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

[Hussar]

The vast majority of Story Now games do not provide players with any more narrative authority than they would have in a traditional game. Rather they tend to expand the system's say and provide additional constraints on both players and GMs. For example, players actually have substantially more narrative authority in a traditional game like Mutants and Masterminds than they would in Masks while Masks puts additional constraints on players like Influence, Conditions and various moves designed to make them feel like teenagers.

That may be true but in Nar games, typically, results aren’t necessarily causally linked to triggers. You fail a check so the GM adds some sort of opposition to you that didn’t exist in the game until you failed that check and wouldn’t exist in the game had you succeeded.

Granted that still puts most of the power in the hands of the gm and is certainly not the only way to do it.

But mechanics of these kind cause a lot of opposition when they are even hinted at. Which means that DnD has never been a Nar game, except in a very broad free form “cos the dm sez “ sort of way.

 

[clearstream]

Only if the proponents of the model are correct in their claim that mixing types results in an incoherent game. There is no evidence that their claim is true, and as such you have no basis here. If you don't presuppose the truth of this claim, there's no reason to believe incoherency will result.

You might like to look at the GEN two tier model discussed here on darkshire.net. By taking a tiered approach, it avoids implying at the definitional or categorical level a detrimental polarity between them.

Tell me you haven't read the articles without telling me you haven't read the articles. Incoherence is where a game tries to focus on more than one agenda, so the statement you disbelieve is definitionally correct.

Whether incoherence is necessarily bad or not, or whether it can be ameliorated or not (it can) are the questions you mean to ask.

Incoherence: Play which includes incompatible combinations of Creative Agendas among participants. Incoherent play is considered to contribute to Dysfunctional play, but does not define it. Incoherence may be applied indirectly to game rules. Abashedness represents a minor, correctable form of Incoherence.

Abashed: Game design which displays features of one or more Creative Agenda that, in their applications, are operationally contradictory. It is a minor form of design Incoherence. However, an Abashed design is easily correctable by ignoring or altering isolated portions of the rules (minor Drift) during play. See Abashed Vanillaism and my review of Little Fears.

For me it would be better to have used a neutral word, like "multifaceted", were the intent to define multiple agendas as a neutral concept. However, @Fifth Element's comment seems reasonable: taking incoherence as a synonym for dysfunction which is right there in the definition. Regarding your first question - is incoherence necessarily bad - the defintion implies to me that no question is intended on that score. Regarding your second question - can it be ameliorated - one answer is provided, but notice that the correction is only done by avoiding the incoherence during play... there is no suggestion that a game can be incoherent and successful at the same time. Which is really @Fifth Element's point as I read it.

Applied to the overall questions in the thread - through abashedness a game like 5e can delight players and achieve a degree of success almost unparalleled in RPG design only because those players are all tacitly correcting for its incoherence during play. Abashedness would then seem to be a profoundly valuable concept for game design. Alternatively, the conclusion is questionable in some way.

 

[pemerton]

One take is that 5e is successful in robust defiance of GNS's predictions.

Ron Edwards - or "GNS" - is not a tool for predicting market success.

In 1999, Edwards wrote an essay attacking the commercial economics of RPG publishing - The Forge :: The Nuked Apple Cart. Here's an extract:

I am a customer as well as a designer of RPGs, in fact, far more so the former than the latter. As customers, too, each of us faces a personal decision: are you a practitioner of an artistic activity or a consumer of a advertising-driven product? I urge you to consider your role in roleplaying economics, and to consider whether a shelf of supplements and so-called source material really suits your needs, as opposed to a few slim roleplaying books with high-octane premises and system ideas.​

The point of GNS is to help RPGers - as designers, and as gamers - to come up with high-octane premises and system ideas! If you're already happy with how your engines firing, obviously it's not relevant to you. In my case, I can testify that it has paid of dramatically. I can do things in RPGing now that I would not have had a clue how to handle 25 or 30 or even 15 years ago.

A crucial goal of gamism may be to have expressive mechanics, that empower each player's imagination and creativity.

