Could Wizards ACTUALLY make MOST people happy with a new edition?

[Imaro]

Wow, it was actually more tolerable when entitled nerds were pronouncing 3.X the best ever and that Gygax loved 3.X and would have hated 4E and that only WotC is in it for the money than now when a bunch of pretentious pseudo-intellectuals want to use fancy terms to pigeonhole their pretend games into different terms that are actually descriptions of playstyle and not mechanics for the most part.

Oh, look... a post that contributes nothing to the discusion in the thread... yet still somehow allows the poster to grab some attention by insulting others in the thread.

First, per your last sentence, no one in this thread claimed that Simulationism, Gamism or Narrativism were mechanics... what we are talking about are mechanics in games that support or don't support said playstyles... but hey pretentious is often substituted for the phrase... "They keep using big words I don't understand... " so I get why you might be confused. Now what were the two words I was looking for that describe your post, oh yeah...

Thread crap, those are the words I was looking for, or is that phrase too entitled, pretentious and/or pseudo-intellectual for you?

 

[Darwinism]

Oh, look... a post that contributes nothing to the discusion in the thread... yet still somehow allows the poster to grab some attention by insulting others in the thread.

First, per your last sentence, no one in this thread claimed that Simulationism, Gamism or Narrativism were mechanics... what we are talking about are mechanics in games that support or don't support said playstyles... but hey pretentious is often substituted for the phrase... "They keep using big words I don't understand... " so I get why you might be confused. Now what were the two words I was looking for that describe your post, oh yeah...

Thread crap, those are the words I was looking for, or is that phrase too entitled, pretentious and/or pseudo-intellectual for you?

Poor baby feels compelled to try and defend his labeling of abstracts as absolutes

It is also pretty funny that you try and make it seem like I'm the one off-target when your pedantic GNS argument has nothing to do with the thread topic.

 

[BryonD]

I'm an academic.

But you don't need to be able to theorise it to do it.

I agree, but that doesn't make it any less true that level of knowledge and experience is a huge difference between you and most.

(And vice versa. I can talk at some length about aesthetics. I can't write very good stories.)

Heh, I LOVE making up stories and I used to write a lot. And eventually it dawned on me that I suck at crafting good fiction. I think I have great stories, but when I put them on paper they just are not fun to read. shrug

I think that is part of the reason I've stayed such a fan of RPGs. I tell my stories in semi-real-time at the table and I see them come to life when I "world build". I get the creative joy and the deficits in creating quality text are not a problem.

Like I said earlier, I've got no reason to doubt that that is so.

fair enough.

 

[Imaro]

Poor baby feels compelled to try and defend his labeling of abstracts as absolutes

It is also pretty funny that you try and make it seem like I'm the one off-target when your pedantic GNS argument has nothing to do with the thread topic.

Nope, just clarifying the mistakes and misunderstandings in your post... but now that you actually understand what we are discussing perhaps you can...you know... actually contribute something to the discussion as opposed to throwing out "I'm sooo cool" one liners. But then something's telling me real discussion isn't what you're after.

EDIT: Threads drift and the topics drift with it. Point is I'm contributing to discussion... you're threadcrapping plain and simple.

 

[pemerton]

I disagree... by this definition realism does in fact constitute simulationism

I don't see how you're getting that out of my post.

What I said was that, as far as the story of LotR, or the Marvel Universe is concerned, it doesn't matter whether or how Glorfindel I and Glordindel II are related, nor what the relative strengths of The Thing and The Hulk are, unless this matters for the story. Whereas in simulationist game play, these are the sorts of questions that become pressing. Because simulationist game play prioritises exploration of the fictional world.

This has nothing to do with realism. It's about internal consistency.

In purist-for-system simulationism, the focus is consistency of ingame causal logic. Rolemaster, Runequest, Classic Traveller, and big chunks (but not all) of 3E are built to with this priority in mind. Realism is a factor here, although not the only factor, because the real world is our main inspiration for what counts as coherent causation.

