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"Gamism," The Forge, and the Elephant in the Room
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5802681" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The standard approach to narrativist play relies just as much on the GM/player divide as does Gygax's D&D. It's not "group storytelling". In fact, the whole idea is to get a story <em>without</em> group storytelling.</p><p></p><p>The actual jobs given to the GM and the players are a bit different from at a Gygaxian table, and very different from at a "storyteller" table.</p><p></p><p>Yes. I've been GMing in roughly the way that I do now since I started running an Oriental Adventures game in 1986. But reading the Forge, and reading some of the game rulebooks that I learned about there, has helped my GMing a lot. It was also good for WotC, because it also encourageed me make the switch from GMing Rolemaster to GMing 4e! (Not directly - I don't think there's a lot of 4e play at the Forge - but by giving me the ideas to appreciate the ways in which 4e's design would help me get what I wanted out of a gonzo fantasy RPG without having to push against the system.)</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure you can tell how a player will react to different GMing approaches unless you play with them (or at least know them well in some other fashion). I use it to help develop my own GMing technqiues.</p><p></p><p>Speaking for myself, I use theory to help develop my gut-feelings. But my gut-feelings can also tell me when something is not working. For my first few years as a GM (basically up until Oriental Adventures came out) I read Lewis Pulsipher, Gary Gygax, and similar sorts of stuff in Dragon and White Dwarf and the AD&D rulebooks, and I tried to run a game like they said I should - emphasising operational play, the need to make the players <em>earn </em>their XP, keep careful track of time and use time as another resource to challenge the players, etc - but (i) I wasn't very good at it, and (ii) my players didn't really seem to enjoy it. They enjoyed playing their PCs, and pursuing their PCs' goals within the imaginary world, and they wanted me to present those PCs with the challenges that would let the players explore and develop their PCs in the ways that interested them.</p><p></p><p>Even though now, when I look back at Oriental Adventures I see a game aiming mostly at a type of high concept sim play (especially with its Honour mechanics), at the time it was liberating for me - in part because of the way it gave the players more freedom to build PCs in accordance with their own conceptions of them (via the proficiency and build-your-own martial arts rules), in part because its classes and races were more obviously embedded in a world of clear thematic values (the loyal samurai, the wandering bushi, the devoted kensai, etc). And hardly an iron spike or 10 pole in sight!</p><p></p><p>My gut feel led me to the sort of RPGing I enjoy, and as an adult I became familiar with a much wider range of RPGs, but The Forge really helped me hone in on what my preferences were, how different mechanics worked with them or against them, etc etc.</p><p></p><p>This I'm in two minds about.</p><p></p><p>Of course most people don't want to play the actual avant-garde games like Nicotine Girls or My Life With Master. I don't run those games either. I run 4e D&D - in its themes and tropes, it's a mainstream gonzo fantasy RPG.</p><p></p><p>But I'm not entirely persuaded that only very few normal RPGers like playing a game in which player protagonism, and the genuine shaping of the story thereby, is to the fore. I'll admit that the popularity of adventure paths does tell against this. But I also think that there does seem to be some genuine but fairly widespread ignorance of techniques - it is extremely common on these boards, for example, to see post after post written on the assumption that the only alternative to a sandbox is some sort of adventure-path style railroad.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, there also seems to be a big love among many RPGers of a pre-packaged story of which they can be a part (by playing their PCs). For these people, presumably narrativism does have little appeal.</p><p></p><p>Like I said, I'm in two minds. I think 4e was an interesting attempt to produce a very narrativist-friendly game, that could also be used for light gamist play, and that (despite its departures from traditional D&D) retained many features of classic RPGs - powers, hit points, and other class features that blur the line between game and metagame, rather than calling it out in the more blatant fashion of some Forge-y games.</p><p></p><p>With 4e apparently having collapsed, I think it will be a while before we see something like that again! I think it's back to mainstream sim for us!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5802681, member: 42582"] The standard approach to narrativist play relies just as much on the GM/player divide as does Gygax's D&D. It's not "group storytelling". In fact, the whole idea is to get a story [I]without[/I] group storytelling. The actual jobs given to the GM and the players are a bit different from at a Gygaxian table, and very different from at a "storyteller" table. Yes. I've been GMing in roughly the way that I do now since I started running an Oriental Adventures game in 1986. But reading the Forge, and reading some of the game rulebooks that I learned about there, has helped my GMing a lot. It was also good for WotC, because it also encourageed me make the switch from GMing Rolemaster to GMing 4e! (Not directly - I don't think there's a lot of 4e play at the Forge - but by giving me the ideas to appreciate the ways in which 4e's design would help me get what I wanted out of a gonzo fantasy RPG without having to push against the system.) I'm not sure you can tell how a player will react to different GMing approaches unless you play with them (or at least know them well in some other fashion). I use it to help develop my own GMing technqiues. Speaking for myself, I use theory to help develop my gut-feelings. But my gut-feelings can also tell me when something is not working. For my first few years as a GM (basically up until Oriental Adventures came out) I read Lewis Pulsipher, Gary Gygax, and similar sorts of stuff in Dragon and White Dwarf and the AD&D rulebooks, and I tried to run a game like they said I should - emphasising operational play, the need to make the players [I]earn [/I]their XP, keep careful track of time and use time as another resource to challenge the players, etc - but (i) I wasn't very good at it, and (ii) my players didn't really seem to enjoy it. They enjoyed playing their PCs, and pursuing their PCs' goals within the imaginary world, and they wanted me to present those PCs with the challenges that would let the players explore and develop their PCs in the ways that interested them. Even though now, when I look back at Oriental Adventures I see a game aiming mostly at a type of high concept sim play (especially with its Honour mechanics), at the time it was liberating for me - in part because of the way it gave the players more freedom to build PCs in accordance with their own conceptions of them (via the proficiency and build-your-own martial arts rules), in part because its classes and races were more obviously embedded in a world of clear thematic values (the loyal samurai, the wandering bushi, the devoted kensai, etc). And hardly an iron spike or 10 pole in sight! My gut feel led me to the sort of RPGing I enjoy, and as an adult I became familiar with a much wider range of RPGs, but The Forge really helped me hone in on what my preferences were, how different mechanics worked with them or against them, etc etc. This I'm in two minds about. Of course most people don't want to play the actual avant-garde games like Nicotine Girls or My Life With Master. I don't run those games either. I run 4e D&D - in its themes and tropes, it's a mainstream gonzo fantasy RPG. But I'm not entirely persuaded that only very few normal RPGers like playing a game in which player protagonism, and the genuine shaping of the story thereby, is to the fore. I'll admit that the popularity of adventure paths does tell against this. But I also think that there does seem to be some genuine but fairly widespread ignorance of techniques - it is extremely common on these boards, for example, to see post after post written on the assumption that the only alternative to a sandbox is some sort of adventure-path style railroad. On the other hand, there also seems to be a big love among many RPGers of a pre-packaged story of which they can be a part (by playing their PCs). For these people, presumably narrativism does have little appeal. Like I said, I'm in two minds. I think 4e was an interesting attempt to produce a very narrativist-friendly game, that could also be used for light gamist play, and that (despite its departures from traditional D&D) retained many features of classic RPGs - powers, hit points, and other class features that blur the line between game and metagame, rather than calling it out in the more blatant fashion of some Forge-y games. With 4e apparently having collapsed, I think it will be a while before we see something like that again! I think it's back to mainstream sim for us! [/QUOTE]
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