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

[Crimson Longinus]

So in other tread (too) there was again discussion about 4e vs 5e.

And whilst I might not agree with every point of the analysis regarding the matter, my impression as well would be that 4e is more tightly focused game, with clearer purpose and playstyle.

Yet... I have much more fun with 5e, and I am hardly alone in this. 4e was not popular, 5e is. We can quibble about it, but that's the gist of it and it is hard to argue that how the game plays had nothing to do with this. If I were a game company boss and wanted a new edition of a game to be designed, the sort of analysis that can't tell me whether people will actually like or buy the product has little use for me.

And I of course am not saying that popularity is the only measure, but I feel it would be equally wrong to say that it is of not value and has no correlation with the quality at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I suspect the key is the question of who is empowered to introduce these dramatic needs and how or when they are focused on. 5e, as a system, doesn't really provide any pathway by which the players get to do that. The GM owns the fiction, even character backstory. There is not really a strong call for the GM to focus on handing off to players on any of this, and definitely no substantive mechanics which do that. It is absolutely POSSIBLE, but we have all definitely acknowledged that.

I am not quite sure all have acknowledged that, but sure, I agree with you that this is the distinction. This is a thing that can happen in 5e, but the game is not designed to make sure it will. This is absolutely fair.

But I'd argue that it commonly happens, albeit obviously not to the frequency and degree people who prefer Story Now games would like. But in practice players tend to have great freedom in defining their characters, including their backgrounds, hopes, dreams, convictions and fears. And usually at some point some of these will be challenged in the play, either due the GM paying attention to these sort of things and making it happen, or the situation just emerging randomly.

And I do not at all argue that this makes 5e and Story Now games similar as overall experience, but that these specific moments still share a clear similarity.

 

[Manbearcat]

So in other tread (too) there was again discussion about 4e vs 5e.

And whilst I might not agree with every point of the analysis regarding the matter, my impression as well would be that 4e is more tightly focused game, with clearer purpose and playstyle.

Yet... I have much more fun with 5e, and I am hardly alone in this. 4e was not popular, 5e is. We can quibble about it, but that's the gist of it and it is hard to argue that how the game plays had nothing to do with this. If I were a game company boss and wanted a new edition of game to e designed, the sort of analysis that can't tell me whether people will actually like or buy the product has little use for me.

And I of course am not saying that popularity is the only measure, but I feel it would be equally wrong to say that it is of not value and has no correlation with quality.

I don’t think folks will disagree with you here. It’s funny I was just talking about this.

The huge success of the GM-directed, power fantasy enabling, traditional play loop/authority distribution, not-particularly-emotionally-or-technically-demanding = casual player embracing play of 5e (amplified by a myriad of converging cultural and technological factors + the staying power of First to Market) is exhibit A, B, and C for support of the paradigm. It was designed with those things in mind. It wasn’t a happy accident. It was intentful design.

But most of the folks in this conversation aren’t interested in talking about market share and the peculiarities of the convergence of a heavily casual leaning + heavily power fantasy wanting + heavily traditional leaning player base + the convergence of other amplifying factors (which includes the emergence of social media + high production value streamed games + concurrent cultural paradigm - minus - the scorched earth revolt against 4e and the social fallout of that; a not-insignificant group basically leaving D&D).

It’s somewhat interesting.

But it’s only interesting as a subset of possible designs in a conversation that talks about all possible conceptual designs (including those waiting to be realized).

 

[Campbell]

I am not quite sure all have acknowledged that, but sure, I agree with you that this is the distinction. This is a thing that can happen in 5e, but the game is not designed to make sure it will. This is absolutely fair.

But I'd argue that it commonly happens, albeit obviously not to the frequency and degree people who prefer Story Now games would like. But in practice players tend to have great freedom in defining their characters, including their backgrounds and hopes, dreams, convictions and fears. And usually at some point some of these will be challenged in the play, either due the GM paying attention to these sort of things and making it happen, or the situation just emerging randomly.

And I do not at all argue that this makes 5e and Story Now games similar as overall experience, but that these specific moments still share a clear similarity.

I think what makes it feel like a difference of kind to me personally is that when I experience those moments in games that lean into High Concept play they are often used as hooks or a springboard into some sort of experience where I am being told a story which to me detracts a bit from the tension and focus on character. This isn't like a bad thing. I can enjoy that weaving of stories when I am expecting it - it just feels like a different sort of experience to me. Still personal at times, but less fundamentally visceral. Does that make sense?

