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

[pemerton]

It strikes me as similar to how inspiration and goals/beliefs are implemented in 5e - as though someone had flipped through an indie RPG book in a shop, found a cool idea, and implemented a half-remembered superficial version of it without ever really playing the original or understanding why it works. I don't think it's cynical, I think it comes from a genuine sense of 'wow, cool!', but it is lazy and poorly thought-out. It's a pastiche, to use a very Ron Edwards word.

I'm not as critical as you are here of the skill challenge mechanic. I think it can be quite effective, and the fact that the GM doesn't roll helps force a focus on the fiction and framing.

I can't comment on 5e's BIFTs, beyond the fact that they seem not to figure very prominently in discussions of the system.

 

[Oofta]

Oofta, you routinely have responses like this to comments like pemerton’s above.

When I see these responses from you (to comments like pemerton’s), I don’t know what you expect the takeaway for bystanders or engaged commenters to be?

What is the next phase of the conversation you believe this type of comment is initiating?

The end of conversation?

Bridging to something else that will provide some kind of insight into the lead post or the topic that the exchange is over?

Or are these fairly routine statement you expressing your sense that your autobiographical testimony needs to be levied as a datapoint? Like in this case, “someone has to stand up for the ‘I don’t find it useful’ voting bloc?”

I just don’t know what to do with these posts (how to process them or how to respond to them if I feel so inclined) when I read them.

I'm trying to be polite. I accept that other people care deeply about something and it took me a while to realize we're just speaking different languages, using a framework I care nothing about, something I think is too abstract to be useful. Not sure what else to say - for some people game theory is a cool interesting topic to discuss on it's own merit. Maybe that comes across as being dismissive, or my saying that game theory in general is pointless. It's not my intent, just that to me it adds no value.

Throw in the occasional implied or stated "If you really understood you'd agree" and it gets a bit frustrating. I don't think D&D falls neatly into any one category. I'd be surprised if any game with the type of flexibility of D&D could. You can go from a game where nothing outside of combat is ever decided by a die roll and in-combat declarations frequently bypass rules to a game where every uncertain outcome is decided by the roll of a dice and PCs just kick doors and loot treasure. The rules explicitly call out both extremes as perfectly normal and okay. Or, just as likely, I'm not speaking the same language.

But then I get posts like this asking me to explain myself. So I attempt to explain myself ... which then leads to people asking me to explain my explanation of my explanation.

P.S. It doesn't help much when some of the posts come across, intentionally or not, as game snobbery. I get it. A lot of people play more game systems than I do. Until recently (and then COVID ) I simply didn't have enough bandwidth to play games more than once or maybe twice a month. When I do get more time we tend to play board games. So while I've played some one shots, I play D&D because the people I play with prefer it. I get tired of people listing off games as if it gives them some secret knowledge that I can't possibly comprehend.

 

[soviet]

I'm trying to be polite. I accept that other people care deeply about something and it took me a while to realize we're just speaking different languages, using a framework I care nothing about, something I think is too abstract to be useful. Not sure what else to say - for some people game theory is a cool interesting topic to discuss on it's own merit. Maybe that comes across as being dismissive, or my saying that game theory in general is pointless. It's not my intent, just that to me it adds no value.

Throw in the occasional implied or stated "If you really understood you'd agree" and it gets a bit frustrating. I don't think D&D falls neatly into any one category. I'd be surprised if any game with the type of flexibility of D&D could. You can go from a game where nothing outside of combat is ever decided by a die roll and in-combat declarations frequently bypass rules to a game where every uncertain outcome is decided by the roll of a dice and PCs just kick doors and loot treasure. The rules explicitly call out both extremes as perfectly normal and okay. Or, just as likely, I'm not speaking the same language.

But then I get posts like this asking me to explain myself. So I attempt to explain myself ... which then leads to people asking me to explain my explanation of my explanation.

P.S. It doesn't help much when some of the posts come across, intentionally or not, as game snobbery. I get it. A lot of people play more game systems than I do. Until recently (and then COVID ) I simply didn't have enough bandwidth to play games more than once or maybe twice a month. When I do get more time we tend to play board games. So while I've played some one shots, I play D&D because the people I play with prefer it. I get tired of people listing off games as if it gives them some secret knowledge that I can't possibly comprehend.

People have asked you to clarify your position because they have taken your repeated posting in the thread as an indication that you wish to participate in the discussion. If you do not, I don't understand why you keep posting. There are many other threads to get involved in.

 

[Oofta]

People have asked you to clarify your position because they have taken your repeated posting in the thread as an indication that you wish to participate in the discussion. If you do not, I don't understand why you keep posting. There are many other threads to get involved in.

You do realize you just asked why I explain my request for explanation for the request explaining...[ERROR, POTENTIALLY INFINITE LOOP DETECTED].

 

[soviet]

You do realize you just asked why I explain my request for explanation for the request explaining...[ERROR, POTENTIALLY INFINITE LOOP DETECTED].

Alexa, what is a rhetorical question?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I just want to say how much this post has resonated with me, and how it leaves me with a few questions.

