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

[Crimson Longinus]

How does 5e combat generate ANY fiction? It certainly CONSTRAINS what fiction you can generate (IE the orc is at 0 hit points, any generated fiction is going to have to acknowledge that somehow).

That seems like meaningless distinction. We could always formulate any generated ficion as its inversion in fiction which it constrains.
I attack orc with my sword, I hit, the orc takes slashing damage, orc is now dead. It think it is pretty straightforward that what sort of fiction was generated.

I don't think your wargame example works well either TBH. How is it gamist? The idea in this case is to generate as realist as possible a scenario. It seems PURE simulation in the most brute sense possible! The army and the general are uninterested in whether or not he 'wins', the goal is to provide realistic situations such that experience gained through them is applicable to a real war.

Of course they care that they win! Have you met any wargamers? People wondering things like "Could I have lead the French army to victory in Waterloo?" is basically the reason wargames exist. Do you think that people in real combat exercises that simulate real battle don't care whether their team wins? How bizarre!

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's the role of the GM. High concept sim generally requires a strong GM oversight including fudging and overt scene framing to reinforce the genre and make everything feel 'right'. Narr requires a more permissive GM role constrained by rules and transparency expressly in order to avoid that oversight and instead allow play to be driven by the players. Sim is prepared to sacrifice freedom for consistency because the emulation is the point; narr is prepared to sacrifice consistency for freedom because the protagonism is the point.

As I said, this only works as long as you consider the attention of players to the world setting and its coherence trivial in Sim, which is absolutely not the case with genres that need active emulation. They resolutely interfere with things that seem like they'd make sense in-world to maintain that feel. Its the fact that the development of the Forge considers that trivial that shows that for the most part those developing it considered Sim an afterthought.
This is not super-surprising; the early parts of GDS suffered badly by tunnel vision when it was being developed only by early Sim proponents in response to Berkmanian Story. It wasn't until people with other concerns got involved that it made a serious attempt to include other concerns, and even then there were problems with Gamism because there weren't enough proponents for it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

From direct experience: there were 3 reasons why character background could be seen as a negative:
1. It implied a significant investment in the character, and real OS play was done with basically throw-away characters. The GM might feel compelled to respect your investment by going light on you. So it was almost like a form of 'plot armor', and thus cheating.
2. It gave your character some sort of material experience that could be invoked during play to your advantage. Whether it was "I must know X" or "I must be an ally of Y" or whatever. GMs are highly suspicious of this kind of thing is OS.
3. It is stepping on the GM's prerogatives. The player has now drawn a part of the 'map', effectively. This gives them an unfair advantage. At best it is stepping on the GM's toes.

For all these reasons backgrounds/backstories could be frowned upon. They were really not adding much to the game anyway, as the whole gist of the thing was "enter the maze of death, get the gold, and survive." It was kind of immaterial where your home town was...

Good to know. I shall stay as far from groups with this sort of play style as humanly possible!

 

[Thomas Shey]

From direct experience: there were 3 reasons why character background could be seen as a negative:
1. It implied a significant investment in the character, and real OS play was done with basically throw-away characters. The GM might feel compelled to respect your investment by going light on you. So it was almost like a form of 'plot armor', and thus cheating.
2. It gave your character some sort of material experience that could be invoked during play to your advantage. Whether it was "I must know X" or "I must be an ally of Y" or whatever. GMs are highly suspicious of this kind of thing is OS.
3. It is stepping on the GM's prerogatives. The player has now drawn a part of the 'map', effectively. This gives them an unfair advantage. At best it is stepping on the GM's toes.

For all these reasons backgrounds/backstories could be frowned upon. They were really not adding much to the game anyway, as the whole gist of the thing was "enter the maze of death, get the gold, and survive." It was kind of immaterial where your home town was...

I'd buy that, but it still existed once #1 was no longer viewed as true, and for OS proponents who are not quite all the way back to the token-play part of the history of the hobby. #2 has some virtues to it, as I've seen that part expressed before. #3 if true was not ever expressed that way, which doesn't mean it may not have been the unstated reason.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Good to know. I shall stay as far from groups with this sort of play style as humanly possible!

He's not wrong with certain element of very early play style, but that sort of style did not survive contact with the playing public for very long at all, less so in some places than others. Particularly, while it might have stayed in practice, the support for characters being interchangeable started to go away about as soon as attribute values actually started to mean something. To conclude that all or even the majority of Old School play was/is that is something of a hot take.

 

[niklinna]

Note, however, that "fudged" is doing some lifting there. Things like metacurrency and the like were not considered fudging; they were guiding the results within context. Fudging was considered bad to a large extent because it was considered a GM-only tool, and thus privileging the GM's image of how the story should come out. How they'd have felt about some other modern tools I can't say.

Yes here is the opening to the essay:

"Simulationism" is a term coined in February 1995 on the newsgroup on the forum rec.games.frp.advocacy (rgfa).[1] Here I want to explain it, and put it into context. Over the next two years on rgfa, it was defined negatively as the rejection of certain methods. The definition was that it was against using meta-game information (like whether a character is a PC, whether this is on-screen or background, or who the players are) to affect in-game resolution. Thus, it rejects methods like die-roll bonuses for how cool a maneuver sounded to the GM, or requiring drama points to allow players to alter background. Instead, what happens should be based on thinking only about what would happen in the game-world as a alternate reality.

