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

[Ovinomancer]

Oh, Alice in Wonderland!

…

That’s what he took from Alice in Wonderland?

Yup. That it's impossible to both have the GM be in control of the story and the Players be in control of the main characters, and then how to make this work. This latter part, which is critical to the idea -- how do you reconcile the impossible thing? -- is just left off in the mockery of Edwards as a dumb person that doesn't get Alice in Wonderland. Haha, let's all laugh at how stupid Edwards is, isn't he just deplorable?

 

[niklinna]

Is it? I don’t remember that part. Are you sure it’s not in Through the Looking Glass, cause I haven’t read that one.

It's the latter: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Through the Looking-glass, by Lewis Carroll

 

[Charlaquin]

Again, you started this, and it's your incorrect assumptions about things said that continue it. Your analysis of what Edwards said is off the mark, to the point that I do not believe you read the essay Brain Damage is mentioned in. Nothing you've said incorporated even a shred of the context that remark is in.

I have indeed read it, I just took something else away from it than you did.

As for Vampire, you're judging someone for not liking a game you like and giving reasons. Okay. That's a thing.

No, he didn’t dislike it and give reasons. That would have been fine. He disliked it and tried to explain why anyone else would like it, and he did so in a condescending manor, disguised by an air of intellectual neutrality. Then he accidentally said the quiet part out loud.

 

[Cadence]

Ninja'd

 

[Mistwell]

Quick thought.

I don’t think that he was objective. But I don’t think objectivity is necessary for theorists to accurately capture and model phenomena (particularly when they have a lot of observational evidence). And honestly, I don’t know that he wasn’t completely objective going into the sort of gaming experiences that ultimately shaped him (nor does anyone else).

So in terms of my understanding of what he liked/didn’t like, it goes as follows:

He certainly liked Gamism.

He had a complete love affair with Process Simulationism (and had a huge amount of experience with it).

He very much, clear as day, did not like GM-facing, GM-directed, Illusionism-intensive High Concept Simulationism because he felt it was play that was unfun and violated social contract because it failed to meet either the evinced goals of play or the implicit goals of play (you can find incoherence and dysfunction in there). Whether or not the italicized is true or not is another question. But he had a huge amount of experience with this and profound disappointment in the play. Narrativism was basically a reaction to this (because that is what he expected out of this form of play).

Now I have no idea how he felt about Table-facing, System-directed, Storygaming as High Concept Simulationism like Fate? No idea.

He obviously, among others put in the work to build out and reify Narrativism. We know how he felt about that.


When he finally played 4e a few years back, he loved it and called it a successful Gamism + Vanilla Narrativism game so I know that he feels that hybrid designs are capable of existing (he postulated that G + N play nice together over the years.

He played Blades years ago (another Gamism + Narrativism Hybrid) and (as I write above) had an unfortunate and clearly misinformed take on it (though he couched it heavily and may have fully drawn back from it sense).

So, on the whole, I don’t feel like he dislikes much in the way of these agendas. Again, I don’t know how he feels about Fate (if I had to guess it would be that he doesn’t like it), but on the whole, the only thing I know that he doesn’t like is a particular brand of High Concept Sim because of the italicized I wrote above. Now, full disclosure (as many of you probably know), I spent the overwhelming majority of my GMing since 84 running brazenly, unapologetically Gamist D&D crawl games (often full blown Pawn/Token Stance). The first time I felt unwelcome in this hobby was the late 80s when the hobby took a HUGE and aggressive turn toward GM-Directed High Concept Sim. It was at that time when my gaming was constantly attacked for shallow “roll-play not roleplay.” That continued for a decade and a half (of which time I ran a nice chunk of Over the Edge + Everway and plenty of, to myself but not my players because they expressively asked for it, very unrewarding GM-Directed, High Concept Sim where I mashed the pedal to the floor on Setting Tourism + Metaplot). It (“roll-play not role-play with a side of OSR/3.x vs Forge culture war) then started again in 2008 during 4e.

