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

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, the issue may be that you’re looking for one culture of play that fully encapsulates your individual preferences and that’s just not what the model is designed to do. The article specifically says the author didn’t want to make a “what culture of play are you” quiz because they don’t think it’s conducive to think of them as six separate boxes that people/games fit into. Most people like some elements of this, some elements of that, and the cultures the article identifies are the broad tendencies that have emerged of how different groups have tended to approach games.

That's fair. Perhaps it is just the desire for a name for a thing that feels so cohesive to me, rather than a pick-and-choose union of disparate things.

On a side-note though, I’m not seeing where you’re getting the idea that “neo-trad” concerns itself with process simulation or games as physics engine, except maybe the fact that it’s “associated with” 3.Xe and PF, which do concern themselves with those things. But, really, that association is mostly just due to those being the editions du jour when the culture first started to emerge. “Neo-trad” isn’t about simulationism, it’s about focusing gameplay on showcasing the PCs, making it their story first and foremost. To borrow from the MDA framework, it’s a culture that prioritizes expression first and foremost.

Mostly it was this explicit callout that made me think this: "I think OC RPG emerges during the 3.x era (2000-2008), probably with the growth of Living Greyhawk Core Adventures and the apparatus of 'organised play' and online play with strangers more generally." These cultures of play are rather clearly tied to either editions of D&D or --2000 was the first year of 3e, 2008 its "last." That ties the origin of this style rather closely to 3e. The fact that the author also mentioned Critical Role and things like it, which took root in a hybrid concept of both PF (e.g. the presence of Sarenrae) and 4e (most of the rest of the pantheon) further reinforced to me that these things were tied to 3e. With 5e then being called out as neo-trad in nature, when it's got a crapload of design choices I would never be comfortable with, it seemed that "neo-trad" was pretty far from what I go for.

There's the further references to the "Tyranny of Fun" criticism of neo-trad. Following the link from that article to a Reddit post on the subject, I found myself at least somewhat agreeing with what that person said. (I disagree that what they call "play" and "game" are totally incompatible, I just think they need to be layered carefully.) Prioritizing "fun" exclusively is, as far as I see it, essentially saying you don't actually want rules at all, hence why I have never really understood folks who seem to see rules as a yucky distraction, a dubiously-necessary evil restricting their freedom. It also, in part, relates to other thoughts of mine.

As I've mentioned in various places, I find "just make sure the players have fun!" a really unhelpful concept, one that might even detract from actually producing good experiences. It's like telling a person to "just be happy!" Trying to pursue happiness directly is often ineffective, but if you instead dedicate yourself to something engaging and worthwhile, happiness will often arise without conscious effort. That doesn't mean that thinking about happiness or fun is bad, nor that we should somehow try to "remove" happiness or fun in order to make it easier for it to spontaneously condense out of the aether--it's still work to make these things happen. It's just not work that arises from focusing on the target in question.

Sounds to me like your goals are mostly pretty aligned with neo-trad, and you’re open to storygame style design where it helps serve those goals.

Perhaps so. I really do love running Dungeon World, though as a player I find its systems too thin for my taste without some pretty heavy lifting on the DM's part. That is, as I once complained to a friend: prior to my DM and I working out some new stuff, it was completely possible for me to construct a generic flowchart that would apply to essentially all combats, regardless of the narrative going on. I find that dull as a gameplay exercise. The roleplay aspect was great, that DM was quite good in that regard (in particular, I can recall a fight inside a demonic flesh-tower bursting upward from within the earth, where we had to defeat opponents and avoid the grotesque organic machinery), but the gameplay aspect felt painfully thin (99% of the time I would just cast Sword on the nearest opponent, unless a particular enemy had to be stopped, or an ally needed healing).

Well, sure; I’ve been talking about these models as lenses for critical analysis of existing games, not as foundations to design new games based on. I think if one wants to design a game, it would be better to first analyze lots of different games under lots of different critical lenses to build a strong and nuanced understanding of what design elements one likes and why, and then design a game that incorporates and perhaps evolves those elements with conscious intent, rather than trying to pick a design theory and build a game to try to fit one of the categories that theory concerns itself with.

