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

[pemerton]

Is that on the Forge archive? I'm curious about this but I don't think I have enough info to find it quickly.

Awesome! Do you have a link to his apology?

That’s something I would be interested in reading.

I am trying to find the link. In making that attempt, I found a couple of posts of mine from 2012:

I just read it.

For what it's worth, here are my main thoughts about it.

It starts with a definition of RPGing:

It is a table-top game played by a group of people. That game consists of people role-playing their characters in a continuing series of events set in a self-consistent setting with consistent rules.​

It then breaks that definition up into G, N and S components:

It is a table-top game (Gamist) played by a group of people. That game consists of people role-playing their characters in a continuing series of events (Story) set in a self-consistent setting with consistent rules (Simulation).​

It then uses that break up to accuse GNS of missing the point about RPGing, by insisting on the "only one creative agenda at a time" principle:

It is table-top game (Gamist) played by a group of people OR it consists of people role-playing their characters in a continuing series of events (Story) OR it is set in a self-consistent setting with consistent rules (Simulation).​

I'm not personally 100% sure that the "only one agenda at a time" claim is true, in part because I think the distinction that Edwards et al deploy between "agendas" and "techniques" is somewhat loose - and Edwards himself seems to come close to allowing this when he says that:

Gamist and Narrativist play don't tug-of-war over "doing it right" - they simply avoid one another, like the same-end poles of two magnets. Note, I'm saying play, not players. The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily.​

(This sort of passage tends, for me, to push against the view that GNS is about labelling and dividing the community. I know others see Edwards' writing differently.)

But even if the "only one agenda" claim is true, the criticism on those blogs wouldn't follow. Gamism is not about "playing a game". It's about doing well at the game being the point of play. Narrativism isn't about there being a "continuos series of events". It's about group play being capable of producing aesthetically satisfying fiction.

Because I don't think the criticism is fair or accurate, I don't think that these conclusions follow:

Indeed, if followed the model will produce something that is basically another type of game completely. . .​

​

The Forges definition of Narrativist while very specific is still a method of viewing a Story based campaign. Some people like it. The games produced (for the best examples of the theory) by the theory are not what people commonly consider to be RPGs- but they are still games of some type liked by a certain type of player.​

This is the first time I've heard it suggested that Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, My Life With Master, etc aren't RPGs. (And for me, it echoes the frequent characterisation of 4e as a boardgame rather than an RPG.)

I also don't think it's true to say that GNS involves

a very specific concept of Story. One that isn't one in common use by any means, and one that likely didn't apply to any significant number of rpg campaigns until he started to apply it.​

Edwards' notion of "story" is straightforward enough - something of aesthetic appeal and aesthetic worth. (He is ambiguous about the relationship beteen appeal and worth, and has an overly moralised conception of what things are aesthetically worthwhile, which happily he drops when he actually starts talking about games, as opposed to talking abstractly about what story involves.) I've played in a lot of RPG sessions and campaigns - not just my own - where that sort of story is going on, although back in the years when I was doing a lot of play outside my own group people weren't very self-conscious about Forge-y techniques, and (especialy because of AD&D 2nd ed and Vampire, I would say) there was an excessive emphasis on the GM as the progenitor of the story.

But if I had to sum up my objection to the objection, it would be that this is presented as if it were a strong reason to reject GNS:

It is inherently subject to Definition Conflict, and thus flamewars​

There are obvious ad hominem avenues of rebuttal here - the refutation of GNS depends upon definitions, for example, that are highly contestable - a lot of Basic D&D lacks a continuing seris of events, for example, because the passage of time between trips to the dungeon is simply handwaved away.

But - and this goes back to my exchangs with Umbran earlier in this thread (and like Umbran this blog draws on the WotC data) - I don't regard it as an objection to an interpretive theory that its characterisation of some value, or of some domain of human activity, is contestable and contested. Simple example: Rawls' may be wrong in his account of fairness, in his account of the relationship between fairness and justice, in his claim that justice is the preeminent virtue of a society, etc. But you can't show he's wrong just by showing that others - including eminent others like Nozick - contest his account of fairness, of justice, of the relationship between these two values, of the relationship of justice to overall social virtue, etc.

Hardly anything worth saying about human affairs is uncontroversial!

I've read the brain damage thread, although it was a while ago now (but well after the actual event).

As I recall it, it is not that

Ron thinks of other definitions of Story . . . [as] brain-damaged.​

As I recall it, Edwards said that people had lost the ability to understand what it means to create a story from playing Storyteller RPGs. (This loss of ability was the so-called brain damage - Edwards makes it clear that he's a mind-brain identity guy, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's a hardcore Chomskyan!)

