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D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
- Thread starter clearstream
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Haiku Elvis
Knuckle-dusters, glass jaws and wooden hearts.
Not necessarily following on from any previous posts but just my tuppence worth referring back to the OP. I find the term Gamist the weak link out of the three in it's definition as it feels to me its mostly trying to put an independent identity on what is basically "not the other two options".
Simulationism - is the crunchy 'what would the world do?' game engine at it's core, which drives the events and players decisions through understanding of the risks and consequences as modeled on the designers view of reality. If the game designer has done a good job these decisions should mirror what would happen in 'real life' .
For example a player whose character has a knife avoids fighting an orc with a spear as he knows the lack of reach is a disadvantage, applied through in game penalties on short weapons. The player has moved the game on (by choosing to retreat and presumably planning a different approach with higher success) in a way that was wise in game terms and a success in game design terms as it simulated what the designer percieved would be realistic in that scenario.
Narrative - is the character based 'what would Steve* do?' game engine at it's core which drives events and players decisions through encouraging (incentivising even?) character traits and beliefs to be acted on. If the game designer has done a good job the player would feel free to follow their character's character even if it would be of practical detriment.
For example the player charges the spear orc because his character 'never runs from a fight' even knowing his character could get badly hurt. But he knows he will get a metacurrency point he can use to get out of Dodge later or maybe an advancement point for leaning into character that will get him more skills for the next session.
The player has as moved the game on by acting in character to create a new dramatic situation that needs resolving. The game design is a success as the player prioritised character driven narrative over playing the numbers even potentially increasing their own risk.
But even though a have a vague sense of it I find it difficult to find a description for gamist that could match the two above.
It feels like gamist should involve more abstract rules that create tactical decision points through the game systems themselves without trying too hard to mirror a real effect.
The best thing I can think of for gamist is AC. Armour prevents the wearer from being injured when hit, so a system like AC that makes a wearer harder to hit through combining armour with, dodge abity and combat experience in one stat mainly to create a simpler combat system feels gamist to me. A simulationist approach would have armour reduce damage after being hit.
It's not wholly unrealistic it will reduce damage taken to the wearer, but is deliberately taking a step back from realism to allow it to be represented in an easily stated up and tactically deployed in game term that can aid achieving success if used correctly.
The player will make descisions on what to do based (among other things) on how easily they can be hit and damaged due to their AC which is neither a simulationist/push to be realy real or a narrativist push to be true to character.
But again simulationist games expect tactical deployment of in game stats and narrativist games often vague up stats and systems to they don't overpower the narrative choices and leave descriptive freedom.
You still end up with either describing gamist as being less realistic more abstract/meta rules than simulationist but that overlaps with narrativist or you lean on the 'tactical use the options available to win' side that overlaps with simulationist. So either way even though I recognise its a third way it's not really its own beast.
Simulationism - is the crunchy 'what would the world do?' game engine at it's core, which drives the events and players decisions through understanding of the risks and consequences as modeled on the designers view of reality. If the game designer has done a good job these decisions should mirror what would happen in 'real life' .
For example a player whose character has a knife avoids fighting an orc with a spear as he knows the lack of reach is a disadvantage, applied through in game penalties on short weapons. The player has moved the game on (by choosing to retreat and presumably planning a different approach with higher success) in a way that was wise in game terms and a success in game design terms as it simulated what the designer percieved would be realistic in that scenario.
Narrative - is the character based 'what would Steve* do?' game engine at it's core which drives events and players decisions through encouraging (incentivising even?) character traits and beliefs to be acted on. If the game designer has done a good job the player would feel free to follow their character's character even if it would be of practical detriment.
For example the player charges the spear orc because his character 'never runs from a fight' even knowing his character could get badly hurt. But he knows he will get a metacurrency point he can use to get out of Dodge later or maybe an advancement point for leaning into character that will get him more skills for the next session.
The player has as moved the game on by acting in character to create a new dramatic situation that needs resolving. The game design is a success as the player prioritised character driven narrative over playing the numbers even potentially increasing their own risk.