This isn't meant as a knock by the way. A large chunk of my group's play is High Concept. Right now we're playing Classic Deadlands and Infinity in a thoroughly High Concept way. Soon I will be running a short game of Blades followed by a short run of Riddle of Steel. After that we're going to return to L5R - finally get to play!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What does it mean to 'change the setting?' I feel it is very common to have games where the character's actions have a significant impact. Now perhaps one can argue that it is common to set up things so that the PCs are so positioned that they do not so much make a choice about the change, but it is merely their success or failure that dictates the change or lack thereof (I.e. typical save the village/kingdom/world thing) an I agree that situations where the players can take more initiative and genuinely make choices between attempting to achieve various outcomes is far more interesting. But the latter of course commonly occurs in games too, though obviously generally not in ready-made modules which by their design are far more inflexible. But such modules are specific form of play and should not be conflated with more freeform play that exists using the same system. "Prep situations, not plots" is the common advice, which is aimed for generating less linear play.

But this is both very common, and not necessarily the whole point. That is, even if play is 'freeform', what does that mean in terms of the model of play that a game like 5e cultivates? Wouldn't it STILL be GM-directed? That is, the GM invents the situations, and those situations are what dictate 'what the game is about', right? Even in the case of situations and non-linear play it is perfectly possible, likely, even typical, that the GM will design these situations such that they don't produce significant disruption (at least that is unplanned by the GM) to the setting itself. And yes, that setup is almost always one where the GM designs what the possibilities of change are, along which lines they fall, etc. When I ran a big 2e campaign back in the '90s that's exactly how things were put together. There was a preordained threat to 'civilization' and there were various different interest groups/factions which might be tapped to provide resources to resist it, but they all had their own agendas. The players didn't have any choice in any of this, it was all preordained, and the sequence of events that would take place without their intervention was also plotted out. This seems like a fairly typical non-linear approach (though I admit the scope of my ambition was rather larger than average, thus also the spectacularity of its failing when the players went off on their own tangent).

Again. Perhaps stop talking about modules? They're not limited because of D&D, they're limited because they're pre-written modules. It is not relevant.

I think the reference to modules was simply illustrative. This is a SUPER common form of play. The GM introduces a 'quest giver' in some form. The structure of the game/adventure/story arc is thus set, both in terms of what it engages and in the expected motivations and actions of the PCs.

Yes. And I don't believe there realistically can be situation where such incentives do not exist at all. Now what amount of such one feels detrimental to their enjoyment is a matter of taste. I for example have on many occasions expressed my distaste for alignment and other such dictated 'objective' moral standards that limit how the players can make their own moral assessments. But some people are fine with such limits, and I in turn am fine with some limits you might not.

Sure, and my tastes on this differ somewhat from Pemerton's too. The point isn't that anyone posits a game where the participants are utterly free of non-fictional constraints. The question is what does the game expect of us? If it expects the PCs to subordinate any sort of personal agenda/character to other considerations then it is less focused on character's dramatic needs as articulated by the PLAYER and more on something else, which might still be dramatic needs (probably is if things are going OK) but doesn't have players deciding what they are (and even Story Now allows for 'setting' to provide motives, it just requires that players be given freedom to be protagonists, that is decide how they engage those needs). It is thus a critical difference where the focus of play comes from, not so much whether there are 'table constraints'.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure what value a singular baseline has. Why not treat various forms of play on equal footing without regard to their popularity? We don't do this in pretty much in other form of media. We do not treat Sons of Anarchy like a specialized form of Law and Order. We don't treat romance anime as a specialized form of shonen anime. We do not treat Soulesbourne games as a specialized form of first-person shooters. We don't trat horror comics as a specialized form of superhero comics. Things that try to do different things should be treated as such.

It certainly has not helped reach any kind of real understanding of differences. It often increases animosity (all that unfounded elitism/narrowness BS), creates outgroups within the larger play culture and causes people to make all sorts of assumptions about other forms of play that are baseless. It can also cause a lock-in effect where people position themselves culturally either for or against a certain form of play.

