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

[AbdulAlhazred]

That's not quite sufficient for character driven. Character driven is where the game centers on the characters. If the characters are motivated, say, to plunder a dungeon and gain treasure, this isn't character driven because the play is actually centered around the setting -- exploring the dungeon created by the GM for the setting (or provided in a module). The characters are motivated to explore the setting. This is great -- it described my 5e games pretty well. Along the way, we can get character moments, but the organizing feature of play isn't the characters, it's still the setting.

For it to be character driven play, play has to organize around the characters, such that setting is introduce only as backdrop and as needed due to what the characters are about.

It's a rather large distinction in play. Doesn't sound large here, but the impact and effect is night and day noticeable (not that one is night and the other day).

What he's trying to describe is a situation in which various character traits, backstory, goals, bonds, etc. feature fairly heavily in how the action is directed. So when one would ask "why did the the party travel to Mudberg?" the answer is "Because Joe got a message from his sister telling him she's worried that her son is in trouble with some local thugs." or something like that. Note that the player may have established the existence of the sister as part of backstory, perhaps even the nephew. Other than that, the 'hook' was probably built by the GM, and pulls the PCs into some sort of plot or perhaps just a straight up standard adventure scenario with the hook added. Later, during the adventure, the hook may come up again and present the character with some sort of motivation (IE the nephew is held hostage by the bad guys with the obvious implication that the PCs better go away or else). Various dilemmas may be posed, and these may well speak to elements of the character (do I leave the bad guys alone to prey on the town and save my relative?) etc. Treasure and glory will generally also be there as sort of baseline table stakes. The PCs will usually accumulate some roster of enemies, etc.

Obviously you and I see a really significant difference between the above and what something like Dungeon World is doing, where setting only exists to the extent that it literally comes into play (the GM may plan for more, but nothing which hasn't appeared in play is canonical in any sense). Players are COMPLETELY in charge of all the areas which relate to their characters directly, and the story is built directly from that.

It can be hard to parse, I guess, because you could certainly POTENTIALLY generate some pretty similar narratives. At least you could look at a DW session and imagine that much of it is not violently at variance with things that could be depicted in a 5e game. I can only suggest that @clearstream and @Crimson Longinus might try playing some PbtAs under an experienced GM like yourself or @Manbearcat in order to really see how different the process of play really is.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I didn't really like 3e at the time, and today I would probably find it unbearable. Still, I can't say I can recall any critical system breakage. Though one thing that certainly showcased some of the issues was when I had to make a new character in one campaign. It had been a long campaign, and our characters were really unoptimised mishmashes. Some had monster levels, and they were multiclassed weirdly by picking up various classes for story reasons over the campaign. And then my character died and I had to make a new one. We were at some very high level at that point. So to save time I just made a simple single classed druid. But holy crap, was that character accidentally insanely more effective than the rest of the party! Hell, he was probably more powerful than the rest of the party combined, and had a ton of tools to simply bypass things that would have otherwise been a challenge. I can easily understand why that would feel pretty broken to some.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Something that has to be called out is 5e is a DM-centric RPG. Where Stonetop says "not only should you do that, you must" 5e leaves it up to the DM. Throughout the rules you'll see that principle stated and restated.

The choice to make 5e-centric DM-centric has specific and intentional consequences. "You must" is off the table. That's empowering to some groups, frustrating to others.

I agree with all of this. I’m not saying either game is better than the other or anything like that. Just that I think of the two I mentioned, one was more suited to character driven play.

5e says - even though we drop you in at the deep end, our rules are good enough to catch you - and that is almost always true. The system is streamlined, expressive, resilient. A product of a quantity of playtesting that few other design teams can match.

Here though, I disagree. Not about the extent of playtesting, because that’s certainly true, but about the rules being “good enough to catch you”. I think that implies a design that intended to provide clear processes for people new to RPGs.
I don’t really think that’s the case. 5e’s design is loose enough that both new folks can grasp it enough to get going, and folks familiar with prior editions find enough recognizable to feel like they know the game.

I am not saying this is a negative thing. I actually think it’s incredibly impressive. But allowing different subsets of people to take the game and make it work for them isn’t an indication of a strong system. That strength is instead imparted on the DM. Their motto of “rulings not rules” makes this apparent.

This is the drawback of that loose design.

5e is by design a game that most people can play. It is designed for high functionality and expressiveness. What I mean by the latter is that you can see throughout the design the patterns and interfaces that create design-space and designability. The 5e designers, knowing their past, are on the whole avoiding using this expressiveness to sell a million splatbooks. Instead responding to what they see players leaning into or away from.

I think what you describe here is the benefit of imprecise design. I know one of the initial goals of D&D Next was modularity. And although I don't think they achieved quite the level they had wanted, there is some. Any group can make adjustments to the game to more readily suit their preferences.

