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

[Manbearcat]

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.

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.

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.

Not saying that what you describe doesn't happen. It totally does. What was merely a convention for utility can indeed have people (as you say) "reify" it into a genre all of its own, a thematic concept to be exemplified and revelled in. (These are excellent words, incidentally, for the difference between what I call "Simulation" and "Emulation." Simulation does not "revel in" or "exemplify" anything; the world simply is what it is, and play proceeds by figuring out "what it is." Emulation, by contrast, is all about exemplifying and revelling in; that's the point, pure and simple. Well, relatively pure and simple, anyway.)

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.

Just grabbing all of these right quick because what I'm about to type (well, typed prior, so I'm basically reiterating) is about conflict of agendas or incoherent toggling of agendas between moments of action resolution or even intra-action resolution itself!

The issue that a lot of D&D has had (and I've written about it quite a bit) is exactly this wobbly serving and reification of 3 different priorities simultaneously. I did a thread that got en-murder-nated by ENWorld's collapse back in 2016. It was a 5e thread entitled "DC 30...DC 35?" Some of the folks engaged here engaged in that thread and they will recall the issues that it exposed with the complete incoherency of handling various issues inherent to 5e's GM-directed noncombat action resolution mediation. The 3 different priorities have been touched on above:

* An aspiration to a Gamism agenda.

* An aspiration to a High Concept Simulation agenda.

* An aspiration to a Process Simulation agenda.

The collision of all of this and the (IMO) failure-state that would arise would be a manifestation of some of the following instances:

1) GM is using Genre Emulation to inform all 3 of situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering when the players are expecting Gamism-observing or Process Simulation-observing situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering.

2) GM is using Process Simulation to inform all 3 of situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering when the players are expecting Genre Emulation-observing or Gamism-observing situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering.

3) GM is using Gamism to inform all 3 of situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering when the players are expecting Genre Emulation-observing or Process Simulation-observing situation framing or DC handling or consequence rendering.

4) GM uses any 3 of Gamism, Genre Emulation, and Process Simulation to inform situation framing...but then uses one of the other 2 to inform DC handling...but then uses the remaining one to inform consequence rendering.

5) GM handles creatures' noncombat action resolution differently than they handle PCs' noncombat action resolution because they're trying to achieve one or the other of Gamism, Genre Emulation, or Process Simulation (this often takes the form of rather incoherently rebaselining DCs - Easy/Medium/Hard in natural language reflects the baseline of the common adventurer vs the common monster of this type vs the typical adventure of this Tier of play - based on whatever agenda strikes the GM in the moment).

6) GM handles all the dynamics surrounding Long Rest Recharge based on Genre Emulation this time (its cool to let big damn heroes flex their guns in the climax and the story needs it), based on Gamism another time (you've got to earn it), based on Process Simulation another time (it doesn't make internal causality sense to even have a Long Rest Recharge by a thing here).

7) GM handles big time, story perturbing wins based on Genre Emulation this time (I need this lieutenant to be alive for story/climax reasons so of course they narrowly escape!), based on Gamism another time (you've earned it...the lieutenant is dead), based on Process Simulation another time (it makes sense for the rank and file to quickly resolve the hierarchy vacuum so a new and more different lieutenant rises up to take the place of the last lieutenant...basically muting your earned victory).

8) GM is inconsistent in their handling of any of the instantiation of play above (one time they do it this way, another time, they do it another way).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So I don't have the time to read through the thread to get the context for the exchange as I'm about to run Stonetop, but since I got dinged, I'll fill out my cognitive workspace for anyone engaging with the thread as to why I went with the Twist bolded above.

* Procedural - The game's rules tell you to vary your Twist/Condition consequences. We had just had a Condition so I went with a Twist.

* Story Now - You guys made friends with the children prior. Jasper's Creed is about protecting the innocent (the default orientation to any child, until proven otherwise, would be "innocent"...particularly when the adults of their clan have just been slaughtered!). Jakob's Belief is about "don't always do what I'm told but I always do what is right"; I'd like to see what Jakob determines is "right" here. Awanye just lost his kid-sister (a child). How will that play into what he is beset with right now?

