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

[soviet]

I mean, ask yourself some time why the vast majority of people who defend it are people who value Nar. Look around for how often in any threads (and I don't mean just on ENWorld which could be argued to contain a disproportionate number of people who are unlikely to find any theoretical model useful) you get people who would primarily indicate they identify their agenda with GNS Gamism or Simulationism. Why do you think that is? Are they that rare? Or is it that the construction on both the other wings looks so defective to people interested in those area that they just dismiss the model and move on?

I imagine it's because people looking for G or S were already well-served by existing games and presumably happy in their gaming. The people consuming theory were (and are) people looking for something not already being catered for effectively. GNS in articulating N play gave shape to what that might be.

By the same token, people attending garages overwhelmingly own vehicles that need to be repaired.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@Thomas Shey

It's not about prominence. It's about distinctiveness. The creative agendas are just phenomenally different.

In fact, I would argue that the whole point was that it wasn't prominent. It was, in fact, a niche within a niche within a niche, hard to design for, hard to exploit as a product (the other agendas welcome creator-made elaborations in a way Story Now does not), certainly not easy to get into the headspace so you can do it, etc. But it was something a niche audience wanted, which wasn't being served.

It makes me think of horizontal market segmentation, Dr. Howard Moskowitz, and the "a large group of people really wanted Extra Chunky but literally did not know it" thing. GNS was a tool for drawing out, naming, and explaining a desire that had gone unserved, and in so doing, prompting the kind of thinking and preparation that would prepare someone to serve that desire. It was a product of its time, and it shows, as I've said earlier. I think it was heavily shaped by the fact that Gamism dominated the TTRPG market (and still does), while Simulation looms large in the public consciousness even if it isn't necessarily well-served in the dominant games.

I will not call my four-part approach a "Fourfold" model, because I do not take seriously the idea that my four purposes--more or less formal causes, in the Aristotelian sense--are the only ones. But I have laid it out the way I have because I see patterns, symmetries between the four purposes that actually do reveal something, not merely label things. Every "game-purpose" I've proposed has a driving concept (the first part of the pair) and an action-space (the second part). Score is the driving concept of "Gamist" play, the idea that performance can be evaluated and ranked in some semi-objective way, and Achievement is its action-space, where one attempts tasks that are worth doing in the hope of proving one's skill. (As noted before, the reason why someone might attempt this could be "prestige," but I consider that a final cause, not a formal one.) Conceit is the driving concept of "emulation" play, the desire to explore an idea or a theme to see the tone and/or results it produces, and Emulation is the action-space where that idea is examined and displayed. "Groundedness" is (what I consider) the driving concept of "simulation" play, the idea that the play-experience should be fully rooted in rational explanations and naturalistic causal relations, free from (so-called) artificial manipulations; "Simulation" is the action-space where that commitment can play out, the metaphorical turning of the crank, the "rules as physics engine" idea. "Values" are the driving concept of "Story Now" play, the idea that the players themselves choose what things are worthy of pursuit or dedication; "Issues" are the action-space, where those (player-defined) values become subject to conflict, and the resolution thereof.

We can draw on real behaviors to see some of this stuff in action. For example, many GNS Gamist players (though often not ones that would call themselves that) have said that the person running the game is the "referee" or that they're disappointed that that isn't how GMing is viewed today. That's a deeply, fundamentally S&A attitude, reflecting the role the game fulfills via the role the person running it is supposed to fulfill. The antipathy for "metagame" knowledge and mechanics, meanwhile, shows how prevalent G&S is as a general interest, even though (as I have been well-schooled in this very thread!) many games are not actually that good at supporting it more than superficially (e.g. 3.x/PF). Fudging as a necessary, even vital GM tool seems to be one of the main C&E interests in the community at large--essentially the counter-claim against opposition to "metagame" mechanics, the idea that no Simulation can be totally perfect, so a little bit of (in general, carefully concealed, to avoid upsetting the players) entirely non-Grounded GM behavior that supports the desired Conceit is warranted. (And this would, again, be a place where I consider C&E to diverge from G&S: really hardcore "process" Sim should be adamantly opposed to any form of fudging, whereas C&E is perfectly comfortable with fudging to ensure the theme or tone plays out the way it "should." Treating it as something to use sparingly, and secretly, is a sometimes-dubious compromise between these two game-purposes.)

