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

[AlViking]

This is probably the silliest bit about this whole branch of the discussion. What it says to me is that people try to pick locks simply to pick them, and for no other purpose.

How is it "silly"? If I try to open my front door and accidentally use the wrong key the lock doesn't open. That's it. The reason I was trying to open my front door doesn't matter to the lock.

 

[pemerton]

Holy smoke! @clearstream , @Maxperson , @pemerton . I am tagging you because you seem to be the ones most into the GNS part of this discussion. In light of pemerton's very enlightening correction of me I suddenly realized there is a seemingly obvious and simple model for play that has a structure that seem very close to my new understanding of GNS. I would be extremely happy if you try to evaluate the merit of this model, and separately the proposed connection to GNS.

1: Play starts as the participants align on a question to address.
2: In order to address it the participants need to establish:
2a: What answers are possible?
2b: What answers are preferable?
3: Which of the possible and preferable answers should we establish?

Step 2a and 2b can be done in any order, or back and forth (like suggest a preferred solution, then evaluate if it is possible, and if not go back to find a new preferred solution)
Each of step 2a, 2b and 3 can spawn new questions that need to be addressed using this structure before returning to this initial question.
Each of 2a 2b and 3 can be addressed trough (role)play.
Once the root question has been resolved, the group need to align on a new question to resolve.

Constructed example of play:
We are having a traditional setup of D&D. The DM describes the characters entering an underground library. The implicit question is are they going to do anything meaningful there, or if not where to go next?
Play proceeds to the players asking question like "what sort of books are here?" "I am looking for other exits" "I search for traps on the sliding bookshelf secret door we found" This play revolves around 2a, trying to figure out what is possible.

After having found that the bookcases only contain boring fan-fiction of known works, there is a locked (untraped?) door with sounds of small feet running around behind and a secret door with a nasty trap they were unable to disarm the characters enter a heated debate over which way they should go next. The fighter want to open the door, while the rogue want to try a long shot at triggering the trap without anyone getting hurt. They bring up relevant experiences from their background supporting their stance. This play revolve around 2b, trying to figure out which option is preferred.

They finally agree to try the door if the rouge manage to pick the lock, otherwise go for the trap plan. The rouge describes how they reluctantly still are doing their best with the tools; the cleric is casting the mandatory guidance, and the fighter make a remark it would have been nice to have a bard around. They then roll a check, and it show the open lock succeeds. This play was quite quick, but revolved around step 3, figuring out which option actually happens.

As the core question is resolved, a new question need to be brought into play. The GM describes how a pack of starving giant rats swarm the PCs clearly intent on getting as much meat as they can get from them. The players immediately responds with lethal force. The question is what will the outcome of the conflict be? No time is wasted playing trying to determine the possible and preferred outcomes - we go straight to playing out the resolution!

The GNS connection
I find the GNS analogy obvious, but as I was the one that came up with this I recognize that might not be the case for everyone. So I will try to spell it out. I think play revolving around figuring out possible solutions correspond to play with a simulation Creative Agenda. Play to evaluate preferences correspond to play with narrative Creative Agenda. Play to resolve correspond to play with gamist Creative Agenda. Incoherence happens when there isn't a common understanding about what mode of play we are currently in - to take a well known example from a different setting: When someone start evaluating while the rest are still engaged in brainstorming.

The setting of the question I guess corresponds to framing the scene. This is generally not decided trough play but rather a function of the social contract. In case of disputes here, using meta channel would be the appropriate way to resolve those.

It seem obvious that there is a correspondence between various components of a game system and which of these modes of play it is supposed to support. For instance the D&D skill system is obviously useful for the resolution step, and some of it might support the determination of possible action play trough modulating what info the DM should reveal. But it is at least for me really hard to see how it could meaningfully be used to establish preferred outcomes beyond possibly some contrived examples. On the other hand the while specifying the ideals element is clearly useful for informing play around establishing preferred outcomes, it is hard for me to see how it can affect the possible outcomes, and appear to only have any relevancy for resolution play indirectly via the inspiration system.

The main difference between the models I can see is that my attempt doesn't introduce any terminology usually associated with with human psychology. This mean that any connection between the preferences of the individual players and the mode of play might become more tricky to formulate and recognize. But given how this language appear to have fueled a lot of hostility and misconceptions since the start (including mine), I think the extra cost of having to try to be explicit about any claims of relationship between these modes of play and player mindset might be very much worth it.

