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

[clearstream]

The strictest possible view is, in my view, not a plausible view.

Here we might have to agree to disagree. There's a wealth of evidence that the game being played at each table differs. In this thread we have had multiple examples of different ways to play various games. My intuition is that we're approaching this at two different levels of zoom, and on the level we are thinking of, we are each right.

I sketched my view in the post you replied to: some rules are constitutive, some are not, there may be borderline cases. In AW, "If you do it, you do it" is I think constitutive. That is what drives play and gives the game its distinctive character. It is the absence of that from @Manbearcat's Not-AW that, most fundamentally, makes it Not-AW.

It's true that what counts as regulatory and what counts as constitutive can be ambiguous. My own view is that certain and a sufficiency of regulatory rules can have a constitutive effect. "If you do it, you do it" is in that set. There is an antecedent activity that can be done without the rule in place (a group deciding that a player's description of what they do is necessary and sufficient to invoke a mechanic is something I have seen from even the very earliest years of play) and the rule casts it as a regulation. On the other hand, that regulation goes on to have a constitutive effect.

EDIT The distinction continues to matter because there are differences in how players grasp regulatory versus constitutive rules based on specifics of their construction. An example that you might recall was over the implications of a PHB rule on Ability Checks in light of a DMG rule on Ability Checks. The risk with a regulatory rule is that because it doesn't constitute the activity (there is an antecedent activity that it regulates) it is hard to test for completeness. Further components of the regulatory rule in other places are hard to anticipate. (Whereas if it constitutes the activity, it is normally obvious if the activity has been constituted, i.e. by the doing of it.) In the case of "to do it, do it" there could be additional components of the rule in other places that adjust its consequences. Ideally there are not, making it a well-fomed regulatory rule.

Gygax and Moldvay spelled out principles in RPG texts in the 1970s and early 1980s. Marc Miller came pretty close in 1977 too.

So I don't see it as a new development.

It's true that we generally see evolution rather than entirely novel origination. I will reflect further on this point, because from a design perspective I am seeing included in game texts accurately articulated principles and agenda that formerly would have been in a preface or sidebar and typically rather muddled. Game designers I have spoken with say that they are more conscious of the value of spelling out the principles they want players to approach play with, They see those as a component of their game text - conceived to operate together with the mechanics - rather than as side advice. They may also provide side advice.

The subjects of an RPG game design now often consciously include the principles of its play. Better answering the question of how the game designer procures that their game text in the hands of players delivers their envisioned play. Thinking about the discussion above, that helps bring instances of play nearer together. In the past, principles were discussed to my reading more as observation and testimony, or wise words, not as intentional design. Or it might be better to caveat, not as widely approached by game designers as a proper subject of intentional design. YMMV.

What I think changed in the 1980s was that different principles from Gygax's and Moldvay's were promulgated (To players: stick to your characterisation, which should be consistent with your stats; to GMs: make sure the story occurs) but the techniques and systems in widespread use weren't suitable to serve those principles, and so meta-principles like the so-called rule zero or Golden Rule became widely adopted and advocated. It's very common, today, to encounter people who assert that those sorts of conferrals of power on the GM are part-and-parcel of RPGing. And what is distinctive to me about a game like Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World or MHRP, in spelling out its principles, is that one thing the principles do is to state that "rule zero" or the "Golden Rule" is not part of the game.

Yes. It's valuable for the game designer to spell out what they intend to make their game distinct.

I don't understand what the force of this point is supposed to be.

You joined an ongoing conversation. The possibility of massively inept play shows that rules have no inherent binding power, else how would it be possible to not follow them, or to follow them not as intended? We're able to see that there is a rule, and see that a player has not found that rule to be inherently binding (through their failure to follow it).

One option that has been discussed in game studies is to deny that a genuine instance of play has occurred at all. So that - tautologically - only when all the rules happen to be binding in the right way is a bona-fide instance of the game being played. That runs into some problems, such as failure to follow rules that don't arise in play (en-passant in chess is an example.) Another is how to define cheating, seeing as one may now be saying that disapplication of a rule means the game isn't played at all. To my reading, it can be shown that one eventually has so caveated what counts as play as to exclude instances of play that are normally counted as genuine (see abundant testimony on enworld as to differences as to what rules are applied or disapplied at different tables, without resulting in cross-accusations that the game in question has not been played.)

