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

[pemerton]

The whimsy which is cited is a prominent feature of the source literature itself, and is enhanced by setting details (particularly the overall characterization of the setting as being in the last days of the Earth, thus robbing all events of any long-term significance). So, yes, you can construct characters who play out whimsicality (and the rules provide reasons to do so as well) but I think it might be best to say that there's still a pretty strong strain of 'setting tourism' in this particular game.

I think that would require some drifting from the rules text. Probably downplaying or ignoring the temptation/resistance mechanics, and probably dropping the tagline system too. (The rulebook does make some gestures in both these directions, and so the drift wouldn't be radical.)

But playing as presented, the players have to bring their Vancian wit and zaniness or it won't move (and there can't be tourism without motion). I think this is what Edwards is picking up on. It's different from - say - CoC in that way, where the players can follow the leads and provided the GM fudges the failed clue-finding rolls it will just unfold by itself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is an important point in the context of RPGing.

Gygax invented Vancian casting, the classes of D&D, the spells and their levels, etc essentially to suit gameplay purposes. But there is a whole host of RPGers who "reify" it and treat these as setting elements of significance in themselves. And so we get gameplay which has the goal of exemplifying, emulating, revelling in, etc these D&D tropes for their own sake. Play drifts from Gamist to a type of High Concept Sim.

I'm not even sure its "high concept" in some cases, unless you're of the view that no non-real-world sim can be other sort. The reification of the Vancian casting happened early on because its, honestly, so damn weird that people weren't comfortable having an in-world explanation for how it worked.

(And I think "drift" honestly understates it; I think it was actively driven in that direction by people who didn't find the old, really heavily Gamist style adequate to what they were doing. But that may just be me having a connotational issue).

The Star Trek fans who are obsessed by the setting get upset when writers invent new nonsense to meet their plot demands. D&D players think that being a wizard, in the fiction, is characterised by having daily resources and so classify 4e fighters as "martial" wizards.

This sort of thing illustrates the conflict between agendas.

I don't think the latter is so much an issue of conflicting agendas that simple resistance to change, honestly (maybe the former, too, far as that goes).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Interesting. I would generally have said the drift goes toward "purist-for-system"/"process" Sim. That is, these things are taken as being a necessary/axiomatic property of existence, and other attributes or characteristics are logically derived from them. The rules treated as a procedure for gaining further knowledge about the world.

As I mentioned, I think its a split case. I think you're right about some things (Vancian casting), but I don't have much sign that "rogue" or "fighter" are considered a distinct thing in-setting in most cases. There's some more tradition weighting in on treating the spellcasting classes (especially the original two) that way, though.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As I mentioned, I think its a split case. I think you're right about some things (Vancian casting), but I don't have much sign that "rogue" or "fighter" are considered a distinct thing in-setting in most cases. There's some more tradition weighting in on treating the spellcasting classes (especially the original two) that way, though.

That's fair. It could be, as I argued earlier, that although D&D had its designed initial state (Gamist/Score-and-Achievement), because it wasn't perfectly nailed down to that (and...well, pretty obscurantist, both intentionally and accidentally), it quickly acquired adherents who assigned other purposes to it, and then subsequently became its own thematic concept (High Concept/Conceit).

But yeah I do take your point that some things are treated that way and others aren't. And such stuff isn't even perfectly symmetrical either. Many people who speak out against things like Monks or Warlords seem to do so because they see that as an inappropriate splitting-up of the Fighter archetype, which sounds very "D&D as its own High Concept/Conceit." But those are often the same people who use very "purist-for-system" reasoning WRT hit points (among other things).

 

[pemerton]

Thank you for the thorough response, (the brevity part could still use some work ) albeit I am afraid that, whilst I feel I at least somewhat understand the point you're trying to make on theoretical level, how it manifests in practical application yet remains at least partly clouded in mystery.

Look at my last three points, and think about how often you see them articulated in discussions about "problem players" and about how to GM. Eg the GM who "cracks down on" the player whose PC tries to pickpocket the king during an audience is manifesting all three: trying to maintain the setting status quo, trying to stop the player establishing the PC's dramatic need, and trying to ensure that action declarations conform to a pre-established pattern that will (i) make the GM's scenario work, (ii) reinforce the dramatic needs that have been dictated by the GM, and (iii) affirm the GM's conception of the setting, and what fits into it.

