D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Micah Sweet]

I never knew there was a history to the term. We almost always used it literally in all of my groups. Very rarely it was used to justify some major disruption, but generally the rare problem players who would do something like that are found out by little things and and up out of the group.

Yup. Never came up as a negative in my games.

 

[pemerton]

The word "game" can be used in many ways, to describe lots of different human (and other animal) activities.

In the context of RPGs, which tend to be rather elaborate affairs, it suggests a structured leisure activity with a degree of intellectuality to it. The intellectuality establishes a resemblance to many board and card games, and most wargames, and a contrast with sports and other physical games. (Which is not to say that sports are stupid - but their physicality tends to be a more immediate trait of them than their intellectuality.)

The leisure tells us that it should be worthwhile for its own sake, probably fun. It's not just a means to an end. (This contrast with some, perhaps much, work.)

And the structure is the result of rules.

In mainstream RPGs, probably the most important rule is that which establishes two different participant roles: a "scene-setter" role (the GM) and a "character/protagonist controller" role (the player). The presence of these asymmetrical roles distinguishes RPGing, in its conventional form, from round-robin storytelling and even from a structured story-telling game like Penny for My Thoughts. It is the existence of the "player" role that makes the game a role-playing one: those in the "player" role are adopting the roles of characters in the situations that the GM presents.

Once we have these basics laid out, we can then see fairly clearly what the scope is for further rules:

*Rules that tell the GM what sorts of scenes to set (Moldvay Basic and Burning Wheel both have these; and they illustrate how these rules can take pretty different forms);

*Rules that tell the players what sorts of actions they can declare for their characters (we see lots of these frequently discussed, although often they are "soft" or informal rules);

*Rules for working out what happens when a player declares an action for their PC (it's well-known that these can vary a great deal across different games and different tables);

*Rules that tell the GM how much they are allowed to "interfere" with the players' characters (eg can the GM just declare that rocks fall and everybody dies?);

*Etc.​

The intellectual character of the activity means that many, maybe all, of these rules will tell one or more game participants to adopt or to deploy certain thoughts or ideas - eg "if this happens, then we all agree that <so-and-so's> character has died".

The rules that govern the GM are likely to be different from those that govern the players, given their different roles in the game. But there is no basis for thinking that the GM's orientation towards the rules of the game should be any different from that of the players. The rules set out how all participants are to engage in this structured leisure activity.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't follow. The phrase in and of itself just points to playing your character accurately.

Sure. Except for all those people who play disruptive or abusive characters or lone wolves and refuse to engage because "it's what their character would do."

Because you're not just playing your character. Unless it's a one-on-one game, or the characters are supposed to be antagonistic towards each other, you're playing a character who is working with a group--the other players. So make a character who will actually work with everyone else and isn't an expletive-deleted.

 

[Maxperson]

Most of the time when we attempt something IRL that carries risk, we know what the risks are at least to a general level.

Humans are very fallible and very often overlook factors that would adjust that risk, often significantly. Also fairly often there are unknowns that alter things and we can't factor those in. A more accurate statement would be...

"Most of the time when we attempt something IRL that carries risk, we believe we know what the risks are at least to a general level."

 

[Maxperson]

Quick google check finds no town, state, or country by that name. Should I expand my search to check planet names?

That's odd, but true! I would have thought someone somewhere would have named their town Reality. We have Hell, Weed, Toad Suck, Catfish Paradise, and even Scratch Ankle(probably lots of fleas there). Someone needs to found a new town and call it Reality.

 

[Faolyn]

No, I don't think that. I just really, really don't like a lot of the messaging that surrounds the "traditional GM" position. It takes great pains at every turn to emphasize just how absolute, just how unquestionable, just how hegemonic and complete the power of the GM is. At seemingly every turn, from where I sit, it seems presumed that player behavior is or will be bad unless harsh punishment is levied at the slightest missteps. At seemingly every turn, from where I sit, it seems presumed that players are actively hostile and need to be shut down, need to be put in their place, need to be reminded that they agreed to surrender all control to the GM, unless they drop the nuclear option. (And that option is always presented as being something trivially easy to do, easier than breathing, effortless and consequence-free, when I have personal experience that no, often it is not any of those things, and doing so can in fact harm your relationships with others and lead to ongoing hurt feelings.)

