D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[The Crimson Binome]

So am I. The goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, giants etc in my gameworld are internally consistent. I just use a different mechanical framework from your preferred one.

You can't use subjective mechanics to represent an objective giant, though. Objectivity doesn't work that way. For the same giant to be consistent in its capabilities within the game world, it couldn't sometimes be a level 25 minion and sometimes be a level 7 solo, depending on who's looking at it.

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't think this is true.

You don't have to believe it, but it's the design of almost every RPG ever made until 1-page RPGs were designed to promote an whitewashing ideology and censor and mock their publishing. RPG publishers publish game structures to provide game content so it can be used by referees to present to players. This is very similar to how every game is published. It's why adventures are essential to D&D (and unnecessary to storygames, which are built to create a story, not game a game system).

That can all be resolved simply by reference to the shared fiction. And has been, at countless tables since the game was first invented.

"Shared fiction" is frankly is Forgite dogma that is irrelevant to all role playing games. It is part of the uniform design which identifies storygames. There has never been shared fiction in D&D. There are only the related game constructs behind the screen.

In fact, there there is a valid point of view that there is no such thing as a shared fiction ever. Stories can only be "shared" ironically. D&D's design was built on this understanding, but also on the belief that people could learn to understand each other better.

the strong implication is "appropriate relative to the overall fiction" which on p 96 is described as "the current of the stream carrying it . . . at 6" speed".

It's "appropriate to the game structure" of course. Not any kind of shared fiction. That didn't even exist when Gygax wrote those books. Forge theory doesn't predate its invention.

It's quite unlike Chess or Go, which does not require mediating the moves via an imagined situation.

It's a game. Like Chess and Go D&D was designed to enable players to achieve objectives within a pattern. In D&D the referee mediates their moves upon the hidden game board. They take measurements, roll dice, attempt to relay clearly and accurately what the positions player's pieces and have the game defined abilities to sense. The players strain their imaginations to great heights to imagine what's relayed so they can achieve outcomes more capably in the game. This is basic stuff to playing D&D. Like any game, how you play D&D matters to the outcomes in the game.

But it is certainly of someone's making - typically the GM's. And the players access it via imaging the relevant ingame situation. If they couldn't, they would not be able to declare moves. For instance, how can a player declare for his/her PC "I walk north down the corridor" without imaging a corridor with an opening in a northerly direction?

Players map in their imagination the reality the DM is relating. All players must have an imagination. It's necessary to play the game. Unlike storygames however how well one is playing the game, how well one imagines the fine details and intricacies of the current game state, is vital to winning. Rapt attention is what D&D engenders. If you could care less about what's happening currently in context to past or future events, then maybe stories are for you. But even most story readers really don't want the purposefully indecipherable expression of a narrative. Stories that are written to be coherent are puzzles and readers puzzlers.

No. You used the phrase "short-circuiting of gameplay". I replied to that. And as I said, when I see posters on this board complaining about "short-circuiting of gameplay", they are most often complaining about 3E/PF "rocket-tag", which is a result of how SoD works in that system (upwards scaling save DCs + high hit point totals relative to save bonuses, leading to an optimal gaming strategy being the bypassing of hit points altogether via SoD).

The contrivances I was talking about are, for instances, 4e's healing surge mechanics, which engender a dramatic rather than naturalistic pacing in combat resolution. I have never seen these described as a "short-circuiting of gameplay". They are part of the gameplay. The point of the gameplay is to have a certain pacing.

So you change the definition of contrived outcome (deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously) to game mechanic. Are there non-contrived game mechanics for you? Games keep score, track game elements, are designed in almost every way to enable players to act in a gameable situation. Contrived outcomes are the antithesis of this action and the goals of virtually every game designed.

This is why you're using contrived outcomes as separate from short-circuiting game play. I believe you are using the term to mean only "was the game board and game rules created by a person?" Who cares whether they were or not. The effects of a person existing isn't absolutely narrative. That dogmatism. Also, a person's expressions simply aren't undying acts. OTOH, rules are codified through all game play so actions in games aren't thrown aside the moment game play begins.

Gygax wasn't ignorant of the significance of pacing, although he was not so interested in it for dramatic as for practical play purposes. For instance, he refers to it on pp 61, 62 and 85 of his DMG).

Game pacing isn't narrative pacing. It's time it takes for most players to play a game. Games that don't have time limits on them often institute them if stalling becomes a common tactic. Like the 1 minute rule for turn taking in D&D too. The structural content of a game like the complexity of a puzzle determine a good deal of how long play on average will take. These aren't designed for dramatic purposes as you mentioned, but for game purposes.

