Did I discover the Left Wing and Right Wing of D&D gaming styles?

[rounser]

There's no room for "shame" in D&D.

Two words, Eric:
elf pr0n.

 

[snarfoogle]

I'd place myself in the middle, probably closer to the traditionalist side. I probably would allow a Brawler/Grappler/Other unarmed combatant class, but no monk. Of course, the Halflings have bladed boomerangs and the elves are racist, but I'd still put myself on the traditionalist side.

 

[Turanil]

Left Wing and Right Wing of D&D gaming styles. I still think there is indeed something like that among gamers.

In reading all your posts I again get this same feeling, that I cannot express as I really would like to do. But basically I have the impression that gamers belong to two groups: (1) those who like to put thinking, consistency, etc., in their setting (be it cosmopolitan or not), and ask that players do play so as to help develop the particular ambiance (be it cosmopolitan or not); and (2) those who just don't care: any class, any monster, and no need to know how the minotaur in black leather trenchcoat with a katana waited in the tomb (without food or toilet) for ages for the adventurers to come.

I like to get an ambiance in the game, to believe myself in another (mysterious) world for the duration of the session. This I canot get that with the second group... (Plus I hate this mixing of medieval types who wear neopunkish attire, pairs of glasses, and spiked hairstyle. I have OGL Cybernet for that, not D&D.)

 

[barsoomcore]

Could you please try expressing this again? Your point seems interesting but for some reason I can't quite figure out what you mean here. Perhaps you could rephrase. I tend to think more in terms of context than consistency but do we mean the same thing? I need my players' characters to exist within the context of the character's culture but I'm not sure if this is what you mean by consistency with setting.

Yeah, I think you got it there.

Basically just realising that a PC can arise naturally out of a game's context regardless of that game's consistency (though a more relaxed consistency naturally leads to a broader interpretation of "naturally" and "context").

It's very important to me that the PCs in my campaign are part and parcel of the setting. It's less important to me that my campaign setting exhibits very large amounts of internal consistency.

When consistency gets in the way of samurai gunslingers riding on dinosaurs, it's time for consistency to take a day off.

Fimblewinter Campaign: Taoist Alchemy + Aztec Cosmology
Agharta Campaign: Fairy Myth + Postmodernism/Critical Theory + Gnosticism/Sufism

You're not moving back to Vancouver anytime soon, are you?

 

[fusangite]

See, this is what I mean. I really don't know that you can claim that societies make sense to the people in them. Certainly, people do try to make some sort of sense out of it all, but that results in a vast variety of opinions on the one hand and ignores the vast level of complexity and contradiction inherent in any society.

What makes you think that the societies I study and the societies I model in game lack these characteristics? But the fact that there is a vast level of complexity and contradiction, some consciously noticed, some not, in every society, does not mean that people live in societies that do not make sense to them; they might feel that their society is failing to be what they want it to -- but that does not mean that the social order does not make some kind of sense to them.

You seem to be dangerously close to the postmodernist position that we cannot make any meaningful generalizations about societies in other places and times. I think we can. Are those generalizations "the truth"? No. Are they complete? No. But I believe we can actually know enough to make educated guesses about the thought of people in societies other than our own.

Even should an individual have the most accurate opinion possible it would still deal with difficulties of ignorance and disagreement.

So?

Even cataloguing the variety and sensibility of those opinions is more or less an impossible task.

Then why do people do anthropology, or sociology or intellectual and cultural history?

Certainly, you could theoretically develop some sort of comprehensive trans-mental and temporal census that would create an accurate map of medieval opinion given the limited number of minds available at any given time, but even that would be more a tool of coincedence for the given time than a listing of what was and wasn't possible.

You seem to think that I'm claiming to be able to know with certainty how people other than me think. Of course I cannot. But that does not mean it becomes a valueless exercise to speculate in an educated and entertaining way about other people's thought.

I mean, you turn to Aquinas to understand the medieval mind, and while that's generally useful it's far more limited when attempting to develop a standard for role-playing behavior. In fact he will almost certainly be an awful standard as he is more or less on the cutting edge of opinion making today, at least in certain circles, much less during his own period and he is very unrepresentative of the sort of social groups we normally expect to see in adventuring either realisticly, literarily, or fantasticly.

I understand Aquinas's position relative to other thinkers in his period too but your own comments betray the fact that you yourself think you know something about elite thought in the 12th century. This suggests that you don't really buy your own unknowability thesis here.

To my mind the cosmopolitan view actually does a better job treating basic inconsistencies of the genre and situation than the traditional simply by avoiding any attempt to create such a standard, and I still stand by my assertion that it's truer to the genre in its own right.

Well, that's perfectly fair. Look: we're discussing how, in a game in which we pretend to be people in world full of magic and mythical beasts, we can suspend disbelief so as to enjoy ourselves. For you, the Cosmopolitan approach is the most effective way to do this. For me the Cultural approach is. But there's no objectively "better" here. Some people can enjoy cartoons and effortlessly suspend disbelief when they watch them whereas others have to watch shows with live actors in order to suspend disbelief. But there is no accuracy here -- just believability because Bakishi's LOTR and Jacksons's LOTR are equally fake. The same is true of our respective approaches to D&D. I have speculated about the underlying assumptions that give rise to these different standards for suspending disbelief but I see little point in arguing here about whether one set of underlying assumptions is more correct than the other.

But all that aside I certainly didn't mean to cast any general aspersions on your work Fusangite, even where I disagree with them I find your posts interesting and well thought it.

