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

[Crimson Longinus]

Logically flawed. There are tons of taxonomies that have uneven baskets. This isn't even wrong.

Not uneven in definitional breadth.

Strawman. No one has made any argument about objectivity.

This guy sure did:

No. Dramaticism's definition denies narrativism. Narrativism isn't a subset of dramaticism, it's a different objective thing.

Circular reasoning. You declare the structure to be vague and then show that since it's vague it must be vague.

Oh please. We are talking about categorising social constructs describing subjective experiences. Of course is vague! That's not even criticism, it is acknowledgement of obvious!

It's also been well covered that the language wasn't the best choice, so unclear what your point in bringing this up again is. Either we're using the definitions as provided or you're still trying to argue definitions. Pick one.

Terrible naming wasn't the point. That story there are more aspect to stories than the narrative was. And narrativism definitely cares about some of them.

I didn't define story. I said storied have internal causes and care about them. Surreal stories still function on internal cause, they just subvert that cause into a different form.

Oh please, this is getting tortured!

Internal cause doesn't require a particular structure (although dramaticism is often concerned with creating proper story structure). Tech manuals are not the goal of dramaticism in any consideration, so a red herring.

It's not that vague, and also it was defined in the essays. Either we're talking about the model or we are talking about definitions, still. Pick one. This vacillation when it aids your argument is tiresome.

You have utterly failed to provide any coherent definition of 'internal cause'. Is surreal story has 'internal cause' then basically everything has. This goes directly back to the criticism of GNS sim basket being 'all the rest' without any actual coherent unifying logic.

No, of course it isn't. Another strawman. I'd welcome disagreement.

You could have fooled me!

So far, most of your arguments are things like "taxonomies must be symmetrical" which is bogus; or they're "I've changed/ignored this definition from that used in the model and now you must defend the model using this new definition, but you can't!" Also largely bogus.

Disagreement would require actually trying to address the model on the premises it's based on and showing how it fails to hold itself up under even those conditions, or directly attacking the premises. You aren't doing the first, mostly just the second, but your attacks are ones of assertion or preference for a different premise, not showing that the premises used are flawed.

The premise of the model is to show the distinctiveness to the story now for the people who are interested in that playstyle. That, it indubitably does. It just has little use outside of that. Basically no one outside Story Now enthusiasts ever talk about narrativism, or at least in the sense as defined in GNS.

But unlike you I don't think these categories are anything objective. Any such classification must make choices of which differences are seen as fundamental and which merely incidental. And that's in the eye of the beholder. The question really is to whom the model is supposed to be useful.

Oh, you mean that preferably they should share the same agenda? Yes, I agree, that does solve the problem because then you aren't worried about how to harmonize different agendas -- you have the same one.

Except the whole point was that there are two agendas. And there still is but they're not in conflict.

Red herring. Doesn't matter if it was announced or not -- if we assume it was announced, it's still causing problems; we just move Bob's objections to the time at which the rule is announced. We still aren't harmonizing anything here -- a solid and hard conflict exists.

It's not a red herring that you completely change the parameters!

RIGHT. The description has no effect at all, so it's not simulationist because we've established an internal cause -- major blow breaks arm -- that aligns, but then have to immediately discard it in favor of the gamist imperatives of the agreed play. Bob wins, no harmonizing.

This is about D&D. If anyone would be aiming for hard core simulationism they wouldn't be playing it in the first place. What is sought here is merely diegetic justification for hit points and the ability for the combat system to generate evocative fiction. I mean this example was literally about how I approach this, so I think I have a decent idea of the goal. But perhaps that you think that one who aims for such light simulationism would actually desire far more extensive simulation is again an indication of the confusion caused by the concept of incoherence, which implies that one should stubbornly max one thing?

I'd be Bob in this case. I'm effectively recreating an issue I had with a GM that decided that damage needed to be more simulationist and so he'd assign lasting injuries and penalties for them. At the time, I was still pretty green, and didn't immediately assert my arguments, but I can 100% tell you that it sucked hard for me in that game. I certainly didn't feel any harmonizing going on.

And that is completely another matter.