Another difference is that this model emphasizes the way the different modes of play interact and can coexist in the scope of a prolonged session of play. That do not appear to be commonly addressed in GNS, that rather has each segment of coherent play as it's scope of interest.

Finally these two combine to remove the inflammatory interpretation that any game supporting more than one of these modes are flawed, due to the system support not closely matching player preference. Rather it might be the opposite, a game providing support for all of these modes could be easily recognized as preferable for someone seeking a versatile and varied experience from their gaming. While others that are tired of spending time on resolution and just want emotionally meaningful stuff to happen might want to look into games that make step 2a and 3 quick and easy while providing support for making step 2b rich and dynamic.

I think your example, of the PCs in the library, is something that would come up in exploratory-oriented play (say, "substantial exploration" sim or in a lower-stakes moment of "story hour" sim) or in gamist play that accepts a heavy degree of exploration.

You describe the players asking questions in order to try and establish what, if anything, is at stake in the situation - it turns out to be very little, other than a choice of where to go next. In this sort of play, choosing which door to open is - at the functional/structural level - choosing what scene to have next, although that choice may be a bit of a blind one: here, the players know that one scene open to them involves tiny feet, but will they attack or flee or do something else? and they know that the other scene open to them involves a trap, but not what else it might involve.

The players then weigh up the choice between these two scenes, which in the fiction is the PCs weighing the choice between the two portals. Risk (the trap) is a major consideration in this, but they also make reference to elements of PC background. The more important the participants regard that background stuff to be - ie the choice made should conform to it or at least in some fashion fit with it - the more likely it is that their overall agenda is a "sim" one; whereas if the background stuff is more like a colourful fig leave placed over a discussion about risk and potential rewards, then it seems more likely the overall creative agenda is gamist.

The players end up "activating" the tiny feet scene, which involves the GM framing them into a fight with rats. If the participants regard this as a "high point" or crux of play, that would be consistent with their overall agenda being a gamist one - and the scene in the library was a preliminary thing that led up to this. I think this is a fairly common way of playing D&D.

I don't think your example demonstrates a movement between creative agendas across moments of play. As I've said, without more detail about the participants' motivations and enjoyment we can't pin it down as simulationism or gamism; but I don't see any signs of "narrativist" play in what you describe. There seem to be no player-determined stakes, no "a) rising conflict b) across a moral line c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players" (the quoted phrase is Baker's).

The following is not quite a library scene, but it has some resemblance to one - it's from 4e D&D play:

In our last session, the PCs had escaped into the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, which had been warded with a Hallowed Temple ritual. Because she is a lich, and hence undead, Jenna Osterneth could not follow them in. Which was good for them, because they were out of encounter powers and had 3 surges across the party, and multiple bloodied PCs including the fighter/cleric on 4 hp.

Their reason for being there was that the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen - like other lost things - had ended up on The Barrens in the Abyss. And Osterneth, as an agent of Vecna, had gone there to try and learn the Raven Queen's true name from her dead (mortal) body. The PCs were there to stop her - but with various degrees of enthusiasm, because they don't all exactly approve of her and her growing divine power. (Even though nearly everything they do seems to increase this!)

The Mausoleum had three areas: an entrance room, with a large statue and modest altar; a set of stairs with slightly elevated ramps on either side leading down to the principal room - very large (about 90' x 50') with a huge statue and two pools of water, corrupted by the Abyss; and then a smaller set of stairs leading down to the burial room, with a large altar and five statues and 4 side rooms (the sarcophagus room, the room with canopic jars, the grave goods room and the treasure room).

The PCs started in the entrance, where they took a short rest. This let them regain encounter powers, allowed the paladin to heal up to full from his ring, and then allowed some healing involving sharing the surges around the party (the ranger-cleric has the Shared Healing feat; our table convention for short rests and healing powers is to allow spending regained encounter healing at the end of the rest). They studied the murals and reliefs in the entrance chamber, which showed the Raven Queen's victories during her life, becoming the most powerful ruler in the world (crushing her enemies, being adulated by her subjects, etc - I told the players to think of Egyptian tomb paintings, Mesopotamian reliefs, and similar).

The invoker/wizard and ranger-cleric (having the best Perception in the party) then heard a slithering sound on the ramp. With his ring that grants darkvision the invoker/wizard could see a guardian naga. And the sphinx then came out, and told them that they must answer a riddle before they could pass further into the Mausoleum. I had mixed together abilities from a MM and MM2 sphinx, so they could either choose between accepting the challenge but suffering a debuff until answering it; or rejecting the challenge but granting the sphinx a power up. They chose to accept.

