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Supposing D&D is gamist, what does that mean?
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<blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8644938" data-attributes="member: 6696971"><p>This is what you were responding to:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And this is what you said:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Then later you said the below:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So my takeaway from the above (among other things you've said) is that you believe the following to be true (and this is what I tried to convey and this is what I tried to demonstrate was not true in Torchbearer):</p><p></p><p>1) You believe that in GMing (any game it seems as you've compared 5e to AW to TB here...all extremely different games/systems) it is both true that "<em>there is a lot of need for GM fiat</em>" and "<em>there is a lot of space for GM fiat</em>."</p><p></p><p>2) I'm reading your use of "Turtles All the Way Down" here to be a claim that all GMing is a sequence of recursive justification (and related to (1) above, "for/within their deployment of GM fiat").</p><p></p><p>3) What makes a rule/system of rules binding cannot be fundamental to them (endogenous) because "opt-in" is fundamentally a choice by an outside participant. There cannot be things inherent to the ruleset/system itself that generates fidelity to them. You and [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] have gone round and round on this and I agree with him. There are plenty of reasons native/inherent to a system/rules from which a disposition toward fidelity to them would be derived directly from the system's/rules' nature.</p><p></p><p>4) You then cite Torchbearer 2 GMing (Twist or Condition in particular - something that is ubiquitous in play) as (what appears to me by inference) as a bog standard exemplar of (1) and (2) above.</p><p></p><p></p><p>If I've got you wrong on any of (1) - (4) above, I would love to be corrected. I have no problem if I've drawn an incorrect inference in the course of this thread, but that looks to me like your position.</p><p></p><p>So its not a strawman. Its my brain soup being poured through the sieve of this thread and these exchanges in particular and that is what comes out of brain soup through sieve.</p><p></p><p>So, again, I disagree strongly with all of (1) through (4). That was the point of my post was to show the following:</p><p></p><p>* There is neither the need for much in the way of GM fiat nor the space for it in all games. Yes, it is a fair bet that play of any system over a long enough interval is going to generate exception-based, minority-in-the-extreme moments where a GM will have to make a decision that goes outside of the encoded instruction and/or laid-down architecture of the ruleset. However, if the system is robust, on those rare occasions that this happens, the principles, instructive constraints, clear architecture, evinced best practices, and past precedence will generate a tight and tidy framework for those hyper-rare, exception-based decisions. As for the other 99+ % of play, the GM will just follow (assuming they're inherent to the system) the clear and transparent procedures and make principally informed and constrained moves when its their responsibility to introduce content (whatever that content might be) and resolve gamestate collisions.</p><p></p><p>Force is very separate from fiat. Force is the willful subordination of system's input and/or other participant input in favor of the GM's desired input. There are tons of games that neither feature nor require (and some that fundamentally forbid) Force. There are some games that feature Force or require Force to make the thing work.</p><p></p><p>Desirability when it comes to Fiat or Force doesn't weigh into their relationship to "feature", "require" or "forbid." Desirability is for the participants at the table to decide/resolve (when it comes to Force in particular, hopefully before play so that players are aware of their role, the system's role, and the GM's role in the play to come).</p><p></p><p>* Fidelity to a system/rules might be because some kind of intersection of (a) they've consistently proven themselves "to work" (they reliably achieve the agenda of play), (b) the agenda of play is inherently enjoyable to the participant(s), (c) the cognitive space inhabited by the participant(s), which the ruleset inherently delivers, is desirable (and, in this space, you can bin several discrete and intersecting features of a desirable cognitive space when running a game) and (d) the features and attendant play experience of an alternative system/ruleset that doesn't deliver some configuration of (a) - (c) is an ever-present incentive to appreciate what you're playing and generate that fidelity.</p><p></p><p>* GMing is not inherently just a sequence of recursive justification. It might be, but it isn't inherently (here is where system comes in). GMing might be a matrix of tightly defined and constrained set of procedures + tightly defined and highly functional principles/best practices which winnow a GM's decision-space from a small subset of "(this) game-functional moves" to a tiny suite (perhaps as small as a few) of those "(this) game-functional moves" toward making the <em>most system-optimal, conscientious move possible in this moment of play.</em></p><p></p><p>* GMing Torchbearer is a perfect example of all of the above and the play-excerpt that I fleshed out above (including breaking down the navigation of the matrix of my decision-space which governed my move) illustrates that.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This arrangement of words tells me that we're talking at cross-purposes and we need to resolve that (because it feels disconnected to both what I wrote above that you responded to and any/all of my other posts in this thread).