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

[clearstream]

The problem with this is that's a good part of the use of Rule 0 I've made over the past 40 years. The rest have been rules-peripheral cases where there simply were no mechanics that seemed to address the issue at all, or the most analogous ones seemed to produce obvious problems on multiple levels. The only other thing I can think of that lands in "Rule 0" ground is house rules, and those are even less likely to break gamist concerns as long as they're shared with the player group at earliest possible occasion.

Can you give an example of what you're referring to? I'm beginning to wonder if you (and possibly some of the others) are using "Rule 0" in a much broader way than I've classically seen it used.

I have had a parallel "Huh?" moment in this thread. The behaviour described - the possible use of rule 0 - isn't something I have commonly experienced. It's the cases to the contrary that are rare - the ones some seem to feel are common. Maybe these dissimilar communities of practice have led to very different ideas about what rule 0 amounts to?

All generally fair, though I again I think you're seeing the process as, of necessity, much tighter than I do. There's enough slop in most mental models on either end that a lot of things will, at worst add in a little wobble that people expect anyway. It doesn't significantly deflect their ability to engage with the situation in a gamist fashion, because, well, we're not playing chess.

Given that RPG were differentiated from other games by the property of having fictional position, then it's RPG turtles all the way down.

 

[clearstream]

Well, let me just say, you have a somewhat controversial interpretation of the 5e rules as actually demanding that there be some 'meaningfullness' to resolution.

5e uses "narrates" in the basic pattern. Others have argued that narrative only plausibly counts as narrative if it is meaningful. Encouragement toward meaningful outcomes is found in the 5e game text.

I don't think we need to drag through that again, it had a whole long thread! So, if you want to state that every check MUST resolve some conflict, that would be doing the same thing that SCs essentially do, or as @pemerton points out they at least close out a scene frame, which implies that some question was addressed (it may come up again in some cases, but a general principle is to give the players their victories and not revisit them). You could also employ a heavy discipline where you simple ALWAYS spell out for the player exactly what the valence of the check is, like "If will take 3 swim checks to cross the river without drowning" or something like that, BEFORE the player commits the PC to the attempt! Even better would be to spell this stuff out in terms of character/player INTENT, not just action resolution.

I sometimes use multiple checks. Generally I think it is better to play as far as you can without checks, and call for the check only when things really are at the crucial point of resolution. Perhaps that is why I don't feel the same disconnect between players and resolution of situation. The situation is only resolved when the players resolve it, on terms we've "negotiated" between us. That might involve one or a few checks.

Incremental success/failure isn't inherently necessary, although it certainly seems like a feature you would want in a more extended resolution system, generally speaking...

5e has some interesting nuance in its ability check resolution. We see

• Standing scores - where the check will be compared against multiple DCs until one defeats it. A common example is hiding, but also tying knots and crafting locks.
• Gauges - where the result indicates a degree of success using a formula or scale. An example is carousing.
• Passive scores - these neither succeed nor fail, but set a level to be contested. The common example is perception.
• Direct results - this is the most common case, where the check is against a target.
• Contests - this differs from any of the above through a draw resulting in no progress.

I'm not certain incremental success/failure is to the benefit of the game. I feel like the designers should tackle first better nuance of result, to make checks more expressive. There should at least be the now typical success, success with a complication, and failure.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In a sense it is true that in a situation where things are tightly mechanically defined and there is no room for GM fiat the players can make tactical choices with greater confidence. But it can also lead to the fiction feeling a tacked on afterthought. Think of the much praised skill challenges. If we stick to the rules and do not let the GM to alter or bypass the rules structure to better accommodate this situation which may arise in the fiction, then the fictional positioning doesn't much matter. Fixed number of checks, with fixed amount of successes and fails required with fixed DC. Doesn't matter if in the fiction it would makes sense for particular thing to be easier or harder than another, it doesn't matter if the character comes up with something clever that should logically solve the whole issue in one fell swoop, or something idiotic that should ruing the whole attempt for sure. Nah, I don't want this. I want to primarily to engage via the fiction, not via the mechanics, and it is the GM's job to facilitate, manage and if necessarily alter the mechanics to suit the fiction so that this can happen.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That absolutely can be a thing, but I think that usually gets worked out pretty early by the difference between RAW and what I call RAU (Rules As Understood). Even gamist-centric groups have, effectively, unstated conventions they go by (which often will end up in house rules once someone notices that its not RAW, or alternatively everyone just adjusts to going back to RAW).

