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

[AbdulAlhazred]

When you say ‘the GM is free to say use a different ability’, that sounds alot like what tends to get called GM fiat.

There are a lot of ways to handle this kind of thing, which is going to vary by table and by system. In Dungeon World (I assume most PbtAs) the player describes their character's fictional actions. The GM then states which move is being made (if any). USUALLY its self-evident and pulling some nonsense is just plain wrong. OTOH the GM DOES have some choices, within the limits of principle and agenda. For one thing a GM is often free to just say "Yeah, XYZ happens" without requiring any move at all, though this is far from always good play. Otherwise the GM will normally do what the player asked for, or in some cases it may be ambiguous and they might pick a move, though the choices are generally pretty limited.

In terms of Traveller, it is still a classic type of game. Maybe you will interpret Streetwise to mean the player gets to choose, maybe not. Even if they choose, they don't have some sort of limitless power any more than GMs ever do. I mean, nobody is realistically suggesting PCs can just dice Streetwise for CR 1 Trillion (enough to build a pretty good Imperial Navy task force in Trillion Credit Squadron). Right? So, there's always a plausible limit. It could be that if the PC says "I want a handgun" and its a Law Level F planet they are not going to get what they want, period. On a law level 0 planet OTOH you might be able to just walk down the street and pick up a PGMP-13 without breaking a sweat or even rolling Streetwise.

 

[niklinna]

When you say ‘the GM is free to say use a different ability’, that sounds alot like what tends to get called GM fiat.

It appears so because @AbdulAlhazred left out any mention of the fictional context, on the part of either player or GM, for that particular exchange. Nobody has framed a scenario in which meaningful action in the fiction is taking place. They are just doing math.

 

[Campbell]

I think these examples do an excellent job of showing why mechanics designed to enable Story Now play do not translate well to games where players are free to move about the setting and poke at it without it poking back forcefully. The sort of power plays that get cited here largely do not happen because players have to deal with the current conflicts they face right now.

Also there's no real way to get out of that conflict loop. No matter how powerful you become in the setting meaningful threats are coming your way. You're the king now? Congratulations. Heavy is head that wears the crown. Rich? More money. More problems. No matter what scenes will be framed. Fortunes will rise and fall. I have had characters ascend to these sorts of heights even fairly early in games. Nothing is ruined.

 

[clearstream]

In terms of Traveller, it is still a classic type of game. Maybe you will interpret Streetwise to mean the player gets to choose, maybe not. Even if they choose, they don't have some sort of limitless power any more than GMs ever do. I mean, nobody is realistically suggesting PCs can just dice Streetwise for CR 1 Trillion (enough to build a pretty good Imperial Navy task force in Trillion Credit Squadron). Right? So, there's always a plausible limit. It could be that if the PC says "I want a handgun" and its a Law Level F planet they are not going to get what they want, period. On a law level 0 planet OTOH you might be able to just walk down the street and pick up a PGMP-13 without breaking a sweat or even rolling Streetwise.

There's always context, norms of play, social agreement, system, description, principles. Those things can be powerful. I felt that the concept of iteration explains it reasonably well.

It's not exactly like this, but in a sense we possess a resource of implicit and explicit rules that may be clearly bounded in some respects, and vaguely in others, and we apply those rules repeatedly to a game-state (fiction and system) so that each next state is dissimilar from the previous, but can be seen in the previous in light of the rules. Here thinking of written system rules, tacit or spoken social rules, and rules of language and cognition.

We being everyone at the table.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There's always context, norms of play, social agreement, system, description, principles. Those things can be powerful. I felt that the concept of iteration explains it reasonably well.


We being everyone at the table.

However you put it. I can also just point out that players in some games have authority which is potentially game-breaking in a technical sense, but they are no more likely to use it that way than the GM is in a classically run 5e game. In any case, as @Campbell just stated, its not like there's some sort of way that PCs can escape their needs! Its just like some supers game, there's always another nastier more evil super villain! Not even Superman gets to just coast.

 

[Ovinomancer]

A lot of the fun I derive from D&D is gamist in nature, and I see similar impulses in the rest of my group as well. For me though, XP and GP are of no real interest at all. What I enjoy about it is:

The puzzle of building an effective character, and of utilising my abilities strategically in play.