However, I don't really see any reason why one could not devise a more accurate simulation which would still fulfil gamist needs for scorekeeping and completion. But that of course depends on what style of gamism one cares for. And in any case, hacking D&D probably would be a poor way to approach it, it would need to be constructed rather differently from the ground up.

But, again, I entreat you to find your own examples.

I mean it was about mine handling of HP. I also still think that Apoc World does good job at harmonising genre emulation with narrativism.

It's your assertion, the burden of proof is on you.

I'd think the burden of proof would be on the side of idea that the 'incoherence' between different baskets of GNS is more liable to lead to a conflict than 'incoherence' between creative ideas within one basket. I have seen no proof of such. That some times some creative agendas are in conflict is not in dispute.

Also that overwhelmingly most successful and popular game ever balances several agendas and that the one time it tried to be more purist and lean more heavily on one it got rejected hard might say something about the validity of this incoherence concept in practice...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Crimson Longinus

What is meant by High Concept Simulation does not conflict with Visceral Protagonism? Do you mean conflict neutral exposition scenes do not conflict? Do you mean serial exploration of the game setting does not conflict? Do you mean a strong focus on transition scenes does not conflict? Do you mean intricately plotted NPCs with detailed histories and specific goals do not conflict? Do you mean playing tropes or playing to specific arcs does not conflict?

Please be specific here.

Conflict for whom? Because that's the question. I don't think these things are objective. Like what I said earlier about mixing immersion and author stance. Some think they're anathema to each other, some can mix them a bit once there is good staring point (that's me) and some can mix them no issue all the time and apparently even for several characters at once (which is mind boggling to me.) And I don't think anyone is lying about these things, they simply honestly experience things differently. So this too is rather like that.

But to answer your question the best I can (which is not well, as I feel you're using phrases as terms of art I'm not necessarily familiar with) of things you mention I'd se only playing specific arcs as unresolvable source of conflict. Others could be if extensive emphasis was placed on them, but most seem in limited quantities being acceptable or even necessary to establishing the context.

I don't know, this probably is not helpful, I try to think this from the angle of "LARPish immersive immediate experience of being a person", and perhaps that's not what you're talking about (though you're often talking about that, which is something I get,) but I don't really get Story Now, which probably has been well established at this point.

 

[pemerton]

What did help was @pemerton seeming like a reasonably smart person that kept saying things that I didn't understand, and so I, one day, said, "self, pemerton doesn't seem like a liar or fool

I'll cop to not being a liar!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@Ovinomancer at least to me writing those long point-by-point posts in which we disagree with everything each other says is getting tiresome, and it will go nowhere, so I'd rather not do that anymore. So please do not feel the need to write a rebuttal of everything I said so that I can do the same for you. We can simply assume that we disagree about everything unless otherwise stated. If there is some point you would like to discuss in more constructive terms, then go ahead.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not uneven in definitional breadth.

Uh-huh. And your evidence for definitional breadth being lacking is... the number of things in the bins, right? Because you haven't once talked to definitional breadth before (and not yet, it seems, either) but rather to the number of things included in each bin. In fact, definitional breadth seems very much a stand in for 'number of things defined' which isn't even a different argument.

This guy sure did:

Right. That's saying that, objectively, the way narrativism is defined differs from how dramaticism is defined. I can point to the objective existence of these definitions. The actual things defined haven't been claimed to be objective. The different is. I can look at the one definition, and then the other, and objectively state that there is a difference.

Come on, man.

Oh please. We are talking about categorising social constructs describing subjective experiences. Of course is vague! That's not even criticism, it is acknowledgement of obvious!

Ah, well, then, there's no use talking about it at all, is there, in any manner. If subjective is a cause to reject, and all thinking about RPGs are subjective, why does this board even exist? Nothing can ever be useful, right?

This is a bogus claim that tries to say that since there's some slop, it's all bad. It's a slippery slope argument.

Terrible naming wasn't the point. That story there are more aspect to stories than the narrative was. And narrativism definitely cares about some of them.

I can't parse that second sentence and it seems critical to your point. Narrativism does not care about story -- that's what happens when you put what happened together. It doesn't particularly care that it might be incoherent, or that it doesn't come close to a good story, or what structure it has. Narrativism is specifically about the very moment of play -- what does your character do here, when put under this pressure, and how does that turn out. This doesn't really care how that outcome works in any kind of story or what that story looks like. It's about experiencing that moment, in the now. Hence Story Now.