Healing surge mechanics absolutely create contrived outcomes.

SNIP

That is a contrivance - a mechanic that reliably (if not universally) produces a particular pacing in combat, for dramatic effect.

Look up the definition of contrived. That's not what's happening in those rules. There is nothing more dramatic about the game because 4e has healing surges as a mechanic. As I pointed out before it actually removes the importance of players care about the on goings within Encounters after the fact.

But it is not a "short-circuiting" of game play. It is a deliberate feature of gameplay, much as the difference in the number of ogres encountered on the 1st or 4th level of a dungeon, per Gygax's Appendix C, is a contrivance for deliberate gameplay purposes.

Your conflating game rules themselves with contrived outcomes. Imagine if a game ever designed so. You take a turn. I take a turn. We switch to another game. No carryover whatsoever.

What have theatre games got to do with anything?
It's the term I believe Gygax used to refer to games that didn't promote game play, but rather pure invention.

As to whether or not Gygax was confused, he wasn't confused about one thing - absolutely crucial to playing D&D is forming an imagined conception of a fictional situation - eg "My character is standing in a dungeon corridor that runs north and south." If you can't do that, you can't play the game.

I addressed this above. Players imagine the reality the DM relates to succeed and be better players. Ones that cannot imagine can't even play.

As to roleplaying being about "social roles", that might be one usage of the phrase in the social sciences, but in my view it has little bearing on D&D play. There are no social roles of magic-user, cleric, fighter etc. As Gygax conceived of them they are playing pieces, not social roles. As Gygax explains, "The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class" (PHB p 18). They bring with them suites of player options, and rule out other options. For instance, class determines which equipment (both mundane and magical) can be used and hence in this way (as in other ways) determines what sorts of "moves" can be made.

All of which speaks to what I said about role playing and not about fictional persona portrayal. Everything designed in D&D for 20-25 years (though less knowingly later) was based on military role playing, role play simuation as they're called now. They are based on the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s interpretation of role playing. That such includes the expression of a personality is irrelevant and not even a common definition until after the advent of Post-Modernism in 1980s common culture.

I know you are fond of talking about different classes involving exploring the "magical system", the "clerical system", the "combat system" etc but there is no actual textual support for this in the rulebooks, and the systems for action resolution and for earning XP are consistent across all the classes (with the possible exception of the monk's chance to stun/kill and the assassin's ability to assassinate, and at higher levels SoD spells, all of which provide somewhat novel mechanical ways to earn XPs for defeating monsters).

While the design was far from ever complete or clear the ladder still makes a better ladder than a table. In the 80s there were DMs who did talk about the magic system and combat system and even used the social mechanics which the Cleric's abilities interact with better than any other.

The DMG is not the rules. It was written the understanding all writings are, with shared definitions within a population Role playing didn't need to be defined like game playing didn't need to either. The DMG was suggestions, possible rules the DM could use behind the screen. Only Gygax also wanted to consolidate players for tournaments and have an identifiable ruleset. So he proposed a "true" code in AD&D. But it's simply not necessary to use in published for to play AD&D.

 

[howandwhy99]

I think the illustrative or "communicative" quality of the drawing is fairly important.

Thus, for instance, I think someone who is good up coming up with new "icons" used to label public places (like exit, toilet, no skateboarding, etc signs) would be much better at pictionary than me.

So... just to be clear from what you snipped and what you posted.

You're agreeing with me? Because needing to be articulate when engaged in referencing during playing a game so players might better succeed during said game is hardly GNS Simulationism IMO.

 

[Hussar]

You can't use subjective mechanics to represent an objective giant, though. Objectivity doesn't work that way. For the same giant to be consistent in its capabilities within the game world, it couldn't sometimes be a level 25 minion and sometimes be a level 7 solo, depending on who's looking at it.

Yes and no.

From the pc's perspective you certainly can. An ogre might take three hits from a second level barbarian but go down in one hit from a 19th level power attacking barbarian.

Now, is the barbarian actually three times stronger? Well, not really. Has he undergone massive physical changes? Again, not really. But in the game, he now treats that ogre as a minion simply because of level.

All the minion rules do is make that ogre numerically capable of doing some damage to the barbarian. It's smoothing out the rough edges that level and scaling cause.

But, the difference here is that mechanics in 4e are very much not meant as world building tools.

