D&D is not a world simulator

[Koo Rehtorb]

The more focused the ruleset is the better the game tends to be, in my experience. Rulesets that make wild promises that you can do absolutely anything you want tend not to do anything very well.

[dascarletm]

A game about being a dentist could be fun...

I just wanted to quote this.

"Roll a d100 to see what silly thing the patient says after waking up from the wisdom teeth removal."
"You're running low on novocaine, what do you do?"
"Roll your cleaning check against their plaque build up... oh and make sure to add in your bonus from the masterwork dental pick."
"The mouth mirror is fogging! Quick, roll to see if you can de-fog it!"
"Roll to see if you understand what the patient is saying with their mouth full of your hands." ... "Uh-oh you think he's saying something inappropriate."
"Looks like Betsy is paying with pennies again! Your receptionist is getting upset."
"Mr. Jenkins doesn't seem to be brushing twice a day... what do you do?"
"The root canal was a success, good job guys! You get 5,000 XP!"

[Segev]

Feel free to slam me some more for whatever character faults you imagine I have.

Okay!

Your attack bonus and saves are low for your level, and your WBL is poorly spent!

[dascarletm]

Okay!

Your attack bonus and saves are low for your level, and your WBL is poorly spent!

I think you may have miscalculated how many skill-points you have. By my math you should have 8 unspent points... oh and also you are missing a feat... and your HP is kind of low... did you remember to level-up last session?

[ComradeBear]

The goalposts are exactly where they've always been. Going through the motions and playing out a very very limited set of choices available isn't really roleplaying.

There's a word for acting out a role that's handed to you -- it's called acting.

According to...?

There are many formal definitions of roleplaying and of rpgs, and none of them state that fewer options makes a roleplay less roleplay-ish. In fact, by this logic Freeform RP is the God-king of Roleplaying because it has no restrictions.

The more a game falls under "you will assume this assigned role and follow it through this predetermined story", the less it is really an RPG. Responsiveness to player input and openness of character design are key features. This is true whether it's a video game or a tabletop game. No one mistakes a "choose your own adventure" book for an RPG, and yet do the same thing on a computer, and it's sold as a "CPRG".

Actually, a choose-your-own-adventure novel DOES exist on computers as "games." They are called Visual Novels.

Notice how that's a different thing than CRPGs because people who are big enough nerds to study game design more intensely than either of us have, notice that there is a qualitative difference between the two.

CRPGs often have features of character creation, levelling and other character development, a central conflict, and turn-based combat.

Those are things VNs and CYOA novels don't have. Hence the distinction. This isn't groundbreaking stuff.

Any impression you have of elitism is ENTIRELY your inference.

Saying a thing is an elitist thing to say doesn't make a person elitist anymore than pointing something out to a person makes that person blind.

On that note, I'm not going to derail the thread further on this topic. Feel free to slam me some more for whatever character faults you imagine I have.

You gotta stop taking everything personally, man. Your ideas/words are not you. I can point out their flaws without meaning ill towards you.

[Beleriphon]

I just wanted to quote this.

"Roll a d100 to see what silly thing the patient says after waking up from the wisdom teeth removal."
"You're running low on novocaine, what do you do?"
"Roll your cleaning check against their plaque build up... oh and make sure to add in your bonus from the masterwork dental pick."
"The mouth mirror is fogging! Quick, roll to see if you can de-fog it!"
"Roll to see if you understand what the patient is saying with their mouth full of your hands." ... "Uh-oh you think he's saying something inappropriate."
"Looks like Betsy is paying with pennies again! Your receptionist is getting upset."
"Mr. Jenkins doesn't seem to be brushing twice a day... what do you do?"
"The root canal was a success, good job guys! You get 5,000 XP!"

By my guest, I thought it was funny after I typed it.

[2D8HP]

While the 1977 Basic set did indeed say "FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAME"
, the phrase "role-playing" was not part of the 1974 rules.

Notice that the cover says "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames", not role-playing!
I believe the first use of the term "role-playing game" was in a Tunnels & Trolls supplement that was "compatible with other Fantasy role-playing games", but early D&D didn't seem any more or less combat focused than the later RPG's I've played, (in fact considering how fragile PC''s were avoiding combat was often the goal!) so I wouldn't say it was anymore of a "Wargame". I would however say it was more an exploration game, and was less character focused.