It is right that Stonetop has a different approach. That does not make it a better game than 5e (although I am very excited by each Stonetop update I receive.) Gods! Do we all want to play just one game? I love that we are in a world that has 5e and TYOV and TB2 and BW and Stonetop and Artifact and L5R and more. I love seeing the palpable advances in game design that come from each landmark game. I see folk here praise 4e and think - they do know it comes from 3e (Bo9S), right? I see them criticise 3e and think, they do know that one of the contributing designers wrote Everway and another Heroquest, right?

Sheesh.

I’m not saying one is a better game than the other. I am enjoying my Stonetop game more than my 5e game, but that’s just my preference. Someone else that played both games might feel exactly opposite.

As for 3e, I had a very memorable campaign I ran in 3e. Once that ended, I wish I had moved on to something else, or that when 4e arrived I was able to convince my players to stick with it longer instead of going to Pathfinder. Late era 3e and Pathfinder took everything I was finding frustrating with D&D and turned it up to 11. By comparison, 4e was a breath of fresh air from the GM side. I have my criticisms of it, sure, but I’d certainly place it among the more tightly designed versions of D&D. I think it’s easily the most character focused version of the game, as it relates to my comparison of 5e and Stonetop. I don’t think any other edition even comes close (though certainly some are unconcerned with such character focus).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I didn't really like 3e at the time, and today I would probably find it unbearable. Still, I can't say I can recall any critical system breakage. Though one thing that certainly showcased some of the issues was when I had to make a new character in one campaign. It had been a long campaign, and our characters were really unoptimised mishmashes. Some had monster levels, and they were multiclassed weirdly by picking up various classes for story reasons over the campaign. And then my character died and I had to make a new one. We were at some very high level at that point. So to save time I just made a simple single classed druid. But holy crap, was that character accidentally insanely more effective than the rest of the party! Hell, he was probably more powerful than the rest of the party combined, and had a ton of tools to simply bypass things that would have otherwise been a challenge. I can easily understand why that would feel pretty broken to some.

One of the most consistent reactions I've seen, and obviously this was GM-centric was that high level opponents were virtually unmanageable because of all the moving parts. You could sometimes get that effect from higher level PCs too, honestly, but not to the same degree because a player was only managing one character, where a GM was often managing multiples.

This is over and above individual problem areas that sometimes you could simply stumble into (this is one of the things that makes me roll my eyes when people talk about just not pressing on the bad spots; sometimes someone can stumble into a bad spot without even realizing it, and this is actually more likely to happen with a player with more limited understanding of the mechanics of something).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What he's trying to describe is a situation in which various character traits, backstory, goals, bonds, etc. feature fairly heavily in how the action is directed. So when one would ask "why did the the party travel to Mudberg?" the answer is "Because Joe got a message from his sister telling him she's worried that her son is in trouble with some local thugs." or something like that. Note that the player may have established the existence of the sister as part of backstory, perhaps even the nephew. Other than that, the 'hook' was probably built by the GM, and pulls the PCs into some sort of plot or perhaps just a straight up standard adventure scenario with the hook added. Later, during the adventure, the hook may come up again and present the character with some sort of motivation (IE the nephew is held hostage by the bad guys with the obvious implication that the PCs better go away or else). Various dilemmas may be posed, and these may well speak to elements of the character (do I leave the bad guys alone to prey on the town and save my relative?) etc. Treasure and glory will generally also be there as sort of baseline table stakes. The PCs will usually accumulate some roster of enemies, etc.

That's probably exactly the sort of using a dramatic need as a plothook @Campbell complained about. Not that I have any issues with doing this, though it would be better if there actually was some unresolved issues relating to the character (besides literal relatives) that the situation would force the character to confront. (Unbeknownst to the sister the thugs are actually Joe's old mates, and he was part of starting the bad stuff they're into now. He kinda started to doubt what they were doing at some point, but didn't have the balls to confront the others, besides, the bad stuff was his idea in the first place. So he just left Mudberg and didn't look back. But in his absence his former mates have taken the bad stuff further, and do not anymore care who they hurt. So now he has to return to sort the stuff in one way or other, and probably tell the truth to his sister who really looks up to him. Or something like that. )

Not that all character driven play needs to revolve around some deep personal questions. Characters just doing shenanigans on their own initiative without super deep motivations is perfectly fine in my book too.

Obviously you and I see a really significant difference between the above and what something like Dungeon World is doing, where setting only exists to the extent that it literally comes into play (the GM may plan for more, but nothing which hasn't appeared in play is canonical in any sense). Players are COMPLETELY in charge of all the areas which relate to their characters directly, and the story is built directly from that.

Yeah, that's one aspect I don't like. I actually like the world having independent existence, even though that of course always is at least partly illusory.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One of the most consistent reactions I've seen, and obviously this was GM-centric was that high level opponents were virtually unmanageable because of all the moving parts. You could sometimes get that effect from higher level PCs too, honestly, but not to the same degree because a player was only managing one character, where a GM was often managing multiples.