Every day people all over the world cop parking fines not because they deliberately set out to park illegally, but because they failed to notice the signs, or they misread them. People make errors in filling in forms, and reporting earnings or expenses, and the like, not because they are tax cheats or insurance cheats but because they get confused or forget something or the rule isn't clear to them.

So it's no surprise that some people - especially if they have strongly internalised the idea of "rule zero"/"the Golden Rule" - might play AW in a way that doesn't conform to its principles. Even if they've read the principles and a sincerely trying to implement them! That doesn't show anything about a lack of power in the principles; it just shows the fallibility of human cognition and intention.

Yes! You outline here some reasons why rules can turn out not to be binding. It is with those sorts of reasons (and more) in mind that I say rules are not inherently binding. That agreement to a rule is never located in that rule. This is not to lessen the importance of rules, even while avoiding overstating any freedom entailed in rule zero, which perforce operates in the context of the attitudes and motives that lead people to put rules in force for themselves.

 

[clearstream]

In the spirit of @Campbell's post, here are some recreations of process charts from Edwards's setting dissection essay, plus some of my own.

He gives sorcerer as an example of a character-driven story now (I'm departing a bit from his way of numbering the steps, for clarity):

1. Establish introductory colour (environment, look and feel - I've never played Sorcerer, but as I understand it the game needs the group to make some decisions about the context, what sorcery and demons are in their setting, etc);​

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2. Make characters, which includes a kicker - ie a player-authored situation that is a moment of disruption or crisis for their PC that propels the PC into action;​

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3. Make the demons - this is setting up both context and content for the crises that will come during play.​

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4. Prepare, which includes both "diagramming" ie organising the preceding stuff in a systematic way (on a chart a tiny bit like a traditional alignment chart) that reveals, visually (ie via its place on the chart) both to the player and the GM its thematic "heft"; and then the GM doing their prep work (I'm not across the details of Sorcerer prep, but I know it's a thing from how Edwards talks about it - and I do know the prep has to have regard to the diagrams);​

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5. Begin play - which includes the GM drawing on their prep to frame scenes that (because they've been conceived of with the diagram in mind) will propel the players towards conflict (at a modest level of abstraction, this is similar to a Burning Wheel GM framing scenes that put pressure on the PCs' player-authored Beliefs);​

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6. Resolve conflicts;​

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7. As a result, witness and experience character transformations, which constitute the emergent story. The character changes, as I understand it, will among other things produce changes in the diagrams, which in turn therefore feed into future prep. This is one example of @Campbell's idea of scenes/situations having "fallout" which feeds into subsequent scenes.​

Here's my attempt to do the same for Burning Wheel:

1. Establish the overall situation and context, building on the GM's pitch of a "big picture";​

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2. Make characters - in BW this is a lifepath process, and iterates with step 1 because lifepaths implicate setting and context, and vice versa;​

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3. Establish relationships, affiliations, reputations, etc - this is part of the PC build process, but is worth calling out because (i) at a certain level of abstraction it has a bit of resemblance to the "demons" stage of Sorcerer (ie it is part of the process of creating the NPCs and relationships that will underpin future conflicts and crises) and (ii) it is a further way in which the PC build phase of the game iterates back into step 1, of establishing situation, context and "big picture";​

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4. Establish Beliefs for the PCs - this is also part of the PC build process, but is worth calling out because at a certain level of abstraction it resembles diagramming in Sorcerer: it is the canonical way in which players signal their thematic concerns to the GM, and interweave the PCs, their relationships, their affiliations, etc (there is no mandate to make Beliefs be about a character's relationships or affiliations, or about other PCs, but it is discussed and strongly encouraged as a good way to support visceral pay with compelling situations);​

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5. Begin play, which will include the GM framing an initial scene: the GM's job here is to frame so as to put pressure on Beliefs and thus propel the players into action declarations for their PCs; as I've discussed upthread, the players also have tools (eg Wises, Circles) to try and establish scene elements or whole scenes that will speak to their concerns, if they want to add to, or depart from, what the GM is offering;​

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6. Resolve conflicts (as per the principle: say 'yes' or roll the dice - so if the players' declared actions don't immediately lean into conflict the GM just keeps saying yes and building up the framing until a conflict occurs - this is why relationships, affiliations etc matter because these give the GM the material, NPCs etc to use in their framing);​

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7. As a result, witness and experiences changes in characters - either internal changes (Beliefs change) or external changes (relationships change, new ones are created, allies become enemies or vice versa, etc); external changes are apt to produce internal changes too.​

