AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Oh, OK, I haven't really especially followed Level Up very closely. I guess they can pretty much do whatever they wish in terms of suggested changes and replacement material.
D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
- Thread starter clearstream
- Start date
The exploratory/GM-as-glue play that you describe - with missions, quest-givers etc (I hope I've got the right general impression) seems mostly exploration of situation: What is this week's mission, and how will it turn out?
The play in my Classic Traveller game that I described was mostly exploration of setting - the players declare actions (opening doors, poking at things) which prompt me as GM to provide them with more detail/information, and gradually a body of knowledge about the alien world, its backstory, the motivations of the aliens, etc is built up. Some information about the backstory and motivation of the NPCs the PCs are working with is also built up.
In the sessions I described I was making up a fair bit of the setting/backstory as we went along, within a general framework/template provided by module notes, a few ideas of my own I'd jotted down, and the previous fiction of the campaign. So in a sense I got to "find out what happens" in the sense of being provoked by the players to make up new stuff. And at least some of that was building on their ideas and speculations, in a very informal and low-impact variation on "ask questions and build on the answers".
What made it explorative and not "story now" was that the (notional) questions on whose answers I was building, and the action declarations prompting me to narrate, were not provocative. Nothing was really at stake. Nor was there any gamism: the map was hidden only in the sense that the only copy was the one in the book I was reading from, but I was showing it to the players when appropriate, freely providing information from it, etc. Getting the information about the setting wasn't any sort of challenge.
I enjoyed it, because building up the details of the alien world and history was fun, and responding to the players responding to me as we build up a shared picture of our Traveller universe was fun, and seeing them gradually develop concerns about what had happened, what might happen, how they would deal with the NPCs, etc was fun too. But I wouldn't want it to be the whole of play! That's why, as I posted upthread, after a couple of sessions I deliberately took steps - using my NPCs as the vehicle - to push play away from exploration of setting and into non-explorative response to situation, in virtue of the behaviour of the NPCs provoking a crisis. The exploration helped identify and establish the materials for this transition, but it required a deliberate decision - on my part - to actually make the transition happen.
There is a sense in which following rules may be voluntary. I say "may" because (if Chomsky and friends are right) then some rules - eg linguistic ones - are not.
Even if there is the weight of a massive institution with armed agents sitting behind the rules, a person can choose to disobey. The consequence might be death, but being shot can't make you follow a rule. (Maybe brainwashing or indoctrination can - but as with Chomsky, I will put that to one side in this post.)
I think these examples also show the relative weakness of the claim that following rules is voluntary. There can be all sorts of reasons to choose to follow rules: the desire not to be shot; the desire not to be hated; the desire to get along with others; the desire to successfully coordinate social ventures; and in the case of games, the desire to experience a particular structure of play.
As I, and @AbdulAlhazred, have posted upthread, this tells us nothing about differences in game play. Choosing to play chess and choosing to play draughts are both voluntary, at least in typical cases. That doesn't mean there's no difference between them as games. Choosing to play charades is voluntary too. That doesn't mean that there's no difference between chess and charades. There's a clear sense in which chess is governed more strictly by rules than charades; that the total "game space" for chess is constituted differently, and more "mathematically", than the game space for charades; that knowing lots about popular culture will be more helpful in playing charades than playing chess; etc.
There is a difference, too, between playing charades and playing twenty questions; and the fact that both involve making guesses, often about the same sorts of subject matters, doesn't eliminate that difference.
In Burning Wheel, it is the job of the players to (i) hook the GM through certain key elements of their PC building, and (ii) if the game moves away from their preferred hooks, to use their powers of action declaration (especially around Circles and Wises) to move the game back in their preferred direction. I've posted examples upthread of how this actually happened in my play.
AD&D 2nd ed has nothing comparable to either (i) or (ii). The game rules set out a quite different expectation, namely, that the GM will hook the players and that the players will follow those hooks. The game does not give the players any means to set their own hooks, nor to force the GM to frame scenes in the way a Circles check can.
The fact that both BW and AD&D 2nd ed require the GM to make decisions, and that those decisions include the framing of scenes, doesn't change any of the above.
If someone tries to use BW to play in the AD&D 2nd ed style, they will have problems: Circles checks, Resources checks, Wises checks will all be disruptive. You'd have to ignore them, and ignore the instructions to players, and ignore the advice on writing Beliefs - perhaps adopting instead the Torchbearer advice on writing Goals.