I wrote the riddle a few weeks ago on the train:

In the green garden, a sapling grows,
In time the tree dies, a seed remains.
In the grim garden shall that seed be sown,
Among the black poplars a new tree, a new name:

Shade shall it cast,
Frost endure,
Dooms outlast,
Pride cure.​

Appropriately enough, it was the player of the ridiculously zealous paladin of the Raven Queen who first conjectured that the subject of the riddle was the Raven Queen herself - first her mortal life, than her life after death in which she took on a new name ("the Raven Queen") and took control of the Shadowfell and death, of winter, and of fate.

When the players had reached agreement on this, they offered their answer. The sphinx accepted it, but insisted that they also tell him whose pride will be cured. After generic answers ("everyone dies"), which did not really satisfy the sphinx, the fighter/cleric answered "Us". The sphinx replied "Well, yes, you," and this was the clue for the player of the invoker/wizard, who answered "The gods" - because the fighter/cleric is now God of Jailing, Pain and Torture (having taken up Torog's portfolio). The sphinx then allowed them to pass down the stairs to the principal room, to venerate the dead queen.

In the principal room, they identified the Abyssal corruptions in the pools, and used a Tide of the First Storm (to summon cleansing water) enhanced by other water-quelling magic (sucked out of a Floating Shield) to purify one, so that they could safely pass it to get to the doorway to the burial room. The mural in the principal room - also a magical hazard if they got too close, which they made sure not to - depicted the mortal queen's magical achievements - including defeating a glabrezu on the Feywild, and travelling to the land of the dead (at that time, a land of black poplars ruled by Nerull).

The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler.

I also decided a further complication was needed: so I explained to the player of the fighter/cleric (who is now the god of imprisonment, and also has a theme that gives him a connection to primordial earth) that he could sense the Elemental Chaos surging up through the earth of the mortal world (because (i) Torog can no longer hold it back, and (ii) the Abyss, having been sealed, is no longer sucking it down the other way); and as a result, an ancient abomination sealed in the earth had been awakened from its slumber and would soon makes it way up to the surface of the world. I then filled them in on my version of the Tarrasque (the MM version with MM3 damage and a few tweaks to help it with action economy). This created suitable consternation, and was taken as another sign of the impending Dusk War.

At this point there was much debate: at least an hour at the table, I would say. They couldn't agree on what they wanted to do - destroy the body (mabye by bringing in the sphere of annihilation, which had been left outside when they fled into the Mausoleum); perhaps destroy the whole Mausoleum; or, as the fighter/cleric advocated, learn her name first so they could use that to bargain with her and compel cooperation without her getting to acquire new domains.

The guardians - who could understand all this, given their Supernal tongue, and could follow it, given their high INT and WIS and Arcana and Religion and Insight - insisted that no Sphere of Annihilation might be brought into the Mausoleum, and that the remains of the dead queen, and her burial goods, not be disturbed. The PCs weren't wanting to start any conflict at this point, and at least three of them (paladin, ranger-cleric and invoker/wizard) were happy with this in any event. So they with the guardian's permission they went down the last set of stairs to the burial room.

This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc.

More discussion and debate ensued. Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.

Asking the guardians confirmed that they also know her name, though will not speak it, as that would be an insult to the dead.

The new plan arrived at - now that it seemed that sequestering or destroying the body wouldn't be enough, and would require fighting the guardians also - was to surround the whole thing in a Magic Circle vs "all" while the collapse of the Abyss takes the whole thing. They thought the Circle would have a good chance of keeping out level 40 or so beings (given the invoker/wizard's high Arcana bonus). But this takes 1 minute per square, and a quick calculation showed the circle would need to be about 30 squares radius, for around 3000 squares area, or 50 hours. (I think during the session someone might have mucked up by a factor of 10, because 20 days was bandied about as the time required - either way too long to do without first dealing with Osterneth.)

So the discussion then shifted to defeating Osterneth. The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it, as the necessary cost of preventing Osterneth coming in and defiling the body.

The sorcerer then powered up the Chariot with a quickened version of his Enhance Vessel ritual, making it speed 10 (he spent extra residuum after a successful DC 32 Arcana check). And they pushed open the doors and launched an assault on Osterneth, who was still waiting outside.