Here's how Edwards sets out generic setting-based "story now" (again, I'm playing a bit with his numbering to hopefully make it clearer and to roughly map to the preceding):

1. Introduce the setting, including a particular situation-rich location where the action will start;​

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2. Make the PCs in that spot;​

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3. As part of PC build, establish the relationships, obligations etc the PCs participate in and are under, drawing on the setting material (Edward says "it is helpful for one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas");​

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4. Prep: identify the political, economic, religious, cultural etc conflicts that the PCs are implicated in, in virtue of where they are, who they are, and who they are related to; this may also involve identifying character goals that fits within that context;​

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5. Begin play with a trigger event, something that destabilises the status quo - power, economics, status, religion, or whatever - in the starting location, which either the PCs, or the NPCs they're related to, can't ignore;​

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6. Resolve the conflicts that emerge - Edwards's advice here is to "embrace the fullest and most extreme rules-driven consequences of every single resolved conflict, no matter what they are" and to "Show those consequences and treat them as the material of the moment in the very next scenes, every time";​

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7. As a result, the setting will be transformed and this constitutes the emergent story.​

And here is how I would suggest doing this for 4e D&D:

1. Introduce the setting - fallen Nerath, and perhaps work out if there's any particular aspect or element people want to focus on;​

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2. Make the PCs, choosing build options that locate them (geographically, historically, thematically) within fallen Nerath - at this stage I think Halfling rangers who worship Melora or Avandra risk being energy sinks, but Dwarven Paladins of Moradin ready to crusade against the giants, or Eladrin envoys from the Feywild concerned about incursions of Goblins and Formorians are good stuff;​

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3. This is probably the weakest part of 4e D&D in the present context - it doesn't have clear processes for making the PCs into "walking soap operas" - what I did was tell each player they had to establish one loyalty for their PC, and this led to relationships to places, peoples, gods etc which was enough to start with (4e themes and backgrounds, on their own, are good for step 2 but I don't think have quite enough heft to cover step 3 on their own)​

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4. Prep: the players can work out if/how their PCs are connected, but more important is that the GM has to prepare (or at least find in a sourcebook) the stat blocks, maps etc that will allow presenting situations that speak to the concerns that have been identified at steps 2 and 3 (so if there are Raven Queen-oriented PCs, prep undead and Orcus cultists; for Kord-worshippers prep Bane-ites; etc); think about, and in practical terms work out, how these can be interwoven within the framework of fallen Nerath, and lean into D&D tropes where they will help carry this load;​

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5. Begin play with an event that locates the PCs within the conflicts and tensions and connections the GM has identified and prepped for at step 4 and forces them to choose a side in some or other respect - it doesn't necessarily have to be as overtly destabilising of status quos as Edwards says, because fallen Nerath is already lacking status quos (the points of light are under constant threat from the darkness), but it has to provoke action for these characters given their contexts, and D&D leans heavily into taking sides in larger conflicts so build on that, don't shy away from it;​

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6. Resolve conflicts - I think Edwards's generic advice here is pretty sound for 4e D&D;​

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7. As a result, the setting will be transformed: so as the PCs scale up the tiers not only are they changing in their standing, capabilities etc but the world they are engaging with is changing as a result of their actions (the "tiers of play" text in the PHB and DMG gives generic ideas about what sorts of changes might be expected - these don't need to be metaplotted, as following the preceding steps will make that sort of thing happen emergently).​

I think using 4e D&D for a different setting (eg Dark Sun) needs a different set of steps, because 1 and 2 will probably be weaker in terms of a situation-rich location and context for the PCs, and hence step 4 will be harder. In my Dark Sun game, I used kickers as a supplementing aspect of step 3. That helped, but the setting still has a fair bit of "status quo" that I found it can be work to push against.

I wanted to say that I really like your post here. I'm conscious that in our interactions I don't do half as much agreeing-by-agreeing as I ought to do! It feels like what Edwards wanted to see was an intense framing and resolving of tensions or conflicts. I can appreciate that.

What do you feel would be the best way to approach the following (any best practices)

1. A group in a long-running campaign desires to move between agendas, so that in some sessions they're immersed in world, in others character tensions and conflicts come to the fore?
2. A group in a long-running campaign introduces commitments that play out over extended arcs; so thinking of this as the same group in the above, a bond, belief or commitment is in some way introduced, then some time later a tension or conflict in its relation starts to emerge, and then some time much later - or really over a span of time - it is resolved in increments, possibly (but not necessarily) leading to a crescendo?

