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

[Crimson Longinus]

Right.

Part of the goal of GNS is to avoid someone buying Burning Wheel expecting to get a 2nd ed AD&D or 5e D&D experience. To that extent, the analytical framework doesn't serve indie designers' commercial interests!, but that was never its purpose.

But leading the buyers to think that Wraith the Oblivion and Twilight 2000 provide basically similar experience is perfectly fine?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Fascinating! I had been wondering how one might go about making a game that was both Values-and-issues and Score-and-Achievement, since the latter tends to value quantification and the former is usually not interested in that. This sounds like it marries those two purposes together, with a clever reversal of the usual structure that Score is built around (making it interpretive, almost like, as you mentioned elsewhere, a "salon" or "writer's circle" kind of thing).

I would consider this to be a Values-and-Issues game at its heart, with a Score-and-Achievement undercurrent that could, as you say, be elevated to the primary purpose of play if one chose to. Sort of the exact reverse of 4e, which has Score-and-Achievement as its baseline game-purpose, but which has enough components and "DMs should really do X" advice, likely by intent, that it serves a Values-and-Issues purpose as well.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Genre isn't even in GNS baskets. Simulationism isn't emulation, it's internal cause. So, if you're doing genre by following genre logic to resolve actions, then you're in Simulationism. Having flavor or trappings of genre isn't this, though. If I set the stage for an encounter in the shadow of a burnt out megatank, where various mutants are facing down a PC, that's not calling for genre logic to resolve actions, it's flavor. It's not simulationism. If, however, the PC declares pulling their gun and gunning down the mutants in waves, and the GM says "sure, awesome, note perfect, you do so," that's resolving according to genre logic. But this isn't how AW works. Instead, the player states what their character is doing, and if that triggers a move, then a check is made. This trigger isn't based on genre logic, or if it makes sense to do so, or if there's some cause/effect implicated -- it happens no matter what. Make a move, do the move. There's no auto here. And the result isn't going to be based on genre logic, either, but rather on what the check result is and how that restricts the GM to respond. Fail, and the GM is restricted to making a move against. This might involve pulling from genre logic, but it's not ever required for it to do so. It's only if the genre logic also happens to do what the GM's move is supposed to do -- challenge the PC's core questions -- that it even slips in. If genre logic says something that doesn't align to the result, genre logic loses -- it's what gets discarded.

So, if adherence to genre internal cause is a thing, it's entirely secondary in precedence, and there only if it aligns to the primary drivers of play, which is to put the PC's essential questions under pressure and find out how they get answered through play.

This resolution loop being entirely dissociated from any kind of genre logic or internal cause and the direction that it must be so to follow the agenda and principles of play completely move the game away from simulationism. It doesn't care to replicate genre, unless it's convenient to do so. It's just borrowing genre for stage dressing. You see this in Vincent's comments posted above, where he points out that the key points of contention in AW aren't genre elements at all.

Then in what basket is this flavour based genre evocation? And indeed any flavour based evocation of themes, mood and drama? Because now you say it is not GNS simulationism, but you don't also accept it in narrativism, unless it is done in Story Now way, and whilst in Apoc World it is, in other games it isn't. There is you problem, you have yourself stumbled on this issue people have been trying to tell you the whole thread: that non-story-now dramatist concerns are orphaned in GNS.

You praising AW has nothing to do with the fact that you're denying the play of others. Not saying you don't like it, not saying that you don't understand it, but outright says that they are wrong about how they've been playing and that the game is doing a different thing altogether. You deny. You deny in your claim that the game could only work with some "bizzare commitment to the purity of some ancient game theory." Aside from the fact that this is another ad hominin attack, questioning the motives of players rather than addressing the stated play in an attempt to dismiss that play, this is entirely dishonest from the point of view of the topic of discussion -- the discussion is about and around that exact game theory. We've taken that as the basis for this entire discussion, so tossing it out to attack others is part and parcel of the denial of play. That AW is self-proclaimed Story Now, that AW was written in 2010 when GNS wasn't ancient by whatever standard you're using, that the designer was quoted above confirming these assessments you're dismissing -- all of this goes directly to your motivated denial of play. You're effectively calling people in this thread lying liars that lie or deluded fools that don't even understand how they're playing a game. There's zero curiosity shown.