If someone tries to use AD&D 2nd ed to play in the BW style, they will have problems. The players have no powers or resources to direct play in the way the BW style assumes. It would all have to be done at the metagame/social contract level.
I don't see how any of this is controversial.
Even if there is the weight of a massive institution with armed agents sitting behind the rules, a person can choose to disobey. The consequence might be death, but being shot can't make you follow a rule. (Maybe brainwashing or indoctrination can - but as with Chomsky, I will put that to one side in this post.)
I think these examples also show the relative weakness of the claim that following rules is voluntary. There can be all sorts of reasons to choose to follow rules: the desire not to be shot; the desire not to be hated; the desire to get along with others; the desire to successfully coordinate social ventures; and in the case of games, the desire to experience a particular structure of play.
As I, and @AbdulAlhazred, have posted upthread, this tells us nothing about differences in game play. Choosing to play chess and choosing to play draughts are both voluntary, at least in typical cases. That doesn't mean there's no difference between them as games. Choosing to play charades is voluntary too. That doesn't mean that there's no difference between chess and charades. There's a clear sense in which chess is governed more strictly by rules than charades; that the total "game space" for chess is constituted differently, and more "mathematically", than the game space for charades; that knowing lots about popular culture will be more helpful in playing charades than playing chess; etc.
There is a difference, too, between playing charades and playing twenty questions; and the fact that both involve making guesses, often about the same sorts of subject matters, doesn't eliminate that difference.
In Burning Wheel, it is the job of the players to (i) hook the GM through certain key elements of their PC building, and (ii) if the game moves away from their preferred hooks, to use their powers of action declaration (especially around Circles and Wises) to move the game back in their preferred direction. I've posted examples upthread of how this actually happened in my play.
AD&D 2nd ed has nothing comparable to either (i) or (ii). The game rules set out a quite different expectation, namely, that the GM will hook the players and that the players will follow those hooks. The game does not give the players any means to set their own hooks, nor to force the GM to frame scenes in the way a Circles check can.
The fact that both BW and AD&D 2nd ed require the GM to make decisions, and that those decisions include the framing of scenes, doesn't change any of the above.
If someone tries to use BW to play in the AD&D 2nd ed style, they will have problems: Circles checks, Resources checks, Wises checks will all be disruptive. You'd have to ignore them, and ignore the instructions to players, and ignore the advice on writing Beliefs - perhaps adopting instead the Torchbearer advice on writing Goals.
If someone tries to use AD&D 2nd ed to play in the BW style, they will have problems. The players have no powers or resources to direct play in the way the BW style assumes. It would all have to be done at the metagame/social contract level.
I don't see how any of this is controversial.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I'm just responding to what was posted. I'd left D&D by about the time B/X came along, so anything I know about it is second hand.
No, I did not read all 1824 posts, so apologies if this is ground already covered. I wanted to note that I think the earliest editions of D&D are the most simulationist, as are the war games that spawned them. Miniature historical war gamers typically have two goals when they play: reenact a battle in a historically plausible way and see if they can do better than Napoleon, or Hannibal, or whatever military leader was at the battle. It is more important to these gamers that the rules accurately simulate real battle tactics than that they are better than their opponents in using the rules to defeat them.
This mindset is evident and dominant in early editions, including the early years of AD&D. The 3d6 ability score model was chosen because it generated a normal (bell curve) distribution, which meant that a population generated through this method would have a random but normally distributed set of ability scores. “Balance” in 1e is (initially) about how common different classes are in the game; fighters, thieves, magic-users, and clerics are ubiquitous, because they only need a minimum of 9 in their primary stat, but rangers and paladins are rare, because the former needs two 13s and two 14s, and the latter needs two 9s, a 12, a 13, and a 17. (All of these need to be in specific abilities, which matters if you are using a method that rolls abilities in order.) Rangers and paladins basically add extra abilities to the fighter, so they are clearly more powerful; they are just harder to come by through random rolls.
The examples of play in these early editions also illustrate the emphasis on simulation. Most of the play is not rolling dice but players describing how their characters interact with the world, literally poking and prodding it to see what happens. The same is true for descriptions of Gygax’s early a games, and Tomb of Horrors would illustrate this as well. In fact, if I were to characterize simulationism, I would say it prioritizes interaction with the world over interaction with your character sheet (or with the game engine) and interaction with other players and NPCs.