My motive in asking about these is that I enjoy a less pressure-cooker approach. So I wonder if others see Story Now as always (and perhaps necessarily) the furnace, or whether there are there effective ways to manage glowering embers - a peat fire burning underground?

 

[pemerton]

I wanted to say that I really like your post here. I'm conscious that in our interactions I don't do half as much agreeing-by-agreeing as I ought to do! It feels like what Edwards wanted to see was an intense framing and resolving of tensions or conflicts. I can appreciate that.

What do you feel would be the best way to approach the following (any best practices)

1. A group in a long-running campaign desires to move between agendas, so that in some sessions they're immersed in world, in others character tensions and conflicts come to the fore?
2. A group in a long-running campaign introduces commitments that play out over extended arcs; so thinking of this as the same group in the above, a bond, belief or commitment is in some way introduced, then some time later a tension or conflict in its relation starts to emerge, and then some time much later - or really over a span of time - it is resolved in increments, possibly (but not necessarily) leading to a crescendo?

My motive in asking about these is that I enjoy a less pressure-cooker approach. So I wonder if others see Story Now as always (and perhaps necessarily) the furnace, or whether there are there effective ways to manage glowering embers - a peat fire burning underground?

For (1), it seems that the first thing the GM needs to do is to vary scene-framing imperatives. Here's Edwards on something in the neighbourhood of what you're describing - both possibilities and risks/pitfalls:

Simulationist play works as an underpinning to Narrativist play, insofar as bits or sub-scenes of play can shift into extensive set-up or reinforcers for upcoming Bang-oriented moments. It differs from the Explorative chassis for Narrativist play, even an extensive one, in that one really has to stop addressing Premise and focus on in-game causality per se. Such scenes or details can take on an interest of their own, as with the many pages describing military hardware in a Tom Clancy novel. It's a bit risky, as one can attract (e.g.) hardware-nuts who care very little for Premise as well as Premise-nuts who get bored by one too many hardware-pages, and end up pleasing neither enough to attract them further.

Historically, this approach has been poorly implemented in role-playing texts, which swing into Simulationist phrasing extremely easily, for the reasons I describe in "Simulationism: the Right to Dream". You cannot get emergent Narrativist play specifically through putting more and more effort into perfecting the Simulationism (which requires that the Narrativism cease), no matter how "genre-faithful" or "character-faithful" it may be. I consider most efforts in this direction to become reasonably successful High-Concept Simulationism with a strong slant toward Situation, mainly useful for enjoyable pastiche but not particularly for Narrativist play at all. . . .

Sole reliance on deepening and detailing any aspects of Exploration is misguided. The vast majority of attempted Narrativist design is a hunt for the perfect Simulationist design that will ostensibly permit the Narrativist play to emerge, leading to abashedness at best. It's often combined with mistaking an effectiveness-improvement mechanic for a reward system - at this point, the game text simply facilitates High-Concept Simulationist play, and the Narrativist goal is left to Social Contract alone. Various publishing practices, especially a long string of scenario and setting supplememnts, provide the coffin nails.​

With the above in mind, one challenge I can see is this: how do the players know what sort of scene is being presented to them? One possible answer: what's presented in the scene might be sufficient to let the players know whether it's intended to be an exploration scene or a protagonistic scene.

I think the bigger challenge than this scene-framing aspect is on the resolution side. Upthread I quoted Edwards, from "setting dissection", saying "embrace the fullest and most extreme rules-driven consequences of every single resolved conflict, no matter what they are" and to "Show those consequences and treat them as the material of the moment in the very next scenes, every time". But that might not work for the exploration scenes. The issue here, it seems to me, is how to make sure the ingame-causality that is used in these scenes doesn't undercut the elements of the shared fiction that are central to the protagonistic moments of play. In the abstract we can talk about the importance of "quarantining" one from the other, but how are we going to do that if the same PCs are in the same setting interacting with the same NPCs? I'm not saying it can't be done, but it seems tricky to me.