This ended up being fairly quick to resolve and went the PCs' way. The basic strategy was to have the fighter (on the back of the sorcerer-driven Chariot) drive Jenna to the ground with a prone-ing attack, and then to keep her pinned there. (Which he did via a "death from above" charge where, on a hit, I let him add half the 30 damage he took to his attack vs Osterneth.) A crit from each of the ranger-cleric, the sorcerer, the invoker/wizard and the paladin (wielding the Sword of Kas to get bonuses vs a Vecna-ite and former ally) helped things along. The invoker/wizard was dropped to zero, but was able to Reverse Time and come back with more hp than before and another action (because the ability changes position in the initiative sequence).

Reduced to zero hp, Osterneth turned to dust - but will reform in 1 day by her phylactery, the location of which is not known to the PCs.

The other thing the invoker/wizard was doing was trying to call back the Sphere of Annihilation - which had been called down towards the heart of the Abyss. What exactly the effects are, of having the Sphere go to the heart and then be called back, will have to be discovered next session! Though I suspect the session may start with an extended rest.

There is a significant "moral line" here - the fate of the Raven Queen, which is intimately bound up with the fate of the world and her (future, possible) rulership of it. There is also a more local "moral line" - courtesy and justice to the guardians of her mausoleum - although given that the fate of the world is (in part) a question of law vs chaos, the local moral line is to an extent a local expression of the grander one: to invade the mausoleum and kill its guardians would be a victory for chaos over order.

The players' debate, as their characters, about what action to take draws upon considerations of their backgrounds and commitments - three are Raven Queen devotees, but two are not: the fighter/cleric who has become the god of jailing, and the sorcerer. These two are hoping for a different future from one where the Raven Queen rules over everything, and this informs the choices that they advocate for.

The vision of the tarrasque escalates the conflict across the grander moral line: the PCs want to save the world from destruction by chaos, but are conflicted about the way doing so will enhance the power of the Raven Queen, and thus further her own ambitions of rulership.

Risk is not an irrelevant consideration for these players: for instance, they have to deal with Osterneth before they can put the Magic Circle around the mausoleum. But it is not their principal concern; and the presence of Osterneth is itself a manifestation of a different, intersecting, moral line: the relationship between knowledge, secrets and power. The players end up choosing secrecy of the Raven Queen's name - which, again, links back to the grand moral line as this enhances the Raven Queen's power even as it thwarts Vecna's ambitions.

This is an example, from actual play, of "narrativist" D&D. There is plenty of exploration (of setting, predominantly) and colour (all the mausoleum details); and the system requires fairly intricate decision-making by the players for their PCs to succeed (4e D&D is, fairly notoriously, not "light" - and you can see decisions about eg how to spend powers like Tide of the First Storm, and how to expend resources like the Floating Shield). But the situation has been framed (by me, as GM) having regard to player-established priorities for these PCs; and the decisions that the players make for their PCs express and relate to the rising conflict across the moral lines that I've described. That's how we can see that it is "narrativist" play.

 

[pemerton]

If there are ways of arranging play that indeed do include the mechanics used in play, it's hard to see how that cannot amount to recognising certain mechanics (or arrangements of them) as better or less well supporting certain interests.

Edwards wrote this over 20 years ago:

[Social Contract [Exploration [Creative Agenda --> [Techniques]]]]. The panoply of Techniques being employed over time either satisfy or fail to satisfy one or more Creative Agendas. Techniques include IIEE, Drama/Karma/Fortune, search time & handling time, narration apportioning, reward system, points of contact, character components, scene framing, currency among the character components, and much more. Each of these terms represents a range of potential play-methods. I consider the two most important Techniques to be reward system and IIEE (see glossary).

Techniques may be thought of as directly expressing the more abstract concept of System (way up in Exploration), except that System doesn't exist all by itself - it's fully integrated with the other components of Exploration. But if you keep that in mind, then yes, the arrow represented by Creative Agenda can indeed be "shot" from the bow of System.

Techniques do not map 1:1 to Creative Agenda, but combinations of Techniques do support or obstruct Creative Agendas.​

Similarly to my remark not far upthread about Edwards's "skewer" metaphor, I don't find the "arrow shot from the bow" metaphor very helpful either. But the remark that combinations of techniques support or obstruct particular "creative agendas" seems unremarkable to me.