And the bit about fudging (emphasis added):

Action and Scene Resolution​

Action resolution differs from adventure design, because it is less about GM preparation prior to the session, and more about use of rules and dice during a game session. However, it still follows the same Simulationist principle of following internal cause.

Many drama-oriented systems advise the GM to overlook or modify die rolls or rules. In particular, they suggest that cool-sounding or inspirational PC actions be allowed to succeed. There is also the alternate concept that the challenge should be fair -- meaning that if the players act intelligently, the PCs should succeed. Simulationism rejects both of these. Results are not fudged for story, so when faced with difficult odds the PCs may well fail. Alternatively, they may get lucky and breeze past the opposition. There is no bias that the PCs will be facing difficult but beatable odds.

 

[soviet]

As I said, this only works as long as you consider the attention of players to the world setting and its coherence trivial in Sim, which is absolutely not the case with genres that need active emulation. They resolutely interfere with things that seem like they'd make sense in-world to maintain that feel. Its the fact that the development of the Forge considers that trivial that shows that for the most part those developing it considered Sim an afterthought.
This is not super-surprising; the early parts of GDS suffered badly by tunnel vision when it was being developed only by early Sim proponents in response to Berkmanian Story. It wasn't until people with other concerns got involved that it made a serious attempt to include other concerns, and even then there were problems with Gamism because there weren't enough proponents for it.

I don't consider it trivial. The players are quite likely supporters of the arrangement, and doing their best to preserve the right feel and story beats from their end.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Edwards was pretty clear in stating that anything involving desirable outcomes in terms of those things is Simulationist in his model, and that in his model, Narrativism is specifically about not having a decided idea about where or how things should go. That was new, and distinct, and clearly in contrast with GDS's Gamism, Dramatism, and Simulationism. He picked a really bad name for it. Actually he picked two really bad names for it. And then, from what I've read, got really pissy about reaction to his model.

It really seems to me that a lot of this argument has been due to people not being clear about which of the terminology-sharing models they are using, and, frankly, making it sound like the models are subject to revision through criticism, after 20+ years. In the GDS model, the above example clearly goes under Dramatism. In the GNS model, it clearly goes under High Concept Simulationism. Yes, Edwards erased or co-opted or buried the idea of drama and that sucks, but we already knew that. If you don't like it, it's enough to say, "I don't subscribe to GNS; here's where things go in GDS."

Except, of course, people do keep defending GNS as the better model; as long as that's the case I reserve the right to say why I think it isn't. Its not as critical in theory in this thread as its parent thread (because GNS and GDS Gamism are probably close enough), but as soon as people want to bring in the other legs of either model, its going to keep coming up.

I have by accident of history been more familiar with GNS than GDS. I have been reading up on GDS as this thread unfolds, but I am not familiar enough yet to have confidence applying it to D&D (or anything) in detail. I have already noticed critical differences in detail between the two beyond the top-level category names, but I'm not sure I'll have the time to internalize them so as to write another reponse to the OP in terms of GDS. I'd love it if somebody who is well-versed in it would do so!

Like I said, I suspect if it was kept to a positive discussion of what the Gamism of D&D is (which both GDS and GNS proponents are in general agreement about) it wouldn't be a problem. The problem comes up when you try to talk about secondary functions in D&D which seem ad-hoc Dramatist to a GDS proponent, and if I'm now understanding correctly the GNS categories, don't seem to fit into it anywhere as best I can tell (because if I'm not misunderstanding Story-seeking that is not Story Now is not consider virtuous in the model, well, anywhere (either that or its again being shoved into Sim because apparently the bucket at the bottom that catches anything that doesn't obviously land anywhere else)). So as soon as you get into that, there are problems.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I have read the rules. I've even played it, albeit very little and a long time ago.

The first on the agenda bullet points is: Make Apocalypse World seem real. The first on the list of principles is:
Barf forth apocalyptica, which is further described thusly:

Cultivate an imagination full of harsh landscapes, garish bloody images, and grotesque juxtapositions. In Apocalypse World, when the rain falls it’s full of fine black grit like toner, and all the plants’ leaves turn gray from absorbing it. Out among the wrecked cars, wild dogs fight for territory, with each other and with the rats, and one of the breeds is developing a protective inner eyelid of blank bone. If you get too close to them you can hear the click-click when they blink.

The whole game is written in highly evocative style, the things are intentionally constructed to evoke very specific feel and it is clear that this is the tone one should aim during the play? How on Earth we are not emulating a genre here? What does genre emulation even look like if not this?

Cherry picking doesn't actually make your point.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Regarding simulationsim and fudging:

I mean I don't really see why you would fudge if your main concern was simulationism. If you wanted to simulate thing and were confident that your system properly simulates the thing, then any fudging would just make the simulation less accurate. Only simulationism motivated reason for fudging would be if the system was bad at simulating the thing and you'd need human interference to 'correct' it.