(As an example, Fragged Empire has a bleeding rule. In my hurry to read it at an early point in process, I read it as cutting in when an attribute went to zero from critical damage. As it turns out, it happens when the attribute goes to negative (i.e. -1 or worse). No one had apparently noticed the difference between what I was doing and/or took my word for it (often a mistake because, well, I'm sometimes sloppy) and what the rules said (possibly because it doesn't come up all the time) but as soon as someone on the FE Discord mentioned it in passing, I checked and found out I'd been doing it wrong and brought it to everyone's attention. Since the RAW rule was more benign to PCs, no one was at all upset, but its gone the other way too and people have mostly just shrugged).

However in the example at hand, this is still only a problem because the players and the GM aren't on the same page, and the GM was unwilling to cut any slack for that. Nothing about being gamist precludes understanding that mistakes and misunderstandings happen. Even back in my Hardcore Young Gamer days when it became obvious that I and the players were effectively using different rules sets regarding Fireball, I'd have said "Okay, this particular one time we'll have it work your way since you did this thinking it did, and the whole tactical setup you chose was based on it. But we need to thrash out whether we want to go by the book or do a houserule before its used again" and everyone would likely have just nodded and gone along.

Right, it is just possible, even not so unlikely, in a classic D&D game (or 3e, which is stupidly complex) that this can come up fairly often, which means we're stepping out of our gamist agenda a lot. That was what I found when I ran RAW 1e (I mean aside from the amusing incident at the very start). So actually getting in any really serious 'game' was quite hard, actually! Now, I expect people like Gygax ran into much less of a problem there, as the entire rules were simply 'whatever I do', so there you get instead the 'playing the GM' issue. For all these reasons I basically agree with you, there isn't anything like real gamism in a system along the lines of D&D. Torchbearer OTOH, you can actually PLAY that in much closer to the true sense of playing (though I'd fault it for having poorly organized rules).

Again, that's about a failure to communicate, however, which can be a problem all over gaming. Its only a massive problem if the GM and players don't recognize that things can go awry there. Again, the simple response would be "You could have asked first. Do you want to back up and change your mind there?" I mean, not to put to fine a point on it, but nothing about GMing for gamists requires you to be a jerk.

Agreed, you can do various things 'about' it, but each incident itself kind of negates that specific instance of gamist play, because whatever the solution is, it in practice is about putting things back to 'how we expect them to be' vs 'playing by the rules to see who is the best player.'

Or, frankly, because the clarity wasn't as good as it could be, so you asked. This doesn't completely address the issue--its one of those cases where you don't want to just do this one-off because consistency is kind of virtue--but it does prevent it from turning into a problem from most POVs.

Well, yes, like the unspooling lightning bolts, that was one of those rules designed to just be a pain in the ass, which early D&D was known for.

Yeah, I just conclude that, while gamist play is possible, the part where the rules are tested against the players should NOT involve some kind of simulationist kind of fiction references. Again, I look at something like TB2, or some ways that 4e is played, and there it is much easier. You don't need to end up with a consistent set of ideas about what will happen "in the game world." TB2 just says "here's the turn structure, and as the GM ticks through turns here's what WILL happen." The fiction is there, it may be the REASON you tick off turns/face obstacles, but you're not actually testing against the fiction, but against the turn/resource system instead.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

In a sense it is true that in a situation where things are tightly mechanically defined and there is no room for GM fiat the players can make tactical choices with greater confidence. But it can also lead to the fiction feeling a tacked on afterthought. Think of the much praised skill challenges. If we stick to the rules and do not let the GM to alter or bypass the rules structure to better accommodate this situation which may arise in the fiction, then the fictional positioning doesn't much matter. Fixed number of checks, with fixed amount of successes and fails required with fixed DC. Doesn't matter if in the fiction it would makes sense for particular thing to be easier or harder than another, it doesn't matter if the character comes up with something clever that should logically solve the whole issue in one fell swoop, or something idiotic that should ruing the whole attempt for sure. Nah, I don't want this. I want to primarily to engage via the fiction, not via the mechanics, and it is the GM's job to facilitate, manage and if necessarily alter the mechanics to suit the fiction so that this can happen.

