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

[AbdulAlhazred]

I’m interested in how Story now handles 2 things and am curious your thoughts.

1. Most Story Now games I see cited have mechanics that are referential to in fiction character’s ability to perform a task even though the characters’s ability to perform a task is often fictionally unrelated or at best tangentially related to the outcome prescribed by conflict resolution. Are there any Story Now games where this isn’t the case? Do you think it theoretically possible for a game to exist where the conflict resolution mechanics don’t pretend to be related to character ability and what trade offs would be present in doing so?

I think there are games where this is true. However, the main point, IMHO, of tying the probabilities to something about the PC is that it rewards consistent play. That is, if my character has Persuasion as an attribute/skill/whatever then this is a solution the player is encouraged to use, their character is a persuader of others. Sure, it may well be that you cannot always say there's a 'reason' in terms of proposed in-game causality, but OTOH it is NOT exactly common for a check to literally establish something right there that is unrelated to it. There is always, IME, a plausible connection between character skill and outcomes, though the actual reasons at the table may be "I did it this way because I get the bonuses."

2. What keeps Story Now conflict resolution mechanics localized to the current scene? Is this absolute or can they directly effect more than the current scene?

They can effect the whole setting! Why would it be necessary to localize them?

3. Can Story Now handle exploration at all?

I think it is generally more incidental. It is certainly possible for their to be unknowns which become apparent as play progresses. It probably won't look like exploration of some established facts (IE the GM's notes).

4. Can’t all task-resolution be framed as conflict resolution? Ex: I want to open the safe to see if I can find out what documents it holds. In classic d&d play the failure state would be the lock is jammed. Which forces play forward.

How does it force play forward? It blocks one path, and presumably the PCs will then explore some other path. And no, not all tasks resolve conflicts. What if I'm climbing a wall because I want to get into the castle where the safe is, which I want to find some papers in? That task doesn't resolve anything, except whether I move into the castle. So, I agree that fortune is always related to conflicts, but some checks are going to be somewhat peripheral. This is one reason why I've always liked SC-like constructs, they allow play to incorporate things like planning and such into a cohesive whole (BitD Jobs do the same thing). In the case of PbtA games you DO have things like 'hold' and 'Forward' which allow players to carry out preparatory moves that have a direct input into later things.

 

[niklinna]

So locking would not be compatible with HCS, in the case that GM reserves all right to what's true about the world at large from moment to moment; the latter being what is generally expected in HCS. You imply not guaranteed to be the case, or at least judgement suspended as to whether it is always the case. Is that all right?

Pretty much. Reserving all right to what's true also implies keeping some info hidden that "locking in" directly contradicts. Locking in involves putting the stakes and probabilities on the table for everyone to see, then the dice fall to select which outcome applies—along with whatever other system is necessary to support that (as in Blades in the Dark). If any of that is hidden, things are subject to alteration to fit the high concept, so you can't have lock-in (as it's been discussed so far, to my understanding).

Now, most HCS play I see discussed happens to involve hiding some of that stuff, but it doesn't have to be that way.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I quoted up-thread the Traveller game text that permits and advises the Referee to make information bad. My post #2062. (The second spoiler.)

Right, but I didn't see it in 1977 text. Not saying it isn't there, but I'd also point out that it is pretty general and we can easily argue about how it applies to specific processes, like Streetwise. I mean, remember, nobody is claiming Traveller, of any vintage, is an SN game, just that even in the early days of RPGs (and Traveller was like the 2nd RPG most people played after D&D) the idea was lurking out there, a player can ask for a certain thing and use a check to get it. Noting that Traveller is a pretty 'Story Light' game (most play IME is happening in largely random-generated systems with the whole action being generated via checks, without much prebuilt setting details at all). So, it was REALLY COMMON in playing that game for the process to be something like a player suggesting that they wanted to find a Patron who would arrange a smuggling job for them (maybe because they were short of cash to pay the mortgage on their FT200).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is there no glue holding characters more or less near the same location? If there isnt what stops the game from becoming 4 separate games where each player takes turn with the DM resolving their game?

Well, even early classic D&D didn't suppose there was "a party", so there are many answers, as many as different games. BitD presupposes the PCs are all part of one gang. Modern D&D seems to have a strong concept of THE PARTY. Some games don't really try to hard, and the PCs may not even be allies! This is obviously something that would require some sort of narrow focus or nexus of activity such that the PCs are guaranteed to interact often.

Whatever that glue is, assume it’s what brought all the characters into the room with the safe. How is it then determined what is in the safe when 2 characters want to find different things in it?

As I say, it would probably have been established via previous fiction of whatever sort. It MIGHT be determined on the spot, but that is not the most likely situation.

For me it’s less about how much of an issue that May or may not be and more about noting that it’s something that always arises in story now play. I’m fine letting people determine whether that’s a deal breaker for them.

Sure, I'm just saying you may not have an actual concrete problem in any given instance of SN play.