The crack-down might happen via social contract means ("Are you sure your PC does that?" or even "Your PC is not allowed to do that!") or via system means ("The king's guards arrest your for lese majeste!"). Either way, it is the opposite of "story now" play.

I've chosen a particularly clear example. But much of the rhetoric around "murder hobos" rests on a less stark version of the same basic conception: that it is the job of the GM, not the players, to dictate the direction of play, to maintain the overall setting status quo, to establish permissible parameters of action resolution on a mixture of pragmatic and evaluative lines.

Now imagine play that departs from those three points and you are imagining "story now" play. The pickpocketing of the king won't last long, as most players (in my experience) aren't really interested in juvenile fiction of that sort. Think more about Conan soloing the Tower of the Elephant, or killing the magistrate in the (implied) opening of Queen of the Black Coast.

Could you give some practical example of what these 'judgements' look like in play. What sort of action declaration and following change in the fiction constitutes as such?

I've got a billion actual play posts on these boards, and have given some examples in this thread. One example I posted upthread: Thurgon persuading Aramina to repair his armour.

certainly you recognise that the player freedom to make such 'judgements' is a spectrum? Like I tried to illustrate in my earlier post, there are always some constraint, and even if we would imagine some platonic state of freedom in which that was no the case, it is still a spectrum between that an zero freedom.

I find the spectrum notion unhelpful. Whenever I see it applied, I see it being used (not necessarily on purpose) to obscure what are for me fundamental differences in gameplay experiences.

Yes, there are always bounds of good taste, and agreed-upon genres (no powered armour in Agon, for instance), but those are so commonplace that unless a RPG group is utterly socially dysfunctional we don't need to talk about them (unless we're discussing things like X-card techniques etc).

So I start with the premise of resolution being open.

I find the conflation of fixed morality with simulationism hella weird.

But it's fundamental. Not that all simulationism involves it; but that when it's present we have simulationism. See my reply not far upthread to @clearstream (about "paying the piper"), as well as my remarks in this post about pickpocketing the king, and murder hobos.

If you're playing story now, you're running the risk that someone will express a judgement that's different from yours. Eg in my Classic Traveller game, when one of the players had his PC escape a criminal trial by blowing everyone but herself up with a grenade, another player was shocked, and expressed as much. That can happen.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I find the spectrum notion unhelpful. Whenever I see it applied, I see it being used (not necessarily on purpose) to obscure what are for me fundamental differences in gameplay experiences.

I see. I assume this is source of much of our disagreement. I feel you rather deal with platonic ideals than the reality. It is also reflected in your near-caricature-like description of non-story-now play. I don't find this sort of all-or-nothing attitude helpful. In reality these things are a spectrum and if the spectrum obscures the differences between gameplay experiences then that simply means that in reality the differences are not that clear-cut, and we better acknowledge that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's fair. It could be, as I argued earlier, that although D&D had its designed initial state (Gamist/Score-and-Achievement), because it wasn't perfectly nailed down to that (and...well, pretty obscurantist, both intentionally and accidentally), it quickly acquired adherents who assigned other purposes to it, and then subsequently became its own thematic concept (High Concept/Conceit).

As someone who was around then, I don't think there's any "could be" about it; at least on the West Coast where I did all my period of OD&D, it had distinctly slid in that direction. There was still plenty of remnant of the original take (raiding dungeons was always easy, after all) but some of the things that were taken as a given that got in the way of playing Big Damn Fantasy Heroes were progressively sliding off.

But yeah I do take your point that some things are treated that way and others aren't. And such stuff isn't even perfectly symmetrical either. Many people who speak out against things like Monks or Warlords seem to do so because they see that as an inappropriate splitting-up of the Fighter archetype, which sounds very "D&D as its own High Concept/Conceit." But those are often the same people who use very "purist-for-system" reasoning WRT hit points (among other things).

People are inconsistent, news at 11.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I see. I assume this is source of much of our disagreement. I feel you rather deal with platonic ideals than the reality. It is also reflected in your near-caricature-like description of non-story-now play. I don't find this sort of all-or-nothing attitude helpful. In reality these things are a spectrum and if the spectrum obscures the differences between gameplay experiences then that simply means that in reality the differences are not that clear-cut, and we better acknowledge that.