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs'
Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find Dungeons & Dragons to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers. With this last
bit of advice we invite you to read on and enjoy a "world" where the fantastic is fact and magic really works!
E. Gary Gygax
Tactical Studies Rules Editor
1 November 1973
Lake Geneva, Wisconsin

Frankly while role-playing is alright, it's the 'enjoying a "world" where the fantastic is fact' part that is much more interesting to me. I'm far more interested in exciting settings than I am in character "freedom".

[Max_Killjoy]

According to...?

There are many formal definitions of roleplaying and of rpgs, and none of them state that fewer options makes a roleplay less roleplay-ish. In fact, by this logic Freeform RP is the God-king of Roleplaying because it has no restrictions.

There seems to be this leap here from "there are points beyond which things that involve playing a role, are not an RPG, and one of those is player control over character creation" to "the defining feature of an RPG is freedom and more freedom=more RPGish".

[ComradeBear]

There seems to be this leap here from "there are points beyond which things that involve playing a role, are not an RPG, and one of those is player control over character creation" to "the defining feature of an RPG is freedom and more freedom=more RPGish".

Lemme quote you real quick.

Going through the motions and playing out a very very limited set of choices available isn't really roleplaying.

I didn't make the assertion that less freedom = less RPGish (which also means its opposite must be true, by simple logic). That was YOU.

There are also plenty of RPGs outside of tabletop that feature character creation in a wide variety of ways. They might be more limited due to programming constraints, but that specific metric is a very weak one to stand on.

[Max_Killjoy]

Lemme quote you real quick.
I didn't make the assertion that less freedom = less RPGish (which also means its opposite must be true, by simple logic). That was YOU.

Funny -- you tell me I said something, quote where I supposedly said it, and it's nowhere to be found in what you quote.

Like I said, you're making a leap here, from "there are points beyond which things that involve playing a role, are not an RPG, and one of those is player control over character creation" to "the defining feature of an RPG is freedom and more freedom=more RPGish".

I'm saying "there's a border here, and outside that border, you're no longer in the realm of what an RPG is", and you're somehow reading that as "there's a scale of more RPGish and less RPGish".

[Dragonexx]

XP: Beer Me
“ Boil an Anthill: Go Up One Level. ”

The rubrics for challenge and advancement as depicted in the DMG have to go. We've looked at them from every direction, and they don't work. At all. And no, I'm not talking about the classic problems like the variable difficulty inherent in fighting a giant scorpion (an interesting intellectual exercise for a 4th level horse archer or a brutal melee slugfest for a 14th level swordsman). That's a real problem, but we are talking about the basic structure of fighting monsters of increasing CR, getting increased piles of XP, and moving on with your life. That's got to end.

Here's why: according to the DMG you are supposed to face about 4 equal-level challenges per day of adventuring. Further, going by the XP chart, your 4-person party will go up a level every time you defeat 13.3 of those encounters -- which is less than 4 days worth of encounters according to the first idea. So if you adventure "like you're supposed to" -- you'll go up 2 levels a week. And of course, if you encounter less than 4 enemies a day, spell-slot characters like Wizards and Druids are crazy good. Essentially, this means that D&D characters go from 1st level to 20th level in half the time as it takes to bring a pregnancy to term.

Indeed, D&D society is essentially impossible. Not because Wizards are producing expensive items with their minds or because high level Clerics can raise the dead -- but because the character advancement posited in the DMG is so fast that it is literally impossible for anyone to keep tabs on what the society even is. High level characters are the military, economic, and social powerbases of the world. And they apparently rise from nothing in about 2 ½ months. That means that if a peasant goes home to plant his crops, then when he gets back to the city with his harvest in the fall the city will have seen the rise of a group of hearty adventurers who attempt to conquer the world and achieve godhood four times while he's gone. The city will have been conquered by a horde of Dao and sucked into the Elemental Plane of Earth and then returned to the prime material as a group of escaped Dao slaves achieved their freedom and themselves became powerful plane hopping adventurers who graduated to the Epic landscape. Then a team of renegade soldiers from the Dao army will have run off into the countryside and survived in the Spider Woods long enough to return with the Spear of Ankhut to return the city to the Dao Sultan in exchange for a gravy train of concubines and wishes. Then a squad of frustrated concubines will have turned on their masters and engaged in a web of intrigue culminating in the poisoning of the Dao Sultan with Barghest Bile and ultimately turned the city into a matriarchal magocracy run by ex-concubine sorceresses. So when the peasant returns with his harvest of wheat, he returns to a black edifice of magical stone done up in Arabian styles and bedecked with weaponry from Olympus that is all controlled by epically subtle and powerful wizards who are themselves the masters of a setting created from the fallout of the destruction of a setting that is itself the fallout of the destruction of a setting that was in turn created out of the destruction of the setting that our peasant walked away from with a bag of grain come planting time last year.