Are we still talking about "gamisim" in Edwards' sense? In that case, this from the step-on-up essay seems relevant:

Exploration is a kind of Social Contract, and a given GNS mode is a kind (specifically, an application) of Exploration. . . . Gamist play, more than any other mode, demands that Situation be not only central, but also the primary focus of attention. You want to play Gamist? Then don't piss about with Character and/or Setting without Situation happening, or about to.​

Any successful RPG has mechanics that empower players' imagination and creativity: in Edwards's language, that underpin and foster exploration. Otherwise it would be a failure as a RPG. That doesn't tell us whether or not the participants are playing with a gamist, simulationist or narrativist agenda. Is it exploration for its own sake? Then we have simulationism - in the case of 5e, that will be predominantly high-concept simulationism. Probably with a focus on (what Edwards characterised as) characters-encounter-problems. (Ie with a focus on situation.)

 

[pemerton]

The interplay of technique is the interplay of priorities-- because the priorities themselves motivate the deployment of techniques, you would be hard pressed to meaningfully argue those aren't both priorities of the people designing OSR games.

There are some similarities of technique across (say) Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey. But it's hard to say that, as films, they have comparable aesthetic priorities. A given means can be a means to more than one possible end.

All RPGs have a shared fiction. All RPGs use various techniques to establish that fiction. One technique is to directly adjudicate the fiction and fictional position. But that can be used for different ends: eg OSR-type play is one; a freeform RPG back-and-forth when the PCs go on a shopping expedition is another.

 

[clearstream]

Ron Edwards - or "GNS" - is not a tool for predicting market success.

In 1999, Edwards wrote an essay attacking the commercial economics of RPG publishing - The Forge :: The Nuked Apple Cart. Here's an extract:

I am a customer as well as a designer of RPGs, in fact, far more so the former than the latter. As customers, too, each of us faces a personal decision: are you a practitioner of an artistic activity or a consumer of a advertising-driven product? I urge you to consider your role in roleplaying economics, and to consider whether a shelf of supplements and so-called source material really suits your needs, as opposed to a few slim roleplaying books with high-octane premises and system ideas.​

The point of GNS is to help RPGers - as designers, and as gamers - to come up with high-octane premises and system ideas! If you're already happy with how your engines firing, obviously it's not relevant to you. In my case, I can testify that it has paid of dramatically. I can do things in RPGing now that I would not have had a clue how to handle 25 or 30 or even 15 years ago.

Are we still talking about "gamisim" in Edwards' sense? In that case, this from the step-on-up essay seems relevant:

Exploration is a kind of Social Contract, and a given GNS mode is a kind (specifically, an application) of Exploration. . . . Gamist play, more than any other mode, demands that Situation be not only central, but also the primary focus of attention. You want to play Gamist? Then don't piss about with Character and/or Setting without Situation happening, or about to.​

Any successful RPG has mechanics that empower players' imagination and creativity: in Edwards's language, that underpin and foster exploration. Otherwise it would be a failure as a RPG. That doesn't tell us whether or not the participants are playing with a gamist, simulationist or narrativist agenda. Is it exploration for its own sake? Then we have simulationism - in the case of 5e, that will be predominantly high-concept simulationism. Probably with a focus on (what Edwards characterised as) characters-encounter-problems. (Ie with a focus on situation.)

I appreciate these comments as they force reflection. I feel that I am not seeking to recite Edwards' definitions, arguments and conclusions, but rather to find my own. Thus we are not necessarily still talking about "gamism" in Edwards' sense, because at least one of us finds his definition unsatisfying. Additionally, from a game designers' perspective, I'm not yet persuaded that 5e is rightly excluded from the list of high-octane system ideas. It's a tour-de-force. That doesn't take anything away from the genius of many other games.

One possibility I'm leaning toward is that Edwards defined what he understood as "gamism", but that amounted to competitiveness (might as well have been called competitiveness), and that there are other goals or desires that gamers as gamers have, that were overlooked. In that case I would resist assigning what I see as a higher tier category, or broader in its implications label - "gamist" - to one narrow agenda - competition. CNS then.

[EDIT To clarify that by "success" I do not refer to commercial success, but success in play... success for its players. I agree with your sense that the two are not always aligned.]