This has been explained before. You keep denying it and insisting that Story Now is actually some other thing. When this is pointed out, you deny this denial.

Oh please, this is getting tortured!

That I'm not agreeing with your strawmen? I agree, that can be very frustrating.

You have utterly failed to provide any coherent definition of 'internal cause'. Is surreal story has 'internal cause' then basically everything has. This goes directly back to the criticism of GNS sim basket being 'all the rest' without any actual coherent unifying logic.

It's defined in the essays. I've decided to stop providing you with restatements of definitions that are in the source material. By now, you should be able to answer these questions for yourself. Not doing so, and insisting that it's my fault I haven't provided you the information already posted once again, is making me do your homework. If you want to argue these points, it's on you to argue them, not me to provide you with the information you plan to use to argue.

You could have fooled me!

Well, in this very thread I both XP'd and publicly commented on a poster that said that the discussion has helped them understand Story Now and that it has also reinforced why they dislike it so much. I was excited about this, because it was a principled disagreement -- understand the opposing argument and articulate what you disagree with. So far, you've not shown you've done the former. I'll be happy to hear your disagreements when it doesn't come with blanket misrepresentations. Disagreement isn't misrepresentation.

The premise of the model is to show the distinctiveness to the story now for the people who are interested in that playstyle. That, it indubitably does. It just has little use outside of that. Basically no one outside Story Now enthusiasts ever talk about narrativism, or at least in the sense as defined in GNS.

No, because Edwards himself is a fan of Simulationist games. Loves them. Talks about them. Has a webpage where he posted vlogs discussing play and often features Simulationist games. So, no, this claim is false. Why it was useful at the Forge is because it is the first fully clear articulation of Narrativism, which already existed in some form in the wild, but was a primary focus of the development discussions at the Forge. This is a difference -- what the essays were meant to do vs what people found useful in them at that time in that place. It's indisputable that the Forge was the crucible from which many modern Story Now games emerged -- most after the Forge closed but using it's thinking to inform their design. However, this doesn't discredit the essays, because they also have helps some simulationist games and are often referred to in simulationist discussions. It's a form of the genetic fallacy, where you swap what a thing was used from by some as impugning the thing. However, in this case, it's even more bankrupt because what it was used for was to develop new games -- hardly a terrible outcome that should be shunned.

But unlike you I don't think these categories are anything objective. Any such classification must make choices of which differences are seen as fundamental and which merely incidental. And that's in the eye of the beholder. The question really is to whom the model is supposed to be useful.

The usefulness of a model is in prediction. I know @pemerton had words against this before, but I think that entire discussion was wrongfooted. Prediction in this case is in the sense means that when you apply the model to data not used in forming it, does it still provide useful results. That's undoubtedly the case, here. The GNS model explains quite well almost all of the common arguments/issues/problems about 5e on these very boards. Is it complete? Does it explain everything? No, of course not, but it's clearly extremely useful and helpful in predicting the kinds of problems that can occur but also in explaining why they occur.

Except the whole point was that there are two agendas. And there still is but they're not in conflict.

No, you said they agree before the game. You didn't explain how they could agree and maintain the different agendas, so it appears you meant they agreed to the agenda. If you're not saying this, then you need to do a bit more to show how these two things were agreed.

It's not a red herring that you completely change the parameters!

Thank you, but I was already aware it wasn't a red herring. I noted that my original example was an unintentional trick questions because play required abandoning the simulationist agenda so that it pretty much didn't matter. I thought that unfair, so I revised the example so that simulationism was maintained and presented strongly so that we could see the nexus of the conflict.

This is about D&D. If anyone would be aiming for hard core simulationism they wouldn't be playing it in the first place. What is sought here is merely diegetic justification for hit points and the ability for the combat system to generate evocative fiction. I mean this example was literally about how I approach this, so I think I have a decent idea of the goal. But perhaps that you think that one who aims for such light simulationism would actually desire far more extensive simulation is again an indication of the confusion caused by the concept of incoherence, which implies that one should stubbornly max one thing?