And while purely intellectual exercises in a universe that is essentially a giant lava lamp of crazy can be interesting, satisfying storytelling is impossible. If the players can't make lasting impact, the game has no meaning. And if players are seriously going from 1st to 20th in a single season, lasting impact of any kind is absurd to even contemplate. It behooves players and DMs to come to a consensus about how they want their campaign to be structured. There is no single best way to handle character advancement in a cooperative storytelling game, and there are a lot of ways to really piss off the other players at the table if you aren't all on the same page to begin with.

Yes, D&D is not meant to accurately simulate a world, as this example demonstrates when you try to apply the rules literally.

[Lacuna Caster]

I'm way outta the loop on this discussion and I'll have to catch up later, but one remark for now-

The rules are the map -- the setting, characters, atmosphere/feel, concepts, etc, are the actual territory.

The foremost purpose of the game mechanics isn't really providing a map or simulation framework for an imagined world. The 'rules are there for resolving disagreements' comment someone made earlier is actually correct on this point, because the fundamental 'hardware' here is a collection of human beings.

Only to the extent that the players prefer an accurate simulation does representing an accurate simulation become an important tool for helping to resolve disagreements. I happen to be one of these people with such an intrinsic preference, but neither of us gets to declare that RPGs exist to service us.

I mentioned this before by PM, but I'll say it again- GNS theory is first and foremost concerned with social dynamics. Any recommendations about system are side-effects (albeit very important ones.) Speaking of which:

[The Bitterest Role-Player In The World] prefers a role-playing game that combines Gamist potential with Simulationist hybrid support, such that a highly Explorative Situation can evolve, in-game and without effort, into a Challenge Situation. In other words, the social-level Step On Up "emerges" from the events in-play. This view, and its problematic qualities, are extremely similar to that of the person who wants to see full-blown Narrativist values "just appear" from a Simulationist-play foundation. It's possible, but not as easy and intuitive as it would seem.

...He probably developed his role-playing preferences in highly-Drifted AD&D2 or in an easily-Drifted version of early Champions, both of which he probably describes as playing "correctly" relative to other groups committed to these games.

This man (I've met no women who fit this description) is cursed. He's cursed because the only people who can enjoy playing with him, and vice versa, are those who share precisely his goals, and these goals are very easily upset by just about any others.

* His heavy Sim focus keeps away the "lite" Gamists who like Exploration but not Simulationism.
* The lack of metagame reward system keeps away most Gamists in general.
* Hard Core Gamists will kick him in the nuts every time, just as they do to Simulationist play.
* Most Simulationist-oriented players won't Step Up - they get no gleam in their eye when the Challenge hits, and some are even happy just to piddle about and "be."
* Just about anyone who's not Gamist-inclined lumps him with "those Gamists" and writes him off.

I've known several of these guys. They are bitter, I say. Imagine years of just knowing that your "perfect game" is possible, seeing it in your mind, knowing that if only a few other people could just play their characters exactly according to the values that you yourself would play, that your GM-preparation would pay off beyond anyone's wildest dreams. Now imagine years of encountering all the bulleted points above, over and over.

At present, I have no suggestions to help them, just as I cannot help those who expect to see "story" consistently emerge from play that does not prioritize it.

[2D8HP]

Speaking of which:

Ah yes, Ron Edwards.
A decade or so ago I picked up the "Sorcerer" game, and the "Sword and Sorcerer" supplement. I loved the sketches of settings, and the bibliography in the supplement, but the core game left me cold, mostly because I just don't want to learn rules that are so unfamiliar (I'm sure you've noticed a theme in my posts).
If I had a young agile mind (and a lot of free time), and I was just getting into RPG's I could see wanting to find "novel", and "ideal" rules, but these days I'm frankly lazy. If I can't learn the rules fast either because they're simple or they're close to rules I already know, I'm probably not going to bother.
The only way I can imagine being motivated to spend a lot of time studying new rules, is if I was really excited by the setting and there is a group of people who I want to game with, who also want to try the game.
Those are pretty high bars these days.