I think that GMs need to earn trust--something I was repeatedly told in this thread is untrue, which thus means that GMs simply deserve trust, indefinitely and without exception, unless they do something so horrifically egregious that you can just write them off as The Worst Person Ever. I think that GMs need to do work to maintain trust--again, something I was told isn't true, and yet in my experience that is true of genuinely 100% of all human relationships.

This is untrue. People have said to extend basic trust, not total. I said to look for patterns of behavior that pointed at actual maliciousness instead of miscommunication or incompetence. In our earliest conversation, about a hypothetical GM who wouldn't let your hypothetical character in to see a high priest, you refused to accept anything other than total capitulation with apology from the GM, because you refused to accept that anything the GM could say would ever be good enough for you. This wasn't the GM being untrustworthy; this was you making assumptions about the GM's integrity or plans and refusing to even entertain the idea that those assumptions might be wrong.

To you, the idea of the GM's position being "absolute" and "unquestionable" was so extreme that you wouldn't accept the idea of a GM having a reason for their action. To you, the GM not letting you in to see the priest even though you felt that you should have been allowed in was enough to prove that the GM was a terrible person abusing their position.

If you have, in fact, had GMs say anything along the lines of "have I mentioned how absolute my power is today, did you remember that everything you do is subject to my veto, hope you remembered that for any reason or no reason at all* I could decide everything you do simply fail," then you have a sucky GM and should leave the group, or take over the role so they don't GM anymore, or even take a vote or get them kicked out of the group. If you're assuming that GMs need to be power-checked or will invariably start to act like that--well, all I can say is even my worst GMs haven't acted like that, and I'm willing to bet that most people haven't encountered many like that, if any.

 

[Thomas Shey]

True, but those things are part of the Living World I like to see in games I play too.

I doubt you particularly like seeing it when its a deliberate brick thrown through the window. A lot of this stuff doesn't appear like things any sane character would do in the situations involved.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure. Except for all those people who play disruptive or abusive characters or lone wolves and refuse to engage because "it's what their character would do."

Because you're not just playing your character. Unless it's a one-on-one game, or the characters are supposed to be antagonistic towards each other, you're playing a character who is working with a group--the other players. So make a character who will actually work with everyone else and isn't an expletive-deleted.

In particular, if you've got a chaos gremlin player, its not like this behavior should never have been clear before they decided it was time to blow the situation up--but in some cases it at least was never visible on-screen to the extent to reveal that. But of course the play-sequence is presumably not every moment of interaction they've had with anyone else. But the consequence of sometimes rather selective playing "in-character" and the PC Glow effect often means the first time the rest of the group has any real tendency to react to it is when its already become a critical problem.

 

[Enrahim]

You are correct about my reading of Tuovinen. I see nothing in there that changes the previously-suggested boundaries between "narrativist" and "simulationist" play. All the types of "sim" play that Tuovinen identifies are play that Edwards's essays characterise as sim. And it is the contrast between "fidelity" and "proactivity" as aesthetic goals that remains core to the difference between these two approaches to RPGing.

I think these passages support my reading:

The earlier Simulationism: Right to Dream is much less obviously satisfactory; don’t take my word for it, but I get the sense that Ron’s detailed exegesis of mechanical rules systems (System Purism vs High Concept, etc.) is not usually considered a satisfactory answer to what Simulationism is, and, what’s worse, what justification it carries as a human endeavour. Sometimes it seems like Ron himself doesn’t really know, either. It’s no wonder that there’s perennial interest for fixing this part of the theoretical corpus.​

​

However, I just read said article anew prior to writing this one, and you know, I think it’s pretty close to spot on in many places. I mean, I’ll be rephrasing a lot in the following, and perhaps saying some things that Ron didn’t quite get to originally, but I have no complaints with the basic premise: Ron characterizes Simulationism as “heightening and focusing Exploration as the priority of play”, which, as you’ll come to see, is basically my conclusion on the matter. Ron also analyzes a wide variety of historical rpgs in the article, sharply observing their function; well worth the read.​

What Edwards calls "heightening and focusing Exploration as a priority of play" is what Tuovinen gets at in saying "Simulationist play expresses as heightened attention to the fiction". Above, I've shortened this to "fidellity" to the fictional material, in order to draw the contrast with narrativistic "proactivity.

