The roots of 4e exposed?

Tony Vargas said:

I think that attitude must have shifted. Suggestions for reskinning 5e around here go further than 4e ever did: Valor Bard for Warlord, GOO Warlock for Psion. Not without resistance from those that want the thing, naturally. Similarly, the only resistance to 3.x re-skinning of weapons I recall was bastard sword for katana - and quite a resistance it was!

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Rather, the need to pretend the arguments had anything to do with reskinning disappeared. 4e’s support of reskinning was never really the issue, it was just a justification for people to present their dislike of 4e as based on something objective. Now that 4e is dead, its detractors don’t have to pretend they had a problem with reskinning any more.

Charlaquin said:

. “Simulationism” became the stand-in for 3e and “gameism” and “narrativism” for 4e. Dark times indeed.

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To be fair, The Forge had come up with those terms years before, a continuation of the Three-fold Theory that arose out of the edition-war-like (actually Storyteller v D&D) Role v Roll debate.

Charlaquin said:

. “Simulationism” became the stand-in for 3e and “gameism” and “narrativism” for 4e. Dark times indeed.

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To be fair, The Forge had come up with those terms years before, a continuation of the Three-fold Theory that arose out of the edition-war-like (actually Storyteller v D&D) Role v Roll debate.

Charlaquin said:

Rather, the need to pretend the arguments had anything to do with reskinning disappeared. 4e’s support of reskinning was never really the issue, it was just a justification for people to present their dislike of 4e as based on something objective. Now that 4e is dead, its detractors don’t have to pretend they had a problem with reskinning any more.

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And plenty of that, too, sure.

".... first casualty of war" and all that.

Tony Vargas said:

To be fair, The Forge had come up with those terms years before, a continuation of the Three-fold Theory that arose out of the edition-war-like (actually Storyteller v D&D) Role v Roll debate.

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Of course, nobody actually uses those Forgite terms accurately anyway.

When people call 4E "gamist", for example, I can't help but laugh and roll my eyes. 4E is probably the version of DnD least suited to a Step On Up creative agenda. Meanwhile it maps to "simulationism" pretty cleanly with its fidelity to heroic fantasy genre emulation.

All of which ignores the fact that Forgite creative agendas refer to gameplay table experiences and not to actual game systems.

What a joke!

Tony Vargas said:

To be fair, The Forge had come up with those terms years before, a continuation of the Three-fold Theory that arose out of the edition-war-like (actually Storyteller v D&D) Role v Roll debate.

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Oh, absolutely. I didn’t mean to suggest that GNS and Threefold were invented for the purpose they were used for in the Edition war. They were preexisting concepts that got co-opted as euphemisms to disguise edition warring from the powers that be.

It is very funny to me now to look back on the d20 vs Storyteller/Roll vs. Role wars, as Storyteller falls far on what would be considered the Roll side these days.

heretic888 said:

Of course, nobody actually uses those Forgite terms accurately anyway.

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AFAICT from the way they get used, they mean something like:

Simulationism: An irrational, uncompromising, preference not for an actual simulation (like, say civil war re-enactment), but for bad games that are bad in the ways a game would have to become if it were adapted to function as a simulation, instead - even though the games in question simulate nothing.

Narrativism: the Role half if the Role not Roll debate, fanatically dedicated to the proposition that bad rules make good games, and that it is impossible to RP if you touch dice. If you must touch dice, their relationship to the all-important narrative should be as abstract & non-deterministic as possible.

Gameism: the Roll opposite of Narrativism, gameists are shunned and reviled for their bizarre expectation that any RPG, by virtue of the G, could in any way be held up to any standards of what makes a game any good at all. (And, if I could squeeze any more any's into that, I would.)


Obviously, I don't put much stock in the Forge, creative agendas, GNS, Threefold theory, or Roll v Role.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I didn't find 5e to be disgusting or unplayable or anything like that. It WORKS, within a certain set of parameters that includes doing more work as a DM than I really care for. It is also prone to a lot of DM foibles I suspect, though the one DM that ran it for us is not going to fall into too many bad habits. Anyway, it has some good design points too, just they would excite me if they were in the context of a refined 4e. I already played AD&D for 20 years, I just don't NEED a game which goes back there, even if it cleans up the mechanics a LOT.

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Not that I find 5e unplayable, but it doesn't suit my tastes. I like tactical game, so 4e is perfect in that regard. Games such as 13th Age are better suited for me than turning 5e playstyle to a tactical one. Is way too much work.

AbdulAlhazred said:

You're preaching to the choir on that one my friend. There are still a very substantial section of the D&D community who consider that to be anathema. Any suggestion that this was a feature of 4e back in the heyday of the Edition Wars was literally drummed off the forums. EnWorld is relatively well policed and you could almost discuss it here, but it definitely required a whole bunch of ignore list! On the WotC D&D forums it was absolutely impossible, any thread containing a suggestion of all but the most trivial reflavoring would get 100 hate posts per hour until it was locked. Some of the responses were pretty eye popping.

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I never really saw any real problem with reflavouring during the 4e era. I mean there are a few edge cases which could be abusive if a Player wanted to push it.

The latest edition of Gamma World used reflavouring even more then 4e did.

Tony Vargas said:

AFAICT from the way they get used, they mean something like:

Simulationism: An irrational, uncompromising, preference not for an actual simulation (like, say civil war re-enactment), but for bad games that are bad in the ways a game would have to become if it were adapted to function as a simulation, instead - even though the games in question simulate nothing.

Narrativism: the Role half if the Role not Roll debate, fanatically dedicated to the proposition that bad rules make good games, and that it is impossible to RP if you touch dice. If you must touch dice, their relationship to the all-important narrative should be as abstract & non-deterministic as possible.

