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

[AbdulAlhazred]

In some narrativist-facing games, having a high rating in a particular skill is less about measuring their observable ability in that activity within the gameworld and more about their ability to use that activity to make things happen in the story. The two things are orthogonal. My character might be visibly much stronger than yours in the gameworld, and we will reflect that trait in our general narration, but in a conflict I am a Clark Kent type and rely on my Clumsy Wholesomeness score. Your character is a fierce and independent single mom who might look small and non-threatening but in a crisis her Inner Strength trait comes out and she's lifting cars off children and smashing robbers to the ground with her brick-filled purse. The numbers are defining the character's approach to problems as a protagonist rather than their actual capabilities as a person.

Right, and in fact if you were to mine back through my entire posting history on Enworld you would find that the FIRST THING that I came up with in terms of 4e being a true Narrativist system was the concept that 4e Skills (which are a lot like 5e skills in basic structure, except you get a level bonus on all of them) represent the APPROACH that the player is declaring a particular PC will take to problems. When you give your character Athletics proficiency, you are not saying "this guy is a great athlete" (maybe he is and maybe he isn't he could have STR 8); what you ARE saying is, that you are going to use Athletics in challenges and you want the reward for doing so, as rolling with nothing but an ability modifier of -1 (if you really had STR 8) sucks and disincentives you. OTOH, the -1 is there, and the mighty thewed barbarian with STR 20 (+5), but no Athletics proficiency, doesn't really roll that way, though if push comes to shove he will likely beat you out in an athletic competition (barely)! I think this explains why proficiency gives a +5, which is basically the same amount as the largest starting ability bonus. Obviously the most straightforward character concept is the guy with BOTH 20 STR and Athletics proficiency, and he's your goto for this kind of thing, but the point is, Athletics just says "I want to do this stuff." not "I'm great at it."

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Sure. I'd just add that in some instances the activity being done to 'make things happen' in the story has the result fictionally follow from being successful at the activity. Beating a bad guys face with a purse full of bricks using your inner strength with the intent of knocking him out till police arrive would be a good example of an activity where all the results directly followed from being fictionally successful at that activity.

However, one could use inner strength to bust open a safe with the intent of finding incriminating evidence against a particular NPC. In this case only part of your results directly follow from being fictionally successful at the activity. The part where you open the safe. What papers are in it doesn't fictionally depend upon your inner strength.

That's the difference I'm talking about.


Clumsy Wholesomeness is an interesting example. I'm not quite sure the kinds of X you could fictionally justify doing with clumsy wholesomeness. Which I think is what's making it so hard to analyze.


Sure, but those approaches can either lead to results that all follow from being fictionally successful at that activity or as shown above, maybe one fictional result follows from the success of the activity and the other doesn't.

I'm reminded of PACE. In that game you get nothing but 2 attributes, and 7 'points' to distribute between them. So 'Clumsy Wholesomeness' would be a fairly good PACE attribute, you can definitely find ways to work it into the narrative. Maybe I have +4 Clumsy Wholesomeness, so when I want to put the moves on the cute girl, I proffer the fiction that I offer to help her cross the street, and I inadvertently bump into her and cause her to break her heel. Fixing it gets me points, so I earn my '4' against her natural suspicion of random male strangers (because of course they are always hitting on her). Now, PACE is a hard system to be a player in, because you really do have to work this stuff! It is not a bad game for silly one-shots where the characters and the situations are kind of designed for each other. OTOH it isn't the sort of system you would generally want to use for most longer games (though we did run a fairly good Arthurian Romance campaign with it once).

 

[niklinna]

The best way I'd see to put it is that the die rolls in something like PbtA games are (in theory) not actually representing the skill of the character or other simulation factors; they're stand ins for how significant his actions are in how the story is playing out and who gets to decide in the moment what that is. That doesn't mean plausibility isn't a factor, but its a factor at a different level than what the die roll is doing.

This is especially so in that Apocalypse World's moves barely resemble task-type actions, and there are no skills! What the heck are "hard" or "sharp" in concrete simulationist terms? It's all about your style in navigating the imaginary world.

Or the way I might think of it "I think this is the dramatically appropriate thing to happen at the moment; lets see if the die rolls and the assigned weight of that sort of thing to this character agree with me." That up-front assessment can very well factor in plausibility among its consideration (its going on inside someone's head after all) but there's no particular requirement for it to do so.

