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

[niklinna]

D&D, insofar as any published adventure or even advice fir play construction this is obviously false. Adventures especially are utterly agnostic to whatever characters are involved. Nothing in, say, Curse of Strahd changes at all -- the plot, the antagonism, locations, NPCs or their agendas, nothing. Hard to claim this is a game about the characters when nothing at all changes in the material. The only thing that changes are the particular details of resolutions of a scene before that's largely ignored before the setup of the next scene.

Oh, characters can deal with all sorts of personal drama and trauma while the plot rolls merrily along on its predetermined course. "Narrativism" inside of Simulationism inside of Gamism (or perhaps another way around, and maybe with scare quotes on all for fairness), like a big RPG turducken.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It did take a LONG while for the ghost of D&D to kind of fade away and people to come to realize that different fundamental design choices were possible, and then sadly Storyteller showed up... Never understood the draw there, I really hated the way that whole thing played from day one myself.

Storyteller is really simple low granularity sim to which it easy to bolt on additions. And dice pools are fun as long as they don't get too large, (looking at you Exalted.) The fixed target number version is probably my favourite official RPG system. But sure, it is not particularly revolutionary.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

D&D, insofar as any published adventure or even advice fir play construction this is obviously false. Adventures especially are utterly agnostic to whatever characters are involved. Nothing in, say, Curse of Strahd changes at all -- the plot, the antagonism, locations, NPCs or their agendas, nothing. Hard to claim this is a game about the characters when nothing at all changes in the material. The only thing that changes are the particular details of resolutions of a scene before that's largely ignored before the setup of the next scene.

Well, duh. Of course a fixed module cannot account that. But perhaps they should publish advice on how to build campaigns that do?

 

[pemerton]

For those of you who played/play 4e, what do you think of the implementation of player-driven quests? Does it work fine as is (i.e., as a section in the dmg), or would you rather it took some different form? I'm not familiar with these books, but I can imagine that if a game really wants to focus not just on quests but quests that are player driven, it could be more fundamentally integrated into the play advice and mechanics.

To repeat: it is integrated into the play advice, on pp 102-3 of the DMG and p 258 of the PHB.

The default setting of 4e D&D, which is presented in the PHB race write-ups and to a lesser extent in the class write-ups, and also in the list of gods (which also feed into the cleric and paladin write-ups) is thematically laden. So there is a lot of stuff there to drive play.

When my game started we had a paladin of the Raven Queen, a Raven Queen devotee who was a refugee from a town sacked by humanoids, and a Raven Queen devotee who liked to shoot undead and demons. There was a cleric of Kord ready to fight Bane-ites (and as GM I had made it clear where Bane-ites were to be found in the setting). And a Feypact warlock devoted to Corellon.

I had some ideas for what I wanted to do in the game, which I shared with the players ("I want your PC to have a reason to be ready to fight Goblins.") And the players had some ideas, as per the above, which I incorporated into my Goblin-oriented situation.

It worked pretty well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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!

And I've posited that this is one of the best explanations for why a more classic RPG paradigm persists. It is really hard to write material for Story Now play. I mean, not at all impossible, most of 4e outside of adventures is quite handy, but extensive setting with lots of metaplot and such, and detailed adventures of course, are just not useful. I think most people today have also been rather trained to consume vs to create. No RPG is likely to be PASSIVE consumption, but a D&D module is definitely closer to 'watching a movie' than playing Dungeon World is, which will really require active participation in multiple dimensions of generating world details, character motivations, and action descriptions, plans, etc. Marketing dollars seem likely to go to the classic game style, as it is better understood, and generates more spin off IP and whatnot. Notice how Indy games tend to be rather ephemeral, but D&D has FR, WoG, SJ, DS, DL, etc. etc. etc. that tends to kind of keep people engaged. I think at least half of why BitD has remained popular for a few years now is that Doskvol is actually pretty atmospheric and engages people's imagination. DW OTOH, each campaign is virtually just a throw away world.

 

[pemerton]

Is 4e as a Story Now game the way it is typically understood, or is that a particular point of view established on these boards? I've mostly heard it referred to as too gameist.

My experience of ENworld is that most posters use "gamist" to mean having overt gameplay elements or even having overt metagame mechanics. They don't use it in Edwards's sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience of ENworld is that most posters use "gamist" to mean having overt gameplay elements or even having overt metagame mechanics. They don't use it in Edwards's sense.

I'd suggest its "having strong game orientation" though that can be implied by the first of course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, duh. Of course a fixed module cannot account that. But perhaps they should publish advice on how to build campaigns that do?

Cool. Where is that in the 5e DMG? I'm wondering if you can find something that passes the same robustness qualities applied to player created quests in 4e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Last thought before sleep:

This thread was about D&D and gamism. Whilst I doubt the value of GNS model, one observation I've been trying to make is that D&D, as it is often these days played, is rather character centred, having heavy focus on character narratives, their traumas relationships and other drama. Now I don't know if that is proper Forge-approved narrativism, not I terribly much care, but it definitely is not gamism and it would be misguided to label it simulationism either. But whatever it is, it is popular, and the game designers would be wise to pay attention to it. They should consider how future editions could better serve that sort of desires, if not via rules then at least via robust advice.

I cannot say how it is played elsewhere. The 2 longish 5e campaigns I played in mostly involved quite a bit of fairly gamist play. I mean, my 2 primary characters in those games DID have BIFTs and obviously a background, and I sometimes leveraged that. However I would say it was never a focus of play! IIRC the first game I set a goal for my character and tried to center the action on that (obviously the other players had their own agendas) but there were no profound dramatic needs involved, just "I'm doing this thing." In fact a lot of the adventuring was us being trailblazed into various scenarios that were at best very loosely related to anything our PCs really cared about. My character's entire goal was completely undermined as a result of one of them, and all his progress was just removed without so much as I got to even wager it against something. It was just plain pure gamist play with a veneer of characterization.

The second campaign had a bunch of elements that drew off of my character's background (as well as stuff related to other PCs) but it wasn't like I said "I want to focus on THIS." I would say, in fairness, the GM probably would have elided it in favor of something else if I'd said "I am uninterested in this." I worked it to relate to my PC's personality and issues and whatnot, and it was OK, but nothing like really a narrative focus. Again, I would characterize it as gamist play (IE we were trying to gain levels as a main focus) with characterization being more just a side thing.

Now, maybe other people interpret these things differently, I'd have to ask the other players in those games, but I don't think so. 5e IME is a mechanically improved game over, say, 2e, but in terms of what playing it involves, there's really no appreciable difference, and BIFTs and Inspiration are just grafted on there and don't really do much, if any, real work.

 

[Beleriphon]

Gamist to me functionally means that the game is being a game first. All other considerations take a back seat to making the game work as a game. I can role play in Axis & Allies, but the only other consideration is making a simulation of strategic level war decisions, but even that takes a back seat to making the game work as a game.

Simulationist means the game is makes simulation of whatever it is simulating the main goal, all other concerns are secondary. GURPS for example tends towards this, since the goal is high fidelity simm of the way things do work (or could work) in game terms, whether that works as a game isn't the primary concern. Star Trek Adventures is another simulationist game, but the game is a Star Trek Episode Simulator not a Star Trek Universe Simulator.

I don't think narratitivst games are a thing per se. Most of them would fall into the simulationist games; but, they're simulating a particular genre of fiction rather than the world.