As for (2), it looks like it might just be another version of (1), or else it might be "story now" with very extended framing. This remark seems apposite, though not conclusive, in relation to (2):

"El Dorado" was coined by Paul Czege to indicate the impossibility of a 1:1 Simulationist:Narrativist blend, although the term was appropriated by others for the blend itself, as a desirable goal. I think some people who claim to desire such a goal in play are simply looking for Narrativism with a very strong Explorative chassis, and that the goal is not elusive at all. Such "Vanilla Narrativism" is very easy and straightforward. The key to finding it is to stop reinforcing Simulationist approaches to play. Many role-players, identified by Jesse Burneko as "Simulationist-by-habit," exhaust themselves by seeking El Dorado, racing ever faster and farther, when all they have to do is stop running, turn around, and find Vanilla Narrativism right in their grasp.​

Maybe group (2) is looking for a very strong explorative chassis, manifested via what I've called "extended framing". The challenge is how to stop it turning into those Clancy-esque hardware pages? And how to avoid that without play just being agonisingly slow? The problem is that GM narration on its own isn't RPGing, but every time the players declare actions that are resolved via considerations of ingame causality rather than protagonism we're back to reinforcing simulationism and running the risk of undercutting protagonism. I don't know if there's any general solution to this. As Edwards says (same essay):

What happens when Premise is addressed sporadically, or develops so slowly that the majority of play is like those hardware-pages? Whether this is "slow Narrativism" or "S-N-S" or just plain dysfunctional play is a matter of specific instances, I think.​

 

[Campbell]

I wanted to say that I really like your post here. I'm conscious that in our interactions I don't do half as much agreeing-by-agreeing as I ought to do! It feels like what Edwards wanted to see was an intense framing and resolving of tensions or conflicts. I can appreciate that.

What do you feel would be the best way to approach the following (any best practices)

1. A group in a long-running campaign desires to move between agendas, so that in some sessions they're immersed in world, in others character tensions and conflicts come to the fore?
2. A group in a long-running campaign introduces commitments that play out over extended arcs; so thinking of this as the same group in the above, a bond, belief or commitment is in some way introduced, then some time later a tension or conflict in its relation starts to emerge, and then some time much later - or really over a span of time - it is resolved in increments, possibly (but not necessarily) leading to a crescendo?

My motive in asking about these is that I enjoy a less pressure-cooker approach. So I wonder if others see Story Now as always (and perhaps necessarily) the furnace, or whether there are there effective ways to manage glowering embers - a peat fire burning underground?

Here's how I try to get a slow burn going when I run games like L5R, Vampire or Exalted :

1. During setting, situation and NPC design I primarily focus on creating a space that reflects player character dramatic needs.
2. While play is in motion, I try to just embrace the internal causality of the situation. Playing the setting with as much integrity as possible.
3. I think long and hard about what the fallout would really be between sessions.
4. I go back to Step 1,

This creates a different sort of play experience, but it is one I still really enjoy and feel like I can remain relatively disciplined about. The temptation (or even inadvertent tendency) to shape narrative outcomes is a source of difficulty for me personally when it comes to delayed consequences. I have to work a lot harder to maintain discipline. Player facing countdown clocks can help but tend to take away from the exploratory environment I expect in a more slow-burn exploration of character and situation.

 

[pemerton]

These Edwards quotes seem relevant to @Manbearcat and Not-AW world.

On the GM role(s) in story now play:

I suggest that considering "the GM" to be either (a) necessarily one person or (b) a specific and universally-consistent role is badly mistaken - we are really talking about a set of potential behaviors (roles, tasks, whatever) which may be independently centralized within or distributed across a group of people. Here are some of those GM behaviors, roles, and tasks: - rules-applier and interpreter, as in "referee" - in-game-world time manager - changer of scenes - color provider - ensurer of protagonist screen time - regulator of pacing (in real time) - authority over what information can be acted upon by which characters - authority over internal plausibility - "where the buck stops" in terms of establishing the Explorative content - social manager of who gets to speak when

A given role-playing experience must have these things - there is no such thing as "GM-less" play. But which of these require(s) enforcing varies greatly, as does whether they are concentrated into a particular person, and as does whether that person is openly acknowledged as such. What matters for Narrativist play, however, isn't any specific point in the diversity-matrix of these variables - it's about what the person (or persons) currently in the GM-role is responsible for. . . .

It all comes down to this: a "player" in a Narrativist role-playing context necessarily makes the thematic choices for a given player-character. Even if this role switches around from person to person (as in Universalis), it's always sacrosanct in the moment of decision. "GMing," then, for this sort of play, is all about facilitating another person's ability to do this. . . .