That's fair. For my part, I feel pretty strongly that the goals and purposes of D&D are already easy to identify, just based on the kind of game it is (a cooperative roleplaying game) and the things it claims to offer (fantasy, adventure, teamwork, cool stories, conflict, skillful play, the three pillars, etc.) If you're of the opinion that it's still a major open question what kind of game D&D is--or if you're looking at this in a broader sense, considering whatever potential games people might want to design--then yes, doing a wide survey is wise. Much like reading lots of books or listening to lots of different composers and music styles and analyzing what these folks have done and trying to determine why.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's fair. Perhaps it is just the desire for a name for a thing that feels so cohesive to me, rather than a pick-and-choose union of disparate things.


Mostly it was this explicit callout that made me think this: "I think OC RPG emerges during the 3.x era (2000-2008), probably with the growth of Living Greyhawk Core Adventures and the apparatus of 'organised play' and online play with strangers more generally." These cultures of play are rather clearly tied to either editions of D&D or --2000 was the first year of 3e, 2008 its "last." That ties the origin of this style rather closely to 3e. The fact that the author also mentioned Critical Role and things like it, which took root in a hybrid concept of both PF (e.g. the presence of Sarenrae) and 4e (most of the rest of the pantheon) further reinforced to me that these things were tied to 3e. With 5e then being called out as neo-trad in nature, when it's got a crapload of design choices I would never be comfortable with, it seemed that "neo-trad" was pretty far from what I go for.

There's the further references to the "Tyranny of Fun" criticism of neo-trad. Following the link from that article to a Reddit post on the subject, I found myself at least somewhat agreeing with what that person said. (I disagree that what they call "play" and "game" are totally incompatible, I just think they need to be layered carefully.) Prioritizing "fun" exclusively is, as far as I see it, essentially saying you don't actually want rules at all, hence why I have never really understood folks who seem to see rules as a yucky distraction, a dubiously-necessary evil restricting their freedom. It also, in part, relates to other thoughts of mine.

As I've mentioned in various places, I find "just make sure the players have fun!" a really unhelpful concept, one that might even detract from actually producing good experiences. It's like telling a person to "just be happy!" Trying to pursue happiness directly is often ineffective, but if you instead dedicate yourself to something engaging and worthwhile, happiness will often arise without conscious effort. That doesn't mean that thinking about happiness or fun is bad, nor that we should somehow try to "remove" happiness or fun in order to make it easier for it to spontaneously condense out of the aether--it's still work to make these things happen. It's just not work that arises from focusing on the target in question.


Perhaps so. I really do love running Dungeon World, though as a player I find its systems too thin for my taste without some pretty heavy lifting on the DM's part. That is, as I once complained to a friend: prior to my DM and I working out some new stuff, it was completely possible for me to construct a generic flowchart that would apply to essentially all combats, regardless of the narrative going on. I find that dull as a gameplay exercise. The roleplay aspect was great, that DM was quite good in that regard (in particular, I can recall a fight inside a demonic flesh-tower bursting upward from within the earth, where we had to defeat opponents and avoid the grotesque organic machinery), but the gameplay aspect felt painfully thin (99% of the time I would just cast Sword on the nearest opponent, unless a particular enemy had to be stopped, or an ally needed healing).


That's fair. For my part, I feel pretty strongly that the goals and purposes of D&D are already easy to identify, just based on the kind of game it is (a cooperative roleplaying game) and the things it claims to offer (fantasy, adventure, teamwork, cool stories, conflict, skillful play, the three pillars, etc.) If you're of the opinion that it's still a major open question what kind of game D&D is--or if you're looking at this in a broader sense, considering whatever potential games people might want to design--then yes, doing a wide survey is wise. Much like reading lots of books or listening to lots of different composers and music styles and analyzing what these folks have done and trying to determine why.