In high concept simulationism, the focus is on consistency and coherence of the relevant genre tropes and story elements. Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon are great examples of this.

Malory, Cretien de Troyes etc, in writing their Arthurian tales, don't have to settle the question of whether Percival or Galahad is the more pious, the more charitable, the more noble of bearing, etc. Once you start statting them up in Pendragon, however, those sorts of issues have to be settled. Likewise in Cthulhu - what is more sanity blasting, a horde of deep ones, or a shoggoth?

It's not about realism - in the real world, there are no sanity blasting aliens, and "nobility of bearing" (at least in Australia, and I imagine America) is a concept with about as much applicability as those that appertain to duling and to honour. It's about consistency and coherence among the story elements.

I believe you can in fact simulate S&S and high fantasy stories

Of course you can try to. Balesir's point, as I understand it, is that it is non-trivial to do so. It is particularly non-trivial if what you want to achieve is genre (high-concept) simulation, but the means you use are purist-for-system oriented mechanics.

Cthulhu provides a good example here, I think. As with many pulp or pulp-ish stories (eg Indiana Jones, Tintin), for CoC to work we have to completely ignore economic and institutional questions like "Where do these guys get their money?", "What reasearch institution is paying for all their non-teaching time?", "Why do they never have to meet deadlines for the submission of copy even though it says 'journalist' at the top of the character sheet?" etc. So good high concept design, for a game like Cthulhu, will push these quetions to one side, and shift the focus of the mechanics, and the focus of play, somewhere else. Conversely, if you start a session of Cthulhu with the PC professor being interrogated by his dean as to why he's been remiss in supervising his grad students, and with the PC journalist being sacked for repeatedly missing deadlines, the game is probably not going to head in the genre-appropriate direction.

As I understand [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION]'s point, it is that classic D&D, at one and the same time, wants to achieve the genre feel of sword-and-sorcery, but wants to use purist-for-system mechanics (demographic models as seen in various DMGs; serious attention to buying and selling of goods and services, including magic goods and services; etc) to get there. And this is what makes it hard to run simulationist D&D. For it to work, there's stuff you have to turn a blind eye to - just as CoC depends on turning a blind eye to the realities of employment as an intellectual or a private detective or a police officer - but the mechanics keep pulling the focus of play back onto those very things.

Now of course one can just ignore the mechanics in question - but now we're starting to talk about how easy or hard it is to drift D&D towards simulationist play, which is a conversation that already concedes a good chunk of Balesir's claim (at least as I understand it).

 

[pemerton]

I agree, but that doesn't make it any less true that level of knowledge and experience is a huge difference between you and most.

In ability to theorise, definitely. In ability to run what I regard as a good game, maybe - I mean, obviously I'm not a novice - but my comparison pool isn't that big, especially these days when I'm not part of a university or convention RPG scene anymore.

To go back to a more general point, I don't see this particular discussion as a matter of argument, at least on my side - I just don't have the capacity to gather the relevant evidence. I can only point to things that make me feel like I'm not Robinson Crusoe in my conception of how 4e is designed to be played.

Besides the rules text that I've cited upthread, I can point to posters on these boards - like Pentius, heretic888, nmns, LostSoul, chaochou, Neonchameleon, AbdulAlhazred, Balesir etc - who seem to approach 4e in a way that fits with my general conception of it (a non-simulationist game which emphasies GM scene-framing in a way that is responsive to player priorities as expressed through PC build and play). I can point to Chris Perkins' column on the WotC site - although it's hard to discern playstyle from the sort of accounts Perkins' gives, what he's describing doesn't seem a million miles from how I approach the game. I can point to the approach described in Worlds and Monsters. And even the Andy Collins, Dave Noonan and Mearls quotes that you mentioned upthread - if I've got the right ones in mind, like Collins on class design and Mearls on monster design - I saw at the time, and still see now, as directed to building a game that will support my sort of play (because I see it as an account of how story elements should have their mechanics tightly integrated with the sort of role they're intended to fulfil in resolving conflicts in the course of actual play).

