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

[GMforPowergamers]

A plus thread is supposed to be positive.
(Source)

and just saying "Wrong" isn't helpful or positive...

....I think that this thread has veered somewhat off course, but it would also appear to be a collective effort.

and again I would love to get it BACK to "hey what is the simple way to say this without jargon"

 

[Campbell]

@Snarf Zagyg

What was under contention was not neutrality or objectivity - it was the claim that The Forge hated D&D. If not being fond of railroads meant you hate D&D that means the entirety of the OSR hates D&D which would be silly. The neutrality or objectivity thing is not something I am going to dispute. Honestly people make too damn much of the essays. It's not a set of scientific papers. It's just a collection of essays like Elusive Shift. Not sure why people are holding them to that standard.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You mean the post where you define Simulationism, Gamism, and Story Now? Okay, so either you define Story Now and Narrativism the same, or I'm not seeing your paragraph on Narrativism. Also, the definition of Narrativism has evolved within this thread as different posters have joined the conversation and asked for clarification. So if you could provide an actual up to date definition of Narrativism that would actually be helpful. Preferably one that other supporters of Edwards and GNS theory actually agree with.

Narrativism and Story Now are the same thing. The description in post 4 is accurate. You confuse people trying to find different ways to explain the same concept as different concepts.

Weird. I'm literally holding the book in my hands. And it definitely shows the receipts. The Elusive Shift. I'm not even half-way through the book. What I've read literally reads like a summary of all RPG forum conversation, including all talk of theory...only they're all quotes from zines and luminaries of the scene back in the '60s and '70s. I guess I could quote from it at length, but then I'd be just copying & pasting the majority of the text, which seems like a bad idea.

Cool. I'll 100% agree that it does so if you can define narrativism in your own words, or quote it from that book. Because, if you cannot, then you do not have any receipts for that discussion.

Narrativism was new with the Forge. It was cobbled together and formalized there in a way that let other people actually use the concept to make games that did not look like any games that existed before. You claim the discussion has never changed, but that's clear evidence it did -- the proliferation and success of games rooted in the concepts explored by the Forge. PbtA is one of the most influential games. Even D&D nods head to it on occasion.

I'm asking you to define it because you're an advocate for it. I want to give you the opportunity to put the best version forward you possibly can rather than talk about my misunderstanding of what you mean. It's worth noting that over the course of this now 32 page thread other proponents of GNS have come along and disagreed with each other (and you) as to what these terms mean and how to properly use them. So you know, it's not like there's one universal definition to point to...unless you try to decipher Edwards' faltering attempts.

I did. You've misunderstood. What am I supposed to do with that now? And no, none of the people I'd agree are actual proponents of narrativism as a thing have disagreed with me. You're reading different attempts to explain the thing as different ideas entirely. If you go back through, we're all liking each other's posts. We do have differences, and we've argued, but not about the core concepts of what narrativism is. I know this because I play these games with many of them. If we disagreed on what it was, how is it we have so much fun playing these games!

I'm not theorycrafting here. I actually practice, weekly, what I preach.

Pot, kettle.

Oh, no. I can make the argument against the Forge with 100% accuracy and perfection. I understand it fully. Because I used to make that argument. I'm not denying that play exists at all, or characterizing it as a subset of play I engage in. That's your argument, in that a discussion about D&D or wargames is the end of the discussion -- it happened 30, 40, 60, 100, 300 years ago and hasn't moved on since. It has, though, you just aren't seeing it.

Quite the opposite. I'd like to hash this all out so we can maybe finally move on to more fruitful conversations about actually new topics. Because, as I said, these exact conversations have been circling the hobby since before it was a unique and separate thing.

According to you, though, there are no new topics to be discussed. They've already been discussed.

Not at all. It's hostility to the man, the pedestal his advocates put him on, and the willful ignorance of history that's required to put him on that pedestal.

I don't put Edwards on a pedestal. He's crass. He's tends towards language that's harmful to his intent. He makes mistakes. I disagree with him strongly in areas. But he said some very interesting and thought provoking things, and because he said those things, other people made games that I very much enjoy. Edwards doesn't have to be worthy of a statue for me to respect his contribution. You seem to think that you have to dismiss or lionize Edwards. I pick a middle path.

Sorry, no. Sources absolutely matter. Are you taking auto repair advice from a 6-year-old or a car mechanic who's got 20 years on the job?

If the 6-year old is a savant and gives the correct advice, it's not suddenly incorrect because it comes from a 6-year old. This is a version of the appeal to authority argument that says that only authorities have weight. Here, though, it's very weird because Edwards does have decades of both designing and discussing games (he still does, and is heavily involved with the Nordic RPG community) and his thoughts have been massively influential in the hobby, spawning multiple popular RPGs that work in ways very different from D&D. In this regard, the source has the merit you're attributing to the 20 years-on-the-job mechanic. He's been there, done that, got the shirt.