I don't think that quite fairly characterizes SCs as they are actually written. It is plain that the idea SHOULD be (and in later examples is, but not all the ones in DMG1) that the fiction MUST always evolve to a new state after each check, and the fictional circumstances are the overriding concern in terms of the type of check, DC, etc. RC skill challenges has a certain number of hard checks, some obstacles, some advantages, etc. so that even following the rote mechanics you get variations that can be deployed along the way. I think really the goal of that was to act as a set of signposts for the GM to insure that she's asking for a consistent number of checks of each DC etc. to, again, give the players the best understanding of the stakes (IE am I virtually certain to fail this SC at this point, or do I have a good chance of overall success such that I want to expend resources on insuring it).

DMG2 also notes that there COULD be cases where the fiction goes to a place with the SC itself no longer makes any coherent sense. There's nothing wrong with abandoning them at that point. I mean, suppose the whole dungeon begins to collapse, the combat with the goblins probably doesn't go on anymore, everyone bails and starts fleeing for the exits. It is the same sort of idea. Honestly I only ever threw out maybe 2-3 SCs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't think that quite fairly characterizes SCs as they are actually written. It is plain that the idea SHOULD be (and in later examples is, but not all the ones in DMG1) that the fiction MUST always evolve to a new state after each check, and the fictional circumstances are the overriding concern in terms of the type of check, DC, etc. RC skill challenges has a certain number of hard checks, some obstacles, some advantages, etc. so that even following the rote mechanics you get variations that can be deployed along the way. I think really the goal of that was to act as a set of signposts for the GM to insure that she's asking for a consistent number of checks of each DC etc. to, again, give the players the best understanding of the stakes (IE am I virtually certain to fail this SC at this point, or do I have a good chance of overall success such that I want to expend resources on insuring it).

DMG2 also notes that there COULD be cases where the fiction goes to a place with the SC itself no longer makes any coherent sense. There's nothing wrong with abandoning them at that point. I mean, suppose the whole dungeon begins to collapse, the combat with the goblins probably doesn't go on anymore, everyone bails and starts fleeing for the exits. It is the same sort of idea. Honestly I only ever threw out maybe 2-3 SCs.

Right. But more you start to take such considerations into account, more into the GM fiat territory we get, and thus are again facing the issues related to that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have had a parallel "Huh?" moment in this thread. The behaviour described - the possible use of rule 0 - isn't something I have commonly experienced. It's the cases to the contrary that are rare - the ones some seem to feel are common. Maybe these dissimilar communities of practice have led to very different ideas about what rule 0 amounts to?

Certainly something seems to be going on here that I'm missing, since my initial reaction was "What else would you use Rule Zero for but addressing errors or producing on-the-fly rules for areas that don't have them?"

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. But more you start to take such considerations into account, more into the GM fiat territory we get, and thus are again facing the issues related to that.

Well, its a bit like the gamism of TB2, which really isn't that concerned with fictional considerations, they just kind of live in their own boxes. You can face obstacles of all sorts of Ob (DCs). It doesn't really matter. I mean, sure, if the GM piles on more ob, there will be more twists and conditions. This might lead to a character or party kill, but it won't obviate the Step On Up kind of nature of the process. So in the case of 4e, if you imagine there will be exactly a certain number of checks in an SC with certain DCs, and generally covering a certain range of skills, as long as the players know those facts, it isn't really that important what those exact values ARE in terms of gamist considerations. You face what you face, you overcome it (or not). A few minor cases where an SC turns out to not matter fictionally and get ditched are not really going to undermine the whole structure IMHO. Yes, the fiction and the mechanics in 4e are a bit less cleanly separated than in TB2, in a sense. Its still a lot cleaner than 5e as far as I can see.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Certainly something seems to be going on here that I'm missing, since my initial reaction was "What else would you use Rule Zero for but addressing errors or producing on-the-fly rules for areas that don't have them?"

