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

[EzekielRaiden]

Someone made McDonalds comparison in other tread. Is McDonald's' food of poor quality given its price? Especially if we count ease of access and use among things we asses? Probably not.

Which is exactly what I said: it's not the quality that is the primary thing driving its popularity. It's market insertion (you can find them everywhere) and ease (they're relatively cheap, but no, they're not even good quality for the price, you CAN find better if you know where to look...people just don't usually care to look.)

And yet even the films you mention we see that quality matters. Some big and expensive action blockbusters based on established franchises get panned, some are loved. Yes, Marvel films have quality. It is not random that they're well liked.

Okay. How about DC movies? How about some of the later films? Infinity War and Endgame were supposed to be grand, epic things. They've got...some serious writing flaws. (Consider the death of Pietro and how horrifically ham-fisted it was.)

They really do have some quality issues.

Simplicity, consistency, these are all certain kind of quality. They're things that have value to the consumer. Hell, even successfully evoking nostalgia is a kind of quality.

....if you're going to expand the definition of "quality" to include literally anything that might be valuable about a product, then sure, "quality" predicts success. Because you've watered down "quality" until it means literally anything positive.

Your previous posts made it pretty clear you were talking about something much more robust than that.

As a bit of an elitist snob this was somewhat painful to write. But I still stand by it. Yes, sometimes success and popularity can be a fluke, but it is absurd to think that there is no correlation.

Again, only if you water down "quality" to the point that it just means "having benefits." Yes, things that have benefits of some kind will be popular, because that's a truism.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you're talking about moments of play that fit the Story Now agenda, they have to happen either by complete accident -- in which case they are passing -- or bloody-minded intent on the part of the GM. And I mean bloody-minded. This is because the structure of play in 5e will not cause these moments to occur just through following how the game tells you to play and provides means for you to play. The core loop structure of 5e -- mentioned on page 4 of the PHB and reinforced elsewhere -- cuts hard against Story Now play emerging. The mechanics of the game mostly point to simulationist resolution because they resolve at the task level and tell you if you succeed or fail at the task only. Inputs are only those that relate to the task, and outcomes are only about the task. Take climbing a wall, for example -- the only inputs here are the GM's assessment of the challenge of actually climbing the wall and whatever things the player can bring to bear (like climbing gear deployed or assistance from a fellow). The result of this check just tells you if the climbing task is successful. Anything downstream of this -- like say if you're climbing to get to the top of a cliff to stop a terrible ritual -- is not going to have anything resolve here (and shouldn't, given the inputs), but failing may invoke some other timekeeping loop that may result in an eventual failure to stop the ritual in time.

So what does all that mean? 5e's mechanics cut against Story Now play at worst, and at best have nothing to provide that aids Story Now play. To get to a consistent experience of Story Now play, you pretty much have to heavily houserule. You could have momentary Story Now play, if the GM is super duper keen and brings everything with that and the players pick up (or it's clearly communicated) so they can hold up their end, but this is a huge overhead on the GM with no support at all from the system, only hinderance. You might do it, but it will be inconsistent, will be constantly fighting with the system (and throwing incoherencies all over the place), and it's mostly not worth it when you could get a game that does this kind of play sooo much better. You might accidentally stumble into a few moments, but that's unlikely given how much the system pushes against Story Now.

And the reason I say it pushes against Story Now is that the system tells you that the GM Says. And the GM Says with very few restrictions. And, as I noted above, the mechanical resolution actually often relies on the GM's say to operate (picking a DC is entirely up to the GM, which puts pressure on the pass/fail envelope). And, probably most notably, the GM is not constrained much by the outcome of checks by the rules (individual GMs can do as they please -- I do, and always honor the result of checks). They can see a success but narrate an outcome that might hit success by the letter but certainly not the spirit and they would not be playing one whit incorrectly (there are a few instances in published APs I could point out where this happens and isn't being malicious).

So, yes, is it possible that 5e has Story Now moments? Sure. Is it likely? No, not without serious intent and effort, and then irregularly.

