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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Hang on. I'm saying it is part of a chain (or really chains) of iteration, with roots in 3.5e. As much in reaction to 3.5e.


I did not and do not say that the game remains the same. Iterative design processes very often result in leaps - substantial innovations - while at the same time having their roots in their predecessors. It's product design 101. Identify problems for your audience (I think we can agree that 3e did a fantastic job of providing a rich supply of those!) Divergently ideate solutions. Where possible, prototype your favoured solutions. Analyse other work in your context for problems you might have missed, concepts you might learn from, and preexisting "prototypes" of ideas you are interested in. Define your criteria for what = good. Using your criteria, converge to a set of solutions - the solution space - that you will then develop. Try to get your core gameplay rapidly to the table, and iterate from there (test, learn, adapt.)

Identify problems > Ideate (diverge) > Define good > Solutions (converge) > Develop.

Typically, the solution space makes its own demands and offers its own opportunities. Certainly some concepts came - as they rightly should! - in from the wider context. Your list is not dichotomous with my claims, it's orthogonal: your list and my claims are both justified. Nothing there "pushes back", which is not to say that the process didn't also bring in elements that did not identify their problem spaces in 3e. That should be anticipated: it's the process working as intended. New things ought to be learned as the solutions are developed.

Right, so my take is that it would have been virtually impossible to alter D&D MORE than 4e did and still credibly package it as an edition of D&D! I mean, starting from the most basic skeletal outline of 3.x was not based on a desire to 'keep what is good and iterate', it was based on a desire to remain within the overall structure and genre of D&D itself. They basically had 2 choices here, they could take d20 and strip it to the bone and build from there, or they could go back to 'classic pre-WotC' (IE 2e or something approximating it) and start there. They really didn't have any other options from a business/product point of view.

So, yes, I agree with your assessment in that we can agree that 3e was at least an attempt to evolve D&D beyond its classic design and create a more solid structure around combat (mostly) as well as an attempt at codifying skills and moving them into the core of the game (IE using them to implement things like thief abilities). Note that 4e basically ditched that last one and started over with skills, which is a pretty major thing, actually! So, 4e does, in some sense "build on that" but: IMHO 4e represents what happens when you say "well, our goal is to make a game which serves an agenda derived from modern ideas about RPGs, but we have to build on a chassis that is recognizably derived from some edition of D&D." Had Rob, Mike, etc. been simply given carte blanc to make any old RPG they wanted which was in the heroic fantasy genre, I very strongly doubt they would have built it on anything that resembles 3e at all. In fact I would have thought that a game more closely resembling Hero Quest/Hero Wars would have been more likely.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I mean, I'm pretty openly Gamist/S&A in my interests, so that shouldn't surprise anyone. And the explicit rationale of Ad/Dis was to eliminate modifiers so play would move more swiftly and smoothly, which sounds fairly Gamist to my ears.

My issue with Elven Accuracy is that it breaks an established design pattern (Advantage works this way for everyone, by design) in a way that specifically favors only certain flavor preferences and not others. That is unreasonable design, as far as I'm concerned. There is essentially nothing in the game quite as good as Elven Accuracy as far as feats go. Every character that qualifies for that feat should take it, hands-down, no questions asked.

Super agree! Worse, it smells like something that could very easily combine with some other game element to produce a really large unintended power boost. I guess it hasn't, but that may also be because WotC has restrained themselves in terms of what other stuff they added to the game so that wouldn't happen. The implementation of Twin Strike in 4e (Ranger At-Will power) illustrates this kind of pitfall really well. It is a stupidly powerful power. Rangers are built around NOT letting it get out of hand (or at least making you pay through the teeth to do so, and then giving you other pretty good alternatives instead). Every rule in the game that deals with power swaps has to be written in such a way that it is impossible, under any sort of build, to combine Twin Strike with some other class in an unlimited fashion, because the results would be stupidly overpowered. Lots of possible MCing options and such thus go out the window of design space. EVEN SO any weapon-using Half-Elf who isn't an idiot will take TS as their bonus Encounter Use At-Will! lol (there are a couple other choices that have some nice synergies with various classes, but TS is never a mistake).

 

[Campbell]

Right, so my take is that it would have been virtually impossible to alter D&D MORE than 4e did and still credibly package it as an edition of D&D! I mean, starting from the most basic skeletal outline of 3.x was not based on a desire to 'keep what is good and iterate', it was based on a desire to remain within the overall structure and genre of D&D itself. They basically had 2 choices here, they could take d20 and strip it to the bone and build from there, or they could go back to 'classic pre-WotC' (IE 2e or something approximating it) and start there. They really didn't have any other options from a business/product point of view.

