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

[Crimson Longinus]

@Crimson Longinus

How would you describe the difference between running Apocalypse World and running D*D 5e? What about running something like L5R or RuneQuest?

Good question and one I cannot comprehensively answer. But I don't think it has much to do with the setting. I'd say it has most to do with how the story that is unfolding at the table is generated, and would relate to the principles governing the six sources of fiction I sketched earlier. But I'm afraid I quite didn't get far enough with formulating that thought.

 

[Campbell]

From a Story Now perspective I have a few fundamental issues with the slow burn lingering consequences means of making decisions consequential.

1. There is no immediacy. That sense of immediate consequences and clear stakes are crucial to feeling the moment to moment tension that Story Now play brings to the table.
2. It leans into problem solving focused play. When there is a delay in consequences or lack of clarity as to the cause of NPC action then a significant portion of play becomes focused on unraveling what's going on rather than bold decisive action and moments of high tension.
3. As a GM it becomes entirely too tempting to see these situations as story fodder or to get lost inside the internal casualty of the setting. I remove my focus and attention from being a fan of the player characters. It's awfully tempting to take lead guitar instead of playing bass.

This can ameliorated a bit by using something transparent like countdown clocks.

 

[niklinna]

Good question and one I cannot comprehensively answer. But I don't think it has much to do with the setting. I'd say it has most to do with how the story that is unfolding at the table is generated, and would relate to the principles governing the six sources of fiction I sketched earlier. But I'm afraid I quite didn't get far enough with formulating that thought.

I'd love to see you continue formulating that thought!

(Could you provide a link to your six-sources post? I tried the search function and came up blank.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Well, the essay, being about AW design, doesn't really talk about SN and what sorts of agenda/principles would produce that kind of play, exactly. If you look at some of the more successful PbtAs that definitely do SN strongly, you can start to distill that out. Perhaps Vince someplace has an essay where he talks about that, though frankly the Dungeon World text does a pretty fair job in and of itself (though you may well change some of its techniques in other games for whatever reason, and their agendas may differ in part). Still, it seems FAIRLY clear to me what leads to good SN play. I agree that GMs in these games have very great narrative authority and can (and inevitably will to a degree) shape where things go. This is going to be true in other non-PbtA games where a GM scene frames as well. I mean, in our TB2 game @Manbearcat introduced feral knife-wielding children! It was a logical move, and arose through use of the TB2 system, but that particular twist reflects a point at which he's really leaning on the ouvre of the game and amping it up! He could have, for instance, simply described the condition of the infant as highly precarious and given Jasper a nasty condition (IE wounded, you cut your hand while trying to do a C-Section) and then our problem would be getting off the mountain under those conditions. Instead he's pushed things in a direction of portraying a nasty brutish world where 7 year olds try to shiv you (granted, they have their reasons).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

(*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.)

True, it might not actually be the best example, lol.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What?

No story now game I've ever played has had a plot. I agree, if you try and say that gamist games have conflicts, you're too broad. If you try and say that gamist games have character traits, I'm gonna argue that this is even necessary. A B/X dungeon crawl requires exactly zero character traits to be had. This is a mess, man!

I think you are just being too pedantic here. naughty word HAPPENS IN ALL GAMES, right? We can agree on that? So, you cannot classify anything on that basis. There are likely SOME SORT of motivations ascribed to the PCs in pretty much every game, though yes when you rolled up Dwarf #12 in your B/X game you probably just assumed "greed for treasure" and didn't visit that. OTOH at some point even Dwarf #12 will acquire some sort of motives, however superficial and meant to serve a gamist cause. Again, simply ascribing a character trait to a PC won't get us any analytical mileage. It is all how this stuff is used.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'd love to see you continue formulating that thought!

(Could you provide a link to your six-sources post? I tried the search function and came up blank.)

Here.

It was really nothing besides articulating the obvious, but I was trying to get things straight in my head and wanted to see if others felt it was sensible to contextualise things this way.

Now I think next step would be to think about how different games divide this authority, and it is of course just not about the amount it is about subject matter. And then of course what practical effect to the play experience this division has.

 

[niklinna]

Here.

Ah, no wonder I didn't find it, the word "three" is in there, but not "six".

It was really nothing besides articulating the obvious, but I was trying to get things straight in my head and wanted to see if others felt it was sensible to contextualise things this way.

Now I think next step would be to think about how different games divide this authority, and it is of course just not about the amount it is about subject matter. And then of course what practical effect to the play experience this division has.

I look forward to seeing your next step.

 

[Ovinomancer]

What? The expansive setting they spend millions to depict and the countless fans obsess over is not a significant point of the show?

No. You can tell if you only put that on screen and show the crew going about doing normal, boring things in the setting working the setting. So shows where they do an analysis of a star system but there's no personal crisis. This isn't what you see, so setting isn't the point.

People treat this stuff basically like a religion, latching on every detail! If this is not about "enjoying the setting for its own right" then literally nothing in the history of humanity never was or never will be.

Right, I deleted a statement that how Fandom reacts and tries to engage with the material is different from the show - and has to be. They have to center themselves in the setting because there's no way to actually engage in character crisis in cosplay.

In fact, the term "cosplay" is used in some circles to describe RPG play where the point is to just portray characters in a setting where the characters are meant to be nothing more than projections into the setting and are non-dynamic concepts. Like D&D characters where they're primarily defined by how they interact with the setting and that are based on portrays of a non-dynamic concept like "holy warrior with a heart of gold."

And yes, of course a setting build by countless writers over six decades will have continuity issues and retcons, and yes, of course the writers will sometimes alter of 'forget' setting details to get the plot moving. But there is no work of fiction of this scale that wouldn't do that. Even period dramas that are based on real events and aim for historical accuracy still do this.

If the setting was the point, there would not be continuity issues any anywhere near the scale and scope as there are in even a single Star Trek show. Across the entire scope of Star Trek shows, those continuity issues are massive! If setting was the point -- if setting wasn't just subservient to the plot -- there wouldn't be because the writers would be taking care to manage that continuity to preserve the setting as much as possible. Instead, they're trying to tell a story often requires handwaving the setting into shape, and that sometimes creates continuity issues -- and when that happens, the story wins fairly often. The setting is not the point of Star Trek.

And, that said, if you don't see this, then I'm not sure there's any room whatsoever to reach any kind of understanding on this topic, or even the topic of how stories are told and what's important to them.

 

[Ovinomancer]

They have had emergent plots that may or may not have made sense.

Sure. I can tell the some kind of story about this thread, or my trip to the car mechanic. That doesn't mean these things have plot.

That this is the point of contention is absolutely baffling to me.