A well-crafted set of rules flows from the setting, is fair and balanced, and gets out of the way of the story that emerges from gameplay. That is, it has all three elements, and yet doesn't get lost in an attempt to fixate on any one.)

OK, please forget my preferences, I'm in suspense here, @Max_Killjoy, please just say the name of the game (games?) that fits your preferences already! I'm really curious!

When I want to play comic book superheroes, I just have a moment of self-honestly and crack open Champions.

If it's Champions (which I last played in the 80's). It's got three strikes against it for me.

1) PC creation takes to long.
2) Modern day setting.
3) PC's are too powerful.

I'm much more interested in playing a regular mortal exploring a fantastic world, than I am in playing a superpowered PC in a world that is mostly close to modern day reality.

To each their own.

[Segev]

Yes, D&D is not meant to accurately simulate a world, as this example demonstrates when you try to apply the rules literally.

Eh...

While he has valid points, he's exaggerating it to the extreme. Not every day travelling needs to have encounters at all; it is just recommended that you have at least 4 on any "serious" adventuring day to present a challenge. And while they absolutely can go up 2 levels in a dungeon crawl, the default assumptions of D&D originated with the idea that there would be significant downtime between adventures. They won't spend four and a half months constantly fighting every single day. They'll spend a couple of weeks getting to their adventuring site, having one or two serious "encounter days" where the fighting actually stresses them, and then spend maybe a week exploring it, and another week or so returning. Overall, the whole adventure might be four weeks. They're likely only mostly to (level at start of adventure)+3, having gained two and most of a third.

Then they'll spend down time back home, researching their next foray into the wilds, figuring out the clues to the BBEG's plot, forging magic items, training, partying, etc. When they determine their next step, they'll take at least a week, if not a month, gearing up and planning the expedition, and then repeat the process.

Going on 3-4 adventures per year, and leveling up 6-10 times, is still pretty impressive, but it's not as fast as that post suggests. Add in that it's actually supposed to be fairly lethal, and the relative rarity of adventurers, and yes, you'll have adventurers who rocket to prominence in a short time, but you'll also have a lot more who are just plain dead or retired "early."

[ComradeBear]

Funny -- you tell me I said something, quote where I supposedly said it, and it's nowhere to be found in what you quote.

Like I said, you're making a leap here, from "there are points beyond which things that involve playing a role, are not an RPG, and one of those is player control over character creation" to "the defining feature of an RPG is freedom and more freedom=more RPGish".

I'm saying "there's a border here, and outside that border, you're no longer in the realm of what an RPG is", and you're somehow reading that as "there's a scale of more RPGish and less RPGish".

Let me quote the same quote again with a direct link to the post where you said it.

Going through the motions and playing out a very very limited set of choices available isn't really roleplaying.

You did indeed say this. Again, this is YOUR assertion. Not mine.

Second, your point is still very weak since plenty of CRPGs give you a wide variety of choices for character creation. Including CRPGs built on the Dungeons and Dragons system.

[georgie_leech]

Let me quote the same quote again with a direct link to the post where you said it.



You did indeed say this. Again, this is YOUR assertion. Not mine.

Second, your point is still very weak since plenty of CRPGs give you a wide variety of choices for character creation. Including CRPGs built on the Dungeons and Dragons system.

I think by 'isn't really role playing, ' he doesn't mean it's less RPGish but is flat out not role playing. That is, it's binary; he needs X amount of freedom to be an RPG, and anything that falls short of that isn't an RPG at all. Dunno what X is for him though.

[ComradeBear]

I think by 'isn't really role playing, ' he doesn't mean it's less RPGish but is flat out not role playing. That is, it's binary; he needs X amount of freedom to be an RPG, and anything that falls short of that isn't an RPG at all. Dunno what X is for him though.

The issue is that this implies that a gradient still exists, with things becoming less RPG-like until they hit an arbitrary point where they cease to be RPGs. Things above that line could be considered "barely an rpg" by this measurement standard. This still implies a gradient of things being More or Less RPG-qualifying using Freedom of Choice as the metric. And on that line, Freeform roleplaying or Freeform Roleplaying with extremely limited game elements would be King of RPGs since it has infinitely possible character creation, and infinite choice, based on the two metrics he's offering.

