"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room

[The Shaman]

Do you have a view about Edwards' "bitterest roleplayer"? Stripped of Edwards's rhetorical flourishes, I've played with, and GMed for, quite a few of these guys (and they don't have to be bitter!). Heck, in some moods (as a player, not normally a GM) I'm one of them.

In my experience, Mr Edwards' "bitterest roleplayer" tends to be the guy who shifts pretty readily between thinking in- and out-of-character, engaging both the rules and the game-world. In that sense they're among my favorite players to have in a game.

I get the impression that your Flashing Blades game involves a lot of setting exploration, but does it have a gamist edge too?

Combat in FB is very gamist, but it's dressed up so beautifully in simulationist terms that it sneaks up on you. The abstractions come wrapped in pretty red ribbons of flavor text.

Frex, the unarmed combat rules can play a significant role in a duel; there's a real mechanical advantage - the opportunity to stun your opponent and cost them an action in the following turn - in throwing a punch or kicking the other guy in the nads during a sword fight.

 

[pemerton]

Frex, the unarmed combat rules can play a significant role in a duel; there's a real mechanical advantage - the opportunity to stun your opponent and cost them an action in the following turn - in throwing a punch or kicking the other guy in the nads during a sword fight.

Interesting.

What sort of mechanics does the game use to stop this becoming a default "win" strategy (like the notorious spiked chain wielder in 3E)? I don't think D&D has ever been very good at handling this - unless you count the 4e encounter power approach as a "solution", but I would see it more as "dispensing with the issue in favour of a completely different approach".

BW has a very interesting mechanic for regulating the use of Brawling to get advantages in combat, plus other similar "augment" strategies: namely, in order to advance their abilities, PCs must use them in challenges with a range of difficulties (incuding some of very hard or overwhelming difficulty), and so players have a metagame incentive not always to bring all their resources to bear.

But while I think this is clever, it also effectively squashes gamist play when the crunch actually hits, because there's all these bigger picture concerns taking over.

EDIT:

A different thread - one of the current Vancian magic threads, either in this sub-forum or in "new horizons" - led me to reread Edwards' Fantasy Hearbreakers essay. One thing he said there seems relevant to this therad:

[E]ach of these games is alike regarding the act of role-playing itself. The point of play is being an adventurer who grows very powerful and might die at any time, and all context and judgment and outcomes are the exclusive province of this guy called the GM (or whatever), case closed. They precisely parallel what AD&D role-playing evolved into during the early 1980s. Each of these games is clearly written by a GM who would very much like all the players simply to shut up and play their characters without interfering with "what's really happening." They are Social Contract time bombs.​

A good gamist RPG has to avoid the "time bomb" thing. That is, it has to allow the Step on Up - and, perhaps, the competition as well - to emerge, and resolve itself, without engendering any more hard feelings than would result from playing a friendly hand of cards (to pick another social, low key competitive passtime).

This involves a lot of moving parts - for example, fitting the game to the fiction in a way that works for everyone at the table without requiring the GM to get involved in a way that might suggest playing favourites. And handling the issue of "lose conditions" - what is the analogue, for a player whose PC dies, or fails to rescue the prisoner, or whatever, of dealing another hand? I think that, historically, D&D has handled some of these issues better than others, and has also handled them differently across editions.

Yet pure powergaming, and "munchkin-ing" have long been derided in our hobby. So if Gamism isn't "bad," why is it so difficult to incorporate into many RPGs, and why do the majority of RPGs implicitly or explicitly push back against Gamist tendencies?

I would say, at least in part, because they haven't solved the design problems to which gamist play, and especially competitive gamist play, gives rise.

 

[The Shaman]

What sort of mechanics does the game use to stop this becoming a default "win" strategy (like the notorious spiked chain wielder in 3E)?

Getting a stun is good - it costs your opponent any remaining actions in the round, and denies them a long action and allows them only one normal action in the next round.

But a stunned character isn't helpless. He can move, parry, dodge, back away, or attack and rely on a reaction parry (a parry with a -6 penalty that doesn't count as an action). A stunned character's options are limited, but the player retains meaningful choices.

Where it gets really dangerous is if a character is stunned twice, losing all actions (other than a reaction parry) in the next round. One of the adventurers in my game is virtually impossible for anyone to hit normally with a sword, but put him up against a couple of tough brawlers and he can be in deep trouble if he doesn't get them first.

 

[The Shaman]

A good gamist RPG has to avoid the "time bomb" thing. That is, it has to allow the Step on Up - and, perhaps, the competition as well - to emerge, and resolve itself, without engendering any more hard feelings than would result from playing a friendly hand of cards (to pick another social, low key competitive passtime).

I think this goes back to some degree to the notion of transparency, of the rules and the adjudication.

