Vincent Baker, in section 4 of this, says basically the same thing as AbdulAlhazred does. I don't know if AbdulAlhazred has read it before, or has independently arrived at the same position as Baker. Either way, I think that Baker saying it tends to suggest that AbdulAlhazred is right.
D&D General Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
- Thread starter clearstream
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Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
And, in the sense that Baker is talking here -- about actually running a game and getting though it, I agree that the important thing is to get through play and this collapse works. However, it works because it ultimately says "just make stuff up" which is not a Story Now approach, but a practical approach.
If we only ever resolve situations through conversations, we're engaged not in play but in collaborative authoring of a story. There's no game, and we don't find out anything surprising about the characters because we're always authoring whatever happens.
To sum up, this advice is good in the sense that getting to the next moment of play can be worthwhile, but if you only do so, you aren't even playing a game anymore.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
That is about adapting and using the system for other purposes. Which one obviously can do, and a lot of people have. Powered by Apocalypse is a thing. It doesn't mean that Apocalypse World itself as it exists isn't about the world as well, anymore than that Chaosium using Rune Quests mechanics to power a ton of other games means that Rune Quest itself isn't about Glorantha.
EDIT: If this post doesn't quite seem to follow, it is because I didn't first properly read which post @pemerton was responding to, so I misinterpreted the context. Feel free to disregard.
EDIT: If this post doesn't quite seem to follow, it is because I didn't first properly read which post @pemerton was responding to, so I misinterpreted the context. Feel free to disregard.
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Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I'm going to expand, here, because the advice for "the conversation" is 'player says what PC does, GM follows agenda and principles and says what happens.' This is, itself, a mechanic. It's Bob Says. It provides some additional constraints on Bob, but Bob says is absolutely a mechanic -- it clearly says how conflicts are resolved.
Do I think that the agenda and principles constraining what Bob Says manages to actually do Story Now? No, I do not. Bob will always be biased and will be providing what they think is the best outcome. Bob will be using some heuristic that is internal to Bob (even a setting will be Bob's ideas about that setting) to make rulings. Sure, this is more constrained that D&D's Bob Says, but that doesn't mean that the outcomes are terribly different. Bob's thumb is all over the resolution, and cannot be removed. As such, without any real intent or effort, Bob can direct play down his conception of what it should look like. The principles here are weak, because Bob has free choice on outcome of success, success with complication/cost (soft move), or failure (as hard as Bob likes). So, for any given action declaration, Bob has to choose, based ONLY on Bob's conception (the principles and agendas do not offer any constraint or advice on how to choose success/failure) and while Bob may be constrained on narration of these, this free choice obviates the core concepts of Story Now.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
It is not. It's literally the idea that everything rests on the "conversation," or core game loop of player declares, GM responds within the principles and agenda. I disagree that it's useful as a model of Story Now -- that Story Now exists with only the conversation -- but it's very clear that this "conversation" paired with the mechanics is what generates Story Now play. This essay is not at all about adapting PbtA to other agendas -- it's about how to understand PbtA at a system design level so that you can hack it to get a game/premise you want and still have it do what it does -- Story Now play.
It was pretty clear to me that Baker is describing graceful failure modes. If you forget some part of the mechanics, PbtA tries to prevent a hard crash. Rather than the game splatting on the ground, or whatever, instead it's "you're missing out, but". As an analogy, if you fall off the roof of a building, there are several shade awnings to catch you. But if you crash through them all, of course you're eventually gonna reach the sidewalk.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
SOMETHING must motivate play and be the focus of play. If it isn't the dramatic needs of the character and their conflicts, or some inherent conflict within the milieu. So, if you don't turn up the heat, you must turn to some other agenda to drive play. That's fine, but lets not kid ourselves that this is all Story Now. I mean, sure, there's nothing forcing play to focus only on one type of thing, so this is OK, but it does mean you have to deal with the possible clash between the needs of each type of play.
