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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8621982" data-attributes="member: 16814">No.  Again, narrativism is very badly wrong, here, but in general the concepts get less useful when applied to individual mechanics because the Gamist/Simulationst/Narrativist model is about the agenda of the game -- what is the game, as a whole, trying to do.  They're all games, RPGs are, so every single one of the has bits that are about playing a game.To address your Gamist, this is defined in terms of not being simulationist -- it's a negative space, not a positive one.  But, again, it's meant to apply to the overall creative agenda -- gamist agenda is about the it being a game, and approached and played from that concept space.  You can absolutely play D&D from a gamist agenda, in that you're going to apply the rules as a game first and engage with skilled play to defeat the game.  Early D&D was clearly an outgrowth of this agenda, and B/X is probably the purest version of it in any D&D edition.  Here, the resolution system has to be clear and unchanging, otherwise the game becomes incoherent.Simulationist means that the game is focused on an internal causality -- it's meant to present a world or concept to be explored and experienced.  These games focus on consistency of presentation of the world.  D&D clearly embraces this approach as well, but it does so both with the "sandbox" approach where the world is entirely independent of PCs and also the "big plot" games where the exploration is of a prepared plotline.  Effectively, to quote Ron Edwards, "Internal cause is king."  The system is again paramount here because the system is the causality created.  That said, the placement of the GM over the rules is doing good work here because the GM can be the system in simulationist games. Narrativism has nothing to do with narration or choosing a good story. Narrativism is hard to articulate because it bumps into terms people routines ascribe in vague and overbroad ways, but it's not really a hard concept.  Once you get it, it's blindingly obvious what it's about.  Simply put, it's about centering the PCs are the focus of play, having the PCs establish a premise to be explored, and then exploring that premise through play. It's critical that nothing be established prior to play, because everything is to be established in play.  The Ron Edwards essay on narrativism is subtitled "Story Now" not because it's about creating story -- Edwards uses story to mean what happens during play -- but because it's entirely focused on the now.  We don't know what happens next, or how the premise will change, or even how the characters will change because we're playing to find that out right now.  This doesn't mean we're seeing if how the players overcome a prepared challenge the GM has -- it's not about uncertainty of exact detail.  It's about only focusing play on what is happening right this moment, and then using that to feed into what happens in the next moment.  You cannot predict how a Narrativst game will go because that's the point of the agenda -- to find out.  System in Narrativist play is immutable like it is in Gamist play -- it's very important to have a system that isn't available to either side to put their thumb on the scale in any way.  All inputs have to be clear and resolution clear so that we all have to react (players and GM) equally to the outcomes.These are overall agendas, not specific moments.  D&D is usually going to be gamist or simulationist as it plays, but most often it toggles and you can see this because the majority of posts about issues with D&D are issues attributable directly to the conflicts between gamist and simulationist play.  D&D doesn't even pay scant tribute to narrativist play, with the clear exception of 4e, which functioned best as a narrativist game but never actually told anyone this.  If you didn't already grok narrativist play, and didn't see it in 4e, you weren't going to really notice it overmuch.  As such, it often reverted to gamist play most often and the majority of complaints you see about it all revolve around some offense to internal causality.</blockquote>

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