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

[clearstream]

@clearstream

I think we're talking about the exact opposite sort of experience here. I was speaking to (as a player or GM) actively maintaining the momentum of play, not surrendering to it. Not effortless play, but effortful play. Players playing their characters hard. GMs framing scenes to keep the focus on dramatic needs one after the other. Everyone embracing the tension. Everyone on the edge of their seat. The imperative phrase here is bring it! Keep the story feral! Grab the game by the throat!

Flow is a state of mind where a person becomes fully absorbed in the activity. Time passes unnoticed. The work feels effortless. That does not mean the work is effortless. It's something many gamers experience and associate with peak enjoyment of their activity.

It's a somewhat aggressive playstyle. Not towards each other, but towards the game. It's not like improv theater or jazz. We're not harmonizing. We're embracing chaos and fictional conflict. We're setting up stakes and seeing how things shake out. There is no status quo in Apocalypse World!

Thank you, that gives me a good picture! That is not the kind of playstyle that I favour. My take on PbtA games is lower key. That doesn't remove momentum. There's volatility and momentum can still snowball, but we're not so hard out. For example, in MotW my mildly neuro-divergent Weird character embraces tangents (which tends to have a snowball-deflating effect.)

Rather apposite to this conversation, one player new to PbtA games described enjoying that the moves flowed into or propelled our fiction. That is something that design-system can make more obvious for players - rather than say, leaving it up to GM to narrate into results (through sensitivity to situation, description, and mechanics.) Maybe that's not how it's expected to play, but our group have been appreciating the game.

 

[clearstream]

I admittedly going from second hand discussion, but I still disagree with this too. I think to claim that you need a much narrower definition of "gamist" than many people in this thread are using.

I feel I've learned a lot from this thread. In part, that asking if D&D is "gamist" isn't that good a question. It means different things to different people, and worse still it invokes a take on what counts as "gamist" that is too narrow. While reading in relation to conversation here, I found more recent commentary (2015, I think) from Vincent Baker on GNS

You know how you can assign a given rule to Drama, Fortune or Karma, if you want, but it tells you absolutely nothing about how the rule works, or why, and it creates illusory clusters of rules instead of fostering real understanding? And the same thing with FitM vs FatE? And the same thing with Effectiveness, Resource, and Positioning? They're convenient stand-ins for what's actually going on, when what's actually going on defies such simplistic taxonomies?

Same thing with GNS.

I was developing the idea of technical agenda as the technical component of creative agenda, and the further I developed it, the more patent it became to me that G, N and S were arbitrary, not reflective of real divisions in actual design or actual play. That while you can, if you want, assign a given instance of gameplay to G, N or S more or less consistently, you do so by asserting false similarities and ignoring some true similarities between other instances of gameplay. GNS is a convenient stand-in for what's actually going on.

If any of you Big Model theorists want to check my work, I'll be happy to lay it out for you, but it's long and it's technical, and I'll ask you to follow along carefully. Hit me up elsewhere.

-----------------------------

I think it's no longer the case that they help us discuss things in the abstract. They never helped much, they just took over every conversation they touched.

And I should be super clear: it's not that I think that there are hybrid creative agendas, coexisting creative agendas, overlaps, gray areas. It's not that I think that G, N and S aren't adequate. I think that the idea of creative agendas altogether isn't adequate. Gameplay doesn't have a creative agenda. Games aren't designed to support a creative agenda. The idea of creative agendas was useful to me for a while, but it's not anymore.

 

[Campbell]

My take on GM Fiat is that it includes any decision which the other players lack the ability to hold the GM accountable for. You have no way of knowing the basis for those decisions because the factors involved are unknowable. This is different from scene framing in a game like Burning Wheel because when the GM is exercising their authority over scene framing, we all have access to the information used in that process which makes it easier to evaluate that decision making process.

Fiat is just a block box. It's pretty much necessary for exploratory play or asynchronous Step On Up play. It undercuts Story Now because we lose our sense of tension when stakes are not clear and immediate. It also puts the GM in a position where they are deciding what happens rather than discovering what happens along with everyone else.

 

[clearstream]

My take on GM Fiat is that it includes any decision which the other players lack the ability to hold the GM accountable for. You have no way of knowing the basis for those decisions because the factors involved are unknowable. This is different from scene framing in a game like Burning Wheel because when the GM is exercising their authority over scene framing, we all have access to the information used in that process which makes it easier to evaluate that decision making process.

