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

[jasper]

D&D is fun game to pass the time. Now are we going to go slay the orc for his pie or should I break out the UNO deck?

 

[Reynard]

The GNS model is literally decades old at this point and its terminology is so muddled I don't think it is useful to use those terms without strictly adhering to the original definitions. Otherwise, people are just talking past each other and arguing semantics.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The GNS model is literally decades old at this point and its terminology is so muddled I don't think it is useful to use those terms without strictly adhering to the original definitions. Otherwise, people are just talking past each other and arguing semantics.

There's a host of sub-definitions to GNS that need to be understood to properly pull out what the essays mean. Like that "story" just means "what happens in play," and not, you know, a story.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My only (personal) problem with that is that I don't care about technical balance in general, I care about the story and the narration. As a DM, I have so many tools at my disposal to make sure that players have (roughly equal) fun (and that the fun of one does not destroy the fun of another) that I consider technical balance to be very unimportant, especially when it's not what a lot of my players are looking for either.

I used to think similarly until I ran 4E.

We had a player who'd always played Rogues because he liked them thematically. In 2E and 3E, you as the DM had to go out of your way a bit to make sure they were included, had proper opportunities to shine and so on. It was quite difficult in 3.XE, because we usually had a Wizard in the party too, and with the best will in the world, a Wizard tends to do a lot of stuff that negates the need for a Rogue. But working hard at it with the right magic items, the right situations, and so on, I thought I was doing pretty well.

Anyway, after we'd been playing 4E for a bit, I noticed the Rogue player was just drastically more engaged during combat, and it turned out he was just having way more fun. And this was directly because Rogues in 4E had so much more they could do in combat. Instead of focusing entirely on trying to get off a backstab occasionally, and doing poor damage with mediocre AC and bad HP the rest of the time, he had a ton of cool abilities he could use constantly, which made his character feel very active and dynamic to him. He absolutely adored 4E because of this. And again, this was after spending a lot of effort in 2E/3E to try and make sure his Rogue had plenty to do - the problem was Rogues in those editions were flatly boring and ineffective in combat, and a lot of D&D is combat. That they get to do scouting/defeating traps/etc. outside combat just doesn't make up for that, at least for some players. And there was no real alternative class which had the same theme/vibe but a more involved playstyle in combat.

The same was true to a lesser extent for the player who habitually plays Fighters, I note.

And both of them reacted to 5E pushing things back in a 3E direction, albeit not all the way, by stopping playing those classes.

The player who played Rogues now plays Warlocks and Sorcerers, largely, which can have a vaguely similar theme/vibe but aren't as relatively dull. He has played a 5E Rogue a lot - a Swashbuckler at that, one of the most interesting and engaging Rogues in combat, I'd suggest - but he told me that it was just drastically less fun than 4E.

The Fighter player now plays Barbarians mostly, and he's less articulate about why, but has several times complained that 5E Fighters are dull (I think I've mentioned this before). He's also really annoyed that they turned Battlerage Vigor into a weird Dwarf-specific class about spiked armour.

So I think it's easy to think this doesn't matter, that you as a DM can easily just overwhelm it, and you can certainly make a difference - I feel pretty sure if I hadn't put effort in, the Rogue player would have got bored completely in 2E/3E - but balance in the sense of everyone having something valid and engaging/interesting to do/think about in combat does matter, I'd suggest, particularly in a game as combat-centric as D&D.

 

[kenada]

OSR is gamist. Traditional D&D is not. It’s a form of High Concept, which is simulationist. When people say it’s not because it doesn’t accurately simulate reality, they’re conflating simulationism with Purist for System, which only one of the ways to go about it.

Personally, I dislike the GNS terms because they are overloaded and confusing. I prefer Step On Up, Right to Dream, and Story Now because they more clearly convey what specifically one means (Edwards’s essays on the topic).

 

[clearstream]

OSR is gamist. Traditional D&D is not. It’s a form of High Concept, which is simulationist. When people say it’s not because it doesn’t accurately simulate reality, they’re conflating simulationism with Purist for System, which only one of the ways to go about it.

I'm probably pretty much in agreement with you on that, although I am sympathetic to other lenses.

Personally, I dislike the GNS terms because they are overloaded and confusing. I prefer Step On Up, Right to Dream, and Story Now because they more clearly convey what specifically one means (Edwards’s essays on the topic).

I've read many of the the GNS and Edwards essays, and some of Mary Kuhner and John Kim's preceding conversation on GDS, and Scarlet Jester's essay on GEN. To me the latter has the greatest clarity. Right to Dream conflates simulationist and immersionist urges, which are very distinct. Step on up fails to capture creative and cooperative uges that often have nothing to do with challenge. Story Now is perhaps the only one that works, perhaps because it arises from Edwards' strongest intutions. Even there, it is conflated with techniques that are better seen as supportive but not required.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I used to think similarly until I ran 4E.