The game works just fine, and does what people thing it does. I don't deny story now playstyle exists and works. What I do not subscribe to is this bizarre myopic exclusionist view borne out of devotion to GNS that the game must be primarily be about only one of these arbitrarily ill-defined priorities, instead of being a gestalt of harmonised priorities. It's like arguing that a song must always be primarily about the music or the lyrics, instead of accepting that it can be about both and the both are needed to produce the holistic experience the creator wanted to convey.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The purpose of simulationist play is to enjoy the fiction - the imagination - for its own sake. In the context of Macbeth, this would be enjoying both the progression of story elements - witches, murders, forests, etc - and also the characters as revealed in soliloquy. The contrast would be staging a production of Macbeth.

A person who stages a production of Macbeth may also come to enjoy the performance for its own sake, but that's not the typical reason for doing it. Putting to one side purely utilitarian motives like I got paid to stage a production of Macbeth, the person staging the production normally thinks they have something to say or contribute or convey by doing so.

The comparison to "story now" RPGing is not perfect, but it is there. Whether or not one comes to enjoy the fiction for its own sake, that's not the agenda. The agenda is to say something during play. Hence the definining feature of simulationism, which is playing to enjoy the fiction for its own sake is not present in other agendas. There is a difference between goals and byproducts.

There is also a difference between a fiction with a point and setting out to create a fiction with a point via the process of RPG play.

Right. So here you are stating the defining factor is the relationship of the person to the subject matter, either audience or the creator.

I am not obfuscating. I am talking about goals of play. Agendas. Priorities. You seem to be ignoring that. Which is odd, if the goal is to understand a theory of creative agendas!

Obfuscating part is all the talk about points and dramatic needs of characters and all that. If the actual defining part is whether the player is creator of audience of the fiction, then say that. Why would it matter for this whether the created/enjoyed fiction has a point or says something about dramatic needs of the character? Why are things weirdly conflated?

No it doesn't. They're mutually exclusive. A RPGer who is exploring something that has been established in advance of play cannot, at the same time make a call, in play, about what that thing is. As soon as you do the second, you are no longer doing the first.

Yes, in a sense. But no RPG is a solid affair where nothing changes. We can establish a thing (Ser Geralt is an honourable man) and then either intentionally or emergently test it in play (Ser Geralt ends up in a situation where he must choose between his honour and his other priorities (any good character has multiple priorities.))

The idea that such things would be set in stone and never questioned or tested seems very alien to me, and I really don't think that is a typical way most people approach these things.

Probably the best-known manifestation of this is every debate ever that arose from the GM's enforcement of alignment in D&D play. But it comes up in all sorts of other ways too. For instance, if the GM has already decided that the outcome of a particular action declaration will result in defeat for the PC (eg on the basis of prep), then a player who declares that action cannot be testing whether or not following a certain conviction is the only way to succeed. This rules out a whole host of fantasy-thematic-story-now RPGing; and pushes towards expedience-oriented RPGing. This is a very common refrain in the history of D&D play (see eg every thread ever that lamented the prevalence of "murder hobos").

So rail-roading? Well, let's not do that then! As for alignment, it is pretty much vestigial in 5e, and a lot of people simply ignore it. I haven't put it on character sheets at least since the third edition.

My own view, based on observation and others' reports of play, is "no" because the GM has already authored the answer to the test. Ie the GM is doing exactly what Vincent Baker tells the DitV GM not to do, namely, "playing god" and deciding what loyalty, fidelity, etc require. The player is exploring the GM's established view of the theme, not making their own call via the play of the game.

You seem to have very specific, and I would say outdated view of how people play games like D&D. Like sure, people certainly still play railrady adventure paths (I mean they're sold by WotC so presumably people play them) but that's not the only way or not necessarily even the dominant one.

What examples do you have in mind? As I posted, I'm sure it's happening somewhere but I don't see examples of it in the accounts of 5e play that I read. These seem to involve GM-authored plot hooks that establish the villain; GM determinations of what various values, commitments etc demand; and working out character concepts in a way that does not actually put them to the test.

Has this again been one of your attempts to smuggle in setting editing powers into discussion by wording things vaguely? That if the GM, and not the player, created the NPC which results Ser Geralt ending up in position in which his honour was tested it somehow doesn't count?

Otherwise I don't understand your doubt on the matter at all. What on Earth would you lead to thinking that 5e play somehow would not include situations in which characters' beliefs, values and commitments would be tested?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Which people? Please cite some posts.

Sure. This guy here for example:

The purpose of simulationist play is to enjoy the fiction - the imagination - for its own sake. In the context of Macbeth, this would be enjoying both the progression of story elements - witches, murders, forests, etc - and also the characters as revealed in soliloquy. The contrast would be staging a production of Macbeth.