</p><p></p><p>This sentence entails a premise that I don't agree with (and I addressed that above); "<strong>can accept</strong> constraints." Again, this assumes that system constraints are fundamentally "opt-in"...that the nature of what makes rules binding is never inherent to the system. Its always "opt-in" and its only the "opt-in" that is relevant (and not the characteristics of the system/rules that interact with the human operating system).</p><p></p><p>So, again, I don't agree with that premise.</p><p></p><p>And I've never said (nor would I ever) that a 5e GM cannot accept constraints. So I don't need to rebut that. 5e has a particular orientation toward GM authority/role and intrinsic, quite zoomed-out guidance and principles for the GM:</p><p></p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">help the players have a good time</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">have fun yourself</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">be consistent in your rulings and convey consistency with your world, npcs, plots, adventures</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rules aren't in charge of the fun, you are with your inventing, adventure/story writing, storytelling, improvising, acting, and refereeing</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">invent compelling plots and make the world and adventure flow around the adventurers so they feel they're part of a fantastic story and world</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">invest prep time outside of the game to exercise your creativity to invent compelling plots, create new NPCs, craft encounters, and think of clever ways to foreshadow story events yet to come.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">know the rules so you make good rulings</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">know your players so you can choose a style of play and a flavor of fantasy that keeps them interested, immersed in the world you've created, tailoring adventures to their preferences as much as possible so they can do awesome things</li> </ul><p></p><p>Now, in terms of winnowing a GMs decision-space, that + the action resolution mechanics/procedures still leaves a relatively huge (again, contrast with Torchbearer) subset of possible decisions for a GM to choose from. This + the GM's role in action resolution is fundamentally why 5e is an enormously GM-directed game. And if you look at the constituent parts and the accretion of all of the above, it should be plain to see that 5e is fundamentally a GM-directed, High Concept Simulation game that features tailored Power Fantasy. It is intentfully designed with that in mind and it achieved that goal.</p><p></p><p>If a GM wants to smuggle in and try to synthesize extra-5e (constraining and informing) principles and widgets...have at it. They can absolutely research them, generate them...accept them.</p><p></p><p>[HR][/HR]</p><p></p><p>That is a lot of words. Hopefully we're on the same page now and/or hopefully you'll correct me if I've got you wrong on anything in the (1) - (4) at the top (I don't believe that I do...and if I do then we have a more fundamental communication breakdown that we'll need to resolve because I'm not sure what other conclusions I could draw based on what you've said in this thread).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Manbearcat, post: 8644938, member: 6696971"] This is what you were responding to: And this is what you said: Then later you said the below: So my takeaway from the above (among other things you've said) is that you believe the following to be true (and this is what I tried to convey and this is what I tried to demonstrate was not true in Torchbearer): 1) You believe that in GMing (any game it seems as you've compared 5e to AW to TB here...all extremely different games/systems) it is both true that "[I]there is a lot of need for GM fiat[/I]" and "[I]there is a lot of space for GM fiat[/I]." 2) I'm reading your use of "Turtles All the Way Down" here to be a claim that all GMing is a sequence of recursive justification (and related to (1) above, "for/within their deployment of GM fiat"). 3) What makes a rule/system of rules binding cannot be fundamental to them (endogenous) because "opt-in" is fundamentally a choice by an outside participant. There cannot be things inherent to the ruleset/system itself that generates fidelity to them. You and [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] have gone round and round on this and I agree with him. There are plenty of reasons native/inherent to a system/rules from which a disposition toward fidelity to them would be derived directly from the system's/rules' nature. 4) You then cite Torchbearer 2 GMing (Twist or Condition in particular - something that is ubiquitous in play) as (what appears to me by inference) as a bog standard exemplar of (1) and (2) above. If I've got you wrong on any of (1) - (4) above, I would love to be corrected. I have no problem if I've drawn an incorrect inference in the course of this thread, but that looks to me like your position. So its not a strawman. Its my brain soup being poured through the sieve of this thread and these exchanges in particular and that is what comes out of brain soup through sieve. So, again, I disagree strongly with all of (1) through (4). That was the point of my post was to show the following: * There is neither the need for much in the way of GM fiat nor the space for it in all games. Yes, it is a fair bet that play of any system over a long enough interval is going to generate exception-based, minority-in-the-extreme moments where a GM will have to make a decision that goes outside of the encoded instruction and/or laid-down architecture of the