I'm trying to make sense of the kind of GM I want to be and the kind of games I want to run as of late, and both GNS theory and the Six Cultures Essay have really opened my mind about these things. When it comes to what I want out of D&D, what you're describing - playing 'real' D&D and having the story be things that happened along the way - really fits the bill. For me, the highlight of the games I run have been things that could only happen with that specific group at that specific time because things evolved to that point within the bounds of the universe and the game rules. Just a few games ago, the party killed Cyan Bloodbane inside a small pyramid summoned by the Gnome Wizard's Bag of Tricks - none of that would be possible if I didn't let my lore knowledge of Cyan's personality (his vanity and cowardice) lead him to take the party's bait (which only existed because of a specific magic item they got ages go) to get easy treasure. No amount of game prep and story design on my end as the GM could create that moment, and this is what brings me back to playing D&D time and time again.

With that said, I'm trying to understand what that means about the kind of game culture I seem to like. From the description of GNS Theory, I feel like what I want aligns mostly with simulationist styles, but then if simulationism aligns with trad/neo-trad, I don't feel I belong there entirely - on the contrary, I feel like the way OSR was described in the essay seems to be much closer to what I want (where OSR games don't even pretend that there is a narrative structure, but only create a story in hindsight). But! OSR is usually categorised as gamist, and having run a few OSE games, I can see why. It seems to be much more limited in its tight gameplay loop of "roll up character -> explore dungeon systematically -> either return with treasure and get to new dungeon or die and roll a new character". All in all, I feel like a lot of the labels could fit me for different reasons.

So, I think that one way that GNS breaks down, is not only that people and games can be good at multiple things, but that the different areas can actually support each other directly. So like, in the case of OSR, the gamism and simulation actually support each other-- the whole point is for the game to be a fun, playable, simulation where the act of making the statistically defined elements interact is enjoyable and engaging, even while they're intended to represent things. The act of sitting down and saying 'ok, I am going to represent being an elf with these particular statistics and abilities, because that'll help it feel like an elf' and the enjoyable game play of applying those things to the actual game, your elf being better and worse at certain things and making you play around that-- its the gamism and the simulationism supporting each other, and if you accept that each of those elements is designed to tell a story through its game play and the intentionality of how it interacts with other elements in the simulation, you've brought in narrative too.

I grew up alongside and participated in the roots of the OC movement (in so far as the article discusses its origins as being freeform messageboard roleplaying) to me, the emphasis of it seems to be player and character empowerment-- e.g. instead of rolling up a character whose abilities and identity you have little control over or regard for, you get to spend a lot of energy on them as a form of creative expression. That's literally what "my OC" refers to, "My Original Character" as opposed to say, the canon characters of that world, or someone else's Original Character. If you look at that loop you outlined for OSR, it breaks down in two places for the OC movement-- OSR generally prioritizes easy character creation, and high lethality, which gives characters a more expendable feel, it can be more punishing to put that kind of investment in them, and the systems don't give you a lot of means of investing that time into them; you can always invest time in your character's story and personality, but you don't have a lot of widgets to customize them with, and reflect different parts of them-- certainly not at low level where the lethality is highest, instead the model is theoretically about starting with nothing, and building up something, its building a legacy, an identity, over the course of the game, rather than starting out with one.

But, and this is something I've been playing a lot with the space of, the actual losing of a character, and the frequency with which it occurs and the corresponding speed, isn't necessarily load bearing for all that is appealing about OSR, it just so happens to be co-morbid with them. You can run a simulative sandbox that engenders the kind of feeling you and I are after, without having to deploy save or die mechanics, and rapidly moving through the loop you mentioned, because the two things are kind of orthagonal. You can have death exist as a vegetable mechanic (meaning, a mechanic that isn't always fun in and of itself, but supports other aspects of the fun), while still reducing its negative impact on OC character investment-- resurrection magic, undead character options that allow characters to be rebuilt after accepting the death, deals that apply negative consequences in exchange for character retention, creatures that knock players out and either capture them or deposit them elsewhere instead of killing them, and simply game mechanics that make players tough enough to have an opportunity to identify failure and respond with retreat and other failure-mitigation strategies all allow you to mitigate the undesirable consequences of failure, while still engaging with a lot of the problem solving, simulative, success-or-failure-depends-on-you elements we like about OSR. It just means changing the consequences of failure.

We do the OSR style sandbox, simulation and treasure hunting game in Pathfinder 2e-- it empowers the players to be robust and therefore invest attention and detail in their characters, characters who die could elect to come back as a ghost using the Ghost archetype, or use resurrection magic, and simply be tough enough to take opportunities to run when necessary. This creates a dynamic where I can have my OSR style simulation, sandboxing, and problem solving, without death hanging over my player's heads like a total albatross.

In video games, we actually watched this play out in the development of the rogue-lite genre out of the rogue-like genre, essentially rogue and its direct derivatives were fun, but too brutal, so its successor genre actually designed around the idea of mitigating the undesirable consequences of failure, while still retaining it's willingness to let the player fail. They even give players consolation prizes for failure that make the next run different, or more interesting-- the OSR and the games it is derived from toy with this, in the form of dice rolls possibly resulting in being able to uses classes like the Paladin, that have statistically unlikely entry requirements, that require multiple 'tries' across multiple characters to get a chance to play.