A person who stages a production of Macbeth may also come to enjoy the performance for its own sake, but that's not the typical reason for doing it. Putting to one side purely utilitarian motives like I got paid to stage a production of Macbeth, the person staging the production normally thinks they have something to say or contribute or convey by doing so.

There is also a difference between a fiction with a point and setting out to create a fiction with a point via the process of RPG play.

 

[clearstream]

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.)

Thank you! Your words prompted some good reflection. Just to be sure of context, I introduced tool as the ontological category for games with the thought of prompting further insights in the exchange with @EzekielRaiden. It's somewhat orthogonal or overlying to this discussion as it is about game as game and not as play. What do I mean by that? The question incurs unavoidable confounds and vagueness, which I will go into briefly now.

1. An intuition that comes readily is to grasp game first as artifact - the actual game text, any components. In this light we can identify Senet as a game even though its rules did not survive the centuries, and it cannot be played (as Senet, it can be played as Senet* etc).
2. One confound is that where players interpret the rules, what the actual game text entails might differ by player cohort. We see many examples of such differences here on Enworld. The differences can be so substantial as to be as if the game text included different words for different cohorts. That makes it problematic to suppose that the artifact has any objective singular identity.
3. One aspect of vagueness is that different cases of game - different TTRPGs say - can have different lists of contents... without failing to be a recognisable case of game. So again, how to collect up a group of artifacts and say all are games?

How do I think this connects with your thought about practices? As you point out, a practice includes a normative orientation by some group toward their object. (Incidentally, I felt you articulated near perfectly the pressure to say that a law can exist even where disobeyed, but that in the case of game what that law turns out to be - how it is grasped and if it is upheld - instead changes the game itself.)

So when I say game is tool, I say that the object that the practice is oriented to is game: rules, indexes, icons, symbols inclusive. I call this object the tool which the practitioners grasp in their normalised or practiced ways and uphold in their performance. It is the object of their performance, just as perhaps laws are the objects of the practice of lawyers. Lawyers can develop new laws, and players can develop new games, the latter providing themselves with further tools for play. (I am not saying laws are tools... something I haven't reflected on and have no current commitments about.)

Ambiguity between game as artifact and game as process has been noted by scholars like Bjork and Juul (2012), and Aarseth and Grabarczyk (2018). I think that ambiguity is resolved by asserting that games as artifacts are tools. As they are grasped by players – tool users – they fabricate mechanisms comprising some number of parts, that produce play phenomena.

To say that a thing is a tool is to say that there is a tool-user who knows the use of that tool and will use that tool, and to imply a purpose that is not solely the wielding, but the product of the wielding. It is to suppose an ability to obey and to interpret a proper use, without ruling out improper use. Two tool-users may disagree on how to wield a tool – one may be unaware of a use known by the other and they may differ in purpose – while being satisfied to agree upon the familial identity of that tool.

The function of a tool is contingent on how a tool-user uses that tool. As players wield game artifacts – tools – to fabricate mechanisms, they may determine properties of those mechanisms. The extent of such determination is variable, for example where some functions are handed over to computers. A central property of a tool is its use: with it we perform functions that are impossible or more difficult without it. This endorses a view that game rules are constitutive – they make possible the fabrication of play. A novel game as artifact introduces new possibilities to those who use it.

Knowledge about game tool use is formed via sampled, prospective and projected play, and narratives of play. It might appear at times that the tools amount to the play, but that is false. It is the tools as grasped by players, fabricating mechanisms, that amounts to the play. Tool users may grasp tools in dissimilar ways and wield them with dissimilar intents, including as to ends and methods.

That's a summary of my meaning by saying a game is a tool, and as you can hopefully see, I was introducing a higher-level and ontological category just in case it prompted any insights for @EzekielRaiden and I (or others FTM.) That's probably enough for this post. I'll follow up your other thoughts as/when it seems necessary (or I am always open to prompting, if we'd like to dig into some particular questions.) I should add that my hair-brained notion was very much a thought experiment: I think I summarised my intention pretty well in a reply to @AbdulAlhazred, with perhaps some further evolution in a reply to @Campbell.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Oh, absolutely! I would like to see much more discussion about how you can make the agendas harmonise and support each other. It just seems that it is an article of faith to some that this cannot and shouldn't be done, so it must be denied that it successfully happens in games like Apoc World and 5e D&D. The concept of 'incoherence' is harmful and should be dropped.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But leading the buyers to think that Wraith the Oblivion and Twilight 2000 provide basically similar experience is perfectly fine?

