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

[soviet]

It's the role of the GM. High concept sim generally requires a strong GM oversight including fudging and overt scene framing to reinforce the genre and make everything feel 'right'. Narr requires a more permissive GM role constrained by rules and transparency expressly in order to avoid that oversight and instead allow play to be driven by the players. Sim is prepared to sacrifice freedom for consistency because the emulation is the point; narr is prepared to sacrifice consistency for freedom because the protagonism is the point.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

"In my experience" succinctly captures both the appeal and at the same time the incompleteness or opportunity for mismatches of the theory.


So let's talk about journalling RPGs. Examples include Thousand Year Old Vampire, Trading Places, The Ground Itself. It's possible we could call these simulationist, although typically journalling RPGs lack causality (although that isn't an obstacle using my definition.)

What do we call touristing-RPG play (i.e. fascination with world without imagining characters to be autochthonic or protagonists)?

What is it when the focus of play is inventing recipes for baking? If mechanical and metagame challenge is absent and no one is worried about character development or resolution of premise?

Where does freeform RPG land, where there are no mechanics and challenge is not stressed?

Why isn't high-concept sim it's own agenda, if that really is the agenda embraced by the world's most successful RPG? Is it really right to sweep it under the rug of simulationist?


[EDIT Maybe some of these questions amount to asking - what is it when we want to have performance without risk? What agenda is that? It can't be gamist, if gamist is performance with risk. It's not simulationist. It can't be narrativist if it is not concerned with character development or resolution of premise. If it is foremost, desire for expression which may be propelled by prompts and shaped by rules.]

I would call TYOV a type of Simulationist Hi Concept game personally. However you could definitely make a case for Story Now! I mean, you are completely in charge of the setting, and have significant control over scene framing, but with a plot driven by the prompts. Mechanics seems pretty focused on 'Who I Am' type concerns. 'Dramatic Needs' however don't seem to be surfaced in a primary way, AFAICT. I guess maybe that could arise in some part due to how the resource gain/loss rules work. Its an interesting test of GNS, but I don't think it fails to say anything about this sort of RPG.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is not a distinction that makes any sense to me. They both happen, they both are present. Which you consider to be 'the point' is purely a value judgement, an a lot of people would shrug and say 'both' are not even see them as different things.

Present isn't any part of the criteria.

Why?

If you're going to ask about a game, you should at least be minimally aware of it, especially when there are free resources on the web. DW has an SRD. The principles and agendas are there. I'm not going to do all the work on your question, but I will meet in the middle.

Why you need to change the rules at all? Aren't you by playing Apoc World creating an experience in living apocalyptic world and in very thematic and genre appropriate way?

Go read the rules. You're just asking questions about something you don't have awareness of and that's enabling and endless string of "why?" rather than discussion.

 

[niklinna]

How about people who are collectively directing the play of a game toward a desireable outcome in terms of theme, characterization and coherency of plot? Its not just a top-down railroad, as all participants are steering, but it isn't Story Now. So where does that currently go? Any attempt to claim its Gamism or Sim seems exceedingly dubious, but I'm suspecting from my reading in this thread that proponents of Story Now really don't want it in Nar as its currently defined.

Edwards was pretty clear in stating that anything involving desirable outcomes in terms of those things is Simulationist in his model, and that in his model, Narrativism is specifically about not having a decided idea about where or how things should go. That was new, and distinct, and clearly in contrast with GDS's Gamism, Dramatism, and Simulationism. He picked a really bad name for it. Actually he picked two really bad names for it. And then, from what I've read, got really pissy about reaction to his model.

It really seems to me that a lot of this argument has been due to people not being clear about which of the terminology-sharing models they are using, and, frankly, making it sound like the models are subject to revision through criticism, after 20+ years. In the GDS model, the above example clearly goes under Dramatism. In the GNS model, it clearly goes under High Concept Simulationism. Yes, Edwards erased or co-opted or buried the idea of drama and that sucks, but we already knew that. If you don't like it, it's enough to say, "I don't subscribe to GNS; here's where things go in GDS."

I have by accident of history been more familiar with GNS than GDS. I have been reading up on GDS as this thread unfolds, but I am not familiar enough yet to have confidence applying it to D&D (or anything) in detail. I have already noticed critical differences in detail between the two beyond the top-level category names, but I'm not sure I'll have the time to internalize them so as to write another reponse to the OP in terms of GDS. I'd love it if somebody who is well-versed in it would do so!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Present isn't any part of the criteria.

If you're going to ask about a game, you should at least be minimally aware of it, especially when there are free resources on the web. DW has an SRD. The principles and agendas are there. I'm not going to do all the work on your question, but I will meet in the middle.

Go read the rules. You're just asking questions about something you don't have awareness of and that's enabling and endless string of "why?" rather than discussion.

I have read the rules. I've even played it, albeit very little and a long time ago.

