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

[pemerton]

An RPG without any sense of narrative essentially negates the purpose of having a GM at all. You're treating a mechanically derived situation as nothing more than a "challenge" to be overcome, and the GM is just AI at that point, and nothing more.

Two things.

First, early RPGs often call the GM the referee. That's for a reason - the GM was core to action resolution, and the GM was not expected to metagame the action resolution in the interests of "story" (very different from, say, AD&D 2nd ed or classic White Wolf).

Second, gamist play will have a sense of narrative in the sense that events happen in sequence, and a recount of what happened to the PCs is possibe. But the original reason that ToH was written and played wasn't to generate hilarious stories about whole teams of PCs getting swallowed by the green devil. It was to pose a challenge to players (especially arrogant and self-important players). This is spelled out in the intro to the module, and has been discussed at length in Stoat's excellent Tomb of Horrors thread.

In D&D the point is to go up levels and get more powerful by overcoming challenges. It's a game, at its core. Running it as a simulation where the player doesn't actually care whether their PC overcomes challenges & levels up is rare, IME. There are other RPGs where success is not the main object of play, but it's at the heart of D&D.

I'd agree that it's probably rare to play D&D in a way that makes levelling irrelevant, but I suspect it's not all that uncommon to play D&D in a way that makes levelling a sort of taken-for-granted backdrop to play, rather than the point of play. I think this is especially true of 4e, and certain variant approaches to XP in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, where XP are earned essentially for turning up and playing the game, and so no particular effort is required to earn them.

 

[BryonD]

First, early RPGs often call the GM the referee. That's for a reason - the GM was core to action resolution, and the GM was not expected to metagame the action resolution in the interests of "story" (very different from, say, AD&D 2nd ed or classic White Wolf).

I think you are spinning a bit there.
I think it is fair to take as fact of record that RPG roots come out of purely "game" based war games.

The evolution of the terms used in the game reflect that heritage far more than any meaningful description of the new hobby that was evolving from that existing hobby.

And no less significant, the hobby itself was very much an evolving thing and still did reflect those wargame roots. So the idea of what an RPG was or could be was not nearly as explored as it is now.

There is no one right answer here and I can't claim that your statement is patently false. But you present it as if to claim that it was a conscious choice to proactively cling to gamism and pointedly hold back story telling. I'd call that far down the list to the point of being a de-minimus issue.

 

[Umbran]

But the original reason that ToH was written and played wasn't to generate hilarious stories about whole teams of PCs getting swallowed by the green devil. It was to pose a challenge to players (especially arrogant and self-important players).

Not *just* challenge them. But to also teach them a lesson. Teaching lessons to the arrogant and cocky usually implies a certain amount of mocking when the powers they are arrogant about fail them.

Which is just to show that one adventure *can* server two masters well enough

 

[pemerton]

I think you are spinning a bit there.

<snip>

I can't claim that your statement is patently false. But you present it as if to claim that it was a conscious choice to proactively cling to gamism and pointedly hold back story telling.

You may be misunderstanding my point. [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] said uthread that, without a simulationist or narrativist purpose in RPGing, the GM's role would be reduced to that of adjudicating action resolution. My point was, that for a certain style of RPG play - Gygaxian gamism (as exemplified by the ToH), Pulsipherian gamism (as articulated in his articles in the early days of White Dwarf), etc - this was a key role of the GM, but that did not make those games any less RPGs. Pulsipher argued against GM adjudication that took into account story considerations, on grounds that it undermined the contribution of player skill to outcomes.

Central to an RPG, as I conceive of it, is that (i) there is a shared imaginay space, and (ii) each of the players' primary source of influence over the SIS is a particular character (or a handful of such characters) in that SIS - the PC. (Even in games where director stance is common and/or central, the PC is typically still an important locus for the exercise of director stance.)

There is nothing about this that makes non-gamist priorities more fundamental than gamist ones. As [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, action resolution in a shared imaginary space creates distinctive, arguably unique, possibilities for setting up and taking on challenges.

As for whether calling the GM a referee is a deliberate attempt to preserve or promote gamism, I don't think that, didn't assert it, and didn't intend to imply it. In talking with others about my game I often describe myself as the referee, just because I (and some of my players) first started RPGing when "referee" was standard terminology.

 

[SSquirrel]

Mea culpa. I thought I earlier brought up the example of Paranoia which is pretty much pure PVP - I'd in no way call consensual competative play badwrongfun. I would however call making other people irrelevant bad.

No worries. Just the way that particular statement was phrased made it sound like any competitive gaming was bad. I remember the Paranoia, but I hadn't been paying attention to who had said it, b/c I didn't have anything to comment about in that specific post Definitely agree about the irrelevancy, but comments I have pop into mind about that would fall under edition warring, so I'll keep them to myself heh.

I think you've misunderstood Neonchameleon. It's the OP who's saying that competitive RPGing isn't really RPGing.

I think it was a matter of he used an absolute when he didn't really mean to. Reading his actual statement, I could only read it the way I did. It's fine tho, we're good. I wasn't responding to the OP in my post, I was targeting the comments I saw.