Thanks. Same here.

I though your position centered on "gaming as an exercise in cultural simulation and immersion" and now you describe these campaign inspirations that sound an awful lot like postmodern gamemanship;

Well, the Agharta campaign is set in the near future -- it's a kind of parody of the (post)modern world. But no, I don't run straight historical simulations -- and if I did, I sure wouldn't use D20 to do it. I still actually create cultures but I use enormous building blocks -- by borrowing systems or parts of systems of thought and material conditions, I am able to take a lot of shortcuts.

The Fimblewinter game was about a group of characters in an ice age hunter-gatherer culture living at the brink of extinction who undertake a quest, in the course of which they uncover information about the culture that existed before them. The campaign was a qualified success -- about half the players got into thinking like primitives confronting a dead civilization.

the cultural supercolider designed to break different narratives down into their component quarks...

I'm not plundering these things for narratives (except in the Agharta campaign). I'm plundering them for symbol systems, tropes, social relationships, etc. My games tend to be about finding interesting congruencies between things and building worlds (and thereby stories) out of that process.

What are you trying to achieve (and I ask that with no small amount of admiration)?

I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my enjoyment of the process itself is main motivation for continuing to do things this way. Like all the GMs here, I like making worlds. I have come up with some unique and eccentric ways of doing that but my motivations aren't really different from other people's.

Wouldn't the primary purpose of such an exercise be to reveal the 'universal' structures present in the diverse elements you glommed togther? Doesn't the disparate nature of the parts parts work against character immersion?

Not if I knit the pieces together successfully -- that's my real work as a GM. That's why I spend a lot of time building my worlds before my games start. The players shouldn't be able to notice easily the consistuent components of what I have assembled.

I wish the Archives section were still around. There is a very good, quite lengthy description of what how my worlds work.

EDIT: Hey Barsoomcore!, could you edit your post where you list my current campaigns and delete the description of Antilla? Thanks. Sadly, I'm not moving back to Vancouver any time soon but the Agharta campaign is currently being run by my co-GM Philip Freeman and there's space available if you'd like to join.

 

[barsoomcore]

Yes, I'd be quite interested. The My Resume link in my sig leads to a page with my basic contact info. Please have him get a hold of me if he's looking for a player.

And thanks!

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I wouldn't say these are associated with left-wing/right-wing in any meaningful way. The issue doesn't have a coherent tradition for a traditionalist to hold up or a revolutionary to rail against. It's more RE Howard v. JRR Tolkien than anything else, and even that's an imperfect comparison.

As to my position, I tend to create expansive worlds with lots of variety that possess a fair level of internal consistency - albeit only when looked at as a world rather than a single nation, region or continent. If a player wants to play a samurai-like character, I will generally have a region or culture available; likewise, a paladin-like character. If I can't fit a PC in, I might revise a region the PCs have yet to really explore to add it in. In this regard, you could make a comparison to the Eberron style.

About the only aspect where internal consistency trumps player choice is where magic is concerned. I like to use Lovecraftian-themed magic, and as such the PCs usually have very limited access to it. At least, if they're wise...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In reading all your posts I again get this same feeling, that I cannot express as I really would like to do. But basically I have the impression that gamers belong to two groups: (1) those who like to put thinking, consistency, etc., in their setting (be it cosmopolitan or not), and ask that players do play so as to help develop the particular ambiance (be it cosmopolitan or not); and (2) those who just don't care: any class, any monster, and no need to know how the minotaur in black leather trenchcoat with a katana waited in the tomb (without food or toilet) for ages for the adventurers to come.

I really hope it's a language issue that makes you come off so insulting. It's OK to have preferences in how you play, but that doesn't make people who like something else wrong, which is certainly what you're making it sound like.

 

[Remathilis]

When consistency gets in the way of samurai gunslingers riding on dinosaurs, it's time for consistency to take a day off.

YOINK!

Thats my theory in a nutshell. As long as your group agrees to accept such notions, the rules should not limit or stifle creativity. Within reason of course.

Options, not Restrictions.

 

[Remathilis]

In reading all your posts I again get this same feeling, that I cannot express as I really would like to do. But basically I have the impression that gamers belong to two groups: (1) those who like to put thinking, consistency, etc., in their setting (be it cosmopolitan or not), and ask that players do play so as to help develop the particular ambiance (be it cosmopolitan or not); and (2) those who just don't care: any class, any monster, and no need to know how the minotaur in black leather trenchcoat with a katana waited in the tomb (without food or toilet) for ages for the adventurers to come.

I guess it depends also on how much of that stuff you REALLY care about...

Take the Minotaur in the above. While an extreme example, it highlights the old Simulation-vs-game arguement.

A simulationist (someone who builds his world with a stunning internal logic) would WANT to know how a minotaur survives in a 10 x 10 room, why he has no formal alliance with the orcs next door, and where he gets his food froom.

The Gamer wants to know how many XP he was worth and what loot he's carrying on his corpse.

The good news IS that its not either/or. Most Players are willing to gloss over the minotaur's lair in order to reach the more important story elements of the tomb. Just like most DMs don't slavishly monitor food consumption and waste removal of PCs. As long as it is reasonable the minotaur has some source of food (goblins, PCs, whatever) and reasonable access to beyond his 10 x 10 room (such as not being locked in there) then we gleefully hack through the challenge for gold and XP while wondering who the BBEG is what his evil plans are...

Katana and trenchcoat are optional, of course.