Gameism: the Roll opposite of Narrativism, gameists are shunned and reviled for their bizarre expectation that any RPG, by virtue of the G, could in any way be held up to any standards of what makes a game any good at all. (And, if I could squeeze any more any's into that, I would.)

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Heh, nice. Here are the actual definitions courtesy of the Big Model wiki:

Gamism/Step On Up: http://big-model.info/w/index.php?title=Step_On_Up&redirect=no

Narrativism/Story Now: http://big-model.info/wiki/Story_now

Simulationism/Right To Dream: http://big-model.info/wiki/The_Right_To_Dream

Basically, in a nutshell, "Gamism" is about overcoming challenges and doing strategic play in a risk/reward style of game; "Narrativism" is about eschewing any kind of predetermined plot (think of it as the polar opposite of Railroading) and focusing play on visceral human issues like emotions, relationships, and moral dilemmas; and "Simulationism" is about exploring the features and themes of a setting or genre.

By these criteria, 4E is fairly difficult to do Gamist play compared to other versions of DnD because of its focus on encounter-based design and little in the way of long-term strategic planning (although there were modifications such as those of the Fourthcore communities that tried to focus the game more on Step On Up play); 4E can be tilted to Narrativist play with fairly little work through its reward cycles (Quest XP and Skill Challenge XP specifically), explicit allowance of player-authored content and "reskinning", and broader conflict resolution mechanics compared to other versions of DnD; and 4E is generally pretty well suited to Simulationist play with the explicit understanding that what it is attempting to "simulate" is the heroic fantasy genre, especially as represented through cinema.

Hilariously, this is the OPPOSITE of understanding of 4E in most of the internet, with the understanding that it is super-Gamist and anti-Simulationist. The irony of this is truly astounding and speaks to the general ignorance and misinformation inherent to such discussions.

Interestingly, in his most recent Phenomenology series Ron Edwards has actually dropped Right To Dream as a creative agenda (presumably because setting exploration is something that happens in ALL roleplaying games, regardless of creative agenda) and only currently recognizes Step On Up and Story Now.

Tony Vargas said:

Obviously, I don't put much stock in the Forge, creative agendas, GNS, Threefold theory, or Roll v Role.

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Sure, but the way the terms get bandied about has very little if anything to do with "the Forge, creative agendas, GNS, Threefold theory".

As one really good example of what I'm talking about, most of what gets passed off as "story-focused" or "story-oriented" play around these parts, and would probably get labelled as "narrativism" as a result, is pretty much GM-authored railroading plot --- and therefore the complete and polar opposite of Story Now play. So, for example, when the developers of 5E went around claiming it was more a more "story-focused game" or that "it was hard to find the story in 4E" they meant, respectively, that 5E is more amenable to railroaded GM plot and 4E made it more difficult to play in this way. What generally passes for "story" or "narrative" in popular RPG discussion is the GM's plot.

heretic888 said:

Heh, nice. Here are the actual definitions courtesy of the Big Model wiki:

Gamism/Step On Up: http://big-model.info/w/index.php?title=Step_On_Up&redirect=no

Narrativism/Story Now: http://big-model.info/wiki/Story_now

Simulationism/Right To Dream: http://big-model.info/wiki/The_Right_To_Dream

Basically, in a nutshell, "Gamism" is about overcoming challenges and doing strategic play in a risk/reward style of game; "Narrativism" is about eschewing any kind of predetermined plot (think of it as the polar opposite of Railroading) and focusing play on visceral human issues like emotions, relationships, and moral dilemmas; and "Simulationism" is about exploring the features and themes of a setting or genre.

By these criteria, 4E is fairly difficult to do Gamist play compared to other versions of DnD because of its focus on encounter-based design and little in the way of long-term strategic planning (although there were modifications such as those of the Fourthcore communities that tried to focus the game more on Step On Up play); 4E can be tilted to Narrativist play with fairly little work through its reward cycles (Quest XP and Skill Challenge XP specifically), explicit allowance of player-authored content and "reskinning", and broader conflict resolution mechanics compared to other versions of DnD; and 4E is generally pretty well suited to Simulationist play with the explicit understanding that what it is attempting to "simulate" is the heroic fantasy genre, especially as represented through cinema.

Hilariously, this is the OPPOSITE of understanding of 4E in most of the internet, with the understanding that it is super-Gamist and anti-Simulationist. The irony of this is truly astounding and speaks to the general ignorance and misinformation inherent to such discussions.

Interestingly, in his most recent Phenomenology series Ron Edwards has actually dropped Right To Dream as a creative agenda (presumably because setting exploration is something that happens in ALL roleplaying games, regardless of creative agenda) and only currently recognizes Step On Up and Story Now.

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It seems to be common for terms to change and even to take on an opposite meaning then the original term.

My favourite example is the term Decimate which originally meant to kill one out of ten soldiers but now is used as a description of killing a large proportion (maybe even 9 out of 10?) of people.

Sure, but the way the terms get bandied about has very little if anything to do with "the Forge, creative agendas, GNS, Threefold theory".

As one really good example of what I'm talking about, most of what gets passed off as "story-focused" or "story-oriented" play around these parts, and would probably get labelled as "narrativism" as a result, is pretty much GM-authored railroading plot --- and therefore the complete and polar opposite of Story Now play. So, for example, when the developers of 5E went around claiming it was more a more "story-focused game" or that "it was hard to find the story in 4E" they meant, respectively, that 5E is more amenable to railroaded GM plot and 4E made it more difficult to play in this way. What generally passes for "story" or "narrative" in popular RPG discussion is the GM's plot.

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Are you able to describe what makes 4e more or less railroady then other DnD games? I am just having trouble imagining how a 4e DM is less able to railroad (or not) then using other rules.