Implying a lower limit on the gradient doesn't prevent the gradient from being present.

EDIT:
And the reason making an arbitrary cutoff between CRPGs being "not really rpgs" and TRPGs being "actual rpgs" is that it justifies saying really crappy things like:
"Oh, you like RPGs? Which ones?"
"I like Final Fantasy and Fallout"
"Those aren't actual RPGs."

And guess who is never going to want to play a trpg with you since you just laid a steamer on their favorite games?
And guess who just made their hobby even harder to get into for someone?
And guess who's now partially responsible for people thinking tabletop games are hard to get into?

That's why you don't do it. The implications don't just piss off fanboys. They hurt the hobby. Just distinguish between CRPG and TRPG and you're less likely to push someone away from the hobby.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm way outta the loop on this discussion and I'll have to catch up later, but one remark for now-


The foremost purpose of the game mechanics isn't really providing a map or simulation framework for an imagined world. The 'rules are there for resolving disagreements' comment someone made earlier is actually correct on this point, because the fundamental 'hardware' here is a collection of human beings.

Only to the extent that the players prefer an accurate simulation does representing an accurate simulation become an important tool for helping to resolve disagreements. I happen to be one of these people with such an intrinsic preference, but neither of us gets to declare that RPGs exist to service us.

I mentioned this before by PM, but I'll say it again- GNS theory is first and foremost concerned with social dynamics. Any recommendations about system are side-effects (albeit very important ones.) Speaking of which:

I think that quote has helped me finally nail down part of what's always bugged me about Edwards and others in his camp -- he's a "legalist". He can't seem to get his head around something happening in a game unless its right there in the rules. Without rules to make something happen, it's apparently just never going to happen. If the rules don't actively support something, then the game will "fail to deliver" regardless of any other factor. At least, that's how Edwards, etc, come across.

Ironically, given his statements and some of the replies I've received, I think this is in part because they project their own particular histories and experiences with gaming onto the entirety of gamers, campaigns, and systems.

I see this same thing in a lot of his underlying justification for separating the "stakes" and "conflict" from discrete tasks, where Edwards has personally had and seen issues with GMs and players trying to game tasks/actions with "you made that stealth role, well there was another guard too, so role stealth again" and similar shenanigans -- so his personal solution was to ditch action/task resolution and have vague "conflict" resolutions, and make rather disparaging comments towards any game that does not, as if everyone else must have had the same issues he did, and will continue to do so unless they use his Best New Thing.

Or hey, we can go with this:

Spoiler

Show

Brian Gleichman, a self-identified Gamist^[8] whose works Edwards cited in his examination of Gamism,^[6] wrote an extensive critique of the GNS theory and the Big Model. He argues that although any RPG intuitively contains elements of gaming, storytelling, and self-consistent simulated worlds, the GNS theory "mistakes components of an activity for the goals of the activity", emphasizes player typing over other concerns, and assumes "without reason" that there are only three possible goals in all of role-playing.^[9] Combined with the principles outlined in "System Does Matter",^[3] this produces a new definition of RPG, in which its traditional components (challenge, story, consistency) are mutually exclusive,^[10] and any game system that mixes them is labeled as "incoherent" and thus inferior to the "coherent" ones.^[11] To disprove this, Gleichman cites a survey conducted by Wizards of the Coast in 1999,^[12] which identified four player types and eight "core values" (instead of the three predicted by the GNS theory) and found that these are neither exclusive, nor strongly correlated with particular game systems.^[13] Gleichman concludes that the GNS theory is "logically flawed", "fails completely in its effort to define or model RPGs as most people think of them", and "will produce something that is basically another type of game completely".^[8]


Gleichman also argues that just as the Threefold Model (developed by self-identified Simulationists who "didn't really understand any other style of player besides their own"^[14]) "uplifted" Simulation, Edwards' GNS theory "trumpets" its definition of Narrativism. According to him, Edwards' view of Simulationism as "'a form of retreat, denial, and defense against the responsibilities of either Gamism or Narrativism'" and characterization of Gamism as "being more akin to board games" than to RPGs,^[11] reveals an elitist attitude surrounding the narrow GNS definition of narrative role-playing, which attributes enjoyment of any incompatible play-style to "'[literal] brain damage'".^[15] Lastly, Gleichman claims that most games rooted in the GNS theory, e.g. My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard, "actually failed to support Narrativism as a whole, instead focusing on a single Narrativist theme", and have had no commercial success.^[16]

