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

[iserith]

I feel like every time I start to get things straight a new post comes along and it upsets the applecart.

Your 4 steps listed here are exactly how one of my gaming sessions goes and I am playing 5e. Why then is my game not narrativist?

This can be something like horoscopes in my experience. Some people are going to look at it and go "That's totally me!" and others will say "That could be talking about anyone." Then if you ask an astrologer to clarify, you get a lot of words like rising sign, retrograde, conjunct, and quincunx and you're often left off no more enlightened than when you began (and perhaps a few bucks poorer). One can have a perfectly great game without trying to fit it in some kind of box designed by a person who didn't like D&D, but good on you for asking.

 

[Xetheral]

By "point" I mean something like theme, evaluation, opinion (not on a matter of fact, but on some feature of human nature or culture or experience or . . .), artistic concern (but not concerns about techniques or execution, but rather about what the work "says").

Thank you for clarifying! I am unfamiliar with that usage. It appears to be blending several related senses of "point" and then applying them in a highly specific context.

For my own edification (and in the spirit of this thread's topic), may I ask if your usage of "point" is idiosyncratic, dialect, or jargon? Or am I simply not referencing a sufficiently comprehensive dictionary?

 

[niklinna]

@Aldarc That's utterly brilliant!

 

[Campbell]

@iserith

The Step On Up essay is pretty much a full throated defense of classic D&D. It's true that much of the Forge was critical of AD&D Second Edition, but that was largely for the same reasons they were critical of Vampire. You can believe whatever you want on that score, but several prominent indie designers regard Moldvay as one of the best designed roleplaying games ever made. Vincent Baker and John Harper are huge fans. Blades in the Dark was inspired in part by Stars Without Number, an OSR game. You can believe what you want on that score though.

 

[Charlaquin]

I suspect that part of the assumed value of the model may rest in being able to predict, with some degree of generalities and debatable reliability, where lines of conflict or incoherence may lie between people of differing motivations.


IMHO, I think that there is a potential risk here of equivocating what is meant by "conflict" in these two contexts. I agree that a general sense of conflict is necessary for both, I don't think that means that two players with different agendas necessarily see the conflict in the same manner. In the case of Gamism, conflict is competitive with optimal choices for "winning the game." In the case of Narrativism, conflict is dramatic with complicated choices for "revealing character."

I think that the two of us can look with some detachment at the former G player and see how these moments of conflict could reveal character and lead to exciting dramatic conflict. We could also look at the latter N player and see how these moments of conflict could involve winning or losing a contest with stakes involved. But that is not necessarily where the respective individuals' play priorties are in a given moment: "How can my character win this conflict?" vs. "How will this conflict change who my character is?"

So let's take a fun example of how the G and N player might conflict in a given moment of play. Here we have Elrond (Gamist) and Isildur (Narrativist):

View attachment 250250

Elrond's player (G Agenda) recognizes here that there is an optimal strategy for winning the game right now. All Isildur has to do is throw the Ring of Power into the fires of Mount Doom to win. Game over. However, Isildur's player (N Agenda) is not concerned with the winning strategy. Instead, he thinks that this an ideal moment to test his character against the ring's corruption, curious about what that reveals about the character he is playing. Isildur fails the test and he decides against throwing the Ring of Power into the mountain, and Elrond's character gets monumentally pissed about the whole thing, holding a grudge against him for ages because he knew that they could have won the game then and there without having to wait 3000 years to finish it. Elrond's player could have chosen to push Isildur and the Ring both into the fire if he was a bigger wang-rod, but he instead decides to retire his character and let them become a NPC patron. We can read this as an illustrative moment of "incoherence."

There may have been a S-oriented player here too. And in this moment, they are likely more sympathetic to Isildur's player than Elrond's player, because of the importance of playing the character in accordance with the character concept. However, if they were playing Isildur, the S player may have not willingly tested their character against corruption or may have gotten upset with the results of a test. They may believe that it would invalidate their character concept of the valiant, noble Isildur, who would never have given in to the One Ring, because it would make their cool character look like a wang-rod. But it's also possible that another S player may have been cool with it because the game is meant to emulate Tolkien, so it's cool that Isildur succumbed to the Ring, so long as there is an easy to understand cause-and-effect regarding the Ring's corruption. But here the emphasis is not so much about testing Isildur's resolve as character as it is about making a saving throw against the corruption of the Ring as an objective reality within this world.

Ok, but like… What if, you want the concern of “how can my character win this conflict?” to be one of the factors which determines “how will this conflict change my character?” What if you want winning to be one of many competing agendas that form the crucible in which your character is forged? What if you feel like just deciding how the conflict will change your character (whether by whim or by some game mechanic) cheapens it, and what you really want is to experience the same push and pull of conflicting desires as the character would, which requires intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and consequences that can serve as proxies or analogues for the factors influencing the character’s own internal conflict?

