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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6096334" data-attributes="member: 4937">But this is precisely antagonism.   Gamism is defined as: "Gamist refers to decisions based on satisfying clear predefined goal conditions in the face of adversity: in other words, on the desire to win."  In its pure form in a D&D context, this expresses itself as game which has the DM on one side and the PC's on the other.   And seriously, how many times as Hussar openly expressed that he had a right to be 'grumpy', 'shirty', 'angry', or 'indignant' by the DM not following the rules as he saw them?   Isn't he telling us stories about how that has happened at his table?  If that isn't antagonism, what is it?That his table has an almost purist for game stance itself isn't surprising.  What is surprising is finding in a gamist context this notion Hussar is advocating for of the players being able to signal to the DM that the players are allowed to skip a particular challenge.  What he's talking about isn't a broad sandboxy approach in which the players set the goals (though it may include that to some measure), but rather being able to determine the actual events of play.  It seems like Hussar is saying, "If PC's only want to play out combat encounters, then everything else should be handwaved and we should only jump from important combat encounter to combat encounter."  I've never encountered it.   I've seen antagonism.   I've had gamist players.  I've never had anyone assert that a player had the right to boil a game down to a series of tactical combat encounters and handwave everything else.   I guess the closest I have seen to this is games that were played on a pure hack and slash level, and they usually involved old school dungeon crawling with zero deviation from that model.   That is to say, they structured the game universe in such a way that it actually only had the elements of play they were intereted in.   This however is along the lines of, "It's ok if you have towns and wildernesses, just so long as you understand that isn't where the game takes place."   They are accepting a game universe that has elements of play they aren't interested in, but dealing with it (or not, see Hussar's frustration) by giving players a veto over whether or not those elements of play may actually interact with the character.   That is novel to say the least, and I can't help but think that it is never going to run smoothly. The 'rules' that govern encounter building are exceptionally loose and we would be better off describing them as guidelines, and really only occur in certain systems.  In any event, they don't result in anything like an equal "medium of struggle".   The assumption here, unspoken at the table, is that the DM is going to pretend to try to win, but not really.  Personally, I find RPGs wholly unsuited both as a DM and a player to being pure gamist constructs.  Too much bias is involved in adjudicating them, whether intentional or unintentional, to make an RPG tournament really interesting as a pure contest of skill.   I don't think you could ever rate a player of D&D in the way you could rate a play of Chess or Call of Duty or Tennis.None of that seems particularly distinguishable from narrating the ensuing debacle.  I can presume that being caught red handed with a bloody knife in the middle of a masquerade ball is going to have a level of interest to it, and I of course do advocate and prefer a mere literary or evocative approach to game master narration of outcome to facillitate player engagement.To me, this depends on the details of the game universe I've set up.  All those things may well occur and probably something will occur.   The question is, "Does the player get to narrate to me how he escapes a scene or what the NPC may legitimately demand?"  That is to say, how much control does the player get over what the DM may narrate as an outcome?   The ability to control what the DM may narrate is really what separates simulation from narrativism.   But even saying that, since we've already established that the table has a purist for game approach, isn't discussing the relevance sort of narrativism already a sign of incoherence?Not as I see it.  Hussar has taken a further stance.  In the situation you describe, he can signal to the player that he doesn't really want to play out the whole escape from prison element, and the DM is expected to cut scene forward to a point at which the player is no longer in prison with the assumption that the escape has now successfully occurred.  Under that structure, challenge is only possible when the player agrees to it.  There is this game that is supposed to pit the DM versus the player, only the player gets 'get out of jail/desert/intrigue free cards' that invalidate that contest.From what you've described, I don't find any real difference between how Burning Wheel is describing play and how I play out a game.   And in any event, you don't notice some incoherence in first asserting "He seems to be advocating a form of gamism." and then stating to the contrary that "Hussar is looking for a game run in something like the way that the Burning Wheel books talk about."  Aren't those two radically different things?</blockquote>

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