Okay. I think that's a good definition. There is honestly no obstacle at all (except a decision folk make for themselves) to a 5e DM holding themselves accountable to their players.

Fiat is just a block box. It's pretty much necessary for exploratory play or asynchronous Step On Up play. It undercuts Story Now because we lose our sense of tension when stakes are not clear and immediate.

Can you say more about the connection between "clear and immediate" and "accountable" which if I read you correctly you imply is a necessary one?

(I ask, because one implication of necessity if intended, might be that a GM is never "accountable" except where everything is "clear and immediate". That doesn't sound right to me. I don't actually see any necessary connection at all between accountability and clarity and immediacy, other than perhaps of trust. None of this is to deny clarity and immediacy of stakes could have a connection with tension.)

 

[Campbell]

@clearstream

I don't mean to imply that in typical 5e play the GM is unaccountable to the other players. Just that they are accountable for different sorts of things. I'll have more on this later this weekend.

 

[pemerton]

Up-thread you resisted the thought that game rules are followed when we find them appealing to follow.

Upthread I said there are a number of reasons someone might follow a rule. People mostly play games because they enjoy them, though that's not the only reason. And they follow the rules because that is what it means to play the game. I don't think most people engage with the appealing character of individual rules.

Here's a concrete example: the radius of the Fireball spell, in classic D&D, is 20'. This is inherited from Chainmail. Had the radius been 15', or 30', I think the rule would have been just as appealing.

I think that many people would have found the a rule that gave 3E D&D fighters better Will saves more appealing than the actual rules. But they seem nevertheless to have used the printed rule, because that was the rule in the game.

My impression from ENworld threads is that many people use the 5e rule for tridents vis-a-vis spears although they don't find it appealing.

To reiterate, people typically follow the rules of a game because (i) the rules help constitute the game, and (ii) they enjoy the game. I don't think individual rules are typically objects of desire or enjoyment in and of themselves.

I am not saying that your version of Wuthering Heights will be the same as your version of 5e. I am saying that your version of Wuthering Heights will be different from my version of Wuthering Heights.

How different? In what ways? This stuff isn't ineffable, or not subject to rational inquiry or discussion.

I've successfully had many conversations with other posters about approaches to 4e D&D, to Classic Traveller, to Torchbearer, among other systems. To give a more concrete example, I've discussed with @Manbearcat our different approaches to wilderness/geography skill challenges in 4e, reflecting our different degrees of enthusiasm for the "man vs nature" genre and our different degrees of knowledge about climbing, orienteering etc. The fact that we have different preferences, and would adjudicate particular consequences differently, doesn't mean we're playing different games. Any more than I'm playing a different game of backgammon from you because I would choose a different move from yours given the same dice roll and the same position of the pieces.

What I am trying to convey, I guess, is that it is utterly opaque to me what you think follows, about the nature of RPGing and the pursuit of various creative agendas, that players or GMs would make different choices in much the same circumstances.

I'm silent here on John Harper's diagram. Perhaps we mean different things by fiat. I am using the word in a strong sense to imply making an arbitrary decision. One that - as to that precise decision - is arbitrary. How are you using it?

As Harper uses it, and as @Campbell used it: to mean the making of a decision relatively free of constraint. "Let it be done" - a decree that is not apt to be contradicted.

There is honestly no obstacle at all (except a decision folk make for themselves) to a 5e DM holding themselves accountable to their players.

Given that @Campbell is referring to a particular sort of accountability - the sort of accountability that obtains in (say) Burning Wheel scene-framing - it's not sufficient to assert that this can be part of 5e play. How would it work? How does the scene-framing work? How are situations resolved? In the example of play that I posted upthread, the scene has been framed by the GM independently of anything the players bring to the table via their PCs. The one action declaration that is resolved mechanically has no stakes, and the player does not even get told if they succeeded or failed.

I believe that play examples in the free basic PDF are intended to give an uncomplicated picture of the process for novices.

Sure. The process doesn't involve stakes. The process involves task resolution, not conflict resolution.

Prince Valiant doesn't have an example of play in the strict sense, but it has a one-page mini-scenario with a rules primer interleaved. This is uncomplicated too. The first use of the rules it suggests is to resolve the PC knights jockeying for precedence. From this, and other examples, we can see a difference between 5e D&D and Prince Valiant: Prince Valiant doesn't depend on GM-as-glue. (I've frequently posted that there are some scenarios in the Episode Book that depart from this - the stand-out in this respect being Mark Rein-Hagen's. Thus they're not playable as written.)