Yep!

 

[soviet]

Right, and in fact if you were to mine back through my entire posting history on Enworld you would find that the FIRST THING that I came up with in terms of 4e being a true Narrativist system was the concept that 4e Skills (which are a lot like 5e skills in basic structure, except you get a level bonus on all of them) represent the APPROACH that the player is declaring a particular PC will take to problems. When you give your character Athletics proficiency, you are not saying "this guy is a great athlete" (maybe he is and maybe he isn't he could have STR 8); what you ARE saying is, that you are going to use Athletics in challenges and you want the reward for doing so, as rolling with nothing but an ability modifier of -1 (if you really had STR 8) sucks and disincentives you. OTOH, the -1 is there, and the mighty thewed barbarian with STR 20 (+5), but no Athletics proficiency, doesn't really roll that way, though if push comes to shove he will likely beat you out in an athletic competition (barely)! I think this explains why proficiency gives a +5, which is basically the same amount as the largest starting ability bonus. Obviously the most straightforward character concept is the guy with BOTH 20 STR and Athletics proficiency, and he's your goto for this kind of thing, but the point is, Athletics just says "I want to do this stuff." not "I'm great at it."

Yep, there was a great article on this stuff by Chris Chinn aka Bankuei entitled Flag Framing, albeit I can't seem to find a link anymore. My game Other Worlds is very much based on this approach, and that article was a big inspiration.

 

[niklinna]

Yep, there was a great article on this stuff by Chris Chinn aka Bankuei entitled Flag Framing, albeit I can't seem to find a link anymore. My game Other Worlds is very much based on this approach, and that article was a big inspiration.

Found it. But what the heck is with blogs being replaced by redirects to...well, shall we way "questionable" businesses? (Do not answer that question, this thread is in the weeds enough as it is! )

Deep in the Game: Flag Framing

web.archive.org

I'm well into the article and liking what I'm reading!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You're missing my point. The game part of it doesn't move. What moves is the payoff. You're still using the game systems to move toward that reward, and the value in getting at it is that you do so well. But "enjoying doing this thing well" is the gamist part no matter what the payoff is, and the payoff varying doesn't say anything about how successfully you do the thing the game provides--its just the payoff.

Sure, but I think calling that 'gamist' is wrong. Its just how games of all sorts work. It is just acknowledging that RPGs have a 'G' in them, that they are entertaining diversions out of which we get pleasure! Yes, some parts of play of ANY GAME may be more pleasing than others, but if that's your definition of gamism, I would say it is not a worthwhile definition, it isn't diagnostic of anything at all. GNS gamism thus includes more. It exists as a distinct agenda, in which the game design's contribution would be in terms of providing situations in which skillful play is required, and rewarded as part of play.

Now, if you want to argue different parts of the game are actually supported by the system and other parts are ad-hoc, I wouldn't argue with you; I still maintain that "playing the GM" is a different kind of game than most people are trying for, and in my opinion, usually a lesser one. But the nature of the payoff isn't directly connected with those different "games".

I'm just saying that you cannot talk about the orientation of a game WRT the type of agendas that it is designed to support when discussing things that are not elements of the game at all, or at the very least specific intended outcomes. I don't think 'pleasing to play' is one that is agenda-related at all. In effect this is the agenda of ALL GAMES.

There are two easy answers to that have nothing to do with your premise; 1. First, once D&D had acquired its first impetus, I don't think anything was going to dislodge that. No possible system design, reward structure, or much of anything else was going to do that. 2. Other SF games with much more D&D like reward structures haven't done much better, usually worse. There's some useful discussion to have about genres and engagement (which I've seen some of even around here) but without that discussion this is comparing grapes to cheese and asking why a given group prefers one over the other.

Honestly, which SF games have had D&D-like advancement as a central element? I certainly don't know the rules of every SF RPG, but I've played a good number of them, and I cannot think of one! Certainly within the crop of early RPGs, which would have been likely to take root and spread widely without tons of competition (IE in the 1970s basically) there were none at all. Gamma World/Metamorphosis Alpha does use very D&D-esque rules, but character advancement doesn't really happen in that game. It does have some pretty D&D-like loot mechanisms though, and it was quite popular in the day (it was definitely on a par with Traveller back in the day). However, it is a pretty light-hearted one-shot sort of game where PCs generally die very quickly and the only factors that matter are luck with saves/mutation rolls, and whether or not your GM decides to give out power armor and laser weapons and such (or they come up on some random charts).