 

[clearstream]

@Thomas Shey

You might find a lot more middle ground if you did not seem so adamant about throwing the baby out with the bath water. I would be completely fine with this list of creative agendas for instance:

Visceral Protagonism
Right to Dream (Dramatism / High Concept Sim)
Step On Up
Living Breathing World

Honestly that Story word seems like an albatross around Story Now's neck to me. It gives all sorts of people the wrong idea about what it's all about.

I'm strongly with you on that. My feeling is there are between four and six creative agendas that could be called out. Yours are a great start on that [EDIT and as is evident any start will need chewing over].

I also feel there are some elements that are currently folded into one or other agenda, but that can be applied to more than one and could be separated out and considered available to all of them. In part that might relieve each agenda of making commitments to things that they don't need to make commitments on. Possible examples could include prestige, risk, or causality. Rather than weld those to an agenda, it may be better to separate them out and then identify any agendas that existing games have so far shown them to be effective/ineffective in.

Finally - and honestly I don't think anyone here is wedded to it - I would drop completely coherent/incoherent, functional/dysfunctional because no matter how caveated ones use of them, those words are going to feel like negative characterisations to a significant number of people.

 

[clearstream]

In fact, I would argue that the whole point was that it wasn't prominent. It was, in fact, a niche within a niche within a niche, hard to design for, hard to exploit as a product (the other agendas welcome creator-made elaborations in a way Story Now does not), certainly not easy to get into the headspace so you can do it, etc. But it was something a niche audience wanted, which wasn't being served.

It makes me think of horizontal market segmentation, Dr. Howard Moskowitz, and the "a large group of people really wanted Extra Chunky but literally did not know it" thing. GNS was a tool for drawing out, naming, and explaining a desire that had gone unserved, and in so doing, prompting the kind of thinking and preparation that would prepare someone to serve that desire. It was a product of its time, and it shows, as I've said earlier. I think it was heavily shaped by the fact that Gamism dominated the TTRPG market (and still does), while Simulation looms large in the public consciousness even if it isn't necessarily well-served in the dominant games.

I will not call my four-part approach a "Fourfold" model, because I do not take seriously the idea that my four purposes--more or less formal causes, in the Aristotelian sense--are the only ones. But I have laid it out the way I have because I see patterns, symmetries between the four purposes that actually do reveal something, not merely label things. Every "game-purpose" I've proposed has a driving concept (the first part of the pair) and an action-space (the second part). Score is the driving concept of "Gamist" play, the idea that performance can be evaluated and ranked in some semi-objective way, and Achievement is its action-space, where one attempts tasks that are worth doing in the hope of proving one's skill. (As noted before, the reason why someone might attempt this could be "prestige," but I consider that a final cause, not a formal one.) Conceit is the driving concept of "emulation" play, the desire to explore an idea or a theme to see the tone and/or results it produces, and Emulation is the action-space where that idea is examined and displayed. "Groundedness" is (what I consider) the driving concept of "simulation" play, the idea that the play-experience should be fully rooted in rational explanations and naturalistic causal relations, free from (so-called) artificial manipulations; "Simulation" is the action-space where that commitment can play out, the metaphorical turning of the crank, the "rules as physics engine" idea. "Values" are the driving concept of "Story Now" play, the idea that the players themselves choose what things are worthy of pursuit or dedication; "Issues" are the action-space, where those (player-defined) values become subject to conflict, and the resolution thereof.

We can draw on real behaviors to see some of this stuff in action. For example, many GNS Gamist players (though often not ones that would call themselves that) have said that the person running the game is the "referee" or that they're disappointed that that isn't how GMing is viewed today. That's a deeply, fundamentally S&A attitude, reflecting the role the game fulfills via the role the person running it is supposed to fulfill. The antipathy for "metagame" knowledge and mechanics, meanwhile, shows how prevalent G&S is as a general interest, even though (as I have been well-schooled in this very thread!) many games are not actually that good at supporting it more than superficially (e.g. 3.x/PF). Fudging as a necessary, even vital GM tool seems to be one of the main C&E interests in the community at large--essentially the counter-claim against opposition to "metagame" mechanics, the idea that no Simulation can be totally perfect, so a little bit of (in general, carefully concealed, to avoid upsetting the players) entirely non-Grounded GM behavior that supports the desired Conceit is warranted. (And this would, again, be a place where I consider C&E to diverge from G&S: really hardcore "process" Sim should be adamantly opposed to any form of fudging, whereas C&E is perfectly comfortable with fudging to ensure the theme or tone plays out the way it "should." Treating it as something to use sparingly, and secretly, is a sometimes-dubious compromise between these two game-purposes.)