Here is an example, from Vincent Baker's blog:

protagonism was so badly injured during the history of role-playing (1970-ish through the present, with the height of the effect being the early 1990s), that participants in that hobby are perhaps the very last people on earth who could be expected to produce all the components of a functional story. No, the most functional among them can only be counted on to seize protagonism in their stump-fingered hands and scream protectively. You can tag Sorcerer with this diagnosis, instantly.​

Notice that he includes himself among the braindamaged - so he's not talking about people with differing views from his about what story means - though he also regards himself as among the most functional of the braindamaged.

What he's claiming is that the practice of RPGs - especially early 90s storyteller RPGing damages the understanding of protagonism - of story creation.

Here is another example, probably more outrage-provoking:

a human being can routinely understand, enjoy, and (with some practice) create stories. I think most postmodernism is arrant garbage, so I'll say that a story is a fictional series of events which present a conflict and a resolution, with the emergent/resulting audience experience of "theme." . . .​

​

the routine human capacity for understanding, enjoying, and creating stories is damaged . . . by repeated "storytelling role-playing" as promulgated through many role-playing games of a specific type. This type is only one game in terms of procedures, but it's represented across several dozens of titles and about fifteen to twenty years, peaking about ten years ago [ie mid-90s]. Think of it as a "way" to role-play rather than any single title.​

​

I now hold the viewpoint that in every generation, inspired and interested young teens and younger college students are introduced to a fascinating new activity that they are eminently qualified to excel at and enjoy greatly. However, subculturally speaking, it's a bait-and-switch, especially during the time-period outlined above. Instead, they were and are exposed to damaging behavior as they learn what to do, and therefore, the following things happen. (1) They associate the procedures they are learning with the activity itself, as a definition. (2) The original purpose which interested them is obscured or replaced with the "thing," or pseudo-thing, of the new purpose, which no one is qualified to excel at, nor does it offer any particular intrinsic rewards.​

​

The vast majority of people so exposed quite reasonably recoil and find other things to do. Some stay and continue to participate. Socially, the activity occurs among the generational wave-front of the young teens and young college students, losing most as it goes, retaining a few each iteration, but always replenished by the new bunch. Of the ones who remain involved, many are vaguely frustrated and dissatisfied, and some of them gain power within that subculture and work hard to perpetuate it.​

Now I don't know what toxic personalities and behaviours Edwards encounterd to make him write this. I have my own memories of university roleplaying clubs in the early to mid 90s, and while I wouldn't describe what I saw there in quite the strong terms that Edwards uses, and I also would regard the RPGing as only one component of a much bigger social dynamic, I did see things that fit what Edwards is describing - in particular the exercise, by GMs who were also dominant figures in this subculture, of their self-asserted power as GMs over the story and the game, as one element in a broader matrix of power exercised over acolytes or wannabe acolytes.

I would say that it was a social dynamic not radically different, in some of its broad features, from that of various and notorious cults that also like to collect their members from vulnerable late-teens who are newly commencing university/college students.

I had the good fortune to recruit some players, who became long term players in my game and long term friends, from refugees from games run by participants in this milieu. I also myself played in some games within this milieu, but mostly as an outsider, and in the only ongoing campaign I took part in remain very pleased with my role, as a player, in bringing the focus of play away from the GM and a would-be dominant player colluding with him to "own" the story, back to the rest of the players, and our PCs, and the various stories that we were trying to tell. (Was I therefore a "problem player"? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the game folded not long after I quit it due to commencing full time work.)

I think Edwards' pejorative remarks about pastiche also have to be read in a similar social context. Everyone - or, at least, every roleplayer - presumably has some genre story or stories that s/he enjoys, and that inform his/her own story creation as a roleplayer - tropes, thematic concerns, characters who spoke to us and whom we like to echo, etc. When Edwards is attacking pastiche in RPGing, he is talking (I think) about the social pressure, within a certain sort of subculture associated at least weakly with sci-fi and fanatsy fans (including the RPGers among them) to adhere to the story, the "canon", the world, as an already-given thing (or, more often, an already purchased thing), to which a would-be player's own protagonistic inclinations must be subordinated.