Edwards gives various examples across various blogs/essays and forum posts. I've posted some of those in this thread. For instance, fortune in the middle is not an ideal technique for simulationism, because it defers exploration. The history of D&D play and responses to D&D bear this out: the systems that Tuovinen characterises as "mechanical simulationism*, which overlaps pretty closely with what Edwards calls "purist for system simulationism" and which used to be called "process simulation" on ENW during the era of 4e D&D discussions, all abandon FitM (see eg RM and RQ as paradigms); while D&D play that retains FitM resolution (ie via the hp combat system) tends to use colourful GM narration (often factoring in the degree of success of a hit roll, and the extent of a damage roll in combination with the degree of hp ablation it produces) to fill in the "gap" that the mechanic itself leaves.

In the other direction, complicated duration tracking (which in FRPGing comes up most often for spells and for healing) can be a good fit for some sorts of "simulationist" play, and for some sorts of "gamist" play (ie that emphasises resource management), but is generally a poor fit for "narrativist" play. (And the evolution of Burning Wheel demonstrates this, with later rules elements tending to shed the duration tracking that was found in the earlier versions; and Torchbearer 2e abandoning duration tracking altogether in favour of abstract "turns" and "phases").

That's not to say that you can't do narrativism with durations (see eg my own vanilla narrativist play of AD&D and RM); just that it tends to get in the way. And if it is combined with other techniques that also draw the effort and attention of play away from the "player-authored rising conflict across a moral line" and onto thematically neutral aspects of the fiction (eg details of architecture or furniture, where these don't carry thematic weight) then the obstruction caused by the combination of techniques may grow.

I wouldn't expect any of this to be controversial.

 

[hawkeyefan]

How is it "silly"? If I try to open my front door and accidentally use the wrong key the lock doesn't open. That's it. The reason I was trying to open my front door doesn't matter to the lock.

Because we’re talking about consequences. There are probably going to be at least a few, and potentially many, depending on so many different factors.

Looking at any kind of ability or skill check divorced of the fictional situation seems like a poor method of analysis.

 

[AlViking]

Because we’re talking about consequences. There are probably going to be at least a few, and potentially many, depending on so many different factors.

Looking at any kind of ability or skill check divorced of the fictional situation seems like a poor method of analysis.

I'm talking about the consequence as well. The consequence of failing to pick a lock is that the door, chest or whatever was locked cannot be opened that way.

I'm not playing a narrative game, it's up to the players to tell me what they do next. I will ensure that there are other options most of the time but occasionally it will just mean they don't get some treasure if they don't want to just bust the chest open or the door down.

But thanks for telling me that we're having bad-wrong-fun I guess.

 

[zakael19]

I'm talking about the consequence as well. The consequence of failing to pick a lock is that the door, chest or whatever was locked cannot be opened that way.

I'm not playing a narrative game, it's up to the players to tell me what they do next. I will ensure that there are other options most of the time but occasionally it will just mean they don't get some treasure if they don't want to just bust the chest open or the door down.

But thanks for telling me that we're having bad-wrong-fun I guess.

I replied to you with this once before, so I'll try it again:

Why are you bothering to continue to pull this thread when you just dont like the idea of fail forward play and scene framing and all that.We get it, you're doing some form of more classic D&D where none of that matters to your table or you don't feel the need to look for ways to enhance the excitement of play. You've said that. Why keep nitpicking techniques that dont matter to you because you don't like them, when it's not a form of discussion but just like, sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "DONT LIKE IT" over and over.

The amount of underlines of the thread title being drawn.

 

[pemerton]

This last I feel strongly about. Aligning by advertising Curse of Strahd?? "Hey, curse of Strahd - yeah I've heard he's really tough, can't wait to take him down!" "Oh, I love the gothic aestetics! Can I play one of those gypsy seers? I can already hear what accent I should use when predicting mysterious doom!" "Horror!? oh, bring your worst, I can't wait to see what sort of spooky stuff will happen!"

I once thought I had advertised very clearly a one shot that was supposed to be a competition style dungeon rush. I got a paladin without armor, and a wimsy air gensai on the team.

I reiterate what I said above. The RPG hobby is lacking an effective non-inflammatory language to talk about games in order to properly advertise and align player expectations. Setting, system and even specific well known modules are not fulfilling that task.

