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

[Crimson Longinus]

Ah, no wonder I didn't find it, the word "three" is in there, but not "six".

3x2=6.

I look forward to seeing your next step.

I wouldn't be holding my breath!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure. I can tell the some kind of story about this thread, or my trip to the car mechanic. That doesn't mean these things have plot.

That this is the point of contention is absolutely baffling to me.

Sure, it is baffling.

The dictionary definition is:
Also called storyline. the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story.

So if we accept that a RPG session is "a dramatic work" (and I would) then the ensuing story is by definition a plot. It might not be a good one, but that's besides the point.

 

[Ovinomancer]

IMHO there is a bit more there, though. There is a PROCESS OF PLAY which is inherent in that core. Also, remember, any actual instance of a game will have concrete principles and agenda, so that is going to shape/constrain the 'just make stuff up'. I was not trying to state that such a 'stripped down' game would lack those. I agree totally that if the entirety of your game just states that the player makes up some action and the MC just responds to it with something, without any rhyme, reason, or agenda at all, then you simply have "collaborative story hour." I mean, I'd go further and state that you want to pick your principles and agenda rather carefully, and they will probably mirror those of AW to a significant degree, if you want the result to be Story Now RPG play. If ALL you have is just 'make stuff up' then you could also add in agenda/principles/practices that might reflect any sort of RP agenda at all, and thus we have reached an irreducible initial principle, there are participants, and they say stuff about what characters do, which is in and of itself not very insightful

I elaborated further, but no. The principles and agenda of play in PbtA games do NOT tell the GM how to decide if moves succeed or fail, they tell them to use the mechanics. If the irreducible procedure point is that the GM decides success -- ie, Bob Says -- and they are free to do this any way they want, then you cannot claim to be achieving the goals of Story Now play.

To state a different way, let's agree that the principles and agendas absolutely work in the post resolution narration space without any mechanics. That is to say, that using these will always generate good PbtA narration of outcomes. Cool, now we still need to determine success or failure. There is nothing at all in the principles or agendas that help to do this, because PbtA clearly tells us this is where we are required to use mechanics. So, absent mechanics, we have no guidance at all, even relying on the principles and agendas. Again, I remind you we're only answering the success/failure question -- not the particulars which are covered by principles and agendas. This means that, in any given moment, Bob is on Bob's own to determine what happens. And Bob can feel that there've been a lot of failures lately and a success is due, or vice versa, or not even be aware of why they chosen a success over a failure in this moment. Or they may, and be entirely within the principles and agendas, be directing play by choosing successes and failures. I know that if I had that freedom, I could make a PbtA game dance to my tune very easily.

So, no, this core failure state (and those layers are a failure state model) collapse into generic play that will not, on it's own, produce Story Now play. It's a good failure state to catch a situation where everything is going off the rails and you need to understand how to fail gracefully in the momenet, but it, in no way, implies that staying in bottom layer is a valid way to play. It's just the final saving failure state. Trying to play a PbtA game at that layer only is playing inside a failure state.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And, that said, if you don't see this, then I'm not sure there's any room whatsoever to reach any kind of understanding on this topic, or even the topic of how stories are told and what's important to them.

Oh, absolutely agreed! To me your position is self evidently so extreme, that it simply renders your definitions utterly unusable, so there is no point in further conversation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think you are just being too pedantic here. naughty word HAPPENS IN ALL GAMES, right? We can agree on that? So, you cannot classify anything on that basis. There are likely SOME SORT of motivations ascribed to the PCs in pretty much every game, though yes when you rolled up Dwarf #12 in your B/X game you probably just assumed "greed for treasure" and didn't visit that. OTOH at some point even Dwarf #12 will acquire some sort of motives, however superficial and meant to serve a gamist cause. Again, simply ascribing a character trait to a PC won't get us any analytical mileage. It is all how this stuff is used.

Why would agreeing naughty word happens in all games have anything to do with this argument. Of course things happen in games. You can't classify on that. This was my point -- games that are engaging is too broad to be a useful categorization. I'm glad we agr... oh, no, apparently we don't.