If you are asserting that 5e D&D routinely does resolve situations (particularly non-combat situations) without the need for GM decision-making of the sort Harper has in mind, Baker has in mind in what I posted upthread (about task vs conflict resolution), that @Campbell has in mind, that I have in mind, it would be helpful (i) to make that clear, and (ii) to provide examples and/or explanation of what you have in mind.

 

[clearstream]

Upthread I said there are a number of reasons someone might follow a rule. People mostly play games because they enjoy them, though that's not the only reason. And they follow the rules because that is what it means to play the game. I don't think most people engage with the appealing character of individual rules.

Here's a concrete example: the radius of the Fireball spell, in classic D&D, is 20'. This is inherited from Chainmail. Had the radius been 15', or 30', I think the rule would have been just as appealing.

I think that many people would have found the a rule that gave 3E D&D fighters better Will saves more appealing than the actual rules. But they seem nevertheless to have used the printed rule, because that was the rule in the game.

I'm reluctant to impute a lack of sophistication to players. For example, I would not make the assumption that players who choose fighter will always prefer rules that make their characters stronger, because (apposite the thread topic) that could prevent the game being appealing on the qualities that matter to them.

My impression from ENworld threads is that many people use the 5e rule for tridents vis-a-vis spears although they don't find it appealing.

To reiterate, people typically follow the rules of a game because (i) the rules help constitute the game, and (ii) they enjoy the game. I don't think individual rules are typically objects of desire or enjoyment in and of themselves.

Yes. I nowhere suppose that players aren't able to consider the system overall in choosing to follow a rule. And that is a fairly obvious case of my rubric, i.e. that agreement to a game rule is never located in that rule.

What I am trying to convey, I guess, is that it is utterly opaque to me what you think follows, about the nature of RPGing and the pursuit of various creative agendas, that players or GMs would make different choices in much the same circumstances.

Possibly that opacity comes down to our looking at these things through different lenses? Yesterday I found this from Vincent Baker (2015)

You know how you can assign a given rule to Drama, Fortune or Karma, if you want, but it tells you absolutely nothing about how the rule works, or why, and it creates illusory clusters of rules instead of fostering real understanding? And the same thing with FitM vs FatE? And the same thing with Effectiveness, Resource, and Positioning? They're convenient stand-ins for what's actually going on, when what's actually going on defies such simplistic taxonomies?

Same thing with GNS.

I was developing the idea of technical agenda as the technical component of creative agenda, and the further I developed it, the more patent it became to me that G, N and S were arbitrary, not reflective of real divisions in actual design or actual play. That while you can, if you want, assign a given instance of gameplay to G, N or S more or less consistently, you do so by asserting false similarities and ignoring some true similarities between other instances of gameplay. GNS is a convenient stand-in for what's actually going on.

If any of you Big Model theorists want to check my work, I'll be happy to lay it out for you, but it's long and it's technical, and I'll ask you to follow along carefully. Hit me up elsewhere.

...I think it's no longer the case that they help us discuss things in the abstract. They never helped much, they just took over every conversation they touched.

And I should be super clear: it's not that I think that there are hybrid creative agendas, coexisting creative agendas, overlaps, gray areas. It's not that I think that G, N and S aren't adequate. I think that the idea of creative agendas altogether isn't adequate. Gameplay doesn't have a creative agenda. Games aren't designed to support a creative agenda. The idea of creative agendas was useful to me for a while, but it's not anymore.

With those thoughts in mind, I'm not sure one can accurately connect incomplete memories of play with supposed creative agendas. For example, I observe players in our group having rich sets of intentions. When it comes to attempting something specific that justifies a roll, they don't recite those intentions. Nevertheless, they seldom attempt actions without underlying intent.

Maybe it can be understood like this, using the example of opening a safe

1. It may seem counter-intuitive, but in 5e, you don't roll to open a safe
2. Per DMG 237, what you are really rolling for is consequences
3. Thus, the only possible outcomes are
   1. you open the safe
   2. you become engaged with additional consequences

I can wonder - what if the safe is empty? The answer depends on our decisions about the kind of play we are interested in. Perhaps if we are immersionists, we'd like to imagine possibly empty safes.

I can wonder - what consequences? As I have said, for me the answer is strictly those constrained by situation, description, system. For another DM, the answer could be entirely different. And that will matter. For 5e system and DM matters.