Oh, I've seen them used in all kinds of ways, but classically in order to bring the fiction to the state the GM was aiming for, despite anything the players do to make it go elsewhere. We had an AD&D DM (he also ran a good number of other games back in the 80's) who was super into that. It was setting and plot tourism through and through. The PCs and their plans and actions were largely just color.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, it is just possible, even not so unlikely, in a classic D&D game (or 3e, which is stupidly complex) that this can come up fairly often, which means we're stepping out of our gamist agenda a lot.

Only if you think on-the-fly rules work is stepping out of it. Honestly, IME its a thing more gamist players are more tolerant of, specificially because they care about coherence of rules rather than just moving on and whatever. As I said, the only time I normally do something ad-hoc and then ignore it is when its a situation sufficiently odd its not worth the headspace for pretty much anyone involved to remember it. Otherwise it becomes immediate fodder for the next houserules update.

That was what I found when I ran RAW 1e (I mean aside from the amusing incident at the very start). So actually getting in any really serious 'game' was quite hard, actually!

Well, I've expressed my opinion that while very clearly gamist in intent, early D&D was honestly pretty crap at the job. There was a reason I bailed off into other games as soon as I saw things that were significantly different, and it wasn't just because I was more simulationist back then (though that was absolutely a factor).

Now, I expect people like Gygax ran into much less of a problem there, as the entire rules were simply 'whatever I do', so there you get instead the 'playing the GM' issue. For all these reasons I basically agree with you, there isn't anything like real gamism in a system along the lines of D&D. Torchbearer OTOH, you can actually PLAY that in much closer to the true sense of playing (though I'd fault it for having poorly organized rules).

I actually don't think that's true with more modern versions of D&D (though I have some suspicions with 5e). 3e and 4e absolutely could be played gamist (though as you say it could sometimes be kind of painful with 3e).

Again, I think you're holding up a bit of a platonic ideal here as being a necessity.

Agreed, you can do various things 'about' it, but each incident itself kind of negates that specific instance of gamist play, because whatever the solution is, it in practice is about putting things back to 'how we expect them to be' vs 'playing by the rules to see who is the best player.'

Naw. The latter only makes sense as long as both the GM and the players involved have the same understanding of how things work. To me what I've done looks more like discovering a game component is missing and accounting for it. Its not about (at least in this area) making things "how we expect them to be" (at least outside of a game-design "what is reasonable" sort of way) as much as "making this functional".

Yeah, I just conclude that, while gamist play is possible, the part where the rules are tested against the players should NOT involve some kind of simulationist kind of fiction references. Again, I look at something like TB2, or some ways that 4e is played, and there it is much easier. You don't need to end up with a consistent set of ideas about what will happen "in the game world." TB2 just says "here's the turn structure, and as the GM ticks through turns here's what WILL happen." The fiction is there, it may be the REASON you tick off turns/face obstacles, but you're not actually testing against the fiction, but against the turn/resource system instead.

I don't think that's the problem here, honestly. After all, these spell rules weren't representing something that pre-existed that needed to be represented, even in the fiction; they were created for the game in the first place and Gygax or whoever got to decide how they worked. Charitably, he decided they'd work something like real world explosives (which there's no particular reason they should, given everything); less charitably he was just trying to make them less useful in the typical dungeon settings he was running (notably, other than starting fires occasionally, neither Fireball nor Lightning Bolt were nearly the pain in the ass to handle outdoors).

That said, its not like I've never claimed that tradeoffs for GDS Drama or Sim can't make things harder on the Game end; you in the end have to decide in that triangular diagram where you're going to land and accept the price for doing so.