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

[Micah Sweet]

Not true at all, both games are expressly designed to simulate what would happen in their respective setting. You seem to be thinking that simulationism necessarily = detailed realism which is not the case.

You seem to be thinking that simulationism necessarily = genre emulation which is not the case.

 

[Ovinomancer]

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.

So, you can't explain what you mean by narrativism? I asked, and this response doesn't seem to be getting to your ideas, but telling me how much you don't care about mine.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Have you read the simulationism essay?

Yes, but probably not on this decade. At some point I read a lot of game theory, but like advanced maths, I have forgotten most of it as it never had much practical use.

 

[Campbell]

If anyone has better framing that still allows us to have a discussion about these things, please speak up and provide it. I would love to have a better way to communicate about this stuff. Criticizing the language without either offering an alternative framing or addressing the points provided just feels like an effort to shut down discussion.

 

[soviet]

You seem to be thinking that simulationism necessarily = genre emulation which is not the case.

No, they are both kinds of sim.

 

[pemerton]

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.

This has already been answered in the thread, by @Campbell and maybe also @Ovinomancer. I'll try again!

Edwards inherited a three-fold distinction from earlier discussion. He changed the label "dramatism" to "narrativism" because the word "drama" already had a different meaning - Jonathan Tweet (the same one who designed 3E D&D) had used it, in his game Everway, to describe a type of resolution process (drama, karma, fortune - ie talking; comparing fixed values; rolling dice or drawing cards). From here:

The Threefold Model for role-playing included the term Dramatism, as presented by John Kim at his Threefold Model (http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/) webpage. When I learned about the Threefold, I'd already been thinking about stuff I'd later call Currency and also about Jonathan Tweet's discussion of resolution presented in Everway. The basic notion of the Threefold impressed me: it was time to talk about goals and priorities independently of everything else, then to see whether everything else flowed to and from them. This was at the time that Sorcerer was making its small way into commerce, so the mailing list was the place for our first discussions; most of them are archived at the Sorcerer website (http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com).

At this point, since "Drama" as a resolution category in Tweet's schema and "Dramatism" as a goals-category in the Threefold referred to two different things, I decided that the names were confusing. Going by which set of ideas was first presented (Tweet's), I changed Dramatism to Narrativism. This terminological change was limited to discussions on the Sorcerer mailing list and later at the Gaming Outpost.

However, our use of the terms and ideas on the Sorcerer mailing list took on its own character almost immediately​

As Edwards says, he is talking about goals and priorities. And as per @GMforPowergamers's query upthread, these are creative priorities - what is the aesthetic experience the RPGers are hoping to obtain? (Edwards also often uses the term "creative agenda" - in this usage, someone's "agenda" is the same as what someone prioritises - as in the phrase "hidden agenda", which means a hidden goal.)

Edwards identifies four main creative priorities in RPGing:

* Experiencing a metagame-free system in operation, unfolding an imagined world before your eyes ("purist for system simulation") - RuneQuest as presented and as typically played is the paradigm of this;

* Experiencing a GM's presentation of a setting and/or story ("high concept simulation") - early WoD is the paradigm of this; 2nd ed AD&D had a lot of it too; I think that a lot of adventure path play is like this;

* Playing well and/or testing your luck - "winning" the game, beating the dungeon, showing off your skill as a player - classic (Gygaxian) D&D is a paradigm of this; Tunnels & Trolls has a lot of this too; I think 3E had a lot of this too, in its approach to PC build ("optimisation") and combat resolution (finding and deploying "I win" buttons);

* Addressing a theme/premise via play, the idea being to "challenge" the participants in relation to values or emotions, and to find out how they react and enjoy sharing those responses, in something like the way other "high" art forms do - Apocalypse World is a paradigm of this; so is Edwards's game Sorcerer; Greg Stafford's Prince Valiant is a much "lighter" example (melodrama rather than genuine drama).​

Because the first two are both about prioritising what the participants experience rather than what they bring to the process of play, Edwards puts them both in one of his three baskets - the simulationist one. But obviously they use very different techniques - RQ-type RPGing is all about the purity and robustness of the mechanics, and how they reveal the fiction without the need for curation or participant intervention; whereas "storytelling"-type RPGing often downplays mechanics and focuses on the GM's role as a curator and presenter of the fiction.

Edwards notes that the third and fourth priorities often use very similar techniques - fortune-in-the-middle resolution, for instance - but he keeps them separate because they are different in terms of creative priority.

A lot of discussion of RPGing on these boards runs together techniques - eg the use of metacurrency - and creative priorities: you can see this, for instance, in @Micah Sweet's post equating metacurrency with "narrativism". Edwards is fairly determined to keep these things separate, for analytical purposes, and his GNS labels are focused on creative priorities, not techniques.

Edwards is well aware that "GM decides" is a powerful technique, but he is interested in other techniques that can also reliably deliver particular sorts of RPGing. On these boards there is often an assumption that "GM decides" is the go-to solution for any tension between resolution mechanics, or PC build mechanics, and the desired play experience. That's fine as far as it goes, but within that context of discussion an analytical scheme that is interested in other possible techniques, and in the way participants other than the GM can generate the fundamentals of play, will of course not seem very useful.

 

[soviet]

Yes, there is a lot of 'I don't understand these terms and refuse to learn, please stop talking about them' energy at the moment.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, you can't explain what you mean by narrativism? I asked, and this response doesn't seem to be getting to your ideas, but telling me how much you don't care about mine.

Narrativism to me means using mechanical levers to influence the game toward a particular story result, with an aim toward emulating a story genre. Metacurrency does this, as does any mechanic that allows a player to make decisions in game put of their PCs direct control.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No, they are both kinds of sim.

The two are radically different! They shouldn't use the same term.

 

[niklinna]

I've played Apocalypse World a bit, enough to know how it works. Its the jargon terminology I have issue with. What does narrativist,gamist, and simulationist mean if its not the natural language definition, and why can't we just use terms that don't require an advanced gaming degree to discuss?

Tell me, please, where I can find the natural language definitions of any of those terms. They aren't in my particular dictionary. The best I could infer from general knowledge of English is that they mean, "something to do with narration/games/simulation", which is pretty vague.

We can use terms that don't require an advanced gaming degree, but when such terms have been put on the table for discussion—which they have been for this discussion—then those who know them are going to use them assuming they are known and understood by the participants.

If you'd like to provide alternate terminology/theory, I'd be happy to learn it, and maybe even use it, rather than complaining repeatedly about how I don't understand it and how I have no plans to learn it and we're speaking different languages so why do I even bother but I'm going to continue trying to derail the conversation anyhow.