Per RAW, there aren't typically dead-end ability checks in 5e. I'm not saying they couldn't come up sometimes in an interesting way, but that isn't the default. In understanding ability checks for 5e, you can comfortably start with examples like the one you quoted from the primer. Later, you might read PHB 174 and pick up more sophistication. Eventually, you'll get familiar with the whole Core and see what's possible.

Maybe the different ways that each DM can answer those questions (the two "I can wonder"s) connects to your creative agendas?

As Harper uses it, and as @Campbell used it: to mean the making of a decision relatively free of constraint. "Let it be done" - a decree that is not apt to be contradicted.

Given that @Campbell is referring to a particular sort of accountability - the sort of accountability that obtains in (say) Burning Wheel scene-framing - it's not sufficient to assert that this can be part of 5e play. How would it work? How does the scene-framing work? How are situations resolved? In the example of play that I posted upthread, the scene has been framed by the GM independently of anything the players bring to the table via their PCs. The one action declaration that is resolved mechanically has no stakes, and the player does not even get told if they succeeded or failed.

The poster promised an update and I'd like to wait to hear their further thoughts.

 

[AnotherGuy]

To reiterate, people typically follow the rules of a game because (i) the rules help constitute the game, and (ii) they enjoy the game. I don't think individual rules are typically objects of desire or enjoyment in and of themselves.

And yet would you agree that individual rules can hurt one's enjoyment of the game?

 

[Aldarc]

I don’t use DCs. I don’t particularly like them. I originally used a fixed DC, which is similar to how B/X does skills, but the current iteration of the system uses 3d6 with a PbtA-style range of success (9−/10–14/15+). I’m also leaning towards conflict resolution over task resolution. The actual skill list is pretty small, and skills by themselves don’t do anything. You need an appropriate speciality to be able to use a skill. Specialities are statements about what your character does with the skill. I seed some specialities via background and class (plus those that everyone generally has), but you can get more by doing things in the fiction. There is also a feat for being able to write “impossible” specialities.

When I hear that you are using a 3d6 resolution system, I can't but ask if you are familiar with the Stunt subsystem in Green Ronin's AGE series of games?

If I had to elevator pitch it, I would describe it as taking Moldvay Basic drifted towards Story Now. The characters still feel very similar to D&D characters (though a bit more powerful compared to from B/X). They still have a lot of familiar elements like classes and saving throws. Combat is still more or less D&D in style. Monsters can almost be used as-is. But once you get out of combat, the system leans pretty heavily on the PCs to drive thing forward.

For example, I have a hex map. It’s skeletal. Out of 285 hexes, I have 12 of them keyed†. The entries in the key are short and describe a situation in the hex. I wrote it before the agenda shift, so I don’t know yet how or to what extent it should change. However, most of what we know has been discovered in play. For example, there’s a red dragon* to the north that visits the ruins the party is trying to rebuild. What is it doing? Don’t know yet. We’ll have to continue playing to find out.

I also want to have some “living world” stuff, but the plan is to handle that with something similar to how BitD handles factions. They’ll have assets and goals, and those things will tick down. I need to get the specifics ironed out though, so I can actually start making use of them …. (Replacing WWN’s terrible faction system was what lead me to do my own thing.)

---

* Since it uses Moldvay Basic for its bestiary, a red dragon definitely not something one should want to fight. I think if the PCs made their Reflex (DEX) saving throws against the breath attack, most of them would survive (but be badly hurt). Except the thief. Poor d4 HD thief.

† Edit: And the situations were generated using WWN’s tags system. The PCs don’t know what those contents are, but they they do know which settlements are ruined. We covered that during the first session when they pointed to the central one and declared they wanted to loot it (the fallen capital).

And when I read this, I'm curious if you have checked out Freebooters on the Frontier.

Also have you considering looking at Fronts from Dungeon World? I find that Fronts are excellent additions to hexcrawls, especially if you establish the main Fronts at the beginning: e.g., red dragon to the north, orcs mustering troops on the border, chaos cultists, etc.

 

[kenada]

When I hear that you are using a 3d6 resolution system, I can't but ask if you are familiar with the Stunt subsystem in Green Ronin's AGE series of games?

I am not. The use of 3d6 came out of a discussion in the “What’s your favorite dice system?” thread. As noted there, 2d6 broke down given the range of modifiers I wanted to use. While it becomes impossible to generate a failure result at the top end (+7), one can still get partial successes. I’m going with that for now to see how it works out in practice. (I’m a big fan of iterating on a system with actual play versus spending lots of time theorycrafting something up.)