[T]he question is not whether there is a GM (there is always one or more for any scene during play), but rather how the GMing tasks are distributed. The potential range of diversity is staggering. The most important variables include: - Which of these roles are most important to be formalized for this game - Whether the roles are centralized in one person - The concept of "the buck" - in the event that different people suggest different things, who says what goes . . .

It's also easy to get distracted by the word "GM." A person may have a mental tautology going between "GM" and "power," with a corresponding death-grip on his or her perceived responsibility to perform and entertain. Once the term is understood to be a set of independent roles which may be distributed differently across the participants, then the whole thing becomes a lot easier.​

And building on that "mental tautology" and the resulting "death-grip", there is this on "freeform" RPGing and GM-force:

Going "no system," especially for IIEE aspects of play [ie action declaration and resolution], combines the undermining aspects of both of the above two approaches [ie metaplot and reinforcing exploration], especially when the author idealizes story as a product rather than Narrativist play as a process. Don't forget, all role-playing has a system; turning it over to "oh, just decide and have fun" merely makes the system crappy and prone to bullying. . . .

Why am I being so harshly critical? It all goes back to Force - if establishing the IIEE circumstances is under one person's control, without reference to any System features, then scenes' outcomes become the province of that person. Which in turn means that the decisions and actions of player-characters are now details of this one person's decisions. Narrativist de-protagonism is the near-inevitable result.​

Manbearcat has also argued that this is not very good for gamist play either.

And where does it tend to lead?

What happens when you want a story but don't want to play with Story Now? Then the story becomes a feature of Exploration with the process of play being devoted to how to make it happen as expected. The participation of more than one person in the process is usually a matter of providing improvisational additions to be filtered through the primary story-person's judgment, or of providing extensive Color to the story. Under these circumstances, the typical result is pastiche: a story which recapitulates an already-existing story's theme, with many explicit references to that story. . . . creating pastiche is primarily a form of fandom, pure homage to an existing body of work. Most High Concept Simulationist play gravitates toward it, and some game texts are explicitly about nothing else. . . .

The GM has the story decisions, i.e., wields substantial Force. "Story" isn't coming from player decisions at all and may be considered, itself, a piece of Explorative-material input from the GM. Everyone else is providing color and material through pseudo-decisions.​

Edwards advice in relation to this possibility for RPGing is

If you're doing a solid Simulationist game with a strong story emphasis via Force, say so and don't bleat about "players control their characters' decisions" (see Call of Cthulhu and Arrowflight).​

I've got a copy of Arrowflight but have never played it. (And am not sure I've even read much of it.) But I've played CoC, and see it as a classic high concept vehicle. There is no player protagonism: as a player, I'm there to experience the story - the solution of the mystery and the descent into madness. And it's the GM's job to deliver those things. And it's a variant of Not-AW, just with a different setting, and with insanity rules that sometimes limit the player's decision-making about what their PC thinks and does.

 

[pemerton]

• While play is in motion, I try to just embrace the internal causality of the situation. Playing the setting with as much integrity as possible.
• I think long and hard about what the fallout would really be between sessions.

<snip>

The temptation (or even inadvertent tendency) to shape narrative outcomes is a source of difficulty for me personally when it comes to delayed consequences. I have to work a lot harder to maintain discipline.

If I've understood you correctly, what you're describing here is related to what I tried to get at just upthread:

Upthread I quoted Edwards, from "setting dissection", saying "embrace the fullest and most extreme rules-driven consequences of every single resolved conflict, no matter what they are" and to "Show those consequences and treat them as the material of the moment in the very next scenes, every time". But that might not work for the exploration scenes. The issue here, it seems to me, is how to make sure the ingame-causality that is used in these scenes doesn't undercut the elements of the shared fiction that are central to the protagonistic moments of play. In the abstract we can talk about the importance of "quarantining" one from the other, but how are we going to do that if the same PCs are in the same setting interacting with the same NPCs? I'm not saying it can't be done, but it seems tricky to me.

If I'm following you properly, you're working out consequences and fallout via the internal causality of the setting. This avoids shaping narrative outcomes. But it also pushes towards exploration rather than "story now" - you're certainly not embracing the fullest and most extreme rules-driven consequence of every single resolved conflict! So the play probably won't toggle between (i) exploration of character, setting and situation and (ii) story now. It will tend to remain (i).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't know what the verb "advance" means here.