No, he's not being dismissed because he lack relevant experience or accomplishments, he's being dismissed for purely ad hominin reasons. Source doesn't matter for good information.

Because it's: 1) framed in a terrible way up to and including calling those who disagree brain damaged; 2) the theory itself is incoherent and ignores large swathes of preferences, and; 3) the same conversations have been going on for decades if not centuries.

Ah, here's the ad hominin stuff in 1. 2 is a bald assertion that has to ignore that games like Apocalypse World not only exist, but are good and work like they say they do. The 3rd is just saying "people have talked about games, so since that happened, no one says anything different." It's a bogus argument on it's face. People have been talking about physics for the entirety of humankind, but new things are said almost every day. The claim that since discussion has happened no new discussion matter is bogus.

Weird. Because it literally does make that argument. It's filled with sources and quotes from people and zine and other publications from the '60s and '70s talking about these exact topics.

Which ones, the ones you can't articulate and continue to confuse? How could you recognize them, then?

And really? A gamer recoiling from the cost of a book?

Ah, finally, and ad hominin directed at me. I must be cheap because I don't rush out to buy a book and read it so I can talk to you about it. It's an interesting argument, given the OP and repeated demands that I explain myself without outside reference and do so to some as yet undetermined level of acceptance by you.

I can't even get any two of the people defending GNS and Edwards and the Forge to agree on the definitions of these things. How am I supposed to have a better grasp of it than you lot?

What do you mean? Go back, we all like each other's posts. Again, you confuse different attempts to say the same things using different words as being fundamentally different. As for having a better grasp, you could do what I did -- consider that maybe we're not idiots wrapped up in a joint delusions about things that don't exist, extend some benefit of the doubt, and start from the question, "okay, if that's true, how could that work" and abandoning your preconceptions. The way you grasp a new idea is to clear the way of old ideas.

I never claimed Edwards exact phrasing was precisely repeated decades ago. I said that these conversations (about preferences, game and gamer types, which of simulation/realism, game as game, character, or story should be primary) have been circling the hobby since before it began because they have. Along with immersion, how best to RP a character, what it means to be in character, the authority of the referee, the creative input of the players, etc. It's all decades old conversation. Even the phrase "One True Way" has been with the hobby since 1976.

Well, good, I didn't say that either. Strawman roundly thrashed!

Yes, those words have been, but the conception of narrativism isn't those things. Character exists in all RPGs, so of course it's discussed. Simulation is obviously a thing. Immersion is another. These are blandishments. The Forge actually put together something new -- a way of playing that certainly didn't formally exists prior to that, and might, maybe have some scattered an uncertain pockets of existence prior. Certainly not in any mainstream discussion -- if they showed up there they were very likely attacked. Kind of like they still get attacked when they show up, only there's not some structure to hang things on and enough people that know about it that the majority can't just roll them over. Although they certainly seem to still try. Now it's just move to argument by exhaustion. There's more of them, so they can take turns and even walk away knowing that someone will keep up the fight and eventually the attrition or moderation will close the discussion.

Thank you. Exactly. Even fans of the Forge, Edwards, and GNS completely disagree about what the theories and jargon even mean. Thank you for clearly making one of my points for me.

What? I don't have any idea how you got this from this:

I'll freely admit that there were pieces of narrativism floating around prior to the Forge. But they weren't brought together and formalized until the Forge. There's nothing talking about this way of playing prior or games that aim to support it. You can bend some older games to do so, but they aren't designed with this concept in mind, they just got there. For all @pemerton's championing of Prince Valiant as a proto-Story Now game, when I read it I see it leaning more towards Trad play and simulationism, and only if you bring a narrativist lens to the interpretation do you get a game that leans that way. It's a post hoc realization -- I do not think that a contemporaneous player would have reached that conclusion, or only a small number might and they'd not have any framework to hang their play upon conceptually.

I guess that's what you get for pointing out a nuanced bit of how people can disagree at the edges while agreeing in the middle. People leap on it to claim that you've discredited the whole thing.

 

[Ovinomancer]

and just saying "Wrong" isn't helpful or positive...

and again I would love to get it BACK to "hey what is the simple way to say this without jargon"

Oh sure, do you want the whole original thing I said (which includes no jargon)? Here it is:

Nope. Not at all close, actually. GNS is looking at what people want out of games -- what their agenda for play is. It carves out 3 large groups:
-- people that want verisimilitude to be king
-- people that want challenge to be king
-- people that want character* to be king

(*This is very high level summation, and "character" really means not that your character wins or is successful or is actually a king, but that questions about the character are the most important -- who are they, what do they believe, and do they actually act that way when push comes to shove.)

