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

[Ondath]

I'm not sure you meant it this way, but when @clearstream quoted just this part it sort of singled it out and dawned on me that I've been having that feeling since I started playing the game in 4e (a system I still have a great deal of affection for, but that's not related here.) Specifically, I always had this feeling that there was an experience that I was pantomining-- where I was always trying to get closer to the ideal of the game,and I could never quite achieve it, until recently.

I agree with this statement, in the sense that what trad DND does, is set a story in a milieu of the fantasy world of DND, but does so with the lens of a movie, book, or video game, where the emphasis is on a structured plot that setting serves. I eventually realized that what I was feeling, was the sense that the world I was presenting was fake, like a facsimile of what it should be where its fake and entirely in service of the main plot and the desires of the players. It was almost like a Call of Duty level, where it was a sequential array of setpieces that emulated aspects of dungeon delving (fighting undead in a crypt, a puzzle room, a boss battle, a negotiation with kobolds) but much like how that Call of Duty city is a series of corridors with all of the other roads barricaded by the game, my games were only concerned with presenting the plot as a movie. When we traveled, it was entirely up to the narrative how fast we got anywhere. When I did treasure, it was entirely to give the players the cool stuff they wanted, and they always ran into their backstories, Critical Role style (this was before Critical Role of course.)

It frustrated me, because I realized, that the cool stuff I wanted wasn't really happening, the world of the game I was presenting didn't feel like a space the players could interact with and make their own decisions about. It was so different from... the ideal that I had about what delving dungeons, and being adventurers in a fantasy world should feel like. But then I had to try and trace that back to work out where I'd even gotten my ideas, and I realized that it mostly came from the fiction that the rulebooks harkened back to-- it came from the implications hanging around the main plots of all fantasy books I'd read, or from the games I played, from the idea that what I really wanted to was to step inside them, and step away from the save the world plot to enjoy and explore the world as a place that exists beyond Chekhov's concerns, in other words, where setting provides a rich playground for the characters to exist in and explore.

The 'real' DND, at least the one I found, was about finding narrative divorced from plot by presenting a world without narrative assumptions and letting the story be 'the things that happened when we went adventuring, and the people we became' rather than the structured plots that have become ubiquitous with storytelling. Trad DND then to me, is a literal simulation of the world, diverted to the needs of what I almost want to describe as a hollywood plot line-- they're not adventurers first and foremost, they're the handful of adventurers that got picked out by destiny to save the world.

In that context, disclaiming narrative decision making to game mechanics, or even to myself in a different mindset helps me to create that separation from the needs of the plot-- I pride myself on creating dungeons without thinking about the specific group going through it, with the goal that different suites of capabilities mean different paths through the content that I'm producing, different discoveries, and frustrations. This creates a play space rife with opportunity to have fun, and find interesting things, but that doesn't become smaller by warping itself to the PCs and their plot, which is my ultimate goal. To make them feel like a small part of a big world, and have their stories play out with emergently against that back drop.

None of this is a criticism of trad DND, or not a generic one anyway, its colored by my perspective, and I've run fun plot centric campaigns in the past too.

I just want to say how much this post has resonated with me, and how it leaves me with a few questions.

I'm trying to make sense of the kind of GM I want to be and the kind of games I want to run as of late, and both GNS theory and the Six Cultures Essay have really opened my mind about these things. When it comes to what I want out of D&D, what you're describing - playing 'real' D&D and having the story be things that happened along the way - really fits the bill. For me, the highlight of the games I run have been things that could only happen with that specific group at that specific time because things evolved to that point within the bounds of the universe and the game rules. Just a few games ago, the party killed Cyan Bloodbane inside a small pyramid summoned by the Gnome Wizard's Bag of Tricks - none of that would be possible if I didn't let my lore knowledge of Cyan's personality (his vanity and cowardice) lead him to take the party's bait (which only existed because of a specific magic item they got ages go) to get easy treasure. No amount of game prep and story design on my end as the GM could create that moment, and this is what brings me back to playing D&D time and time again.

With that said, I'm trying to understand what that means about the kind of game culture I seem to like. From the description of GNS Theory, I feel like what I want aligns mostly with simulationist styles, but then if simulationism aligns with trad/neo-trad, I don't feel I belong there entirely - on the contrary, I feel like the way OSR was described in the essay seems to be much closer to what I want (where OSR games don't even pretend that there is a narrative structure, but only create a story in hindsight). But! OSR is usually categorised as gamist, and having run a few OSE games, I can see why. It seems to be much more limited in its tight gameplay loop of "roll up character -> explore dungeon systematically -> either return with treasure and get to new dungeon or die and roll a new character". All in all, I feel like a lot of the labels could fit me for different reasons.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You tell me, you're the one assuming obvious shared definitions. I've linked my sources already.

I have no interest in GNS theory; it seems obtuse and needlessly pretentious to me. I am interested in a discussion about what aspects of gameplay D&D wants to emphasize, and what we can do as players to shift that gameplay towards one we prefer.

 

[jasper]

It is a metacurrency. Been making that argument for awhile. Usually gets flatly denied.

Batman can take on the evil metacurrency unless it is sweeps month.

