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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 8649595" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Here is what I would say the shorthand litmus test for “is this actually Gamism(?)” would be:Play in which the demand for guts, guile, strategy, and tactics in the face of real risk is consistently featured and level of skill employed is easily contrastable.So you have:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Demand (it’s not opt-in/out)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Suite of traits (GGST acronym)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Real risk (can’t be pretension)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Consistently featured (in the challenge segment )</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Contrastable skill (discernible hierarchy)</li> </ul>If that stuff isn’t present as a gamestate and experience through line for the challenge segment of play (for both GM and players), then one or more of the features above are violated.Torchbearer is the ultimate Gamist engine because the through line of Gamism is literally “every moment” (because all of phases interact with each other and every decision significantly interacts with future gamestates) and pedal to the floor.“Adventuring Day D&D” aspires to this, but it can often fall short because of one or more component parts:* There isn’t real risk (it’s pretension to risk or “an accepted dud” or the GM takes their foot off the gas or upthrottles to control pacing/story so the players aren’t controlling the gamestate).* Demand isn’t there because individual players can opt-out by “I’m just roleplaying (a doof, a lovable loser, a provocateur, an abstained from conflict) my character” in such a way that isn’t rules/skilled play prescriptive (creating a confound for the arena of “a competitive crucible that churns out skillfulness”).Another problem any form of D&D can suffer from is a different form of “no real risk” and/or “contrastable skill.” That is because if any of the following are in play, this will hurt Gamism:* Game engine is poor at creating challenges.* Game engine is poor at making challenges “reverberate.”* The GM is poor at challenging.* The GM is unwilling to challenge.This is why I called out 5e’s Social Interaction rules as potentially good for Gamism. Everyone has played Pictionary and/or Charades. It’s not a terribly high bar to run that sufficiently well to contrast skill in the participants.Now the GM has to impose real risk and do so consistently (the fallout for “failure to woo/de-escalate needs to be sufficiently beefy”). If they fail that then <buzzer> on Gamism.</blockquote>

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