ruleset. However, if the system is robust, on those rare occasions that this happens, the principles, instructive constraints, clear architecture, evinced best practices, and past precedence will generate a tight and tidy framework for those hyper-rare, exception-based decisions. As for the other 99+ % of play, the GM will just follow (assuming they're inherent to the system) the clear and transparent procedures and make principally informed and constrained moves when its their responsibility to introduce content (whatever that content might be) and resolve gamestate collisions. Force is very separate from fiat. Force is the willful subordination of system's input and/or other participant input in favor of the GM's desired input. There are tons of games that neither feature nor require (and some that fundamentally forbid) Force. There are some games that feature Force or require Force to make the thing work. Desirability when it comes to Fiat or Force doesn't weigh into their relationship to "feature", "require" or "forbid." Desirability is for the participants at the table to decide/resolve (when it comes to Force in particular, hopefully before play so that players are aware of their role, the system's role, and the GM's role in the play to come). * Fidelity to a system/rules might be because some kind of intersection of (a) they've consistently proven themselves "to work" (they reliably achieve the agenda of play), (b) the agenda of play is inherently enjoyable to the participant(s), (c) the cognitive space inhabited by the participant(s), which the ruleset inherently delivers, is desirable (and, in this space, you can bin several discrete and intersecting features of a desirable cognitive space when running a game) and (d) the features and attendant play experience of an alternative system/ruleset that doesn't deliver some configuration of (a) - (c) is an ever-present incentive to appreciate what you're playing and generate that fidelity. * GMing is not inherently just a sequence of recursive justification. It might be, but it isn't inherently (here is where system comes in). GMing might be a matrix of tightly defined and constrained set of procedures + tightly defined and highly functional principles/best practices which winnow a GM's decision-space from a small subset of "(this) game-functional moves" to a tiny suite (perhaps as small as a few) of those "(this) game-functional moves" toward making the [I]most system-optimal, conscientious move possible in this moment of play.[/I] * GMing Torchbearer is a perfect example of all of the above and the play-excerpt that I fleshed out above (including breaking down the navigation of the matrix of my decision-space which governed my move) illustrates that. [HR][/HR] This arrangement of words tells me that we're talking at cross-purposes and we need to resolve that (because it feels disconnected to both what I wrote above that you responded to and any/all of my other posts in this thread). This sentence entails a premise that I don't agree with (and I addressed that above); "[B]can accept[/B] constraints." Again, this assumes that system constraints are fundamentally "opt-in"...that the nature of what makes rules binding is never inherent to the system. Its always "opt-in" and its only the "opt-in" that is relevant (and not the characteristics of the system/rules that interact with the human operating system). So, again, I don't agree with that premise. And I've never said (nor would I ever) that a 5e GM cannot accept constraints. So I don't need to rebut that. 5e has a particular orientation toward GM authority/role and intrinsic, quite zoomed-out guidance and principles for the GM: [LIST] [*]help the players have a good time [*]have fun yourself [*]be consistent in your rulings and convey consistency with your world, npcs, plots, adventures [*]the rules aren't in charge of the fun, you are with your inventing, adventure/story writing, storytelling, improvising, acting, and refereeing [*]invent compelling plots and make the world and adventure flow around the adventurers so they feel they're part of a fantastic story and world [*]invest prep time outside of the game to exercise your creativity to invent compelling plots, create new NPCs, craft encounters, and think of clever ways to foreshadow story events yet to come. [*]know the rules so you make good rulings [*]know your players so you can choose a style of play and a flavor of fantasy that keeps them interested, immersed in the world you've created, tailoring adventures to their preferences as much as possible so they can do awesome things [/LIST] Now, in terms of winnowing a GMs decision-space, that + the action resolution mechanics/procedures still leaves a relatively huge (again, contrast with Torchbearer) subset of possible decisions for a GM to choose from. This + the GM's role in action resolution is fundamentally why 5e is an enormously GM-directed game. And if you look at the constituent parts and the accretion of all of the above, it should be plain to see that 5e is fundamentally a GM-directed, High Concept Simulation game that features tailored Power Fantasy. It is intentfully designed with that in mind and it achieved that goal. If a GM wants to smuggle in and try to synthesize extra-5e (constraining and informing) principles and widgets...have at it. They can absolutely research them, generate them...accept them. [HR][/HR] That is a lot of words. Hopefully we're on the same page now and/or hopefully you'll correct me if I've got you wrong on anything in the (1) - (4) at the top (I don't believe that I do...and if I do then we have a more fundamental communication breakdown that we'll need to resolve because I'm not sure what other conclusions I could draw based on what you've said in this thread). [/QUOTE]
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