Now the thing is, the majority of play in the hobby is clearly GM-directed, High Concept Sim with some Gamism feathered in and then muted (as the dictator of the through line of play) via an abundance of free play/vignettes and then subordinated here and there because of clash with story or inviolable immersion priorities and then feathered back in (etc). But that is the only thing that is negatively connoted in the essays as far as I can tell.
The problem is, that is The Big Dog (and The Big Dog knows it and if you don’t know…prepare to be reminded!) and has been so for…30 years? So its not a % # of play styles with these framing issue in the Forge model. It’s that there is a lot of subtly variant subsets (3 examples would be some have more PC-build intense Gamist through lines and Power Fantasy than others, some are totally unstructured freeform and borderline LARP, some follow the metaplot most of the time and then get off of it now and again and change playstyle to a nearly full-bore Gamism crawl phase, etc) that fall under that GM-directed, High Concept Sim header. This is where the 6 cultures of play do their best work with Trad + Neotrad/OC + Nordic LARP. The Big Dog plays those and drifts them and brings in Classic (Gamism) priorities to one degree or another.

How is this post not a complete violation of the rules the Original Poster put forth for this thread?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Edwards becomes a toxic person for the ideas he said. Ideas that are being discussed in the thread.

is there not a way to discuss the theory from other people? I mean are ALL people who put this forward toxic? (If so that may be an issue) if not why not just get different sources?

 

[Manbearcat]

Interesting choice, to claim gaslighting and then engage in a series of strawmen. No one has claimed there's no bias, they've claimed that Edwards doesn't hate the games he's critiquing (except Vampire). He bluntly critiques games he likes as well. This isn't a claim of no bias, it's a discrediting of the ad hominin attack against Edwards that attempts to dismiss his ideas because he doesn't like whatever game you think he doesn't like. It's attacking the person of Edwards and not the actual ideas. Edwards is very much not without bias. It's just the claimed bias isn't it.

And GNS is pretty neutral and objective. It strives to be so. It's a creation of humans, so it's not perfect, but I've managed to use some of the concepts to run better games in many different agendas. I had a rather vigorous discussion with @Manbearcat about the nature of the Alien RPG, where he saw some narrativist DNA and thought it works well that way, but I found it doesn't (and our attempt to do so didn't work well) and that it responds extremely well to a Simulationist take. It's actually the only example I know of where I see some narrativist tech involved and somewhat working with simulationism. It's a hard toggle, and I don't think the game does a good job with it on it's own, but understanding GNS helped me work through a good way to enable that toggle and get those moments of play. I hope to continue with a campaign after my short run cinematic version, but work is killing my weekend schedules when that game happens (we haven't met for 2 months now).

So, yeah, strawmen. You're being gaslit by your own imaginings.

And this gets to daylight between two generally agreeing parties doesn’t mean ideas suck or are wrong or are not useful.

We have subtle disagreements around edge cases and nuance. I can articulate my position on Aliens. You can articulate yours. I don’t feel like our daylight has been resolved but I think both of us have moved by way of our conversations.

I have nuanced disagreements (sometimes more significant than that) on these issues with almost all of the people that folks surely bin me with on ENWorld. Sometimes I’m strongly on an opposing side (see “Gamism in DW”) of those same people (who I happen to also be friends with). I don’t see that as a sign of weakness of the ideas under scrutiny. We’re humans of limited mental faculty, prone to confounding bias, and trying to rub two brain cells together to make sense of complex things (so it’s a weakness of our limited processing power which we can hopefully resolve by adding more sincere brains to the pile).

 

[overgeeked]

Is it? I don’t remember that part. Are you sure it’s not in Through the Looking Glass, cause I haven’t read that one.

It is.

“I ca’n’t believe that!” said Alice.

“Ca’n’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one ca’n’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”

 

[Malmuria]

Also, for the record, while I think quoting him was the thing that triggered this digression, I don’t think you were wrong to do so. It made sense in context and supported your argument quite well. If anything, my offhanded comment that his writing was off-putting to me was the problem. Sorry for that, didn’t realize it would be such a controversial statement. In retrospect it didn’t add anything productive and I should have realized it was potentially inflammatory.

This thread is not just about the ideas of “rpg theory” but again how they are communicated, with or without jargon. I’m (partially) a writer, so I think how ideas are discussed and communicated is extremely important. In fact, I don’t think you can draw a clear line between “form” and “content.” So criticizing his writing, or, heaven knows, Gygax’s writing, is fair game and relevant in tracking the reception of its ideas.

 

[overgeeked]

How is this post not a complete violation of the rules the Original Poster put forth for this thread?

Don’t worry. It gets better.