I'm talking moments in which the events unfolding (either by design or by accident) challenge the character's convictions, hopes, fears etc. "Loyalty to my king vs. the promise I made to my true love," "Will I be the person my family believes me to be, or the one I want to be myself?" "How far am I am willing to go to gain vengeance." Stuff like that. I don't really see the DC's for climb checks mattering terribly much with this.

 

[niklinna]

Though I have a funny story regarding an unusual course such a scenario took from years ago. Perhaps it was accidentally very Story Now in a sense? It was an Exalted campaign I was running and a Deathlord was trying to blow up the world. The motive of the Deathlords is basically to end suffering by euthanising the entire world. The PCs somewhat unsurprisingly were not going to let this happen. So one of the player characters had dragged her wife (who was originally just a random NPC but the player decided their character madly falls in love with her) into the 'final battle' with the Deathlord. In the ensuing battle the wife gets killed (I don't remember how, probably due random. The wife was a competent warrior, but not nearly as tough as the PCs.) So at the crucial moment where the characters are just about to stop the bad guy from activating his doomsday thing, he makes some sort of classic villain speech, addressing the character whose wife was killed. "Now you know my pain, join me and we can end all the suffering forever!" (Or to that effect.) So the character, who is utterly heartbroken, actually agrees, joins the bad guy, the world gets blown up, the end. On the one hand it was pretty cool, but the other players weren't terribly pleased.

That's awesome, and I'd say the moment very much reflects Story Now play.

But you can see the tension in the reaction of the other players. They had signed on to a story with a particular end and weren't happy when that was thwarted. You might say you dove into Story Now and emerged back into High-Concept Simulation or more traditional Story/Drama play, where the outcome of the Story Now moment clashed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And the reason I say it pushes against Story Now is that the system tells you that the GM Says. And the GM Says with very few restrictions. And, as I noted above, the mechanical resolution actually often relies on the GM's say to operate (picking a DC is entirely up to the GM, which puts pressure on the pass/fail envelope). And, probably most notably, the GM is not constrained much by the outcome of checks by the rules (individual GMs can do as they please -- I do, and always honor the result of checks). They can see a success but narrate an outcome that might hit success by the letter but certainly not the spirit and they would not be playing one whit incorrectly (there are a few instances in published APs I could point out where this happens and isn't being malicious).

Mostly this is one of the biggest issues. 5e doesn't have a non-combat resolution system, at all, in effect. It has a 'color generation' system. That is, first the GM sets the DC of every task, and only with reference to the specific fiction engaged by that action, and then there's no 'valance' to whatever results from the check. So non-combat resolution in 5e is utterly toothless. It actually means nothing to pass a check in 5e (unless it is an attack roll or a saving throw in combat). 5e doesn't even really tell the GM what the meaning of passing/failing a check should mean in any terms which matter WRT the character's goals at all. So the means doesn't even technically exist for a player to engage some sort of concern they have at a mechanical system level. Is it possible for the GM to draw out a (mental perhaps) map of what successes mean in a specific context, communicate that to the player (so they can assess the stakes and thus truly engage the character's need/consideration) and then honor that. The result would look HELLA lot like a 4e SC! That is in fact exactly what the SC mechanism of 4e does for the game's participants. It says "Oh, you, player, you need to get N successes here before 3 failures to achieve your goal, and the checks will come out of skills X, Y, and Z, and they will be level Q, and R of them will be hard checks." It also says that there is a contract here that requires the GM to honor success with the same faithfulness they would for a combat situation.

Yes, you can certainly have Story Now happen without a formal way to do all the above, but everyone had better know how to make that work. Basically Story Now 5e requires rewriting a bunch of the game in a fairly thorough way, even if only informally.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Okay. How about DC movies?

They're mostly crap (except Wonder Woman, which is amazing) and people overwhelmingly think that.

How about some of the later films? Infinity War and Endgame were supposed to be grand, epic things. They've got...some serious writing flaws. (Consider the death of Pietro and how horrifically ham-fisted it was.)

Yeah, I don't really like them much, but if you compare them to Justice League, a movie with very similar concept, it is easy to see why Marvel films are overwhelmingly more liked. They're just better made movies.