While I tend to swim in the rulings-not-rules end of the pool, in my experience the games that facilitate that approach offer relatively concise, clear rules from which the referee can readily extrapolate on the fly. That shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of 'rules-thin' versus 'rules-dense,' but rather a rules-dense game can have fairly simple mechanics at its core which facilitates ad hoc rulings.

 

[S'mon]

I think we all tend to have styles we favour and styles we see as secondary. Edwards seems to like Gamism & his Narrativism, and sees Simulationism as secondary - his earlier essays regarded Simulationism as actively dysfunctional. You like (edit) Sim & Nar. I'm G&S: I see a strong world-Simulation as creating the environment in which Gamism can flourish, with Narrativism a secondary consideration; as GM I might have occasional Nar (or Drama/Story-Sim) flourishes, but it's not a central consideration for me. What I like is PCs exploring a well-simulated world and attempting to succeed in it to the best of the players' abilities.

 

[The Shaman]

What I like is PCs exploring a well-simulated world and attempting to succeed in it to the best of the players' abilities.

Same here.

 

[S'mon]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] - I don't think 'meaningful choice' has to mean 'Gamist choice'. It can mean Narrative or Dramatic choice, and it can mean Sim choice.


Narrative choice - do I join my traitor girlfriend against my old comrades, or kill her? What would I do for love? Choice is the essence of Premise per Ron's Narrativism.

Sim choice - choosing what part of the world to explore, whether in terms of geography or relationship webs etc, motivated by which would be the most interesting rather than most enriching.

 

[steenan]

But if Gamists consistently feel dissatisfied with their RPG experiences, it's probably because generally speaking, the genre is already making them swim upstream. RPGs are one of the few, singular outlets that Narrativists and Simulationists have, whereas RPGs are just one of dozens, if not hundreds of outlets for Gamists. As a result, Narrativists and Simulationists are rightfully protective of our turf. Our opportunities for exploration are vastly more limited compared to Gamists. We need our RPGs to be Narrativist and Simulationist, in ways that Gamists don't need their RPGs to be "Gamist." In other words, when it comes to RPGs, it's the Gamist's job to adjust their viewpoint to the Narrativists and Simulationists, not the other way around. And frankly, if the Gamists don't like it, they're almost assuredly going to go back to something that better "scratches their itch."

Does this mean that Gamists can't, or shouldn't be accommodated at all? No, but it does mean that the primary focus of RPGs should never primarily be the "G." After having read Edwards' GNS theory, I am even more convinced that while it doesn't need to be wholly ignored, Gamism is and should be subservient to Narrativism and Simulationism in RPG design and play.

I would agree with this point of view if mechanics-heavy gamism was the only kind. But I can tell from my experience that it is not. I know a few people (including my wife) who really like "winning" and overcoming challenges in RPGs, but are not into character optimization, tactical combat and adding bonuses. They prefer planning when they can and improvising when they must, using out-of-the-box solutions, manipulating people, exploring mysteries and solving puzzles. They want to have their wits tested, but in interaction with the game world and NPCs, not in interaction with the mechanics. Computer, board or card games are not a satisfying option here.

It's good to have RPGs designed consistently for fun gamist play.

The problem starts when (what happens very often, unfortunately) a designer can't decide what kind of game they want to create, gives a random mix of G, S and N and at the table players pull in different directions. That's why I'm strongly opposed to the idea of a "game for everyone".

 

[Quickleaf]

I thought I'd chime in with a different perspective. Caveat: I am not a hardcore game theory guy, I am just passingly familiar with GNS.

Back when I as writing Tales of the Caliphate Nights (Paradigm Concepts) for True20 system I made a decision that all of the most powerful options would come from those that enhanced the genre narrative. During character creation the most powerful feats included Virtuous and True Faith, both which included role-play guidelines. During play you could gain big bonuses by initiating framed stories, and could sway elements of the story with a creative weaving check. And there were feats which gave you bonuses to those two actions.

In GNS terms I'd guess you could call this "aiming thru gamism to evoke interesting narrative." From the few games I played it worked very well in channeling power-gamers into the atmosphere Caliphate Nights evoked.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I know a few people (including my wife) who really like "winning" and overcoming challenges in RPGs, but are not into character optimization, tactical combat and adding bonuses. They prefer planning when they can and improvising when they must, using out-of-the-box solutions, manipulating people, exploring mysteries and solving puzzles. They want to have their wits tested, but in interaction with the game world and NPCs, not in interaction with the mechanics. Computer, board or card games are not a satisfying option here.

I view my participation in role-playing games the same way.

I humbly submit that such activity is the core of the rpg game-form, and as such, actually the primary focus upon which narrative and simulation aspects can be layered according to preference.