D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?

[clearstream]

This question comes out of the thread discussing whether D&D is simulationist. The question relates to an envisioned categorisation of games into gamist, explorative or simulationist, and dramatic or narrative. There is some disagreement over the qualities or meaning of these categories, but I think one can say they are defined by some combination of goals (or decisions or desires) and techniques (or mechanics) depending on how welded one feels the latter are to the former. Example models bear the three-letter acronyms GDS, GNS, and GEN.

In the simulationist thread, folk called out this or that game or mechanic as gamist and therefore not simulationist, without having an appealing definition of gamism to sustain the disjunction. Ease of play and engagement (or interest) were called out. Does one therefore suppose that narrativist games are perforce not easy to play, and not engaging or interesting!? That seems unlikely. FWIW I am more drawn to the camp that do not count techniques (such as distribution of power) as necessarily welded to goals (such as resolution of premises).

So I wondered, if we say that D&D is gamist, what does that mean? And perhaps more importantly, in what ways is gamism appealing or valuable? Why is D&D gamist (if it is?) Some terms I thought of were fairness, balance, diversity, and creativity. I think many would argue for challenge or competitivenss, but that seems to me an unsophisticated idea about what gamism necessarily amounts to. Gamers who identify themselves as such may enjoy more cooperative play, for example. Not all require GM as adversary. Is gamism even one impulse?! Is it one mode, or many bundled into one just because of insufficient scrutiny or understanding.

Again, do we say D&D is gamist? What does that mean? And what are its appealing benefits?

 

[Lyxen]

To simplify things to the extreme, from my perspective:

• Simulationist comes from the story and the narration: someone wants to cast a tornado of flame, how do I implement this in the game's term. I choose this on purpose to show that it's not realism, it simulates something happening in a non-real game world.
• Gamist from the game's engine, I want to create an effect that doers X damage in Y area with Z effect, how do I describe it narratively.

For me, the advantage of the gamist view is that it creates something which is balanced and controllable. If you allocate that power to a class, you can then balance another class to have something similar in technical power.

My only (personal) problem with that is that I don't care about technical balance in general, I care about the story and the narration. As a DM, I have so many tools at my disposal to make sure that players have (roughly equal) fun (and that the fun of one does not destroy the fun of another) that I consider technical balance to be very unimportant, especially when it's not what a lot of my players are looking for either.

And the problem is when the gamist aspect creates constraints on my narration, whether because it's blatant or because it generates discussions that are focussed on the technical aspect of the game. One of my major problems is about grids and maps, there are no grids in my game worlds, I don't want to have maps prepared, especially ones with squares all over them, and I don't want creatures to be aligned precisely and people counting squares. If I want people to be clustered, or fighting back to back, or hiding in a doorway or behind a corner, I want to imagine them there, describe them there just like in any work of the genre. I don't want, as happened in 3e and 4e, to have a DM tell me: OK, you were whispering in each other's ear and want to fight back to back, but now I'm putting you there and there on a grid just because the game system requires it.

And honestly, even if you have players who are challenged by TotM and spatial location (I know there are people like this), and even if you want to use beautiful maps, you don't need a grid. Position and distances do not have to be precise, people are moving around anyway, and most maps and VTTs do NOT need grids on them.

Now, of course, if some players want to play in a gamist fashion, or really tactically, it's fine as well, it's just a question of preference, and there are editions which support this way better than 5e. But it's why, with our preferences at our tables, we are extremely happy with 5e, fuzzy rulings, and more than anything the return of Theater of the Mind as the basic option, because it allows us to have a game that is way more simulationist of the genre (and therefore narrativist) than gamist. Again, preferences only, not looking down on other ways of gaming.

 

[clearstream]

To simplify things to the extreme, from my perspective:

• Simulationist comes from the story and the narration: someone wants to cast a tornado of flame, how do I implement this in the game's term. I choose this on purpose to show that it's not realism, it simulates something happening in a non-real game world.
• Gamist from the game's engine, I want to create an effect that doers X damage in Y area with Z effect, how do I describe it narratively.

For me, the advantage of the gamist view is that it creates something which is balanced and controllable. If you allocate that power to a class, you can then balance another class to have something similar in technical power.

My only (personal) problem with that is that I don't care about technical balance in general, I care about the story and the narration. As a DM, I have so many tools at my disposal to make sure that players have (roughly equal) fun (and that the fun of one does not destroy the fun of another) that I consider technical balance to be very unimportant, especially when it's not what a lot of my players are looking for either.

For me this line of thought begs the question: why is it appealing that it is balanced? What goal is served by it? I do not see balance as a goal in itself (does anyone really have the goal that "All I want from play is it is balanced"!?) Balance may be a technique in service to an ends: if so, what is that ends?

 

[Morrus]

Assuming one accepts the model, D&D fits into all three categories at different times. It's quite a middle-space occupying game.

 

[TerraDave]

Assuming one accepts the model, D&D fits into all three categories at different times. It's quite a middle-space occupying game.

Yes. It’s always been a game, but with many nods to simulation over its history.

As for narrative, Ravelnoft and Dragon Lance helped invent and certainly mainstream a more story oriented approach.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Assuming one accepts the model, D&D fits into all three categories at different times. It's quite a middle-space occupying game.

