4E and RPG Theory (GNS)

[eyebeams]

Depends on what you mean by "You ARE the Hero!".

First question, Hero of an already much written story or Hero of a story to be written (or no story at all for Purist-For-System S) ?

I want established players to go from incoherent G-S to hybrid G-N, because I think they will have more fun playing D&D this way.

Why do you want people to play in a way you enjoy, instead of a way they enjoy? Do you think gamers go for immersed role assumption because they're masochists, or because they're to dumb to follow their preferences? Neither possibility is especially optimistic about what gamers can accomplish.

For newcomers, I'm pretty sure they would find it more natural before they are taught that S is the GOOD way to roleplay, because it is played by WoD players, which are of course better than gamist D&D players.

Has it occurred to you that if lots of people play and enjoy a game, and you don't, the locus of responsibility for your experience does not rest on that game? I mean, I really can't stand GURPS, but there's no need for a theoretical model that lets me shout out how you should dislike anything that smells of it. I just don't fancy it.

Why I like G and N more than S? Because in the firsts ones, players have a meaningful impact on the game, and that is coming from a DM !

It seems more likely to me that you, personally, are more comfortable arranging games in one totally-arbitrary mode (well two, in your scheme) than another. That's your bag -- not everybody's. In fact, people switch from one play mode to another all the time, even in the scope of a single session. Good games support simultaneous difference in agendas and even nested agendas.

 

[marune]

Why do you want people to play in a way you enjoy, instead of a way they enjoy? Do you think gamers go for immersed role assumption because they're masochists, or because they're to dumb to follow their preferences? Neither possibility is especially optimistic about what gamers can accomplish.

I want them to at least try it, because IME, lots of people who play mainstream RPG have been taught that only two kinds of play exist, G and S, and that the later one is for "true roleplayer".

 

[eyebeams]

I want them to at least try it, because IME, lots of people who play mainstream RPG have been taught that only two kinds of play exist, G and S, and that the later one is for "true roleplayer".

People have always approached playing games from different directions. Commercially successful games (which are not the be and end all of game design) generally support this kind of diversity. The vocal segment of a play community may fix on one or two ideas, but playing RPGs isn't about the vocal segment -- it's about you and your group. Frankly, some clique's opinions are of no particular import. For example, I sell a Wushu variant that the self-styled center of the Wushu fanbase dislikes, because I didn't give a damn about their dogma. It's been pretty successful for me, because the fanbase has nothing to do with what half a dozen people do a couple of nights a week.

D&D and the WoD really don't have serious differences in this regard.
Instead, they change their approach depending on what they want, and there are hooks in place to support these shifts.

"Simulationism," as defined in GNS, isn't really what most players are up to, full time. Nobody is wholly exploring what it's *really* like to exist in a world where divine magic or werewolves are real, and suppositions about in-world culture and metaphysics are not done at the expense of setting a story around a theme.

People should change up how they play -- variety is fun -- but I think you're seriously underestimating the dynamism of a working gaming group.

 

[pawsplay]

IME, incoherence in D&D is the main reason for much of the problems at the table and the endless debates on these boards.

And its consistent position as the #1 selling RPG of all time.

 

[S'mon]

Depends on what you mean by "You ARE the Hero!".

First question, Hero of an already much written story or Hero of a story to be written (or no story at all for Purist-For-System S) ?

Immersionist play, the PC is the protagonist of the situation. "Story" isn't a very helpful term here when discussing Gamist-Immersionist play. Fine for Narrativism's 'Story Now' agenda, but in G-Immersionist play, stories are what arise in retrospect, as the result of play. Bad GMs and modules try to force a particular story - Railroading.

Basically, in D&D you have the chance, and the capabilities, to be The Hero, but you have to Step On Up. That's what I love about D&D. As a player I'm not thinking "What would this character Rolfus Redbeard do in this situation?" I'm thinking "What do I, Rolfus Redbeard, do in this situation?" - with an awareness that success or failure are both possible, as a result of both luck and my own abilities.