This post of yours made me think straight away of this from Edwards:

Consider the previous example of a group who has arrived at the agreement to role-play a vampire-character game, with three members who have radically different GNS and Premise approaches but share a superficial commitment to "story," undefined. What sort of Stances might be most common during play, from each of them? (In this example, each person represents one possible approach within each of the modes, and does not represent the entirety of a mode.)​

• One player is interested in competing, using his or her real-person influence and strategizing about dramatic outcomes to "score higher" than the other players, so he or she spends a lot of time in Author/Pawn Stance.
• Another is interested in experiencing and Exploring the nuances of the story as it is presented from an external source (perhaps a sourcebook and/or a GM), and spends a lot of time in Actor Stance.
• The third is interested in generating climactic and conflict-resolving moments derived from his or her character's decisions, and so those decisions are most likely going to be determined from Author Stance (but not Pawn).

Conflicts may well arise among these players as their decisions regarding their characters and expectations of one another disrupt the various goals. Stances and their impact on both the outcomes and experiences of play may be understood as part of the mechanisms of achieving GNS goals.​

And also this (note that in what follows, Edwards is not using "premise" to mean "issue/theme" - which is his later usage in the "story now" essay - but rather is using it to mean "motivating rationale for play"):

Gamist Premises focus on competition about overt metagame goals. They vary regarding who is competing with whom (players vs. one another; players vs. GM; etc), what is at stake, victory and loss conditions, and what particular sort of strategizing is being employed. Gamist play also varies widely in terms of what is and is not predictable (i.e. randomized), both in terms of starting positions and in terms of ongoing events. . . .

The key to Gamist Premises is that the conflict of interest among real people is an overt source of fun. It is not a matter of upset or abuse, and it is certainly not a "distraction from" or "failure of" role-playing.

• A possible Gamist development of the "vampire" initial Premise might be, Can my character gain more status and influence than the other player-characters in the ongoing intrigue among vampires?
• Another might be, Can our vampire characters survive the efforts of ruthless and determined human vampire hunters?

Narrativist Premises focus on producing Theme via events during play. Theme is defined as a value-judgment or point that may be inferred from the in-game events. My thoughts on Narrativist Premise are derived from the book The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, specifically his emphasis on the questions that arise from human conundrums and passions of all sorts. . . .

Narrativist Premises vary regarding their origins: character-driven Premise vs. setting-driven Premise, for instance. They also vary a great deal in terms of unpredictable "shifts" of events during play. The key to Narrativist Premises is that they are moral or ethical questions that engage the players' interest. The "answer" to this Premise (Theme) is produced via play and the decisions of the participants, not by pre-planning.

• A possible Narrativist development of the "vampire" initial Premise, with a strong character emphasis, might be, Is it right to sustain one's immortality by killing others? When might the justification break down?
• Another, with a strong setting emphasis, might be, Vampires are divided between ruthlessly exploiting and lovingly nurturing living people, and which side are you on?

Simulationist Premises are generally kept to their minimal role of personal aesthetic interest; the effort during play is spent on the Exploration. Therefore the variety of Simulationist play arises from the variety of what's being Explored. . . .

• Character: highly-internalized, character-experiential play, for instance the Turku approach. A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?
• Situation: well-defined character roles and tasks, up to and including metaplot-driven play. A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Situation Exploration might be, What does the vampire lord require me to do?
• Setting: a strong focus on the details, depth, and breadth of a given set of source material. A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Setting Exploration might be, How has vampire intrigue shaped human history and today's politics?
• System: a strong focus on the resolution engine and all of its nuances in strictly within-game-world, internally-causal terms. A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of System Exploration might be, How do various weapons harm or fail to harm a vampire, in specific causal detail?
• Any mutually-reinforcing combination of the above elements is of course well-suited to this form of play.

The key to Simulationist play is that imagining the designated features is prioritized over any other aspect of role-playing, most especially over any metagame concerns. The name Simulationism refers to the priority placed on resolving the Explored feature(s) in in-game, internally causal terms.​

In your case, it seems that you wanted to GM a gamist dungeon-bash, but the players turned up ready to do what Tuovinen calls "princess play",

where a character player is encouraged to develop a character they find entertaining to occupy as a thespian role. . . . The ideal princess play game will feature a wide variety of appropriate situations where the player gets to “act out” the role, with the other players offering affirmative reactions and feedback that make the role feel more real.​

My view is that there are some systemic reasons why the hobby does not have a very good vocabulary for talking about these different approaches to play. One is economic/commercial: the dominant publisher (WotC) as well as the other publishers who rely on WotC to create and sustain the market for what are largely D&D variants (eg Paizo) have no interest in cultivating subtle differentiation among their customers. They want to sell their books to all comers.

