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

[Ovinomancer]

Though hopefully something far more elaborate than the throwaway line in 4e. But 5e DMG is pretty damn lacking. They could easily publish a whole Advanced Campaign Builder's guide or some such.

So, then, 5e is not deeply concerned with characters because printed materials clearly steer in a different direction and there's zero available advice in the printed material on how to do this or even that it is a goal.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The players are expected to contribute dramatic needs, including the story elements that make those feasible - eg the mother whose remains lie in the Fortress of the Iron Ring - and the fundamental story frameworks ("quests") within which scenes are framed by the GM.

Right. This is you doing it again. All this is just thrown together as one package. Having to recover the remains of one's mother is certainly 'a dramatic need' albeit I'd argue we need to establish more about the emotional significance of this for it to truly have dramatic impact. But the further material conditions surrounding that are no longer 'dramatic needs' Yes, the mother's remains must exist (or at least the character needs to believe so) and they need to be in some location that is not readily accessible. And of course the character needs to have some important reason for retrieving the remains. But none of this requires that the player invents the whole Fortress of the Iron Ring and it's place in the setting. They could, but doing so is not 'establishing a dramatic need.' And all this of course comes back to you quibbling about the player establishing a quest upon seeing 'here be dragons' on the map. That they use GM invented place/other setting elements as trappings for their dramatic need doesn't invalidate their contribution. They have established a dramatic need for their character, and also elevated a random flavour text on the map to something that now has significance to the story. (Yes story, we are always creating stories at the RPG table.)

As for 4e, you're massively overinterpreting what is actually there. I seriously doubt that it was ever intended for the players to establish significant setting elements via quests, merely to set goals regarding already existing elements. Or if they intended players to have significant setting authority, then they did piss poor job at expressing it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So, then, 5e is not deeply concerned with characters because printed materials clearly steer in a different direction and there's zero available advice in the printed material on how to do this or even that it is a goal.

Yes. (Well, it is probably more than literally zero, but it definitely is not much.) The whole point of this tangent was that there is desire in the playerbase for more character drama related content, but the game books as they stand do poor job for supporting it and it would be wise for WotC to offer that support.

 

[niklinna]

I don't think that game theory is waste of time and I like thinking about games and what makes them tick and how to better build games that do what I want. but I have to say that GNS model simply doesn't seem like a good model to me. In any thread it is brought up, half the discussion is fighting terminological quagmire and meta discussions about the theory. And the theory has obviously been constructed from very specific perspective by people who have very specific desires for games. If you don't share that perspective it simply appears unintuitive and the divisions in it illogical. Narrativism category is crazy narrow and bizarrely specific, whilst simulationim category lumps massively different things with different and often conflicting design agendas together.

Here's the thing. We don't seem to have a better model in common use, and the GNS model is pretty well fixed by now, so people can learn exactly what its terms mean by reading the source material, instead of complaining about them—especially in contexts explicitly framed in terms of the model. Frankly, if an OP brings up GNS and somebody don't agree with GNS, they probably don't want to even engage in that thread.

I agree that the divisions aren't good, but GNS Narrativism highlighted a cool new approach to play for a lot of people—Story Now. It isn't everyone's cup of tea but it is, as @Ovinomancer pointed out, A Thing. I also agree that GNS Simulationism is way too big of an umbrella. But the terms are defined and established, and I'm not here to critique the model. We can start another thread for that if you like! But maybe let's not.

To this day I don't really understand what Forge 'narrativism' is and why a 5e GM using player created backstories to set up situations that dramatically resonate with the characters is not that, but a 4e GM giving XP for a character fulfilling a player declared goal is!

I'll summarize once more. GNS Narrativism (Story Now) is about generating story (particularly value-laden story) in the play session. If you're doing story away from the table by writing backstory or prepping, or organizing events of play into a narrative after the fact, you're still doing story, but you aren't doing GNS Narrativism. That's it. Does it leave a ton unsaid about story in RPGs. Heck yeah! But the texts are pretty clear about what it is about.

By that measure, most people saying 4e is GNS Story Now are a bit off the mark. The issue there is more about how much say the players get in what's going on, which does mostly fall under story—and about which GNS Narrativism makes fairly clear and stated assumptions—but is not about GNS Narrativism's principal concern with whether that happens at the table or offline.

I see I've begun prefixing all uses of GNS terms with "GNS". It might become something I regularly do.

Edit: Fixed typos.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Right. This is you doing it again. All this is just thrown together as one package. Having to recover the remains of one's mother is certainly 'a dramatic need' albeit I'd argue we need to establish more about the emotional significance of this for it to truly have dramatic impact. But the further material conditions surrounding that are no longer 'dramatic needs' Yes, the mother's remains must exist (or at least the character needs to believe so) and they need to be in some location that is not readily accessible. And of course the character needs to have some important reason for retrieving the remains. But none of this requires that the player invents the whole Fortress of the Iron Ring and it's place in the setting. They could, but doing so is not 'establishing a dramatic need.' And all this of course comes back to you quibbling about the player establishing a quest upon seeing 'here be dragons' on the map. That they use GM invented place/other setting elements as trappings for their dramatic need doesn't invalidate their contribution. They have established a dramatic need for their character, and also elevated a random flavour text on the map to something that now has significance to the story. (Yes story, we are always creating stories at the RPG table.)