Now it seems that character traits (I think that's where you are now) means... character motivations? Yes? Do I have this? Well, no, when I rolled up Dwarf 12 I didn't bother with a character motivation because I didn't care about that -- have you not heard of pawn stance? MY goal is to get treasure so my avatar is better able to do more things -- I don't really care what Dwarf 12 might thing about this. Dwarf 12 doesn't think about this, because I'm imagining Dwarf 12 and I don't imagine that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Oh, absolutely agreed! To me your position is self evidently so extreme, that it simply renders your definitions utterly unusable, so there is not point for further conversation.

Yes, manipulation of setting to serve story is a very extreme viewpoint. Way out there. No one has ever been so extreme as to note that shows routinely lampshade, hand wave, and even directly contradict their own setting lore just to tell a story. I will report myself for re-education for daring to doubt that the setting is why people watch Star Trek.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sure, it is baffling.

The dictionary definition is:
Also called storyline. the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story.

So if we accept that a RPG session is "a dramatic work" (and I would) then the ensuing story is by definition a plot. It might not be a good one, but that's besides the point.

I don't accept that an RPG session is a dramatic work, as a matter of fact. These are terms of art. An RPG session may be the performance of a dramatic work. Not the same thing. Also, doesn't have to be at all.

 

[niklinna]

Vincent Baker, in section 4 of this, says basically the same thing as AbdulAlhazred does. I don't know if AbdulAlhazred has read it before, or has independently arrived at the same position as Baker. Either way, I think that Baker saying it tends to suggest that AbdulAlhazred is right.

I have been reading the whole series and am into the Q&A followups. Lots of brilliant stuff in there, well worth the time to read. Thanks for the reference, @pemerton!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

OK, but I have to ask, why is Conceit wedded to emulation? Can I not explore a concept in terms of an entirely novel milieu or at least without regard to emulating anything?

How do you examine the Conceit without doing something to portray or instantiate it? "Emulation" is just the process of portrayal. As said elsewhere, it is the act of elevating a concept so that one might appreciate it. Sometimes this will mean Emulation in the sense of genre and the conventions so associated. Sometimes it will mean Emulation in the sense of a specific author's work (Jack Vance, HP Lovecraft, JRR Tolkien), others an overall theme or idea with no singular source that goes a bit beyond genre proper ("wacky hijinks," "survival," "intrigue"), or cultural packages associated with particular time periods and/or regions (e.g. "Arabian Nights," "Wuxia," "Sword-and-Sandal"), etc.

By elevating this tone, theme, genre, style, idea, etc., the act of play becomes focused on generating the conditions that will fulfill the thing elevated in a satisfying and effective way. Situations (challenges, issues, etc.) will be shaped not by their naturalistic-rationalistic consequences, nor by the need to surmount obstacles, nor by the values the players wish to see put to the test. (Or, at least, those things will be a secondary consideration, filigree overtop the main focus.) Instead, situations will be shaped so that the Conceit itself will remain center stage, and an enjoyable experience and exploration thereof can occur.

This is why you get DMs saying things like "the point of the game is FUN, if the system produces un-fun results then you SHOULD change them." Because they have an unstated commitment to a Conceit, action-adventure, which is more important than perfect Groundedness or (semi-)objective Score. (Generally most D&D folks don't engage overmuch with Values-and-Issues play at all, so that's neithet here nor there.) This then leads almost inexorably to fudging, among other tools of DM force like illusionism, to ensure the Conceit remains unbroken and center stage. But because most DMs also have a commitment to either "the world is a 'real'/durable/tangible world, one that you can reason about and draw naturalistic conclusions from" or to "there are real challenges in the world that, purely through your own skill, cunning, and resourcefulness, you can overcome and truly own the victory for doing so," the vast majority of DMs who use these tactics (particularly fudging and illusionism) intuitively know that they must do so secretly or it will "ruin" the experience.

It's also why the criticism of these behaviors tends to focus on either "well that's not very naturalistic, how can you say you value realism and physics-engine play and then turn around and secretly rewrite the world when you 'need' to in order to 'fix' it?" Or, from the opposite direction, "doesn't that invalidate the players' successes? They didn't earn anything, you just handed them victory." And then folks who say they stopped doing this and found great success are, essentially, saying that either pure(r) Score-and-Achievement play, or pure(r) Groundedness-and-Simulation play, proved successful and generated experiences the players cherished even though the Conceit of "high-action adventure" was not always enjoyably front and center in the play experience (aka, Emulated). IOW, by this taxonomy, these are DMs saying they consciously chose to stop having C&E be the most important of their game-purposes, and instead allowed one of the others to be the most important instead.