But even though a have a vague sense of it I find it difficult to find a description for gamist that could match the two above.
It feels like gamist should involve more abstract rules that create tactical decision points through the game systems themselves without trying too hard to mirror a real effect.
The best thing I can think of for gamist is AC. Armour prevents the wearer from being injured when hit, so a system like AC that makes a wearer harder to hit through combining armour with, dodge abity and combat experience in one stat mainly to create a simpler combat system feels gamist to me. A simulationist approach would have armour reduce damage after being hit.
It's not wholly unrealistic it will reduce damage taken to the wearer, but is deliberately taking a step back from realism to allow it to be represented in an easily stated up and tactically deployed in game term that can aid achieving success if used correctly.
The player will make descisions on what to do based (among other things) on how easily they can be hit and damaged due to their AC which is neither a simulationist/push to be realy real or a narrativist push to be true to character.
But again simulationist games expect tactical deployment of in game stats and narrativist games often vague up stats and systems to they don't overpower the narrative choices and leave descriptive freedom.
You still end up with either describing gamist as being less realistic more abstract/meta rules than simulationist but that overlaps with narrativist or you lean on the 'tactical use the options available to win' side that overlaps with simulationist. So either way even though I recognise its a third way it's not really its own beast.
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The-Magic-Sword
Small Ball Archmage
I'm not sure you meant it this way, but when @clearstream quoted just this part it sort of singled it out and dawned on me that I've been having that feeling since I started playing the game in 4e (a system I still have a great deal of affection for, but that's not related here.) Specifically, I always had this feeling that there was an experience that I was pantomining-- where I was always trying to get closer to the ideal of the game,and I could never quite achieve it, until recently.
I agree with this statement, in the sense that what trad DND does, is set a story in a milieu of the fantasy world of DND, but does so with the lens of a movie, book, or video game, where the emphasis is on a structured plot that setting serves. I eventually realized that what I was feeling, was the sense that the world I was presenting was fake, like a facsimile of what it should be where its fake and entirely in service of the main plot and the desires of the players. It was almost like a Call of Duty level, where it was a sequential array of setpieces that emulated aspects of dungeon delving (fighting undead in a crypt, a puzzle room, a boss battle, a negotiation with kobolds) but much like how that Call of Duty city is a series of corridors with all of the other roads barricaded by the game, my games were only concerned with presenting the plot as a movie. When we traveled, it was entirely up to the narrative how fast we got anywhere. When I did treasure, it was entirely to give the players the cool stuff they wanted, and they always ran into their backstories, Critical Role style (this was before Critical Role of course.)
It frustrated me, because I realized, that the cool stuff I wanted wasn't really happening, the world of the game I was presenting didn't feel like a space the players could interact with and make their own decisions about. It was so different from... the ideal that I had about what delving dungeons, and being adventurers in a fantasy world should feel like. But then I had to try and trace that back to work out where I'd even gotten my ideas, and I realized that it mostly came from the fiction that the rulebooks harkened back to-- it came from the implications hanging around the main plots of all fantasy books I'd read, or from the games I played, from the idea that what I really wanted to was to step inside them, and step away from the save the world plot to enjoy and explore the world as a place that exists beyond Chekhov's concerns, in other words, where setting provides a rich playground for the characters to exist in and explore.
The 'real' DND, at least the one I found, was about finding narrative divorced from plot by presenting a world without narrative assumptions and letting the story be 'the things that happened when we went adventuring, and the people we became' rather than the structured plots that have become ubiquitous with storytelling. Trad DND then to me, is a literal simulation of the world, diverted to the needs of what I almost want to describe as a hollywood plot line-- they're not adventurers first and foremost, they're the handful of adventurers that got picked out by destiny to save the world.
In that context, disclaiming narrative decision making to game mechanics, or even to myself in a different mindset helps me to create that separation from the needs of the plot-- I pride myself on creating dungeons without thinking about the specific group going through it, with the goal that different suites of capabilities mean different paths through the content that I'm producing, different discoveries, and frustrations. This creates a play space rife with opportunity to have fun, and find interesting things, but that doesn't become smaller by warping itself to the PCs and their plot, which is my ultimate goal. To make them feel like a small part of a big world, and have their stories play out with emergently against that back drop.