Beyond that, the closest I can come up with is D6 Star Wars, but that obviously has the limitation of being heavily built on a specific setting and backstory. You can get some decent advancement in that game, but it is much less clearly focused on. There's nothing like 'levels' really, as there are in D&D. I ran some d6 Space, the modern version of the system with the Star Wars branding filed off, and yes, you can advance, but its slow and it certainly is not central to the game, nor is loot or any other specific measure of progress. So, no, I think the SF genre has not really taken up the idea in the way D&D did. I suspect the main reason is that SF is intended to be at least partially realistic, the fundamental SF conceit is "what is the world like IF X" where 'X' is something technological. A D&D-like game doesn't really support that conceit very well, and thus SFRPG developers have historically shied away from this sort of design. Now, maybe that is less true today with some of the Transhumanist kind of conceptions of technology and such, but that has its own challenges (like how do you play a PC that becomes transcendent for one). Besides, such games only seem to have appeared really in the last 20 years, and its unlikely one RPG will rise to D&D-like popularity in the current market, there's just too much stuff out there.

So, I think it might have been possible for an SF game to achieve D&D-like popularity, if it had been written in the 1970s and utilized insights into RPG design that didn't arrive until nearly 20 years later! Mostly though, I think kitchen-sink fantasy was the richest vein to tap, and it matched up really well with the D&D design's focus on advancement. That combination is the central formula that makes D&D work.

 

[Manbearcat]

@FrogReaver and @clearstream

You've gotten a lot of answers on this from folks above. I'm going to put my thoughts on these things.

INTENT + FAIL FORWARD + OBJECTIVE DCS (BURNING WHEEL FAMILY OF GAMES)

What does this design care about and what does it do?

* The game engine cares deeply about player protagonism as the primary machine of moving the fiction. Players intent is overwhelmingly the source of the propulsion for the movement of the fiction. However, this may be somewhat or mostly detached from the gamestate (you get what you want but things are worse for you as well vs you get what you want).

* The gamestate to fiction relationship is left up to players at both the PC build stage ("do I want to build to archetype and have things go well for my character in their archetypal shtick or do I want my archetypal shtick to be a source of wear and tear - physically/emotionally/philosophically - on my character?") and at the action declaration/approach-phase ("do I want to approach this in a way that is more apt to lead to fallout - Fail Forward - and mark xp/advance or do I want to to approach this in a way that is less apt to lead to fallout - I get what I want no strings attached and no cost to my PC within the gamestate but no advance/xp?").

* Obstacle rating or difficulty class or opposing dice pool is both unbounded + not not tethered to PC advancement + table-facing. So what this means is that the game is going to be more injurious to your PC than the alternative design and it will become particularly so if you don't (a) build robustly to archetype so you can marshal a ton of resources to bring to bear to defeat obstacles/opposition and (b) simultaneously approach obstacles/opposition in ways that let you declare actions which hew to your archetype. And you know this going in.

* Reward cycles and resources gained to marshal against future opposition overwhelmingly demand that you_struggle. Advancement and resource marshaling is contingent upon struggle and hardship and worsened gamestate. You the player struggle with your decision-points (thematically for sure...but also tactically and strategically and how those intersect) and your character "feels it" and is invariably eroded underfoot. Its a design that makes it impossible to "conception proof" (lets call it) your character. This is very intentional. It is the sought, and designed in, experience. Its to make for a more brutal, more swingy gamestate experience where you're accruing a lot of PC attrition (physically/emotionally/philosophically) that leads to a particularly challenging emotional quality to play. You have a lot of control over the gamestate via build and approach/declared actions...but there are absolutely limits to this. Even the most optimized play is going to yield a character-ablating, conception-challenging and altering experience.


INTENT + FAIL FORWARD + SUBJECTIVE DCS (4E, 13TH AGE, AND A FAIR AMOUNT OF PBTA/FITD EXPERIENCE)

What does this design care about and what does it do?