Now, one of the purposes of the concept of an Interlude in HoML is that it will let you do different things. Since it literally by definition doesn't focus on conflict, you can use it to, say, focus on sim concerns, do some genre tourism, etc. I mean, my motive was more just to give an option to establish color and 'set up' if that's needed, but its there, do whatever you want with it. Frankly, I wouldn't overuse these things, and I'd keep them fairly focused on being like an 'establishing shot' in a film, but that's just me.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
huh? Sorry, I really don't follow you here. I'm not PROVING something logically. I'm just saying "X doesn't belong in genre Y, so adding it in there violates the concept of playing in genre Y." Its no different from saying "Brussel Sprouts are not part of Thai cuisine, so adding them to pad thai means you are no longer cooking pad thai." I mean, YES, what makes something pad thai is the use of certain ingredients and techniques, but we're not talking about causes here, there's nothing 'circular' about it. If that's circular reasoning then ALL STATEMENTS OF FACT are equally 'circular'! I don't think so. Maybe we're just misunderstanding each other, because I doubt you mean that...
It isn't a 'genre conflict for Star Trek' it is a conflict between the Star Trek genre element of the transporter with another agenda, which focuses on drama/narrative/plot. Since the transporter logically removes many constraints from a wide range of situations, it undermines the production of many forms of tension. I mean, one could also try to argue that this simply makes the task of challenging characters (in any of several ways, this can apply to gamist concerns as well) more INTERESTING. It is undoubtedly true though that it increases ones work, or else tends to beg for 'cheap answers' like "Oh, there's an ion storm, you can't do that now!" (which a LOT of actual Star Trek episodes did, though the nature of the excuses varied a bit).
The point is, if all I want to focus on is emulating the genre successfully, its not a problem, the transporter 'just works' and the players will likely use it to achieve their ends, and the GM will likely construct plots that read a lot like Star Trek episodes, and some of them will feature 'ion storms', but mostly because that's how the show worked (though it is likely that some dramatic tension is present in this type of play too, which it might enhance).
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Actually, I want to comment again on this to make a slightly different point: ALL play involves some sort of 'conflict', there is always some type of drama in RPG play, otherwise there's essentially nothing at all. In Story Now play it is simply the primary focus in a way that is beyond other agendas, and it is handled in a particular way which brings the entirety of play to that narrow focus. Obviously if you are running a genre sim (High Concept, whatever GNS wants to call it), like say FASA Star Trek, then it would be silly to imagine that game as simply empty 'trekisms' blabbered out into emptiness with no structure or meaning attached to them. There IS a plot, even though a HUGE focus of the game is on the Star Trek genre itself. In fact, because this specific genre is drawn from a TV show, which obviously has plot and drama, you could even think of plot and drama themselves as necessary parts of 'Trekism', at least within the confines of an inherently plotted activity like an RPG (Star Trek cosplay OTOH could exist completely without plot or drama, you can simply dress up as Lt. Uhuru). So, lets forgo any line of reasoning that leads down the road of "well, there's some plot happening, so it must be all about that!" Of course there's plot, definitionally at the level of defining an RPG!
In light of that, and lets give RE credit for knowing this and its spelled out in his work, obviously the 'G' and 'S' type agendas must be dramatic agendas, and we should focus on why they are each distinctive vs trying to argue that issues of drama and plot have no business being part of the analysis, or that they can only be examined in light of some other agenda. IMHO that is really the issue with GDS, it doesn't actually see story as being a focus in and of itself.
Crimson Longinus
Legend
To be completely honest, I have to say that at this point I have utterly lost the plot of what you're arguing about.
(*That being said, inserting mythos into other settings is such a common thing to do, that it might not necessarily even come across as particularly jarring in a crowd that's used to that. But that's besides the point.)
Yes. You can put Shoggoths* in Apoc World, and you can put Klingons in Glorantha. Neither is a thing the games as written instructs or expects you to do, but the rules won't break down in either case. So what? What's your point?
Again? So? You have just demonstrated that any form of fiction creation by necessity contains several different elements and purposes. Like Star Trek is a show about future space explorers that make tough moral choices regarding hairy situations that often have some allegorical significance. We don't need to decide whether it 'really' is about the setting or the characters or the message, as they are all intertwined into one gestalt.
(*That being said, inserting mythos into other settings is such a common thing to do, that it might not necessarily even come across as particularly jarring in a crowd that's used to that. But that's besides the point.)