Again, only if you water down "quality" to the point that it just means "having benefits." Yes, things that have benefits of some kind will be popular, because that's a truism.

Even if we defined it more narrowly, then consumer enjoying a product meant for entertainment absolutely must count for quality. People often say that point of RPGs is to have fun and on the other hand that it is pointless thing to say, because of course it is. But yeah, fun kinda matters a lot when talking about entertainment! And I don't think people lie when they say they have fun watching Marvel films or playing 5e. One absolutely at least needs to consider that a thing beating another very similar thing in popularity might be an indication of some sort of quality. 4e showed that the brand of D&D alone is not enough for people to love the thing, so it is not just that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But that only works if you conclude that the more important element is "how the world works" in a general sense rather than in a direct engagement sense. That was certainly not how the GDS Simulationists saw it, and even though much of my simulationism has peeled away over the years, I think I'm still with them on this: world sim and genre emulation are in terms of engagement, as different as chalk and cheese. The latter seems much more like the sort of thing done to structure story conceits for a character, just writ large, and do not bear any greater ground level engagement well.

In other words, there's a fundamental disagreement that goes along here as to whether the two things are more similar in a utilitarian fashion, or more different. I don't suspect that's resolvable, honestly.

I think I'm not sure I understand "in a general sense rather than in a direct engagement sense." so I am not sure I am getting the point. TO ME when you say "genre emulation" I map that onto High Concept Simulation/Genre Simulation. The agenda is based on reproducing and exploring the elements of the genre, and it will simulate that genre by means of rules and other game elements, possibly a setting, color, etc. This might include things like support for particular traits that are relevant to characters in that genre (IE a game that emulates Chinese Fantasy/Historical Drama might have rules that govern a character's status in the 'Martial Arts World'). In a Process/Purist-for-system Simulation agenda you might have basically the same kind of system, but the use of it will be different. in HCS it will be important to things like whom the character engages with (high level MA masters won't bother with your rank 1 nobody, even if he's actually got a lot of 'Ki' and is a good fighter). In Process Sim purely stochastic mechanics might govern that, or it will dictate if a master of a rival sect even notices you when you meet. These might actually be pretty similar mechanics!

So, no, HCS might not say a lot about low level details of how the world works if they aren't relevant to the genre, but even a 'World Sim' can only address a few things.

 

[Campbell]

In order for quality to have a strong impact on sales we must be dealing with substitutes. The fundamental marketing failure of 4e is that it is not a substitute for the sort of playstyle encouraged by AD&D 2nd Edition. That is not a blackmark on the actual quality of the game though.

I'm sure we don't want to make the argument that Madden is a higher quality game than Elden Ring?

Not that any of this really matters beyond the general principles involved.

 

[niklinna]

So D&D has embedded such switching forever, to the point many just accept it as part of the game. And that switching is evident in 5e APs -- where you have "the plot" embedded in the game, with directions to the GM on how to ensure events happen (so HCS), but then it presents moments that are handled through the mechanics. Most obvious is combat, which I'll circle back to, but quite often you have DC checks to find secret doors necessary to be found or walls climbed or social encounters. These are accepted, because they're so common and have history, but they clunk in practice and you see complaints about them show up. Fail that check and the game stops because you've moved into a situation were you've actually shifted to purist-for-system and that's not aligning with the HCS. This is just within simulationism (and probably another knife in model that it doesn't separate these two things more clearly).

Combat, though, is a big one. No one seems to notice the sudden shift to gamism here, but they complain about the downstream effects all the time. How combats are too easy (they're their to support HCS, but being evaluated from a gamist perspective); hitpoint recovery makes everything too easy (same); I had a TPK and now have to figure out how to get the replacements embedded in the plot again (gamism result disrupts HCS agenda); and so on. Myriad issues are caused here.