* Gamist - Kill conflicts are dangerous and this is a new obstacle that threatens you guys significantly. Someone might walk away from this with an Injury (the worst Condition before "Dead" and makes you very vulnerable to earning "Dead"). Someone might not walk away at all. If you guys want to spare these children, it will take some seriously skillful play.

* Relationships - How will Olga, Einar, and Helga (Friends if they can make it back alive) deal with taking part in killing children (even if forced upon them). That wasn't part of the deal!

* Genre - Yes, this is an input to or constraint on framing and consequences.

Right, to be clear, it was really a very good move, for all the reasons noted above. Anyway, as a moment of RP, it was great. I mean, here come the kids, with daggers and blood in their eyes. LOL.

 

[Thomas Shey]

@Manbearcat I don't disagree that any of that can occur--but frankly it doesn't look any worse than a lot of other ways for expectations and results being at odds. That seems more of an issue of communication breakdown (which, to be clear, is massive common in the hobby) than because there were different agendas at work. From past experience, that could have happened if only one was.

 

[clearstream]

Drama resolution is not the same as "just deciding".

Edwards says this about the use of Drama resolution in "story now" play, and it seems quite consistent with what @Manbearcat posted:

Frankly, un-structured Drama turns out to be ill-suited to Narrativist play. It's clear why people turn to it so consistently; years of suffering through task-resolution systems that fail to resolve conflict, with the attendant Simulationist creep of rules-revisions during the 1980s, is enough to put any aspirant Narrativist off of "rules" and "systems."​

I think that Manbearcat's notion of "system's say" sits in the same general conceptual neighbourhood as Edwards's "structured" as opposed to "unstructured" drama.

In Torchbearer, there is drama resolution: the fortune mechanic for resolving a conflict tells us that a compromise is required, but there is then talking among the participants to work out exactly what that means. In Prince Valiant, as Edwards points out, there is drama resolution:

a certificate in Prince Valiant may be redeemed (lost) for a player to state that the character instantly subdues an opponent. The mechanic replaces the usual resolution system (comparing tossed coins), which is simply ignored. This illustrates a Drama metagame mechanic replacing a Fortune baseline mechanic and relying on an irreplaceable Resource.​

This is all "structured" drama resolution.

Based on this, our disagreement dissolves. @Manbearcat must have been thinking of an unstructured process of deciding amounting to force (tautologically undesirable.) I was thinking of a structured process that need not (at any point) use fortune. Your examples are relevant, but may be somewhat oblique, as they are systems in which fortune is more often employed.

What you're describing here seems like straight-down-the-line simulationist play. The player makes a decision. The system - either a mechanical process, or a process of GM decision-making consistent with the game's theme, genre, setting, etc - determines a consequence. (What you call paying the piper.)

These examples don't tell us anything about story now RPGing, as far as I can see.

As @Hussar noted, written examples can always be quibbled with. We've all experienced that! To be clear, the system does not determine the consequence in either world. (Even reading back I don't see how that is arrived at.) It provides a tool and the impact of that tool is up to the group. (You may also be parsing the examples with some reasonable but unintended assumptions about who is deciding what.)

The examples shouldn't tell us anything about story now RPGing: that's not their purpose.

 

[clearstream]

Well, as before, I struggle to see how this differs from "make a well-designed game, regardless of what it's for." Analogically, "what about a person who just wants their vehicle to drive smoothly?" Smooth operation is an ideal of design, effortlessness. That is, certainly, a thing players will want to pursue, but I'm not sure it's a purpose for which a game can be made. They instead strike me as a positive quality a game should evince if it is, in fact, designed well for whatever purpose it has, when the desires of the players are in sync with that design. Again for an analogy on why that last "in sync" bit is necessary, it doesn't matter how flawlessly the stick-shift works in a well-oiled-machine sports car if the driver wants a pickup to haul things; the sports car won't fulfill that want, no matter how it "flows."

I see that I've introduced a term that requires defining. Flow is the state and experience of effortless performance.

