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

[AbdulAlhazred]

What is the situation? What did you as player describe? What does the system say? What's at stake? DM will then narrate result.

Again, how much have you played 5e, if you have these sorts of questions?

Quite a bit, and you just don't seem to be getting what I'm saying.

Lets look at what a 4e skill check means: First, let me say that SOME 4e skill checks run into the same problem that 5e has, but most don't because the way 4e uses its skills and describes them tends to be more concrete in effect, but also less specific about what a skill actually IS. So, for instance, its quite clear what 4e swimming checks mean, you can swim for one melee round (its an athletics check). The thing is, all 4e skill check outcomes within combat are quite well-defined, they're basically 'powers' (in the compendium they actually format them literally as powers). If not, then they are governed by 'page 42', which again produces definite results, as it structures everything in terms of an attack. But this is all fairly unimportant really because the real purpose and use of skill checks is in Skill Challenges. As I stated before, that provides an intent-based framework in which each check produces a defined measure of overall success of intent. There is no ambiguity at all there, if its a simple level 3 challenge then the consequences of success or failure of a given check within that challenge is a matter of rules. I mean, the GM can spell out MORE than that (IE partial success, etc.) but any player is on firm ground when making a skill check, and can decide without reference to the GM or anything but the fiction and the state of the SC and the character, and decide whether or not something 'can work' or not.

5e skill checks simply do not partake of this character. As I say, there are a few cases where 4e checks can fall into this crack too, and the WHY is illustrative. They would be cases where a player species that their character has some sort of intent or a specific task they wish to complete, and the GM fails to frame up the action into an SC! The ranger declares that he wants to track down his friend's murderer and the GM simply asks for a single Perception check. 1st it seems like the GMing here violates the intent of 4e design, and secondly I would observe that the MERE EXISTENCE of the option to cast this as an SC actually does some good work. In a sense at this point the GM is sort of telling you its a 'Complexity 0 SC', because otherwise why only ask for this single check? But for the 5e player, the request to make this tracking check doesn't really tell him anything much at all. The GM will probably feel obliged to present a success as indicating some amount of tracking happened, but that's all we know. Heck, failure could still mean the same thing!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What is a "gamist element"?

Meant to reply to this earlier and forgot.

I find this overall assertion, that there is a hard, absolute gap between "this is what we are setting out to do" and "these are the steps we take to do it." Even the essays I've read from Edwards seem to pretty blatantly dance on this line, despite his repeated insistence that a creative agenda and mechanics are totally distinct things.

Now, I do take the point that a tool used to pursue an end is different from both the process of getting to that end as well as the end itself, just as the Dawn Treader is different from both the titular Voyage and its intended destination. But it seems just as silly to adamantly insist that there is no such thing as a "Gamist element" of design as it would be to insist that a sailing ship isn't an element of travelogue storytelling (which VotDT is). If you have a ship, and that ship serves a plot critical role in facilitating the overall purpose of telling a story about a long journey through lands strange and wondrous and dangerous, then that ship is a travelogue element, even if "ship" in the abstract can be employed in a variety of ways without necessarily making the story a travelogue story.

So, the "gamist elements" would be the techniques, tools, incentives, and design structures which facilitate or (preferably) push the action of play toward a Gamist experience: the designed components of the game which clearly serve the Gamist purpose for which the game was written. Which seems to be pretty much what you said I was saying, so that's good.

And yes, Edwards seems to be describing (with his kinda odd magnet metaphor) what I would call "layering" the two together. You have oil on top and water beneath, and sometimes you rise into the oil, sometimes you sink into the water. You can't really be centered in both places at the same time, but you can fluidly (heh) switch between them.

This is also useful because, as I have said elsewhere, I find that every pair of game-purposes has some things in common and some things opposed, and this seems a strength rather than a weakness. As I think I have already said (but might be mistaken), it seems to me somewhat capricious how GNS put two of its "creative agendas" that seem to move in opposite directions in the same bucket, when each of them has independently several symmetries with other agendas too, yet no combination occurred.