Can you link back to your four-fold, I have lost it. (I'm teasing about four-fold, but do you know the post I mean? Where you first lay it out up thread.)

 

[Manbearcat]

In fact, I would argue that the whole point was that it wasn't prominent. It was, in fact, a niche within a niche within a niche, hard to design for, hard to exploit as a product (the other agendas welcome creator-made elaborations in a way Story Now does not), certainly not easy to get into the headspace so you can do it, etc. But it was something a niche audience wanted, which wasn't being served.

What I would add to this is "you don't know you want a thing before you can even conceive of its existence". Who knew they needed paper weights or door stoppers or truss hangers or batting gloves until someone imagined them or someone successfully designed already imagined things into existence? Who knew there would be a market for such things? Who knew that market would grow rather than stagnate or regress as years piled on?

Same goes for Story Now games. Who knew you could design a certain sort of principled, rules-directed, authority-distributed play that created an intense, focused sort of player protagonism coupled with intense, yet tightly system-constrained, opposition to that protagonism on the GM side? Who knew a particular array of systemitized incentive structures and integrated conflict/action resolution mechanics and consequences could align participant behavior and coordinate the conversation of play so it consistently propels play toward addressing the very questions that play is intended to address.

Until the early 90s with games like Over the Edge, the TTRPG version of the paper weight/door stopper (et al) probably (maybe latent in some aspirant designer's imaginings) wasn't really conceived of. Then you have the Burning Wheels, Dogs in the Vineyards, Sorcerers, My Life With Masters, and a host of folk talking about how to distill that type of design from the current and potential design-space out there. Then you get several games inspired by those early efforts years later.

Maybe in 20 years (or even less), this design will have a pretty beefy market share to the point where niche has been transcended. I mean, the ball has certainly been moved down the field quite a bit since the early 90s!

 

[pemerton]

On RPGs, or games, as tools:

There are things used in gameplay that are tools - eg dice, boards, pens, computers, etc. Most of these are deliberately designed by humans for the purpose for which they're used in gameplay. (But not always: imagine a rough map drawn in the dirt using a stick by a group playing a RPG while camping; and I remember a post from a D&D player whose group used M&Ms for minion tokens - whoever got the kill got to eat the M&M!).

A game itself is probably best conceived of as a practice. (This is the approach I'm familiar with in the phil of law and phil-of-law adjacent work on practices and conventions). It is constituted by rules, which include a normative orientation by the participants towards the rules. (I'm not going to try and analyse cheating in this post - perhaps the notion of hypocrisy being the tribute that vice pays to virtue will do the job, but I'm not going to try and work that out. Whereas there is pressure in a theory of law to say that law can exist even when widely ignored or disobeyed - consider eg some aspects of Russian tax law - there is no corresponding pressure on us to say that a game continues to exist even when few of the participants treat the "official" rules as normative for them. We can just say they're playing a different game, or perhaps no game at all.)

In the case of the a RPG, I follow Vincent Baker in thinking that the principal purpose or function of the rules is to establish, maintain, and change, a shared fiction. There are all sorts of sub-rules - some express, some implicit - that establish the details of this, including when tools (what Baker calls cues) are to be used.

Why people would want to get together and create a shared fiction together - what, if you like, is the reason for RPGing - is a further question. Edwards puts to one side motivations like "hanging with my friends" or "getting paid to do it", and tries to identify reasons or purposes that are more inherent to the activity. He puts it this way:

stick to the role-playing itself. (The wholly social issues are real, such as "Wanting to hang out with my friends," but they are not the topic at hand.) Now ask, "What makes fun?" This may not be a verbal question, and it is best answered mainly through role-playing with people rather than listening to them. Time and inference are usually required.​

The three possibilities he comes up with - for the sake of enjoying/experiencing/imagining the fiction in itself; to win at a game in which manipulating the shared fiction (in accordance with the rules of the game) is part of how you win; to make a point like other authors/creators do in their various media - are grounded in a mixture of intuition and observation.