So, yes, I agree with your assessment in that we can agree that 3e was at least an attempt to evolve D&D beyond its classic design and create a more solid structure around combat (mostly) as well as an attempt at codifying skills and moving them into the core of the game (IE using them to implement things like thief abilities). Note that 4e basically ditched that last one and started over with skills, which is a pretty major thing, actually! So, 4e does, in some sense "build on that" but: IMHO 4e represents what happens when you say "well, our goal is to make a game which serves an agenda derived from modern ideas about RPGs, but we have to build on a chassis that is recognizably derived from some edition of D&D." Had Rob, Mike, etc. been simply given carte blanc to make any old RPG they wanted which was in the heroic fantasy genre, I very strongly doubt they would have built it on anything that resembles 3e at all. In fact I would have thought that a game more closely resembling Hero Quest/Hero Wars would have been more likely.

I disagree with this take based on what we know about the internal divide in both iterations of the design team. We know in each case there was a pretty bitter divide including even the idea that magic users should be balanced against martial characters. I mean it's fairly evident by what happened when Mearls got control (with Essentials) and comments he made in the runup to 5e that he did not see things in the same way as Heinsoo or later Logan Bonner.

 

[clearstream]

I argue that it isn't a dichotomy. Or rather the dichotomy isn't in pre-authored/on-the-fly setting/world, but in specifically what in the world is pre-authored vs. on-the-fly.

Yes, I agree with you, that's really the whole point of the thought-experiment.

My question is intended to imply skepticism about the dichotomy I first put in mind.

1) Here are two poles. 2) Is our position one of denying that there can be points between them and insisting they must be dichotomous? 3) Might we turn out to make use of both by finding a balance between them? 4) That balance needn't be simply a middle point on a line, it may be design-space secured by an attitude or orientation. 5) That resists Edwards' extremism (albeit perhaps he is aiming for rhetorical emphasis rather than a theoretical position.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I hope that others will respect my belief that criticising other RPGs is unproductive. Instead I will give two examples of game design concepts underlying my assessement, and explain how those are evidenced in 5e.

Design-space. One way to create design-space is to lean into feature combinations. Suppose I design 3 features and cannot combine them: that's a 3-point design-space. Suppose I allow every permutation including repetitions: that's a 9-point design-space. The latter can be predicted to retain interest in play for a greater number of sessions than the former. 5e uses combinations all through to create design-space, but you should be able to see how that is also in tension with designability.

Designability. One can see that the class structure of 5e both makes available and constrains combinations of features. That increases designability because the test-space is much reduced. Picture by contrast the number of combinations that would need to be tested for each new feature, in the absence of such class structures! Relatedly, a feature of 5e is the soft-allocation of design-space to each class. For example, at a certain level the sub-class feature for ranger will lean toward defensive. That makes it easier to design for - to design in this case a new ranger subclass - because the designer can be given the game bible and know what direction they should be thinking in. Each class has specified "slots" for sub-class features, further aiding designability.

While these concepts are often associated with (predictive of) games that retain interest over hundreds of sessions, it's not the case that a game is bad just because it doesn't apply them. Great games often succeed by challenging convention, and some design concepts might not be at issue for a given design.

It does mean however, that it is right to say that 5e has patterns (controlled combinatorial-ness) and interfaces (sub-class feature "slots") that are efficient and effective, and help sustain interest in play. 5e can be examined by game designers (and players who are interested) to understand deft application of those concepts.

There is no mystery as to the value I place in player testimonials. It is found in the reading or listening to what players are actually saying. There are typically a spectrum of views, from positive to negative, so it is important to read across them. @Thomas Shey introduced a salient observation before: what weight do we give a single view in judging the quality of the design, and by implication what weight do we give to a great many views when they are in accord?

Well, what I note is that 5e sacrificed the easy path there, which 4e had mapped out! clearly there was a consideration that was higher priority than either 'designability' nor 'design space'. I mean, I think 5e does reasonably well there, but nothing touches things like AEDU, which literally meant that any character could simply acquire a power from any other class trivially. I mean, that was pretty cool. Beyond that, lots of designability was baked in with role and source to focus the designer of a class in on exactly the kinds of things it should achieve, for example. I'm a bit skeptical that 5e's framework could withstand the sheer volume of additions that 4e got in its run. WotC went CRAZY with that game, and it didn't break one bit! There are what FIVE ways to be a Vampire in 4e? (ritual, feat tree, class, race, MC, Hybrid) though I think the ritual really doesn't count since it seems to be meant only for NPC color, or possibly you could use it as a story device to explain a PC gaining one of the other types of 'vampirism'. None of these invalidates or breaks the others (and even stacking them doesn't really cause any issues). I really do not think 5e would be that robust! Still, clearly 5e is balanced enough in overall design that its use of 3e level design/modularity works pretty well.

