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General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5782231" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>But this all turns on "clearly". </p><p></p><p>Examples include things like in classic D&D play, having two mappers so that if one gets swallowed by a Lurker Above the party still has a copy of the map. Or the ToH story about the guy who, teleported into the three lever pit, stood on two levers before operating the third, so as to avoid fallling down any further pit that was opened up. These choices become obvious in retrospect, but that just puts pressure on the Gygaxian GM to come up with new challenges and puzzles, and the players to come up with new solutions.</p><p></p><p>Another example of the usage of "meaningful choice" that I find fairly common is the idea that players should occasionally be presented with overwhelming encounters, so they can learn to judge their PCs' prospects and flee when necessary.</p><p></p><p>And yet a further example is this, from a former prolific poster on these boards, responding to one of my actual play posts:</p><p></p><p></p><p>From my (non-gamist) point of view, the following response captures some of the relevant differences in possible dimensions of meaningfulness:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is why I like the fact that, from the point of view of Gygaxian gamism, 4e is such a cakewalk, with all that plot protection, and lack of operational resource management, etc. It means that the importance of operational decision-making is reduced (less scope for gamist priorities to take over) and room is therefore created for thematically-driven decision-making.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5782231, member: 42582"] But this all turns on "clearly". Examples include things like in classic D&D play, having two mappers so that if one gets swallowed by a Lurker Above the party still has a copy of the map. Or the ToH story about the guy who, teleported into the three lever pit, stood on two levers before operating the third, so as to avoid fallling down any further pit that was opened up. These choices become obvious in retrospect, but that just puts pressure on the Gygaxian GM to come up with new challenges and puzzles, and the players to come up with new solutions. Another example of the usage of "meaningful choice" that I find fairly common is the idea that players should occasionally be presented with overwhelming encounters, so they can learn to judge their PCs' prospects and flee when necessary. And yet a further example is this, from a former prolific poster on these boards, responding to one of my actual play posts: From my (non-gamist) point of view, the following response captures some of the relevant differences in possible dimensions of meaningfulness: This is why I like the fact that, from the point of view of Gygaxian gamism, 4e is such a cakewalk, with all that plot protection, and lack of operational resource management, etc. It means that the importance of operational decision-making is reduced (less scope for gamist priorities to take over) and room is therefore created for thematically-driven decision-making. [/QUOTE]
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"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room
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