D&D 5E [+] Explain RPG theory without using jargon

[Charlaquin]

(1) GNS does suggest agendas can overlap at a number of points, such as N and S caring about how a character is portrayed with integrity. So the GNS Advocate may argue that the issue of whether your play motivations in these more aligned areas represent either Simulationism or Narrativism can be murky.

But doesn’t that kind of put paid to the idea that these agendas can’t be served simultaneously? If the only claim the theory is making is that sometimes these agendas can conflict with one another… I don’t feel like that’s saying anything particularly revelatory. And it has seemed to me that people have been arguing that at any given moment of gameplay, one agenda must take precedence over the other. Also, some have claimed that a game can only serve at most two agendas. None of this seems to track for m.

(2) I don't think that we should take disagreements about definitions as being indicative that the definitions or concepts people attempt to describe are invalid. It sometimes means simply that people have their own interpretation or understanding or ways of trying to explain things. My preference here is to instead take these differences as an invitation for further dialogue and discussion. We may use these terms differently, but I nevertheless think that it's important that we understand how we respectively use those terms. It may mean that it requires a collation of our understandings to form the meaning, but that is often how language or parole works.

For sure. I certainly don’t think that because people have different definitions of the agendas, they must be invalid. I think it’s far more likely that there is at least a cohesive underlying theory (if not necessarily one I would agree with), and that the conflicting definitions are indicative of the theory being commonly misunderstood. But I have to wonder if that common misunderstanding is due to the theory not being very accessible.

(3) As I think that a core motivation for the development of GNS was attempting to explain the growing sense of (the again poorly-named) Narrativism, I would suggest that your own personal value in GNS may rest in trying to understand what N was and why many people in the Forge felt like their contemporary games failed to scratch that itch as well as how they tried to deliver that desired experience through their own game designs.

Maybe. It may surprise you to learn that I rather like what I have seen from ostensibly narrativist games and mechanics. I love 4e. PbtA is awesome. FATE seems pretty neat. I can see their appeal, and why someone who wants that kind of experience would find (most editions of) D&D dissatisfying. I don’t feel like I need GNS theory to explain that, and I feel that what I understand of GNS theory misses the mark on what is appealing about more traditional RPG play, which is something it ostensibly aims to do.

(4) As I said before, I am not really one who likes using GNS jargon in my discourse. It tends to invite a lot of heated discussions of terms, with some people bringing their other understandings from other models. For example, if we talk of Simulationism, then that may suggest either GDS or GNS models. I think that there is more practical jargon that came out of the Forge, for example, that speaks to actual gameplay principles and issues.

I agree with you there, for sure.

I am more than happy to try my hand at elucidating other jargon that pops up in TTRPG theory, as I see no reason why we should limit ourselves in this (+) thread to limit ourselves strictly to explaining GNS.

Frankly, I don’t really know what jargon comes from GNS and what comes from elsewhere.

 

[niklinna]

Expectations is a good point here. If I'm playing a Samurai with a code of honour... what do we all expect that means? Is it a limitation I have to follow (but might try to find clever ways to work around) as the price for my cool sword powers? Is it a limitation I have to follow (and willingly so) in order to represent how my character 'would really be'? Is it a limitation I have to continually choose whether to follow in a series of escalating 'how about now?' moral dilemmas? It can't really be all three at once.

It can easily be a mix of the last two though. It is a limitation the character (for personal and in-setting) reasons is supposed to follow, but a situations may arise which challenges this code.

I've got my doubts about whether the three things are necessarily exclusive, but they tend overwhelmingly in my experience not to co-occur in single moments. Now, all three could show up in a situation, but resolving the situation sure looks to me like it'll require choosing one over the others. I'll need to add something to this scenario to propose a moral dilemma: Say the samurai has sworn a specific additional vow to protect the daimyo's young child above all else, with some particular fictional consequence on failure (not to mention the basic moral weight). Then the dilemma could involve someone threatening to kill that child unless the samurai does something that will violate their code of honour and thereby cause them to lose their cool sword powers*, and that is also literally out of character**.