Like I said, none of the above is argument. It's just an attempt to explain of why I don't feel like a madman or a mere troublemaker when I paint the picture of 4e that I do.

One thing that has become clearer to me over the last couple of years is the features of 4e that permit drift away from RPGing towards tactical skirmishing. I try to characterise them in my long post inside the spoiler blocks upthread. It seems to me, though - and in saying this I don't think I'm disagreeing with you (BryonD) - that for those players who have drifted 4e towards tactical skirmish with the occasional bit of colour, a more 3E-ish 5E would not be all that attractive. Because 3E's mechanics, lacking the metagame character of 4e's mechanics, don't permit the same degree of drifting.

And for those, like me, who see 4e's emphasis on fictional situation (as explained in that long post), plus the integration of fiction into resolution in many parts of the system (as explained in that long post), as the key elements of the system that make it an RPG rather than a tactical skirmish engine, a more 3E-ish 5E wouldn't be all that attractive either. Because however exactly we should think of 3E - purist-for-system simulationism, or exploration-heavy Gygaxian gamism - it clearly does not take the same approach as does 4e to the situation, and to the way that the fiction feeds into action resolution.

Which is why I think "reconciliation" will be tricky. If I was to hazard a guess as to how it might be attempted, it would be to build a simulationist-style game that emulates 3E in many respects, but is better suited than 3E to drifting into pure tactical skirmishing. This would then cut loose those who are playing 4e as an RPG in a way that depends upon its differences from 3E. For the reasons I've given, I don't feel that's as minority a position as you do, but it might still be minority enough to be worth cutting loose, from WotC's point of view. (I'm sure Chris Perkins will be able to drift whatever system he's paid to design and play to the sort of game that he wants!)

 

[TheAuldGrump]

On Gygax hating 4e... I am pretty sure that he would, but then he had some not nice things to say about 3e too.

It really just means that the games either weren't to his taste or that such would be the perception, in the case of 4e.

Either way, you would be allowed to disagree with him.

The Auld Grump

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I disagree... by this definition realism does in fact constitute simulationism, but I have already quoted passages that make it clear it is not a requirement for simulationist play. I'm sorry but I believe you can in fact simulate S&S and high fantasy stories... and just stating "They aren't simulationist vehicles" when Toon is cited as a simulationist game just doesn't cut it. Give me some reasoning and logic and I'll consider it but pronouncing it so doesn't make it so.

Seriously, how is this any different than Toon being considered a simulationist game? Are the physiology, mating habits, etc. of cartoon characters explained in the game? Probably not, just as they aren't important to the genre being simulated. You and Balesir are speaking to realism... not simulationism. You two seem to be saying you can't simulate something unless it's realistic, while I'm claiming you very much can.

I think you are wrong in hte characterisation of Balesir's comments but it does highlight why I dislike the Forge GNS analysis, simulation is an overloaded term with different meanings depending in context that leads to a lot of people talking across each other, to no good purpose.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

In ability to theorise, definitely. In ability to run what I regard as a good game, maybe - I mean, obviously I'm not a novice - but my comparison pool isn't that big, especially these days when I'm not part of a university or convention RPG scene anymore.

To go back to a more general point, I don't see this particular discussion as a matter of argument, at least on my side - I just don't have the capacity to gather the relevant evidence. I can only point to things that make me feel like I'm not Robinson Crusoe in my conception of how 4e is designed to be played.

.....stuff......

I would not see myself as all that good a DM either but my approach and view of 4e (for what it is worth) is very similar to what pemerton has outlined in this thread, though he sounds like a more awesome DM than myself.

On topic, I would not see myself playing any 5e that was more 3.x like than 4e. Nor would I see any 3.x fan going for a 5e that was build on the 4e chassis.

 

[Balesir]

Wait a minute... these tales are exactly what D&D is trying to simulate.