As for "simulation" -- if the rules and the setting (the world, the desired atmosphere, character capabilities, etc) are mismatched, then there are going to be disconnects and dissonance. I don't see how ANY sort of gaming (G, N, or S, if one buys that trichotomy) is fostered by a system which repeatedly creates "what the hell was that?" moments. For the "gamist", mismatched rules & setting make the game more vulnerable to situations with imbalanced or unfair outcomes. For the "narrativist", mismatched rules & setting make the game more vulnerable to moments of "bad story".

Another problem that comes up is that many designers and players seem to conflate the "narrativist focus" with "drama resolution", creating a game which shares the sins of much poor fiction, in which events are transparently contrived to "Make The Best Story".

[Max_Killjoy]

The issue is that this implies that a gradient still exists,

No, it doesn't.

[ComradeBear]

No, it doesn't.

So if there is no gradient, then your measurements make 0 sense except for Inclusion vs. Exclusion, ie True vs. False.

If Character Creation = True and
Choice(s) that affect storyline = True then any game with both of these is an RPG regardless of whether there is only One storyline affecting choice or 20 billion.

So a game that lets you choose between Boy and Girl for character creation and allows one storyline altering choice fits the definition of an RPG in the absence of a gradient.

Note the following:
If you agree with the above paragraph, then your assertion between CRPGs and "Actual" rpgs is invalidated.

If you disagree, you're admitting that you utilize some kind of gradient in your definition.

Choose which loss you wanna take, but you pretty much walked into this one.

[Max_Killjoy]

So if there is no gradient, then your measurements make 0 sense except for Inclusion vs. Exclusion, ie True vs. False.

If Character Creation = True and
Choice(s) that affect storyline = True then any game with both of these is an RPG regardless of whether there is only One storyline affecting choice or 20 billion.

So a game that lets you choose between Boy and Girl for character creation and allows one storyline altering choice fits the definition of an RPG in the absence of a gradient.

Note the following:
If you agree with the above paragraph, then your assertion between CRPGs and "Actual" rpgs is invalidated.

If you disagree, you're admitting that you utilize some kind of gradient in your definition.

Choose which loss you wanna take, but you pretty much walked into this one.

If you're standing on top of a mesa, and you walk too far in any direction, you fall off the mesa.

You can move around quite a bit, but once you're over the edge, you're no longer on the mesa.

[nrg89]

I normally agree with Max_Killjoy but I have to take 2D8HP side here. I'm all for pointing out what doesn't work in RPGs but this begs the question; what systems ticks off your boxes and makes you pick it up and play?

I could name several that makes me pick it up but I'll name my go-to system as of now; Savage Worlds. The PC power is always in check and if one enemy is too weak you can always scale up the difficulty by throwing more at the players meaning armies are not useless. Character creation takes a very short time, the way people are taken out is consistent with most cinema universes, the magic is not game breaking, it's not super important to have magic items meaning that underdog characters can still come out on top, the setting changes actively change the rules and the rules are fast and quick enough that they don't get in the way of the story.

We already have 7+ pages of discussion on what systems can do to break verisimilitude, it would be nice if we could discuss concrete examples of how to enhance it.

[ComradeBear]

If you're standing on top of a mesa, and you walk too far in any direction, you fall off the mesa. It's not how close to the edge you are, it's whether you're past the edge.

In this situation there is a gradient. It is "Nearness to the center of the mesa."

Eventually this distance becomes too great and now you are not on the mesa, but the gradient exists, even with a limit. Some things are closer to the center than other things, even if everything within a certain area is defined as "on the mesa."

Which would place, in this scenario, close-to-freeform RPGs nearest to the center by your two listed measurements.

Your example doesn't help your argument.