Further, unlike Edwards, I have no issue with a game serving multiple purposes simultaneously. That the purposes are incommensurate is perfectly cromulent with pursuing more than one. It just means that, in general, there will be one which takes greatest precedent (perhaps universally, perhaps contextually, e.g. S&A in combat and G&S in exploration). So D&D can be a game where the fundamental mechanics are geared toward defining how difficult obstacles are to overcome in a semi-objective fashion (Score) with player actions determining whether they are able to succeed in their goals or not (Achievement), while featuring various themes and tones as the central presentation of those adventures (Conceits) and extemporaneously portraying those themes etc. (Emulation), in a world meant to be modelled closely as if it were a real place with consistent physical-and-magical laws (Groundedness) that one can rationally predict and reason about (Simulation). Non-centric Conceit-and-Emulation play will mention or feature Conceits (as most games will), but will be willing to compromise on actually fulfilling that Conceit in order to maintain some other goal should the two conflict.

(As noted above, Values-and-Issues play is mostly vestigial in D&D, for a variety of reasons. So I didn't mention that, not because it can't be done--it can, as the "4e as Story Now" folks attest--but because that's just not typically a component of the...standard game-purposes "package" for D&D DMs.)

This has the added bonus of giving an additional explanations for why "incoherent" systems would tend to predominate even when many players have one particular preferred game-purpose. (Not that my taxonomy has "incoherent" as a thing, since I think that was a pejorative error on Edwards' part. I'm just responding to his use of it.) That is, people may genuinely actually want different purposes at different times within the same game, or may want to satiate multiple interests over the course of play, so long as each gets some attention. This is a direct challenge to Edwards' assertion (which may or may not have been explicitly stated?) that each person can value one and only one "creative agenda" in a given game. (I don't think he was so foolish as to assert that someone can't enjoy a Sim game for its Sim-ness and a Nar game for its Nar-ness. But he definitely seemed to have said "you can't enjoy both Nar AND Sim in the same game.")

I think it might depend on the TYPE of conceit!

I'm not sure what you mean. If the purpose is to enjoyably examine a thematic concept (whatever form that takes), and the system ever, for any reason, tells you that a result is inconsistent with that thematic concept, it seems to me you have only two choices: (1) accept the result because you value something else more than you value portraying the thematic concept, or (2) reject the result because you value faithfulness to the concept more than other things, and thus alter the result so that it suits. The secrecy of fudging and illusionism are a separate concern, namely preserving the false impression that the game remains fully G&S or S&A—aka "Simulationist" or "Gamist"—that arises from trying to, in essence, have one's cake and eat it too.

Do you have an example of a Conceit where this dichotomy (whether to follow Conceit or system when the two conflict) is not possible even in principle? Because if the Conceit is just "be like reality but augmented with specific fantasy elements," that isn't a Conceit anymore, it's just Groundedness (and this similarity is part of what allowed GNS to err in putting the two in a single bucket.)

 

[niklinna]

This has the added bonus of giving an additional explanations for why "incoherent" systems would tend to predominate even when many players have one particular preferred game-purpose. (Not that my taxonomy has "incoherent" as a thing, since I think that was a pejorative error on Edwards' part. I'm just responding to his use of it.) That is, people may genuinely actually want different purposes at different times within the same game, or may want to satiate multiple interests over the course of play, so long as each gets some attention. This is a direct challenge to Edwards' assertion (which may or may not have been explicitly stated?) that each person can value one and only one "creative agenda" in a given game. (I don't think he was so foolish as to assert that someone can't enjoy a Sim game for its Sim-ness and a Nar game for its Nar-ness. But he definitely seemed to have said "you can't enjoy both Nar AND Sim in the same game.")

Edwards pointed out repeatedly that his categories were to be considered as describing moments and decisions (see Labels), not players or whole games, but then he would go ahead and say things like "Simulationist game", often with a comment that he was doing it as a shorthand for something like "game that prioritizes or supports Simulationist play". But shorthands have a way of masking....

I would love to see discussion of games that deliberately weave some number of the 3–4 main modes of play, how they do it, and how well they pull it off. I know they're out there!