuses on relationships and interaction between characters.
• The Rules Rapist: player who aggressively uses the rules to gain as much power as possible. Although highly inappropriate, this is the term Allston used; some modern lists change it to Rules Sea Lawyer. (Context note: HERO system's rules were known to be highly min-maxable.)
• The Showoff: seeks spotlight time for their own character, potentially at the expense of others. (This would normally be considered disruptive.)
• The Pro From Dover: wants their character to be the best in the world at some particular thing.
• The Tragedian: wants their character to experience, and play out, suffering.

GDS/GNS/Threefold Model (Kunher/Kim/Edwards?, 1999?)

The GDS or GNS model first appeared on the Usenet group rec.games.frp.advocacy. It appeared in the FAQ for that group for the first time in 1999 and has since been adopted by multiple authors, most notably Ron Edwards. It identifies three categories:

• Gamism which revolves around a gaming experience for the players at the table;
• Simulationism which is about maintaining a versimilitudinous fictional world;
• Narrativism which is about maintaining narrative properties and pace (originally called Dramatism).

Two categories were added later, although with less seriousness:

• Illusionism in which the players are aware that they have no freedom to control the story but role-play to make the known events appears to fit one;
• Cheetoism which corresponds to the casual gamer; reduced interest in any of the others.

Most original writings on the subject did not refer to these as player categorizations, but they were treated as such. They have been used as categorisations of systems, players, experiences, parts of players, agendas for GMs and players, and many things while remaining ill-defined; in addition, Edwards infamously referred to groups of players exposed to games which did not fit his model as "brain damaged" (although in later interviews he attempted to clarify this). As such this categorization is now widely considered to have collapsed into uselessness.

Laws, 2002

(in Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering, Robin D. Laws, SJG 2002)

Laws' categories were published in his book on GMing, and are now probably the best known categories. He cited Blacow, but not Allston.

• The Power Gamer: seeks out power and plays to gain further power.
• The Butt Kicker: wants to fight, but does not necessarily seek the optimal character for doing so.
• The Specialist: regularly plays a single character type and wants to experience that type's 'cool thing'.
• The Tactician: wants to apply problem solving to either active puzzles or tactical combat optimization.
• The Method Actor: wants to explore aspects of their character's personality.
• The Storyteller: wants the flow of events in the game to reflect properties of a good narrative, including pacing.
• The Casual Gamer: isn't that into the game and wants to hang out with the group.

The Specialist here is especially problematic, as it implies that if a player does not play the same character type regularly, they do not care about that character's standard cool behaviour.