This is a thorny moment for the player. They can't have it all ways, and here is where the argued exclusion kicks in:

• If what matters most to the player in that moment is maintaining their cool sword powers, they'll choose that option. There's a strong implication, to me, that this bit is purely for the sake of having cool sword powers (that is, it's what a GNS proponent would call Gamist, and at the least it's not concerned with the fiction of the situation).
• If what matters most to the player in that moment is representing how their character "would really be", they'll do that. Note that this is likely to align with their code of honour anyhow, so here we have a potential chink in the exclusion argument. (Interestingly to me, it combines the first two items rather than the last two.) This part seems to straddle the line, since the player wants to immerse in the fiction but the situation demands they break that immersion**.
• In the last case, things are likely to be more specifically dependent on the situation, because it's defined in terms of the fiction. Maybe they know they'll need their cool sword powers right after this situation with the daimyo's child at stake (that is, it isn't about merely keeping the cool sword powers for the sake of having them, but keeping them for a particular purpose in the fiction, so any coincidence of outcome actually depends on differing motives). Is resolving that situation more important than the basic loss of a child's life and the daimyo's likely wrath? Maybe they can find a way to save the child and regain their cool sword powers? It's a risk!

I've spent over 40 minutes trying to think of a reslution that combines all three in the moment, but so far haven't cracked it. Maybe somebody else can think of one.

* This is a major trope in Celtic myth, with a hero being undone by having to choose between violating one geas and another. Poor Cú Chulainn.

** Note that this bit is metagamey (sorry for the jargon), in that it explicitly demands that the player not play the game in the way they want—assuming that is a priority for the player, of course. I think that's a shady thing to do.

 

[niklinna]

If the player next to me abandons the Samurai code to achieve a personal goal of their character... how should we respond? Strip the PC if their powers? XP penalty? Tut at them for cheating or metagaming? Feel disappointed because 'that's not what the character would do'? Nod in appreciation at the roleplaying? Nod in appreciation at the direction the story is about to take? Give them an XP bonus?

Nod in appreciation at the roleplaying and nod in appreciation at the direction the story is about to take, probably. Unless it is somehow really stupid.

I have played with people who respond to similar scenarios in some of the other ways @soviet asked. That's the point: How you interpret this sort of thing reflects on your priorities and preferences.

 

[niklinna]

Any recommended readings?

I've only just downloaded the files, but Role-Playing Game Studies - coding conduct (which Snarf linked), looks promising. Most of the chapters are available for free.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@niklinna it is not that it different people cannot have different priorities, of course they can. But I feel that some of the 'conflicts' people agonise over are not conflicts to me, and I'm not alone feeling this way; @Charlaquin seems to agree. Thus it is possible to have a position where these things are not in conflict, which is not the same than saying that conflict cannot ever exist.

This was the original samurai post I responded to:

Expectations is a good point here. If I'm playing a Samurai with a code of honour... what do we all expect that means? Is it a limitation I have to follow (but might try to find clever ways to work around) as the price for my cool sword powers? Is it a limitation I have to follow (and willingly so) in order to represent how my character 'would really be'? Is it a limitation I have to continually choose whether to follow in a series of escalating 'how about now?' moral dilemmas? It can't really be all three at once.

Now, cool sword powers are mechanics and possibly game balance issue and those would be handled differently in different games. But I really don't see how the last two are in conflict. Certainly the first of them is stating how the character is and the last one is testing that? Both are really about "how the character really is." The first is merely stating that the character is honourable and the asking at what cost. Certainly the former is a necessary condition for the latter to make any dramatic sense?

 

[niklinna]

@niklinna it is not that it different people cannot have different priorities, of course they can. But I feel that some of the 'conflicts' people agonise over are not conflicts to me, and I'm not alone feeling this way; @Charlaquin seems to agree. Thus it is possible to have a position where these things are not in conflict, which is not the same than saying that conflict cannot ever exist.

I agree that there is way too much agonising over conflicts of priority—as if it were some profoundly existential problem!

I have multiple interests/desires/agendas when I play, and I give them differing priorities depending on the game, the scenario, the people at the table. I can reorder them as the game context changes, and I can even entertain differing priorities in the same general timeframe. But I also recognize that, in by far the majority of moments, I am working with at best two priorties when they happen to align. And that's fine. I can't be looking at the speedometer and a street sign at the exact same instant, but I can move my gaze very quickly.

