The 'Four Humors' Theory of TTRPG Players

The Angry GM recently published an article about the distinct ways in which players play RPGs, with the specific example of D&D.

He mentioned in particular the rise, or increase, of an attitude towards the game as an intrinsically theatrical activity, adding that to the old GNS classification:

Some players see D&D as a Game. They think it’s about overcoming obstacles, winning adventures, accomplishing goals, and advancing characters.

Some players see D&D as a Narrative. They think it’s about telling a story of fantasy adventure and they want to share the most interesting story possible.

Some players see D&D as a Simulation. They think it’s about entering a world as a character and dealing with it as it is. Whatever happens happens.

And now, some players see D&D as a Performance. They think it’s about putting on a show. They have a role to play and they’ve got to play it to the hilt. In the most interesting and engaging way possible.

It's a good article, worth checking out. While reading, it occurred to me that we could treat GNS Theory as just a way to describe some of the emergent properties of a simple pair of dichotomies, along the lines of another well-respected and evidence-based organisational schema, that of the humoral theory of human health.

Take all of this very seriously please.

A simple pair of dichotomies

Somebody is playing a tabletop role-playing game. They are engaging with an activity, making decisions, thinking about what they are doing. The act of play is, ultimately, a realisation of the act of thought. What is the player spending most of their brainpower thinking about?

There are two dichotomies here.

1. Is the player thinking mostly about their real world environment (the people they are playing with, the game rules, the miniatures, the side conversations)? Or are they thinking mostly about the fictive setting? Or something in between?
2. Is the player thinking mostly in an inward-looking away, about themself and what is theirs or squarely within their purview? Or are they thinking mostly in an outward-looking way, about things around them and outside of their control? Or something in between?

We can put this on a pair of axes, as in this professionally-drawn image.

And now a picture emerges, of what GNS+P is describing, but defined in terms of these innate characteristics of human thought: wet, dry, hot, and cold fictive, reality, inward-looking, and outward-looking.

 

These of course are what modern medicine ludology teaches us are the fundamental building blocks of blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile different ways to engage with a role-playing game.

GNS+P Theory doesn't map precisely to the four resulting quadrants, of course. There's some interplay and outliers. We have debatable blobs, not square pigeonholes.

Let's break this exciting new bit of science down.

Yellow bile 'TTRPG as Game'

Temperament: choleric (ambitious, driven, aggressive)

What is a Gamist player thinking about?

Their thoughts tend to be INWARD-LOOKING: upon their own (and usually necessarily, the group's) ability to win; to this end they channel attention into their own player skill, their own knowledge of the rules, and making decisions about their own character's capabilities.

Their thoughts typically tend towards REALITY: the nature of the game and how to win it, the rules and mechanics, win and lose conditions, and how to get other players to go along with their plans. But they do still focus some of their attention on parts of the fictive environment: the obstacles to winning that their character encounters, and the mechanical ways they can get advantages with their character (in particular, advancement). The yellow blob in the diagram therefore stretches away towards the left.

To put it another way, Gamists have an excess of yellow bile.

Black bile 'TTRPG as Narrative'

Temperament: melancholic (sad, delusional, deep in fantasy)

What is a Narrativist player thinking about?

Their thoughts tend to be OUTWARD-LOOKING: towards the group having a satisfying play experience and how the game's play will become a story after the fact. At times, they may care more about their own enjoyment of the game-as-story, thus leaning towards the inwards-looking position.

Their thoughts tend towards REALITY: making decisions for the good of the players' play experience, the emergent story, and what will be 'interesting'. If they care about the game rules, it is in case those become an impediment to higher-order goals. (The Narrativist's thoughts may also drive towards a story with verisimilitude and/or immersion, creeping towards engagement with the fictive environment.)

To put it terms we can all understand, Narrativists may have an excess of black bile.

Phlegm 'TTRPG as Simulation'

Temperament: phlegmatic (calm, reserved, analytical)

What is a Simulationist player thinking about?

Their thoughts tend to be OUTWARD-LOOKING: at the world around their character, and at things they don't already know. They want to discover things about the fictive world and see how they mesh together, and inwards things like their knowledge of the rules and their character are mostly ancillary to that. But the act of engagement still requires making plausible decisions about the character, and the Simulationist does typically spend some attention on their character's place within the world (thus, the blue blob on the chart reaches upward).

The Simulationist's thoughts are almost strictly FICTIVE: They care most about the world they are playing in. The game's rules are meant to simulate a world, the GM is the arbiter of those rules, and the outcome of those rules is to be accepted and examined, never challenged or overruled for the sake of higher-order player/GM goals.

So of course, Simulationists have an excess of phlegm.

Blood 'TTRPG as Performance'

Temperament: sanguine (passionate, mirthful, self-indulgent)

The Angry GM suggested 'Performance' as a new and increasingly popular playstyle category, characterised by (amongst other things) creating

characters with clearly defined motivations, personalities, beliefs, goals, and fears right from the get-go. Their character’s character doesn’t emerge from gameplay and it doesn’t change as the game plays out.

What is a Performer player thinking about?

 

Their thoughts are ultimately INWARD-LOOKING: Most of all, they care about their own character, deciding its intrinsic properties, and then getting across those preselected properties.

Their thoughts are largely on the FICTIVE: How to affect the fictive world by determining a tiny part of it; looking for opportunities in the world to accomplish their secondary goal of expression. External things like 'the game rules' and 'the other players' don't impact this very much for trad RPGs.

Or as we normal, modern people would definitely say in normal, modern terms, "Performers have an excess of blood".

I put something weird on that chart, though.

 Entertainer island

I think there's a little outcrop of the Performative playstyle occupying the diametrically opposite position.