It’s just that it seems so hard to get this point acknowledged as valid without their being a defense for it (like here where you argue it’s not all that important in play).

Sure. I just don't have it as a PERSONAL issue, and that's true of others as well. I am happy to think about it in terms of general game play/design. I'm not sure there are really ANSWERS though, people are all a bit different.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, the performance measures can be subjective. I mean, figure skating has points for artistic merit and such, but nobody thinks that makes it less a competition (I won't touch the argument about whether it is a 'game proper' or not, it doesn't matter). I'd note though that there are pretty strict standards for judging subjective things and strong social constraints, etc. in any situation where subjectivity is highly important. RPGs are more informal/relaxed and thus perhaps you can say a game is gamist where the objectives are things like "tell the best joke in play" or whatever. The structure however does need to CENTER ON that. Again, classic D&D is the perfect example, the whole game REVOLVES AROUND getting loot (magic and GP) and leveling up. EVERY player is oriented towards those things, and anyone who isn't is not really playing. I mean, nothing is more of a dud in D&D than a group of players who just shrug their shoulders and say "Oh, we'll just keep drinking at the inn." when someone hands them a treasure map! lol. Maybe that shades into a form of HCS as the subjective measures become less defined and less central to play. I mean, you can acquire more power in a CoC game, but nobody would ever propose that getting big weapons, money, and high skill values is the POINT of that game!

I'm just noting I see a certain degree of repeated moves to put gamism into a smaller bucket than it lives in in the wild, IME. I'm not going to say things like experience and magic items aren't an easy reward cycle, because they are; but there are others that can produce just as gamist an experience that just requires more up-front buy-in.

 

[niklinna]

Right. So who opens the safe will affect the contents of the safe.

Your phrasing implies that you think there are already some contents in the safe, and that we are changing them. This is not the case. In such a play style, we are not exploring a pre-existing reality—we are writing it as we go.

Put another way, we aren't reading a novel, not even a "choose your own adventure" book where all the options are already fixed in ink on paper. There is no safe, and the safe has no contents, until we decide what they are. We're writing the module or adventure as we go through it. As for which skill is used, there has to be some plausible fiction for how the characters get the safe open. And as I've pointed out a couple times, how they go about it will have different potential consequences/fallout for the fiction.

But also, it isn't necessarily who opens the safe that determines the contents. No, that just determines the consequences/fallout of the opening. It's entirely possible that one player puts forward the stakes on what's in the safe, everybody agress to that, and then they nominate somebody else to open it! The dissociation is even worse, good heavens!

But seriously, that's absolutely true. There is no necessary association between the character doing the check and the outcome. It's all negotiated by the participants in the collaborative process of generating the fiction. The negotiation may be collaborative or adversarial (as @Manbearcat's quotation of the relevant text from Blades in the Dark shows), but the important point is that we're generating things as we go.

But the characters presumably don't think this is the case, yet the players know it to be so. This sort of system causes almost complete disconnect between the decision making process of the players and the decision making process of the characters.

Yes, there is a disconnect. It's a different play style, a different way of generating a fiction, to the usual exploration of a prewritten situation/scenario. That's all.

Hell, why would the characters even debate who opens the safe? They certainly cannot know it would in any way or form affect the contents! In universe it would make perfect sense for one character to say "Go ahead, you do it, you're good with locks. But I sure hope it's those papers in there rather than just some pointless gold you're always after!"

They debate it because how they open the safe matters, possibly more than what's inside. If the party needs to get Jane's safecracking skills up, have her do it (maybe the master safecracker is going to retire soon, or maybe that character's player is leaving the campaign—a very dissociated concern). If we don't care about raising an alarm or leaving evidence, have the smasher do it. If we're really worried about getting that safe open without complications, then sure, have the master safecracker do it.

This obviously doesn't bug you, and good for you. But it would bug me massively.

That's totally cool. You have different preferences in play style. You like to follow things forward from established premises. The approach I'm describing involves quite a bit of logical backtracking and filling in. Heck, Blades in the Dark has a full-on "flashback" mechanic where you can literally go back in time to fill in detail...so long as it doesn't directly contradict what's been established, anyhow. Me, I love playing that way. But I love following forward too, it all depends on the game & the group.

It is not just colour, it affects the odds massively. In fact GMs determination of the difficulty affects things way more steeply in BW than in 5e D&D, and it is far easier to make things virtually or literally impossible. Why on Earth would such a huge impact be given to simulationist measures such as safe quality, which has basically nothing to do with what you're actually intertest about, that being the beliefs and desires of the characters?

Oh, sure it can affect the odds (very little in Apocalypse World, quite a bit in Blades). Balancing odds with the stakes is a big part of the fun of playing Blades! Well, for me anyhow. And Blades gives you lots more tools than quality of items to juggle and jigger in the process of working out those crux moments. I love it to bits.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

 

[FrogReaver]

Your phrasing implies that you think there are arleady some contents in the safe, and that we are changing them. This is not the case. In such a play style, we are not exploring a pre-existing reality—we are writing it as we go.