My point is that (1) I don't think "simulating these stories" is what D&D has ever tried to do, even though it was inspired by the tales and the worlds they are set in, and (2) if simulating these stories is what D&D is trying to do, then it fails catastrophically at doing so.

Gandalf and Elric are not immune to physical harm from "low level" creatures - they simply don't take any because that is not part of the story. There really aren't any "low level" creatures in the stories, in fact. Some creatures and characters have weaknesses or lack the strengths that others possess, but "level" per se is not a concept really supported by anything in the books.

So if it is simulating Sword and Sorcery fiction or High Fantasy fiction... then doesn't it also simulate the same flaws in those stories that don't make sense? How many powerful Wizards are kings in most of these stories? Why don't powerful figures like Elric, Corum, Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser, Gandalf, Legolas, etc. take jobs to go out and commit genocide on weaker monsters? Why don't most of them rule the world?

Because their world does not work the way the D&D world(s) work. If they went out to commit genocide, they might die. Of course, they would not, if the story the author was telling demanded that they did not, but as far as their world was concerned that would be down to luck (or maybe destiny), rather than the "physics" of the world.

If Gandalf, having shown he can defeat a Balrog, decided (in a fit of hubris) to go out and slay them all, you can bet that no good would come of it. And nothing in the "physics" of Middle Earth would make Gandalf's demise (and likely disgrace) in the least unlikely, barring the character of Gandalf himself being unlikely to draw erroneous conclusions about his own inviolability.

Again you want D&D to "make sense" when it doesn't model a genre that holds up under close scrutiny of "making sense". I will again state that this seems more like a desire for realism vs. simulating majority of fantasy stories out there.

No, I'm wanting any system for Simulationist-focussed play to model an internally-consistent world and, if it is attempting to model any specific genre, one that models the genre world, not attempts to force the genre stories to happen.

This relates to the "impossible thing before breakfast" that Edwards brings up. What you seem to be asking for here is for genre stories to be generated by simulating the setting where those stories took place. That can't work. Many things were assumed to have happened (in the imaginary world) where the stories were set. "The Story" was presumed, in the conceit necessary for good fiction, to have been simply one particularly interesting series of events that happened there. By trying to "force the luck" to generate such supposedly unusual events, we break the world model.

To paraphrase Charles Tilly in his excellent book "Why?", "The Truth is Not a Story". Stories are simply ways we arrange sets of information that seem to us to be extraordinary or noteworthy. If we try to generate a story by defining the way the world works, we are doomed to failure - which is why successful Narrativist supporting games don't model world physics (as a general rule).

This is exactly my point... Powerful heroes hired, whether they are Gandalf, Elric or many others, to commit genocide on weaker monsters (regardless of the reasons) is not a trope of the genre... so why is it that Baelsir feels that in simulating these types of stories/chartacters... D&D does a poor job because it does not address this issue in its own worlds?

The characters in these sources do not go out to deal with lesser threats, whether paid to or not, because there is an actual cost to doing so. They would, in the world they inhabit, actually be at risk. Their lives and talents are simply far better risked in tackling the bigger, more important threats. The fact that they don't fall to "lesser threats" is down to the intent of the storyteller, not to the nature of the world they inhabit. Modelling the world they inhabit would support simulationist play; trying to model the story they took part in would not (at least, not successfully).

They can be, but then you have the S&S heroes that D&D also draws inspiration from and many, though not all, of them are motivated by wealth, power and many other "selfish" goals.

I highlighted the phrase above because I think there is a confusion, here. D&D was inspired by these stories; it was wisely enough drawn, however, not to attempt to 'simulate' them, nor even the worlds they were held to take place in.

My point was moreso that you don't read about these heroes being paid to eradicate a race of monsters that pose absolutely no threat to them... and D&D through it's rules (insignificant rewards for this behavior among other things) simulates that this is not a trope of it's genre.

Insignificant reward, perhaps, but also insignificant cost. A few 12th level characters could eradicate an orc village (say) in 2E in, what, a day? Less? With no significant risk at all.