The Battle of 5 Armies (er...editions)!

[wingsandsword]

If you are using "narrativist" in the Forge sense then I don't understand what you are saying - with its player empowerment at every point, 4e seems in its mechanics to be clearly the most narrativist-supporting version of D&D.

If you mean "narrativist" in some different sense, what is that?

I was unaware that "The Forge" invented and defined the term "narrativist", I heard the term used and thought that the definition was self-evident, perhaps I missed a memo somewhere. I meant "narrativist" in the sense that D&D is about producing a narrative, a coherent story. D&D to me is much more about producing a shared experience of a DM and a handful of players where each character has their own story and they interweave with each other and the DM to create a coherent whole. That's not about player "empowerment", it's about internal consistency and how the game helps depict a game world and maintain verisimilitude for the players, hence why I was seeing it related to simulationism. 4e has pretty openly eschewed verisimilitude for ease of play.

Oversimplified 1-1-1 diagonal movement, and internal logic and consistency on monster abilities thrown out in the name of rules simplification (like fire creatures dying instantly from falling in lava), or NPC's having stats based on their level and role instead of the equipment they are carrying (so that a town guard has the same AC whether he's wearing full plate or studded leather, except studded leather armor doesn't exist anymore apparently), are all symptoms of that. If that's narrativism, I don't want any part of it.

 

[Sphyre]

I wonder how many people voted for 3.x and resisted their change to 3.x based on it being new. Not that I think all people did, but I'm curious to see what the ratio would be, if any, as that would also give inference to how many people are saying they will stay with 3.x, and then will actually play 4e, which basically means they shouldn't have voted, thus making the poll skewed in results.

 

[Li Shenron]

Don't know if I will switch.

I've tried playing OD&D, 2e, 3.0 and 3.5 (but not 1e or C&C).

My favourite is 3.0.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I was unaware that "The Forge" invented and defined the term "narrativist", I heard the term used and thought that the definition was self-evident, perhaps I missed a memo somewhere. I meant "narrativist" in the sense that D&D is about producing a narrative, a coherent story. D&D to me is much more about producing a shared experience of a DM and a handful of players where each character has their own story and they interweave with each other and the DM to create a coherent whole. That's not about player "empowerment", it's about internal consistency and how the game helps depict a game world and maintain verisimilitude for the players, hence why I was seeing it related to simulationism. 4e has pretty openly eschewed verisimilitude for ease of play.

The way I've seen narrativist explained most often is as a style of gaming that concentrates on the story aspects more than any other.

So, a narrativist would place emphasis on "The group of adventures headed to the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun in search of the unholy artifact that they had been told rested there. They traveled across miles and miles of desert, braving sandstorms and heatstroke before they reached the entrance." The idea with this sort of game is that, the point of the game is to tell the story. The story isn't very much fun if it ends suddenly with the party dying of thirst in the middle of the desert due to bad rolling. None of the players or DM get to see what happens at the temple. So, since dying of thirst will not advance the story, it won't happen. It might be an interesting plot point to make the players worry about their water supply and maybe even give them a penalty to their attack rolls due to dehydration if they didn't bring enough water. But the point of the game is to continue the narrative, so outright death is not an option.

This is in contrast to simulationist thinking that says "I need a rule to figure out how much water is used each day of the journey as well as a rule for what the chance is that the party finds water along the way. If they run out of water, I need a rule that says exactly what the effect of dehydration is. If the PCs get too dehydrated, they should die because that is what would logically happen. If they all die then it means that the bad guys get to the unholy artifact first, use it to summon their god and destroy the whole world. No big deal, just start up a new campaign with new characters."

 

[The Little Raven]

Newfangled C&C gets represented but classic OD&D gets left out?

 

[pemerton]

I was unaware that "The Forge" invented and defined the term "narrativist", I heard the term used and thought that the definition was self-evident, perhaps I missed a memo somewhere.

I don't know that they invented it - it's just that it's the only canonical definition of the term I know.

I meant "narrativist" in the sense that D&D is about producing a narrative, a coherent story. D&D to me is much more about producing a shared experience of a DM and a handful of players where each character has their own story and they interweave with each other and the DM to create a coherent whole.

From this alone, it's hard to distinguish playstyles - eg both Runequest and HeroQuest might fit this description, but the first is ultra-simulationist and the second extremely non-simulationist in its mechanics.

4e has pretty openly eschewed verisimilitude for ease of play.

I don't think that's right. 4e has eschewed the attempt to use the mechanics to model ingame causality. The mechanics instead distribute narrative control. It's up to those exercising that control (sometimes GMs, sometimes players) to narrate a verisimilitudinous world.

That's not about player "empowerment", it's about internal consistency and how the game helps depict a game world and maintain verisimilitude for the players, hence why I was seeing it related to simulationism.

There are at least two ways to depict a verisimilitudinous gameworld. One approach (eg Runequest) has mechanics that model such a gameworld very consistently. Another (eg HeroQuest) has mechanics that distribute narrative control across the player and GM, and the participants in the game use that control to narrate a consitent gameworld. The second is what the Forge calls "narrativist". Hence my wondering whether you had the Forge sense, or some other sense, in mind - it turns out you had some other sense in mind.

The point about player empowerment is that if the players aren't empowered to narrate the story (eg via fortune-in-the-middle mechanics) then they are not really participating in the telling of the narrative, but rather having it dictated by a combination of (i) the mechanics and (ii) the world that the GM is creating and narrating.

I think that 4e, by empowering players to shape the gameworld (eg via the skill challenge mechanics) will actually increase the capacity of D&D to be a game of shared story telling. More story will actually emerge during play, while (consistently with the whole PoL approach) the role of the GM in pre-determining the story (via worldbuidling, control of action resolution, adjudicaiton of mechanical alignment etc) will decrease.

 

[Agamon]

I don't think anyone who has played C&C would hesitiate to say, yes, its D&D

A D&D-like game, sure. An edition of D&D, nope.

 

[Grimstaff]

Newfangled C&C gets represented but classic OD&D gets left out?

See option 1.

 

[Arnwyn]

If you're not moving to 4E, what edition do you prefer?

3.x

And what does that edition offer that (we assume) 4E will not?

For me:
1) Players. (My players refuse to buy and/or learn a new rules set.)
2) Time savings (don't need to convert my long-running campaign world; among other savings)
3) Immediate rules knowledge (I know 3.x. I don't know 4e. See also #2.)
4) Fluff to our taste.
5) Resource management to our taste.
6) A teeny-tiny bit more emphasis on the simulation side (teeny-tiny indeed) than on the gamist side. (A little eency-weency bit more balanced on that front.) I.e. a little less simplification.

I don't know enough about the rules to guess at anything else.

 

[hong]

I was unaware that "The Forge" invented and defined the term "narrativist",

They pretty much did, yes.