What's the object of the game?

[T. Foster]

The "difficult-but-possible" principle is the tricky part. To a degree, one can depend on this being achieved if the encounters are matched to the party's level. On the other hand, however, there is a lot that depends on the judgment of the DM. A DM can easily make things too hard (without meaning to) simply by allowing the PCs too not enough time to rest up, not enough opportunity to acquire necessary items, giving not enough information, etc.--all without posing them against something of a very high CR. Likewise, it is easy for a DM to make things too easy.

But this analysis ignores the fact that the DM is not just a referee/observer/facilitator/computer-substitute, but also an active player/participant in the game, and that achieving that 'difficult but possible' balance is the way that the DM 'plays' the game. Players' enjoyment of the game (from a Gamist approach, which IMO is the most appropriate and satisfying approach to D&D -- see Henry's Gygax quote above) comes from defeating the DM's challenges through skill and luck. The DM's enjoyment of the game comes from creating those challenges for the players, and to suggest that this can or should be reduced to some sort of fixed formula is to marginalize the DM's role as active participant in the game.

Another thing to keep in mind is that just because the campaign as a whole is balanced to be 'difficult but possible' by no means suggests every single encounter need be so-balanced. Part of good game-play on the players' behalf is to recognize appropriate challenges -- to avoid encounters that are too tough, either permanently or until better equipped/prepared, and to not be distracted and waste time and resources on encounters that are too easy -- and part of good game play on the DM's behalf is to force such decisions on the players. A party of players who assumes that every single encounter they face is going to be 'difficult but possible' is not playing the game well, and will almost certainly pay with their characters' lives (assuming both players and DM are operating under a Gamist approach, of course).

 

[S'mon]

I agree with T.Foster. Also, it's almost inevitable under the Gamist approach that there WILL be failure - PCs will lose fights, PCs will die, it may happen that there's a TPK, and the GM may be sad but he'll let it happen, he won't intervene to cheat players of their defeat.

If the GM intervenes (eg to prevent TPK) because "The Heroes Don't Die", that's Simulationist. If he intervenes "To Tell A Better Story", that's Narrativist. Both are perfectly valid forms of roleplay IMO, I just think D&D is constructed for and best suited to a pretty pure Gamist approach.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

Geez...it took 19 posts before someone said "kill things and take their stuff"????

Shame on us. Shame on us all.

I perfer the Jack Chick method of playing D&D, you know have the dm kill off a PC tell him he is dead and then make a 8 level cleric a "priest" that can cast spells. yea thats it... (Still waiting on the Hot Satanist Goth DM)

Failing that its about fun, and bad puns at my games.

Oh and as one of my player says after every monster drops.
"I loot the body"

 

[Barak]

Meet hot girls, steal snacks from the other players, and get my PC's grubby little hands on a Vorpal Sword.

And if I have fun at the same time, it's an added bonus!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

...Both are perfectly valid forms of roleplay IMO, I just think D&D is constructed for and best suited to a pretty pure Gamist approach.

I see it slightly differently. The Gamist is most likely going to want rules to specifically cover the situations possible within the game, which includes defeat, and those rules are provided in clear terms. On the other hand, the designers knew that the Simulationist and the Narrativist would likely change or over-rule a defeat that would interfere with the story-line, and that how they would do so will vary from GM to GM, thus they added a few paragraphs in the beginning of the DMG regarding "DM's Fiat" and left it at that.

Personally, I mix-and-match, although I'd say I favor Narrativist the least (heck, my current campaign has the only instance of "narration" I've ever used, now that I think of it). Allow me to explain.

In the campaign, I don't want the PCs to die over minor encounters, so these combats are often Simulationist (just don't tell my players, they think it's Gamist, as challenges are more a challenge by tactics than by high-level opponents, and thus victory is more about tactical decisions than die rolling and number crunching). Through out the rest (skill checks, problem solving, clue hunting, etc.), it's almost exclusively Gamist, although I'll shift to Simulationist if the PCs come up with a GREAT idea and I, as the GM, would like to see them pull it off. On the other hand, PCs eventually have "key encounters", being NPCS or creatures that are intended to be focal points of the tale. This could be the lieutenant of the adventure's BBEG, or the monster-guardian of an item required by the PCs, an enraged mob, the BBEG of the campaign itself, or other such role. These combats are played Gamist, as PC death in such enounters would be viewed as a major event or even a tragedy rather than having died against something unimportant and trivial.

On the flip-side, there is one character with a "mystery background", being that the character entered game play as a fully written character with no history or name, and is regaining fragments of her memory throughout the game. These history sessions (the "piece-meal prequal" as we call it) are distinctly narrative, since it's clearly obvious that she must have survived by virtue of still being alive. But this is about the extent of my liking of Narrativist GMing style; It serves the plot in those instances, but I don't think I could play the game (i.e., a full campaign) that way myself. At the same time, others have expressed interest in actually playing during the same era, so full-development of the setting is underway, and these games will be in the Gamist/Simulationist hybrid style I describe above since they will be playing characters that are either killed or die of old age long before the start of the original campaign and thus the risks within the game will be "standard" for our group.

Side Note: I think that's what I don't like about the Star Wars prequals... We know what's going to happen, and thus the only anticipation there really is to the movies is the idea of how it happened, which (for me) feels like half a movie and makes it harder to overlook inconsistancies and cheese even though the original trilogy had just about the same amount.