The first on the agenda bullet points is: Make Apocalypse World seem real. The first on the list of principles is:
Barf forth apocalyptica, which is further described thusly:

Cultivate an imagination full of harsh landscapes, garish bloody images, and grotesque juxtapositions. In Apocalypse World, when the rain falls it’s full of fine black grit like toner, and all the plants’ leaves turn gray from absorbing it. Out among the wrecked cars, wild dogs fight for territory, with each other and with the rats, and one of the breeds is developing a protective inner eyelid of blank bone. If you get too close to them you can hear the click-click when they blink.

The whole game is written in highly evocative style, the things are intentionally constructed to evoke very specific feel and it is clear that this is the tone one should aim during the play? How on Earth we are not emulating a genre here? What does genre emulation even look like if not this?

 

[niklinna]

It's the role of the GM. High concept sim generally requires a strong GM oversight including fudging and overt scene framing to reinforce the genre and make everything feel 'right'. Narr requires a more permissive GM role constrained by rules and transparency expressly in order to avoid that oversight and instead allow play to be driven by the players. Sim is prepared to sacrifice freedom for consistency because the emulation is the point; narr is prepared to sacrifice consistency for freedom because the protagonism is the point.

Now this is interesting! I am reading Threefold Simulationism Explained and it makes a pointed comment that one does not fudge results for story when doing (GDS) Simulation. I can see ground for Huge Misunderstanding if people aren't clear which model they are framing their discussion in.

One of those critical differences between GNS and GDS I mentioned in my last post....

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Whilst I disagree that 5e combat system generates "almost no fiction," I agree that as sims go, it is not great. But it probably also wouldn't be a choice of people who wish "realistic challenge" in the first place. I was not talking just about D&D. Having more robustly simulationistic system doesn't need to conflict with providing an interesting challenge (though of course this depends on the sort of challenge you desire) and it can even support it. Basically the desire in such a simulation would be for the system to create simulation of the challenge the action being simulated would have in reality (or in the source fiction.) Like how the purpose of some wargames is to realistically to simulate the sort of command challenges the general leading a real army would face. In such a situation sim and gamist agendas have intertwined to basically become one.

How does 5e combat generate ANY fiction? It certainly CONSTRAINS what fiction you can generate (IE the orc is at 0 hit points, any generated fiction is going to have to acknowledge that somehow).

I don't think your wargame example works well either TBH. How is it gamist? The idea in this case is to generate as realist as possible a scenario. It seems PURE simulation in the most brute sense possible! The army and the general are uninterested in whether or not he 'wins', the goal is to provide realistic situations such that experience gained through them is applicable to a real war.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why retain the Threefold nature of the model? What is gained by hiding Story Now inside Dramatism? By associating it with a creative agenda it is a direct inversion of? You would just be repeating what you feel is a fundamental flaw in the Forge Big Model. It's hard to not see this as questioning its legitimacy.

As noted, r.g.f.a. Dramatist certainly didn't consider it a direct inversion; they considered at least prototype elements of it very much in their toolbox as I've indicated.

If you want to argue the threefold approach is fundamentally flawed into uselessness, that's at least legitimate; if you view Story Now (as Nar) being needed for it to have function, you're already doing that as-is, since it forces together emulation and simulation in a way that followers of classic Sim would consider at least as opposite to genre emulation as you apparently do the rest of Dramatism to Story Now. There's nothing about Story Now from the outside that looks like it deserves one third of the conceptual space all by itself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

They seem to think it puts the focus overly on an individual character and/or on the character's past over the present. But that's somewhat speculative in some cases, because they don't always articulate their reasons.

From direct experience: there were 3 reasons why character background could be seen as a negative:
1. It implied a significant investment in the character, and real OS play was done with basically throw-away characters. The GM might feel compelled to respect your investment by going light on you. So it was almost like a form of 'plot armor', and thus cheating.
2. It gave your character some sort of material experience that could be invoked during play to your advantage. Whether it was "I must know X" or "I must be an ally of Y" or whatever. GMs are highly suspicious of this kind of thing is OS.
3. It is stepping on the GM's prerogatives. The player has now drawn a part of the 'map', effectively. This gives them an unfair advantage. At best it is stepping on the GM's toes.

For all these reasons backgrounds/backstories could be frowned upon. They were really not adding much to the game anyway, as the whole gist of the thing was "enter the maze of death, get the gold, and survive." It was kind of immaterial where your home town was...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Now this is interesting! I am reading Threefold Simulationism Explained and it makes a pointed comment that one does not fudge results for story when doing (GDS) Simulation. I can see ground for Huge Misunderstanding if people aren't clear which model they are framing their discussion in.

One of those critical differences between GNS and GDS I mentioned in my last post....

Note, however, that "fudged" is doing some lifting there. Things like metacurrency and the like were not considered fudging; they were guiding the results within context. Fudging was considered bad to a large extent because it was considered a GM-only tool, and thus privileging the GM's image of how the story should come out. How they'd have felt about some other modern tools I can't say.