We had a player who'd always played Rogues because he liked them thematically. In 2E and 3E, you as the DM had to go out of your way a bit to make sure they were included, had proper opportunities to shine and so on. It was quite difficult in 3.XE, because we usually had a Wizard in the party too, and with the best will in the world, a Wizard tends to do a lot of stuff that negates the need for a Rogue. But working hard at it with the right magic items, the right situations, and so on, I thought I was doing pretty well.

Anyway, after we'd been playing 4E for a bit, I noticed the Rogue player was just drastically more engaged during combat, and it turned out he was just having way more fun. And this was directly because Rogues in 4E had so much more they could do in combat. Instead of focusing entirely on trying to get off a backstab occasionally, and doing poor damage with mediocre AC and bad HP the rest of the time, he had a ton of cool abilities he could use constantly, which made his character feel very active and dynamic to him. He absolutely adored 4E because of this. And again, this was after spending a lot of effort in 2E/3E to try and make sure his Rogue had plenty to do - the problem was Rogues in those editions were flatly boring and ineffective in combat, and a lot of D&D is combat. That they get to do scouting/defeating traps/etc. outside combat just doesn't make up for that, at least for some players. And there was no real alternative class which had the same theme/vibe but a more involved playstyle in combat.

The same was true to a lesser extent for the player who habitually plays Fighters, I note.

And both of them reacted to 5E pushing things back in a 3E direction, albeit not all the way, by stopping playing those classes.

The player who played Rogues now plays Warlocks and Sorcerers, largely, which can have a vaguely similar theme/vibe but aren't as relatively dull. He has played a 5E Rogue a lot - a Swashbuckler at that, one of the most interesting and engaging Rogues in combat, I'd suggest - but he told me that it was just drastically less fun than 4E.

The Fighter player now plays Barbarians mostly, and he's less articulate about why, but has several times complained that 5E Fighters are dull (I think I've mentioned this before). He's also really annoyed that they turned Battlerage Vigor into a weird Dwarf-specific class about spiked armour.

So I think it's easy to think this doesn't matter, that you as a DM can easily just overwhelm it, and you can certainly make a difference - I feel pretty sure if I hadn't put effort in, the Rogue player would have got bored completely in 2E/3E - but balance in the sense of everyone having something valid and engaging/interesting to do/think about in combat does matter, I'd suggest, particularly in a game as combat-centric as D&D.

System matters.

 

[Campbell]

OSR is gamist. Traditional D&D is not. It’s a form of High Concept, which is simulationist. When people say it’s not because it doesn’t accurately simulate reality, they’re conflating simulationism with Purist for System, which only one of the ways to go about it.

Personally, I dislike the GNS terms because they are overloaded and confusing. I prefer Step On Up, Right to Dream, and Story Now because they more clearly convey what specifically one means (Edwards’s essays on the topic).

I think modern D&D is somewhat confused on this matter. It provides an excessive wealth of gamist tools to players and then like expects them not to use them too much. It talks about consistent worlds, challenge and story in the same breath. I'm not sure it's a game that knows what it wants to be. This is evident how different permutations of modern D&D have been from one another (D&D 3e, PF1, 4e, 5e, PF2). Each strikes different chords, but still seems to be fairly confused about how they should be run and how they should be played.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

System matters.

Word to that. One of the first things I realized about RPGs when my brother and I had a few of them was how clear the impact of system was. Same group, same GM, different system, different behaviour - especially after a few sessions of the system reinforcing/discouraging approaches which might be natural in another system.

Then we got on the internet and back then, in like 1993, half the people talking about RPGs were absolutely lunatic hardliners that system does not, in fact, matter.

They slowly died out before a revival in the 2000s with the d20 era, which had a ton of people trying to claim system didn't matter so you should be using d20 for everything (good grief). Then it died out again, before making another comeback more recently, where 5E hyperfans (including those who deny being such) are just repeating the rhetoric of the early 2000s.

 

[clearstream]

I think modern D&D is somewhat confused on this matter. It provides an excessive wealth of gamist tools to players and then like expects them not to use them too much. It talks about consistent worlds, challenge and story in the same breath. I'm not sure it's a game that knows what it wants to be.

It's a game that consciously wants to be centrist. It gives a nod to many styles. I feel it is easy to overlook that the designers employed by WotC are typically incredibly well informed and among the best in the field. They have a highly sophisticated and often subtle touch.

This is evident how different permutations of modern D&D have been from one another (D&D 3e, PF1, 4e, 5e, PF2). Each strikes different chords, but seems to be fairly confused about how they should be run and how they should be played.

Again, in 5e's case it's not confused, it's intentionally left open. I'll also nod toward reasons for skepticism about determining what any human-moderated game is prior to interpretation.