I think it sounds more like a kind of High Concept Sim than Gamist to me. They value some sort of adherence to a setting or something similar. Competition sounds like a secondary concern to this objective of verisimilitude or 'rightness'.
Are we back to "only a purist stance is the stance" AA? Because its possible to favor one and still care about the other here, and I think I have a pretty good idea which one is the priority, wouldn't you think?
I think you could play a pretty gamist "party against the dungeon, can you level up?" OTOH I don't disagree that overall, when you started mixing in other sorts of more exploratory play, it kind of imploded. I think that's typically going to happen with pretty much any system where the main thrust is "what would really happen" because its never really all that clear, especially when 'really' starts to involve things like magic.
The problem was with OD&D you were constantly doing the sort of ad-hoc rules add-ons I've referred to. Want to climb a wall to do something? Is it even going to be possible? How hard will it be? You had absolutely nothing to base it on, because in terms of mechanics, OD&D had basically two significant things (a very schematic combat system with associated saving throws, and a slightly more elaborate spell system) and a couple of small odds and ends of supplemental mechanics for things like surprise and secret doors, but past that you were on your own.
I've argued you can play a Gamist game with no rules at all, but that doesn't mean I think its a particularly
desirable way to play, which is why you can probably hear my eyes rolling all the way across the Internet when the "Rulings not Rules" proponents start in.
So its not the narrowness of scope that made me leave D&D; it was the fact that as far as support, what it gave me was pretty much pants.
Well, 3e is just mind-bogglingly complex and filled with specific rules, and classic spells that are very open-ended, so its hard to say you can really be definitive. 4e, yes, because it actually doesn't care much about the fiction in a pure sense if you just play it as a kind of gamist tactical setup, though that is a somewhat limited type of play for that game as well. 5e? I think its squarely in the same land with 2e and 3e here, you can 'play by the rules', but you will get tripped up often, and the upshot usually is more of a 'tour the fiction' kind of HCS or something.
Again, I think you're confusing "Have Game as a priority" with "not being willing to engage with anything else at all." A Gamist may prefer that your interpretation of an open-ended element be one he can turn to his benefit, but that doesn't mean he doesn't expect it to require some interpretation and accept that as long as it doesn't look like there's no sense of consistency and/or the interpretation is constantly against letting him do what he wants.
Well, I'm not NECESSARILY talking about something like "Oh, there's no actual rules for boats here, I'll supply something that sounds reasonable." I mean, that can potentially go whatever way, either outputting what the GM WANTS, and/or what the players think falls within the range of what they would plan for.
Exactly. As I said, one of the elements of doing house rules is, even if something is done in a way that happen to support the GM's wants once, he's still going to deal with it being an established precedent that can be used to make gamist decisions in the future. Cynically, that's why I think at least some RNR proponents don't like having more than minimalist written rules.
I think the question is whether or not everyone AGREES on how all these spells work. As an AD&D player, I really carefully studied all the material about each spell and rules lawyered the heck out them, so I can recall seeing all sorts of fun interpretations of things. The only sure thing with spell casting is there was no sure thing! You were playing on what you thought the GM was going to say, and not a lot else beyond a general consensus that "fireball hot." lol.
That's a specific game culture thing though (I do agree that early D&D spells tended to be, shall we say, "terse" in their explanations; I was never into AD&D, but I can't imagine it was worse than the one-line wonders of spell descriptions in OD&D).