Diegetic justification that doesn't have any impact isn't simulationism, it's just flavor. This was the crux of the 'trick' I inadvertently included in the original example -- that D&D regarding hitpoints is unabashedly gamist, always has been, and that there's no simulationsim here, just some veneer of flavor that gets applied. You can tell because no wound described with damage ever matters past providing flavor -- there's no impact to any following fiction. So, in this case, if this is what you do, you're letting go of any simulationist agenda here and going with the gamist one the game provides, but you're telling yourself you've saved it because you added some meaningless narration.

Or is there actual meaning to your narration? It can't be how close a PC is to suffering a meaningful blow (dropping to zero hp) because that's conveyed by the hp total, not the description. You can tell this because any number of descriptions can be used interchangeably and never make a difference in play.

At best, such narration is a signalling tool to other players where there's some prohibition from sharing hp totals between players. Then it's just a proxy for that information -- it still has no meaningful impact on play. As such, it's flavor, not agenda.

And that is completely another matter.

How so? You claimed it was a contrived example, I provide evidence it's not contrived but autobiographical, and you dismiss this explanation but do not revoke your claim it's a contrived example? That seems extremely uncharitable. So far, you've dismissed the example as contrived, and when shown to be not contrived, chosen to dismiss that as irrelevant to the discussion. You've managed to chain a bunch of dismissals to avoid engaging the issue. I mean, I get it , fear of a trap or something can be strong, but that's why I've asked for your own examples. Let's see how that's going....

However, I don't really see any reason why one could not devise a more accurate simulation which would still fulfil gamist needs for scorekeeping and completion. But that of course depends on what style of gamism one cares for. And in any case, hacking D&D probably would be a poor way to approach it, it would need to be constructed rather differently from the ground up.

Why so? You've strongly argued that Apocalypse World needs NO modifications to support simulationist play, but D&D cannot without extensive modification to the rules. Double standard much? If agendas are so easily harmonized, as you've also claimed, I don't understand why extensive work must first be done to even consider aligning agendas for D&D. This doesn't sound easy at all!

I mean it was about mine handling of HP. I also still think that Apoc World does good job at harmonising genre emulation with narrativism.

Genre emulation isn't part of GNS. Again you step outside the model under discussion and make a claim based on your own set of premises and defintions. In this case, you've added genre emulation as a thing AND redefined narrativism to something unstated. I can tell, because whatever you mean by genre emulation, narrativism doesn't care about it and will fight it.

I'd think the burden of proof would be on the side of idea that the 'incoherence' between different baskets of GNS is more liable to lead to a conflict than 'incoherence' between creative ideas within one basket. I have seen no proof of such. That some times some creative agendas are in conflict is not in dispute.

No, the burden of proof is on the people that make the claim. The incoherence has been given examples -- multiple ones. I can go to the front page of ENW right now an pull an example of that incoherence:

D&D 5E - Epic Level 1?!

So essentially the idea is you take the idea of Epic Level 6 but you stay a similar level of power to a level 1 PC. However you still level up, instead of the power creep race you just get more options and variety as you attain more class levels and access to additional features. It would...

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Where does "Willpower" lie... Wisdom? Charisma? or someplace else?

The title says it all. In AD&D, it was part of Wisdom, but I wonder with the design of 5E, which does not include it either under Wisdom nor Charisma, where did it go???

www.enworld.org

Worlds of Design: Peaceful Solutions to Violent Problems

How can we provide non-violent means of resolving conflicts with monsters and NPCs in RPGs? Picture courtesy of Pixabay. Recently I noticed a discussion online about the percentage of time spent in combat in RPGs. Many felt that in D&D, most of playing time is spent in combat. With war...

www.enworld.org

Super easy. All of these are fundamentally about a conflict between simulationism and gamism.

Also that overwhelmingly most successful and popular game ever balances several agendas and that the one time it tried to be more purist and lean more heavily on one it got rejected hard might say something about the validity of this incoherence concept in practice...

Ah, argumentum ad populum. Is this that same overwhelmingly most successful and popular game ever that requires significant rework to deal with the hitpoint simulationism/gamism problem?