One is High Concept the other is Purist-for-system. The essays make this distinction under simulationism. So... sure, only if your taxonomy intentionally stops at too high a tier. Like saying Animal, Elephant and Animal, Platypus are the same thing if you stop at Animal.

We've been around on this before, and you seem hellbent at stopping at a high level and ignoring the sub-groupings below. GNS does this.

However, this is one of my issues with GNS, in that it's structure allows for this kind of argument to be easily reached. While I agree that internal cause is the key thread between high concept and purist-for-system (or process sim), the grouping of things that value very different kinds of internal cause makes it very easy for people that don't grok this to dismiss the entire theory by misunderstanding this. It's obfuscated enough that it's an easy target.

Then in what basket is this flavour based genre evocation? And indeed any flavour based evocation of themes, mood and drama? Because now you say it is not GNS simulationism, but you don't also accept it in narrativism, unless it is done in Story Now way, and whilst in Apoc World it is, in other games it isn't. There is you problem, you have yourself stumbled on this issue people have been trying to tell you the whole thread: that non-story-now dramatist concerns are orphaned in GNS.

If the point is genre evocation -- and by this I mean the point of playing the game is to experience the genre -- then it's sim. The point of AW isn't to experience the genre. It's not to recreate Mad Max or any other genre story. All of that is background to what the game is getting to. So AW doesn't emulate genre and genre is not the point of playing AW. If, as @pemerton notes, you jump into an AW game to revel in some glorious post-apoc tropes, you're going to be first confused and then disappointed when the game doesn't deliver this.

The game works just fine, and does what people thing it does. I don't deny story now playstyle exists and works. What I do not subscribe to is this bizarre myopic exclusionist view borne out of devotion to GNS that the game must be primarily be about only one of these arbitrarily ill-defined priorities, instead of being a gestalt of harmonised priorities. It's like arguing that a song must always be primarily about the music or the lyrics, instead of accepting that it can be about both and the both are needed to produce the holistic experience the creator wanted to convey.

Your arguments treat story now as a version of dramatism, despite being told multiple times it is not. You also state that it should be easy to move from story now to simulationism with no changes to a game that was built from the ground up to enable narrativist play and avod simulationism. You deny it in your airy claims that you can mix and match GNS agendas freely, despite the point of the essays to be to identify competing agendas. You deny it in that people that do play the way you do not are telling you that you have a misunderstanding about what's central to their play (at least some of it, I engage many agendas across many games). The root of your argument is that these aren't separate things, but rather just loose descriptions, but my experience, and the experience of many other posters you've engaged, is that these are separate things. You aren't allowing for a difference of opinion, but instead a hard statement that says "your play isn't what you say it is."

Meanwhile, on the other side, no one is denying your play at all. Looking through the lens of GNS doesn't require denying play -- it's pretty open to any kind of play and makes no normative statements about play (why would it, the author enjoys multiple agendas himself!). It's not saying that your play doesn't exist, nor are the other posters.

Sure. This guy here for example:

Your quotes don't even engage the point you tried to make about shared narration.

Shared narrative power is something that exists independent of the agendas. You can even have shared narrative power in a simulationist game, although that's going to have the least utility. But it exists in some gamist games, and some narrativist games, but not all, and isn't a requirement. Blades in the Dark has some shared narrative power, in that players can Resist complications and, by this declaration, cause the GM to have to narrate a lesser or no complication. The player has to tell how they Resist in the fiction. This is clearly some shared narrative power (I've elided the exact mechanics of how this works). So, in Blades, there's at least some narrative power sharing. But, in AW, there's pretty much zero outside of "ask questions, use answers." This is triggered by the GM, though, so it's not something the player can assert, but if the GM does use it, then they are bound by the answers and they open up the backstory to player input.

So, no, shared narrative authority is not a requirement of story now.

Oh, absolutely! I would like to see much more discussion about how you can make the agendas harmonise and support each other. It just seems that it is an article of faith to some that this cannot and shouldn't be done, so it must be denied that it successfully happens in games like Apoc World and 5e D&D. The concept of 'incoherence' is harmful and should be dropped.

Then show that 1) you can accurately apply the model (which you seem to have trouble with) and 2) how you can do 1) and harmonize.

