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

[kenada]

I've snipped most of the detail - if you're interested, you can get that by going back to the original posts. What I've tried to show is the contrast between (i) play that is oriented towards exploration which therefore involves a significant degree of GM exposition, and does not involve the generation of momentum; and (ii) play that is oriented towards "moves snowball", and which therefore involves - as @Campbell put it - a willful practice by players, GMs and systems to sustain the momentum of play. To embrace tension and keep things constantly in motion.

I have examples of both styles. They took place in the same game, so it’s easy to see the contrast.

One of my players ran Scum and Villainy for us a while back. It’s a Forged in the Dark game with an enumerated set of principles and best practices. You’re supposed to be playing to find out what happens. Our GM liked it because it was easy to prep.

Most sessions followed a similar format. Someone would have a job (or maybe there would be an option of several jobs), we would meet them, and then we would go on the mission. We had a lot of discretion regarding how to do the job, but everything was book-ended in the same way. It reminded me of Shadowrun and the Mr Johnson play structure. There were never any significant consequences for our missions. Even when we terraformed a planet, nothing really happened. Next session, we’d be back to getting a new mission with a bit more cred in our pockets. That changed our last session.

At the start of our last session, I declared that we wanted to steal space drugs for Captain Pilot, who wasn’t the captain, which was my character. The GM still snuck in a fixer (to my minor annoyance), but we did most of the driving. The mission went pretty well — we got what we wanted; but we didn’t get away clean. We robbed one of the high-tier factions. Because of what we did and the system, the GM had to make a move that followed. Even though that particular conflict ended, it continued to have consequences: our ship was impounded when we docked at a station.

After the session, the GM told me I took him by surprise when I told him what we wanted to do. Finally! That’s playing to find out what happens! The GM gets to be surprised too. It’s a shame the campaign had to go on hiatus for unrelated reasons. I’d really want to continue pushing my characters hard while we tried to steal our ship back. That’s what make the game interesting. Just problem-solving our way through a mission gets boring after awhile.

 

[clearstream]

The perception of the procedure and its intent would change. The problem I have with this thought experiment is don’t know what ToA says exactly, and the material outside of that is spread across multiple books and chapters. It doesn’t have a step by step checklist like B/X does, and just assuming their roles were switched makes the comparison seem unfair.

In my spoilers, I gave the actual bullet point sequence for hexcrawl from ToA apge 37-8. That's quoted, not collated. In italics, I explain each step. As it says in ToA "For each day that the party travels through the wilderness, follow these steps:" and there five steps. The procedure is not spread out. No more than in Expert. ToA literally has a step by step checklist.

 

[niklinna]

After the session, the GM told me I took him by surprise when I told him what we wanted to do. Finally! That’s playing to find out what happens! The GM gets to be surprised too. It’s a shame the campaign had to go on hiatus for unrelated reasons. I’d really want to continue pushing my characters hard while we tried to steal our ship back. That’s what make the game interesting. Just problem-solving our way through a mission gets boring after awhile.

There's the nut of it right there. It's back-and-forth creation of story on both sides, sure with whatever might have been created before as input, but the GM has to be ready to handle anything from the players. And not just a wacky use of a spell or something.

 

[clearstream]

I've snipped most of the detail - if you're interested, you can get that by going back to the original posts. What I've tried to show is the contrast between (i) play that is oriented towards exploration which therefore involves a significant degree of GM exposition, and does not involve the generation of momentum; and (ii) play that is oriented towards "moves snowball", and which therefore involves - as @Campbell put it - a willful practice by players, GMs and systems to sustain the momentum of play. To embrace tension and keep things constantly in motion.

In order to see better what you are getting at, do you see momentum as a binary - absent, or snowballing? There are no degrees of momentum? At any given moment, everything in play has identical momentum?

 

[Aldarc]

In order to see better what you are getting at, do you see momentum as a binary - absent, or snowballing? There are no degrees of momentum? At any given moment, everything in play has identical momentum?

I will point out that while you think that a lack of momentum is impossible (from what I gather), there are some people - including the poster @Manbearcat quoted about worldbuilding - who value the absence of momentum or snowballing in their games. They explicitly value failure states that do not snowball into conflict or forward momentum and that can result in a complete loss of momentum. The party can't open the door. Nothing happens. The party leaves and maybe comes back later if they have the proper tools or are higher level. There is no actual snowballing or forward momentum in the action.