The form of the activity (in Edwards' terms, it involves setting, character, situation and colour, as well as the system for adding to or changing the fiction) itself imposes some limits, which again can be conjectured by a mix of intuition and observation. Eg the sort of wins that are possible by manipulating a shared fiction are not likely to include puzzles of the sudoku or crossword type - that's not to say that RPGs don't include these sorts of things from time to time, but they are ancillary to RPGing in the same way that resolving a conflict of armies via a tabletop wargame process in ancillary. The former doesn't involve developing or manipulating a shared fiction; the latter doesn't involve playing a character.

It is possible to have borderline instances. The last time I used a riddle in play, it was about the Raven Queen and solving it required knowing and building on elements of the shared fiction. A grid-based puzzle that (eg) relied on knowledge of oppositions that obtain within the fiction could be a component of gamist RPGing rather than just a puzzle dropped into a RPG session.

Similar limitations operate in the other domains. One way to get together with friend to create fiction with a point is to write a novel or play together, but this isn't RPGing: even if this is done via some sort of system, it doesn't involve character, setting or situation in the way that Edwards intends (ie some participants having a particular relationship to certain characters, and the way those characters are located in setting and situation so as to provoke action declarations). For this reason, the shared setting generation one might find in (say) the first session of a Fate or BW campaign isn't roleplaying in Edwards's sense - it's a type of preliminary activity, in the same way that there is a clear sense of playing soccer in which marking up a field and placing the goals doesn't count as playing soccer, even though it might be an important thing to do so that soccer can be played.

Edwards likewise does not count reading a rulebook or a setting book as RPGing in his sense, no matter how much imaginative pleasure the reader gets from reflecting on the setting or thinking about how the rules would play out.

Are there other reasons, besides Edwards' three, for engaging in the practice of RPGing?

I have a hair-brained notion of five challenges

1. Drama - as a player I am challenged to propose and unravel psychological motives (e.g. duties, beliefs, desires)
2. Story - as players we are challenged to resolve a premise
3. Simulation - as a player I am challenged to know the world and my place in it
4. Construction - as a player I am challenged to build something in the game world
5. Solution - as a player I am challenged to figure something out (e.g. a puzzle)

With four dimensions they can be addressed along

1. Tactical - position matters, materiel matters
2. Strategic - policy matters, logistics matter
3. Cultural - concerns matter, beliefs matter
4. Magical - relationships matter, appearances matter (is this really separate from cultural? and/or should there be psychological?)

The dimensions, as presented, seem to be different aspects of the shared fiction that might be manipulated or deployed in order to win - cultural, magical, but why not eg technological or geological? - or else (to echo @AbdulAlhazred) matters of "scope" with some uncertainty as to whether that is intended to be more properties of the fiction (position, politics) or rather properties of the system used to resolve actions and thereby try and win (eg "large scale" in terms of the scope and temporality of play vs "immediate" in the same terms).

The drama, simulation and solution challenges all seem to involve working something out about the fiction. The construction challenge seems to involve (perhaps) manipulating the fiction in a certain fashion, ie a particular sort of engagement with the system. The story challenge seems to be an invitation to authorship.

Probably unsurprisingly, I think that looking at RPGs through the lens of shared fiction created in a certain fashion (character, setting, situation with distinct allocations of authority in respect of these) and a system for doing that creation - ie basically the framework provided by Edwards and Baker - allows us to see what is going on in these different sorts of RPGing, and to work out what sort of system might be best for them. Eg a classic high-concept sim game is unlikely to be good for either "story" challenges (because of the role given to the GM in managing setting, situation, and consequences of action resolution) or the "construction" challenges (for similar reasons) but might be fine for "drama", "simulation" and "solution" challenges (GUMSHOE seems to handle these sorts of things pretty well).

Purist-for-system should be able to do construction challenges within the scope of its colour (eg think about trade and starships in Classic Traveller).

And of course - assuming I'm interpreting "story" challenges successfully - a typical "story now" oriented RPG should be good for doing those (again subject to considerations of colour).

it is assumed a game will be more successfully expressive and engaging, the more challenges and dimensions it successfully weds.

