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

[Ovinomancer]

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.

Right, your claim is that other people are reading it wrong, and making wrong assumptions. Why?

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

It is impossible to do so in any Story Now way, which means that any character is about evincing concept, not questioning. And that's high-concept sim, which is already in place well enough.

 

[niklinna]

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.

Yeah, this is why in my response to the OP above, I made a point of distinguishing what 5e supports, hinders, and allows (and in what ways), rather than saying it is or isn't GNS Gamist etc.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Yeah, 4e being "more amenable" to Story Now approach I can buy.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It is impossible to do so in any Story Now way, which means that any character is about evincing concept, not questioning. And that's high-concept sim, which is already in place well enough.

Right. So here the model is again just a hindrance and leads to this sort of siloed "all or nothing" thinking. I can easily imagine a game being more supportive for playing character drama without becoming Story Now.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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 enage in that thread.

But isn't this a rather huge problem though? Like if all discussion of human psychology was framed in the terms of Myers–Briggs personality model and anyone who wouldn't buy into that would be discouraged from participating or had to create their own bubbles?

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.

Right. But this is frankly bizarre. Does the gamism care about the timing of the creation of the game elements? Does simulationism? Why only narrativism does? It is super unsymmetrical. Why does preplanning dramatic elements instead of improvising them turn narrativism into simulationism, but preplanning or improvising challenges has no impact on whether something is gamism.

And of course the timing is practically never all or nothing. Some elements are created before (even on Story Now, like we discussed regarding characters) some are created during the play. The ratios may change, but both are always there.

Furthermore, I don't think 'story after' is a particularly useful concept. Sure, it is a thing and it always is a thing whether you care about it or a not. You can always look back at the events after the game and think about the story they formed. Even after the most hard core purist Story Now session. But as this happens after the game, whether you do this or not has really no impact to the play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Me too. Except more so. I hate all this Label-ism. All this pseudointellectual discussion about what something is and is not is a complete waste of time. All that matters is what people do at the table, and so long as they are having fun they are doing it right.

The usual problem is that without having terminology of some sort, its not like its particularly easy to talk about what people do and don't have fun doing and why. And its kind of nice to not have to constantly do that by trial and error.

 

[niklinna]

But isn't this a rather huge problem though? Like if all discussion of human psychology was framed in the terms of Myers–Briggs personality model and anyone who wouldn't buy into that would be discouraged from participating or had to create their own bubbles?

We're not trying to frame all of RPGing into GNS. But we are having a discussion within that model, as framed, at least in part, by the OP, which explictly said GNS was fair game. If you want to develop another model, that's fine, but don't come to a Myers-Briggs conference and tell everyone their model sucks and they need to use another one.

Right. But this is frankly bizarre. Does the gamism care about the timing of the creation of the game elements? Does simulationism? Why only narrativism does? It is super unsymmetrical. Why does preplanning dramatic elements instead of improvising them turn narrativism into simulationism, but preplanning or improvising challenges has no impact on whether something is gamism.

GNS Gamism and Simulationism don't need to emphasize timing because it isn't as much of an issue there, because their key elements both arose naturally during play from the get-go. An accident of history, perhaps. The particular dramatic stuff that GNS Story Now cares about, historically and in large part, had not, or at the very least, had not been formally acknowledged.

And of course the timing is practically never all or nothing. Some elements are created before (even on Story Now, like we discussed regarding characters) some are created during the play. The ratios may change, but both are always there.

I won't argue you there! It's all a matter of degree.

Furthermore, I don't think 'story after' is a particularly useful concept. Sure, it is a thing and it always is a thing whether you care about it or a not. You can always look back at the events after the game and think about the story they formed. Even after the most hard core purist Story Now session. But as this happens after the game, whether you do this or not has really no impact to the play.

It's useful, if only to recognize that part of the matrix of possibilities and see whether you've covered all the bases.

 

[Thomas Shey]

At the dollar figures they're making, it's way more than good enough.

As I've noted before with the market inertial D&D has, all it needs is to be good enough to do that. Past that anything is speculative in either direction.

 

[Campbell]

Timing certainly does matter for different sorts of play as well. It's absolutely crucial for challenge-oriented play that challenges be designed ahead of time. Otherwise, it is not a fair contest of skill. I certainly do not want the RPG equivalent of cheating AI in video games.