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

[hawkeyefan]

When I started a thread asking What is worldbuilding for?, I got a lot of replies from 5e players which demonstrated that they do not play "story now" 5e. I don't recall any replies from 5e "story now" players.

Wow, a little blast from the past there. That thread was a big part of my understanding of games beyond those I was playing, and toward trying new ones out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I mean, I'm pretty openly Gamist/S&A in my interests, so that shouldn't surprise anyone. And the explicit rationale of Ad/Dis was to eliminate modifiers so play would move more swiftly and smoothly, which sounds fairly Gamist to my ears.

My issue with Elven Accuracy is that it breaks an established design pattern (Advantage works this way for everyone, by design) in a way that specifically favors only certain flavor preferences and not others. That is unreasonable design, as far as I'm concerned. There is essentially nothing in the game quite as good as Elven Accuracy as far as feats go. Every character that qualifies for that feat should take it, hands-down, no questions asked.

My cynical read from this description is that they wanted a particular kind of benefit present that the Advantage/Disadvantage design had hamstringed the ability to get to, so they just end ran it. That something like that would pop up in 5e design at some point does not surprise me at all.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Wow, a little blast from the past there. That thread was a big part of my understanding of games beyond those I was playing, and toward trying new ones out.

Yikes! That thread was early "grokking" for me, too! I read a few of my posts in that thread and am now just shaking my head.

 

[Manbearcat]

Wow, a little blast from the past there. That thread was a big part of my understanding of games beyond those I was playing, and toward trying new ones out.

Yikes! That thread was early "grokking" for me, too! I read a few of my posts in that thread and am now just shaking my head.

This is from a poster in that thread:

Without worldbuilding you have no wilderness to explore, nor seas to sail across, nor kingdoms to live in or to overthrow. You have no history, no deities (which kinda screws over any Clerics in the game!), no moons or weather or cities or kings. You have no raiding Vikings to the north, no cultured Romans, no desert marauders, no pleasant Hobbit-filled valleys, no Elven woods.

I figured you two might find that particularly comical given our Stonetop game!

And @darkbard and @Nephis might find that particularly comical given our Dungeon World game.

And @AbdulAlhazred and @kenada and @niklinna might find that particularly comical given our Torchbearer game.

I guess the explored wildernesses, the towns, the deities and myth, the friends and family and enemies, the monsters and marauders, and the history we’re uncovering is just a big ole “nope!”

Damn. And I thought we were actually imagining a space and playing a TTRPG in it all along!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

One observation is that it seems like the problematic element of the taxonomy and classification discussion, is a disagreement on the underlying philosophies and values that underpin the language being utilized. This presents to me an underlying truth: we cannot have definitive terminology that allows games (systems, whatever) from different movements to be encapsulated by a uniform language that accurately describes them, independent of reader and artistic context.

Much as in lit crit circles, we can only discuss works through different lenses that attempt to ground the conversation, but must also be accepted as a non-binding intermediary-- in other words, whether something works for you in the way that it works for Edwards, or if the categories he draws make any sense are an outgrowth of the degree to which you share his artistic values, and we aren't simply discussing values as goals but in the way he interprets the text, both literally, and the text of play around the table. In this context, its also important to understand that a tradition doesn't have to be articulated to be extant and valid.

For example, some people here have suggested that they have a goal of inhabiting a character for its own sake, framing that goal as being in opposition to Step On Up, which concerns itself with engagement in competition (e.g. you aren't solely playing to inhabit the character if you're playing to win.) But I think the difficulty arises in that I know when I am playing the game, and I engage in games that are Step On Up in character, I understand that very differently, where the Step On Up elements are entirely there to help me get into a frame of mind that aligns me with my character. E.g. If I want to inhabit a character that is fighting a dragon, the act of fighting, and a game element designed to simulate the dragon, are simply tools to help me with the primary goal of inhabiting the character who is doing those things.

At first blush, it might seem like the Step On Up elements and my desire to win would remove me from the wants of my character (people have expressed the trope of playing a character like a stolen car) into playing the game, but to my mind, they actually play a role in enforcing tone-- characters who behave like stolen cars aren't universally desirable stories, it can help me inhabit my character when the mechanics remind me of a need to be careful, which reflects my own characters good sense and need to survive and compromise in the course of pursuing their goals. Nothing makes me feel more like my mech pilot in Lancer than kitting out a mech with different systems and weapons and picking between frames, because that's a big part of mech stories-- the hardware and the pilot's self expression through their mech and their skill as a pilot, if I'm not engaged in those acts, then I'm not in the correct headspace to be the pilot.

