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

[Ovinomancer]

To be completely honest, I have to say that at this point I have utterly lost the plot of what you're arguing about.


Yes. You can put Shoggoths* in Apoc World, and you can put Klingons in Glorantha. Neither is a thing the games as written instructs or expects you to do, but the rules won't break down in either case. So what? What's your point?


Again? So? You have just demonstrated that any form of fiction creation by necessity contains several different elements and purposes. Like Star Trek is a show about future space explorers that make tough moral choices regarding hairy situations that often have some allegorical significance. We don't need to decide whether it 'really' is about the setting or the characters or the message, as they are all intertwined into one gestalt.

(*That being said, inserting mythos into other settings is such a common thing to do, that it might not necessarily even come across as particularly jarring in a crowd that's used to that. But that's besides the point.)

To try and rescue this, let's look at Star Trek. Is the point of an episode of Star Trek to revel in a particular bit of setting lore? Is the point to find out how transporters work, like really work? Is it even to enjoy the tropes and genre of Sci-Fi? I'd say no. I say this because all of these things are often immediately tossed with weak justifications for whatever story they're telling (and often cause continuity problems if examined). The story is the main point in any Star Trek episode, and it's never about the technology, or space, or anything like that -- it's about some member of the crew undergoing some personal crisis. Why? Because Star Trek is a soap-opera in space. The setting is a backdrop -- it's the grease that allows the quick changing of location and problem week to week. It doesn't make sense very often, and it's never called on to resolve the conflict in question -- it's entirely subordinate to that and written/rewritten as needed for the story.

So, the setting is totally not the point of the Star Trek show. This is the same sense that setting is not the point of a Story Now game. It's there to provide grease for play, and to be subservient to the play.

 

[Campbell]

@Crimson Longinus

How would you describe the difference between running Apocalypse World and running D*D 5e? What about running something like L5R or RuneQuest?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Surely, though, this leads to two things:

1. If decisions are being made all the time, then whether there are decisions isn't an interesting thing to analyze. We know that answer, it is "yes, always."
2. Since we know there are always decisions, it becomes interesting to ask what is being decided (or decided about), and why, and perhaps even by whom.

I think you and me, and probably the people I generally find myself in concert with, are all on this page.

With my game-purposes taxonomy, the thing-being-decided(-about) is the first part of each pair, the concept or focus. Then, the act of making or testing those decisions (and dealing with their consequences) is the second part of each pair. Values-and-Issues is design geared around having players decide about Values (choosing what things they are willing to seek despite difficulty), and then Issues are where those decisions get tested (conflicts that must be "resolved" somehow, whether through success, failure, abandonment, complication, etc.) Conceit-and-Emulation is design geared around embracing a Conceit, some core theme or tone (deciding a theme to explore, as one would explore an artwork) and then taking action to Emulate related works or genres, to manifest or portray that theme in a (hopefully) satisfying way.

OK, but I have to ask, why is Conceit wedded to emulation? Can I not explore a concept in terms of an entirely novel milieu or at least without regard to emulating anything?

*It's possible I may just not be seeing the other ways to view it, but fudging and illusionism seem to openly defy all three of the other game-purposes. It defies G&S by being not grounded--it's an artificial manipulation of the world. It defies S&A by invalidating the scoring metric and (thus) devaluing the Achievements (the success is not earned by skill, but dispensed by the DM). And it defies V&I by deprotagonizing the players. Yet it fits beautifully in C&E, because the Conceit is (more or less) Pulp Action, and Emulating that requires trimming out "unacceptable" results.

I think it might depend on the TYPE of conceit!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This isn't a very useful metric, because the vast majority of games are intended to be fun and engaging and all have to dispense with reality to a greater or lesser degree. This means your test relies on some line when "realism" is high enough.