Except, and I speak from experience, first believing as you do here and then thinking differently after understanding that there are large differences in play. I still play 5e, and play it pretty straight as a HCS with gamist toggle in combat AND I run Aliens which is pure HCS AND I play and run Blades in the dark which is primary Story Now with toggles to gamism AND I play in PbtA games that there are large, important, and not confusable differences in play here. And that's me in just the last year of play.

There is no way I would try to run Blades like I do 5e -- completely different and I'm not talking how mechanics work. The entire approach is different. My thinking and position as GM is different. My players orient differently. It's very different!

My 5e play wouldn't occasion much remark about being different. I'm perhaps more gamist in my approaches than the average, and certainly more lenient about some things, but well within normal tolerances such that most people interested in play 5e could sit at my table and be fine.

So, yeah, not really a spectrum at all. Believe this is not understanding that there are large differences. Part of this is that the clear difference between sim and gamism are familiar to play -- they've existed and GMs have coping mechanisms already in place to deal with them such that they don't even really notice the conflicts anymore -- that's part of the game at this point. I didn't, for sure. Now I grasp the differences better, mostly by having experiences well outside my prior understanding, I can see them more clearly and can take steps to ameliorate them ahead of time via prediction. One such change I made in a game I ran a few years ago was to have a houserule that PCs could not die unless they chose to. This removed the problem with the gamist combat killing PCs important to the HCS story and was made to support the HCS I was running.

There's nothing being said here that is casting any approach as lesser than another. I run 5e primarily HCS -- if I thought that mode inferior, I wouldn't run it as a preference. I wouldn't run 5e. I have no interest in process-sim RPGs anymore, but I figured that out a long time ago even if I lacked the vocabulary for it. I wouldn't run Alien. But, I do, and these games are great. So there's zero effort here to cast anything is a bad light. Saying that, there's huge differences between games optimized for different agendas.

 

[Campbell]

There often are a lot of nuances involved in questions of overall play agenda, but let's not get [naughty word] twisted. The it's a spectrum argument is often deceptive even when it is technically true because it makes things on far ends of a spectrum seem much closer than they actually are. Like if Adventurer's League is a 0, Critical Role is like a 5, the way I run L5R 5e is like a 40, and Apocalypse World is like a 99 - that would be a spectrum. Still would not be anywhere close to the same play experience.

I don't really view it as a spectrum though because to me creative agenda is about what I can expect from the people I play with. If I cannot expect to regularly come across situations that relate to my character's dramatic needs (without them being used to draw me into a plot) whether or not it happens when the GM is in the mood for it is kind of irrelevant to me.

 

[pemerton]

I see. I assume this is source of much of our disagreement. I feel you rather deal with platonic ideals than the reality.

Well, I'm talking about my own play experiences, so they're real and not platonic abstractions.

It is also reflected in your near-caricature-like description of non-story-now play. I don't find this sort of all-or-nothing attitude helpful. In reality these things are a spectrum and if the spectrum obscures the differences between gameplay experiences then that simply means that in reality the differences are not that clear-cut, and we better acknowledge that.

In my post I deliberately chose an illustration that I called "clear" and "stark". I'm not going to quibble with "near-caricature". (Which is not a synonym of "caricature".)

But look at my 3 points, and then look at typical GMing practice and advice. I am going to follow @Ovinomancer's lead and look at some posts near the top of the current D&D board frontpage:

D&D General - The War Between Vecna and the Raven Queen: Origins, Thoughts, and Campaign/World-Building Ideas - GM's conception of the setting as the starting parameter for play;

D&D General - Travel In Medieval Europe - the use of setting for "storytelling" - implicitly by the GM - in D&D;

D&D General - Violent Solutions to Peaceful Problems - the OP of this one exemplifies both the priority of the GM's conception of the status quo and what would be an appropriate response to it, and the GM's need to shape player action declarations to conform to a conception of how things should unfold.​

That last one generated some "I don't railroad"-type responses, but none (on the first page) seemed to articulate a story-now oriented response. It also generated at least one "no evil PCs" response.

When I say that I don't see much evidence of "story now" RPGing in 5e D&D I'm not making it up! I'm reporting what I (don't) see.