You aren't neotrad. Honestly, given how you've described your games, I'd say you were Trad. The cultures aren't really piecemeal looks at moments of play but overall approaches. IIRC you run DW with a planned bit of Story Before leading play. That's trad, even if the GM is embracing of player inputs because it's still gonna get checked against the GM's conception. Story Now can't have this GM conception filter.

Your comments that you can script combat tends to very much support this. This sounds kinda like prepped encounters that can easily become mechanical exercises in DW because they're disconnected from the normal flow of play.

 

[Oofta]

Here are some RPGs that have no aspect of simulation: HeroWars, HeroQuest and HeroQuest revised; Maelstrom Storytelling; Marvel Heroic RP; In A Wicked Age; Agon; Cthulhu Dark; The Green Knight.

Here are some RPGs that have barely a nod to simulation: Torchbearer (the way difficulties for skill checks are set); Tunnels & Trolls (the "spell point" system based on STR); 4e D&D (positioning in combat); Apocalypse World (armour and damage rules).

Even the games you list have some sense of emulation, they're trying to emulate a certain style of fiction and view of a shared world. The players have to buy in to shared concepts of things that are happening outside of the game rules. There may be very, very little simulation but I disagree that there is none. Again, you seem to be basing this on "it must have X percentage" which is not what I'm saying.

I don't think GNS is useful, especially for games with the flexibility of D&D except perhaps for people that just like to argue about how their intangible opinion is "correct". People that play D&D can stress different aspects, or not. Just look at the Role of the Dice chapter in the DMG. Want a more gamist approach? Always use dice to resolve uncertainty. A more narrativist approach? Ignore the dice.

The only games I would consider truly [only] gamist would be something like chess or MtG. If you want to claim that in your opinion there is no simulation in the games you listed, go for it. I won't stop you.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I used to think similarly until I ran 4E.

We had a player who'd always played Rogues because he liked them thematically. In 2E and 3E, you as the DM had to go out of your way a bit to make sure they were included, had proper opportunities to shine and so on. It was quite difficult in 3.XE, because we usually had a Wizard in the party too, and with the best will in the world, a Wizard tends to do a lot of stuff that negates the need for a Rogue. But working hard at it with the right magic items, the right situations, and so on, I thought I was doing pretty well.

Anyway, after we'd been playing 4E for a bit, I noticed the Rogue player was just drastically more engaged during combat, and it turned out he was just having way more fun. And this was directly because Rogues in 4E had so much more they could do in combat. Instead of focusing entirely on trying to get off a backstab occasionally, and doing poor damage with mediocre AC and bad HP the rest of the time, he had a ton of cool abilities he could use constantly, which made his character feel very active and dynamic to him. He absolutely adored 4E because of this. And again, this was after spending a lot of effort in 2E/3E to try and make sure his Rogue had plenty to do - the problem was Rogues in those editions were flatly boring and ineffective in combat, and a lot of D&D is combat. That they get to do scouting/defeating traps/etc. outside combat just doesn't make up for that, at least for some players. And there was no real alternative class which had the same theme/vibe but a more involved playstyle in combat.

The same was true to a lesser extent for the player who habitually plays Fighters, I note.

And both of them reacted to 5E pushing things back in a 3E direction, albeit not all the way, by stopping playing those classes.

The player who played Rogues now plays Warlocks and Sorcerers, largely, which can have a vaguely similar theme/vibe but aren't as relatively dull. He has played a 5E Rogue a lot - a Swashbuckler at that, one of the most interesting and engaging Rogues in combat, I'd suggest - but he told me that it was just drastically less fun than 4E.

The Fighter player now plays Barbarians mostly, and he's less articulate about why, but has several times complained that 5E Fighters are dull (I think I've mentioned this before). He's also really annoyed that they turned Battlerage Vigor into a weird Dwarf-specific class about spiked armour.