You know, hypothetically. Asking for a friend.

 

[iserith]

@iserith

The Step On Up essay is pretty much a full throated defense of classic D&D. It's true that much of the Forge was critical of AD&D Second Edition, but that was largely for the same reasons they were critical of Vampire. You can believe whatever you want on that score, but several prominent indie designers regard Moldvay as one of the best designed roleplaying games ever made. Vincent Baker and John Harper are huge fans. Blades in the Dark was inspired in part by Stars Without Number, an OSR game. You can believe what you want on that score though.

Yes, I've read it, and I've played games by Baker. My position is that, taken as a whole, bringing up these theories and the extensive, often pejorative jargon are not helpful in a D&D context and in many cases actively harmful. We can communicate important and useful ideas without them.

 

[pemerton]

I feel like every time I start to get things straight a new post comes along and it upsets the applecart.

Your 4 steps listed here are exactly how one of my gaming sessions goes and I am playing 5e. Why then is my game not narrativist?

Maybe it is? I'm not in it, so only have your account of it to go on!

If you suspect it's not, then I can have a guess or two about where you're probably differing from the 4 steps mentioned:

* Most D&D players do not adopt the "advocacy role" for their PCs. They have regard to other considerations, like the ones that @Charlaquin and I were talking about upthread: following the scenario, keeping to the mission, not splitting the party. (I think in the other thread you referred to a "sidequest". Implying that there is a main quest. Which implies that the players may not be adopting the advocacy role.)

* Most D&D GMs don't adopt the approach described in the 4 steps: they don't frame scenes by reference to dramatic need so as to prompt a consequence-laden choice. Normally they frame scenes that are driven by some external concern (a classic one: the PCs come across a NPC under attack and get dragged into a conflict/conspiracy), or else present a bit of environment - say, a dungeon entrance - and invite the players to poke at it. (The idea of main quest/side quest is suggestive of a non-narrativist approach to scene framing and scenario design.)

* When it comes to consequences/results of checks, most D&D GMs determine this at least in part by reference to bits of the fiction that are hitherto-unrevealed to the players (the classic one is missing a find traps roll leads to being hit by a trap), not by reference to an imperative of placing pressure on PCs' dramatic needs.​

If nothing in those 3 dot points is within cooee of describing your D&D play, then perhaps you are playing narrativist.

 

[pemerton]

@iserith

The Step On Up essay is pretty much a full throated defense of classic D&D. It's true that much of the Forge was critical of AD&D Second Edition, but that was largely for the same reasons they were critical of Vampire. You can believe whatever you want on that score, but several prominent indie designers regard Moldvay as one of the best designed roleplaying games ever made. Vincent Baker and John Harper are huge fans. Blades in the Dark was inspired in part by Stars Without Number, an OSR game. You can believe what you want on that score though.

Torchbearer was made after months of serious play of Moldvay Basic by Luke Crane and friends. The game lists OD&D, Moldvay, and (I think) Caverns of Thracia in its bibliography.

And the influence is obvious.

 

[pemerton]

Right, so that “performance metric”? I want that to be there so that it can be one of the factors I have to weigh when trying to make a difficult decision, in service of discovering “what my character would do.” That’s why it’s seeming like my agenda is “incoherent” by these standards. My ultimate motivation is to learn about character, which is apparently a simulationist thing, but the existence of a performance metric seems to be a barometer for whether or not something is gamist, and I do want one.

I'm not 100% sure what you have in mind as a performance metric, but I think you're referring to your PC winning or losing, not to you, Charlauqin, the game player winning or losing. The latter is what Edwards has in mind as core to gamist play: judging the performance (the guts, the strategising, the bravado) of the actual players. Like you would at a casino, or in field sports, or in chess.

 

[pemerton]

Thank you for clarifying! I am unfamiliar with that usage. It appears to be blending several related senses of "point" and then applying them in a highly specific context.

For my own edification (and in the spirit of this thread's topic), may I ask if your usage of "point" is idiosyncratic, dialect, or jargon? Or am I simply not referencing a sufficiently comprehensive dictionary?

Well, I teach law and philosophy but not literature, media or communication. They probably have better terminology. Edwards sometimes uses premise and sometimes uses theme. Neither is perfect, because "theme" can easily encompass tropes (as in "a sci-fi themed movie") and "premise" can easily encompass rationale (as in "why are we gathered together to play this game" - and indeed Edwards started off using premise this way before changing it to use "point").