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

[pemerton]

I'm not sure why you exclude 1e here. The DMG has a quite thorough write up of wilderness exploration including all the various rules and charts, explanations of all the procedures, etc. Its not as succinctly presented, and some parts are scattered in a few appendices, etc. but you can run a completely legit hexcrawl with all the resource rules, encounters, etc. all laid out nice and neat. If you stick to the letter of the encounter rules you can determine exactly what happens when there's an encounter too, at least down to the level of determining that some random encounter is 'friendly', at which point the DM will have to decide exactly what that means of course.

And yes, any party containing spell casters of more than about 9th level should be able to bypass most of the resource kind of stuff, although again if you are sticklers for rules there will instead by substituted a game of tracking material spell components, lol. Honestly, if you are a real stickler for 1e's rules, its a fairly tight game that doesn't leave too many loose ends in this regard. Its just a pain in the arse to mill through all the rules you will need to reference.

Right. The real issue with hexcrawls in AD&D is that they're not a lot of fun for most people, especially once you adopt the techniques - like spell component tracking - that are necessary to make them work.

In an early foray into BW, I had three journeys.

The first involved the PCs in a vessel piloted and sailed by NPCs. So the travel was merely a backdrop to the scene-framing.

The second occurred after the PCs failed to successfully resolve the various conflicts on the NPC vessel, resulting in it sinking. They were rescued by a NPC ship (Circle-d up by one of the players). A Duel of Wits determined where that vessel dropped them - one the shores of the Bight Desert.

The travel through the Bright Desert was resolved by a series of framed scenes. The final one of these was the PCs' push north from an oasis to the Abor-Alz. This was resolved as an Orienteering check, plus each PC having to make a Forte check to see how much their Forte was taxed by thirst, hunger and heat. The Orienteering check failed, and the consequence was that when they arrived at the pool in the foothills that they were heading towards it had been fouled.

These were all easy to manage (in the various different ways that that was done) and didn't suffer from too much rules lookup or too much minutiae.

The underlying agenda of play was "story now", but Torchbearer shows how the same basic techniques could be used to support "step on up" play.

 

[pemerton]

I'm far from clear how this counts as GM-as-glue play.

I'm afraid I'm unclear how it doesn't. But then, as I noted in that post, I think people draw a lot stronger lines than I think represents things in the field.

You described the play in question like this:

Sometimes making things up as long as you communicate them to the players and are flexible to concerns about temporal concerns (i.e. potential earlier decisions the players made that would have been made differently with the current information, which they should have had) has no meaningful impact on the gamist process; you take in the addition, include it in your decision making, and move on.​

Unless I've misunderstood, you are talking about the GM making a suggestion to the players, and the table working out how to implement it (including any revision of the existing gamestate to reflect temporal aspects) in a transparent fashion.

I've used that approach (in Rolemaster), mostly for rules but occasionally for information about the fiction that ought to have been conveyed but - for whatever reason - was not.

Given that it involves the GM pooling information and decision-making with the whole table, I see it as the opposite of GM-as-glue.

 

[Manbearcat]

I just posted the below quoted text in that "Midieval Europe Travel Thread:"

D&D has done Travel/Trekking/Journeys 3 ways. If you want to do either of the first two in 5e you're going to need to do some heavy-lifting of hacking it in yourself and then stress-testing to make sure its tightly integrated or find a product on the DMs Guild or whatever that has already attempted to do so (successfully or not you'll have to put the work in to figure out!).


* B/X RC hexcrawls w/ high resolution map and integrated rules/procedures. Procedurally, its just like dungeon crawls except mapped with fully prepped and high resolution hex-map (each hex themed and stocked w/ topography/hazards/denizens) + encounter tables + exploration turns/rest per 4 turns + wandering monster clock + monster reaction + encumbrance and loadout enforcement + gold/xp. This struggles when magic starts becoming ubiquitous (particularly powerful, terrain and light obviating magic.

* 4e map + conflict resolution (Skill Challenges) with intent/goal and stakes and Fail Forward. You can do this with each individual Skill Challenge being a leg (therefore likely Complexity 1) or the whole thing (therefore Complexity 3 to 5). Regardless, you've got a constantly changing situation with new topographical/locale-inspired dangers/obstacles to overcome (each with their own inferable consequence-space) > resolution > new obstacle/danger or escalated existing one > Win/Fail-state. Success means you complete the charted course (leg or the whole deal) w/ failure meaning some interesting twist happens that complicates or subverts your intent/goal and now you have to deal with that before you move onto your next leg (if going the leg route) or your next site of conflict if you're doing the entirety of the macro Journey as a singular conflict/Skill Challenge.