AbdulAlhazred is designing a game to support "story now" play similar to how 4e D&D does. His game uses a mechanic which (i) doesn't reinforce exploration of the system for its own sake, because it is simple and confined and doesn't interact much with other system elements in intricate ways, and (ii) makes some of the story now play he is interested possible.

He has not stated high concept sim as an agenda, and there is nothing about his game that particularly suggests it is well-suited for high concept sim. For instance, there doesn't seem to be anything that dictates an answer to the paladin's question to flank or not to flank, whereas one would expect a game oriented towards high concept sim to provide such an answer ("internal cause is king").

This is why I find game design interesting. So, imagine this 'paladin', with an attached concept of honor which includes some version of "always confront your enemy directly and give him a chance to answer" coupled with flanking (attacking from outside an opponent's view basically). So, nothing really rewards you, in my game at least, for sticking to your ethical principles. OTOH suppose the paladin does circle around behind his opponent. This is a game where the following course of character development, in terms of what sorts of powers and whatnot that get attached to your character, are dictated by narrative logic and the action. Surely backstabbing someone is not going to get the paladin a shiny holy sword! Maybe he's taken the first step down the road towards becoming a 'blackguard' or something. His reward is likely to be appropriate to his behavior in some way at least. That is a central conceit of the game, heroes form their destinies by their actions. If you want to be a holy warrior, well, behave like one! This is a bit different from a game like DW where players select things like bonds and then either uphold them or not, as they are questions about the character more than descriptions. If a DW paladin swears to protect the halfling and then leaves him in the lurch, well, the bond is discharged (assuming neither player wants to keep it) and XP is given! The paladin might also change alignment.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Helpful insights! A kind of play I like is where I know the setting and the NPCs' means and motives, but have no plan for what happens. Nor do I know which NPCs are going to figure highly, or even if the roster is complete.

I am not characterising this as Story Now. Rich, unanticipated stories do emerge though. In a sense, what I am doing is assigning part of my cognition to operating as "player", so that it can join in the authoring-on-the-fly. Thus they stumble across things, get involved, get in trouble, wander places I haven't mapped yet, experience conflicts. These could amount to DMPCs only one has them at arms-length, so they are readily sacrificed or passed over if that is where the stream of emergent narrative courses.

Right, it is just literally as stated, a matter of AGENDA. If the game is focused first and foremost on what is motivating and driving the PCs, their dramatic needs, the conflicts that arise out of addressing them, and the consequences/fallout/rewards of the resulting action, then you are working a Narrativist agenda. Story Now kind of follows very naturally, because the above focus means that any conflicting faithful depiction of setting, or any preordained plot elements would take secondary place to that, and so would fail to be established, or would be contradicted, should that serve the Narrativist agenda.

Likewise a potentially competing agenda, lets say HCS: focuses on exploration of the setting/genre and the associated conceits. So in that case if a player declares something about their PC which brings out a dramatic need, it may be passed over for whatever reasons. It could be distracting from exploration, it could be too difficult to integrate into some preordained element of setting or genre, etc. So when it comes to a choice of priorities, HCS will go for exploration of things that are generally outside of 'character' per se.

Clearly actual games overlap in some degree. Even purist Story Now games have a genre and some basic setting concept, even if it is quite abstract and contains no concrete facts at the start (IE a DW game will start with nothing except the conceit of a fantastical D&D-esque world with dragons, dungeons, wizards, and the possibility of heroic adventure). The players may well 'explore' a world that comes into existence and is fleshed out in DW play, but it exists purely to form the backdrop for the character's conflicts and to generate some kind of internal logic for the action. At most the players might imagine their characters as wishing to take on the roles of great explorers, and thus 'map out' parts of the world. That won't turn it into HCS play, as its more likely that the GM will put the PCs dreams of finding 'lost cities of gold' or whatever under pressure! He's not facilitating them, he's giving the players a way to examine that impulse itself, and perhaps to fulfill it to a degree. In the HCS version, the GM will map out this world ahead of time and the play will be the actual revelation, the transference of those map symbols onto the player's map! If a problem arises which pits exploration against something else, its purpose is simply to enhance the 'reward' aspect of successful exploration (IE 'see you did it even though there were obstacles').

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Correct in that context. In my reply upthread to @Manbearcat about metaplot (post #1510) I reintroduce the way in which sharing is significant from the perspective of "story now" RPGing.

