D&D General Mike Mearls' blog post about RPG generations

[payn]

On the topic of agendas, I think the "casual player doesnt have one" is not entirely accurate. What I think is that a lot of casual players dont have the terminology or ever given it much thought below the surface. Most will just say they like playing a game and telling a story. If you sit down and really dig into it with them, you would likely discover their agenda underneath the surface of just enjoying a game.

 

[Minigiant]

Ja. He clearly seems to be referring to the Hickman Revolution, when TSR's primary design orientation shifted to more heroic arc focused and less treasure-hunting. Culminating in 2E relegating XP for treasure to an optional rule.

1. Start to 1983: Treasure hunting Simulation
2. 1984-1990: Heroic Adventure Simulation
3. 1990-1999: Setting Emulation
4. 2000-2019: PC based Adventure Simulation
5. 2008-2013: Heroic Tactical Game
6. 2014-
7. 2024- Heroic Fiction First
8. 2024- Cleaner
9. Treasure hunting Simulation

I don't necessarily think it needs to be a "rules-heavy" game. Dungeon World isn't rules-heavy. It's smaller than D&D, significantly so. But it does have rules you're supposed to use. Those rules just cover a lot of ground relatively efficiently.

Dungeon World does it by having a clear vibe that both DM and Players to buy into as well as a clear catch all rules for resolution.

Many rules light games either have a very clear genre emulation or put more onus on the DM to fill the games.

 

[Distracted DM]

By the way, I would totally be on board with the 8 Aesthetics of Play if it managed to kill off the terms 'Simulationism' and 'Gamism' as well as the tribalist tendency some people have with identifying with these terms.

What's the issue with using those terms to describe design philosophies?

 

[Nikosandros]

WG4 (DON'T SAY IT!)

You don't like WG4? Or is that a joke about not pronouncing the name T...

 

[Micah Sweet]

Definitely not! My 33 year old "circles of hell" Nirvana t-shirt I wear to sleep in sometimes is far too threadbare to offer much padding.




Ja. He clearly seems to be referring to the Hickman Revolution, when TSR's primary design orientation shifted to more heroic arc focused and less treasure-hunting. Culminating in 2E relegating XP for treasure to an optional rule.

Better than it being removed entirely in the WotC editions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

By the way, I would totally be on board with the 8 Aesthetics of Play if it managed to kill off the terms 'Simulationism' and 'Gamism' as well as the tribalist tendency some people have with identifying with these terms.

But keeping "Narrativism" is ok?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

"Engage through mechanics" sounds like a really, really, really mild version of gamism. Which generally matches overall with this stuff.

I would say that I agree that gamism is sort of the....how to put it without giving it special privilege....how about "naive" agenda? Because, whatever else these things we call tabletop roleplaying games might be...they wear the "GAME" part on their sleeve. That's the thing everyone knows about, and it carries certain assumptions, especially in this world where we now get commercials about products for adults that are clearly "HEY FELLOW GAMERS, YOU GAME TOO RIGHT? WE ALL LOVE VIDEO GAMES HERE". (15-20 years ago, you'd NEVER have seen these kinds of commercials, it's kinda funny how I dropped out of watching TV for a while and the difference is stark.)

Once players get exposure to what TTRPGs can do, if they become enfranchised, they may decide they really like one agenda or another.

Yes, it is gamist and some examples I know about have being playing rpgs for 40 years. They have had plenty of time to become "enfranchised" they are just not that interested. They would probably be just as happy playing Gloomhaven or a coop online rpg.
Another gamist is about "winning D&D", they want to beat the encounters. Not super into rp. They think they are good at optimisation, but only in big numbers go up. They love 3e and Pathfinder because they prebuild their character but did not like 4e.
And probably would not like a game like Daggerheart. Too many decisions at the table and not enough in the character build.

This gets to the heart of my gripes with the Forge. At best the GNS are axes of a scatter plot with each player a point of in 3d space with some g, some n and some s.
The agendas of play oversimplifies and obscures that most people come at the thing with multiple of agendas in mind and may actually respond to different rules systems with different agenda priorities.

 

[Aldarc]

But keeping "Narrativism" is ok?

I don't particularly care about the name Narrativism either. I'd be more than willing for Narrativism to die as a term if Gamism and Simulationism also died as terms.

But would you be willing for all of these terms to die?

 

[Charlaquin]

By the way, I would totally be on board with the 8 Aesthetics of Play if it managed to kill off the terms 'Simulationism' and 'Gamism' as well as the tribalist tendency some people have with identifying with these terms.

Well it doesn’t use either of those terms, and people don’t seem to tie as much of their identities up into the aesthetics. Though that may be because it’s a much lesser-known model in the RPG sphere, perhaps because it’s not specific to RPGs. It was mainly about video games, but is applicable to all games (maybe less so to sports).

 

[Charlaquin]

At this point, I would be fine with a change of pace of people identifying as one of these eight aesthetics in a tribalistic manner than with the current G-N-S.

I mean, if they did, they’d be wildly missing the point of the model.