That doesn't mean my method works equally well for everyone, there are people in this thread that it certainly doesn't work for! But I think the takeaway from that is how agenda has a much less direct relationship with result than Edwards supposes in his work, because different participants actually need different tools to arrive at a given experience, predicated on how they're conditioned to read the rules-- e.g. are these things in the way or here to help me, how much do they help me, how important is X thing that is very present to the space I want to inhabit, and how important is Y thing that isn't very present at all. It also means that rather than discussing focus, we could be discussing utility towards a given end, in other words, how can the game help players arrive there. Whether those thins actually cohesively work to produce a given result is much more introspective, and probably requires a discussion of audience expectations for the experience in question.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That doesn't mean my method works equally well for everyone, there are people in this thread that it certainly doesn't work for! But I think the takeaway from that is how agenda has a much less direct relationship with result than Edwards supposes in his work, because different participants actually need different tools to arrive at a given experience, predicated on how they're conditioned to read the rules-- e.g. are these things in the way or here to help me, how much do they help me, how important is X thing that is very present to the space I want to inhabit, and how important is Y thing that isn't very present at all.

This, @clearstream, is another reason why I am less concerned about player motives than I am about game-(design-)purposes. Player motives do not have a consistent relation to rules structures.

It's a bit like the difference between the goals an author might have for writing their story and the things a reader might want from or value in such stories. Literary genres and classifications don't generally take into account why the reader chooses to read the story, even though it's obviously super important that readers have done so (otherwise I doubt anyone would be talking about the story!). Furthermore, that doesn't imply there's no relationship between genre and readership motives. Bildungsromane are popular for a variety of reasons, for example, but that is not super relevant to the purposes served by writing them.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This, @clearstream, is another reason why I am less concerned about player motives than I am about game-(design-)purposes. Player motives do not have a consistent relation to rules structures.

It's a bit like the difference between the goals an author might have for writing their story and the things a reader might want from or value in such stories. Literary genres and classifications don't generally take into account why the reader chooses to read the story, even though it's obviously super important that readers have done so (otherwise I doubt anyone would be talking about the story!). Furthermore, that doesn't imply there's no relationship between genre and readership motives. Bildungsromane are popular for a variety of reasons, for example, but that is not super relevant to the purposes served by writing them.

Okay, you've said this a few times, and I've got thoughts.

You're saying here that the user's wants are less important that what the product is designed to deliver, at least as far as I can tell. I find this backwards coming from a systems engineering background. The single hardest and most screwed up part of a design is requirements elicitation. This is where you talk to the customer, discuss what they want, and then develop a clear set of design requirements that meet those wants and can be tested against. You go back to the customer and review these. To often engineers start to take over this process and push their design ideas, and this leads to a dissatisfied customer.

In the RPG space, this is very hard because most customers not only having seriously thought about what they want, but also usually aren't even aware to the entire option space (this is where complete newbies are awesome!). So the elicitation is very hard to do. I think that this is where GNS provided huge benefit to design -- by doing some work on wants, you can design a product for customers who have that want. It's useful as a stand-in.

What I don't get is ignoring it altogether and only looking at possible design configurations (of which there can be many) as a model. It seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This, @clearstream, is another reason why I am less concerned about player motives than I am about game-(design-)purposes. Player motives do not have a consistent relation to rules structures.

I just mentioned this in another thread. The way at least West Coast D&D players in the OD&D days tended to play was distinctly off-sync with the incentives in the rules; rather than the players adjusting to the rules, over time (initially in house rules, later in the actual evolution of the published rules to a limited degree) the rules adjusted to the players.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Okay, you've said this a few times, and I've got thoughts.

You're saying here that the user's wants are less important that what the product is designed to deliver, at least as far as I can tell.

Not at all. I'm saying that trying to make a framework which analyzes all the possible wants a player might have is much too ambitious, at least for me. Others are perfectly welcome (heck, encouraged!) to work toward such a model. I am choosing not to, for several reasons:

• There seem to be to be a GREAT deal more player motives than game-(design-)purposes. As in, @clearstream seems to have identified at least four or five different player motives that are all plausibly satisfied by Score-and-Achievement alone. My stuff is already quite long despite being only four. To have the potential of 16 or more different player motives...that's just too much for me to grapple with as a casual analytic effort.
• As noted, the relationship between what engages players (both individually and collectively) and what game design elements a game contains is...complicated, to say the least. Generally, game designers on the other hand find value in having a clear purpose toward which their designs tend; there also only a small number of designers for any given game, but an unbounded potential set of players.
• Others have mentioned that it is possible to do things line bringing a game into a direction different from its base or intended one through careful advice, "best practices" info, and elective player choice. This indicates some amount of separation between what a game is "made for" and what a game may be "played for," even without actually changing its design at all. This makes an already complicated relationship (between how/why one makes games and how/why one plays games) even more fraught.