Before I actually respond to your request to pick apart the difference here, though, there's a critical concern in your comparison I want to point out. You are speaking of the player as the one who "seek[s ] to define skill," but in general that's not really how S&A games work, at least as I've understood it. The system (or, perhaps, the DM, but usually the system) defines what "skill" is--what it means to succeed at a task, and moreover, the degree to which one succeeds at it--and the player is generally not involved in that process at all. The player often is involved in selecting which tasks to attempt (e.g., which attacks or skills to use in D&D), but things like target numbers, probabilities of success, what tools are possible for manipulating those probabilities, etc. are all fixed within the game. A player inventing new rules for what qualifies as "success" is generally frowned upon in Score-and-Achievement contexts, because as a rule that is extremely sensitive to abuse. Stereotypical playground "yeah well I have an INFINITY PLUS ONE sword!!" stuff.

I like this, but it unfortunately responds to an artifact of posting on my mobile, where I glossed over a detail that I didn't realise was at issue. Yup, for sure system (or some experts or authorities) define what skill is. There are then one or more "arenas of proof", where skill (as defined) may be expressed, tested, displayed.

One thing I like about your binary is that it doesn't commit to pretend violence, threat, kill conflicts.

Coming back to this: What does it mean for a game to be designed for "flow"? Whatever it is, I'm certain it is of aesthetic value (the word fairly drips with such meaning) but in terms of something the player's actions can drive toward, what is "flow"? From a superficial reading of the word, it just sounds like "the game does what it's supposed to do very well." That, to me, doesn't sound like a game-purpose; it also doesn't sound like something players can pursue so much as witness. It sounds like a word for "a game that has good design."

Addressed, I think.

"Tempo," on the other hand, sounds like a word for pacing, that is, the rate or sequencing of experiences. Obviously, to some extent, this depends on how the game itself is used, but since you didn't specifically give much definition for "tempo" it's hard to dig deeper on this front. Hence, same question as above: what is "tempo"? Like, how does one design it? Is it possible to have a game where tempo is the only thing play is designed for? Can a game completely ignore tempo and still be a good, effective experience for its players?

Here also I seem to have introduced a term requiring definition. In this case I thought others would already know it. For a primer, perhaps start with how the term is used in Chess. You should see how it applies in any game with resources and/or action economy and/or gearing in the mechanics. At its simplest, it is the ratio between players, of opportunities to affect the game state. It relates to rate or access to information.

A lot of mystifying likes if I am the only one here who knew what those terms meant!? The question I was anticipating is - where might we see a tempo-flow binary in an existing RPG? In what cases does it already arise, or is it speculative?

 

[clearstream]

RPGing has a certain standard form (which is why I've not responded to @clearstream's question about Thousand Year Old Vampire - I don't think we get clear accounts of play by beginning with borderline examples of the activity): at a given moment of play, some participants (most typically, one participant) is managing the setting and backstory and drawing on that to frame a situation; the rest of the participants (most typically, a single digit number greater than one: one-on-one games aren't deviant, but I don't think they're typical either) are managing characters within that situation.

Seeing as I am invoked. Rather than ignoring a now vigorous form of RPG (more often on indie channels than mainstream) it seems okay to me to say that this form wasn't available to Edwards to study, and so GNS theory might be largely or completely silent on it.

That indicates that we can draw outside the lines, without suggesting that we can't find a great deal of value for understanding RPG inside them. I've come to feel that is a strong but also unnecessary source of disagreements. We can appreciate the creative agendas and if we like adopt them, without insisting (if anyone does) that they are the only possible agendas or that their contents cannot be reviewed, relocated or rearranged in other ways too.

There can be purist Story Now. And a wonderful myriad of worthwhile variations, inspired by GNS or products of parallel inspiration. What counts as a game is famously vague (Wittgenstein suggested unresolvably, a view that later game studies has sustained) and we're very conscious of the confound of rules and interpretation. There's every reason to suppose that purposes for play or agendas for decisions are equally and unresolvably diverse.

 

[clearstream]

[EDIT please refer to my post #1283 further below, for my current take.]

Inspired by @EzekielRaiden's binaries, I wanted to get down something I felt could fall within what others might also recognise as gamist.

Skill - Arena
System or some authorities define skill, which is then tested or expressed in some arena of proof (can be multiple). This is a satisfying and thrilling aspect of gamism, that we see everywhere. Balance is most at issue to this binary. Nod to @EzekielRaiden for this one of course.

