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

[Crimson Longinus]

There's no weird duplication. You cannot have a game where the players central concern is the protagonism of their character, and yet have the game be centered on a story generated by the GM.

Right. Makes sense. But not what I meant. Can we have game where the player is 'authoring fiction' but that fiction is not about dramatic needs of their character? It can be about, say, being amusing, or responding to challenge or something completely else. Perhaps that Dying Earth game you and @pemerton were talking about would be like that. (Though you don't seem to think so.) Or some other form of setting-oriented Story Now that was mentioned? I guess I'd like to unpack a bit what 'player authorship with a point' entails. Can we make bad or trivial points for it to count?

But yes, I can certainly see how the dramatic needs of the characters probably is a good place to have the player authorship at for producing an intense and enjoyable game.

Actually could we unpack this 'dramatic need' a bit as well. What constitutes a dramatic need? It certainly must be pretty subjective.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It isn't on RPG.net (though there's a general tendency for some parts of the user base to be generally hostile to theory is a thing, but at least they don't dominate there), but it still tended to be brought up primarily through the lens of Nar (obviously this is a generalization, not a universalization; obviously people like Permerton's self-note earlier aren't nonexistent). I used to think that was simply because the part of the hobby that was Sim in the old day had shrunk to functional invisibility, and Gamists are so generally used to getting dumped on in discussion that bares on story focus that they just stayed out. Now that its been made clear to me quite how narrow Nar is, and how much of the old Dramatism got shoved into Sim, I conclude its more that most people who's agendas belonged in either of the old GDS D or S likely found it usefulness minimal, so unless they're just coming in to bitch about it, they stay out completely.

I read, and sometimes post on RPG.net. Its usually a quite different sort of community. There's a LOT more emphasis on discussing published material than anything else. Very little theory discussion goes on there. Most of the D&D sections consists of While I Read threads where someone expounds on each page of some published book and there's discussion of that material. The other common type of threads are recountings of play, sometimes with a point (like there's several threads now recounting 'retro gaming' where they run 4e and comment on it, usually as fans). There's a game design thread, but it is virtually entirely consumed with discussions of mechanics and related stuff, there's very little discussion of overall game design goals, theory, etc.). I mean, I would not say you will never hear some theory discussion, but IME it is quite rare and usually limited to a few posts here and there. 99% of all threads there lack any mention of such things whatsoever. In fact Enworld seems to be the place where a lot of this sort of stuff gets debated. There are other forums dedicated specifically to one or another 'school' but this is the ONE where I see a wide mix of perspectives getting debated. Frankly I don't find those other forums all that useful for my purposes...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can speak to my learning of how it works. I had seen GNS theory and bounced off of it hard. During the time I was waking up to the possibility of story now I didn't ever look at GNS theory. I did get a few quoted snippets from Edwards talking about Story Now specifically, but I can't say they really helped. What did help was @pemerton seeming like a reasonably smart person that kept saying things that I didn't understand, and so I, one day, said, "self, pemerton doesn't seem like a liar or fool, so maybe start by assuming what he said is true and figuring out how that could be? What assumptions of mine need to change to make what is said be true. Now, does that hang together and make sense?" It was later that I went back to GNS (because it was linked or talked about, I don't recall) and reread. Then it made much more sense because I understood how it was working to categorize intent of play.

Yeah, honestly, for me it was how I bounced HARD off 2e when I tried to actually use it as it was written (we'd played it as just basically 1.5e for quite a few years before that). I just found that it was completely not workable and produced a crap result. While I'd encountered various 80's game designs (this was the late '90s) I wasn't really tuned into any of the online stuff that was going on then. When 3e came out I was busy with other things and it didn't seem like it went in an interesting direction, and I did very little RPing for a few years, until for some reason when 4e was announced I decided I'd buy a copy and maybe run a game. So, I pretty quickly started finding out that there were things about it that made sense in some way I didn't really understand. Talking to some people here and gradually getting exposed to various theoretical discussions, and then some PbtA games in particular, clarified things a good bit. GNS really just seems to FIT in terms of defining why some games worked and others did not work when used in a certain way, particularly 2e and 4e. Some of the Vincent Baker essays also provide some really solid added understanding in areas that GNS doesn't cover.

