Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?

[Manbearcat]

Originally Posted by pemertonGame systems that are generally oriented towards such play include AD&D, CoC, Vampire: the Masquerade...

Three radically dissimilar games.

Only very, very tacitly following this thread, but this caught my eye in a "what in the world...?" sort of way.

I think this may in fact be a source of dissonance that you and I have in some of these conversations, particularly where it pertains to The Forge and, more specifically, "system matters."

The most fundamental core mechanic of VtM and White Wolf games is "The Golden Rule" or "there are no rules" or, apropos, "system doesn't matter."

@pemerton is referring to AD&D 2e above (surely), not 1e. AD&D 2e went all-in on this ethos (unlike OD&D, 1e, and B/X). CoC does as well. The lifeblood of those three gaming systems are overwhelmingly GM Force and opacity, inadequacy, incoherency, or impotency of action resolutions mechanics (which, not coincidentally force multiplies the "heavy GM mediation/Force is required to make this game work" angle), where GM latitude is at its utter apex (in all the history of TTRPGs) and subordination or outright ignoring action resolution mechanics/outcomes so the GM can curate the play experience at their discretion is the most fundamental aspect and energy of play.

Quite literally, those 3 systems probably have more to do with why The Forge was created than anything else.

If you look at a modern indie game like Blades in the Dark, you see, the utter antithesis of the GMing and design ethos of games like AD&D 2e, CoC, and VtM.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think this may in fact be a source of dissonance that you and I have in some of these conversations, particularly where it pertains to The Forge and, more specifically, "system matters."

I get plenty of dissonance from The Forge. I mean, if the Forge were trying to tell you "roll a d20, you want high," it would take 12000 words, and /none/ of those words would in any way refer to dice, the number of faces on them, nor the target for success - but, they'd sum it up in a completely nonsensical label at the end, so Forgites could say, IDK, "Confirm Brisance" when they mean "roll d20 you want high," and then link you to the 12k word Ron Edwards opus that fails to explain that's what it means.

(And, no, I'm not going to tell you how I really feel, I'm going to enjoy my 4-day weekend.)

The most fundamental core mechanic of VtM and White Wolf games is "The Golden Rule" or "there are no rules" or, apropos, "system doesn't matter."

The Wolfie no-rule is hardly a /mechanic/, but sure, more or less. They also famously said "Bad rules make good games!" so it's not that system doesn't matter, it's that systems should suck, to /force/ the GMs to override them and the players to angle for that as much as possible.

pemerton is referring to AD&D 2e above (surely), not 1e.

While 1e wasn't /trying/ to be a system so bad that playing it would train everyone to accept and rely on the DM's judgement & ultimate authority, it still prettymuch got there.

AD&D 2e went all-in on this ethos. CoC does as well.

It's the height of irony that anyone would conclude that AD&D 2e and Storyteller have anything in common. They fought their own bitter precursor to the edition war, the ROLL v ROLE debate, through much of the 90s, on the basis that they were absolute polar opposites, with D&D the deformed poster child for all-rules-all-the-time ROLLplaying and Storyteller the glorious paragon of ROLEplaying, GHoD* Complex notwithstanding.

Not that D&D and Storyteller don't both throw everything at the feet of the DM and demand he fix it, but just that's it's the freak'n Height of Irony.

CoC (and BRP in general), though, not see'n it s'much. % skills, not so weird nor requiring of constant intervention as all that. And, as questionable as much of 2e was, it was less incoherent (in the English meaning of the word, not the Forgelish) than 1e.

The lifeblood of those three gaming systems are overwhelmingly GM Force and opacity, inadequacy, incoherency, or impotency of action resolutions mechanics (which, not coincidentally force multiplies the "heavy GM mediation/Force is required to make this game work" angle), where GM latitude is at its utter apex (in all the history of TTRPGs) and subordination or outright ignoring action resolution mechanics/outcomes so the GM can curate the play experience at their discretion is the most fundamental aspect and energy of play.

With the exception of articles and conjunctions, I'm guessing not one word of that actually means what it sounds like it means. Because Forge.

Quite literally, those 3 systems probably have more to do with why The Forge was created than anything else.

I'll /try/ not to hold it against them.
















* Great Handfuls of Dice. In some storyteller games you could get really large dice pools together, and if you could twink** out a low difficulty somehow, an egregious number of successes. But, apparently, the GM was supposed to ignore the 17 HL you just did to the 8-HL target who only soaked 5, and just narrate it the same as if you'd hit him with a feather duster.

** Yeah, I wondered about that, too, first time I heard it but, no, different meaning: for some unknowable reason the Storyteller community in the 90s used 'twinky' or 'twink' as either verb or now when talking about muchnkins, powergaming and what would come to be known more politely as system mastery.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - just adding to what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] posted, which I fully agree with (except to add that 1st ed AD&D also started heading in the same direction in the post-DL era).