As for 4, you're massively overinterpreting what is actually there. I seriously doubt that it was ever intended for the players to establish significant setting elements via quests, merely to set goals regarding already existing elements. Or if they intended players to have significant setting authority, then they did piss poor job at expressing it.

Again, why does 4e need to be protected from this such that you're unwilling to consider it and instead insist any such take is wrong?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes. (Well, it is probably more than literally zero, but it definitely is not much.) The whole point of this tangent was that there is desire in the playerbase for more character drama related content, but the game books as they stand do poor job for supporting it and it would be wise for WotC to offer that support.

5e cannot support it as presented. The reasons why have already been covered in thus thread. Unless you're maintaining that GM Says is the proper and only way to deliver such play? I say bluntly it is not.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, why does 4e need to be protected from this such that you're unwilling to consider it and instead insist any such take is wrong?

Such a bizarre take! I don't care what you do with 4e, I just don't think the books say what you think they say. It is not about what should, it is about what is.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

5e cannot support it as presented. The reasons why have already been covered in thus thread. Unless you're maintaining that GM Says is the proper and only way to deliver such play? I say bluntly it is not.

I literally do not understand what you're saying here. It is impossible to have character drama in 5e? That is obviously and demonstrably not true.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it's quite useful. This discussion has helped me articulate exactly why I don't like narrativist games. Now that I understand what their agenda is and the various approaches intended to achieve it, I can reject it personally with a clear conscience, or even dabble in it knowing why those mechanics exist.

For example, I have spent a lot of time recently examining Star Trek Adventures with an eye towards running it for my friends. While not really a Story Now game, it does have some mechanical elements that lean that direction (more than most versions of D&D, anyway). Understanding the agenda behind those mechanics will inform my running of the game, hopefully for the better.

Then I would personally consider this thread to have succeeded. Even if nine people walk away feeling it was a waste of time, one person genuinely getting something useful out of it is still a win. Though TBH I think it's a significantly higher than that. I, personally, have come to understand things significantly better than I did before this thread.

This is great. As someone that does love SN, among other games, I'm actually excited for someone to grasp the concepts and then decide it's not for them. Far better than the usual denial that SN is even a thing.

Agreed. As with a significant number of things in life, I would much, much rather have a principled, sober disagreement than any form of knee-jerk response, whether it be for or against my own position.

Though hopefully something far more elaborate than the throwaway line in 4e. But 5e DMG is pretty damn lacking. They could easily publish a whole Advanced Campaign Builder's guide or some such.

I mean, I don't personally think the things in 4e were throwaway so much, but other than that point, I agree. Frankly, that's how I would write nearly every core book. Emphasize that campaigns can be a beautiful thing to build, not just to borrow. E.g., the Ancestries section: don't declare X race is "common" and Y race is "uncommon." Describe the races without fear or favor, and then explain how different campaigns might use different lists or options in order to cultivate a theme or examine a conceit. E.g. 4e Dark Sun used the dragonborn to represent dray, but did so by exploring the themes of the race in a very Dark Sun "inverted tropes" kind of way. The implied setting version of 4e dragonborn are noble warriors who carry an ancient legacy, tending to lean into their physical prowess and their honor-before-reason traditions. The Dark Sun dray are conniving (as opposed to brave), insular (the dark shadow of clan-centric society), sorcerous (as opposed to martial), and widely distrusted or even feared for their inhuman appearance and the fact that they don't have history or precedent due to being a relatively new phenomenon.

Same goes for things like deities and classes. (And despite what some folks have claimed, 4e Dark Sun maintained the "no Divine classes" thing; indeed, in arguably did so better, because it doesn't even offer the fig leaf of elemental clerics.) These are all tools that can be exploited to set a tone, to establish a conceit, to explore thematic and conceptual spaces. Talk--to both DMs AND players--about how these elements can be used in creative and productive ways. Emphasize that the fundamentally collaborative nature of D&D means that DMs and players are best served by working together, picking up ideas and learning from each other. It would literally only require a couple of pages AT MOST in each spot (ancestries, classes, and deities; maybe throw in equipment, spells, and feats too--that'd be a grand total of at most 30 pages, and those would be some of the most useful, productive pages in the entire PHB!)

 

[Campbell]

It's obvious to me that 4e is not primarily a Story Now game in the same way Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World or Sorcerer are. What it is much more amenable to Story Now play than other editions of the game, including my personal favorite editions (B/X and PF2). It is more amenable because the rules get in the way less than they do in other versions of the game.

As a Story Now GM during every moment of play your primary concern should be framing thematically dynamic scenes that directly follow from the fallout of the previous scene. This often involves eliding space and time. The rules of other versions get in the way more because when you have divergent resource management eliding space and time has an impact on the game state that is felt unevenly between players. Also the stronger the exploration side of the game becomes the harder it becomes to elide this stuff because players want to play with their exploration tools. This can be a strong issue in B/X and PF2.

Additionally, 5e just puts too much say in the GM's hands for how things will turn out (saying this as a GM). Outside of combat the game is pretty much GM Decides. Story Now is all about group wide shared narrative tension. We're supposed to be finding out how this stuff goes together. The extraordinary amount of willpower it takes to not steer the wheel where you want it narratively as a 5e GM is massive.