And I wholeheartedly agree that it is irrelevant if most existing games are binned in just one or two places by GNS. I don't get what would be served by trying to create a 'well balanced' taxonomy in some numerical sense. Who cares? I want the conceptual space to be organized in terms which have explanatory power! I completely get why 'Bob' and 'GM' cannot harmonize their play WRT hit points. It makes perfect sense in GNS terms, and it correlates well with actual experience. I mean, I agree with CL that MOST players of D&D will paper over it, but that's mostly because D&D never really cared about 'meat' anyway. The example of the shattered arm is EXACTLY what occurred to me the instant I read the post! GNS explains this conflict quite adequately, and I don't see how either GDS nor GEN really does that at all. Certainly not in the same clear way that GNS does.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll respond now only to this one thing, as it comes close to ad hominem and you have repeated similar earlier.


Of course it doesn't mean that there is no point discussing it. Merely that if you do not properly recognise the underlying subjectify you might make erroneous generalisations.


I am not denying anyone's experiences. I am sure everyone is quite honest about their subjective experiences. That I do not agree with the general utility of the theoretical flamework they use to contextualise those experiences or the further generalised predictions of that framework doesn't mean I think that they're dishonest, or mistaken about the experience itself.

Right, but you are saying, in essence, that their analysis is flawed, or at least that some other analytical framework produces better results. I think it then becomes incumbent on you to supply some sort of substantive argument. So, for example, explain to me how GDS provides a better explanation for, lets say, my categorization of 4e as being a Story Now game, and how my approach to it would or would not conflict with, say, your approach of using it as a skirmish game with very light plotting that purely emphasized monster-of-the-week play. We could talk about how that framework explains why I cannot (or how I can) play 5e Story Now and how it is facilitated by that system (or maybe we agree it isn't, but I would assume GDS or whatever would provide somewhat different reasons for that). I mean, don't feel limited to subjects I'm suggesting here, either. I'm happy to discuss analysis of any game(s) you wish using GNS and whatever other analytical tools which you find better suited. Basically I'm just saying, I don't find hypothetical objections very useful, and I haven't seen where anyone has really dug into another framework and demonstrated its chops (I could possibly have missed something as I did skip some pages to get caught up a few times).

 

[Campbell]

Right. Makes sense. But not what I meant. Can we have game where the player is 'authoring fiction' but that fiction is not about dramatic needs of their character? It can be about, say, being amusing, or responding to challenge or something completely else. Perhaps that Dying Earth game you and @pemerton were talking about would be like that. (Though you don't seem to think so.) Or some other form of setting-oriented Story Now that was mentioned? I guess I'd like to unpack a bit what 'player authorship with a point' entails. Can we make bad or trivial points for it to count?

But yes, I can certainly see how the dramatic needs of the characters probably is a good place to have the player authorship at for producing an intense and enjoyable game.

Actually could we unpack this 'dramatic need' a bit as well. What constitutes a dramatic need? It certainly must be pretty subjective.

Basically if you are actively trying to do it I think it counts. Creative agendas are about intentions - not results. This kind of thing often takes time to develop skill in. A dramatic need is simply something the character wants enough to go after despite hardship. Some dramatic needs will make for better play than others, but it's not like there's a bar you need to meet for it to count.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But that's the thing. It is both. It absolutely is both. There definitely if advice to pepper everything with crazy apocalypse flavour. And this in any way or form doesn't harm the other functions of the rules, they enhance each other. And that's the beauty of it, it is ingenious, and I really don't understand why people need to bend over backwards to deny this due some ideological commitment to imaginary agenda purity ordained by some theoretical model.

I agree that in AW the game includes 'Apocalypse' in its recipe. Vince Baker answered why that is, directly, as quoted in this thread (I'm a lazy bastard and won't try to link to it, but I think you read it). He stated unequivocally that he believed that apocalyptic ouvre of the game would produce the juiciest and most interesting conflict! Now, maybe he also just likes that genre. Maybe people PLAY because they like that genre vs because they want Story Now, or instead of playing Dungeon World because they like apocalyptica better than D&Disms. I can't say. I can say that the apocalyptic stuff is not REQUIRED in order to play a game closely similar to AW. DW is really QUITE close, though I think it does illustrate how AW's genre is pretty ideal, as its quite tempting for players to try to drift DW more into a competition to get treasure, or various other things, where the 'stew' of the apocalypse makes that kind of thing less likely.

So, I am not against saying that AW has a certain genre, and to the extent that people may play because they like that genre that 'playing an apocalyptic RPG' is a part of their agenda. I think, however, that they would be unlikely to play THAT game unless Story Now was a big consideration. I mean, Aftermath for example, is vastly better as a game that catalogs, realistically, all the various challenges and tools related to surviving the end of civilization. It is one of, maybe THE, most extensively detailed purist-for-setting sim RPGs ever written! I mean, the gun rules are so detailed that the choice between a .38 special revolver and a .45 automatic is a major decision that can have life-changing consequences, lol. I'd expect there are much more gamist RPGs in this genre as well. Heck, Car Wars springs to mind instantly (admitting that it is a pretty limited RPG, but its automobile combat system is, obviously, peerless, and hugely fun).