Even before 2e, there is a sea change in the game. In Unearthed Arcana, there is an ability score generation method based on the player choosing what class they want to play. If you want to play a paladin, for example, you roll 9 dice for your Charisma and choose the best three, or just give yourself a 17 if the rolls are too low. This, IMO, is definitely a shift into gamism, where the priority is on players interacting with the game rules and building engines with them. This particular example has the intention of making all aspects of the game engine available to all players, rather than filtering them through the random ability score generator. 2e takes this further: in 1e most of the rules are in the DMG, but in 2e almost all of the rules move to the PHB, making them accessible to players and facilitating engine-building. 2e also leans heavily into expanding player options through splat books and kits, but not necessarily with balance in mind. Later editions are more concerned with balance and, importantly, PC durability, so we see things like standard arrays, max starting HP, and average HP per level, not to mention classes where there is an increasing expectation that they will be “equal” in some way, be that power or how enjoyable they are to play.
—Axe
This mindset is evident and dominant in early editions, including the early years of AD&D. The 3d6 ability score model was chosen because it generated a normal (bell curve) distribution, which meant that a population generated through this method would have a random but normally distributed set of ability scores. “Balance” in 1e is (initially) about how common different classes are in the game; fighters, thieves, magic-users, and clerics are ubiquitous, because they only need a minimum of 9 in their primary stat, but rangers and paladins are rare, because the former needs two 13s and two 14s, and the latter needs two 9s, a 12, a 13, and a 17. (All of these need to be in specific abilities, which matters if you are using a method that rolls abilities in order.) Rangers and paladins basically add extra abilities to the fighter, so they are clearly more powerful; they are just harder to come by through random rolls.
The examples of play in these early editions also illustrate the emphasis on simulation. Most of the play is not rolling dice but players describing how their characters interact with the world, literally poking and prodding it to see what happens. The same is true for descriptions of Gygax’s early a games, and Tomb of Horrors would illustrate this as well. In fact, if I were to characterize simulationism, I would say it prioritizes interaction with the world over interaction with your character sheet (or with the game engine) and interaction with other players and NPCs.
Even before 2e, there is a sea change in the game. In Unearthed Arcana, there is an ability score generation method based on the player choosing what class they want to play. If you want to play a paladin, for example, you roll 9 dice for your Charisma and choose the best three, or just give yourself a 17 if the rolls are too low. This, IMO, is definitely a shift into gamism, where the priority is on players interacting with the game rules and building engines with them. This particular example has the intention of making all aspects of the game engine available to all players, rather than filtering them through the random ability score generator. 2e takes this further: in 1e most of the rules are in the DMG, but in 2e almost all of the rules move to the PHB, making them accessible to players and facilitating engine-building. 2e also leans heavily into expanding player options through splat books and kits, but not necessarily with balance in mind. Later editions are more concerned with balance and, importantly, PC durability, so we see things like standard arrays, max starting HP, and average HP per level, not to mention classes where there is an increasing expectation that they will be “equal” in some way, be that power or how enjoyable they are to play.
—Axe
By R do you mean a syntactic/linguistic string, or do you mean a string bearing a semantic interpretation? If the former, then we seem to be talking homophones, so not only are there multiple Zs, but each one is a distinct semantic interpretation of a (merely homophonic) R. If the latter - ie if we individuate Rs by way of their semantic interpretation - then we seem to lose the difference between R and Z altogether: there are no "separate Zs for an R" but merely different Rs which are expressed using the same words under different semantic interpretations.
There are a pretty wide range of moves that can be made to blunt my argument - eg distinguishing concepts from conceptions, or appeals to vagueness, or distinguishing between the semantic content of a rule and the judgement involved in its application - but none of them is uncontroversial, and probably more to the point I don't really see what any of them has to do with rule zero.
Even suppose it to be true that roleplaying rules are particularly challenging or contentious in respect of their semantic interpretations, compared to other game rules - and frankly I don't see why such a supposition should be granted - that would still have nothing to do with rule zero. All it would mean is that for gameplay to commence among a group, they would have to settle on a sufficiently overlapping shared interpretation to permit that to happen.
