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

[niklinna]

I feel you're evading the question. Forget I said anything about any atmosphere. That's not the point. Fighting bugbears etc is. In fact, if you wouldn't know that the GM is making it up on the spot, there is no difference to a preplanned dungeon delve. Any observer or even a player that wouldn't know that wouldn't experience things any differently. Still a sim just because GM is making it up on the spot rather than a day before the session?

If fighting bugbears is the point, then that is what GNS theory is interested in, and that falls under its Gamist category.

Also, I super feel that simulationism in this theory is just "everything else that didn't fit to our other categories we actually care about" category. Both narrativism, and according to you gamism have super specific and strict requirements to qualify, everything else is a sim.

You would not be alone in that. It's one of the larger historical criticisms of the GNS model. It does at least describe subcategories of simulationism, but it's a grudging nod at best. I think there was some kind of obsession in that whole realm with having things in threes....

 

[clearstream]

I think "all or nothing" thinking is pretty much part of human nature. It isn't the model leading to siloed thinking.

But I see a clear disconnect in that you are asking for drama or story, not in any GNS sense, but that people who use the model—perhaps because this thread established GNS as a context?—are taking those terms (and whatever elaboration you've provided) and interpreting them in light of that model. Which you don't subscribe to. The model addresses your desires, but it locates most of what you call "character drama" someplace that you don't like (or don't understand), and yet you and the GNS people refuse to find common ground. But they're the ones with a model and language to frame a discussion.

GNS, yes, and GDS and GEN. There are multiple lenses. I'm drawn to GEN because I feel that the GDS/GNS triangle helps itself to a lot of assumptions and unnecessary conflations.

There are deeper problems than this, particularly with interpration and application of theory & models, but if I have the courage to get into that at all it'll have to wait. I've already alluded to it in comments about how GNS is to be applied to moments and decisions, and not to game systems or players.

Perforce decisions are a behaviour of players, right? And moments, a feature of their play.

It's probably right to say that game system is not (for e.g.) gamist, but one can say that a game system is designed with gamist ends in mind (or withhout), enabling (or hindering) gamist moments and decisions. For convenience then, why not say the system is gamist?

 

[Aldarc]

Fair enough. The only one of those rulebooks I've read is The One Ring 2e, and I must have missed it there. Certainly the concept exists, as you say, across many RPGs.

(1) I don't fault you for having not read these. (2) I will freely admit that I think that people (and here I include myself) sometimes tend to gloss over a lot of GMing advice or the particular wording in GMing sections because many already know how to GM in other games (i.e., D&D) and they bring those assumptions and their experiences into these other games.

 

[kenada]

I'm not so sure. As long as they're things the players had no reasonable way to know beforehand anyway it doesn't matter, unless you consider 'guessing well' to be a meaningful challenge and I wouldn't.

But if we accept your premise, in what GNS category would an improvised dungeon delve fall into then, if lack of preplanning disqualifies it from gamism? Let's assume there is no heavy focus on exploring character drama beyond "dungeons are kinda scary" and not heavy emphasis on presenting super coherent fantasy milieu. You classic fight bugbears, avoid traps, get treasure type of an affair.

I’d be interested to hear @Manbearcat’s experience running Torchbearer, which has a lot of Step On Up to it. My impression as one of the players in his game is that it doesn’t feel unfair in spite of the (my presumed) low volume of prep.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

I agree with this. But there is a point where the terms crossover so much, and the bleed-togetherness is so fluid, that the label becomes more of a hinderance than a help. Perhaps this is one of those times?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Also, further ponderings: Lets say I take a Story Now engine, some Powered by Apocalypse thing and then proceed run a game where the primary reasoning for how to frame things is not related to the dramatic needs of the characters, but evoking some particular feel and perhaps a genre. Like proper no myth, no prep, but the focus on evoking, say, a gothic horror feel. (And specifically in generic sense, so that it is not personal horror tailored to these characters.) What I am doing? Is this now a high concept sim too?

 

[Campbell]

Also, further ponderings: Lets say I take a Story Now engine, some Powered by Apocalypse thing and then proceed run a game where the primary reasoning for how to frame things is not related to the dramatic needs of the characters, but evoking some particular feel and perhaps a genre. Like proper no myth, no prep, but the focus on evoking, say, a gothic horror feel. (And specifically in generic sense, so that it is not personal horror tailored to these characters.) What I am doing? Is this now a high concept sim too?

In my book it's High Concept. This is where I place a fair amount of Powered by the Apocalypse games that are not Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts or Masks. Good examples include Monster of the Week, The Sprawl and Tremulus.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah it's a problem. GNS rolled over GDS pretty hard. Speaking of GDS, in my digging I have found multiple versions of that model. Is there a particular one you recommend I start with?

The 1998 FAQ is probably the most useful one, though as noted by Brian Gleichman, it includes the "fair" reference in Gamism, which a lot of us disagreed was automatically necessary. The 2003 version was done for Nordic LARP and suffers from being colored a bit much from their specific needs and expectations.

(I won't comment about GEN; it looks interesting but I'm not experienced enough with it to say whether its an improvement or not).

From what I've read, this is a fair criticism! GNS Sim is an unwieldy big umbrella (although I do feel I understand Edwards's intent).

I'll be really blunt; I'm pretty cynical that he really wasn't interested in either Gamism or especially Simulationism, and as such it got some of the same haphazard treatment Gamism got in GDS, without anyone even to take him to task on it. As I've noted, the only reason genre emulation is in there is once he'd scraped everything out of Dramatism but what he wanted, it had to go somewhere, and there was going to be no good angle where it could be viewed as belonging in Gamism, so Sim is where it went.

More or less, yeah.

Yup.

And again, don't get me wrong; there are distinct issues with GDS; its very arguable that the number of modern gamers who care at all about the more hardcore versions of Sim are tiny, and they weren't huge even back in the day. For all my criticism of Nar, there are at least a discernible number of people who clearly really want what Story Now is serving up. The problem with it is that it wants a wing of the threefold all to itself. At least GDS Sim's world fixation was a somewhat broader concern in, well, theory. Very few people want All The Sim in a GDS sense, but at least a significant number at the time wanted some of it (whether that's still true is hard to judge). Do a lot of people want some Story Now, given the constraints on it? Its hard for me to think so.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In my book it's High Concept. This is where I place a fair amount of Powered by the Apocalypse games that are not Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts or Masks. Good examples include Monster of the Week, The Sprawl and Tremulus.

Fair enough, but again it proves that GNS narrativism is bizarrely specific and narrow and simulationism absurdly broad with next to no unifying features. I would never, ever associate Powered by the Apocalypse with any sort of simulationism. It absolutely is not a simulationist engine by any sensible definition of the word.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I’d be interested to hear @Manbearcat’s experience running Torchbearer, which has a lot of Step On Up to it. My impression as one of the players in his game is that it doesn’t fee unfair in spite of the (my presumed) low volume of prep.

It gets involved in the question of what rest state you're engaging with. If part of your game setup is prep for an encounter, if there's no encounter until you get there, what did the prep mean? On the other hand, if the GM is not changing the encounter mid-encounter, then at least your decisions there are still engaging with challenge meaningfully.