BUT, it works okay often enough and many GM's put their thumb on the scale to prevent this. I, myself, take a pass over the adventure prior to play and smooth places that I recognize will cause problems (too little or too much) to provide a more even experience, thus prioritizing the HCS agenda by tuning the gamist toggles to a point that I think they won't cause issues. Still happens, though. In one of my last few 5e games, I went much more strongly gamist -- a hexcrawl -- where it didn't matter if PCs died or whatever, but I very much paid attention to communicating information so that the players could make reasonable decisions (ie, avoided purist-for-system agenda pushes to stay within gamism). These were conscious choices.

But every time I pick up 5e, one of the things I absolutely know is that the game will require toggling between agendas and that this will be the largest challenge I have GMing the game. And I think this is the telling point -- the mark of a great GM isn't really creativeness or acting ability, but the ability to expertly manage these toggles. This is the primary cognitive overhead of the 5e GM.

Thank you, this is the sort of detailed analysis I'm interested in. For D&D I would say the switching has been there, but isn't at all formalized, and the approaches people have developed are ad-hoc and, as you've said, difficult to pull off. To use @Manbearcat's language, there is conflict at the (many) points of contact?

* It is of absolute necessity that if you're building a game engine that functionally toggles in the way you're depicting that it be designed such that INTENT IS ABUNDANTLY TRANSPARENT AND PROCEDURES ARE ABUNDANTLY CLEAR AND THE WHOLE THING FREAKING WORKS. The reason why Torchbearer works despite having extremely different subsystems/zoom is because intent and procedures are transparent and clear and the whole thing freaking works.

I agree that Torchbearer is transparent, but I can't say that the whole thing works for me. I am constantly aware of the tension of the Grind conflicting with my understanding of how time passes, to give just one example, and at certain moments in our sessions I have felt them actively clash. What I do find interesting and engaging is how, for example, belief/creed/traits/etc. feed into the more Gamist mechanics.

* In my opinion (and I've expressed it many times), 4e accomplishes successful integration of Gamist and Story Now priorities because of transparency, intraparty balance, PC : Team Monster/Obstacle balance, fantastic integration of the various moving technical and thematic parts, coherent incentive structures, and hyper-functionality (related to all of the prior stuff). This is why the combat engine ISN'T just a Gamist subsystem. There is so much depth and dynamism and reliability of the combat system that a GM can trivially (assuming sufficient skill of course) frame techincally demanding and decision-space-and-outcome-dynamic combat with a huge diversity of micro-goals and macro-goals that may have nothing to do with or only something to do with "ablating Team Monster HP to 0 to achieve Win Con."

For 4e I can see some of this. My play experience was limited to the one campaign though, in which combats generally did feel like "ablating Team Monster HP to 0". So boring. But outside of combats it was a blast.

Would you care to discuss how Stonetop manages its particular combo?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Even if we defined it more narrowly, then consumer enjoying a product meant for entertainment absolutely must count for quality.

Then you have made it circular. It's popular because it's good; it's good because it's popular. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Any non-circular, non-trivial definition of "quality" is going to tell you nothing, because popularity is at least as much a function of externalities (like, as stated, market insertion, nostalgia, previous investment, etc., etc.) as it is of skillful execution.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

That's awesome, and I'd say the moment very much reflects Story Now play.

But you can see the tension in the reaction of the other players. They had signed on to a story with a particular end and weren't happy when that was thwarted. You might say you dove into Story Now and emerged back into High-Concept Simulation or more traditional Story/Drama play, where the outcome of the Story Now moment clashed.

Yeah, it definitely was some sort of agenda conflict. I think the other players were mainly just miffed that their agency was sort of bypassed. In retrospect it would have worked more satisfactorily if the other characters would have at least gotten a chance to properly confront the traitor character (even if they would have ultimately lost.) But whilst I don't remember the details, somehow the situation at that point was some sort "hand on the red button" thing, and the other characters really plausibly couldn't do anything anymore. And yes, this was framed so due me thinking it too much in high-concept terms, so that I actually hadn't seriously considered that the character would take the bait (I mean it's not what a hero in this sort of story would do! )

But yeah, that was pretty extreme, but I like when the characters do something unexpected that alters the situation, and I'm definitely not going to stop them.