Lyxen
Great Old One
Outside of 4e, I can't bring up a single instance of a narrativist element in D&D.
I'm sorry, can you please elaborate (including your definition of narrativism) ?
Outside of 4e, I can't bring up a single instance of a narrativist element in D&D.
That's interesting because if the concern is around dominating the table, as you suggest that isn't down to character efficiency alone. As well as matters of personal charisma, there is the distribution of authority to determine the world and narrate what happens. In that sense, D&D has always sustained a great inequality. (A balanced distribution of power has sometimes been needlessly conflated allocation with narrativism.)Now, some people consider that that balance of fun can only be achieved if people around the table have the same amount of power to influence the game. As an aside, I've met a lot of players who do not think that way, and who are perfectly happy to see other mostly influence the game, and to follow the adventure and the story, contributing only occasionally.
But on the other hand, there are certainly people who, unchecked, would dominate the table. And, not so curiously, these are also people who certainly don't want to have others dominate the table. So now we come down to the power of influence, and in the end, it sort of stems from what the characters are able to do in the game, because, apart from just talking, it's still your characters who have the power to act in the game world and therefore to influence the game. Hence the concept of balance at the level of the characters, technically.
At this stage, I'd like to point out that it's already a fallacy, because even with characters of equal "power", the ability to talk and influence others is personal to the players and you can have characters who are absolutely equal and still some players dominating the table, usually through personal charisma or intelligence (of any kind of intelligence, for example social one and not necessarily IQ).
So if balance is a fallacy, how can it possibly be appealing as a goal for D&D? Either it's not a goal, or D&D is unappealing. If as you suggest it's not really a goal, then on what grounds is D&D gamist? Is that down to the group?It is a further fallacy when you consider that the game is extremely complex and that, if you only have a look at the three pillars, it's impossible to have characters that are absolutely equal in power for all pillars, therefore some will probably be more powerful in some pillars and others in other pillars, but then you see how artificial it is since it also then depends as to how much time the table spends on various pillars, etc.
This argument as I note, primarily seems to resist the characterisation of D&D as gamist. Right?But in the end, if you ask around, you will find that there are a lot of people elsewhere and around here who consider that D&D is a combat game (based on the further fallacy that there are, according to their count, more pages dedicated to combat in the rules). And in any case, balance in the other pillars is extremely hard to measure and enforce through rules, since it comes down even more than anything on the personal capabilities of the players.
Hence that focus on technical combat balance for the characters, as a means to ensure overall balance of the game and, hopefully balance of fun for the players. Which is also why, if you look at all the elements above, I also find that technical balance way overrated, because it's such a miniscule factor in the potential fun at the table, and so easily overridden (if only in the fact that because the DM sets up the fights, the conditions of said fight have an even stronger influence than the characters' capabilities) by other factors that unless there is clearly something very wrong in terms of effects on the combat pillar, I won't even bother looking at it.
A feature often seen in narrativist games is player choice over whether an attempt succeeds. Fate points are an example. D&D has faint traces of narrativism in TIBFs and inspiration.I'm sorry, can you please elaborate (including your definition of narrativism) ?
Do you feel that is distinctive of gamism? Would you say that narrativist and simulationist players don't mind feeling left out?Balance is appealing because D&D is a game played for fun. No one likes to feel that they're letting the group down or being sidelined. If one player's character gets to do twice as much stuff as another players', then that can lead to feeling left out, or dissatisfied/believing that they have made a mistake.
No. Again, narrativism is very badly wrong, here, but in general the concepts get less useful when applied to individual mechanics because the Gamist/Simulationst/Narrativist model is about the agenda of the game -- what is the game, as a whole, trying to do. They're all games, RPGs are, so every single one of the has bits that are about playing a game.As I understand the terms:
D&D has generally posited itself pretty strongly in the gamist section, with more or less simulationism baked in (mostly as justification for the gamist elements, but sometimes working the other way around as with the various combat maneuvers in 3e)..
- The main purpose of a gamist mechanic is to provide a fun/balanced/engaging game. You may or may not have justifications for them in the narrative, but those are fig leafs. 4e was likely the most gamist version of D&D, with encounter powers, healing surges, splitting magic into combat magic (various class powers) and rituals, and having monster stats unapologetically based on level and role, and the narrative aspect being reverse-engineered from that).
- The chief role of a simulationist mechanic is to convert a thing in the game world into mechanical terms. 3e is probably the edition that leaned the farthest in this direction, by detailing things like how monster stats are built (a crocodile has AC 15 because it has Dex +1 and Natural armor +4; which also means it has AC 11 against a touch attack or AC 14 when flatfooted – the croc's CR 2 is in theory the result of its AC among other things, not the cause of it), how to price and construct magic items, how long it takes to build an item, and assorted other things. D&D's never been very good at being simulationist though, but 3e made a strong attempt.
- And finally, the idea being a narrativist mechanic is to reflect something that happens because it makes for a good story. D&D generally doesn't do these. FATE aspects and associated fate points are a good example: Aspects are statements about a character that are generally true, and players can either call upon them to help at the cost of a fate point, or have the GM suggest that one will cause a problem, in which case the player can gain a fate point to accept or spend a fate point to deny it. This creates a situation where players are rewarded for getting into trouble in a way that gives them resources for future showdowns.