TwinBahamut said:
Well, many people argue that things like per-encounter and per-day abilities, especially Martial powers as they are implemented in 4E, make the most sense as a system designed for the player to do certain things when dramatically appropriate according to genre traditions, rather than something which makes sense from a simulationist point of view. Other abilities, like Second Wind, are specifically designed to emulate the common image of a hero who pushes himself to stand up and keep fighting in the face of injury. In other words, D&D 4E is using its rules to model how events flow in a story, rather than try to model how events flow in a world.
Because most of D&D 4E's rules seem to built around making the game play out like a dramatic and memorable story, I think it can be argued that this is a kind of narrative-style game, though probably a different kind than other narrative games, where narrative control is more explicit.
See, this is why discussions of GNS drive me nuts. People don't know what the terms really mean.
I really can't agree here, because mechanics that ensure a dramatic flow of events (similar to a movie or novel) do not imply a
narrativist game. Narrative gaming is more than just focusing on the storyline!
As I was pointing out earlier, the primary goal of narrative play (at least according to GNS) is to explore a
concept or
theme. A narrative game has as part of the premise some sort of moral or ethical conflict, which is solved (for good or ill) during the play of the game. I gave the example of a vampire earlier; consider also the "Light Side/Dark Side" of the force in Star Wars (in particular, in a game where falling to the dark side is easy and the path of good is difficult).
In some ways, ANY game system can support ANY of the styles if the players desire it. A game that focuses on a paladin and others associated with his church or order and continually pushes the paladin into situations that challenge his code -- that's a narrativist game. That same group can be played with a looser code of conduct and more focus on "kicking bad guy butt" and be a gamist game -- in other words, one that focuses on the competition among the players, and between the players and the game-world.
(Side note: I think this is what a lot of people are really trying to say when they complain about the game becoming more like an MMORPG. MMOs are strongly gamist; they're all about Winning The Fight and Beating The Monsters, with little introspection or exploration.)
Simulation usually means focusing on exploration of one of the five RP elements (Character, System, Setting, Situation, and Color). D&D has traditionally had a strong simulationist bent towards exploring Setting, and it remains so -- games often focus on exploring interesting sites and finding lost secrets. Situation can also be a source of exploration, which we often think of as "social simulationism". Just because everyone is standing around and playing politics at a ball doesn't mean you aren't simulating. Similarly, character exploration can be simulationism. The guy who wants to play a tiefling whose evil heritage and good nature are at war is interested in character simulation.
This is where a lot of confusion happens. There's a distinction between character or social simulation and narrativism, though they are related. (Indeed, some people have written essays claiming that narrativism is only a specific type of simulation.) In general, the distinction is one of where the driving force is. Character simulation says, "I have decided what my internal state is; now throw a consistent world at me and see what happens." Narrativism says, "You have determined your internal state, now I will attempt to upset that state by designing challenges that directly attack it."
Do you see the difference? The narrativist GM is aware of the characters' inner lives and directly pokes at them, while the simulationist GM creates a consistent world and lets the player explore how his character would interact with it.
And this sort of exploration can easily be happening without encumbrance rules, while Bruce Willis gets back to his feet after getting punched out for the fifth time, and while ninjas dance in circles around the heroes and attack them in groups of two and three. Dramatic action versus realistic action has NOTHING TO DO with simulation versus narrative.
Realism is necessary for certain types of simulation, and dramatic gaming is usually needed to create a narrative (thematic) game, but those are results -- not causes, and certainly not definitions. A narrative game can have plenty of realism, and a simulation game can always have drama.
Well, rant off, I guess. I think D&D 4e is definitely a shift towards gamism, in that it's more concerned with balance and fairness, but on the other hand I think all the previous D&D games intended to be just as gamist and simply failed. They had various methods of controlling character growth, like making the combat-weak thief level up three times faster than any other class, while the incredibly powerful magic user gained levels very slowly. That's a gamist trait, though it doesn't really work to keep the game fair.
If 4e is more gamist, it's only because they have, over time, recognized what was not working in the previous D&D systems and fixed them.