Right, and this why it seems like a TAXONOMY is the proper starting point. If you assess first of all what is common between ALL RPGs, then you further categorize them by some sort of criteria, and you can then further sub-categorize. Popularity never enters into it. There may be 10 billion herring in the sea, but cladistically that is irrelevant and biologists don't even consider it in terms of classifying organisms into phylogenic categories. Likewise I don't see any value ANALYTICALLY in calling some certain style of RPG play out as the 'baseline' simply because it is played a whole bunch. Such a strategy will fail to produce an analytically valuable tool! It may have great RHETORICAL value, or even value as a business/marketing tool. It won't help you understand choices in RPG design or play at all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I think what makes it feel like a difference of kind to me personally is that when I experience those moments in games that lean into High Concept play they are often used as hooks or a springboard into some sort of experience where I am being told a story which to me detracts a bit from the tension and focus on character. This isn't like a bad thing. I can enjoy that weaving of stories when I am expecting it - it just feels like a different sort of experience to me. Still personal at times, but less fundamentally visceral. Does that make sense?

Yes? Maybe? Not sure... Doesn't some sort of 'story' ensue out of these situations in Story Now too? Could you elaborate on what you mean 'being told a story' in this context?

 

[Campbell]

Yes? Maybe? Not sure... Doesn't some sort of 'story' ensue out of these situations in Story Now too? Could you elaborate on what you mean 'being told a story' in this context?

Mostly in the sense of plot weaving / adventure hooks. The GM using it as a means to bring in other preplanned story elements that are not directly related or deciding where they want things to go ahead of time. I fully expect that in certain games. It's just part of the fundamental difference in forms of play in my experience. So, I have learned to invest a little less emotionally in the tension of those moments.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The problem is that “I’ve seen a lot of failure states” is a series of observations.

Now where have I seen them?

* I’ve seen them in the wild while observing peoples home games (not participating).

* I’ve seen an endless deluge of them, with no safe harbor in sight, sited on ENWorld and other places.

What do the have in common?

* The issues I’ve sited.

How have I nearly wholly avoided them despite GMing more than 10,000 hours of TTRPG play with 100s of neurologically diverse participants in the last 38 years?

Edit: On rethought, I don't think even my modified response was useful, so I'll simply say I don't think we can have this conversation at this point.
Second Edit: And I see I was too slow on that, so I hope you'll take my sincere intention not to be insulting for what it is.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No, I think it exemplifies how Gamist and High Concept Sim agendas conflict like heck sometimes.

I don't think they have to. I just think you've to make sure at least your game structure doesn't actively punish you for aiming at the genre structure, and ideally supports it. As I've noted, its possible to structure a superhero game so that a gamist can play it and still look reasonably like a superhero, and you don't get much more high concept than superheroes.

The problem with D&D is that it wanted to sell itself as sword and sorcery/high fantasy but wanted to be played like really gritty fantasy, and even its own mechanics couldn't make up their mind which they were aiming it.

It was damned hard to do what 1e AD&D literally promised, to play an equivalent of Conan, Odysseus, or Aragorn. Instead you made up your pog, which at level 1 was more of an insect than a hero, and 99% of the time you got squished before level 3. All you COULD do was focus on the gamist elements in order to get your character to around level 5, where it was even worth giving 'pog' an actual name. I mean, many/most GMs drifted things by making it easier and easier to run that gauntlet (which perfectly explains how in original D&D 0 hit points is stone cold dead, but in AD&D 1e it MIGHT optionally hold a chance of surviving, and in 2e that extends to a certain degree of negative hit points, and then that becomes more solidified in 3e, etc.). So, yeah, 90% of the audience did not find classic D&D to be doing what they wanted.

It says something that starting RuneQuest characters were often more survivable than first level D&D characters; you usually had to collect an impale or a crit or be fighting something particularly tough to die with one hit in RQ, and you often had some mitigation strategies, whereas first (and with the less fighty classess, even second or sometimes third) level character could be done in by one high roll on a D8.

One problem that we all ran into somewhere in there was that within D&D's imagined process and structure, there simply is no place for player-driven dramatic engagement. You can't formulate, as a game element, stuff like an 'assassination attempt'. I mean, the GM can FIAT this stuff, but otherwise you just have these exploration/combat rules that only work in a narrow range of situations. You can invent task-focused mechanics ('skills') and whatnot, or special rules subsystems (the assassination table), but they don't fit in well with the rest of the game. Resolution isn't 'open' either, so you can only achieve being the Conan that the GM allows for, and you won't reliably get what you want out of that. This clearly got a lot worse when what you wanted was to actually explore specific dramatic needs and play out the resulting conflicts.

There's an agenda part of it there. Anyway, 'resistance to change' translates to 'desire to experience the pure unadulterated thing' too. And that is easily formulated as an agenda.

I suppose, but when its simply attached to familiarity its more like a hundred agendas than any distinguishable one.