* The game engine cares deeply about player protagonism as the primary machine of moving the fiction. Players intent is overwhelmingly the source of the propulsion for the movement of the fiction. However, the game also cares deeply that the cognitive space the player inhabits when assuming their archetypal shtick + gamestate + attendant fiction relationship be very tightly coupled. The game will not let you "build to gamestate-incompetency" (lets call it) within your archetype. You WILL BE robustly capable and potent within archetype. Period. You lead with archetype...the gamestate will tend very much toward following.

* Given that the gamestate to fiction relationship is not left up to players when it comes to their archetypal shtick (when you engage in your archetype's moveset, the gamestate will follow in predictable path), there are only two sources of gamestate opposition within the player's purview:

1) Choose suboptimally (or worse) within your decision-tree. Obviously this means going outside of your archetypal shtick or it could mean calling upon thematic resources or orienting the situation in a particular way that tends toward punishing your character/changing the situation adversely (this is often related to gaining a boon/advance/xp...some sort of downstream aid).

2) "Punch above your belt." Take on challenges (these challenges might be physical, emotional, philosophical or the intersection of some/all) that yield a higher propensity for negative gamestate outcomes (and attendant fiction) or a worse degree of gamestate consequences (and attendant fiction). You want to test yourself? You want big rewards? You want heightened danger? Choose your enemies/goals/threats accordingly or overextend yourself on purpose.

Regardless, (1) and (2) also yield potent player protagonism (players are driving the play) but its a different matrix of decision-space/game engine than in the first system design.

* Because we want to achieve the design goals/experience outlined above, obstacle rating or difficulty class or opposing dice pool is both relatively bounded + tethered to PC advancement + table-facing. So what this means is that the game is going to be dramatically reduce injuriousness to your PC in proportion to (a) your ability to orient the situation such that you can bring your archetype to bear upon it (+ the reality that principled GMing which follows dramatic needs will invariably mean an abundance of scenes framed around archetype) and (b) in proportion to player inputs around (1) and (2) above.

---

So really, what it boils down to might be this:

* The first design has a "built-in HARD MODE" that you just can't get around. Its going to hurt you and keep hurting you despite the reality that you're "getting what you want." The game is meant to be a struggle. Experiencing that struggle and seeing how your agents within the fiction (your character first among them) wear down and either resolve themselves to carry on or be resigned to their fate is the point. Your ass is always in the fire...period, full_stop.

* The latter design has a "built-in HARD/MEDIUM MODE toggle." The game very much might be a struggle. And certain rewards will increase in proportion to struggle and enhanced hardship and danger. But the throttle setting has more player input (by design) until you have formally bit off more than you can chew (on purpose, because you'll know that going in) and now you have to pull your ass out of the fire if you can.

 

[clearstream]

@FrogReaver and @clearstream

You've gotten a lot of answers on this from folks above. I'm going to put my thoughts on these things.

INTENT + FAIL FORWARD + OBJECTIVE DCS (BURNING WHEEL FAMILY OF GAMES)

What does this design care about and what does it do?

* The game engine cares deeply about player protagonism as the primary machine of moving the fiction. Players intent is overwhelmingly the source of the propulsion for the movement of the fiction. However, this may be somewhat or mostly detached from the gamestate (you get what you want but things are worse for you as well vs you get what you want).

* The gamestate to fiction relationship is left up to players at both the PC build stage ("do I want to build to archetype and have things go well for my character in their archetypal shtick or do I want my archetypal shtick to be a source of wear and tear - physically/emotionally/philosophically - on my character?") and at the action declaration/approach-phase ("do I want to approach this in a way that is more apt to lead to fallout - Fail Forward - and mark xp/advance or do I want to to approach this in a way that is less apt to lead to fallout - I get what I want no strings attached and no cost to my PC within the gamestate but no advance/xp?").

* Obstacle rating or difficulty class or opposing dice pool is both unbounded + not not tethered to PC advancement + table-facing. So what this means is that the game is going to be more injurious to your PC than the alternative design and it will become particularly so if you don't (a) build robustly to archetype so you can marshal a ton of resources to bring to bear to defeat obstacles/opposition and (b) simultaneously approach obstacles/opposition in ways that let you declare actions which hew to your archetype. And you know this going in.