And when I read this, I'm curious if you have checked out Freebooters on the Frontier.

I haven’t. I’ve also had @Manbearcat ask me why I wasn’t using The Perilous Wilds. Compatibility with B/X and feeling like D&D are hard requirements.

I want to be able to reuse the OSE and RC bestiaries basically unmodified.‡ I have a different saving throw progression, but because Basic D&D is table-based, I just use my table instead of the original one. I need to convert morale modifiers, but that is simple math. Everything else works more or less the same. Since skill checks are made (almost) exclusively by the players, I don’t have to decide on numbers for creatures (something I disliked doing in WWN).

For my players, we’ve been playing D&D for a while. Going from OSE to PF2 was a little disappointing because they lost a lot of flexibility in how they could build their characters. I would describe my players as trad-ish inclined. When we switched to WWN, they liked how capable they felt and the options they could take. While I could probably pitch us successfully on switching to a different system, keeping it compatible made it a much easier sell. Their characters converted* over pretty neatly from what we were doing in WWN.

Also, I really want to use the exploration procedure I discussed in the WWN thread. I don’t like the use of hexes as a movement abstraction. I don’t like distance either. Using time solves the problem of tracking distance very neatly and presents well to the players. They can ask how far away something is, and telling them it’s about two hours to the north is immediately intuitive. If they take a break mid-journey to do something else, the system deals with it naturally. Anyway, I’m using that mostly as-written, but I plan to revise and evolve it once I get to that part of the system.

Also have you considering looking at Fronts from Dungeon World? I find that Fronts are excellent additions to hexcrawls, especially if you establish the main Fronts at the beginning: e.g., red dragon to the north, orcs mustering troops on the border, chaos cultists, etc.

I struggled with fronts when I ran Dungeon World. I think part of the problem is Dungeon World is just really bad at explaining how the game is supposed to work. It took reading Apocalypse World to really understand that. I feel like fronts are more evocative of a story-based approach.† That seems particularly true if you set some up in the beginning. I’m looking for something more emulative of a “living world sandbox”, which BitD-style factions seems more fitting.

The current sketch looks something like this (inspired by BitD and WWN). Factions can create some number of assets (based on the one part of WWN’s faction rules I liked), and assets have goals. Progress towards a goal is tracked with a clock-like structure. I expect I will check regularly for progress on the clock (still tbd). I also have a projects system that uses the same clock-like structure. (Well, it’s actually clocks but based on the 3e crafting rules, which are also sort of like clocks.)

Currently, the only clock in play is the project to clear the hex around the players’ ruined manor. The players know some of the parameters, but I’m still working that out (especially with the agenda shift). They know the size (40 points) and a couple of threats. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the threats, they’re too scared to take action against the threats. There’s a couple of gorgons (both the D&D-style and the classical one) and a nest of stirges (90 stirges). Also a warp beast, but they haven’t learned about that yet. They’ll need to drive off, kill, or negotiate with those things to make their hex “safe” (changing its status to settled).

---

* I have slightly out-of-date barbarian, cleric, and thief classes here. Bard is coming soon and will bring updates to the other classes. These were written pre-drift. I don’t expect a lot of changes, but some of the framing may change. Thieves’ Cant is already different in my current draft. Also, an update will include a proper OGL attribution. It should be the section 15s from OSE (Classic Fantasy Genre Rules), 3e, 5e, and PF2.

The basic approach to powering up the classes is to put them into groups that given them extra capabilities. This started out as layering the OSE classes on top of the WWN ones, but they evolved out of that (for OGL and design purposes. Characters also gain feats and ability score improvements at regular intervals (every 3rd and every 4th level accordingly). I would honestly prefer not to have feats, but they’re a thing my players really like.

† Edit: I should also note the red dragon resulted from an events check, which happen regularly. It wasn’t something I decided ahead of time would be part of the campaign. This kind of “discovering the setting by playing to find out” is something I want to preserve going forward. This is also why I describe fronts as feeling story-like. We started with a (more or less) blank slate when it came to dangerous things out in the world.

‡ Also adventures. Necrotic Gnome’s adventures for Old-School Essentials tend to be site- or situation-based, so they should actually work pretty well when something happens that would point to them. I ran Halls of the Blood King because a treasure stash contained a deed, and the players were interested in checking it out. The hex was generated as ruins, so I stuck the proverbial Halls in an iterum plane with a gate on the property’s front gate. It was good stuff.