I recognize 100% that player motives need to be accounted for in design, that's why you should do things like avoiding dominant strategies (and especially avoid leaving in dominant strategies with the hope that players will choose not to use them for the good/health of the game.) I'm just not really seeing a lot of value, for the amount of effort I would expect it to take, in trying to analyze player motives.

I find this backwards coming from a systems engineering background. The single hardest and most screwed up part of a design is requirements elicitation. This is where you talk to the customer, discuss what they want, and then develop a clear set of design requirements that meet those wants and can be tested against. You go back to the customer and review these. To often engineers start to take over this process and push their design ideas, and this leads to a dissatisfied customer.

But engineering in this sense is generally bespoke, yes? You are making one product to satisfy one specific customer or one specific group. TTRPGs don't seem to be designed that way. They seem to be designed to capture a certain focus or intent, with the hope that there are lots of people out there who will find that focus or intent fun and engaging. In the video gaming space, for example, one does not generally spend a long time figuring out what motivates people to play MMOs and only then begin asking what steps one should take to make one. Instead, one generally feels driven to make an MMO, chooses a design focus for it, and then attempts to use tools and techniques that will (it is hoped) be liked and appreciated by a large audience. The project begins from a design purpose, and then seeks to find out how to make that purpose work. That's what my analysis is focused on.

In the RPG space, this is very hard because most customers not only having seriously thought about what they want, but also usually aren't even aware to the entire option space (this is where complete newbies are awesome!). So the elicitation is very hard to do. I think that this is where GNS provided huge benefit to design -- by doing some work on wants, you can design a product for customers who have that want. It's useful as a stand-in.

Well...that's what I'm hoping to do? We aren't saying "players are motivated by praise, so let's design a game where players will receive praise." Instead, we tend to see it as...well, there are both competitive and cooperative reasons to play a game that expects performance and skill. If we design a game that offers this, there are almost certain to be players who will find value in it. We should understand what kind of purpose this is, in terms of design, so that it can fulfill that purpose the best it can. Should that design prove effective, it will (hopefully) be popular among players whose motivations align with what our game offers.

What I don't get is ignoring it altogether and only looking at possible design configurations (of which there can be many) as a model. It seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

Surely there are many, many, MANY more reasons why players might wish to play games? Clearstream brought up Tempo/Flow, Collection/Perfection, Merit/Praise, and I think some others besides, and I offered some of my own also in that space. And that is just S&A! Groundedness-and-Simulation might have some of those (Collection/Perfection, for instance), but it would also seem to satisfy Cleverness/Prediction (the motive of being sufficiently well-versed in the process that you can predict its operations well in advance--possibly also shared with S&A), Parsimony/Budgeting (the motive of doing much with few tools, efficiency in personal play), or Information/Learning (the world exists and is full of concrete facts, so the player is motivated to learn what those facts are). And those are just off the top of my head, as someone not actually gunning for that type of analysis. I'm sure Clearstream could come up with even more!

I just mentioned this in another thread. The way at least West Coast D&D players in the OD&D days tended to play was distinctly off-sync with the incentives in the rules; rather than the players adjusting to the rules, over time (initially in house rules, later in the actual evolution of the published rules to a limited degree) the rules adjusted to the players.

Agreed. Player motives can and do propagate back to the designers. Ignoring such things is foolish. But I have no confidence at all in my ability to grapple with such questions of player psychology and the like, given I have like three psych courses under my belt. I choose to leave those questions to others who are more motivated, trained, or funded than I am.

By choosing not to analyze player motives, I am not saying it is valueless to do so. I am saying I am not up to the task, and don't personally see the reward for doing so as being worth the effort it would take on my part. Others can do so, and absolutely should if it tickles their fancy, but their critiques of my efforts specifically in the area of player motive are...just not what I'm aiming for. Like telling a physical chemist that her work should be accounting for the biomedical applications or potential risks of these materials. It isn't that there aren't such applications or potential risks; it's that her training may not be adequate to the analysis, and her intent doesn't really intersect with those things. If others wish to ask those questions, awesome, they should! But if they then criticize her work because it didn't ask those questions, it is (or at least it seems to me) perfectly valid for her to say, "I wasn't trying to ask those questions in the first place."

 

[Ovinomancer]

@EzekielRaiden

Ah, nevermind. I said my piece. You don't seem to think it's worth considering. Have fun.