A player can start with a solid foundation of hot, wet inward, fictive humors. That is, they have a firmly imagined static character with predetermined characteristics and sometimes even an intention to pursue a 'character arc', whatever on earth that means when you're (a) playing a game that (b) involves, at its most fundamental level, making decisions about situations that you have no foreknowledge of.

But with those humors as a firm foundation, most of the player's attention is freed up to focus on the actual performative act, which is ultimately outward-looking in reality (given that it is a process of interaction with an audience). With this inversion of the expression of their bodily gameplay humors, the Performer is now thinking primarily about the theatrical entertainment of the other players / the GM / their Twitch audience / passersby in the real world. When taken to excess, to the game's detriment.

Balancing the humors

So it seems likely that people can have a predisposition towards certain humors, and we might or might not regard this as an imbalance of humors.

What are the implications? Let's sketch just a few, presupposing (naturally) that two thousand years of high-quality humoral medicine can be extended to the modern environment of the game table.

• A player who is desirous of a more neutral or 'balanced' playstyle may examine the degrees to which they are inward- or outward-looking, in the fictive world or reality, and deliberately change their behaviours accordingly.
• If the players and the GM at a table all have a similar humoral temperament, then we would expect their games to run well if they indulge in that temperament, although players of a different style would scarcely recognise the game they were playing!
• In rare circumstances where the group dynamics are just right, players of completely opposite humoral temperaments may 'cancel out' at the table due to the ways they use and express those temperaments, resulting in (against the odds) a harmonious, near-maximally-enjoyable game.
• Obviously, players may be able to select the right foods and drinks to modulate any excess of humors. By careful review of TTRPG play I have discerned some of the modern-day nostrums: pizza (hot + dry); coffee (hot + wet); soda (cold + wet); chips (cold + dry).

Science marches ever onwards.

Players not engaging

It's game time and the players are just sitting there spinning their wheels. They plan and what-if and weigh their odds and bicker in and out of character. Yeah, it's one of those sessions.

 What's happened?

1. The players might have insufficient information to make a decision. They may have forgotten some information. Perhaps one of your hints was inscrutable. The players might not see how some information they have aligns with one of their objectives.
   
2. The player characters might have unclear goals or clashing goals, or there might be disagreement in the group about which goal to pursue (due to differences in PC preference or differences in reasoning). They might be unclear about which goals should be prioritised above which others.
3. The players might have a real-life moral dilemma about acting to achieve in-character goals that don't align well with their own ideals, and are tip-toeing around having to confront that. This is a huge issue and is best served by halting the session to have the conversation.
4. You might have forgotten to give the player characters time pressure and stakes. There's a particular kind of malaise that can occur when you're using a subjective (or just subjective-feeling) experience/advancement system ('milestone' or 'narrative' or 'chapter' advancement) and you don't have a setting with big obvious time limits or opportunity costs or wandering damage. A feeling that the positive and negative consequences of action and inaction are all vague and distant can transition into a feeling that action and inaction don't really matter.
5. The players might be dreading that the wrong choice will endanger their PCs. This is a different way there can be a lack of motivation towards action over inaction. In this case, you've done such a good job as a GM getting the players invested in their characters and feeling the world has big dangerous stakes that they've become paralysed with indecision. Good work, bad outcome. I'm quite sad that I've never achieved this one. Probably the best way to coax things towards action is to remind them of how the world is ticking on in the background without them.
6. The players might be under the misapprehension that the GM should be deciding things for them. Apparently this can happen with novice players and/or due to 'learned helplessness' in the wake of unpleasantly railroady GM-ing. This is another huge issue where your best bet is to call a halt and discuss the problem in an understanding but matter-of-fact way.
7. The players might be too overloaded with information to make a good decision.

That last one's a joke. It might be possible to give the players 'too much' information but I've never seen it done (or even heard it complained about).

There are orthogonal mistakes, of course: giving the players too much false information from bad sources, giving the players too little likely-immediately-meaningful information, obfuscating information excessively, giving the players information in ways that makes it seem irrelevant, giving the players information that makes them regret their goals and objectives, giving the players information too fast for them to digest or note down, giving the players information after establishing a GM style in which nothing they learn ever really matters, etc.

Manage information to avoid a 'players not engaging' session

I have two tips here.

First

Establish PC goals early. Always summarise PC goals at the start of a session along with information you know they have which is likely to be relevant to those goals (and other key information). Constantly restate PC goals and key information during play, if even a glimmer of an opportunity presents itself. It's hard to overdo this. Remind PCs of their character motivations if those are substantially different from their immediate and long-term goals.

When the player (character)s acquire new information, try to frame it in terms of PC goals and other key information they already have, so that it slots neatly into their mental framework.

Second

When you're handing out any kind of information "X" via narration, you might have a tendency to hedge or use filler words. You absolutely must learn to overcome this. Cut out any qualifying language like this:

• "I guess it makes sense that X"
• "it's sort of X"
• "I suppose X would"
• "it's kind of... you know, X"
  
• "you think that maybe X"
• "[sigh and grimace] well... X"
• "Y! ...No, well actually, X"
  

Phrasing things this way undermines a player's trust in the quality, validity, and importance of the information content! It conveys, consciously or unconsciously, that the GM is uncertain about what's true in the world. It also conveys that the information wasn't important enough to pre-determine. And it conveys that the information wasn't connected enough to other things in the world for there to be an obvious answer.

Brains can only pay attention to so much, and are constantly filtering information into buckets based on its perceived usefulness. Hedging/filling will get information filtered disproportionately into the mental bucket with 'discard immediately' written on it.

The solution is just a matter of practice. Learn to pause and work out exactly what you want to say, then give a precise, confident, unambiguous answer. Even after a long pause you'll be much more likely to get information to stick in the players' heads.