 

[clearstream]

I will point out that while you think that a lack of momentum is impossible (from what I gather), there are some people - including the poster @Manbearcat quoted about worldbuilding - who value the absence of momentum or snowballing in their games. They explicitly value failure states that do not snowball into conflict or forward momentum and that can result in a complete loss of momentum. The party can't open the door. Nothing happens. The party leaves and maybe comes back later if they have the proper tools or are higher level. There is no actual snowballing or forward momentum in the action.

I feel folk are expanding on what I said. That was:

What I find counter-intuitive is to have as a goal running a game without momentum running through it.

I think your example is a good one. It's perfectly fine to have some moments when things seem to come to a dead-end. I keep saying that I see variation in momentum as ideal. I would hope that there was some compulsion to return, or perhaps other paths to take.

I do not count your example the same as having as a goal running a game without any momentum. Doesn't that goal seem counter-intuitive? Well, it does to me.

 

[Campbell]

I feel folk are expanding on what I said. That was:



I think your example is a good one. It's perfectly fine to have some moments when things seem to come to a dead-end. I keep saying that I see variation in momentum as ideal. I would hope that there was some compulsion to return, or perhaps other paths to take.

I do not count your example the same as having as a goal running a game without any momentum. Doesn't that goal seem counter-intuitive? Well, it does to me.

What guides that decision making process then? When do we choose to allow for dead ends? How do we choose? How will players know? What's the process?

 

[Ovinomancer]

What guides that decision making process then? When do we choose to allow for dead ends? How do we choose? How will players know? What's the process?

To answer the rhetorical: the GM does, silly!

 

[kenada]

In my spoilers, I gave the actual bullet point sequence for hexcrawl from ToA apge 37-8. That's quoted, not collated. In italics, I explain each step. As it says in ToA "For each day that the party travels through the wilderness, follow these steps:" and there five steps. The procedure is not spread out. No more than in Expert. ToA literally has a step by step checklist.

Fair enough. I misunderstood and hadn’t realized that was a direct quote. I went ahead and picked up a copy of ToA, so I can follow along better. Going back to your original question:

As a thought experiment, if that same guidance that you find telling in ToA were in X1, then the procedure there would be changed in effect? And, conversely, if one erased the guidance from ToA, then the procedure there would, too, be changed in effect. I'm trying to understand the interaction between the guidance, and the bare procedure. Because on surface those bare procedures are near identical (or perhaps you can highlight the dissimilarities that stand out to you?)

I think my previous answer still partially applies regarding guidance. The only thing that really stands out as different is the 5e procedure is written very timidly. Compare the procedure in ToA to the combat procedure in the PHB. Disregarding that as well, they are pretty similar. I wouldn’t be surprised if the former influenced the latter.

However, the rest of my commentary on 5e still applies. Even if I ran that loop (while ignoring the guidance), the system still has elements that undermine it. Outlander means the party doesn’t need food. Having a ranger means you can never get lost when the party is in the ranger’s favored terrain (and forest seems like a pretty safe bet for ToA). It would be like if having a fighter in the party meant they automatically won combat. Where’s the fun in that? Obviously, if the point isn’t to engage with those subsystems and experience the play they have to offer for their own sake, then it’s somewhere else (e.g., experiencing the story prepared by the GM).

So I don’t think the guidance can be disregarded because I think the spirit behind it informs the overall design of 5e. I think 5e is intended for traditional campaigns where the GM plays an active role in determining what happens. One can use for other styles of play, but you’ll have to do some work to make it happen (depending on what they and their needs are, of course).

 

[Manbearcat]

That's very true. There are many decisions that must be made in play. My doubt is around a supposition that those countless decisions don't arise in RPGs generally. Choice of twist or condition in TB2, or rulings as to Good Ideas. It seems to be turtles all the way down.

When a colleague MCs Monster of the Week or I GM Torchbearer 2, there are many points where we make decisions and author fiction. A player fails an ability test. I decide whether to introduce a twist, or that they accomplish the task but receive a condition. If I introduce a twist, I author that twist. In all cases, I aim to say what follows (from fiction, description, system.)

I meant to address these two posts awhile back.

These two statements (and statements like them) assume something like "all GMs make decisions while running games and therefore all games inform and constrain a GM's decision-space similarly." That is to say "not much at all...the GM can just do pretty much whatever the eff they want."

This is just self-evidently not only not true, but its not even nearing the truth.

Take last evening's Torchbearer Town phase (which was their Respite phase; a special Town phase like "Seasons Change" or TB1 "Winter phase" where time passes, you reflect on play, characters, you make relevant thematic changes to PCs, and costs for Town phase are amped up).