Look, sure, 5e is popular. But claiming it's popular because it harmonizes different agendas is begging the question (ie, you've assumed the answer in the premise). You have to support this claim. "Popular" is not actually an argument for anything other than "what's popular?"

 

[Ovinomancer]

@Ovinomancer at least to me writing those long point-by-point posts in which we disagree with everything each other says is getting tiresome, and it will go nowhere, so I'd rather not do that anymore. So please do not feel the need to write a rebuttal of everything I said so that I can do the same for you. We can simply assume that we disagree about everything unless otherwise stated. If there is some point you would like to discuss in more constructive terms, then go ahead.

I started my reply prior to dinner, so it was delayed. Feel free to ignore the last. I'll sum up my major takeaway:

You do not show that you understand the GNS model. You do this by constantly trying to redefine terms, or arguing a different model is better without providing any explanation other than you like it more. You take that same "I like it more" argument and apply it to all other arguments as a salve, obviating any need to understand or engage because it's all subjective (which argues that there's no point in discussing games at all). You use these arguments in a way that denies how other people are telling you that play, instead suggesting that they misunderstand and really mean this other thing. You say terms are not defined well when they are clearly defined in the source articles.

Ultimately, this pattern shows that you're not interested in trying to understand, but rather shutting down conversation. I've had some entertainment in pointing out each of these dodges in our exchanges, but you are correct it's become a lot of work. If you actually have genuine curiosity, and wish to understand something, I'll gladly engage in constructive discussion. I've shown that I do so with others in this very thread. If you don't care to do so, that's fine, too, but that also means that you're arguing to shut down discussion. Maybe don't do that.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You misunderstand; note you're talking about feel and story beats. Note I mentioned "world integrity". High genre settings don't have that. They really can't, because they deliberately avoid taking a number of elements to their logical conclusion (because if they did, it wouldn't look much like that genre). That's what makes genre emulation (again, and I repeat this to make the distinction clear, outside of genres that lack conventions other than of time/place and event focus) actively hostile to traditional GDS Sim. They aren't talking about anything resembling the same thing.

(You can, of course, get into the weeds of general usage of "Simulation" here, but its a term-of-art for either model; the difference is that one is very much about world integrity that denies purely dramatic conceits while the other is utterly dependent on them to look as they do).

Well, I argue that 'world integrity' really doesn't exist in RPGs generally because the nature of the world is so underspecified that it is entirely impossible to determine in any way what the actual constraints are. I think its potentially possible to say that some worlds have a greater integrity or plausibility (in internal terms) than others, perhaps. However the demands of other agendas and practical play considerations put a enough of an upper limit on it that it isn't going to matter. Maybe if the subject matter of a game is VERY limited, then within that aspect the world could be consistent. That is, much like the old Avalon Hill D-Day game produces a pretty plausible set of scenarios for the course of the Invasion of France, an RPG that occupies itself with a narrow subject could be quite plausible within that range. It is just not likely to be a very general game, just like the AH game only produces division-level simulations of a small part of WWII that are kind of believable.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'll respond now only to this one thing, as it comes close to ad hominem and you have repeated similar earlier.

You take that same "I like it more" argument and apply it to all other arguments as a salve, obviating any need to understand or engage because it's all subjective (which argues that there's no point in discussing games at all).

Of course it doesn't mean that there is no point discussing it. Merely that if you do not properly recognise the underlying subjectify you might make erroneous generalisations.

You use these arguments in a way that denies how other people are telling you that play, instead suggesting that they misunderstand and really mean this other thing.

I am not denying anyone's experiences. I am sure everyone is quite honest about their subjective experiences. That I do not agree with the general utility of the theoretical flamework they use to contextualise those experiences or the further generalised predictions of that framework doesn't mean I think that they're dishonest, or mistaken about the experience itself.

 

[Hussar]

Because it privileges certain kinds of distinctions while ignoring others, and begs the question whether that's a useful thing to do in a model.

The fact it can sometimes be used in a useful analytical way does not mean the overall model works; it just means parts of it work for some purposes (and that's almost tautological, or it never would develop a following in the first place). But I repeat, once you get outside of Nar, I have little evidence that much the GNS Threefold works for people who are not in that corner. It doesn't actively work against Gamists (but it also doesn't support them the way N does for its proponents) and it actively works against a rather decent sized number of people who could connect with the D in GDS, and whatever remaining old-school style Simulationists out there.