This is why I always agree with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] when debates break out on these boards about excesses of player entitlement, a GM's prerogative to control the game, etc. Of course the GM has some say over what game will be run, just as the players do to - if only by saying, if you're going to GM that than let's all go to the movies instead! But as soon as someone thinks that it is important to call out a GM's prerogative, as if the banal fact that the GM is a human being too, participating in a voluntary leisure activity, wasn't all that we needed to know, then I react in the same fashion as Hussar. And I get a feeling of hostility to player protagonism that I don't understand, but that reminds me, however mildly, of Edwards' comments about RPGing.

Edwards says another curious thing on the Vincent Baker blog:

The design decisions I've made with my current project are so not-RPG, but at the same time so dismissive of what's ordinarily called "consensual storytelling," that I cannot even begin to discuss it on-line. . . I cannot articulate the way that I have abandoned the player-character, yet preserved the moral responsibility of decision-making during play.​

I don't know what he was working on then, and whether or not it has seen the light of day. I'd be curious to see it.

From that comment, plus some other stuff on the Forge forum, I infer that Edwards thinks that the whole player-participant-via-PC model of RPGing is inherently flawed as a medium for collective story creation. If true, that would be a depressing conlcusion for me! - although a flaw need not, per se, be fatal.

One post by Edwards that has helped me a lot with my GMing was posted 7 months or so after the Brain Damage episode, and seems more upbeat about what can be done in an RPG:

Plot authority - over crux-points in the knowledge base at the table - now is the time for a revelation! - typically, revealing content, although notice it can apply to player-characters' material as well as GM material - and look out, because within this authority lies the remarkable pitfall of wanting (for instances) revelations and reactions to apply precisely to players as they do to characters​

​

Situational authority - over who's there, what's going on - scene framing would be the most relevant and obvious technique-example, or phrases like "That's when I show up!" from a player​

​

Narrational authority - how it happens, what happens - I'm suggesting here that this is best understood as a feature of resolution . . . and not to mistake it for describing what the castle looks like, for instance; I also suggest it's far more shared in application than most role-players realize . . .​

​

The real point, not the side-point, is that any one of these authorities can be shared across the individuals playing without violating the other authorities. ​

​

For instance, in [a particular game RE GMed], I scene-framed like a m[*****]-f[*****]. That's the middle level: situational authority. . . But I totally gave up authority over the "top" level, plot authority. I let that become an emergent property of the other two levels: again, me with full authority over situation (scene framing), and the players and I sharing authority over narrational authority, which provided me with cues, in the sense of no-nonsense instructions, regarding later scene framing. . .​

​

Well, let's look at this [ie another poster's problems with his game] again. Actually, I think it has nothing at all to do with distributed authority, but rather with the group members' shared trust that situational authority is going to get exerted for maximal enjoyment among everyone. . .​

​

It's not the distributed or not-distributed aspect of situational authority you're concerned with, it's your trust at the table, as a group, that your situations in the SIS are worth anyone's time. Bluntly, you guys ought to work on that.​

So maybe he changed his mind about the viability of RPGs as a creative medium. I don't know.

TL;DR - I may be brain damaged!

Whereas I don't get that vibe - for example, in a couple of his essays he talks explicitly about how he changed his mind - on the existence of simulationism, for example, and also on the place of gamism - he used to think it was the odd one out, but then realised that it has more in common with narrativism than narrativism has with simulationism.

He also apologised for the "brain damage" episode in a very public way, as well as (if he is believed) talking to John Nephew personally to resolve things between them.

I'm by no means saying he's a saint! But by the standards of the academic world, for instance (which is the world of ideas that I mostly inhabit) he seems to admit to change and to error at least to an average degree.

That confirms my recollection that Edwards included himself among the damaged. It also reminds me that, back then as now, I was curious as to what Edwards's ideas were for a post-RPGing game of collective dramatic storytelling.

The first follow-up thread I found is this one: Followup to the Awful Thread of Awfulness "no retractions, no apologies" - but then it does retract the use of "brain damage" (see below).

Here's another post of mine, from 2014:

Who said it should be ignored?

Edwards apologised and retracted. By his own testimony, he spoke personally to John Nephew.

The pathology he was alleging was a creative pathology. He thought that certain RPGs damage, seriously and permanently, the creative capacities of those who played them. He wouldn't be the only cultural critic in the history of cultural criticism to have that sort of strong view of a cultural artefact or cultural practice that he disliked. And though he apologised for using the phrase "brain damage", with its particular pejorative connotations, I don't think he apologised for or retracted his judgement of the cultural situation he was commenting on.

Ought he to have? I think that board rules preclude expressing an opinion on that.