I think you can say that there are RELATIVE priorities (and in fact they can ONLY be relative). Otherwise you can attack Story Now the same way, EVERY RPG has plots, conflicts, and potentially character traits and motives which can come into conflict. Clearly SN puts a higher relative priority on this stuff, and likely brings into play tools that may not be needed in other agendas for that purpose. Likewise with gamism, etc. However, I agree that Minecraft is more 'Simulation' than 'Game', as its at least as often played in 'God Mode' where the only object is to just freely construct stuff in accordance with its internal setting logic.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think you can say that there are RELATIVE priorities (and in fact they can ONLY be relative). Otherwise you can attack Story Now the same way, EVERY RPG has plots, conflicts, and potentially character traits and motives which can come into conflict. Clearly SN puts a higher relative priority on this stuff, and likely brings into play tools that may not be needed in other agendas for that purpose. Likewise with gamism, etc. However, I agree that Minecraft is more 'Simulation' than 'Game', as its at least as often played in 'God Mode' where the only object is to just freely construct stuff in accordance with its internal setting logic.

What?

No story now game I've ever played has had a plot. I agree, if you try and say that gamist games have conflicts, you're too broad. If you try and say that gamist games have character traits, I'm gonna argue that this is even necessary. A B/X dungeon crawl requires exactly zero character traits to be had. This is a mess, man!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This... is a very weird example. I see where @Crimson Longinus is coming from, because you've managed to completely obfuscate your point behind your example. As I follow this, you're trying to say that genre isn't an input into SN, and that's mostly but not entirely correct. Setting is a constraint on play -- that's it's purpose -- even in Story Now. The point you're making -- is the setting the final constraint -- is valid, but the example confuses this because, if I'm playing AW in a Story Now mode, the constraint of setting is strong enough to, except in very specific circumstances, hedge out shoggoths from play. Honestly, without some kind of thumb on the scale, I'm not sure how shoggoths get in if everyone is playing with integrity.

So, then, what does setting (of which genre is a part) do in Story Now games? They set the stage. They provide a common understanding and backdrop to play, so that when we're in the moment of play and things are happening, there's enough setting to provide a common framework for everyone to situate within. And no more. The and no more is the real key to how setting operates in Story Now -- it's not the star of the sow and should not be dictating any outcomes to play, just like a prop doesn't dictate the outcome of an improv sketch. It's influential, sure, and can be an input, or it can be subverted into something else as needed. Setting is still important to Story Now, but that doesn't elevate the play to Simulationism. For setting to elevate to Simulationism, setting has to be the star of the show.

We're certainly saying the same thing. So, to clarify as I was apparently leaving a bit too much unsaid (sorry), in a Star Trek genre simulation type of primary agenda the reason for the 'ion storm' which takes out the transporter is that it is a trope of the genre! Now, it will certainly also shape the plot, and that may well be useful in a dramatic sense. However, even the dramatic element of the ion storm is still helping primarily to reinforce the genre. Thus this ion storm might happen at any appropriate moment within the genre sim play. It would often set things up, for example.

Within a Story Now version of playing Star Trek, a failure of the transporter, the 'ion storm', appears as a way of creating/raising stakes within the context of conflict. Of course, it is a genre appropriate way of doing that, but the point of doing it NOW is to serve the Story Now agenda. In PbtA terms it would be a hard or soft move by the GM in keeping with the play process which puts pressure on the PCs. I recall there's a Star Trek episode where there's some sort of time pressure created, and the transporter fails. Does Kirk abandon his crewmembers to their fate? Or does he risk a million lives on some other planet to rescue them? His loyalty is pitted against his sense of duty by means of a transporter malfunction. Perfectly genre appropriate, but in service of story, not particularly just to play to genre tropes, certainly not PRIMARILY for that reason. I'd also say that ends are likely to vary between agendas here too, as it would be appropriate in Story Now to lose those crew members, potentially, but it would be rather a violation of the tropes of the genre for that to happen (when Kirk loses men it is SET UP, not consequence, or else its color).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Vincent Baker, in section 4 of this, says basically the same thing as AbdulAlhazred does. I don't know if AbdulAlhazred has read it before, or has independently arrived at the same position as Baker. Either way, I think that Baker saying it tends to suggest that AbdulAlhazred is right.