Edit: another problem with this example is that a Mesa's area is non-arbitrarily defined. In your case, what Is and Is Not an RPG is arbitrarily defined. Meaning someone else's Mesa may be differently sized from yours, making the gradient even more important. You have drawn a line and said "everything past this is not an RPG" but there is no reason why someone else can't draw their own line elsewhere. The gradient is still shown to exist.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ah yes, Ron Edwards.
A decade or so ago I picked up the "Sorcerer" game, and the "Sword and Sorcerer" supplement. I loved the sketches of settings, and the bibliography in the supplement, but the core game left me cold, mostly because I just don't want to learn rules that are so unfamiliar (I'm sure you've noticed a theme in my posts).
If I had a young agile mind (and a lot of free time), and I was just getting into RPG's I could see wanting to find "novel", and "ideal" rules, but these days I'm frankly lazy. If I can't learn the rules fast either because they're simple or they're close to rules I already know, I'm probably not going to bother.
The only way I can imagine being motivated to spend a lot of time studying new rules, is if I was really excited by the setting and there is a group of people who I want to game with, who also want to try the game.
Those are pretty high bars these days.OK, please forget my preferences, I'm in suspense here, @Max_Killjoy, please just say the name of the game (games?) that fits your preferences already! I'm really curious!If it's Champions (which I last played in the 80's). It's got three strikes against it for me.

1) PC creation takes to long.
2) Modern day setting.
3) PC's are too powerful.

I'm much more interested in playing a regular mortal exploring a fantastic world, than I am in playing a superpowered PC in a world that is mostly close to modern day reality.

To each their own.

HERO 4th and 5th have come closest (the broader system of which Champions would be a subset). However, I've found that HERO doesn't handle characters below a certain point on the "power scale" as well as might be claimed, because there's just not that much "room" down there. I've become less enamored with the segments/phases/SPEED setup, and the focus on grid movement, over the years.

Really, at this point, I'm doing a LOT of searching, and nothing I've found (including all the repeated recommendations here) has really been what I'm looking for... each turns out to have a fatal flaw.

[Max_Killjoy]

In this situation there is a gradient. It is "Nearness to the center of the mesa."

Eventually this distance becomes too great and now you are not on the mesa, but the gradient exists, even with a limit. Some things are closer to the center than other things, even if everything within a certain area is defined as "on the mesa."

Which would place, in this scenario, close-to-freeform RPGs nearest to the center by your two listed measurements.

Your example doesn't help your argument.

Edit: another problem with this example is that a Mesa's area is non-arbitrarily defined. In your case, what Is and Is Not an RPG is arbitrarily defined. Meaning someone else's Mesa may be differently sized from yours, making the gradient even more important. You have drawn a line and said "everything past this is not an RPG" but there is no reason why someone else can't draw their own line elsewhere. The gradient is still shown to exist.

The problem is that you're assuming the gradient also makes one "more on the mesa" or "less on the mesa" in a direct scalar fashion -- that is, if going too far in one direction makes you "off the mesa", then any movement in the other direction makes you "more on the mesa".

Consider instead that going too far in the OTHER direction ALSO puts you off the mesa entirely.

You asserted that if too little character design freedom or character decisions freedom can make a game not an RPG, then more freedom makes a game more an RPG and total free-form would then be the ultimate RPG. Instead, that's too far in the other direction -- too little freedom, and you have a board game or choose your own adventure book; too much freedom, and you're playing make-believe, like children saying "I shot you!", "No you didn't!"


In general, you're coming across as more eager to "catch me being wrong" than to understand what I've been saying.

[Segev]

I think what's being asked for here is a clear demarcation of how far from the center of that hypothetical mesa something can get before it is "not an RPG."

By asserting that there is "no gradient," that things are 100% in or 100% out of the set "RPG," you're making a call that there is a precise set of criteria. And, since your precise set of criteria include some grading as to how well they're met, with imperfectly meeting them allowing some to qualify while others (which are even less perfect) do not, you need to spell out where you draw the limits.

Otherwise, there is, in fact, a gradient that lets you give fuzzy membership to some games which are "more RPG" than others.

[Lacuna Caster]

I think that quote has helped me finally nail down part of what's always bugged me about Edwards and others in his camp -- he's a "legalist". He can't seem to get his head around something happening in a game unless its right there in the rules.

I can't speak for Edwards directly, but I think you're missing the point completely here. The overriding thrust of GNS design philosophy is that "the rules and procedures of play are at the mercy of the social contract and not vice versa", (AKA the lumpley principle.) Group concensus and buy-in is the foundation, not the rule-set (though of course, certain rules are immensely helpful for fostering concensus and advertising what you buy into.)