Here's an overview thread on The Forge from 6 years later: When you point to the Moon, rpg culture hears only "Brain Damage"

Here's the page where Edwards talks about talking to John Wick on the phone (I had the wrong RPG-creating John - apologies for that): Brain damage "I'm reconsidering the whole thing, a lot. "You should listen to them," is one thing I'm hearing over and over, and John is the guy who gave me the best advice about it."

From the Follow Up thread:

If you think I might be right, but was utterly dumb in thinking "brain damage" means what I thought it meant​

​

Then you're definitely right. Believe it or not, this was presented as a term of sympathy and brotherhood, as in, "we're all in this ward together." It's too bad it seems to have become a term of vicious insult to the current generation (as my generation, to our shame, used "retard"), without my knowledge.​

Edwards doesn't change his mind on his criticism, which includes self-criticism. He does retract his misjudged term. And he adds "Anyone who wants to address what they see as a personal attack can do it on the individual level, treating me as a person instead of a demon. John did that. Follow his example. I'll listen to what you have to say, and address it." I don't know how many people besides John Wick spoke to him one-on-one.

In this post on Vincent Baker's blog, from around the same time, Edwards also uses a different description, intended metaphorically (I think the "brain damage" was intended to sit on some murky line between literal and metaphorical):

Yes, "we" are still obsessed, in the manner that you have described. It's a creative and technical illness, much in the sense that early cinema was hampered by the assumption that what they filmed should look like a stage-set, viewed front-on, from the same distance, at all times.​

​

The design decisions I've made with my current project are so not-RPG, but at the same time so dismissive of what's ordinarily called "consensual storytelling," that I cannot even begin to discuss it on-line. I can see the influences of Universalis, The Mountain Witch, and My Life with Master, but I cannot articulate the way that I have abandoned the player-character, yet preserved the moral responsibility of decision-making during play. That's all I'll say here, and I won't answer questions about it.​

​

More specific to your question, Vincent, I'll say this: that protagonism was so badly injured during the history of role-playing (1970-ish through the present, with the height of the effect being the early 1990s), that participants in that hobby are perhaps the very last people on earth who could be expected to produce all the components of a functional story. No, the most functional among them can only be counted on to seize protagonism in their stump-fingered hands and scream protectively. You can tag Sorcerer with this diagnosis, instantly.​

​

[The most damaged participants are too horrible even to look upon, much less to describe. This has nothing to do with geekery. When I say "brain damage," I mean it literally. Their minds have been harmed.]​

​

Perhaps Primetime Adventures, My Life with Master, Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris, etc etc, are really the best available prosthetics possible, permitting the damaged populace to do X? If so, what will people with limbs prefer to use, to do X?​

​

I don't know. I can see its parts forming, as with a mid-term embryo, but what it will be and how it will work, and who will use it for what purposes, I don't know. My current project may be right on track with it, or I may be veering off in a hopeless direction.​

You can see again here that he locates himself among the pool of the "damaged" (he is the author of Sorcerer - it's his pride and joy). You can also see the comparison he is drawing to the early years of cinema. He is trying to identify a way in which (he belives) RPGers have become stuck in a preconception about how the RPG-game-form relates to protagonism and dramatic story-telling: he thinks they are in the terrible place of being the ones who care most about it, but also the ones least able to dig themselves out of the hole they are in - because they are the ones committed to the preconceptions that have got them stuck in the hole in the first place (like early cinematographers).

Vincent Baker has two interesting responses to that post:

So my choice is to make prosthetics or else to abandon, y'know, us? That's a sucky choice. I want a better one.​

Apocalypse World might be the outcome of the better choice?

And this:

"WCH, RMR and MJF, please see my PSA."
You are not safe here.​

That link goes to this page: anyway: A Public Service Announcement

Which says the following near the top:

The purpose of this blog is to judge people's fun. We begin by judging our own fun, but in doing so we will and always will judge others' fun too.

I hold standards of quality to be independent of individual tastes. Accordingly, everyone who participates here must do so with the understanding that the fun that suits their individual tastes might be called crappy, broken, lame, sucky, wimpy, stupid, or even pathological. You may feel free to defend your favorite fun if you're so moved, but you should do so in terms of its objective quality, without falling back upon "everyone likes what they like," "all tastes are equal," or "judging my fun makes you an elitist."