When I, and @Campbell, and @Manbearcat, and others, point to the role of GM fiat or "GM-as-glue" in a particular style of RPGing, we are not pointing to a phenomenon that is some sort of manifestation of the challenge of interpreting or applying or sticking to rules. We are pointing to a particular technique that some RPGs use. The technique is the one of the GM deciding, based on their conception of some or other aspect of gameplay (the shared fiction; pacing; spotlight; etc) when a situation is resolved. Burning Wheel - just to stick to one game that is not a GM-as-glue game - is not a game in which the GM decides when a situation is resolved. The roll of the dice does that. 4e skill challenges are the same in this respect. What makes BW and 4e different in this respect is that they include rules that GM-as-glue games do not (in the BW case, rules such as "intent and task" and "let it ride", as per my post upthread) and they require the use of techniques, such as non-neutral, non-extrapolative scene-framing, that are not essential (and indeed are often eschewed) in GM-as-glue play.
These differences between RPGs are differences of rules and of techniques, just like (as per my post upthread) the difference between chess and charades is both rules (chess also differs from draughts in this respect) and techniques (chess and draughts are much closer in this respect). The metaphysical nature of game rules, and the psycho-social dynamics of game rule uptake - whatever those happen to be - doesn't explain the difference between BW play and GM-as-glue play. It is the difference in rules and techniques that does htat.
As far as I can tell, you use "say what follows" to mean "say something sensible in the context of the game". That's good advice, but I don't think it tells us much about the details of, or varieties of, RPG play. Given that there is so much variation in systems - including in distributions of authority and expectations about how it will be used - and hence so much variation in context resulting from that alone, an injunction to "say what follows (from fiction, description, system)" is an injunction to do different things in different games. "Follow the rules" would be similar in this respect: it might be good advice, but if I follow the rules of boxing I'm going to have a pretty different experience from one in which I follow the rules of a primary school clap-and-sing game.
In my Classic Traveller game, during its exploratory phase, when a player says "I look in the room" I say what follows: I tell them what their PC sees in the room. That doesn't stop it being exploratory play. That's part of what makes it exploratory play. I (typically) don's ask for a check. I consult the module. I make up details if I need to. My agenda is to convey a plausible and interesting world of the far future. I am not trying to provoke any response from the players. I am not putting them under any particular pressure.
In the same game, as I have posted, I deliberately decided to move out of exploratory play by having the NPCs return to the surface, out of the ice-buried alien outpost. When the PCs followed, it wasn't long before conflict ensued. This was because, back on the surface, decisions had to be made, including decisions about who had jurisdiction (three nobles were competing in this respect, with one - being a naval officer - claiming to act in the name of the Imperium). When playing my NPCs, I said things that followed. But "what follows" isn't monolithic. People aren't automatons. I made deliberate choices to have the NPCs perform actions that would squeeze the PCs, compelling the players to respond in some fashion. I was adopting different principles to inform "what follows" from those I was using in the exploratory phase.
I have no real sense of how you make your GMing decisions when you GM 5e. I don't know what principles guide you in opening and closing scenes. I don't know how you decide when situations are resolved. I know how I do those things playing Burning Wheel, because (i) the rulebook has clear instructions, and (ii) I follow them.
I think you are trying to push a metaphor beyond the limits of its utility. I also don't know what "everything in play" refers to.
I gave some examples of play in which the basic goal and expectation of play was to establish a shared fiction about the nature, the history, and the fate of an ice-buried, psionically-oriented alien compound. And the expectation was that that would be achieved by me, as GM, telling it to the players: not via reading them a story, but rather via the play of a RPG. Which means they declare actions for their PCs which oblige me, in response, to narrate some bit of setting, so that the players - imagining themselves as their PCs all pooling this information that they're learning - can gradually build up this fictional conception of the imagined world. This is an approach to RPG play which is very old, maybe as old as the hobby.
@Campell, in his post about momentum/moves snowball, contrasted that with one thing naturally leads to the next by way of reasoning what the potential impact would be on the setting. I posted the examples that I've described in the previous paragraph and got a "love" response from Campbell, so I infer that he thinks I'm at least roughly correct in my understanding of the contrast he was drawing. In the approach to GMing that I've just described, which is one in which I say "what follows" using the method described earlier in this post, moves are not snowballing. I am not setting out to keep things in constant motion. The players' discussion is about the purposes of the compound, what happened to the aliens, etc. I am providing whatever answers or prompts or encouragements of further exploratory action that seem appropriate. It is no skin of my nose whether or not you or someone else wants to say that there is a use of "momentum" in which what I've just described has it. But there is clearly a different use - @Campbell's use - in which it does not, and that's the use I was responding to.