None of this is a criticism of trad DND, or not a generic one anyway, its colored by my perspective, and I've run fun plot centric campaigns in the past too.
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Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Niche protection is a typical feature of gamist approaches, but it's not sufficient on it's own. More correlation than causation.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Keeping in mind that the cultures of play aren’t exclusive categories, I think (and I know a lot of other 4e fans would agree), a lot of the backlash to 4e came from the fact that it went in a bit more of a “storygame” direction, while the 3e crowd was generally much more inclined towards “trad” and “neo-trad.” 5e is very “neo-trad” friendly, while also managing at least initially to appeal to a lot of folks with “OSR” and “Classic” inclinations while the “trad” crowd stuck with Pathfinder and the “Storygame” folks moved on to explore other, non-D&D systems. Nordic LARPers were of course off doing their own thing, since as the article notes, that style of play tends to favor more modern or near-future settings. I can’t really think of any new play cultures popping up. One might expect the supposed “Matt Mercer Effect” to have spawned a new culture, but Critical Role is pretty solidly “neo-trad” in style.
I think it could be a useful compass, when designing a game, to think about what kinds of fun your game satisfies and how.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
I don’t really know Blades in the Dark, but I would say that mechanics that involve the players in the generation of setting and situation would appeal strongly to the expression and fellowship aesthetics, and potentially to narrative and fantasy.
Well, it is a very broad model, designed for analysis of games in general, not just RPGs. Yeah, in the RPG space, fantasy aesthetic is such an ingrained part of the genre it’s almost meaningless to talk about it as an aesthetic, but it makes more sense in the context of a model that’s supposed to also cover games like Chess, Yahtzee, and Poker.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
This is very true, however, trad DMs tend to mesh pretty well with OC players. I’d argue that Critical Role has exactly such a setup.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
The fellowship aesthetic is so broad that anything absent pure, hateful competition triggers it in a game. I play competitive games quite often to play with others. So, yeah, implicated, but I'm struggling to see an RPG that isn't. As you note, this is for any and all games, so there are some that this is less of a trigger, and I suppose some RPG settings (cons, maybe) are less about fellowship, but this isn't really useful to discuss design of RPGs. Blades allows for PvP, at lots of levels, so even less so than the assumed party structure of D&D.
Expression isn't at all implicated, because you're not trying to put yourself in the game (that would be... concerning).
Narrative isn't implicated because the structure of Blades is the opposite of experiencing a story. That's more like running through an AP and learning the nifty plot twists as you play. Blades works on the Story Now premise -- there's no story to experience in that sense, you're playing for right now and not to create or enjoy the story but to drive your character's dramatic needs as hard as possible.
Fantasy I touched on -- perhaps useful in a broad sense, but RPGs are make-believe games, where you are always engaged in Fantasy. Nothing to separate from any other RPG here, just like Fellowship.
And looking at it broadly, it has some merits to evaluate boardgames and video games and such. But, once you even open RPGs as a subgenre of games, most of the utility of the model dries up because things are either always implicated in any RPG, or there's not enough detail to discern the differences between RPGs and what that RPG cares about.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Oh, I very much disagree with this! OC players are usually called things like munchkins and powergames and needy players by Trad GMs. Trad is about telling the GM's story, or exploring the GM's setting. The GM is firmly in charge, and is putting their imagination to the forefront. Players are engaging what the GM is creating.
OC, though, is about the character having being the star, and the GM is expected to craft play such that the character shines. Challenging the character comes only in very controlled ways, because that's not the point of OC, the point is to have an awesome story where this character gets to take the stage in a familiar setting and be the star. The setting is going to be an IP, have strong canon from that IP, and only the OC is expected to break that cannon. The GM is much less free to alter things, and is really just the MC storyteller for the players. Lots of Vampire hits this mark.