I expect each of you to have the self-understanding and emotional maturity to make your own decisions about your participation here, given this. My experience so far has overwhelmingly borne this out, and I expect this post to make the process only easier for us all.​

He elaborates in a reply to a comment:

If you feel like I'm saying that your favorite thing is actually pretty lame, probably I am saying that your favorite thing is actually pretty lame, but I expect you to respond constructively nonetheless. If you're participating here, you're taking that risk.

Crying "stop judging my fun" or any of its variants isn't responding constructively.​

Edwards and Baker both take it as given that RPGing is a creative artform, and that it can be done better than it currently is.

 

[pemerton]

to say someone doesn’t agree with your (again, general you) ideas because they have some sort of cognitive block is rather condescending,

Edwards didn't say this.

 

[Malmuria]

Okay. I'll take your word for it, I'm not counting them. Nor am I going through them one by one. Fiasco is prominently featured and has the features I identified above. I love Fiasco. It's entirely about improv shared storytelling, though. Microscope is about setting creation. Really nicely done. I haven't played Downfall, but it similarly doesn't embody narrativism.

On a second look, I noted Dogs in the Vineyard in there, which fails most all of the qualities listed and only comes in under the dubious "doesn't have simulationist mechanics" quality. Dogs is very much Story Now. Monsterhearts is also a hard sell as a storygame. However, it's somewhat suspectible to drift, and often, like PbtA played not in accordance with directions.

Ok I’m confused again. Don’t bother explaining…it’s fine.

Exits, pursued by Dramatic Need

 

[Campbell]

So games like Fiasco, Follow, Microscope, Penny For Your Thoughts and For The Queen are exercises in collaborative storytelling where we're making decisions based on what we think would make for the best story. In games like Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark and Dogs in the Vineyard our perspective is still very much grounded in the characters we are playing. We are playing them in big, bold ways but still advocating for them. Not for what we think makes the best story.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok I’m confused again. Don’t bother explaining…it’s fine.

Exits, pursued by Dramatic Need

Confused about Monsterhearts? It's PbtA. Functionally, it's about pushing hard on the premise through the characters and seeing what happens. It's not about telling a good story, which is the core defining objective of storygames -- the story is the primary goal.

ETA: or what @Campbell just said.

 

[pemerton]

So games like Fiasco, Follow, Microscope, Penny For Your Thoughts and For The Queen are exercises in collaborative storytelling where we're making decisions based on what we think would make for the best story. In games like Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark and Dogs in the Vineyard our perspective is still very much grounded in the characters we are playing. We are playing them in big, bold ways but still advocating for them. Not for what we think makes the best story.

I agree that Penny For My Thoughts is not a RPG. But it doesn't have to be driven by "what is the best story?" I think you can immerse in your "position" because it still has the first-personality of a RPG.

But when providing cues to others (as opposed to playing one's own position), then I think considerations of what would make for a good story are more important.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, @pemerton - here is the fundamental issue with these conversations.

I asked @hawkeyefan if he was aware of an apology. When he didn't address the issue, I assumed that there wasn't one. That where you came in with this-

I don't know whether this is intended as a rhetorical question, or ironically, or in some other fashion.

But just for those who are following along, Edwards did apologise and posted about his conversations with John Nephew (and maybe others) in which he conveyed those apologies.

Well, everyone had been following along, and we all want to see where "Edwards did apologise" and "conveyed his apologies." Because it's been my experience that I'm told things ... that aren't matched by the existing words when I look at the source material.

So while I appreciate your long post on the subject ... I will note the following:

1. Your prior thoughts are not the same as him apologizing.
2. Your construing what he said are not the same as him apologizing.
3. Repeated justifications by Edwards ... are not the same as him apologizing.
4. Saying that someone might have (maybe) earned an apology from him "one-on-one," and that anyone who read that needed to contact him and get their own personal apology ... that's not an apology.
5. Finally, this is (at BEST) trying to justify the brain damage comment. I find the comment by Edwards about sexual assault to be much worse, and that the comment both manages to insult numerous people into hobby and trivialize the sexual assault of minors, and I am unsurprised that people keep completely ignoring that comment.


As @Malmuria correctly stated, "Edwards apology on the matter was very much of the 'I’m sorry people were offended' sort" which is not an apology. And have yet to see him address the more problematic comment.

If you have an actual link to him making a real apology, and addressing his sexual assault comment, feel free to post it. An apology.

 

[Umbran]

How is this post not a complete violation of the rules the Original Poster put forth for this thread?

Mod Note:
The Original Poster violated the rules themselves, kind of making those rules null and void.

But, this is irrelevant, as folks have shown that the collective here is not going to discuss this in a constructive manner. Thread closed.