E.g. we could have lumped together treated as one concept together what I call C&E and V&I into a "Mythopoeic" category (differentiated mostly by whether it is Story Before or Story Now), and likewise placed both Gamism and "process" Sim into a "Systematic" category (both care deeply about rules, but for totally different ends). Perhaps, for V&I/C&E, calling the former "protagonized" Mythopoeia (Story Now) and "High Concept" Mythopoeia (Story Before). Point being, even if he meant for them to be four distinct things, his choice to give two the same category with a modifier muddies the issue rather than clears it up.

Overall, and this may be something Edwards said already and I just haven't read it (or forgot), I find G&S/"process" Sim to be the most picky and exclusive of the bunch, a real stickler for doing things its way or not at all. C&E/"High Concept" Sim is arguably the most amenable, so long as Conceit is overall served satisfactorily (another major difference between the two). S&A and V&I fall somewhere between, but due to their quirks they just so happen to be able to stay out of one another's way pretty well.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Frankly, IMHO, the reason WotC developed 4e was simply the fact that the design team they had basically said "We can't do anything more with this giant festering pile of orc dung. We need to start over!" lol.

More importantly, the company that basically built itself on championing 3e, Paizo, explicitly said more or less that same thing. Paraphrased, "We want to make good products. We cannot do so while shackled to the limits of 3rd edition. It is so flawed it is preventing us from moving forward."

Like...I think it was Jason Bulmahn who said this? One of the major designers of PF2e. His genuine admissions that there were fundamental faults in the design of PF, ones running all the way to its roots in 3e, legitimately made me sit up and say, "Alright, they are serious."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Advantage is a good mechanic, but I agree leaned on too heavily now in 5e. It's worth counting among its merits that with advantage, you have a better chance of making a success within your range, but your range isn't shifted. Die modifers - especially when stacked - shift your range. Sometimes undesirably.

I believe the right approach is both together (advantage and die modifers.) It's been interesting to see more recent PbtA designs include advantage (roll 3d6, keep highest two) and disadvantage.

What I like about advantage is it is distinctive. So in my HoML game the ONLY allowable situational modifier is Advantage/Disadvantage. If something is not significant enough for that, then its too trivial to bother with at all, and by making all permanent type modifiers bonuses/penalties to the DV of the check, there's little chance of things getting confused. Cheapening of Advantage by over-generously granting it could be a thing, but I would like to think that the design of the game makes it pretty clear this is meant to signify that someone has a real genuine significantly improved chance of success. I DO grant it for 'tactical reasons' like flanking and surprise, I think situational tactics should be emphasized, and 4e spent a lot too much ink on 'procedural advantages' (IE you did X in the turn right after Y, or whatever). If you flank someone, if you get the jump on them, if you have a lot better cover than they do, well, they're kinda forked. It means that often the fiction just reads more plausibly, and that really isn't a bad thing.

 

[Manbearcat]

Having GMed as much or more 4e than possibly any other person on the planet…

Having run the Setting Tourism-est FR and PS 3.x from 99 to 04 (game from level 3 to level 22)…

The idea that 4e and 3.x share anything more than the most utterly faint DNA (d20
chassis and some Bo9S martial conceptions)? Utterly preposterous. 4e and 3.x are nearly opposite ends of the D&D design and play spectrum. Totally different games.

And GMing 3.x from level 11 to level 22…for a skilled MtG Wizard player and Druid player along with a Fighter prestige class monstrosity and a nova Rogue…

I will never

Ever

Ever

Ever

Do that again. Nothing approaching it. The Wizard and Druid solved every problem I threw at them. Every problem. And the encounter budget and deranged combinations I threw at them to even remotely challenge the Wizard and Druid…it was the most exhausting (in terms of overhead and handling time) thing I’ve ever done GMing and nothing even comes close. From level 11 on, combats were either rocket tag and done or hours and hours. At level 17, it was 2-4 hour combats routinely if it wasn’t rocket tag.

I’m still waiting for my Gold Medal or Nobel Peace Prize or Man of the Millenia for running that game and sticking to it.

I’m certain that a not-insignificant portion of my love for Dogs in the Vineyard is it’s deliverance of me from GMing that 5 year 3.x Setting Tourism + Rock/Paper/Scissors the Wizard and Druid game.

My players loved it.

But I can’t do justice to the personal hellscape I endured for my friends in the running of that game (I HATE Setting Tourism…I HATE FR and PS…I HATE overwhelming cognitive burden due to overpowered spellcasters).