This is over and above individual problem areas that sometimes you could simply stumble into (this is one of the things that makes me roll my eyes when people talk about just not pressing on the bad spots; sometimes someone can stumble into a bad spot without even realizing it, and this is actually more likely to happen with a player with more limited understanding of the mechanics of something).

Yeah, I really wouldn't know about the GM side issues. I never much ran 3e outside some one shots and perhaps mini-campaigns as I didn't like the system. I played in 3e games quite a bit but I used other systems for my own campaigns.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, I really wouldn't know about the GM side issues. I never much ran 3e outside some one shots and perhaps mini-campaigns as I didn't like the system. I played in 3e games quite a bit but I used other systems for my own campaigns.

To give an example...

I ran an encounter with a 16th level Wizard and his 14th level Fighter bodyguard. Now, picture the number of spells, feats and (even at reduced value) magic items you expect to find amongst those at that level.

Nonhuman opponents might not have the magic items, but they'd supplement one or both of those with a list of special abilities. Dragons and fiends were particularly special in this regard (and it wasn't like high level encounters were going to involve fiends or dragons fairly often or anything...)

 

[clearstream]

I think I may be unfamiliar with your metaphor. I'm also not sure what the difference between "free-form" and "GM decides" is in games that have a GM calling stuff--which is what I thought "FKR" meant? That is, Free Kriegsspiel itself is...specifically a "Free" by becoming "GM Decides."

Here I meant only that FKR is not the only kind of freeform RPG. It's probably the kind most written about.

The magic circle of play is a concept in game studies. On entering it, players suspend disbelief etc, adopt lusory attitudes, all that stuff.

We can have rules that establish roles, division of authority, game world and so on, but that are left on the border of the magic circle. Within the circle they will contextualise our freeform, but no system is used (e.g. no resolution system). My thought is it counts well enough within designed, but is it excluded from any category in the proposed taxonomy?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What is a "gamist element"?

When I say that 4e supports "story now" play, I am using the phrase in Ron Edwards's sense, to describe an agenda. So it would not make any sense to talk about "story now" or "narrativist" elements involved in actual play, as an agenda is a motivation for, and an aspiration for, play, but is not an element of play.

So the only point I can make sense of in the neighbourhood is that the same system components and techniques of 4e that make it suited to gamist play, also make it suited to "story now" play. This is not a surprise! To quote Ron Edwards from two essays written nearly two decades ago:

Step On Up is actually quite similar, in social and interactive terms, to Story Now. Gamist and Narrativist play often share the following things:​

• Common use of player Author Stance (Pawn or non-Pawn) to set up the arena for conflict. This isn't an issue of whether Author (or any) Stance is employed at all, but rather when and for what.
• Fortune-in-the-middle during resolution, to whatever degree - the point is that Exploration as such can be deferred, rather than established at every point during play in a linear fashion.
• More generally, Exploration overall is negotiated in a casual fashion through ongoing dialogue, using system for input (which may be constraining), rather than explicitly delivered by system per se.
• Reward systems that reflect player choices (strategy, aesthetics, whatever) rather than on in-game character logic or on conformity to a pre-stated plan of play.

Which is a really long-winded way of saying that one or the other of the two modes has to be "the point," and they don't share well - but unlike either's relationship with Simulationist play (i.e., a potentially hostile one), Gamist and Narrativist play don't tug-of-war over "doing it right" - they simply avoid one another, like the same-end poles of two magnets. Note, I'm saying play, not players. The activity of play doesn't hybridize well between Gamism and Narrativism, but it does shift, sometimes quite easily. . . .​

​

Author Stance may be considered the default for Narrativist play only in the sense that it needs to be in there somewhere. Narrativist play doesn't have to be exclusively in this Stance, nor does it even have to be employed more often than the others. The only requirement is that it be present in a significant way. Narrativist play is very much like Gamist play in this regard, and for the same reason: the player of a given character takes social and aesthetic responsibility for what that character does. . . .​

​

Looking at earlier games from a Techniques perspective, a shift to Narrativist play within the larger Gamist context is apparent in some Tunnels & Trolls, as discusssed in "Gamism: Step On Up". . . .​

​

Just as in Gamist play, the big gorilla of the five Explorative elements is Situation. . . .​

​

As I've tried to show at various points so far, Gamist and Narrativist play are near-absolute social and structural equivalents, sharing the same range for most Techniques save those involving reward systems. They differ primarily in terms of the actual aesthetic payoff - what's appreciated socially and aesthetically. That difference is extremely marked. Happily, therefore very little if any chance exists for these modes of play to come into conflict with one another - a group simply goes one way or the other.​

Playing 4e well, especially in combat, requires good technical skills. This generates a "gravitational" pull towards a gamist agenda, but that pull can be resisted in various ways: (i) if the technical elements reinforce other aspects of what's at stake in play ("story" elements, "dramatic needs"); (ii) if the GM's choice of opponents, and play of those opponents in the combat, does similar reinforcing. And of course (i) and (ii) are related - my two poster children for this are the Deathlock Wight (MM) and the Chained Cambion (MM III).