So I think it's easy to think this doesn't matter, that you as a DM can easily just overwhelm it, and you can certainly make a difference - I feel pretty sure if I hadn't put effort in, the Rogue player would have got bored completely in 2E/3E - but balance in the sense of everyone having something valid and engaging/interesting to do/think about in combat does matter, I'd suggest, particularly in a game as combat-centric as D&D.

in my thread about 'always trying to play 4e' I touched on this, but in general when we started to play 2e we found everyone wanted to be martial characters... over time we all played casters. in 3e we started out caster heavy and until Bo9S came out had few non casters... 4e was full of fighters and warlords... then 5e came around and everyone who wanted to play those were pissed... and most now flock to warlcok

 

[soviet]

Want a more gamist approach? Always use dice to resolve uncertainty. A more narrativist approach? Ignore the dice.

This shows a profound misunderstanding of both agendas.

 

[Oofta]

This shows a profound misunderstanding of both agendas.

This is a philosophical debate with so many different fuzzy definitions depending on whom you ask that I've given up.

 

[soviet]

This is a philosophical debate with so many different fuzzy definitions depending on whom you ask that I've given up.

Not really. I agree that people sometimes rely on their own intuitive sense of what the terms mean, but the definitional essays are fairly clear. The notion that narrativism is supported by ignoring the dice is casually disproved by the essay, and the notion that gamism is supported by more dice rolls is similarly unfounded.

 

[kenada]

I found it not very enlightening because the statement effectively boils down to the conversation between Antony and Lepidus:

"This thing is a perfect simulation of itself" is, in fact, literally an actual joke made by SMBC. Almost a decade ago, in fact. Likewise things like "Buffyspeak." Hence I found it not very enlightening. Telling me the game simulates itself, that it works how it works because that how it worked before, and that changing it makes it "stop feeling like D&D," just...doesn't give me much information to work with.

Hmm. I apologize for the lack of clarity. I thought the example would help, and my response to @The-Magic-Sword definitely should have, but I’m making a distinction between “trad D&D” and “D&D”. If it helps, think of “D&D” as a genre on its own separate from how the game is play. There are certain mechanical and aesthetic elements a game needs to be “D&D”. That’s true even when some of those elements may be discarded or ignored in play.

The given description of "trad" play did not seem to reflect much concern with balance at all. Indeed, it seemed to be rather strongly against that. E.g., the article explicitly associated "trad" play with the phrase "roleplaying, not rollplaying," which is a phrase I outright loathe. It's...also a bit weird that you present "trad" play as opposed to railroading, since the article in question (almost explicitly) ties "trad" to a rise in railroading: "The PCs can contribute, but their contributions are secondary in value and authority to the DM's. If you ever hear people complain about (or exalt!) games that feel like going through a fantasy novel, that's trad."

I snipped the neo-trad discussion because I think it’s been addressed by other comments. I agree with @Charlaquin that what you describe sounds like neo-trad. I also don’t think 3e’s simulation-like aspects were important to it (if anything, it developed in spite of them), especially compared to 3e’s stance on player empowerment.

Anyway, you’re right. Having a goal of telling a story implies that the game is going to be a railroad, and those participating in a trad game presumably accept that some railroading will happen. However, I don’t think all railroading is fair game. There are norms. For example, even though the PCs are expected to take a quest hook, it needs to be dangled for their acceptance. Encounters are supposed to be balanced and defeatable by the PCs. Problems are solved via the characters’ capabilities. The impossible encounter violates all of those. It’s not balanced, and it can’t be solved via application of the characters’ capabilities, so it “must” have a GM-determined solution the players have to figure out, which makes it “bad” railroading.

 

[Oofta]

Not really. I agree that people sometimes rely on their own intuitive sense of what the terms mean, but the definitional essays are fairly clear. The notion that narrativism is supported by ignoring the dice is casually disproved by the essay, and the notion that gamism is supported by more dice rolls is similarly unfounded.

Depends on who you ask. In any case, I always feel like I'm being rude when I say this but I'm not discussing this any more. Feel free to ignore anything I say on this topic, I don't think the philosophical underpinnings and assumptions are useful or enlightening. If you do, go for it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Inspiration. Definitely a metacurrency.