That's a strong claim with which i'd strongly disagree. If D&D did include all parts of the GNS model, D&D would be a mess of incoherency. It's not, and that's not some magical design wizardry, it's because ot's never tried. Heck, experience with D&D is one of the larger hurdles to overcome in learning how narrativist games even work. Outside of 4e, I can't bring up a single instance of a narrativist element in D&D.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Yes. It’s always been a game, but with many nods to simulation over its history.

As for narrative, Ravelnoft and Dragon Lance helped invent and certainly mainstream a more story oriented approach.

Narrativism is NOT "story oriented".

 

[Oofta]

I don't think there are any clear lines. Does fireball do more damage than a flamestrike because it's a higher level? Sure. Is that gamist or simulation? I would say yes to both. Much of the concept of spells and their relative power comes from the concept of ammunition and artillery since D&D grew out of a wargame. So the more powerful the munition, or spell, the more damaging the effect. Magic isn't real of course so you could say it's never simulationist. How can you simulate something that is completely fictional?

So take something like jump. We can long jump in the real world and D&D gives us rules to simulate that. On the other hand, there's no way to accurately model long jumps because the same rule has to cover every age category, body shape, every approach and landing surface. If you want to keep it simple how much the person is carrying doesn't really matter, neither does their training nor natural aptitude change much. So we have the current rules which are simple, easy to explain and close enough for the game. Do they actually do a good job? Well, without real world tests and extensive studies not just looking at how far the top .001% athletes that have spent their life training to do this one thing can jump under ideal conditions, we don't really know. It's close enough for the game. Besides, the DM can always give people an athletics check.

We could continue on down the list, but to me D&D evokes the feel of a fantasy novel and world. It's more simulationist than gamist compared to 4E (that's not an indictment of 4E) and I'm sure less simulationist than others. Most aspects of the game can be viewed through both lenses, and both would be correct.

Every TTRPG will always have aspects of both.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I think that D&D is quite gamist: it is designed to create an engaging an enjoyable game rather than a realistic simulation.
Hit points are an example: they give an observable measure of a character's survivability that the player can make decisions based around.
Fewer players would enjoy a system in which their character has a chance of being killed on any hit, even though that might be more realistic.
Likewise the ability and weapons mechanics are set up to allow players to create characters similar to those in common media tropes rather than a strict attention to realism.

For me this line of thought begs the question: why is it appealing that it is balanced? What goal is served by it? I do not see balance as a goal in itself (does anyone really have the goal that "All I want from play is it is balanced"!?) Balance may be a technique in service to an ends: if so, what is that ends?

Balance is appealing because D&D is a game played for fun. No one likes to feel that they're letting the group down or being sidelined. If one player's character gets to do twice as much stuff as another players', then that can lead to feeling left out, or dissatisfied/believing that they have made a mistake.
Although perfect balance isn't going to be attainable in a game with as many options as D&D, there is no reason to give up on any semblance of equality.

 

[Lyxen]

For me this line of thought begs the question: why is it appealing that it is balanced? What goal is served by it? I do not see balance as a goal in itself (does anyone really have the goal that "All I want from play is it is balanced"!?) Balance may be a technique in service to an ends: if so, what is that ends?

Ultimately, for me, the only balance that matters is that of fun for all players, including that of the DM. If some people have fun at the expense of others around the table, it's very likely that some of these people will find that they don't enjoy the hobby that much.

Now, some people consider that that balance of fun can only be achieved if people around the table have the same amount of power to influence the game. As an aside, I've met a lot of players who do not think that way, and who are perfectly happy to see other mostly influence the game, and to follow the adventure and the story, contributing only occasionally.

But on the other hand, there are certainly people who, unchecked, would dominate the table. And, not so curiously, these are also people who certainly don't want to have others dominate the table. So now we come down to the power of influence, and in the end, it sort of stems from what the characters are able to do in the game, because, apart from just talking, it's still your characters who have the power to act in the game world and therefore to influence the game. Hence the concept of balance at the level of the characters, technically.

At this stage, I'd like to point out that it's already a fallacy, because even with characters of equal "power", the ability to talk and influence others is personal to the players and you can have characters who are absolutely equal and still some players dominating the table, usually through personal charisma or intelligence (of any kind of intelligence, for example social one and not necessarily IQ).

It is a further fallacy when you consider that the game is extremely complex and that, if you only have a look at the three pillars, it's impossible to have characters that are absolutely equal in power for all pillars, therefore some will probably be more powerful in some pillars and others in other pillars, but then you see how artificial it is since it also then depends as to how much time the table spends on various pillars, etc.

But in the end, if you ask around, you will find that there are a lot of people elsewhere and around here who consider that D&D is a combat game (based on the further fallacy that there are, according to their count, more pages dedicated to combat in the rules). And in any case, balance in the other pillars is extremely hard to measure and enforce through rules, since it comes down even more than anything on the personal capabilities of the players.

Hence that focus on technical combat balance for the characters, as a means to ensure overall balance of the game and, hopefully balance of fun for the players. Which is also why, if you look at all the elements above, I also find that technical balance way overrated, because it's such a miniscule factor in the potential fun at the table, and so easily overridden (if only in the fact that because the DM sets up the fights, the conditions of said fight have an even stronger influence than the characters' capabilities) by other factors that unless there is clearly something very wrong in terms of effects on the combat pillar, I won't even bother looking at it.