The roots of 4e exposed?

pemerton · Jul 16, 2018

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.

Just as a point of intellectual history: you do realise, don't you, that The Forge is quite hostile to White Wolf/Storyteller, and largely indifferent to D&D but with a mild sympathy for its classic/OSR version.

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

For someone who gets worked up about what you see as falsehoods by critics of 4e, though, you don't hold back in posting nonsense about The Forge and the "threefold model".

Tony Vargas said:
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.

From "Simulationism: the Right to Dream":

However, contrary to some accusations, [simulationism is] not autistic or schizophrenic, being just as social and group-Premise as any other role-playing. The key issues are shared love of the source material and sincerity. Simulationism is sort of like Virtual Reality, but with the emphasis on the "V," because it clearly covers so many subjects. Perhaps it could be called V-Whatever rather than V-Reality. If the Whatever is a fine, cool thing, then it's fun to see fellow players imagine what you are imagining, and vice versa. (By "you" in that sentence, I am referring to anyone at the table, GM or player.) To the dedicated practitioner, such play is sincere to a degree that's lacking in heavy-metagame play, and that sincerity is the quality that I'm focusing on throughout this essay. . . .

Pound for pound, Basic Role-Playing from The Chaosium is perhaps the most important system, publishing tradition, and intellectual engine in the hobby - yes, even more than D&D. It represents the first and arguably the most lasting, influential form of uncompromising Simulationist design.

Tony Vargas said:
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.

From "Gamism: Step on Up":

References to Gamism tend to be dismissive, superficial, and often backhanded ("except for the Gamists," "my inner Gamist," etc). . . .

[T]he first step is to renounce a judgmental and dismissive approach about "those awful Gamists." The second is to renounce the less-judgmental but equally-dismissive "those Gamists" attitude, which might be called the NIMBY view. And then, finally, to renounce the sort of guilty-liberal, halting, apologetic defensive line as well. . . .

Gamist play, socially speaking, demands performance with risk, conducted and perceived by the people at the table. What's actually at risk can vary - for this level, though, it must be a social, real-people thing, usually a minor amount of recognition or esteem. The commitment to, or willingness to accept this risk is the key . . . This is the whole core of the essay, that such a commitment is fun and perfectly viable for role-playing, just as it's viable for nearly any other sphere of human activity.

Tony Vargas said:
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.

From Narrativism: Story Now:

There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s). Story Now has a great deal in common with Step On Up, particularly in the social expectation to contribute, but in this case the real people's attention is directed toward one another's insights toward the issue, rather than toward strategy and guts. . . .

A protagonist is not "some guy," but rather "the guy who thinks THIS, and does something accordingly when he encounters adversity." Stories are not created by running some kind of linear-cause program, but rather are brutally judgmental statements upon the THIS, as an idea or a way of being. That judgment is enacted or exemplified in the resolution of the conflict, and a conviction that is proved to us . . . constitutes theme. Even if we (the audience) disagree with it, we at least must have been moved to do so at an emotional level. . .

Fortune-in-the-Middle as the basis for resolving conflict facilitates Narrativist play in a number of ways.

* It preserves the desired image of player-characters specific to the moment. Given a failed roll, they don't have to look like incompetent goofs; conversely, if you want your guy to suffer the effects of cruel fate, or just not be good enough, you can do that too.

* It permits tension to be managed from conflict to conflict and from scene to scene. So a "roll to hit" in Scene A is the same as in Scene B in terms of whether the target takes damage, but it's not the same in terms of the acting character's motions, intentions, and experience of the action.

* It retains the key role of constraint on in-game events. The dice (or whatever) are collaborators, acting as a springboard for what happens in tandem with the real-people statements.

heretic888 said:
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!

I agree re 4e and gamism - though [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] on these boards articluated a coherent gamist version of 4e which is nothing like Gygaxian "skilled play" but rather is quite "light", and is about showing off your schtick in a given encounter.

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] used to argue that 4e is a type of high concept simulationism as you suggest - I tend to agree with [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], that it is best suited to "story now" instead. Not that it couldn't be done in a high concept fashion, but I think that would tend to make for more tedious play because the "heaviness" of the mechanics would still be there, but they wouldn't be giving as much payoff (with the outcomes pre-settled) as they do with a more "story now" focus. And I think it's pretty obvious how many 4e mechanics exhibit the features of FitM resolution that Edwards calls out in the passage I just quoted.

EDIT: Just saw this follow-up post:

heretic888 said:
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.

Absolutely! There is a very frequent assumption, in posting on these boards, that the only reliable way to get "story" in RPGing is through GM-railroading.

We recently had a big thread about it.

pemerton · Jul 16, 2018

Ted Serious said:
Pathfinder 2 is nothing like 4e. It does not want to drive its fans away.