Its just a matter of identifying what you really want out of the culture of play that has appeal.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm not sure what it means, but I have always envisioned D&D to be G with patches of S with any N coming from the players, particularly when they create back or current story on our Obsidian Portal site.

 

[Malmuria]

I grew up alongside and participated in the roots of the OC movement (in so far as the article discusses its origins as being freeform messageboard roleplaying) to me, the emphasis of it seems to be player and character empowerment-- e.g. instead of rolling up a character whose abilities and identity you have little control over or regard for, you get to spend a lot of energy on them as a form of creative expression. That's literally what "my OC" refers to, "My Original Character" as opposed to say, the canon characters of that world, or someone else's Original Character. If you look at that loop you outlined for OSR, it breaks down in two places for the OC movement

I don’t know if it is off-topic for this thread, but I would love to hear more about your experience in “OC” role play. Did OC seem to you like a “game” or more like a “creative project”? From the outside, it seems as something that was very freeform and sort of a means to generating fan fiction. I think the influence of live journal and tumblr on contemporary rpgs, perhaps especially 5e, has not been explored enough (as evidenced by it being lumped in with “neotrad”)

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I don’t know if it is off-topic for this thread, but I would love to hear more about your experience in “OC” role play. Did OC seem to you like a “game” or more like a “creative project”? From the outside, it seems as something that was very freeform and sort of a means to generating fan fiction. I think the influence of live journal and tumblr on contemporary rpgs, perhaps especially 5e, has not been explored enough (as evidenced by it being lumped in with “neotrad”)

So, we called them RPs, I would say that we actually thought of them more as a 'pastime' it was a fun thing to do but it didn't have an object usually, and while you could get ambitious and try to carry off a story arc, it wasn't exactly meant to produce anything at the end the way you expect a creative project might. I participated in them mainly on Nintendo's Nsider Forums, on Gaia Online's Forums, and after Nsider went down, on private forums hosted by people I knew from that scene. I was also very familiar, and somewhat involved in the Fizzy Bubbles scene, when it was active on Serebii.net.

Different people did different things with it, so it was actually fairly diverse-- imagine an enworld board, where every thread was its own game, and all of the action was just people typing descriptions and dialog at each other and RPing. So I might join an RP, sometimes by application, other times freely simply by popping off a basic character bio, glancing at the context of whatever was already happening, like for location and such and say:

Magic steps through the front door of the old house, they look pensive as they glance around, a sword is slung across their back while a revolver rests at their side. "Hey, is anyone here?" they call out, their hand rests on the hilt of the sword, as if they're expecting to be attacked.

Then one of the other participants might respond:

Veronica calls out lazily from behind a nearby folding screen "Oh, I'm right here" she puts down the book she was reading and stands up, walking slowly around the screen with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, she cocks an eyebrow as she looks Magic up and down "What, looking for a fight?"

Which is a post I would read, and respond:

Magic blushes and takes their hand off theirsword "Oh no, sorry, force of habit"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Where things get a little weird, is that there are no rules other than social convention, and no conflict resolution mechanic, so a fight might look like this:

Magic draws their sword and revolver and dashes across the space between them and Veronica, bringing the blade down in a jumping slash.

With the other participant responding:

Veronica steps forward, dropping into a roll that narrowly dodges the slash before coming up and attempting to slam her book into their side with the incredible force of her super strength.

Then I would have to decide whether my character Magic would take the hit or not, which is my decision-- she can't force me to take it, except if I seem to never take hits, the other participants will become annoyed at me for always making my character untouchable and give me a talking to, so there's a push and pull of what I want to take and when. Pushed to its extreme, there were 'militaries' where characters would fight other groups-- some forums had referees, others determined winner with judges based off writing quality, and others developed metas where it was about adhering to your approved set of abilities, and siloing off routes of escape to force a logical win in the fiction. If the fight wasn't with another player, it was more about expression, with someone loosely 'GMing' as part of their description, usually one of the people who had clout in that RP.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The central object, if it can be described to have one, was to participate in a sort of shared daydream in a particular milieu, they were often social, with the character's personalities fooling around, fighting, flirting, and so forth being a big draw-- the OC could actually become a kind of secondary identity to inhabit, and the RP itself a kind of almost entirely social experience where you sit around and chat in character, becoming so comfortable doing so that you could shoot the breeze and banter, like it was a night with buddies in a real world bar. Some took it very seriously, and made art or headcanons about their characters, or paired up with certain partners for more serious RP.

They also varied a lot, my writing above is very good, it would have been top notch if I was still participating (they were very young scenes you understand, I was 10 when I got into my longest running one, and the leader was like 14 and had been doing it for a couple of years, I only found out how close we really were in age talking to them just recently, actually-- that was more than half my life ago!) other times it could look like this:

Magic: Veronica, what are you doing with that book!? Dodges and draws their sword

Veronica: Putting you out of your misery charges swinging the book from side to side, ignoring the sword

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

added a bit in an edit, library desk hopping.