D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

[Thomas Shey]

Player-driven gamism I guess would be something closer to Arnesonian play, in the sense of actively inventing your own missions ('We're going to go and rob the temple of that snake cult the GM mentioned') and then relying on Calvinball style tactics and lateral thinking to achieve those goals outside of excessive dice rolls or actual combat (flooding the dungeon and so forth).

A certain degree of that could be had in a lot of traditional dungeon-crawling. Its one reason I say OD&D was very gamist with only a veneer of simulationist concerns.

 

[pemerton]

No, but honestly if you look at the (mostly fragmentary) accounts of early GMs, there's a strong 'Quest Element' there.

<snip>

So. What if you played something that used OD&D mechanics, or lets say Holmes Basic and you asked players what they were intending to accomplish when they tried something. You could then ask for an ability check (or it might be one of the other existing types of die roll) and use it to gauge that, complete with fail-forward and some notion of 'twists' and such. I don't think that game will fight you.

Edwards talks about this sort of thing happening in early D&D, and also in some T&T. To me, it reinforces the idea that "vanilla narrativism" is a real, and under-appreciated, thing.

My view (influenced by Edwards' generalisations which fit with my own more limited experience and observations) is that somewhere in the early to mid 80s a lot of this got squashed, with the idea emerging that more setting and more pre-authorship meant better RPGing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

How much "story now" RPGing have you participated in?

Very little. Next to none. A little bit of Apoc World... and is Fate story now? If it is, we definitely played it 'wrong.'

"Story now" is a two-word phrase. The key word is "now". The goal of play is, here and now, for players to have to make decisions that express or address their PCs' dramatic needs. Doing that is the point of play.

That doing so may also produce a story is secondary. My personal experience is that the stories that result from "story now" RPGing are not very good stories. They are meandering. They involve foreshadowing that is never resolved. Sometimes the choices of the characters, looked at over time, seem arbitrary or disjointed. Quite often there is a lot of gonzo rather than subtlety.

It's easy to explain why this is so. There is no editing. Not every scene that the GM frames is unqualified success; and even if it succeeds, it's not always the case that the player sees in it what the GM had thought they had introduced into it. If the game uses fortune (dice-based) resolution, turns of events and pacing more generally can depart from what would make for a good story. Etc, etc.

Hence: the goal of "story now" play is not to create a story, or have a story emerge. It is to here and now have the experience of genuine protagonism, and to see what results from that. And as Edwards said and as I quoted upthread, the most basic step in playing "story now" RPGing is to stop reinforcing simulationism, that is, to stop asking the question what does the internal logic of the setting dictate at this point. And as I posted upthread, doing that is harder than it may seem at first blush. It requires abandoning many techniques that are widely advocated in RPGing.

You intentionally engage in activity that will generate a story, you are intentionally generating a story. Whether it is a good story is probably a matter of taste. Considering that things like dramatic need are considered, probably a better what that emerges from old school D&D dungeon delve.

Also, the naming scheme is terrible is the intent is to sell the idea that it is not about the story. Narrativism, Story Now. Really?

No. Incorporating background and taking suggestions is not the same thing as orienting the whole of play towards the dramatic needs of the protagonists as authored by the players of those PCs.

But it is a similar thing. It's just a difference between dabbling and going all in.

The player is the one generating the dramatic need. An example is given on p 258 of the 4e PHB: "perhaps your mother is the person whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring."

Right. So how is the player not establishing the dramatic need to get the relic if they happen to be inspired by seeing word 'dragon' on the map?

So upthread, multiple times, I mentioned that in much "story now" RPGing the GM retains authority over scene-framing, but the principles and expectations of play oblige them to exercise that authority in a particular fashion. In this remark, you seem to display a total lack of awareness between (i) establishing a dramatic need and hence a demand for what is going to be the focus of play, and (ii) framing a scene (including the mechanical components of doing that). Are you really unaware, or just trying to make a rhetorical point?