Also, I think 5e improves on 4e in terms of some of its use of the design space. 5e uses feats better, and while the structure of classes is not perfect, it does lend itself to a nice "make a choice at level 3 and never think about it much again." which is NOT really true of 4e (but then the flip side is 4e characters are inherently super tweakable to achieve almost any player desire imaginable without much trouble.).

So, I'd give 4e slightly better marks on these points, but not overwhelmingly better by any means. Mostly I think it points out that those considerations are secondary in 5e to other ones, like creating a weird hodge podge of class feature-based stuff is actually a design goal of 5e, but anathema to 4e's putting what you call 'design space' first.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, what I note is that 5e sacrificed the easy path there, which 4e had mapped out! clearly there was a consideration that was higher priority than either 'designability' nor 'design space'. I mean, I think 5e does reasonably well there, but nothing touches things like AEDU, which literally meant that any character could simply acquire a power from any other class trivially.

Was this really true, though? I was always under the impression there were some potentially synergies with powers from different classes that were deliberately avoided by choices of where they went. I realize the multiclassing feats could end run this to a degree, but there was overhead on that and practical limitations of how much you could fish in that pond.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right.


What does this mean?


We tried to unpack this earlier, I don't think we quite got there. what makes some action 'a judgement'? Also, is every thing the characters do in a story now game 'a judgement?' Don't they ever just non judgementally put boots on or order a drink? What portion of the player actions need to be these judgements for qualify for Story Now?

Well, putting my boots on has nothing to do with character motives/needs (except in the most trivial and I would think uninteresting way). So, to the extent that a game focuses on what sounds like 'daily life' it isn't doing Story Now, its probably doing some sort of simulationist play that focuses on 'simulating the daily life of a character'. I don't think there's a 'proportion' that has to be met here, I think its just a matter of to what degree is a particular agenda being catered to in a game. It could obviously vary from session to session. In terms of game design, its strictly something like; to the extent that a game puts the focus on 'putting on boots', it is catering to a simulationist agenda, and that will presumably mean it is detracting focus from elements that might cater to other agendas.

Sure. I just don't think why on Earth you think this is at all unique to Story Now. In my game today the characters allied with a harpy. Fine by me, she seemed like a nice lass, if you don't mind murderous cannibals. (I was being unfear, it's technically not cannibalism, she wouldn't eat other harpies.)

But why did they do that? Was it because it would remove some obstacle so they could get some treasure? Was it because one of the characters strongly believes in the value of cooperation and staked his reputation/life/belief against proving it on this harpy? Or something else?

Both, probably some other things too. When starting a game it is customary to agree upon what the game is at least roughly about, right? You seem to do so too, everyone does. It might be something very specific, or it might be pretty broad, but it practically always exists. And this premise informs and influences what sort of things the characters do in the game, thus it influences what sort of decisions the players make. Do you disagree with some part of this?

I think it is likely that some stronger version of premise might be present in Story Now, though not always. I mean, Dungeon World presents a premise of a fantastical world and heroic unique player characters (your character is THE Wizard, not a wizard). Every DW game will be organized with this premise in mind (it can be subverted of course, but then the game may not work well).

Right. This is the premise, and I'd assume it informs what sort of things the players declare their characters will actually do.

I am trying to nail down at which point in your book establishing a premise stops and establishing non-story-now-appropriate influences to the player decision making begins. Like if I say the theme of the game is 'sword and sorceryish pulp adventures" which it is? What if I said it is "Star Wars rebel heroes" game? That kinda implies morality. Is it just the limits to morality we are worried about here, or the style and flavour of things the characters are assumed to do?

Well, I think it is quite fair to say that genre and premise often interact in some way. Remember, Edwards doesn't really talk about genre as a PRIMARY thing. It supports premise, and so you won't likely create a system or play a game where the desired premise doesn't mesh with the genre. Like you wouldn't want to play Knights of the Round Table in Cimmeria, right? I mean, maybe juxtaposing those would actually be INTERESTING, but then the focus would be the juxtaposition, it isn't really helping you do an SN kind of play, particularly. At least not SN that is heavily character focused, it might work for SN that is more setting focused, where the PCs motives are external to themselves.