But, as so often happens with any categorization, and especially with GNS, it gets reified from a useful tool to understand moments, decisions, and actions, into static buckets into which entire games and persons must be put, and kept there for their own good! Or, if one disagrees, then the categorization itself must be wrong and rejected. I prefer to keep the useful tool (with its warts, which I hope I've been clear about acknowledging) and apply it to my moments, decisions, and actions.

This was the original samurai post I responded to:

Expectations is a good point here. If I'm playing a Samurai with a code of honour... what do we all expect that means? Is it a limitation I have to follow (but might try to find clever ways to work around) as the price for my cool sword powers? Is it a limitation I have to follow (and willingly so) in order to represent how my character 'would really be'? Is it a limitation I have to continually choose whether to follow in a series of escalating 'how about now?' moral dilemmas? It can't really be all three at once.

Now, cool sword powers are mechanics and possibly game balance issue and those would be handled differently in different games. But I really don't see how the last two are in conflict. Certainly the first of them is stating how the character is and the last one is testing that? Both are really about "how the character really is." The first is merely stating that the character is honourable and the asking at what cost. Certainly the former is a necessary condition for the latter to make any dramatic sense?

Hm, it looks like we have a different understanding of those two points. I took the second as a statement of desire on the player's part to portray a particular character, and that going against that was going against what makes play fun for them. If instead it just means particular values the character holds, but the player is willing to see challenged, then the last two items are actualy the same. @soviet, do you have anything to say about that?

Edit: Fixed a typo.

 

[Campbell]

Wrong thread.

 

[Blue]

I really could use a link to Einstein's explanation of special and general relativity that can be understood by a six year old!

I don't know if that specific one is in there, but Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) explains a lot of complicated concepts using only the thousand ("ten hundred") most common words.

 

[niklinna]

I don't know if that specific one is in there, but Thing Explainer by Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) explains a lot of complicated concepts using only the thousand ("ten hundred") most common words.

Einstein himself wrote a book for the general public, didn't he? At least, I recall reading it when I was in high school.

 

[FrogReaver]

Of course not. It's just an infinitely more useful and well-researched model than GNS. If you're going to try to be in an RPG theory space, maybe push for a broader, more all-encompassing, and broadly applicable theory.

Well, mostly because that disagreement shows it's incoherent as a model. It's the stuff that's agreed upon or shown to be widely useful that you can build a functioning theory on. The test of any theory/model is how well it matches reality. By that metric alone GNS utterly fails.

The basic premise of GNS theory is: different players have different preferences in what they enjoy about games.

That's not what I'd call revelatory. It's more like a statement of "water is wet". It's where GNS goes with that premise that's contentious. And misunderstood, apparently even by proponents of GNS. GNS tries to awkwardly pigeonhole all games/gamers into three overly broad categories that ignore a lot of preferences, whereas MDA has eight more narrow categories that cover far more ground and generally make it a much more useful theory. It's also used by a sizeable swathe of video game designers, whereas GNS is not widely known, much less widely accepted, much less widely used. There are more posters here advocating for GNS than there are actual game designers using it to make games.

Right. But even GNS has not "really gained much traction". The posters at the Forge talked about it a lot. And some of the designers there took it to heart and made games based on GNS. But it's not some wide-spread theory among game designers. It's as contentious as it ever was and not widely accepted.

And even there a lot of people vehemently disagreed with GNS...and a lot simply couldn't understand it...and a lot pointed out that it left out a lot of games and styles of play. The Forge wasn't some monolith built to Edwards where posters heaped nothing but praise and accolades at his feet. There were a lot of arguments there about GNS. And we shouldn't forget that Edwards has said some rather...questionable things about playing certain games and the effect that has on people's brains. This is not an unbiased academic putting forth well-reasoned or well-written theories that accurately model RPGs.

No, discussion should not be limited to D&D, but expecting people on a D&D subforum of a site largely dedicated to D&D to have read some random Forge posts or some itch.io or indiegogo title before they can have conversation about games is more than a bit gatekeepy.

What I find when I engage the GNS theory is that the users of that language explain something. I try to explain it back in my own words and they don't have any particular issues with my characterization at that time. Then later in the discussion as I'm trying to take what I learned and apply what I've learned, it always comes out that my understanding was wrong due to some additional nuance or some additional component of the theory that is yet unrevealed, etc. Every single time!