If you're really unaware, that reinforces my impression that you have little or no experience participating in "story now" RPGing. It's trivial to separate (i) and (ii). In my 4e game, the player of the Raven Queen paladin - following an encounter with Orcus cultists in town - declare that he (as his PC) was scouring the surrounding area looking for more cult activity or locations. Checks were made - I can't remember the details. I was the one who framed the Orcus temple that he discovered, in response to those checks.

That's an illustration of resolution being "open". Had the action not been declared, the discovery of that temple would not have been framed.

Of course it was rhetoric. But you don't seem to be consistent. You constantly confuse the player establishing the dramatic need with the player establish the material parameters relating to it.

 

[pemerton]

This stuff (Story Now) is fairly easy to explain.

Players : Create dynamic characters who want things. Go after those things like you are driving a stolen car. Be a fan of each others' characters.
GMs : Create dynamic situations that relate back to the aims of the player characters and introduce fun complications, keeping the focus solely on them. Be a fan of the player characters.
Everyone : Play to find out what happens. Bring it.

It only gets complicated when we smuggle in how we expect this stuff to work.

Right. This links directly to @AbdulAlhazred's post about how you could do "story now" using OD&D - which I have labelled a type of "vanilla narrativism".

And look at your last sentence, and relate it to your participant roles:

We have to drop the assumption that the players' job is to buy into the GM's setting and/or situation. That's radical, relative to the dominant norms of contemporary D&D play.

We have to drop the assumption that the GM's job is to bring a prepared setting with a suite of situations that will engage the players. That's radical too, relative to those dominant contemporary norms. (Eg What!? You don't use maps?!)

Hence my repeated remark: it's not about authority structures, its about principles and expectations concerning how authority will be used!

 

[Thomas Shey]

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But definitely avoid badly-done backgrounds with all tension already resolved in the past.

This is why I roll my eyes at the negative characterization of Story Before sometimes. Its entirely possible to have an extensive backstory that's whole point is to set up the character's current tensions and problems. I've got a superhero character who makes no sense without his, not only in terms of powers and skills, but the form his survivor's guilt and the things it drives him to do take. Without it he'd be a tree with no roots.

 

[pemerton]

That is a good explanation of the concepts involved, thank you. It unfortunately also perfectly encapsulates exactly why I have no interest in a Story Now game, and would in fact likely have a negative play experience from either playing or (especially) running it. Not a single aspect of the Story Now concept as you described it resonates with me.

This is not a surprise given our earlier conversation!

 

[pemerton]

This is where we run into over-selling this one line. It’s buried in the DMG. It is not in the PHB

You keep saying this. You are wrong. It's in the PHB, on p 258. I've even quoted from that page, multiple times, upthread.

 

[pemerton]

the thing is what you describe happens in a lot of RPGs

No it doesn't! You posted to me, in apparent shock, "You don't use maps?" And @Campbell's account of participant roles basically rules out the use of maps!

I don't think you are really reading and taking literally what he is posting.

If the players are the ones who bring the dramatic needs, and the GM's job is to create situations that respond to that, then every old-school module and every adventure path suddenly becomes unusable. That's not mainstream D&D RPGing!

 

[pemerton]

Magic Item Wishlists was this giant subversive piece of player entitlement (a D&D iteration of indie tech kindred to player authored kicker) because it was in the PHB

Wishlists are in the DMG (p 125). I don't think they're mentioned in the PHB.

(I don't know if that makes it easier or harder to diagnose THE AGENDA dun dun dun.)

 

[pemerton]

To be fair, wouldn't you think the idea of player-authored quests would be best presented in the book intended to be read by players? How would they even know about it otherwise?

It is. On p 258 of the PHB. I've quoted it upthread. And pointed this out to @overgeeked multiple times in this thread. But overgeeked keeps ignoring that and continuing with the false assertion that it is in the DMG only.