I assert that "vivid and inhabitable", as a property of a RPG setting, is independent of whether the setting is pre-authored (shared or otherwise) or authored in the course of play (shared or otherwise).

I took you to be implying that a setting can be "vivid and inhabitable" only if (or at least normally only if) it is pre-authored.

Yes, at least in the 2003 essay and the "setting dissection" essay. (I can't speak to his current usage.)

Assuming he's not inconsistent - and I don't think he is - it follows from his comment about improvisation that it is possible to have "story now" and hence "no the plot", and the "openness" of resolution that I posted about upthread, while also having an established setting.

I know it is very common to associate "story now" play with "no myth" play - on these boards that is @AbdulAlhazred's default, I think, and probably also @Ovinomancer's, but while that is probably the most typical approach (exemplified eg by AW and DW) it is not the only one. But it doesn't follow from the possibility of setting-heavy "story now" play that any old setting will do, or that "story now" imposes no demands on how setting is presented and used in play. Edwards talks about this both in the 2003 "nar essay" I've been quoting from in this thread, and in the setting dissection essay. My post upthread about metaplot draws on what he says to explain how setting heavy "story now" works, and what demands it imposes. The most important one is sharing.

Well, I don't know Stonetop except by reputation, and so have no view on whether or not its 229 pages present an obstacle to "story now" RPGing. The mere fact of there being setting doesn't; but as I posted upthread and reiterated just above, there are particular demands on how setting is presented and used that are imposed by "story now" RPGing. And I don't know if Stonetop satisfies them.

Yeah, and on that note you could look at Erithnoi which is just a reformatted version of my own campaign notes from years of playing various games and reusing the same setting. I don't find it difficult to run a Story Now type of game, like HoML, using this setting. It is really just a bunch of color and details that can be pulled out and used. Nothing in it is secret to the GM, and there's little to no 'metaplot'. Anyone who wants can go through any part of the material. Furthermore, I don't really care if we abide by whatever is here, its just 'stuff', some was established in some previous play, possibly 30+ years ago in some cases, or else just something I dreamed up one day when I was bored, also possibly 30 or even 40 years ago or more.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@pemerton wrote a response to this that I agree with. Over the years I've talked about this subject a lot (what is sufficient to constitute "system" and "a game"). I don't know if you were involved in those conversations. I thought so, but perhaps not. So what I wrote above was not intended to be analysis. As I said, I've belabored this issue to the ground in the past. It was basically an assertion of what I feel is self-evident.

But I'll give a go at some analysis by way of creating a game.

I'm going to call this game "(Not) Apocalypse World."

Procedurally, lets do this. Take damn near everything out.

Take out the structure of play (including the move loop and conversation structure and Threat creation and deployment), every facet of the Agenda but one, the Principles, the Best Practices, the Playbooks, Gear and Crap, Harm and Healing, all of the moves and the structure for making custom moves.

All that stuff. Now keep the following:

• Make (Not) Apocalypse World seem real.

• Always say what the rules demand (we've got one rule - see below).

• Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and
undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions
about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else.

That's it.

Those are your "rules." This is your "system." We've taken Apocalypse World and we've stripped out everything that makes it Apocalypse World.

Looks terrible right? I agree. I would never, ever, ever run this. Its a razor's edge from Calvinball and the odds of it degenerating to Calvinball are not small.

But its still constitutes "system"...it just so happens that "system's say" is entirely "GM's (unbridled...unconstrained...unstructured...not principally informed) say." Doesn't this game look an awful lot like a complex, intricate system with all kinds of PC build and action resolution widgets and interactions that caveats hard with a "oh yeah...the GM can ignore or change rules/outcomes at their discretion if they feel like it leads to a better game"...except it dispenses with the illusion that all of that other stuff (PC build and action resolution etc) brings about actual, verifiable, insured-against-(overt or covert)veto, capacity to evolve the gamestate in a manner desired by the non-GM participant?

Didn't I already invent this exact game somewhere up thread? LOL!

The clever thing is, as Vince said, this is basically what you get if you don't interact with the rest of AW, except you even got rid of the principles and agenda, so now there's no more of AW left at all. Still, the point is very good, you can add all sorts of player-facing D&D-esque mechanical foofarah and you won't ever get Story Now. You COULD build SN via some sort of purely mechanical process though. It would just have to restate things like the GM's principles as rules, well gosh that's basically what AW does! (I mean DW does it, I assume that was cribbed from AW with whatever suitable changes related to genre and tone).