 

[Lanefan]

Gygax takes it as central to play that, while the GM writes up the dungeon, it is the players who choose what they encounter within it (subject to the GM's wandering monsters; hence part of being a skilful player is minimising the time spent dealing with the GM's wanderers). This can be seen, for instance, on pp 107-9 of his PHB:

Few players are so skilful at fantasy role playing games as to not benefit from advice. . .

[A]ssume that a game is scheduled tomorrow, and you are going to get ready for it . . . [T]alk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure. . .

Once the objective has been established, consider how well the party playing will suit the needs which it has engendered. . .

Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party has an objective, and wandering monsters are something that stand between them and it. . . Do not be sidetracked. A good referee will have any ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible. The mappers must note all such things, and another expedition might be in order another day to investigate . . . This is not to say that something hanging like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked must be bypassed, but be relatively certain that what appears to be the case actually is.​

As soon as a group starts playing in the way that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has described - ie using pre-packaged adventures designed for PCs of a given level - then all these remarks from Gygax become completely irrelevant. It is the GM (whether solely, or drawing upon a module author) who chooses the difficulty of the encounters. At that point, the difference between "objective" monster building and 4e-style monster building seems completely one of taste. They are simply different tools for generating encounters of a given mathematical difficulty.

This brings up an interesting tangential question: while lots of DMs (including me) use canned modules in their games, how often do we actually run them completely stock with no changes? In my own case the answer is either never or close-to-never. Further, how often do the players play the module as written, without exploring anything else (where opportunity exists, I'm aware of several modules where it doesn't?)

Also, I'm not sure I agree that the Gygax comments lose all - or any - relevance when the party is playing a caned module.

Lastly, keep in mind that at least to begin with Gygax sort of had the idea of an adventure taking but a single session, meaning a different objective had to be set every week; hence the advice given.

Lan-"all in all, it's easier to skip the wandering monster part and go straight to wandering damage"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Have fun with that straw man you seem to be building for yourself there, because I don't see anyone here advocating that style of play.

Now, I have played in and run sessions that could, at a stretch, be characterised in this way. When both players and GM are extremely busy and the players just want some arse-kicking action and tactical kabluie a short, ready-made scenario can be just the thing to get a fix of RPG - but I wouldn't say any of us prefer that mode of play. It's a compromise; a second-best that we adopt when a preferred method of operation is not available. And it's done with the agreement of all involved; one of us might say "I don't have any time to create anything proper, but I'll run you guys through the Temple of the Frog God, if you like - make characters to suit?" It's not ideal, but it gets some roleplaying in when we have noo time for anything better.

Other than this, I haven't heard anyone - here or anywhere else - actually propose that railroaded play is a good thing. But not every mode of play other than a sandbox is a railroad. Try playing something like Fiasco, PrimeTime Adventures or Universalis. You will find games where railroading is actually impossible - but they do not involve sandboxes and they are built to promote stories out of play. The idea that the only alternative to a pre-made sandbox is GM force railroading is a false notion arising simply from lack of knowledge or understanding.

Well, someone has to be the devil's advocate...

There's been times - surprisingly frequent times, in fact - in my experience where the DM flat-out drives the story. Why? Because she has to, as that's what the players expect and-or want. "You set the adventure, Ms. DM, and we'll play through it!" It's not a preferred style of play, but it is a common one.

I see nothing at all wrong, in fact, with the DM drawing up a storyboard before the campaign starts; said storyboard being malleable enough to adapt to events during the campaign and-or new ideas that present themselves. I do this (the storyboard for my current campaign is now on version 9) and it works; and as adventures get played through I can also get a vague idea of how much longevity the game has left before I have to really start scrambling for ideas. The key is to not glue yourself to the storyboard (unless running a defined adventure path), but to use it as a guideline, and idea source if-when the players ask "what comes next?". That said, if the players buy in to the plotline and hooks it becomes much simpler; as everyone's on the same page.

Also, I've seen (and been a player in) situations where the players in effect railroaded themselves. The DM can give all kinds of adventure options and hooks, but the players - bound by the alignments, history and established personality of their characters - see only one option.

Lan-"less coherent than usual tonight, it seems"-efan

 

[Hussar]

And considering the popularity of adventure path play, I'd say it's hardly rare that groups set out on a fairly pre-scripted path. Granted there certainly are other styles but this is hardly rare.

And I'd hardly call someone playing in an adventure path doing it wrong. Sandboxing is only one of many campaign styles, all with their own strengths and weaknesses.

 

[pemerton]

And considering the popularity of adventure path play, I'd say it's hardly rare that groups set out on a fairly pre-scripted path.