And 4e/WotC did?

pemerton · Jul 16, 2018

Shasarak said:
I think that the advice about failing forward is helpful though like for example instead of being stuck at a closed door on a failed roll you instead open it really loudly alerting everyone on the other side.

I think the idea of "being stuck at a closed door" is mostly a feature of GM-driven/railroad play. In "story now" play, the story just is that the PCs didn't go through that door, so some other thing happened.

Shasarak said:
I have seen a lot of advice re: Skill Challenges and seen a few videos I think Matt Colvile did one or two. Honestly I am not sure what the set structure brings to the table that makes it better then just playing out the Narrative as it comes.

I don't know what Matt Colville has to say about it, but the structure of a skill challenge serves the same purpose as the structure of combat resolution: it establishes a mechanical finality which means that the outcomes are driven by player actions declarations and their resolution, rather than the GM's opinion as to where the fiction should go next.

Maxperson · Jul 16, 2018

pemerton said:
I think the idea of "being stuck at a closed door" is mostly a feature of GM-driven/railroad play. In "story now" play, the story just is that the PCs didn't go through that door, so some other thing happened.

Being stuck at a door has nothing inherently to do with railroading. You might as well say parrots are a feature of railroad play, since DMs can railroad you with a parrot.

Aldarc · Jul 16, 2018

Maxperson said:
Being stuck at a door has nothing inherently to do with railroading. You might as well say parrots are a feature of railroad play, since DMs can railroad you with a parrot.

You may be more fixated on his use of "railroad" here - likely due to its pejorative connotation - but keep in mind that the "/" designates "and or," with the first element in that phrase being "GM-driven play" and I would personally place greater emphasis in what pemerton said on that than "railroad." I would estimate that a lot of GM-driven play does entail "being stuck at a door," because it derives from a sort of board or puzzle game mentality that may not even apply to your sandbox approach. The GM is driving the campaign and the PCs into a particular direction: e.g., campaign arrows point to the dungeon. A frequent feature in GM-driven play in such scenarios is that a given room has to be "solved" to progress to the next room. There is one locked door. You are stuck. There are often set solutions that the GM or adventure writer has devised. These solutions may be self-contained in the room itself or require that the PCs have found, or must find, the "keys" elsewhere. In games that adopt more proactive player-driven play, there may not be a preset solution for getting into the figurative "door." The players may just look for and then successfully roll to find/create a secret door.

Tony Vargas · Jul 16, 2018

pemerton said:
Just as a point of intellectual history: you do realise, don't you, that The Forge is quite hostile to White Wolf/Storyteller, and largely indifferent to D&D but with a mild sympathy for its classic/OSR version.

It seems reasonably hostile to D&D, too, describing both as "incoherent."

you don't hold back in posting nonsense about The Forge and the "threefold model".

In this particular instance I was posting my impressions of how the boards tend to (miss)use Forge terminology. And, no, I have made a small effort, but never found much sense in the Forge. The Threefold Model made a little sense to me back in the day, but it still mainly came off as intellectualizing the essentially bogus Role v Roll 'debate.'

"Pound for pound, Basic Role-Playing from The Chaosium is perhaps the most important system, publishing tradition, and intellectual engine in the hobby - yes, even more than D&D. It represents the first and arguably the most lasting, influential form of uncompromising Simulationist design."

RQ was notably more Realistic than its contemporaries, owing to the authors participation in the SCA giving them significantly more clue than EGG's perusing of museum polearms or whatever got him so fixated on 'em.

I consider RQ influencial in being such an early 'skill-based' system, and BRP for being the first formal 'core system,' where the consumer was giving a copy of the core bits. An innovation d20 would be notable for 20 years later.

From "Gamism: Step on Up":

References to Gamism tend to be dismissive, superficial, and often backhanded ("except for the Gamists," "my inner Gamist," etc). . . .

[T]he first step is to renounce a judgmental and dismissive approach about "those awful Gamists." The second is to renounce the less-judgmental but equally-dismissive "those Gamists" attitude, which might be called the NIMBY view. And then, finally, to renounce the sort of guilty-liberal, halting, apologetic defensive line as well. . . .

Y'know what'd also help with that? Not making a 'Gamist' box and sticking folks in it, in the first place.

Absolutely! There is a very frequent assumption, in posting on these boards, that the only reliable way to get "story" in RPGing is through GM-railroading.

We recently had a big thread about it.

'Railroading' or linear play is a reliable way of getting a specific story out on the table, in which the GM takes most of the responsibility for coming up with and 'telling' the story. In D&D, which as the gateway to the hobby is also it's de-facto gatekeeper, the game has generally (TSR era & 5e) relied heavily on the DM to make /everything/ work, so, of course, it's natural if you want a focus on story, to expect the DM to make that happen.