The Forge isn't trying to explain your experience with CoC vs V:tM, and why you found them similar or different. It's offering an analytic vocabulary for talking about RPG design, and some features of RPG play. It's no more "confusing, inveigling or obfuscating" than is a chemist who tells you that coal and diamond are the same stuff, or Newton who tells you that an object falling to earth and a planet orbiting the sun is the same physical phenomenon, or an anthropologist who tells you that reigious practices among neolithic people and grief counselling in its contemporary Californian manifestation play the same social function.

If you're not interested in that sort of analysis then that's fine, but as far as I can see it doesn't give any reason to complain about it. It's not like Ron Edwards dropped by your house and told you that yuo had to read his essays or else he'd steal your dice!

For my money, it's sufficient evidence that The Forge's analysis is largely sound that Ron Edwards, in an essay published c 2003 predicted, almost down to the last full stop and comma, the features of 4e that generate visceral hostillity from simulationist-inclined players (again I'm using "simulationism" in The Forge sense), which is the majority of RPGers, more-or-less from the moment it was published.

In any event, the sorts of differences in the feel of play that I tend to see discussed on these boards - like degree of "search-and-handling" required (compare, say, grappling in 3E to searching for a secret door in AD&D); or whether players have authorial power over aspects of the fiction that doesn't correlate to their PC's exercise of causal power in the fiction (what The Forge calls "director stance"); or whether metagame mechanics are prominent or minimal more generally; or whether PC build is a column A, column B approach (eg race and class) or something else, or is stat+skill based or something else, or is level-based or something else - have no bearing on whether a game facilitiates narrativist, simulationist or gamist play in The Forge sense. Againm that's typically because the discussion on these boards nearly always assumes a broadly simulationist goal of play. (Sometimes you see openly gamist goals advocated, but those posters often get dogpiled for being "power gamers" and even the gamist posters on these boards tend to have a healthy simulationist aesthetic often inspired by the similar combination of S with G found in Gygaxian AD&D.)

Now the previous paragraph isn't saying that such matters are unimportant. Nor that The Forge has nothing to say about them. But if you want to learn about a chemist's account of the difference between coal and diamond you wouldn't look in the index under "Elements" or "Periodic Table". You'd look for their account of allotropes, of the relationship between molecular and bonding structure one the one hand, and reflectivity and hardness on the other, etc.

So if you want to talk about the difference in feel between (say) CoC and V:tM, look to The Forge's account of IIEE, or of colour and setting and situation, or various forms of participationism. Not to its account of GNS.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Forge is no more "confusing, inveigling or obfuscating" than is a chemist who tells you that coal and diamond are the same stuff

Seems more like an alchemist trying to explain it by alluding to Greek mythology.

"Just a beautious Aphrodite from her shell, to twisted Hephaestus by his Forge is we'd, so flammable coal to the infammable diamond."
"But, flammable and infammable are synonyms."
"Not in the Forge sense. "

(again I'm using "simulationism" in The Forge sense),

That you need that parenthetical is indicative of the problem.

 

[pemerton]

That you need that parenthetical is indicative of the problem.

The reason for the parenthetical is that most posters on ENworld who use the terms GNS don't use them as The Forge does. (Similarly they don't use the term "fail forward" in the way those who coined it did. In both cases its because discussion on ENworld doesn't typically incorporate an appreciation of the approaches to RPGing that underpinned the coinage of these various terms.)

In typical ENworld usage, "S" means something like what The Forge calls "Purist for system simulationism", "N" means something like what The Forge calls "High concept simulationism" but can also be used to describe a game with player-side metagame mechanics, and "G" means something like "has resolution processes with high search-and-handling time" or "has lots of metagame resolution" or "doesn't straightforwardly allow the GM to decide outcomes by narrative fiat".

Maybe you find the usage in the previous paragraph helpful. Personally I don't, but that's because I want an analytic vocabulary that can do more then tell me that 5e is mechanically crunchier and has more player-side metagame than does CoC (notice how I can make that point without needing to use any GNS terminology at all). For my part I have learned a lot from The Forge. It explained more to me about Rolemaster, a game that I played for nearly 20 years, then anything on the official ICE forums. And as I already posted, it anticipated of all the criticisms that 4e faced from its critics - anyone who'd read the relevant material on The Forge, and saw what was being announced in the lead up to 4e and the response on these boards, could see what was going exactly what was going on and write the script for the next 4 years.

Why does 5e not receive the same criticisms as 4e? In my view, primarily because it is packaged as a high concept simulationist game, which remains the most popular approach among RPGers.

I get that you are very opposed to analysis of RPGing. That doesn't make analysis wicked or wrong.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The reason for the parenthetical is that most posters on ENworld who use the terms GNS don't use them as The Forge does. .

I don't blame ENWorlders for that. The Forge should've picked labels that made an iota of sense. Then the meaning might not have drifted so far.

In typical ENworld usage, "S" means something like what The Forge calls "Purist for system

Doesn't help.
How I've seen it used aground here seems something like "compromises desirable qualities of a game the way a simulation would."