<snip>

I'd hardly call someone playing in an adventure path doing it wrong.

I agree with both points, although personally I really don't like the adventure path style.

You can't use subjective mechanics to represent an objective giant, though.

What does this mean?

I can absolutely describe a 100% objectively-existing computer using the following sentence: "The computer currently in front of me, the keyboard of which I am typing these words on." Yet that sentence has three speaker-relative referring terms ("me", "I" and "these words").

I can tell you the time where I am - 7.27 in the evening - and that is objective, too, even though the clock of someone moving past me at a very high speed might give a different reading as they watch me type these words.

For the same giant to be consistent in its capabilities within the game world, it couldn't sometimes be a level 25 minion and sometimes be a level 7 solo, depending on who's looking at it.

This sentence is incoherent.

Within the gameworld, the giant has no level and is neither a minion nor a solo. It is a giant. The people who look at it - the inhabitants of the gameworld - can see it, and can see what it is capable of.

The people who describe it as a level 25 minion or a level 7 solo are the players. They do not see any giants. In fact, they know that no giants exist, and that the whole gameworld is just made up. And they absolutely can represent elements of the gameworld using sometimes one mechanic, sometimes another. All you need is a translation schema, which I and [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] have already both explained upthread.

If you want an analogy, consider the Battlesystem mechanics that Mearls recently described in L&L. In that system, the mechanical representation of an orc changes depending on the purpose for which it is represented - one-on-one fighting, or unit-vs-unit fighting. That doesn't mean that the orc in the fiction is changing in some fashion, or ceases to have an objective existence (relative to the fiction).

When the giant is fighting level 7 PCs, the best mechanical way to give expression to its capabilities is as a level 7 solo. When the giant is fighting 25th level PCs, the best mechanical way to give expression to it capabilities is as a level 25 minion. The giant hasn't changed. The fiction hasn't changed. Only the mechanics are different. Just like Battlesystem.

 

[pemerton]

RPG publishers publish game structures to provide game content so it can be used by referees to present to players.

This is not a very accurate description of most of the TSR-published material that I have. It is game content, but it is not game structures. For instance, I have material that talk about stone walls and floors, about peasants, about plants and flowers, about food and drink, about kings and rivers and borders and countries. Countless pages of such stuff, mostly published by TSR between the early 80s and the late 90s. This is game content, but the expectation is that the players will know how to interact with it based on their knowledge of the real world, and imaginatively projecting. There are often few or no game rules associated with this stuff, and certainly not enough to regulate even half of what players might try and do with it.

Just to give one instance - suppose a player says, during a bar-room situation "I spill my beer on such-and-such an NPC so we'll be able to identify him later by the smell of beer on his clothes". Nothing published by TSR that I'm aware of has any rules for resolving this game move. It depends entirely on imaginative projection of the properties of cups, of beer and of human noses as the participants know them to be in the real world.

"Shared fiction" is frankly is Forgite dogma that is irrelevant to all role playing games. It is part of the uniform design which identifies storygames. There has never been shared fiction in D&D. There are only the related game constructs behind the screen.

This is just nonsense.

Seeing as you love talking about role playing in the social sciences, I'll give you an example. I teach in a law school. I therefore have to write moot problems and exam questions. Many of these involve fictions. For instance, here is one from last semester's exam:

SEN Bakery Pty Ltd (‘SEN’) is a world-renowned producer of high-end cakes and pastries sold on the wholesale market. In 2010 SEN entered into a five-year contract with Perfect Patisseries Pty Ltd (‘Perfect’), a retailer of cakes and pastries, under which it agreed that it would not provide goods or services to any other commercial enterprise. However, SEN is now threatening to break its contract and to start supplying its wares to a rival patisserie.

Can Perfect receive an order of specific performance requiring SEN to perform the contract, and/or an injunction to prevent them supplying the rival patisserie?​

Answering this question requires the students to entertain a fiction - to imagine the existence of these various made-up companies and their made-up contract - and then to reason from that imagined situation. Some of that reasoning is pretty mechanical. But not all of it - for instance, the students have to decide whether the company SEN is more like the singer in Lumley v Wagner, with other options available which make an injunction permissible, or more like the steel company in Atlas Steels with no other options open which hence would make the injunction impermissible. That decision requires thinking about the fictional properties of the fictional company and comparing them to the real properties of various real-world litigants in the decided cases.

Answering that question does not require any story-telling skill. It only requires lawyering skills. It nevertheless involves working with a fiction. It is quite different, in that respect, from playing Chess or Go which doesn't require entertaining an imaginary state of affairs.