Maxperson said:
Being stuck at a door has nothing inherently to do with railroading.

It kinda is. In a 'sandbox' you're free to just go somewhere else, maybe come back to that door later (and not just in the sense of go scour the rest of the dungeon for the right key). In a linear adventure, the next step is behind that door, so until you get through it (just break out the ax, dude), you're 'stuck.' In a 'fail forward' paradigm, not being able to open the door gets you (with some added difficulty/consequence) to where getting through the door would have (for instance, while you're unsuccessfully tyring to open the door, an enemy patrol you were hoping to avoid comes through it, and you have to silence them quickly or the jig is up).

Kobold Boots · Jul 16, 2018

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!

The difference:

When the publisher puts out a game that is perceived to be hard to skin - people get bent.
When the publisher puts out a game that is perceived to be easy to skin - people skin.

My opinion is that folks got so hung up on losing system mastery gained over the years when playing 4e that it colored everything that 4e had to offer.
My experience from being someone that's forced to retrain myself every three years at my own expense (because I work in tech) is that I was hardwired to be 4e's core audience just because of the way things went.

KB

Tony Vargas · Jul 16, 2018

Kobold Boots said:
The difference:

When the publisher puts out a game that is perceived to be hard to skin - people get bent.
When the publisher puts out a game that is perceived to be easy to skin - people skin.

My opinion is that folks got so hung up on losing system mastery gained over the years when playing 4e that it colored everything that 4e had to offer.

That's certainly a thing that can happen. 3.x was big on rewarding system mastery, and 4e both invalidated that mastery and greatly reduced the relative rewards for gaining & applying mastery of it.

I got less bent out of shape by that than I did when the 6th ed of Hero did the same sorta thing - though, to be fair, the challenge of acquiring system mastery was greater (and quite different), and the reward lesser, than in 3e.

My experience from being someone that's forced to retrain myself every three years at my own expense (because I work in tech) is that I was hardwired to be 4e's core audience just because of the way things went.

Not sure I follow?

AbdulAlhazred said:
Well, someone might have meant them this way, but it would be a caricature of how many of us use these terms, whether they're used in some sort of 'correct' way according to some place called 'The Forge' where I have neither ever posted nor ever read anything much.

permerton's always providing helpful links.

I mean, you're being sarcastic, but these can be useful terms. I agree they were often just tossed about by those wanting to tar something as something though.

For me, enough of that has happened that any usefulness (which I'm doubtful of in the firstplace) has been thoroughly undermined. Now, I am sarcastic (& bitter & cynical) on my best day, but I do feel that each new set of terms that gets rolled(npi) out (and GNS is at least a full generation back in the ongoing process of obfuscation), is just refining/recapitulating/reimaging/disguising the basic us-vs-'em false dichotomy of Role v Roll.
Which I was sick of w/in minutes back on UseNet.

AbdulAlhazred said:
Welllllllllll, if the player actually literally is true to the reflavoring in the sense that NOTHING in the mechanics is impacted at all, then there should be no effect. At least in terms of the mechanical inputs to the game. As for the FICTIONAL inputs, and the implications in terms of fictional positioning, there's clearly an impact there. I am not sure it is proper to call it out as 'abusive', but I'm not sure what the abuse you are referring to is, actually, so I'm not positive.

The one potential abuse I've seen with reskinning or reflavoring was in the early days of Champions!, which went much further than any ed of D&D in giving players licence to describe their powers however they wanted, was to come up with a 'special effect' (description of a power) that concealed what it really was, so that your victims would be less likely to pull out a viable counter for it.

Kobold Boots · Jul 16, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
That's certainly a thing that can happen. 3.x was big on rewarding system mastery, and 4e both invalidated that mastery and greatly reduced the relative rewards for gaining & applying mastery of it.

I got less bent out of shape by that than I did when the 6th ed of Hero did the same sorta thing - though, to be fair, the challenge of acquiring system mastery was greater (and quite different), and the reward lesser, than in 3e.

Not sure I follow?

1. I hear you regarding HERO System.
2. Since my profession pretty much makes anything you learned three years ago almost obsolete or irrelevant, the need to pick up new things in order to be relevant and marketable helped me avoid group thinking that the switch from 3e to 4e was anything less than completely normative. Granted, that's a really foreign line of thinking to most folks.

KB

Garthanos · Jul 16, 2018

pemerton;7463878 said:
For someone who gets worked up about what you see as falsehoods by critics of 4e, though, you don't hold back in posting nonsense about The Forge and the "threefold model".

Pretty sure it was clear that he was echoing things he knew were nonsense... but which seem to be "common use/understanding".
It seems he also didn't get much out of them either but that seems different. (I kind of found Forge to be fun mental exercise of modelling those who model - LOL)