"N" means a game with player-side metagame mechanics, and "G" means "doesn't straightforwardly allow the GM to decide outcomes by fiat".

Better.
Try explaining the Forge senses so concisely.

I get that you are very opposed to analysis of RPGing. That doesn't make analysis wicked or wrong.

I'm just opposed to bad analysis, applied prejudicially.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't blame ENWorlders for that. The Forge should've picked labels that made an iota of sense. Then the meaning might not have drifted so far.

They likely did make more sense then in their community, but (1) a lot of this was getting hammered out because it weren't terms, and (2) a lot of the waters were muddied by people - typically critics - who took those terms and ran with them in different directions, often as if they were monolithic preferences: "That game is gamist - and gamism is bad - but I prefer simulationist games, which is good."

So what alternative labels do you offer that would be more suitable?

I'm just opposed to bad analysis, applied prejudicially.

It's a miracle then that you haven't deleted your own account.

But let's approach this from another angle. You don't like GNS or find it inadequate for the analysis of TTRPGs. That's fair. What's your better alternative? This is largely the problem we are collectively facing. There are a lot of people who badmouth GNS, the Forge, or Ron Edwards' ideas, but I haven't really encountered too many offering alternative terms, concepts, or approaches for the discourse. Even a lot of the OSR community that sometimes speaks about Forge with disdain, also will find themselves engaging in discourse about games using the Forge's own framing.

More importantly, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT does any of this actually have to do about whether "Pathfinder 2 is Paizo's 4e"?!

 

[Jer]

More importantly, WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT does any of this actually have to do about whether "Pathfinder 2 is Paizo's 4e"?!

That question was answered when the OP titled the thread. Because on the Internet "if the headline of an article is a question, then the answer to that question is 'No'".

 

[Tony Vargas]

as if they were monolithic preferences: "That game is gamist - and gamism is bad - but I prefer simulationist games, which is good."

That's certainly one of the things that soured me on the Forge.
But, it seems built into the Forge paradigm, that division of the hobby into monolithic preferences, since they label a game that's not sufficiently committed to perching on one monolith "incoherent."

So what alternative labels do you offer that would be more suitable?

"WARNING: The Forge contains elitist psuedo-intellectual circumlocutions known by the state of CA to cause cancer or reproductive harm." Or, whatever the UK or EU equivalent would be...

What's your better alternative?

TTRPGs are a relatively new sub-set of gaming, as are videogames, but, the latter industry is orders of magnitude larger, and has attracted far more of the available intellectual as well as financial capital.
At least some of the answers we're groping about for like late-medieval alchemists, may have already been found by the well-funded metaphorical chemists, over there.

Heresy, I know.

does any of this actually have to do about whether "Pathfinder 2 is Paizo's 4e"?!

Well, apparently Ron was the Cassandra who predicted word-for-word the spurious edition war complaints that would be leveled at 4e - not just someone who compiled a lot of erudite-sounding-complaints that edition warriors later dug up and hurled randomly - so maybe examination of his texts could divine the fate of PF2, as well.

 

[pemerton]

Try explaining the Forge senses so concisely.

Gamism = RPGing with win conditions. Gygaxian dungeoneering is an example. Supers-type RPGing where the Hulk has to beat up on the Thing to save the day is probably another. And I susspect a fair bit of Rifts play is like this also. Stuff that matters in design includes GM fairness and, in crunch-heavy systems, broken builds.

Simulationism = RPGing in which the players' goals is to "be there" - either in the world as it plays out through the mechanics (eg a lot of RM, Runequest and Classic Traveller), or in the world as it plays out through the GMs story/scenario (eg CoC, much post-DL D&D play, V:tM, and basically anything that follows The Alexandrian's advice around "node-based design" or "the three clue rule").

Narrativism (once called Dramatism in some discussion, but Jonathan Tweet had already coined that term for a different purpose in his game Everway and so Ron Edwards out of deference to Tween coined a new term) = RPGing where the goal, in play, is to create story experiences that are recognisably stories in the sense in which novels and films are stories, and an account of what I had for lunch yesterday probably isnt. So sequences of events that exhibit pacing, theme, rising action and climax, etc - where this is not pre-established by a GM or module writer but is done collectively at the table using the classic RPGing devices of players playing characters through the GM's world/situation. An early example is Prince Valiant. The best-known contemporary examples are probably Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World and many of its offshoots. My favourite version of such a system is Burning Wheel.

A group of us on these boards - me, [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and some others - think that of all versions of D&D, 4e is the best suited for narrativist play; and that independently of comparisons to other versions of D&D, it's well-suited to narrativist play. The features of the system that underpin that are the same features that make it poorly-suited for simulationist play, and that therefore make it unpopular with many RPGers.

Whatever the commercial fate of Paizo's PF2, I've seen no evidence that PF2 is intended to be, or will be, a good game for narrativist purposes. But I haven't been following that closely; maybe [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] has a different view or can shed more light.