I think I probably absorbed this from you referring to it, and if I did read it probably because you posted it, master! What I recall is the analogy of PbtA to layers of an onion, such that as a design you could peel away the less essential 'outer parts' (which I take to be things like specific playbooks and details of specific moves) but you would still have the ESSENCE of the game. That appears to be surfaced in the link you give here as heading 4 "Apocalypse World's Structure"

So, my statement in the previous post was reflective of "The innermost core is the structured conversation: you say what your characters do. The MC, following their agenda and principles, says what happens, and asks you what your characters do next." If you have this, then you have the 'essence' of the game. I mean, I'm not going to claim that all games which have this are PbtA, not at all. You could layer entirely different mechanical solutions on top of that core and have a completely different game. I'd say FitD games fall into that category, they're close kin to PbtA games, and basically share that core layer, but layers 2-4 have been engineered differently. I would maintain however that if you have that core, and the rest of the game 'collapses onto it' (which I take to mean ALWAYS builds on it exclusively) then the resemblance to AW will be there to some degree, and the resulting game will probably reflect at least some Story Now character.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

To try and rescue this, let's look at Star Trek. Is the point of an episode of Star Trek to revel in a particular bit of setting lore? Is the point to find out how transporters work, like really work? Is it even to enjoy the tropes and genre of Sci-Fi? I'd say no. I say this because all of these things are often immediately tossed with weak justifications for whatever story they're telling (and often cause continuity problems if examined). The story is the main point in any Star Trek episode, and it's never about the technology, or space, or anything like that -- it's about some member of the crew undergoing some personal crisis. Why? Because Star Trek is a soap-opera in space. The setting is a backdrop -- it's the grease that allows the quick changing of location and problem week to week. It doesn't make sense very often, and it's never called on to resolve the conflict in question -- it's entirely subordinate to that and written/rewritten as needed for the story.

So, the setting is totally not the point of the Star Trek show. This is the same sense that setting is not the point of a Story Now game. It's there to provide grease for play, and to be subservient to the play.

What? The expansive setting they spend millions to depict and the countless fans obsess over is not a significant point of the show? People treat this stuff basically like a religion, latching on every detail! If this is not about "enjoying the setting for its own right" then literally nothing in the history of humanity never was or never will be.

And yes, of course a setting build by countless writers over six decades will have continuity issues and retcons, and yes, of course the writers will sometimes alter of 'forget' setting details to get the plot moving. But there is no work of fiction of this scale that wouldn't do that. Even period dramas that are based on real events and aim for historical accuracy still do this.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No story now game I've ever played has had a plot.

They have had emergent plots that may or may not have made sense.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And, in the sense that Baker is talking here -- about actually running a game and getting though it, I agree that the important thing is to get through play and this collapse works. However, it works because it ultimately says "just make stuff up" which is not a Story Now approach, but a practical approach.

If we only ever resolve situations through conversations, we're engaged not in play but in collaborative authoring of a story. There's no game, and we don't find out anything surprising about the characters because we're always authoring whatever happens.

To sum up, this advice is good in the sense that getting to the next moment of play can be worthwhile, but if you only do so, you aren't even playing a game anymore.

IMHO there is a bit more there, though. There is a PROCESS OF PLAY which is inherent in that core. Also, remember, any actual instance of a game will have concrete principles and agenda, so that is going to shape/constrain the 'just make stuff up'. I was not trying to state that such a 'stripped down' game would lack those. I agree totally that if the entirety of your game just states that the player makes up some action and the MC just responds to it with something, without any rhyme, reason, or agenda at all, then you simply have "collaborative story hour." I mean, I'd go further and state that you want to pick your principles and agenda rather carefully, and they will probably mirror those of AW to a significant degree, if you want the result to be Story Now RPG play. If ALL you have is just 'make stuff up' then you could also add in agenda/principles/practices that might reflect any sort of RP agenda at all, and thus we have reached an irreducible initial principle, there are participants, and they say stuff about what characters do, which is in and of itself not very insightful