[EDITED To make clear my appreciation for @pemerton's thoughts. I dashed off a response that on rereading was too brusque!]

 

[Aldarc]

In my experience, a lot of the dissatisfaction with the term “gamism” often stems from the people who are resistant against thinking and talking about TTRPGs as ‘games’ more so than how “gamism” maps onto certain play goals.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You might like to look at the GEN two tier model discussed here on darkshire.net. By taking a tiered approach, it avoids implying at the definitional or categorical level a detrimental polarity between them.


Incoherence: Play which includes incompatible combinations of Creative Agendas among participants. Incoherent play is considered to contribute to Dysfunctional play, but does not define it. Incoherence may be applied indirectly to game rules. Abashedness represents a minor, correctable form of Incoherence.

Abashed: Game design which displays features of one or more Creative Agenda that, in their applications, are operationally contradictory. It is a minor form of design Incoherence. However, an Abashed design is easily correctable by ignoring or altering isolated portions of the rules (minor Drift) during play. See Abashed Vanillaism and my review of Little Fears.

For me it would be better to have used a neutral word, like "multifaceted", were the intent to define multiple agendas as a neutral concept. However, @Fifth Element's comment seems reasonable: taking incoherence as a synonym for dysfunction which is right there in the definition. Regarding your first question - is incoherence necessarily bad - the defintion implies to me that no question is intended on that score. Regarding your second question - can it be ameliorated - one answer is provided, but notice that the correction is only done by avoiding the incoherence during play... there is no suggestion that a game can be incoherent and successful at the same time. Which is really @Fifth Element's point as I read it.

Applied to the overall questions in the thread - through abashedness a game like 5e can delight players and achieve a degree of success almost unparalleled in RPG design only because those players are all tacitly correcting for its incoherence during play. Abashedness would then seem to be a profoundly valuable concept for game design. Alternatively, the conclusion is questionable in some way.

Yep. The theory strongly implies that incoherence is bad and to be avoided. I feel this is trivially untrue. Sure, different design desires may conflict, but this is not automatically so. One can achieve harmony and even have different elements support each other. It would be like saying that comedy drama is incoherent as it contains conflicting design goals of drama and comedy. And furthermore, of course one can also have conflicts between design desires that fall under same category in GNS, as the categories are incredibly broad and vague.

 

[clearstream]

In my experience, a lot of the dissatisfaction with the term “gamism” often stems from the people who are resistant against thinking and talking about TTRPGs as ‘games’ more so than how “gamism” maps onto certain play goals.

Would you say "gamist" is a good label for competitiveness, if its contents are only competitiveness? What might be it's other contents, if it has any?

 

[pemerton]

The vast majority of Story Now games do not provide players with any more narrative authority than they would have in a traditional game.

Is it time for a repost?

An interesting thing about Apocalypse World is that it has (almost) no metacurrency. (I've used "almost", because there are a couple of particular playbook moves that come close, but are easily avoided.) On the surface, its allocation of functions to the GM and the players is very "traditional".

But as soon as we drill below the surface, we can see that it upends that "traditional" approach completely, because of the expectations it puts on the players to drive play through their PCs (a bit like a classic sandbox, but even moreso, and with emotional connections and relationship really being foregrounded) and on the GM to keep buiding up the pressure via those soft moves, which will eventually explode into trouble, because someone is going to roll 6- some time soon.

So to really make sense of a RPG, we have to look at all its components - its mechanical techniques (like metacurrencies), and the sort of principles or expectations it sets up for GMs and players, and how these are going to interact with its tropes and setting and stuff, and how that whole package is going to produce an overall play experience at the table.

 

[pemerton]

That may be true but in Nar games, typically, results aren’t necessarily causally linked to triggers. You fail a check so the GM adds some sort of opposition to you that didn’t exist in the game until you failed that check and wouldn’t exist in the game had you succeeded.

Granted that still puts most of the power in the hands of the gm and is certainly not the only way to do it.

But mechanics of these kind cause a lot of opposition when they are even hinted at. Which means that DnD has never been a Nar game

I have to say, I see basically no evidence of "story now" RPGing in what I read about 5e D&D play. If it's happening, it's well under the ENworld radar as far as I can tell!