The idea is that you can't have multiple kings at the same time -- if the game is being adjudicated purely on whether or not it's making sense "in the world" of the fiction, then challenge is not primary because things that are needed to enhance challenge are not aligned to things that the 'world' demands. To give a 5e example, Challenge (Gamism) would be keenly interested in well balanced encounters that really push at skill in resolving them and that follow a pattern that extends long term strategic challenge as well. In other words, games that fully push the CR balance tests and that make hard use of the daily XP budget and that pace rests 2 short to each long. This fights against agendas that are about the world making sense, with encounters that can be unbalanced and how the daily XP budget doesn't align well with the kind of play that's desired. Sometimes it can appear that these align, but it's almost always accidental and temporary.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@Snarf Zagyg

What was under contention was not neutrality or objectivity - it was the claim that The Forge hated D&D. If not being fond of railroads meant you hate D&D that means the entirety of the OSR hates D&D which would be silly. The neutrality or objectivity thing is not something I am going to dispute. Honestly people make too damn much of the essays. It's not a set of scientific papers. It's just a collection of essays like Elusive Shift. Not sure why people are holding them to that standard.

?

The Elusive Shift isn't a collection of essays. I assume you've read it? It's more a historical document, with excellent sourcing (contemporaneous zines and primary sources from the 70s and early 80s) regarding the evolution of TTRPGs, especially with direct accounts of the people at the time w/r/t the RPG theory.

I do think that there's an implicit argument about the early evolution of games, but it's certainly not a call to action or reaction against things happening today.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Finally, the reason those statements keep coming up is because people keep trying to present Edwards as a neutral arbiter of games ... you know, Edwards liked B/X! But he isn't a neutral arbiter and fan of all games. It's well known. To argue otherwise does a disservice to the people you are talking to, and, honestly, to Edwards to.

Yep, this. I don't like being gaslighted, and I don't like when I see other people being gaslighted. "No, there is no bias, you're just imagining it." Please!

Also, pretending that GNS theory is somehow neutral and objective, leads the adherent effectively casting any disagreement with it as lack of understanding or result of (to not use Edwards' terms) "cognitive bias."

I don't think this is helpful. And like I tried to allude to earlier, we are ultimately talking about categorising and describing rather subjective experiences, so it is perfectly possible that a certain explanatory framework works for one person while not to another, without either of them being in any way objectively "wrong."

 

[Malmuria]

@Snarf Zagyg

What was under contention was not neutrality or objectivity - it was the claim that The Forge hated D&D. If not being fond of railroads meant you hate D&D that means the entirety of the OSR hates D&D which would be silly. The neutrality or objectivity thing is not something I am going to dispute. Honestly people make too damn much of the essays. It's not a set of scientific papers. It's just a collection of essays like Elusive Shift. Not sure why people are holding them to that standard.

When I saw some theory threads featuring GNS terminology come up here a couple months back, I went to The Forge :: Articles and read the core articles about GNS theory (start here: The Forge :: GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory). They're easy to find, and I was quickly able to follow the discussions here on ENWorld pretty well, and before long to participate too. And there's a glossary that does a decent job explaining particular terms.

@Campbell how would you suggest people educate themselves about particular terminology? Sincere question. I thought going back and reading the original essays was a good idea for this, but now it seems like maybe they aren’t the last word for the history of some of these terms?

 

[Ovinomancer]

normally in a + thread it is to add not say anything is wrong

edit: and where it is simplistic (what I thought was the point) I don't see what is wrong at all... infact as gets shown over and over again people can NOT agree on a 'right' answer even with massive jargon and details

Again, people do agree, you seem to be mistaking trying to use different ways to explain it to multiple questions as different answers entirely. All talking about the same thing.

And, come one, man. You start by saying you haven't even read anything about it and then go on to make a statement about what it actually is. That claim is not correct. It hasn't been advanced by anyone else in the thread, even those arguing against GNS. You're essentially complaining that things are terrible because your hot take about something you haven't even read was challenged. I'm somewhat at a loss.

Let me try to reframe. If I said that your home game, which I haven't seen played, is really summed up to be about whether or not hitpoints are meat or not meat, and it was a + thread, would you feel like you had the ability to tell me I was wrong? I mean, of course I'm wrong, but that's almost the level of being off that you got to with your summation. It uses words that are in the theory, like I used words that are in your game (hitpoints, at least), but the relationship of those words to what's happening is extremely tenuous.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Attempting to defend* him seems off topic for the thread. Discussing his theory doesn't.

*Edit: or trash him as a person

Yes, both are. You'll note that anything about Edwards was brought up by detractors first, essentially attempting to make the discussion about Edwards the person rather than the ideas.

 

[Malmuria]

Like, my take is "Wow yeah, the Brain Damage thing sucked. But what about his ideas about Step on Up

There’s a kind of polite version of this in some of his other writings, at least in my reading of them, which is that he sometimes seems kind of mystified and/or chagrined that people like games that, in his analysis, are “dysfunctional.” Out of this emerges a set of ideas (high concept simulation, participationism) trying to explain this mystery. There’s a legacy to this that I see on rpg twitter, which is indie designers similarly chagrined at the popularity of 5e (not unwarranted because it does take up most of the breathing room).