I think you are reading that into the phrasing when it’s not actually present.

Seems reasonable to describe the contents of the safe being different based upon who opens it as a ‘change’ in the contents of the safe. You are conflating the fictional description of the fiction where nothing changed and the description of the potential fiction from the vantage point of our reality - where the safes contents are going to be different depending on which fictional character opens the safe.

 

[niklinna]

It's not just the motives & desires, it's the generation of a plausible fiction that everybody at the table is satisfied with (regardless of success or failure at individual dice rolls). The fiction has to take some form, but the binding from fictional form to game mechanics varies from game to game. Apocalypse World is way at the far end of generality. Blades in the Dark leans toward appearing more (process-)simulationist, but when you look at how it handles action resolution, that turns out not to be the case. Torchbearer has even more skills, but again, the way it handles them is cosmetically simulationist at best.

And to me the former seems more coherent and honest. It seems weird and confused to me have seemingly simulationist measures of difficulty based on safe quality and lock-picking skill, but then draw odds for things not actually connected to these from them.

Well, even Apocalypse has its hold and forward mechanics, which you get from making moves that have some plausibility in the fiction. It just doesn't bind them to concrete objects (although it totally leaves participants free to explain their hold and forward using such).

The process of generating a fiction via rules, whether simulationist, narrativist, Story Now-ist, has to have some mechanics, and the binding of mechanics to the fiction ideally involves plausibility. It doesn't have to! But then you're just doing math problems. Blades in the Dark has all these factors to consider:

• Player's goal in performing their action (intent and form, for example, getting the dirt on the Baron, in the form of papers in a safe revealing his crimes).
• Consequences/fallout of a weak success or failure (guards giving chase/attacking, character suffering harm, bulding on fire, all that good stuff).
• Character action ratings (roughly equivalent to skills).
• The likely default degree of effect on a basic success.
• The character's position in the situation (controlled, risky, desperate). These affect the level of benefit/severity of fallout. Formal factors in position are:
  • Potency of something (lightning is very effective vs. ghosts, vampires are just potent)
  • Quality/tier of equipment, items, or other resources
  • Scale (small vs. large gang)
• Whether you want to pay for any bonus dice on your roll, either by you (or a friend) paying stress, or by accepting a "devil's bargain" (guaranteed peripheral fallout, with many possibilities mechanical and fictional).

It is explicitly part of the rules that players can negotiate by trading position for effect, among other things. Quality is one small part of that, but it's all motivated by plausibility. Nothing dishonest or confused about it!

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Your phrasing implies that you think there are arleady some contents in the safe, and that we are changing them.

No, I didn't mean that.

This is not the case. In such a play style, we are not exploring a pre-existing reality—we are writing it as we go.

Put another way, we aren't reading a novel, not even a "choose your own adventure" book where all the options are already fixed in ink on paper. There is no safe, and the safe has no contents, until we decide what they are. We're writing the module or adventure as we go through it. As for which skill is used, there has to be some plausible fiction for how the characters get the safe open. And as I've pointed out a couple time, how they go about it will have different potential consequences/fallout for the fiction.

Yes, I fully get this.

But also, it isn't necessarily who opens the safe that determines the contents. No, that just determines the consequences/fallout of the opening. It's entirely possible that one player puts forward the stakes on what's in the safe, everybody agress to that, and then they nominate somebody else to open it! The dissociation is even worse, good heavens!

But seriously, that's absolutely true. There is no necessary association between the character doing the check and the outcome. It's all negotiated by the participants in the collaborative process of generating the fiction. The negotiation may be collaborative or adversarial (as @Manbearcat's quotation of the relevant text from Blades in the Dark shows), but the important point is that we're generating things as we go.

Right. And when you're negotiating that sort of thing, you're not actually inhabiting the perspective of your character and making decisions from that vantage point.

Yes, there is a disconnect. It's a different play style, a different way of generating a fiction, to the usual exploration of a prewritten situation/scenario. That's all.

Yep.

 

[clearstream]

Right, but I didn't see it in 1977 text. Not saying it isn't there, but I'd also point out that it is pretty general and we can easily argue about how it applies to specific processes, like Streetwise. I mean, remember, nobody is claiming Traveller, of any vintage, is an SN game, just that even in the early days of RPGs (and Traveller was like the 2nd RPG most people played after D&D) the idea was lurking out there, a player can ask for a certain thing and use a check to get it. Noting that Traveller is a pretty 'Story Light' game (most play IME is happening in largely random-generated systems with the whole action being generated via checks, without much prebuilt setting details at all). So, it was REALLY COMMON in playing that game for the process to be something like a player suggesting that they wanted to find a Patron who would arrange a smuggling job for them (maybe because they were short of cash to pay the mortgage on their FT200).

Why doesn't the player simply specify that the item they want is the dirt? If that's how their GM is running it.

Do you see what I mean? What heads that off? Why would they need to open the safe?