Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6587681" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes - but he's also the guy who was writing essays saying that people should run (and design) games in ways that suit what they want. He characterises narrativism and gamism as "opposed poles of a magnet".I'm not sure they're as opposed as Edwards thinks they are, but his real point is that simulationism is the odd one out. In gamism the fiction is for something: an arena for confronting and overcoming challenges (White Plume Mountain, Tomb of Horrors, Hidden Shine remain some of the quintessential D&D examples). In narrativism the fiction is for something: it provides the elements with which, or against which, the players express their PCs' dramatic needs, and from which the resolutions to those dramatic needs are constructed.In the community for which Edwards was predominantly writing (ie the "indie" community of the late 90/early 2000s), the puzzle of simulationism is that the fiction is not for anything. That's why Edwards called his essay on simulationism "the right to dream" - because dreaming is the spontaneous creation of fiction that is not for anything.Part of the Forge objection to illusionism is that it is simulationism masquerading as something else: the GM pretends to the players that they overcame a challenge, but in fact it was all determined by the GM's fudging of the dice rolls; or the GM pretends to the players that they made choices that expressed the dramatic needs of their PCs and thereby determined fictional consequences, but in fact it was all determined by the GM's manipulation of the backstory.This is also why Edwards calls consenusal "illusionism" participationism: there is no illusion, and the players willingly participate in the experience of the GM's dream. Of well-known systems I think that Call of Cthulhu is the clearest example of this: no one pretends, in standard CoC play, that the choices of the players make a meaningful difference to overcoming challenges or to resolving dramatic needs. The players are experiencing the GM's narration of a cosmic horror story in which their PCs are caught up, but are not protagonists (protagonism is largely antithetical to the aesthetic aspirations of cosmic horror).I don't know if you've read <a href="https://plus.google.com/+lukecrane/posts/Q8qRhCw7az5" target="_blank">Luke Crane talking about playing Moldvay Basic</a>. This is a celebration, by an author most often associated with narrative RPG design (Burning Wheel) and credited (by Jonathan Tweet among others) as a pioneer in articulating "fail forward" as a technique, of hard-failing, PC-death gamist play. Most telling, in the context of illusionism discussions, is his comment about fudging:I've learned that it's a hard game to run. Not because of prep or rules mastery, but because of the role of the GM as impartial conveyer of really bad news. Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless. I've a deeper understanding why fudging dice is the worst rule ever proposed. The rules indicate fudging with a wink and a nudge, "Don't let a bad die roll ruin a good game." Seems like good advice, but to them I say, "Don't put bad die rolls in your game." To expand on the point: The players' sense of accomplishment is enormous. They went through hell and death to survive long enough to level. They have their own stories about how certain scenarios played out. They developed their own clever strategems to solve the puzzles and defeat the opposition. If I fudge a die, I take that all away. Every bit of it. Suddenly, the game becomes my story about what I want to happen. The players, rather than being smart and determined and lucky, are pandering to my sense of drama—to what I think the story should be. So this wink and nudge that encourages GMs to fudge is the greatest flaw of the text.Luke Crane clearly gets narrativism (evidence: Burning Wheel). He clearly gets gamism (evidence: the passage I just quoted). Does he get simulationism? Dunno, but I'm not sure he's on board with the subordination of player agency that simulationism requires (because once there's player agency, we're not just dreaming - the players are using their agency to do something).It's simulationism which is the odd one out, from the Forge perspective.The point is that there is no single, clear definition of balance.You can see this manifested concretely in game design. In 4e, having a weakness to a certain sort of attack (say, fire vulnerability) is a penalty, and so in PC build needs to be traded off against other benefits. (Much of the dispute over the vampire class is whether the tradeoffs around regen, radiant vulnerability, healing surge cap, etc are balanced.)In Burning Wheel, that sort of weakness is something you have to pay for at PC build, because it opens up a point of leverage for your PC in relation to the fictional situation that you would not otherwise enjoy.In Marvel Heroic RP, the characters with smaller dice (hence weaker) are more likely to roll 1s. A 1 gives the player a "plot point" (fate point) and the GM a bonus die in the "doom pool" (which is the GM's resource pool). And the GM is likely to use the dice in the doom pool to try and confront the heavier hitters in the party.Different resolution systems, connected to different approaches to the goals of play, mean that considerations of balance or imbalance are very different in these games.Then I think you've misread. Read Luke Crane's take on Moldvay Basic. That is the quintessential Forge outlook. From the Forge point of view, Gygaxian "skilled play" D&D is as sensible and comprehensible as some avant-garde game designed by Paul Czege or Vincent Baker. It's the 90s-style "storytelling" play associated with 2nd ed AD&D (though, as per my post upthread, found as early as 1982 in a prominent commentary on the game) and with White Wolf that is the problem case.The contemporary expression of that would be the Adventure Path - neither gamist (because the players have to win for the thing to progress) nor narrativist (because the story is pre-authored) but wanting to maintain some sort of illusion of player agency.That may be wise, but again I think you have mis-identified the "them": it is simulationism, not gamism.I'm not sure who you think is being defined as wrong.On balance in gamism, <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">Edwards says</a>: 1. Parity of starting point, with free rein given to differing degrees of improvement after that. Basically, this means that "we all start equal" but after that, anything goes, and if A gets better than B, then that's fine. 2. The relative Effectiveness of different categories of strategy: magic vs. physical combat, for instance, or pumping more investment into quickness rather than endurance. In this sense, "balance" means that any strategy is at least potentially effective, and "unbalanced" means numerically broken. 3. Related to #2, a team that is not equipped for the expected range of potential dangers is sometimes called unbalanced. 4. In direct contrast to #1, "balance" can also mean that everyone is subject to the same vagaries of fate (Fortune). That is, play is "balanced" if everyone has a chance to save against the Killer Death Trap. Or it's balanced because we all rolled 3d6 for Strength, regardless of what everyone individually ended up with. (Tunnels & Trolls is all about this kind of play.) 5. The resistance of a game to deliberate Breaking.Who is being said to be "wrong by definition"? If we look at 4e, for instance, it aims at (2) and (5), to the extent that it involves (1) this is seen as an unintended and perhaps unfortunate side effect (eg people emphasise that the power gaps that open up in 4e are generally less than in 3E), supports (3) (the "team synergy" for which 4e is widely lauded) and doesn't really care about (4).Contrast classic D&D, in which (4) is generally true, likewise (3) (though thieves are perhaps optional), (1) is true (and is closely linked to (4), because how well you progress can depend heavily on the vagaries of fortune, including magic item acquisition) but (2) is definitely absent (at low levels physical trumps magic, and from around level 5 and up magic trumps physical) and (5) is not very robust (it's not that hard to deliberately break AD&D, especially post-UA).And now compare 3E. (5) is right out (the game is very easy to deliberately break). (4) also tends to be missing above low levels, because some players get resources (via their PCs) that let them regulate their exposure to the vagaries of fortunes.  Neither (2) nor (3) is present: the most mechanically effective team is not a "balanced" one but an all cleric/druid one, perhaps with a back-up wizard; and martial and magical strategies are not generally equally effective.The only real way in which 3E is balanced, from the gamist point of view, is (1): everyone has all the options in front of him/her and so has equal opportunity of PC build. Hence the importance of system mastery to gamist 3E play.The upshot: I'm not sure what your objection is to this discussion of balance, as it seems to me to give a fairly robust set of concepts for understanding the different ways in which 4e, classic D&D and 3E are balanced or unbalanced.</blockquote>

Verification