Provided that the gravitational pull is resisted, there is no incoherence in story now play requiring strong technical skill. This is a big contrast, for instance, between Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant: both support "story now" play, but BW also demands technical skill from the players. But it has many elements in system and principles to make sure the resulting gravitational pull towards a gamist agenda does not prevail. (Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic tries to be like BW in this regard; I'm not as sure that it fully succeeds, though it gives it a red hot go.)

Right, I agree with the analysis of 4e. What I found was that you could do some interesting 'arena combats' basically, and my first early play was just devising some simple 'dungeon' type setups that presented interesting technical challenges (the DMG's Kobold Hall also takes this path). I remember there was a fight with some goblins where there was a dilapidated house and some wagons that provided various terrains, choke points, etc. and the different types of goblins (the lurker, the skirmisher, the brute, and the leader) could be handled by properly employing the terrain. However, the PCs only motive here was a quest given by me, the GM, and some basic genre logic and "we're the good guys." The adventure was entirely my invention. So that works reasonably well in 4e. The problem I found was that generating endless variations of fresh tactical challenges is too shallow by itself.

So, I discovered that the cooler way to run it was very very low prep (like I'd cut and paste a bunch of stat blocks I might use onto a sheet and print it before play, not much else). The players would simply get dropped into some situation that demanded, due to internal logic they had expressed through character build choices, backstory, or just OOC commentary and questioning, some sort of 'answer' from the characters. That would be folded into an SC or a tactical combat challenge where the parameters would arise out of this 'question' (dramatic need) and the players would mine the system for ways to answer it, either using stock powers and some RP, or improvised actions, etc. Usually 'victory' didn't really consist of 'wipe out the other side', though being D&D that was usually one possible outcome!

Generally speaking the results of one encounter would then ramify into more encounters following some sort of general theme. For example I invented a type of monster, the Vuul, which were these sort of spirit/werewolf type creatures. I forget exactly why that form, I think there was a PC who had a thing with werewolves, was a shifter, etc. and so there was this element of family heritage playing into it, the honor of a paladin, the ranger's girlfriend was in danger, etc.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As a game design, 4e has its origins squarely in 3e Tome of Battle. Which was both a reaction to and made possible by 3e.

Nobody is disputing that, at some basic mechanical level, 4e is 'based on' 3e, it surely is designed to take the same basic elements as a starting point. The combat systems are very similar in many respects, powers are certainly not all that different from various mechanics that showed up in places in 3.x (3.5 mostly as you point out, ToB or more like Bo9S definitely being good choices, though you could see AEDU as being similar to some of the non-vancian caster implementations too). So, yes, clearly 3.x was a starting point, and I don't think the designers of 3e did anything incredibly stupid in terms of the basic chasis of 3e. The problems were really in terms of not focusing on doing some things well, and I have to say there was something very stanky about their playtesting, because a lot of stuff that could easily have been improved was just borked.

So, 3e fighters are just a terrible implementation. The whole 'full round attack' thing and how multi-attacks work, the way any move that isn't "I swing my sword" is basically either worthless or has to be built heavily with feats/skills (and is then too niche to be viable). Fighters lose their MAIN claim to fame from AD&D, which was a really significant hardiness against magic/poison/etc. And then there's just no options, you get swings, and more swings, and... There REALLY IS no particular reason to ever play a non-caster past about level 3. At least half of all the classes in the game will never haul their own weight past level 3-5 or so. People can say it doesn't matter, but that's BS.

And what if I DO make a strong Cleric/Druid build? You dismiss that like I'm some incredible deviant if I do something like that, but OF COURSE THAT IS WHAT I DID! I mean, it costs nothing to be 3x more effective. I can still do all the RP and whatever that anyone else can do. Sure, you can claim "but if you want to play a fighter, why would you do that?" but all the players I know really want to play a fighter THAT KICKS ASS, yet, measurably it won't! If you're lucky the cleric will just focus on tons of buffs to put on the fighter, so now you're a buff rack, and even that won't make your level 9 fighter worth having in the party.

That's all just the gross mechanical stuff, but it is only scratching the surface of the profound issues with 3e. I mean, sure, its a functional RPG, so is RIFTS, that doesn't mean it isn't hugely and deeply flawed, because it is. Frankly, IMHO, the reason WotC developed 4e was simply the fact that the design team they had basically said "We can't do anything more with this giant festering pile of orc dung. We need to start over!" lol.