But another is more (sub-)cultural: there seems to be an aversion among RPGers to talking honestly about how their play works and how they want their play to work. For instance, there are a lot of play experiences that rely pretty heavily on the GM laying down clear tracks and the players following them; but instead of honest discussions about how to do this well, you can see endless pages of discussion drawing "angel on the head of a pin" distinctions between "railroading" vs "linear adventures" vs etc etc etc.

Related to the aversion described just above is something that @Campbell has often posted about, namely, the use of shaming to enforce particular expectations - eg that "good" players will enjoy the GM's stuff and follow the GM's hooks even if these are not very interesting. There is little widespread sense that GM's can be held to account for the quality and deftness of their craft. And this makes it hard to talk about particular approaches to GMing, aimed at supporting different sorts of play experiences.

I'm sure there are other reasons too, but these are some of the ones that I believe I've observed over the years.

EDIT:
Another example of the weakness of existing widespread jargon/usage:

If someone says that they want "character based" or "character driven" play, do they mean something like what you experienced - role-expressing, role-affirming play with the unarmoured barbarian and the whimsical air genasi? Or do they want the sort of character-driven "narrativist" play that I enjoy in Burning Wheel?

Those are wildly different play experiences. But as you say, there is no widespread terminology for contrasting them.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm talking about the consequence as well. The consequence of failing to pick a lock is that the door, chest or whatever was locked cannot be opened that way.

I'm not playing a narrative game, it's up to the players to tell me what they do next. I will ensure that there are other options most of the time but occasionally it will just mean they don't get some treasure if they don't want to just bust the chest open or the door down.

But thanks for telling me that we're having bad-wrong-fun I guess.

What I am talking about doesn’t really have anything to do with the game and is not me telling you anything about bad-wrong-fun.

I’m simply talking about common sense.

If you are trying to pick a lock, the consequences are more than “the lock does not open”. I mean… this is obvious.

Why were you picking the lock? Maybe to gain a map inside the locked place. Now you won’t get it, unless some other mean s of getting in exists.

Why did you want the map? Maybe it was to locate a valuable artifact. Now you won’t get that. Why did you want the artifact? Maybe it was the only way of slaying the great beast that was going to consume the princess in a sacrificial rite. Bow you can’t save the princess.

And on and on. There could be any number of consequences of all kinds. To boil it all down to just whether the lock is picked or not is silly.

 

[AlViking]

I replied to you with this once before, so I'll try it again:

Why are you bothering to continue to pull this thread when you just dont like the idea of fail forward play and scene framing and all that.We get it, you're doing some form of more classic D&D where none of that matters to your table or you don't feel the need to look for ways to enhance the excitement of play. You've said that. Why keep nitpicking techniques that dont matter to you because you don't like them, when it's not a form of discussion but just like, sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "DONT LIKE IT" over and over.

The amount of underlines of the thread title being drawn.

I don't comment on your games. I've asked questions here and there to get a better understanding. So why do people keep accusing me of not understanding something because I don't care for it? Why to people keep bringing up how there must be consequences? Why is it "silly" that the only consequence for failing to pick a lock is that you can't open the lock in my game? Why do you and a few others keep insisting on telling us how we should run our game?

The people with narrativist bent are continuously telling us that we're playing our games wrong. Every few years (or decades) someone plays a game where a puzzle takes a long time to solve so therefore we have to implement fail forward to eliminate that .001% of gametime that was wasted. I made a one line joke and now I have to I explain why I don't want to implement fail forward yet again. When I explain what I don't like my response is ignored. After I explained that if I have a ticking clock I don't want the clock dependent on success or failure I'm told ... wait for it ... that the way to run a ticking clock is to make it dependent on success for failure. So my preferences are rejected or ignored and I'm told yet again that I "could" implement fail forward and that if I did things would be so much better.

Why do you keep injecting discussions from narrative games into a D&D subforum labeled D&D General?

 

[pemerton]

The placement of oceans, islands, volcanoes, rivers, and other geography doesn't give a flip about the rule-set you're using; nor does the astronomy or calendar or weather.

This claim is literally false. I play both Burning Wheel and Torchbeaer 2e. And these use different rules for determining the weather.