 

[Manbearcat]

@Manbearcat I'm thinking about what you said about system's say and story now. Would you say following is correct:

All the information/content/fiction whatever you want to call it, that ensues in the process of playing any RPG comes from one the three sources:
1. GM. 2. Player. 3. System.

Further, the information generation in each case may happen 'now' or it may happen 'before.'

So for example GM prepping content is GM's say before, the GM making decision/improvisation at the moment is GM's say now and so forth. System's say before would be things the system requires to be defined before the play begins, whilst system's say now is the system producing results in the moment (the dice rolls and their results etc.)

And further, different games have different ratios on which they rely on these six methods of information generation (though, I'd argue, almost all include at least some of each.)

Does this make sense to you? Or to anyone for that matter?

Quite a good post!

Here is what I'll say on the above proposed matrix. I think its a little more complex than what you're proposing (shocker!):

* While situation prep is technically happening "before", the execution of it in play could make it skew heavily toward producing "now." The more that is left for play to decide/govern (system's say and player's say) of the situation prep, the more it will skew toward "now." So deftly handling the (constraining) features of the situation framing is a big pivot point in that skew.

* System will also have more or less of a constraining skew via its say whether the prep is "before" or "now. For instance, if you're running a Medium-sized Torchbearer Adventure, system already has huge constraining inputs on # of Problem Areas, Difficulty Level, Rest Areas and several other key governing principles and procedural elements. So Torchbearer Adventures skew heavily toward "system say" whether you're prepping them "before" or you're procedurally generating them "now." Same goes with individual situation/obstacle framing. Same goes with dealing with a player's prospective move space. Same goes with doling out consequences. All of this stuff will skew more or less toward "system's say" vs "GM's say" contingent upon how much constraining say that system has over a GM's say (their possible menu of moves to be made or "things to be said to the table participants").

* System will do the same thing with players. System will do the same thing with GM/player relationships. The more system has constraining or structuring/guiding say on the conversation that is happening at the table, the more you have to bake that into your qualitative evaluation of "system's say" vs "GM's say" or whatever.

So, a simple formulation of all of this is something like, a design skews more or less toward "GM's say" contingent upon who integral and binding "system's say" is and how authority is distributed at the table. So for instance, some observations and a conclusion of a prospective design might be:

O1 (observation 1) * This game allows the GM to veto/ignore system at their discretion.

O2 * This game places the GM in a powerful and privileged role in terms of determining content (setting, situation, consequences to action/inaction, possibly even input on PC generation) which includes large powers of veto over player input (whether that be an outgrowth of their prep or it be an outgrowth of their personal conception of causality/tropes or their personal conception of what makes for good play in this moment).

O3 * This game features huge amounts of prep before, and intensively-resolved in all of its various parameters, in order to play at all.

O4 * This game requires significant GM input into action resolution mediation and that mediation is not comparatively constrained (either principally or procedurally) and, again, see O1 and O2.

O5 * The system has very broad brush strokes or rather convoluted or opaque input into all of O1 - O3.


CONCLUSION * This game skews extremely heavily toward "GM's say."

Prep before or now plays a role for sure. But it might not play a significant one and there are a lot of riders to the prep that go into it as well. For instance, its absolutely possible to have "prep before" be better suited for a Story Now game than "prep now" if that prep before is done more deftly (leaving only what is necessary to provoke action locked down AND it being principally guided by system AND player protagonism is front and center - "the situation challenges an evinced dramatic need") than prep now (eg - the person is poor at structuring their cognitive workspace in order to improvise principled, system-and-dramatic-need-constraining content).

 

[clearstream]

At best it was 'color'. In something like classic D&D a player could say "my character feels bad for the baby kobolds and spares their lives." but THE MOST that would follow from that would be some impact on their alignment, and even that depends on who's interpretation of alignment you're using! It surely isn't central to play!

Here I am noticing "THE MOST" which jars with my experiences and intuitions. We're conscious that what's unique and powerful in RPG is the integration of fiction: we're able to make it count in our fiction.

For it to be central to play at very least it needs to be the focus of significant mental energy, something we are all actively working towards. Situations need to be framed specifically to test the player character on this score. if it is accidental or incidental it is not central to play.

For something to be central to play I think it needs to be something we are all expected to engage in with vigor and enthusiasm.