I think my preceding paragraphs cast doubt on this assumption. D&D 4e does not have a "strategic" dimension of any great significance (assuming that dimension is about scope and temporality of play, rather than about the content of the fiction). Wuthering Height does not have a strategic dimension of any great significance (on either understanding of what that might be). Both can be quite expressive and engaging.

I think that Rifts purports to engage all 4 dimensions, but I don't think this makes it more expressive or engaging than either of those other two RPGs.

As far as challenges are concerned, there are huge tensions between (say) the "story" challenge and the "simulation" challenge, as Edwards has detailed at length and as I've posted in this thread. Similarly, systems that support "construction" challenges tend to be inimical to "story" challenges. Etc.

 

[pemerton]

I mean, ask yourself some time why the vast majority of people who defend it are people who value Nar. Look around for how often in any threads (and I don't mean just on ENWorld which could be argued to contain a disproportionate number of people who are unlikely to find any theoretical model useful) you get people who would primarily indicate they identify their agenda with GNS Gamism or Simulationism. Why do you think that is? Are they that rare? Or is it that the construction on both the other wings looks so defective to people interested in those area that they just dismiss the model and move on?

As I've posted already upthread (I think), when I first read Edwards's essays, in 2004 I think it was, I was in my 15th straight year of playing Rolemaster as my main system. That continued for nearly 5 more years.

I regard myself as deeply steeped in an understanding of the process sim/purist-for-system agenda, and thinks Edwards account is far more insightful than anything else I've read about it. (Around the same time I spent a fair bit of time on the ICE boards: many RM players there, but few of them seemed to have any serious grasp of how the game worked in a deep sense, or what the causes were of recurrent issues that that sort of RPGing presents.) Just as one minor example, Edwards essay explains, very clearly, why every RMC includes a new variant initiative system - and of course my own version of RM had its own bespoke initiative system, which would from time-to-time cause issues precisely because (as Edwards points out) initiative does not really satisfy the internal-cause-is-king demand of simulationist play.

I also have done enough 2nd ed AD&D play (as player, rather than GM) and CoC play (likewise) to have a relatively good grasp of high concept sim as an agenda, and again think Edwards does a good job of identifying where the pressure points arise in that sort of play. The continued occurrence, on ENworld, of discussions and debates that are clearly explicable in terms of high-concept-sim vs gamist conflicts-of-agenda only reinforces that impression. Part of what makes systems like Fate or GUMSHOE stand out is that they seem to have resolved many of those pressure points.

 

[pemerton]

Same goes for Story Now games. Who knew you could design a certain sort of principled, rules-directed, authority-distributed play that created an intense, focused sort of player protagonism coupled with intense, yet tightly system-constrained, opposition to that protagonism on the GM side?

<snip>

Until the early 90s with games like Over the Edge, the TTRPG version of the paper weight/door stopper (et al) probably (maybe latent in some aspirant designer's imaginings) wasn't really conceived of. Then you have the Burning Wheels, Dogs in the Vineyards, Sorcerers, My Life With Masters, and a host of folk talking about how to distill that type of design from the current and potential design-space out there. Then you get several games inspired by those early efforts years later.

Let's not forget Prince Valiant (1989) and Maelstrom Storytelling (1997) and HeroWars (2000). OtE is 1992, but the others you mention are all post-2000.

I tend to agree with Edwards that while "story now"/narrativism was never mainstream, it existed from early in the hobby. So that Edwards and friend are not inventing it, but are pulling it out from the simulationist shadow and really thinking about what techniques, and what principles, will or won't make it work better or worse.

Of course this involved reversing, or at least questioning, many ideas in RPGing that had become largely received by the mid-80s, like the importance of world-building, the importance of GM fidelity to their world and the established fiction, the need for the GM to keep a "lid" on pushy players, etc.

I also feel there are some elements that are currently folded into one or other agenda, but that can be applied to more than one and could be separated out and considered available to all of them. In part that might relieve each agenda of making commitments to things that they don't need to make commitments on. Possible examples could include prestige, risk, or causality. Rather than weld those to an agenda, it may be better to separate them out and then identify any agendas that existing games have so far shown them to be effective/ineffective in.

On prestige, Edwards in his story now essay clearly identifies social status/prestige as something that might be implicated in "story now" play, in the same way that it is an obvious factor in author's circles and artistic salons.