Let me provide some examples of how your assumption on harmonization doesn't really work. You, @Crimson Longinus, are on record that hitpoints have to have at least some "meat" component because the healing spells say "wounds" in them. So, to you, it does not make sense that you'd have a spell "cure light wounds" if it isn't curing actual wounds. This is simulationist -- not because it's emulating anything, but because it's valuing some internal cause. But, let's say a player named Bob sat down at your table and insisted that there is no "meat" to hitpoints, that they're just a game element that only tells us things when they're gone and otherwise don't have any fictional attachment, Bob is clearly engaged in some gamism. These two things cannot be harmonized. What you value -- that internal cause -- is not at all what Bob values here, and these are going to conflict. Maybe, if Bob is cool, and you're the GM, this gets glossed over. Bob doesn't care you're narrating wounds because he's happy that the game still works out and he can just ignore your narration (although this opens up the question of if your narration really matters at all -- is it even engaging internal cause or is it largely meaningless?). But if the roles are reversed, and Bob is the GM, he never bothers to narrate anything for hitpoint damage because it's not a thing to him. You, however, are not getting served any internal cause, and are, in fact, getting the opposite -- no internal cause. You are now unhappy in play. This is an unharmonizable agenda conflict under GNS. You are receiving incoherent play because you expect one thing but are receiving something else.

Another example of this is the game The Between. This is a PbtA/Brindlewood Bay hybrid game billed as Story Now. However, it has quite a number of High-concept simulationist elements in how it presents and resolves the villains (the game is about Victorian monster hunting and solving mysteries related thereto). This causes tension in the game when these elements interact, and the game handles this via some occasionally jarring toggles. Mysteries are run in a nominally Story Now style approach, but some moves only generate "clues" which are statements about the situation that are not conclusive (the GM is given an example list for each villain). Players collect these clues, and, when they wish, can invoke the move "answer a question." The questions are provided and unique to the villains. The players then can use some or all of the clues they've provided to create a narrative that answers that question. They then roll to see if their narrative is true, true but with unforeseen twist/danger, or not true and they've made a dangerous error.

The conflict here is that each villain or mystery is, in many ways, pre-scripted. What is important about the villain is pre-scripted -- their unique questions. This causes tension in play because now players have to incorporate these issues into their play and move towards answering them rather than playing to find out what happens. The locus of examination and exploration is moved off of the characters and onto a narrative structure. We're no longer playing to find out what happens, but playing to find the answer to this mystery that has nothing to do with who the PCs are. This is high-concept sim space. On the other hand, there's some really nifty mechanics that center on discovering who the investigator PCs are, and that are strongly story now in flavor and execution. The problem really is that you're doing one of these things or the other -- it toggles, it doesn't harmonize. I'd say The Between is a really good go at creating a game that tries to do both, but that it fails in this regard because the tension between undercuts each agenda. It feels incoherent in play quite often. One of the biggest pieces of the game that seems to cause the most confusion/consternation in how it works is the mechanic called the Unscene[sic]. This is pure conch passing story telling that interleaves into regular play during the Night phase and exists only to allow players (not the GM) to tell a shared story in pure storytelling mode about something happening in the city that has nothing to do with the play of the game (and never again features in play). It's mood setting and/or pure flavor only and is the single most questioned piece of the game (ie, has very many questions about how it even works or what it's supposed to do or if it's being done correctly). It's another toggle, and only that is obvious in play -- and that was in a game where the players were very comfortable spinning stories so it was easy to do but still felt like "okay, stop playing this game while we play this other game for a bit and then we'll go back to the first game." The Between doesn't harmonize agendas, even as it tries to serve two (high concept simulationism and story now), but rather it toggles and the seams are often quite visible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

@Thomas Shey

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

And I'd argue that distinctiveness exists elsewhere in the spectrum of agendas in multiple places. You (apparentlY) disagree. So here we are.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The question is: what is the actual error in looking at different modes of exploration?

Because it privileges certain kinds of distinctions while ignoring others, and begs the question whether that's a useful thing to do in a model.

The fact it can sometimes be used in a useful analytical way does not mean the overall model works; it just means parts of it work for some purposes (and that's almost tautological, or it never would develop a following in the first place). But I repeat, once you get outside of Nar, I have little evidence that much the GNS Threefold works for people who are not in that corner. It doesn't actively work against Gamists (but it also doesn't support them the way N does for its proponents) and it actively works against a rather decent sized number of people who could connect with the D in GDS, and whatever remaining old-school style Simulationists out there.

So while Nar may well work to do functional description of what its doing, most of the other parts of the GNS Threefold only seem to work for people not primarily doing them.