* Various other D&D where you're basically just simulating the experiential aspect of journeying/trekking with maps and rules and procedures and loadout and player decisions being faithfully observed or abridged/elided/ignored with the toggle being the GM's discretion at what best promotes the experiential quality of journeying/trekking at the moment. All that stuff is more "GM prompt" than actual consistent ruleset/journey engine with gears and teeth. So you'll go between vignettes with a lot of purple prose/flourishey-discriptions of vistas > maybe onto some moments of meaningful gamestate movers that involve system/player input/map reference > maybe some handouts or cool tokens to amplify "the feel" > maybe pretending that you're spending time on meaningful gamestate-moving decisions but its partly or mostly or wholly just performative theatrics + Force to engender the mood/experiential quality. Some formulation of all of that stuff.

* Which do you (fair readers) think represents the majority or consensus orientation to play of that thread?

* What do you think the "hierarchy of controversial approach" would be given the orientation of the participants in that thread (and 5e at large)?

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

So, I think that one way that GNS breaks down, is not only that people and games can be good at multiple things, but that the different areas can actually support each other directly. So like, in the case of OSR, the gamism and simulation actually support each other-- the whole point is for the game to be a fun, playable, simulation where the act of making the statistically defined elements interact is enjoyable and engaging, even while they're intended to represent things. The act of sitting down and saying 'ok, I am going to represent being an elf with these particular statistics and abilities, because that'll help it feel like an elf' and the enjoyable game play of applying those things to the actual game, your elf being better and worse at certain things and making you play around that-- its the gamism and the simulationism supporting each other, and if you accept that each of those elements is designed to tell a story through its game play and the intentionality of how it interacts with other elements in the simulation, you've brought in narrative too.

Actually, The GNS model does have a name for this type of thing. It's Incoherent, and if you happen to like them you have brain damage

Sorry to potentially bring up this chestnut again, but I'm pretty sure the discussion didn't get here and I don't feel like a discussion about using the GNS model is complete without my uhh... favorite part of it, shall we say.

 

[niklinna]

Actually, The GNS model does have a name for this type of thing. It's Incoherent, and if you happen to like them you have brain damage

Sorry to potentially bring up this chestnut again, but I'm pretty sure the discussion didn't get here and I don't feel like a discussion about using the GNS model is complete without my uhh... favorite part of it, shall we say.

Oh, it got there.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

Oh, it got there.

Well now I just feel dumb for not reading the thread.

that'll teach me.

 

[pemerton]

I just posted the below quoted text in that "Midieval Europe Travel Thread:"

D&D has done Travel/Trekking/Journeys 3 ways. If you want to do either of the first two in 5e you're going to need to do some heavy-lifting of hacking it in yourself and then stress-testing to make sure its tightly integrated or find a product on the DMs Guild or whatever that has already attempted to do so (successfully or not you'll have to put the work in to figure out!).

* B/X RC hexcrawls w/ high resolution map and integrated rules/procedures. Procedurally, its just like dungeon crawls except mapped with fully prepped and high resolution hex-map (each hex themed and stocked w/ topography/hazards/denizens) + encounter tables + exploration turns/rest per 4 turns + wandering monster clock + monster reaction + encumbrance and loadout enforcement + gold/xp. This struggles when magic starts becoming ubiquitous (particularly powerful, terrain and light obviating magic.

* 4e map + conflict resolution (Skill Challenges) with intent/goal and stakes and Fail Forward. You can do this with each individual Skill Challenge being a leg (therefore likely Complexity 1) or the whole thing (therefore Complexity 3 to 5). Regardless, you've got a constantly changing situation with new topographical/locale-inspired dangers/obstacles to overcome (each with their own inferable consequence-space) > resolution > new obstacle/danger or escalated existing one > Win/Fail-state. Success means you complete the charted course (leg or the whole deal) w/ failure meaning some interesting twist happens that complicates or subverts your intent/goal and now you have to deal with that before you move onto your next leg (if going the leg route) or your next site of conflict if you're doing the entirety of the macro Journey as a singular conflict/Skill Challenge.