Here is another example. We run client interview competitions. These require students to pretend to be lawyers interviewing clients. This is a roleplay in the literal sense, and it involves fictions. Imaginary fact situations, like mine above, have to be created. Client personalities and motivations have to be authored. Etc. Fiction, and imagination, is inherent to roleplay. It's how you do it.

And I can tell you, law students have been answering questions about made-up fact situations, and engaging in client interview exercise, long before Edwards ever set finger to keyboard.

there is no such thing as a shared fiction ever. Stories

Your insistence on equating "fictions" with "stories" is a huge impediment to talking about this issue with you. I have just given an example of a fiction that is not a story. Thought experiments in special relativity are another example.

And there most definitely are shared fictions. I shared the above fiction with over 100 students sitting last semester's exam.

In D&D the referee mediates their moves upon the hidden game board. They take measurements, roll dice, attempt to relay clearly and accurately what the positions player's pieces and have the game defined abilities to sense.

<snip>.

Players map in their imagination the reality the DM is relating.

Can you not see how tortured this is? You talk about moving the players' pieces, and then talk about the game-defined ability of those pieces to sense. Sense what? The "pieces" are inanimate objects. They can't sense anything. And all that the players can sense is the GM's screen and the table in front of them. All the "sensing" is imaginary - it is the imagined sensing of imagined things by imagined characters. The content of all that imagining is a fiction.

Likewise your reference to "the reality the DM is relating". When the DM says "You see an orc" what reality is the DM relating? There is no orc. A fortiori, then, no one sees an orc. It's all made up.

Here is another example that proves my point, from Gygax's DMG p 71, discussing the resolution of a player's action declaration of hurling oil at a monster:

Where is the oil? In a pouch, of course, so that will take at least 1, possibly 2 segments to locate and hurl.​

What is Gygax talking about here, given that the oil, the pouch, and the indicated moments of time, all DO NOT EXIST? He is talking about imaginary oil, in an imaginary pouch, in which imagined time is passing. And the GM is resolving the action by reference to that imagined fiction. This is what is sometimes called "free form roleplaying" without the need to use mechanics.

And this is not a special case. It's inherent to RPGing. It's the difference between RPGing and chess. Chess does not require imagining a pretend situation. It does not require asserting any propositions that are false when evaluated against the real world. Whereas RPGing does. It requires asserting propositions about the existence and location of oil, and the passage of time, all of which would be false if evaluated against the real world. (But the participants know how they are to be evaluated, namely, relative to the shared fiction.)

This also has nothing to do with storygaming, or The Forge. Gygax is not discussing storytelling. He's discussing playing a game. But part of being good at that game is having the ability to think of clever things relative to a fiction. It's not just pattern recognition, anymore than playing Pictionary, or "I spy with my little eye", is just pattern recognition. (Nor is playing basketball just pattern recognition, for that matter, though for reasons different from RPGing - in the case of basketball it's because the game has a huge physical/athletic component.)

Your repeated assertions that all gameplay is pattern recognition is more dogmatic than anything that ever came out of The Forge.

 

[Aenghus]

Storytelling and worldbuilding are often involved in running a roleplaying game, but they aren't essential and either of them can be dialled up or down as required. An old fashioned random dungeon with pregenerated characters with no backgrounds can avoid both deliberate story and much in the way of worldbuilding. Any scenario where the PCs are locked in a limited set of locations can reduce the amount of worldbuilding called for. Limiting the PC's opportunities for social interaction limits the opportunities for story or plot. (Note I'm not advocating any of these playstyles, just saying they are both possible and I've seen concrete examples of them).

Both storytelling(and fiction creation in general) and worldbuilding can be pursued as hobbies or interests in and of themselves. Storytelling tends to prioritise drama, and worldbuilding prioritises consistency. Consistency isn't an absolute though, there are facts, politics, history, geography, religions, philosophies, etc etc and few if any are experts in everything, or prioritise every factor equally.

So if a RPG referee also values either or both of storytelling or worldbulding I think it important to realise that players can mess up both stories and worlds. I've seen a number of frustrated novelists or worldbuilders taken aback by players questioning the referee's premises, interpreting events, backstory and situations differently to the referee, doing the "wrong" things and messing up their nice clean world or story. Maintaining the status quo is a primary motive behind railroading and suggests the referee values his world or story more than the player's participation in the game.

RPGs require enough consistency to satisfy the participants, which may not be much. I still value consistency, but am much more willing nowadays to adjust or rewrite unrevealed backstory to adapt to the game's needs.