 

[S'mon]

Why I like G and N more than S? Because in the firsts ones, players have a meaningful impact on the game, and that is coming from a DM !

I know Edwards usually has a big Hate On for Simulation (and lumps/ed vastly varying games & play styles into Sim, from Dramatist games like Buffy to mechanical simulations like Twilight 2000 and Runequest), but I think this is unfair. Almost every Sim game allows for meaningful player participation in creating the simulation. The GMing style that doesn't, he calls Illusionism (which becomes Railroading when obvious/undesired by players). And certainly D&D normally allows for meaningful player impact since it's primarily Gamist and depends on player abilities - at the very least, on player ability in using the combat system. Most D&D games also allow for a lot of choice; the classic Keep on the Borderlands approach presents a mini-setting and the player characters can do whatever they want within it.

 

[pemerton]

Skeptic, thanks for starting an interesting thread.

Why is it bad that new players are told to make decisions as if they were in their character shoes?

Because it can suggest that the player is a slave to the PC, rather than vice versa. It can also lead to a type of play that I think 2nd ed AD&D was especially prone to, in which players use irritating PC personalities as a cloak for disruptive play.

And in a challenge-heavy game like D&D, which also allows players to create non-mercenary characters (especially clerics and paladins) it can lead to the sort of lose-lose conflicts that Skeptic is concerned about - either the player breaks with PC personality, or breaks with optimal tactics, and the game punishes the player for either choice.

The solution is to make it clear that the player should prioritise tactics, but also has to come up with a narrative to explain the PC's prioritisation of tactics.

In a Gamist game you want to win through optimal tactics. In a Simulation you want the simulation to be accurate, or to experience what it would be like to be your PC. In D&D type games you are experiencing what it would be like to be the PC, AND your PC wants to win through employing optimal tactics.

This is roughly what Buzz said upthread, I think. I'm interested to see what the PHB and DMG say about alignment, clerics and paladins in this respect - these seem to be the areas in which the tactically optimal PC can be hardest to make work. Though the desingers have certainly helped out be getting rid of all the gods of basketweaving.

IME, incoherence in D&D is the main reason for much of the problems at the table and the endless debates on these boards.

I don't know if I'd say the main reason, but certainly a prominent reason.

He's attempting to transgress the boundaries towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum RPGs.

Hong, your taunting is less funny when I'm on the taunted side!

 

[RFisher]

The important lesson of GNS and similar theories is very simple: make sure your game does what you want it to do. It also provides a useful vocabulary for talking about a game.

I definitely agree about the latter point.

I’m unsure whether you and I agree about the former point.

The lesson I see in the three-fold model is that here are three important approaches to play, each player and GM uses all three of them, so your game should support all of them.

Sometimes it’s fun to do something extreme, like playing a game that focuses heavily on one of the approaches nigh to the exclusion of the other two, but only sometimes.

The other way it goes wrong is when people assume it to be a comprehensive theory of role-playing games.

 

[buzz]

Relevant quote from 4e PHB, p.18:

D&D is a roleplaying game but not necessarily an exercise in improvisational theater. Sometimes, the role you play is defender or leader—the character you’re playing is engaged in combat and has a job to do so that your team comes out victorious. Even in combat, though, you can interject bits of personality and dialogue that make your character more than just the statistics on your character sheet.

This comes right after a typical bit about giving your PC a personality, quirks, and such.

And this great bit from the Alignment section:

Unless your DM is running a campaign in which all the characters are evil or chaotic evil, playing an evil or chaotic evil character disrupts an adventuring party and, frankly, makes all the other players angry at you.

There's also a lot of general emphasis on the fact that the players are creating a team of PCs intended to work together. I read it as a very polite admonition against "my guy" and "dickweed" play.

Granted, there's still stuff like, "As far as the rules of the game are concerned, your character is you," (p. 12).

Still, I think WotC gets it.

 

[hong]

Granted, there's still stuff like, "As far as the rules of the game are concerned, your character is you," (p. 12).

That might just be a reference to how the rules always use "you" when they mean "your character", eg "you swing your axe in a wide arc [...] hit: 3[w] + Str damage"