• Various other D&D where you're basically just simulating the experiential aspect of journeying/trekking with maps and rules and procedures and loadout and player decisions being faithfully observed or abridged/elided/ignored with the toggle being the GM's discretion at what best promotes the experiential quality of journeying/trekking at the moment. All that stuff is more "GM prompt" than actual consistent ruleset/journey engine with gears and teeth. So you'll go between vignettes with a lot of purple prose/flourishey-discriptions of vistas > maybe onto some moments of meaningful gamestate movers that involve system/player input/map reference > maybe some handouts or cool tokens to amplify "the feel" > maybe pretending that you're spending time on meaningful gamestate-moving decisions but its partly or mostly or wholly just performative theatrics + Force to engender the mood/experiential quality. Some formulation of all of that stuff.

• Which do you (fair readers) think represents the majority or consensus orientation to play of that thread?

* What do you think the "hierarchy of controversial approach" would be given the orientation of the participants in that thread (and 5e at large)?

Q1
I think the majority or consensus approach is the last of your three options. I haven't seen anyone mention the second option. And given that there is only person really emphasising random encounters, but he is also clearly contemplating a high degree of GM control over storyline, I don't think the classic hexcrawl approach is being contemplated.

Q2
I think that the "controversy hierarchy" would more-or-less follow my answer to Q1. That is, the third approach - being widely presumed as the approach - is least controversial. The hexcrawl approach seems to be comprehensible but I would conjecture generally disliked because of its pacing implications (ie its tedious) and also because it's not really conducive to "smelling the flowers" or talking about how you spend each evening before camp, which seems a reasonably high priority for most of the posters in that thread. I assume the 4e approach would be the most controversial, given its history of controversy and its complete absence (and the complete absence of the consideration of any approach that is conflict/"closed scene" resolution) from the thread (other than your post).

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

So, more on topic, I can safely say that D&D is a form of gamist, just as much as it is a form of simulationist and a form of narrative. Anything more than that is above my paygrade.

What I also think is that critical discussions of game design should stay far, far, away from forums of this type, and should stick to game design meetings and academic papers, because when people on the internet get a hold on them, it stops being a useful tool for discussion and design and becomes more a stick to beat people over the head while while saying "Your way of having fun is Objectively Wrong And Bad and my way of having fun is Objectively Right And Good."

 

[clearstream]

I just posted the below quoted text in that "Midieval Europe Travel Thread:"



* Which do you (fair readers) think represents the majority or consensus orientation to play of that thread?

* What do you think the "hierarchy of controversial approach" would be given the orientation of the participants in that thread (and 5e at large)?

It may be worth noting too, that 5e modules include two with hexcrawls. OotA and ToA. The latter hearks back to X1 Isle of Dread. Hexcrawl furniture for 5e is found in those (and DMG.)

I don't know of any examples of an SC approach for 5e, unless DiA or WBtW has such? Anyone know?

EDIT For DiA I found

Using the map to chart a course from one location to another is unreliable at best… When charting a course through Avernus, ask the player whose character is overseeing navigation to roll two dice:

• Roll 2d4 if the characters are traveling to an unvisited destination marked on their map.
• Roll 2d8 if the characters are returning to a destination they’ve visited previously.
• Roll 2d10 if a native guide is leading the characters to their destination.

If the rolls of both dice don’t match, the characters arrive at their destination as intended. If the dice match, they wind up somewhere else: pick one of the other locations.

The one thing the map does do is magically talk to the PCs: Every time they go somewhere, the map tells them exactly what it is and where they are before they have a chance to explore and find out.

 

[clearstream]

Quotes about DiA in my previous were from the Alexandrian, who also comments

Let’s take one step back: RPG adventures are built using scenario structures. A dungeoncrawl is one type of scenario structure. A mystery is another. There are many others, including things like heists, hexcrawls, raids, etc.

A significant problem in RPG design is that these scenario structures aren’t really talked about. DMs and even designers just kind of pick them up (often imperfectly) by osmosis. Most of them are limited to just dungeoncrawls, mysteries, and railroading.

Comparing the 5e DMG with the Expert Set, I would say the former has the more complete rules for hexploration. X1 adds a hex map replete with evocative detail, yet ToA is even more replete.

The supporting mechanics are present in multiple versions of D&D (including 5e). What may be missing are some (ideally more than one) frameworks for using them. Leaving it as usual up to DM to manage. (I want to confirm that by reviewing the game texts again in case I missed it, but it would be in line.)