Fair enough. But GNS doesn't have anything bad to say about your friends playing competitive WoD or Amber. The OP was criticising GNS because GNS says that competitive play is one healthy way to play an RPG.

I never said GNS said anything bad about competitive play. That was all related to Neonchameleon's post. My "this thread is an example" bit was just that if you bring up GNS Theory, all you get is a long argument w/no resolution and a bunch of discussion that makes me think we should all log off and go do something else for awhile. Which I am right now. bedtime

PS Actually, he was saying that saying the Gamism factor is the largest factor of a RPG is wrong and that doesn't seem crazy to me. When the understood definition of gamism is a competition (with a chance of winning) against the game. His example of pure gamism would have you ignoring the social aspects of the game and group dynamic and basically sounds like someone who would not be a lot of fun to game with. Pure gamism and not trying to work with your group at all is just someone being an asshat and trying to ruin a roleplaying session 99 times out of 100. Even people who are playing very confrontational characters who are maybe even trying to kill other party members actively are still playing within certain limits and guidelines the group has. Hence, not pure gamism.

 

[S'mon]

I'd agree that it's probably rare to play D&D in a way that makes levelling irrelevant, but I suspect it's not all that uncommon to play D&D in a way that makes levelling a sort of taken-for-granted backdrop to play, rather than the point of play. I think this is especially true of 4e, and certain variant approaches to XP in 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, where XP are earned essentially for turning up and playing the game, and so no particular effort is required to earn them.

Hm, you have a good point. Would that be 'drifted' play, then?

I'm running AD&D currently online twice a week in my city & wilderness based Yggsburgh campaign, and I worry a bit that I'm giving XP for fun roleplaying and shenanigans, rather than just for killing monsters and getting treasure, thus violating the purity of the Gygaxian paradigm. I resolve it a bit by tracking XP session to session, but only 'dropping' XP when there is a concrete achievement such as a defeated monster, pile of loot, or substantive political achievement.

Looking at how I actually award XP, I guess a good deal of it could be described as being for 'story creation' - as it's an open sandbox the players are free to engage with it however they wish; the more entertainingly they do so, the more XP I tend to give. OTOH the old-school players very much want to keep the primary focus on Gamist concerns, defeating challenges, succeeding, and levelling up. It's just that some of those challenges are primarily political and/or romantic rather than physical threat.

 

[S'mon]

There is nothing about this that makes non-gamist priorities more fundamental than gamist ones. As [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] pointed out upthread, action resolution in a shared imaginary space creates distinctive, arguably unique, possibilities for setting up and taking on challenges.

I agree strongly, and that's the biggest part of the attraction of RPGs for me. I don't think I'm at all uncommon, either.

 

[S'mon]

Even people who are playing very confrontational characters who are maybe even trying to kill other party members actively are still playing within certain limits and guidelines the group has. Hence, not pure gamism.

I don't see why you can't have pure Gamist PvE - players as a cooperative group controlling their PCs, versus the GM-created environment. I'd think that was the normal sort of Gamist play in RPGs.

 

[BryonD]

As for whether calling the GM a referee is a deliberate attempt to preserve or promote gamism, I don't think that, didn't assert it, and didn't intend to imply it.

Fair enough. I'm glad to be corrected.

However, I still read what you wrote and see you drawing a connection between "a reason" the DM is called a referee and expectations about metagaming.

I can agree with your clarified point of view. But that statement I quoted remains an example of taking a rather simple point tied to a simple explanation and spinning it as a thought out plan to achieve a particular cause.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Looking at how I actually award XP, I guess a good deal of it could be described as being for 'story creation' - as it's an open sandbox the players are free to engage with it however they wish; the more entertainingly they do so, the more XP I tend to give. OTOH the old-school players very much want to keep the primary focus on Gamist concerns, defeating challenges, succeeding, and levelling up. It's just that some of those challenges are primarily political and/or romantic rather than physical threat.

As far as I'm concerned, if one wants to say that the three GNS entities are the only ones, then gamism is even wider than that. Namely, it even applies when the "step on up" is built around surface and/or metagaming things instead of the direct subject matter of the "story" itself.

For example, when we play 4E, I award bonus action points for "making people laugh". In this respect, I'm acting as the "referee", as pemetron discussed it. (Also something we have long called the DM in our games--usually Mr. Ref or Ms. Ref.) However, we also have this dynamic embedded in our "system" (in GNS terms, encompassing social contract and any house rules or other ways of doing things). Make someone "roll on the floor or gasp for breath" and you get the award automatically, no matter how trivial the remark or who set it up. We've done something similar in all our games since the late '80s.

Now, I happen to think there are things "on heaven and earth" in roleplaying that are well outside GNS. So if someone wants to say that is more social gaming, I'm not offended. I'm just working within what GNS says. But certainly, there is something more "gamist" oriented in that activity than Nar or Sim. For one thing, we'd do it anyway without the reward, but the reward does intensify the drive and the one-upmanship.