I know folk put stock - rightly I think, for a goal of intense experiences - into what we might call effortful, high-stakes play. However, I don't discount lighter, but still meaningful play. That is, I see folk engaging with a range of intensities, and for me that's okay. Additionally, I feel that what is central to play can develop as we go along. The group can pick up on the sparing of the kobolds and be curious about that. Maybe the piper is paid down the line? Maybe it's not that simple: what happens to these vulnerable creatures bereft of care-givers?

What you describe is ideal. I don't dismiss its validity and virtue. For me, a range of levels of commitment is okay and still touching the stone.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I read, and sometimes post on RPG.net. Its usually a quite different sort of community. There's a LOT more emphasis on discussing published material than anything else. Very little theory discussion goes on there.

Until relative recently I did too, and I don't think that described TTO at all. It might have been a relatively small amount of primary theory discussion, but it still came up quite frequently.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'll try and go into some more detail tomorrow when I have more time, but in an abbreviated form: Since at least AD&D2e there's been a strong thread of Dramatist concerns that ran through it, starting from the more fiction-emulation parts of the hobby that came in from SF/fantasy fandom, and probably started cresting hard in D&D as a whole because of, well, Dragonlance. It was particularly noticeable because some of the old-school Fantasy F**** Vietnam types got really soggy about it when it started to happen, and still, in some cases, speak about it with disdain.

But that concern only modestly touched the actual mechanics of the game. At most it may have made some of the pseudo-Simulationist elements in prior editions become less prominent, but the closest thing to Dramatist mechanics you got was the integration of some things to provide more character distinction (the kits, the more full-blown integration of Non-Combat Proficiencies). I'd speculate this is because for all that parts of the fandom who wanted an experience more like the fiction they took in, they were still seeing it mostly through a Gamist sort of lens; that was late enough that people for whom something more on-target for them had other options starting to show, and they'd started to migrate off to them.
(As an example of this, consider how late in the day it was until there was even a basic metacurrency in the game, and that's a pretty minimalist plot-steering tool). For the most part any input in steering plot outside of in-character actions was done in an ad-hoc fashion. On the other hand, the game progressively was shedding anything but relatively superficial (in GDS terms) Simulation elements. (These were always kind of secondary to the actual mechanics in the game which weren't notably simulationist, but several of us went into that in the other thread so its probably not useful to repeat it).

Just as a note of interest. I ran both 1e and 2e, and played both very extensively, for their entire lifespans as 'current' games (IE 10+ years for each) and I think they are VERY DIFFERENT games. That is, at the level of classes, spells, and combat stuff, they are mechanically compatible. However, that is pretty deceptive, as the two games try to do very different things. The exploration rules of 1e are basically non-existent in 2e for instance. There's none of the structured movement through the dungeon with each action taking a certain amount of time and triggering wandering monster checks, burning torches and rations, etc. in 2e, those rules are virtually entirely elided. There are 'wandering monster' tables in 2e, but their purpose is VERY DIFFERENT, they are there for the GM to use 'whenever his story needs it' to generate something to goad the PCs with! Likewise in the wilderness you run into 'random' monsters when the GM feels like it happening (there is a roll to see if you meet something at least). The tables themselves are to be created BY THE GM, there are no 'stock' tables (there are some examples and then various products do provide some) as there are in AD&D 1e.

2e is a game in which a DM creates a story, either conceiving of it ahead of time, or possibly weaving together stuff that happens in play starting with some basic pregenerated starting seed adventure. The players, through the PCs then experience that story, possibly altering it and shaping it to whatever degree the DM allows. Leveling, which is a reward for expert play in 1e, becomes more or less just a device to illustrate different phases of the story in 2e. Its up to the GM what kind of XP is netted for any given action (you do still get XP for killing monsters), so at best it is a 'carrot' for following along with the plot and staying in character (because only the thief for example will get XP for stealing treasure, the wizard will get it for clever spell castings). How much XP is derived from 'activities' vs monsters is left up to the DM. Likewise elements that were reward structures in 1e become tools for the GM, or maybe the players if allowed, to use for story purposes. This includes things like keeps, followers, etc. Things like magic item creation, spell research, acquiring artifacts, etc. is all moved from 'prep work' to essentially narrative elements where the DM either hands them as tasks to the PCs ("make the sword of Gork Killing, cause you gotta kill Gork.") or at best the DM may allow a PC to do one of these things, or not as it suites them. All this is rather different in tone and design than 1e.

I am curious if GDS can explain why 2e doesn't really work. GNS IMHO seems to explain why it was not working for us rather well.