So, when Tuovinen says that the "story hour" GM decides what play will be about, he means simply that the GM is the one who presents the story - where "the story" encompasses plot and theme ("legit fantasy literature").

What makes this sort of play "simulationist" is because, in play, the orientation of the players is towards coming to know, in detail, via the play of their PCs, this story that the GM is presenting to them. In Edwards's terminology, they are "exploring" the GM's story. In Tuovinen's, they are paying "heightened attention" to the GM's story. Part of how this heightened attention is manifested is by the way the players declare actions for their PCs. And the pay-off is that, by declaring those actions and having the GM respond, they are able to learn about the story in a way that is different from reading it in a novel or watching it as a film. To speak a little bit metaphorically, but not hopelessly metaphorically, they can "slow down" the good bits, they can "walk around" a set or scene to learn more about it, they can ask more questions of the antagonists to try and grasp their motivations, etc.

There can be simulationist play that is not as GM-centred or GM-driven as "story hour". Some types of "dollhouse" play, or "substantial exploration", might fit into this category. Some Ars Magic play might fit this description - playing out the life of the Covenant. Or some Traveller play - there can even be GM-less Traveller play, where the players roll for the worlds, the cargoes, the encounters, etc. I don't know Ars Magica especially well, but with the Traveller example I think it can probably drift into "gamism" fairly easily (shifting from "what happens to our trading enterprise?" to "can we keep our trading enterprise afloat?") but that need not be inevitable.

I don't see why. The GM provides the plot and the theme - that is, what play will be about. The players decide, via their action declarations for their PCs, how to investigate that "aboutness" - they spend more time chatting to the Knights of Solamnia learning their history and their view of the Oath and the Measure; or they spend less time with the Elves because they think they're boring, but they really get into the stuff with the Gully Dwarves; etc.

As I've posted, this interactivity is crucial to the difference between playing a RPG - even a "story hour" RPG - and reading a book or watching a film.

As Tuovinen explains, for this to work it requires that "the freedoms you give to the player are carefully constrained". This is why he has a discussion of how to railroad, and of the silliness/futility of trying to pretend a story hour is not a railroad - as he says,

You’re literally only bothering with the railroad tracks because you don’t want to waste time preparing complex content and then just have the other players skip it; it’s much better to take the track as a given and focus on how to make your content worth the trip.​

This is not incoherent in my view, but it does require abandoning some reflexive shibboleths: the players aren't at liberty to do whatever they want; they are under an expectation/obligation to go along with the GM's story; the GM is, conversely, under an obligation to give them good stuff!

In my own RPGing, I can think of three different sorts of "story hour" experience. (All as a player; I don't recall ever having tried to GM a "story hour"). I've done CoC (and some other BRP) one-shots, GMed by terrific GMs who are able to bring the fiction to life, make it clear what the players are expected to do, facilitate the players engaging with and contributing to the colour, and deliver a rewarding story pay-off. (I will come back to these one-shots below; but first . . . )

I've done a long "story hour" campaign which had many players (my memory is 6, plus the GM) where - at least for me - the focus of play was more on the interaction between the PCs, and the relationships we built up and our expectations and orientations towards the setting; rather than the GM's story. The game ended when the GM - seemingly (i) having lost control of his own material, and (ii) wanting to disrupt the accreted layers of meaning from what we as players had done - teleported everyone 100 years into the future. That killed all the meaning in the game, and killed the game.

And then I've done multiple "story hours" where the story is weak, and/or the GM is not very deft, and the experience was a more-or-less tedious slog. These games fizzle out in a session or three.

Coming back to the one-shots: there is what I regard as a narrativist variant on the one-shot "story hour", where a good chunk of play resembles "story hour" as the GM builds up the situation; but then, at the moment of crisis, the players need to get "proactive" to decide how to resolve things. Some Prince Valiant scenarios have this character - eg The Blue Cloak and even moreso The Crimson Bull. (An actual play report on both of those is here: Prince Valiant actual play) And I've played convention one-shots, using Stormbring/Elric and maybe also a couple of other BRP variants, that have this character.

Using the "aboutness" language, in these sorts of scenarios the GM introduces the subject-matter of thematic judgement, but it is the players who, at the moment of crisis, actually make the judgement. The analogue, in DL, would be if the players got to express a judgement over whether the return of the gods is a good or bad thing; or whether the dragon armies should be helped or hindered; etc.