 

[pemerton]

The issue we have is this. I ask what's the difference between A and B. You respond A has X, B doesn't. But to me it seems that B does have X (or at least can have,) so either I have misunderstood what you mean by X or you have misunderstood what B entails. And I'm trying to figure out which it is.

<snip>

I rather feel it is this sort of binary all or nothing attitude where there is only perfect story now or some railroady AP is denying the existence of certain playstyles. It is not how thigs are in the reality, and insisting on it doesn't make discussing what people actually do or like any easier. I don't like adventure paths, but the certain common Story Now mechanics and practices rub me the wrong way too. What I like could be characterised laying somewhere in the middle, at least from certain point of view. And it is a real thing.

I've posted thousands of words of explanation, play examples, etc. I've offered general descriptions - players change setting, players introduce dramatic needs, players' responses and judgements are not dictated by system or social cues. I've worked through, in detail, an example of BW play.

And what you tell me is that you can't tell the difference between that and your own play - despite having given one example of "story now" play of your own which (a) seems to have been unintended rather than deliberate and (b) wasn't liked by most of your players.

Frankly, it's frustrating.

Imagine an approach to RPGing in which what happened with your Deathlord thing is what is happening all the time. That would be "story now".

Are you able to point me to examples of 5e D&D play that regularly exhibit that sort of thing?

 

[pemerton]

5e is by design a game that most people can play. It is designed for high functionality and expressiveness. What I mean by the latter is that you can see throughout the design the patterns and interfaces that create design-space and designability.

How is this not true of (say) Agon? Or Dungeon World? Or Prince Valiant?

(I can see how it may not be true of Burning Wheel or High Adventure Roleplaying. They are relatively complex in mechanical terms.)

 

[pemerton]

I would correct this assessment somewhat and say that "5e is by design a game for curated play," which happens to be how most people are used to playing TTRPGs.

I think not only is it what people are used to, I think it's what people mostly prefer.

 

[pemerton]

Quite a bit, and you just don't seem to be getting what I'm saying.

<snip>

for the 5e player, the request to make this tracking check doesn't really tell him anything much at all. The GM will probably feel obliged to present a success as indicating some amount of tracking happened, but that's all we know. Heck, failure could still mean the same thing!

I think that Ovinomancer spells it out nicely in this post:

There are three main things that a check could do in 5e, it can disclaim decision making, it can be a prompt, or it can be a prop.

If you're disclaiming decision making, you're doing exactly that -- the mechanic tells you what happens and you go with this. Attack rolls are a good example of this in 5e -- the mechanic determines what happens.

If the mechanic is a prompt, then it's job is to provide some prompt to the GM for narration. Most skill checks are like this -- they don't tell you really what happens, but instead provide a prompt to the GM to provide narration according to the GM's interests.

If the mechanic is a prop, then it doesn't matter -- it's being used to obfuscate a GM Says moment with one that appears to be disclaiming decision making. This can be asking for a pointless check to "build tension," or exactly what fudging is.

Ovinomancer goes on to point out one potential consequence of this trifurcation of possible functions:

There's a reasonable subset of rolls where the GM intends to disclaim decision making, but really just hopes the die comes up agreeing with them, and if it doesn't, the check turns into a prop.

But I think probably the most common approach to checks, consistent with the highly curated nature of the game, is that the Gm treats the check as a prompt. This is what is going on in your tracking example.

To take the point one step further: out-of-combat resolution in 5e D&D isn't designed to have teeth. It's designed to support curation by mostly serving as a prompt.

The combat system and some parts of the spell casting system are the principal exceptions - hence why they produce discussions about "easy mode" (which reconciles stochastic resolution with high concept play imperatives, to the frustration of more serious gamism), about fudging (which is a device to further reconcile stochastic resolution with high concept play imperatives), etc.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What I like about advantage is it is distinctive. So in my HoML game the ONLY allowable situational modifier is Advantage/Disadvantage. If something is not significant enough for that, then its too trivial to bother with at all, and by making all permanent type modifiers bonuses/penalties to the DV of the check, there's little chance of things getting confused.

My biggest objection to a/d (but its a huge one) is it say, not only nothing is worth paying attention to until its This Tall, but it then says after one of them applies, no others matter. I really can't describe what a blunt object I find that to be.