So while Nar may well work to do functional description of what its doing, most of the other parts of the GNS Threefold only seem to work for people not primarily doing them.

Now this I'm going to disagree with.

Say you want to do a Ticking Clock scenario. The PC's must travel from Point A to Point B or Bad things Will Happen. Looking at the three approaches does highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

In a heavily Sim game, these scenarios don't really work very well. After all, it's mostly just a basic math question. The train leaves at 5:25 traveling at 50 Km/h. Can it reach the next stop, which is 100 km away in under 2 hours? Well, yes. It can. And, in a Sim based game, the DM shouldn't be adding things to the game specifically to slow that train down because that's not really sim anymore. Anything that slows that train down should arise from the setting itself and if there isn't any reason (outside of dramatic tension ones which are off the table) for the train to slow down, then the train doesn't slow down.

In a more Gamist game, the question actually changes. It's not Can the PC's arrive in time? No. The question is now, "What resources will it cost to reach the destination on time and will the PC's be able to deal with the challenge at the destination after having spent resources?" It's all about resource management and whatnot. Which in turn, inspires different possible approaches - maybe a sort of gauntlet challenge where the point of play is to make it to the end; or maybe some sort of resource attrition to make the final challenge more challenging. Or some combination of the two. It's entirely possible that the players will never reach the destination, or, may reach the destination too weak to resolve the challenge, or maybe will blow through the entire thing by clever play. It's one long challenge with lots of moving parts.

In a more Narrativist game, the question changes again. Getting to the end isn't really in question at all. You WILL get there in time. The question is, "What are you willing to sacrifice to do so?" Is your shining knight on his trusty steed willing to kill his horse to get there on time? Are you willing to forced march through the night, leaving companions behind, knowing that they will likely die, to weak to defend themselves from the dangers pressing in? Are you willing to make a deal with some Bad Thing and succeed at some great personal cost? And the answering of those questions is the point of play. Getting to the destination and stopping that Bad Thing isn't really the point. That's (most likely) going to happen. The question is, at what cost?

So, no, I think the threefold model does a really good job when it's used the way it's meant to be used. It identifies strengths and weaknesses in approaches and suggests possible ways forward. Which is exactly what a model should do.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'll respond now only to this one thing, as it comes close to ad hominem and you have repeated similar earlier.

Really, how? I'm speaking to specific things you've done, I'm not using your qualities as a person as a stand in for my argument.

Of course it doesn't mean that there is no point discussing it. Merely that if you do not properly recognise the underlying subjectify you might make erroneous generalisations.

Or nonerroneous ones. You're claiming to know the direction of error here, but you don't even correctly use the model under discussion. Instead you argue that since there's some ambiguity involved, that only error can result, but only here, I guess, because you now say that ambiguity doesn't mean error all the time. You're just sure it does here.

I am not denying anyone's experiences. I am sure everyone is quite honest about their subjective experiences. That I do not agree with the general utility of the theoretical flamework they use to contextualise those experiences or the further generalised predictions of that framework doesn't mean I think that they're dishonest, or mistaken about the experience itself.

You are. Every time you say that genre emulation and narrativism can easily coexist (and do) you are denying what narrativism is. This is despite being told, by multiple people, and multiple times, that these two things don't coexist because they're are looking for opposed things. Instead, you blithely continue to assert that those people must be in error because, to you, it's all there. This is expressly denying play. You literally have to discount what people are telling you to continue making this argument. It's not some theoretical argument, either, it's people describing how and why they play, and what they are seeking out of it. You have to continue to deny this to continue making this argument.

Honestly, it was my realization that I was doing that that made me stop and take the steps to understanding what narrativism/Story Now is. Given how you've posted about it, you do not grok it. If you do, then you're being exceedingly dishonest in your posting. I do not consider you to be a dishonest person though -- I think you post with good integrity -- so it must be that you do not understand. That's the only way you can be so consistently incorrect in your pronouncements. I certainly was, not many years back. Back then, we'd have been on the same side of this argument. I didn't get it.