No one is claimed 5e play is Story Now. Merely that that the things you define as indicators of story now can and are present in it. Hell, it is very common that things on both your story now and not-story-now lists are presents in the same game, happily mixed. Like some stakes are based on player defined character's dramatic needs, and some are GM established in reference to the setting. And of course in all sort of games the player's actions can have impact, and it is hella weird to think that they wouldn't. On your list of non-story-now only the first is one is at least somewhat recognisably present in my games. What this means, I don't, know, except that your binary definitions do not reflect the reality.

But the one critical thing is where the impetus comes from. Is the game fundamentally shaped by the questions which arise out of dramatic needs of the PCs or not?

The point was about how character driven play occurs in non-story-now games. The players decide that they want to do something, they do, and then the story is suddenly about that.

Right, but the reason SN took on a big focus in 'Narrative Play' is that it really insures that the focus goes to where NP wants it to go. Setting, per se, isn't going to make SN or NP generally impossible. It is just sort of like the boots, if exploring a GM provided setting is a big focus, then discovery, and the associated genre sim will assume a greater part of the agenda. In order for a strong setting to take 2nd place to character dramatic needs requires deft handling. I think there's a strong desire to point out that some games get SN almost by default, and some require a little work, and some take a HUGE amount of work.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@clearstream

That's not what The Magic Circle is about at all. It's about fully embracing the structure of play and taking on the expectations of the game we are all playing together.

The backbone of The Magic Circle is the conceit of the alibi, allowing us to step away from our culturally prescribed roles and fully take on new ones. To have a space where we can confidently play.

Now, this I understand. So, I've always been this kind of player of games, especially RPGs, where I take the game at face value and play it hook-line-and-sinker for what it is (as far as I can determine that). Maybe with real long familiarity and whatnot I'll take over and make it do something else, but I always feel like the intent and expectations are a part of the game, essentially. If I play 1e D&D then by gosh my characters are played mostly in ruthless pawn stance and my player-earned skills of knowing 400 ways to thwart an evil GM with a 10' pole is on full display. If I play Dungeon World, then I'm playing to address my bonds/alignment/whatever and focus play on dramatic needs, come hell or high water.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's a rule, they agree to follow it and they can refer back to it (it's written down) in case of doubt.

So...if you write down in a book, "If you aren't sure what happens, the referee will tell you what happens," suddenly it's a rule and not "DM decides"?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, there's a couple of things in there: first, even if someone generically agrees with you, in a fight that involves multiple participants, that doesn't mean fiat is going to be appealing.

And again, if you're going to tell me "Once someone is flanked, nothing else matters" then I think that's because you're putting too much heft on being flanked.

The model I contrast Advantage/Disadvantage with is Shadow of the Demon Lord Boons and Banes. When you get a Boon or a Bane there, it gives you a D6 bonus or penalty to your D20 roll--but if you have multiples, you just roll them all and take the best. At some point, obviously, this becomes frequently indistinguishable from just having a + or - 6, but it takes a while there, and it doesn't add significantly to the overhead for most people, and at least the first few are still getting you somewhere (and this is a system where the difficulty caps pretty low, too; you never need more than a 25 as I recall).

Basically, I'm not a fan of a system telling me that making any effort beyond the first breakpoint is pointless, and I'm not going to find "it doesn't matter until the mod is relatively huge" a virtue. That doesn't mean the 3e "search for a dozen different small modifiers" is a virtue, but the swing in A/D is a bridge way too far the other way.

Hmmm, well, I think the d6 mechanism you describe is not bad. You could also use piling on more advantage dice, which is a bit different in detailed probabilities, but could be given a pretty similar overall effect. I just don't want to focus on enumerating long lists of conditions and circumstances and 'move on' to the action. HoML is NOT AT ALL simulationist! While I have advantage modeling things that would make sense in the real world, that's intended to get the right fiction and produce a sensible narrative, not to simulate the elements of fighting with swords and such. All that is necessary is a quick check to say "Oh, yeah, I have flanking, so Advantage!" The GM can then look and see if anything cancels that with Disadvantage and we're ready to roll. You do get a substantive benefit from advantage, so its rarely not worth having. For the same reason in HoML there are exactly 4 sources of bonuses, and nothing ever stacks within them (and 3 of those really can only have one source of modifiers in general). HoML combat, unlike 4e, or even 5e, or 13a, etc. is FAST. It is purely focused on what the characters are doing and how they react to the situation at hand. Tactics are important, you want stuff like surprise and flanking, but play has more of the quick feel of older classic D&D in terms of it moves along. It really is NOT meant to be a numbers game.