Contrast when the NPC noble asserts authority, and then puts one of the PCs on trial, and then that PC blows everyone up with a grenade: that's momentum, and moves snowballing. I am not providing answer or prompts that fill in information about the setting. The focus of play is not on obtaining that information. I am deliberately creating pressure on the players, via their PCs, which is provoking them into declaring actions in which things that matter to them (in virtue of their identification with their PCs) are put at stake. That's what I mean, and I think what @Campbell means, by "momentum".
clearstream
(He, Him)
By R I mean a rule that we can point to in common, even if we have different ideas about what it means. For example, I can point to the Harden Will rule on page 137 of The One Ring 2nd ed. and normally we can both identify that rule.
By Z I mean what we take that rule to mean. On enworld there are numerous examples of disagreements as to what a commonly identified rule (an R) means (its Z.)
"Say something sensible in the context of the game" might come close to what I mean.
I mean - say what follows from fiction/description/system (in accord with your principles, where those are not part of system.) As groups can choose to follow or not follow some rules, and can have different ideas of what following some rules amounts to (for example, different ideas about what interrupts a long rest in 5e) they might have different ideas about what follows. That's also true where they hold or apply differing principles.
That could also come close to what I mean. As I am using the terms, snowballing is one example of momentum (a building momentum), but it is not the only example. Perhaps @Campbell counts the terms synonomous, in which case it might need to be clarified that I am talking about two related but differing concepts. Snowballing is one possible feature of momentum, as I am using it.
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I feel like that as the engine-building has increased, D&D actually got less gamist, culminating in Pathfinder 1e. In PF1, it’s possible to build characters that just win. I’ve played those characters and played with those characters. If I can succeed at skill DCs in the mid-20s (or higher) when taking 10, there’s no challenge. I “won” the game before we even got started. It would be like using one’s financial advantage to build the best car possible to win every auto race effectively uncontested. Is that really competition? Not really, and that’s why restrictions are needed to restore competition (and gamism to D&D).
Those restrictions take wildly divergent forms in D&D. On one hand, you have B/X with very little actual system structure. If you want to do well in B/X, you have to play well as a player. If you don’t, your character will die fast. After all, there’s not really much on your sheet (that’s the competitive constraint in B/X). This “playing smart” is usually referred to as “skilled play”, which I can’t see meaning anything other than gamist. That shouldn’t be taken as a pejorative either. I think it’s a shame gamist gets an unfair wrap, though it usually comes from those who prefer a certain other style of play.
Anyway, on the other hand, you have games like 4e and Pathfinder 2e. These are games that “solve” the build-to-win problem that 3e had by enforcing parity. Unlike B/X’s approach to constraints (minimal system), these are much heavier systems, but they’re designed to surface competitive play during the game instead of when building characters. If you want to do well in those games, you have to play smart and use good tactics. If you don’t, the game will hammer you. If you do, you’ll be able to swing above your weight compared to what the baseline says. Again, “smart play” = “skilled play” = gamism
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Right, I think @Pickaxe uses 'gamist' in something close to the early meaning, which was some sort of mechanical concession to playability. There is also, as he says, an early definition of simulation, or 'realism' which defines the rules of the world as being the rules of the game. So the two are seen as virtually antithetical. Hit points are 'gamist' because they greatly abstract away from some hypothetical fictional reality in which there are wounds and whatnot. Gamist ALSO came to mean something closer to its current meaning in that it surfaced the agenda of "how playable/fun is this?" as a design consideration and you could then ask questions about a game based purely on that axis.
It is also true that a certain level of realism was a core goal in TT Wargaming, which is how RPGs got their original notion of simulation and realism. That obviously went out the window when magic arrived, and when RP demanded interesting characters, but it has definitely lingered all these years in the psyche of D&D.
Guys like Edwards exploded all that completely with things like GNS and game process analysis techniques such as the ones @pemerton often references (his favorite is Vincent Baker). So GNS simulationism and gamism really owe very little to, and are not congruent (except accidentally) to the definitions @Pickaxe is using (though his are not pure old school either). GNS gamism for example is an orientation towards an RPG's character AS A GAME, and 'Step On Up' play (or something analogous). The old definition was a bit more modest "the RPG is a game and as such it must have practical playable mechanics, which are more enjoyable on the whole to interact with than ridiculously elaborate realistic ones." with a side dose of "realism seems to sometimes undermine the quality of game play in a competitive sense."
So, we can see how old school gamist evolved into GNS gamism, sort of, but they're not the same thing, like a chicken is not Velociraptor.
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