 

[jasper]

I am as lost as Oofta with all this jargon which don't help. Neotrad, trad? Etc.
1. Gamist is the dice rule the action and the DM with some input from the players create the plot. The plot could be a module, a hardcover adventure, something stolen from fiction etc.
2. Story is the fiction rule the action over the dice and input from the plot comes from the players. The resulting story could be an awesome novel.
Yes, there is plenty of space in the middle of both ends of this spectrum.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

BTW, if narrativism solely means Story Now then GNS is even more bizarre and flawed than I had thought, as there is insane amount of games with heavy focus to drama and narrative which nevertheless definitely are not Story Now, but that doesn't make them simulationistic or gamist either. Like what is the focus of WoD games supposed to be according to this model? Call of Cthulhu? Games like Critical Role?

 

[pemerton]

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.

<snip>

The only games I would consider truly [only] gamist would be something like chess or MtG.

Every RPG has shared fiction. That's the point of RPGing.

Here's a very simple resolution system for a RPG:

* When I declare an action for my PC I flip a coin. If it comes up head, I get to say what happens to my PC. If it comes up tails, the GM gets to say what happens to my PC.​

Where is the simulation in that RPG system?

I don't think GNS is useful, especially for games with the flexibility of D&D

Have you ever played a RPG that is not D&D or a derivative? Have you played any of the games I identified as having no simulationist aspects: HeroWars, HeroQuest and HeroQuest revised; Maelstrom Storytelling; Marvel Heroic RP; In A Wicked Age; Agon; Cthulhu Dark; The Green Knight?

Let's just look at The Green Knight, which is easy to describe. Each PC has a Dishonour score. When you attempt an action, it must be classified as either honourable or dishonourable. If the action is honourable, it succeeds if you roll above your Dishonour, and if you succeed your Dishonour steps down while if you fail it steps up. If the action is dishonourable, it succeeds if you roll below your Dishonour, and your Dishonour steps up.

What is that simulating?

Presumably you've heard of Apocalypse World, which has spawned a whole family of RPGs (PbtA - "Powered by the Apocalypse"). Here is what Vincent Baker, the designer of AW, says on p 288: "The entire game design follows from “Narrativism: Story Now” by Ron Edwards." How is this consistent with "GNS" not being useful? It led to the most influential contemporary RPG design.

 

[pemerton]

If natural understanding is disguised jargon, and not natural understanding is disguised jargon, I don't know what we're doing here. What terms are we discussing here, and what do they mean? Serious questions.

I don't know what RPGs you have experience with.

If you have never played a RPG other than D&D and its derivatives, most of the Forge discussion will not be meaningful to you.

For similar reasons, if you have never seen a movie other than a MCU one and the latest rom-com, most of the discussion on a film studies blog will not be meaningful to you.

But if you've played a bit of Apocalypse World, or a bit of Marvel Heroic RP, then you'll see straight away that there are approaches to RPGing that are different from D&D's.

 

[Campbell]

Obviously Step On Up or Gamist RPG design (challenge oriented play) is speaking from a relative perspective. When someone says that D&D (particularly old school D&D) has a gamist or challenge oriented design they are making a comparative claim relative to larger body of tabletop RPG design. They are not claiming it's some sort of board game (because calling an RPG a board game would be silly).

Few roleplaying games are as oriented around group problem solving of challenges/adventures as D&D. That does not mean that's all the game is about, just that it is much more about that than pretty much any other game in this space. Honestly that's probably a big part of its mainstream appeal.

 

[soviet]

BTW, if narrativism solely means Story Now then GNS is even more bizarre and flawed than I had thought, as there is insane amount of games with heavy focus to drama and narrative which nevertheless definitely are not Story Now, but that doesn't make them simulationistic or gamist either. Like what is the focus of WoD games supposed to be according to this model? Call of Cthulhu? Games like Critical Role?

The old World of Darkness games are heavily simulationist. Yes there is a lot of talk in the books about drama and narrative, but the mechanics themselves do not empower the players to drive the story. Instead the mechanics directly control the PC's actions at times (frenzy etc.) and the GM is explicitly encouraged to direct events towards their own story ideas. It is very much about GM as auteur with the players acting out their parts, chewing up the scenery and bringing the detailed, heavily codified setting to life. It was precisely this dichotomy between what the game seemed to offer and what it actually did that led to the development of narrativist systems in the first place.

(I loved the oWoD, it was just that the game design technology wasn't quite there yet to support its ambition.)

Not sure why anyone would ever think CoC wasn't simulationist.

 

[niklinna]

BTW, if narrativism solely means Story Now then GNS is even more bizarre and flawed than I had thought, as there is insane amount of games with heavy focus to drama and narrative which nevertheless definitely are not Story Now, but that doesn't make them simulationistic or gamist either. Like what is the focus of WoD games supposed to be according to this model? Call of Cthulhu? Games like Critical Role?

The original post of this thread explicitly brought GNS and other threefold models up as germane to the discussion, and in fact as the only specific reference to any theories or models. I won't deny that GNS is bizarre and flawed, but several folks have simply complained—repeatedly, in this and other threads—that they don't understand it, pointedly refuse to learn it, and have not offered an alternative. If folks are having a productive conversation in a language you don't understand, why would you butt into their conversation and complain that they are not speaking your language?

As to your question: You could have read the original texts (here's just one) and found out what World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu are according to the GNS model.