The challenge of whether the group can beat the encounter, and ultimately the adventure, through smart tactics/teamwork/character building.

The soft friendly competition of having an effective turn in combat, of showboating, of doing the most damage/getting the most kills/killing the big bad guy yourself. Think: Legolas and Gimli at Helm's Deep. This is very much based on 'feel' rather than necessarily tracking any particular numbers.

All of these were stronger in 4e but are still very much there in 5e.

So, 5e is a weird thing, where the players can be engaging in a gamist way, but the GM is fully in HCS sim. This is because the combats are so available to the GM putting their thumb on the scale, both in design and in play. There's no way for the players to ever know if the GM just didn't push the planned second wave to compensate for their bad rolls or a bad tactic, or vice versa -- no way to know if the second wave was always planned and not a reaction to the quick dispatch of the first.

And then there's the thing that some players might want the feel of the challenge, but not actually challenge. 5e does this very well, where failure is rarely actually on the line, but the concern it could come is often present.

Now, none of this is to suggest that a table can't lean hard into 5e gamism and drive it that way. You can, but the system isn't super helpful here because so much of it requires GM rulings to even operate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, I am in no way shape or form trying to imply that I've made an exhaustive list, far from it. D&D is just the easy example, most classic play is understood to be fairly gamist so it is relatively easy to use. Gamism could include things like an acting contest where the game centered on rewarding great moments of in-character play. It would simply have to focus on the "do this and there's a reward" element. 'Reward' can also be a bit loose, though I think once it starts to go outside of things that actually happen as part of the game play itself (IE like XP and GP do in D&D) then we're in danger of mislabeling another agenda as gamist. No doubt there are borderline cases too.

I dunno. I personally don't think to hit that win-and-reward cycle, it can be in or metagame rewards and still do the job. At the end of the day, its about the player getting that little zing, after all, for his success, and he can either be doing that because his character got a boost or because of the appreciation of his fellow players for his skill in play. The former is just a more reliable zing as long as people care about their characters at all (and even token players do to some extent).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's ironically somewhat in the vein of randomly generated hexes for some hexcrawl procedurals. What's in the next hex? The GM may roll and/or consult a chart. The world expands through the PC's actions across the map and within it.

I suspect this overlap comes from Story Now and OSR's shared resistance against the GM as author and railroading. Is it any wonder that there are so many designers who jump back and forth between the two camps with equal fascination?

Though I'd argue the obvious difference in this case is that that, effectively no one controls what's in that next hex in that situation (except whoever put the chart/table together, and if that's distant enough in time, "control" because an interesting term for it).

 

[FrogReaver]

I think these examples do an excellent job of showing why mechanics designed to enable Story Now play do not translate well to games where players are free to move about the setting and poke at it without it poking back forcefully. The sort of power plays that get cited here largely do not happen because players have to deal with the current conflicts they face right now.

Also there's no real way to get out of that conflict loop. No matter how powerful you become in the setting meaningful threats are coming your way. You're the king now? Congratulations. Heavy is head that wears the crown. Rich? More money. More problems. No matter what scenes will be framed. Fortunes will rise and fall. I have had characters ascend to these sorts of heights even fairly early in games. Nothing is ruined.

They certainly aren’t very disruptive in story now games even if achieved. But there’s still the basic genre, setting and background the players have entering this fictional world and if something too implausible happens in relation to those then that can detract from the game for certain players.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A lot of the fun I derive from D&D is gamist in nature, and I see similar impulses in the rest of my group as well. For me though, XP and GP are of no real interest at all. What I enjoy about it is:

The puzzle of building an effective character, and of utilising my abilities strategically in play.

The challenge of whether the group can beat the encounter, and ultimately the adventure, through smart tactics/teamwork/character building.

The soft friendly competition of having an effective turn in combat, of showboating, of doing the most damage/getting the most kills/killing the big bad guy yourself. Think: Legolas and Gimli at Helm's Deep. This is very much based on 'feel' rather than necessarily tracking any particular numbers.

All of these were stronger in 4e but are still very much there in 5e.

Yeah. The benefit to things like XP and gold is that enough people clearly have an urge toward advancement that things that give them that are going to be a reward cycle for a rather large number of people, and for most don't require a special amount of buy-in. But for others, the sort of things you refer to above can be much stronger (and that's even true for some who do appreciate advancement-related rewards).