Offer - Risk
An offer made for the consideration of some stakes at some odds. A good example is the likelihood of terminating use of a character costing at least the time invested in developing it, in exchange for increased future power. Often connects with Skill - Arena, but isn't Skill - Arena. For example, high Skill may produce a confidence that the odds are better. Or risk taking in the Arena may result in the Skill display becoming more thrilling. Noticeable sympathies with Edwards' performance with risk.

Tempo - Flow
Tempo is the ratio among players of opportunities to influence the game state. Flow is the state and experience of effortless performance. The two are connected (in games) by the necessity of becoming one with tempo in order to enter flow. Flow isn't only a consequence of system (or tempo) so it can occur elsewhere. Group flow is also possible.

Construct - Perfect
Perfection is the neurotic satisfaction in a tidy or controlled game state. Construction includes constructing a collection, and is found in all the places that players can make a choice to achieve a satisfying neatness and completeness. In RPG, it's noticeable in choices on offer in a system that "click" together. It can be mistaken for a concern for balance, where it is in fact concern for preservation and fulfillment of pattern.

When I ask, is D&D gamist and why that matters, maybe that could be understood to be a question as to what D&D offers on the left-hand side, oriented toward the desired experiences or purposes found on the right-hand side. Friction has arisen where one poster or another has proposed an exclusive categorisation. That dissolves if we can accept that D&D could be gamist, and fit other characterisations too. This is a skeptical position as to what we might conclusively say taxonomically (i.e. we can't conclusively say anything.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Fair enough! I didn't exist at that point (stupid lousy linear time), and don't know the period well, so I stuck to modest claims.

People are inconsistent, news at 11.

That's not really what I meant though. Inconsistency implies a waffling inability to commit. That certainly happens, but I also see behavior that reflects a hierarchy of interests. Nearly everyone cares about world consistency somewhat, but some prize it so much they'd rather not sacrifice it without great need. Many like real challenges and earned victories, but some like them so much they'll give up world consistency for it. Likewise for other possible orderings. There's also some "virtue ethics"-like thinking involved, both within a given virtue and between distinct virtues. In (Aristotelian) virtue-ethics thinking, the correct balance point between extremes (e.g. what qualifies as "courage" between the extremes of "cowardice" and "foolhardiness") necessarily depends on context. Further, there may be contextual preference between different virtues; courage may outrank kindness when lives are on the line, but this might be reversed when teaching a child. It can be difficult to keep the two distinct from each other.

@Manbearcat I have little to add, other than as said above, players are sometimes interested in fulfilling different agendas in different contexts. More or less, a good hybrid game is one where the players' wants are satisfied by artfully switching between agendas/modes/etc., such that the layering or embedding actually causes better alignment rather than worse.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

I understand that differences in degree can effectively become differences in kind when large enough. I also understand that intentionally aiming for something as one's main objective is rather different than merely using that thing as a supplementary ingredient or accidentally stumbling upon it. But one should still be able to admit the similarities. I find the doubt @pemerton expresses about there being moments in 5e play when the characters' dramatic needs are challenged or where the players can makes significant impact to the direction of the emerging story utterly baffling. Of course there are such moments! And for illustrative purposes "look at that thing that occasionally happens in your vanilla game, it's like that except more and almost all the time" might work way better than "No, mate, they have nothing in common."

 

[clearstream]

That's not really what I meant though. Inconsistency implies a waffling inability to commit. That certainly happens, but I also see behavior that reflects a hierarchy of interests. Nearly everyone cares about world consistency somewhat, but some prize it so much they'd rather not sacrifice it without great need. Many like real challenges and earned victories, but some like them so much they'll give up world consistency for it. Likewise for other possible orderings. There's also some "virtue ethics"-like thinking involved, both within a given virtue and between distinct virtues. In (Aristotelian) virtue-ethics thinking, the correct balance point between extremes (e.g. what qualifies as "courage" between the extremes of "cowardice" and "foolhardiness") necessarily depends on context. Further, there may be contextual preference between different virtues; courage may outrank kindness when lives are on the line, but this might be reversed when teaching a child. It can be difficult to keep the two distinct from each other.

As an aside, have you read Miguel Sicart on virtue ethics in games?