I don't think your (1) is correct, at least as I've understood creative agenda from the Forge "tradition" (I use scare quotes because I'm not sure we can have genuine traditions of thought that are only 20 years old). In the Forge usage, creative agenda manifests over periods of play (hours, sessions), and is understood in terms of what does this group of RPGers take to be the "pay-off" of their play?

Subject to that, I think your 2 to 4 are uncontroversial: creative agenda is a group-level phenomenon, and if the participants are looking for different sorts of pay-off then play is incoherent by definition (in the technical sense of "incoherent") and likely to be unstable in the real world - eg those looking for simulationist pay-off will regard those looking for gamist pay-off as "munchkins" or "power gamers", and will regard those looking for narrativist pay-off as "pushy" types who tread on the GM's authority.

Personally I wouldn't try and analyse this is in terms of incoherence of creative agenda, but rather poor use of the RPG medium.

If you read Edwards and Tuovinen, you can see that - most of the time, unless they introduce express qualification - they are talking about RPGs with pretty mainstream role allocations. One participant - the GM - introduces/presents situations/scenes to the other participants; and those other participants - the players - control the actions of characters who are present in those situations, thereby shaping how the situations unfold. It is this distribution of authority that permits "story hour" to play out differently from just having the GM recite a story.

The use of over-powerful NPCs, which prevent the players from playing their role, is thus just poor RPGing, a clumsy use of the medium. Similarly - and setting aside absurdist RPGing like (perhaps) Toon and Over the Edge - introducing significant contradictions into the fiction isn't a creative agenda issue. It's just poor use of the medium.

But in some "story hour" or "substantial exploration" play a type of powerful NPC might be important: eg for revealing the rails, in a "story hour" (say, by revealing plot threads); and eg by teleporting the PCs here and there in a "substantial exploration" game, thus actually permitting the enjoyment of the material to take place. (In a sci-fi game the teleporting NPC could be replaced by a starship, or a TARDIS, or similar.)

In other words, not every bit of unsatisfactory RPG play is due to creative agenda malfunction. In the fizzled "story hours" I described above, the issue wasn't really creative agenda incoherence, as that the material was not interesting.

To me, this simply comes back to Tuovinen's injunction: "respect yourself, respect your friends". Is the stuff interesting or not? If the stuff is interesting, ego is not a problem. It it's boring, modesty won't save it.

Again, I don't really see this as a creative agenda issue.

Thank you so incredibly much! I think identifying my assumption number 1, that creative agenda is (or can be) defined on singular actions is the key difference in assumptions we had going in. I think all the other differences, including our difference in understanding the scope of change stems from this.

Given my impression you have been more directly engaged with the underlying source material than me, I defer to you in regard to what is the intended meaning by Tuovinen. I find everything you have said so far to make perfect sense, and I 100% agree with it when removing that assumption.

If you care to indulge me a little bit more I then would really like to pick your head on one more thing to try to prevent future miscommunication. The way I now try to conceptualise the situation I had in mind is that the emergent creative agenda of play is tied to what sort of reward cycle that play can provide. For the GM bringing the material to the table seeking the reward of (positive) feedback on their self expression, story time play provide an unsatisfactory experience as the players engage in just investigating it rather than "evaluating" it. However as they are not actually disrupting play despite their dissatisfaction we still look at simulationist play.

This is paralell to the situation where the GM brings poor content only they themselves are interested in exploring. In this case play could still express SIM, but the players would be dissatisfied with the experience, but might still play along hence not disrupting it.

My question is: What would be the aproperiate terminology to use for this phenomenom when talking with someone assuming forge parlance like yourself? I thought incoherence was the word, but it wasn't? This seem like an important enough concept, and easy enough to confuse with incoherence the way I did that I would guess there is some established terminology around this phenomenom?

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

Sure. Except for all those people who play disruptive or abusive characters or lone wolves and refuse to engage because "it's what their character would do."

Because you're not just playing your character. Unless it's a one-on-one game, or the characters are supposed to be antagonistic towards each other, you're playing a character who is working with a group--the other players. So make a character who will actually work with everyone else and isn't an expletive-deleted.

Anyone familiar with the variant, "That is not what YOUR character would do."?

I once played 5e with someone who would often say something along those lines... during combat...RP...leveling...