In more than one of his essays he discusses circumstances in which "the system" often becomes a group-specific cultural artefact, often with the GM playing a leading role in that respect. Clearly notions of prestige are in play here too.

As far as "risk" is concerned, here is how he talks about "risk" in the context of "story now":

The potential for personal risk and disclosure among the real people involved.

* High risk play is best represented by playing Sorcerer, Le Mon Mouri, InSpectres, Zero, or Violence Future. You're putting your ego on the line with this stuff, as genre conventions cannot help you; the other people in play are going to learn a lot about who you are.​

It's clear that he is referring to the sort of "risk" involved in any artistic endeavour. He's aware that there is also a type of "risk" in playing to win (ie you can lose, and perhaps look like an idiot in the process) but the risk is different - it's rare that anyone is going to judge your values or personality based on whether or not you're a good wargamer, or a good unraveller of mysteries, in the way they will judge you based on what you think is worthwhile from an artistic/thematic/dramatic point of view.

Which just brings us back to the fact that Edwards, in his work on GNS, is analysing creative agendas as these are apt to be expressed via the medium of RPGing. It's not a general theory of games, nor a general theory of fiction, nor a general theory of life.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I also feel there are some elements that are currently folded into one or other agenda, but that can be applied to more than one and could be separated out and considered available to all of them. In part that might relieve each agenda of making commitments to things that they don't need to make commitments on. Possible examples could include prestige, risk, or causality. Rather than weld those to an agenda, it may be better to separate them out and then identify any agendas that existing games have so far shown them to be effective/ineffective in.

To pry apart, here, why I've been making a distinction between (for example) my Achievement and "prestige" considerations:

"Prestige," in the relevant sense of "getting admiration from others for what one has done," isn't something that a designer can do or make. It isn't something that could be "written into" a game as part of its structure, nor even much written into the procedures or limits or the like that apply to GM behavior. "Prestige" can only result from the things players themselves actually do with the tool. Sort of like how "euphony" or "tension-release" isn't really something an instrument can be designed for; you can design it so that it will produce clear frequencies with the correct timbre, but euphonious sound and the release of tension can only come from performed music, an action.

Someone could absolutely choose to play a particular instrument for the purpose of generating euphony or playing pieces that have deeply satisfying cadences (I'm a big fan of the penultimate cadence in the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; it gives me tingles.) But no amount of formal causes of instruments will ever match those final causes of instruments; "what purposes are instruments made for?" necessarily should get different answers from "why do people choose to play instruments?" At least, for any answers that really tell us much of anything--obviously "make music" is a purpose for both sides, but that's either cyclical or trivial and thus not very productive.

Can you link back to your four-fold, I have lost it. (I'm teasing about four-fold, but do you know the post I mean? Where you first lay it out up thread.)

Sure thing. It proved unusually difficult to find using the search function!

 

[pemerton]

Consider The Dying Earth RPG. I don't know how @EzekielRaiden classifies it. Edwards classifies is it aimed at narrativism/"story now". But it doesn't really fit his formal definition of "story now" - it's not really about addressing a premise in the lit 101 sense.

In The Dying Earth the GM is instructed to come up with situations and scenarios that will get the PCs into trouble. This is guaranteed by a combination of the action resolution rules for persuasion, which means the PCs will be persuaded to do inane things; and the PC build rules for resistances, which make it impossible for a PC to be good at resisting all the temptations of the Dying Earth (gluttony, lust, sloth, etc).

At the start of a session, players are allocated "taglines" of Vancian dialogue, and the way to "win" the game and get PC advancements is to amuse the table with witty delivery of taglines. (The rules have a scale for grading tagline delivery from zero to 3 points.)

What makes it narrativist in Edwards sense is not revealed by his formal definition, but rather by the fact that the whole point of the game is to enjoy seeing how oneself and one's fellow players respond to absurd adversity and deliver droll witticisms in response. It's about authorship with a "point", even if the point isn't really addressing a premise or theme. (And PCs all have more-or-less identical dramatic needs, which the rulebook is quite clear about.)

I guess one could envisage gamist Dying Earth play, with competitions to see who can be the most witty. I don't think that would involve anything but a slight change of tone among the participants - a bit less sharing and generosity, a bit more of an Ancien Regime royal court vibe and looking down one's nose at those who aren't good at wit.