* Reward cycles and resources gained to marshal against future opposition overwhelmingly demand that you_struggle. Advancement and resource marshaling is contingent upon struggle and hardship and worsened gamestate. You the player struggle with your decision-points (thematically for sure...but also tactically and strategically and how those intersect) and your character "feels it" and is invariably eroded underfoot. Its a design that makes it impossible to "conception proof" (lets call it) your character. This is very intentional. It is the sought, and designed in, experience. Its to make for a more brutal, more swingy gamestate experience where you're accruing a lot of PC attrition (physically/emotionally/philosophically) that leads to a particularly challenging emotional quality to play. You have a lot of control over the gamestate via build and approach/declared actions...but there are absolutely limits to this. Even the most optimized play is going to yield a character-ablating, conception-challenging and altering experience.


INTENT + FAIL FORWARD + SUBJECTIVE DCS (4E, 13TH AGE, AND A FAIR AMOUNT OF PBTA/FITD EXPERIENCE)

What does this design care about and what does it do?

* The game engine cares deeply about player protagonism as the primary machine of moving the fiction. Players intent is overwhelmingly the source of the propulsion for the movement of the fiction. However, the game also cares deeply that the cognitive space the player inhabits when assuming their archetypal shtick + gamestate + attendant fiction relationship be very tightly coupled. The game will not let you "build to gamestate-incompetency" (lets call it) within your archetype. You WILL BE robustly capable and potent within archetype. Period. You lead with archetype...the gamestate will tend very much toward following.

* Given that the gamestate to fiction relationship is not left up to players when it comes to their archetypal shtick (when you engage in your archetype's moveset, the gamestate will follow in predictable path), there are only two sources of gamestate opposition within the player's purview:

1) Choose suboptimally (or worse) within your decision-tree. Obviously this means going outside of your archetypal shtick or it could mean calling upon thematic resources or orienting the situation in a particular way that tends toward punishing your character/changing the situation adversely (this is often related to gaining a boon/advance/xp...some sort of downstream aid).

2) "Punch above your belt." Take on challenges (these challenges might be physical, emotional, philosophical or the intersection of some/all) that yield a higher propensity for negative gamestate outcomes (and attendant fiction) or a worse degree of gamestate consequences (and attendant fiction). You want to test yourself? You want big rewards? You want heightened danger? Choose your enemies/goals/threats accordingly or overextend yourself on purpose.

Regardless, (1) and (2) also yield potent player protagonism (players are driving the play) but its a different matrix of decision-space/game engine than in the first system design.

* Because we want to achieve the design goals/experience outlined above, obstacle rating or difficulty class or opposing dice pool is both relatively bounded + tethered to PC advancement + table-facing. So what this means is that the game is going to be dramatically reduce injuriousness to your PC in proportion to (a) your ability to orient the situation such that you can bring your archetype to bear upon it (+ the reality that principled GMing which follows dramatic needs will invariably mean an abundance of scenes framed around archetype) and (b) in proportion to player inputs around (1) and (2) above.

---

So really, what it boils down to might be this:

* The first design has a "built-in HARD MODE" that you just can't get around. Its going to hurt you and keep hurting you despite the reality that you're "getting what you want." The game is meant to be a struggle. Experiencing that struggle and seeing how your agents within the fiction (your character first among them) wear down and either resolve themselves to carry on or be resigned to their fate is the point. Your ass is always in the fire...period, full_stop.

* The latter design has a "built-in HARD/MEDIUM MODE toggle." The game very much might be a struggle. And certain rewards will increase in proportion to struggle and enhanced hardship and danger. But the throttle setting has more player input (by design) until you have formally bit off more than you can chew (on purpose, because you'll know that going in) and now you have to pull your ass out of the fire if you can.

Something this made me think about - a digression, absolutely - is what is your view of the prospects of future RPG design? Have we reached "the end of history" from the perspective of RPG?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yep, there was a great article on this stuff by Chris Chinn aka Bankuei entitled Flag Framing, albeit I can't seem to find a link anymore. My game Other Worlds is very much based on this approach, and that article was a big inspiration.

Deep in the Game: Flag Framing should get you a copy

LOL, ninjaed! Thanks for that link!

 

[Campbell]

Something this made me think about - a digression, absolutely - is what is your view of the prospects of future RPG design? Have we reached "the end of history" from the perspective of RPG?

There's definitely some new stuff. Journaling games, lyrical games, Belonging Outside Belonging, coop games like Ironsworn, Brindlewood Bay style mystery as you go play, more recent High Concept games that are more transparent in what they are about like L5R Fifth Edition.