The PCs went to Market (+0 Lifestyle Cost normally, but +1 during Respite when all LSCs are +1 above normal) to loadout for their coming Adventure. @AbdulAlhazred 's Elven Ranger Awanye was primary w/ @kenada 's Fighter Jakob and @niklinna 's Mage both helping the Resouce test to buy Flasks of Oil for their Lantern. They knew their Ob Rating that they had to achieve to make the purchase (table-facing).

* They spent enough dice in Coin to insulate them from Tax as a complication.

* I had Taxed them recently as a Resources complication.

* I recently had given them both a Twist and a Condition on failed tests.

* You're supposed to distribute these consequences at near parity.

* They failed. In a prior Town phase, a Market purchase failure yielded a Twist with some brigands (basically a "Stickup" trope as a conflict). A scrap ensued and Jakob called his Enemy ("The Bear", a Captain in The Watch). Things went off well and The Bear + The Watch descended upon the brigands and off to the stocks they went. Later, due to a Town test Twist in the Flophouse, The Bear brought the lead brigand in as the sentence was passed; he was to lose his hand. The Bear was going to make Jakob perform the grizzly affair on the block w/ a Health test to determine if it repulsed him. Jakob agreed and performed the severing of the brigands hand (I can't remember whether he succeeded or failed and took a Condition).

So we're back in Town (Respite) phase in the Market last night. The Resources move fails. Jakob has taken on his Creed during Respite:

"Loose ends must not be left untied lest they promulgate injustice."

Further, his Belief is:

I don't always do what I'm told, but I always do what seems right." (this is what got him kicked out of The Watch and earned him The Bear as Enemy).

Alright. So I create some fiction; there is a shortage of Oil so they have to go to a shady dealer to get some. This guy ends up being a Fence...a Fence that was friends with the brigand that was sent to the stocks by the PCs and lost his hand courtesy of a cleaver swung by Jakob.

Awanye is up front. He pulls a dagger and is trying to get to Jakob to eviscerate him, but he has to go through Awanye to get to him. Fight vs Fight. Jakob throws himself into the violence to help his friend w/ Heart of Battle 3 and with Awanye's help, they win the contest with beefy Margin of Success. They disarm him and have him pinned. They don't want to kill him because they'll have to deal with the bureaucracy of the law even if they're defending themselves. Jakob's Creed is at tension here because he also doesn't want to get The Bear involved; Enemy + Lifestyle Cost to Find Someone. But what a loose end this might be.

They decide to threaten him with Persuader vs Persuader. They again win and the Fence swears not to bring harm to them in the future.

So sort of a conflicted "loose ends status."

He's still is in play to be a problem for Strond at large (their Hometown). He still is in play to be a problem for Jakob's Friends (The Spectral Mother and her Daughter, The Lomborg Family, Watch Members Olga/Einar/Helgi) or even his Enemy (which would come back to Jakob) in Strond.

So yeah. Not a direct loose end, but an indirect one.

He did what "felt right"...but was it "right?"

We'll see. This "loose end" will surely come back in play later.

So we learned a lot about Jakob in this sequence (and we've learned a lot about him in prior sequences as well).

---

Sum told...

This GMing moment wasn't governed by anarchy. It wasn't a nearly autocratic brand of "GM decides" fiat. It was as far from arbitrary as a moment of GMing can be.

It was system-directed, system-constrained, rule-and-principles-and-best-practice-observing, conscientious GMing. I reflect intensely on play afterward; particularly where I feel like I was lacking. I'm quite confident that, of the suite of possible moves I could have made to that failed Resource Test, this was "the best" move I could have made given all of the system inputs I'm informed and constrained by. And they informed and constrained 100 % were dominating my decision-space and winnowing my possible moves made down (as they always do) to a very small subset of moves down to this particular move that I ended up making.

I would hope this demonstrates how profoundly different this cognitive workspace is from another matrix whereby I can set the Obstacle Rating to whatever "feels" right (vs summing coded Factors), whereby the players don't know what they're rolling against, whereby the players don't know (a) if I'm honoring their input/the system's input or if I'm instead subordinating it with my own input, whereby I'm neither constrained nor informed by very specific GMing parameters but rather I'm given broad-sweeping-powers to "find the fun/story (based on my conception of it)" and "honor/veto rules/results (and the GM-facing means to do so)."

Both the experience GMing and playing these distinct games are profoundly divergent.