This is specifically why I was taking exception to your rather bald statement that the purpose of the rules is to be a 'map to the territory'. This is only true if you have a bunch of players that attach primary value to mapping territory to begin with. In short, your agenda is showing, and you expect others to kowtow to this definition as if it were self-obvious. Whether players and their preferences come in 3 or 5 or a million different flavours doesn't really soften that problem.

Now sure- with enough good will and a certain amount of instinct, you can get story or balance or whatevs in the absence of explicit rules to cover it, purely through a gentlemen's agreement.... But if this is your approach to negotiation... then I wouldn't count on that happening.


Your other points seem to be throwing up flak to dodge the central complaint, and are far too wide-ranging to cover in depth, but out of courtesy I will briefly address two of them.

Gleichman's citation of the '99 WotC study is interesting, mainly because the conclusions are completely contradicted by it's own data (e.g, powergamers' total disregard for story effects somehow being complementary to the storyteller.) But I think a 4-way division of preferences (which I might loosely map to nar, sim, gamism and hard-core gamism) is quite plausible, and has found some practical application.

There are certainly potential forms of lack-of-realism that both undermine balance and undercut storytelling. There are also forms of metagame reward systems, or 'artificial' constraints on character progression or scene framing, that significantly help to regulate powergaming or fuel an engrossing narrative. If you inherently reject all metagaming- which in practical terms I'm not even sure is possible- you will necessarily have a suboptimal system for any agenda aside from pure simulation. There's nothing wrong with pure simulation, but the overlapping segment on that venn diagram is a precarious place to dance.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can't speak for Edwards directly, but I think you're missing the point completely here. The overriding thrust of GNS design philosophy is that "the rules and procedures of play are at the mercy of the social contract and not vice versa", (AKA the lumpley principle.) Group concensus and buy-in is the foundation, not the rule-set (though of course, certain rules are immensely helpful for fostering concensus and advertising what you buy into.)

This is specifically why I was taking exception to your rather bald statement that the purpose of the rules is to be a 'map to the territory'. This is only true if you have a bunch of players that attach primary value to mapping territory to begin with. In short, your agenda is showing, and you expect others to kowtow to this definition as if it were self-obvious. Whether players and their preferences come in 3 or 5 or a million different flavours doesn't really soften that problem.

Now sure- with enough good will and a certain amount of instinct, you can get story or balance or whatevs in the absence of explicit rules to cover it, purely through a gentlemen's agreement.... But if this is your approach to negotiation... then I wouldn't count on that happening.


Your other points seem to be throwing up flak to dodge the central complaint, and are far too wide-ranging to cover in depth, but out of courtesy I will briefly address two of them.

Gleichman's citation of the '99 WotC study is interesting, mainly because the conclusions are completely contradicted by it's own data (e.g, powergamers' total disregard for story effects somehow being complementary to the storyteller.) But I think a 4-way division of preferences (which I might loosely map to nar, sim, gamism and hard-core gamism) is quite plausible, and has found some practical application.

There are certainly potential forms of lack-of-realism that both undermine balance and undercut storytelling. There are also forms of metagame reward systems, or 'artificial' constraints on character progression or scene framing, that significantly help to regulate powergaming or fuel an engrossing narrative. If you inherently reject all metagaming- which in practical terms I'm not even sure is possible- you will necessarily have a suboptimal system for any agenda aside from pure simulation. There's nothing wrong with pure simulation, but the overlapping segment on that venn diagram is a precarious place to dance.

From my point of view, this isn't about a "simulation uber alles" agenda. It's about setting/world, system, and the sort of game (and story) the participants want, all syncing up and meshing together well. I greatly dislike dissonance and disconnect.

If the sort of game one wants to play requires divergences from the world we're all familiar with, cool, no one is rejecting that, the critical issue here isn't realism in the sense of carbon-copying our familiar real world. However, those divergences require some form of explanation, and will have some consequences that might further diverge the world from what we would expect from our daily experiences.

The system being used need to sync with that "new world" well enough that it doesn't throw the players out of the in-world headspace with inconsistent or incoherent results. No one is claiming it needs to be perfect, it just needs to be close. And obviously it needs to have mechanics in place for those other abilities.

The metagaming I'm just about completely rejecting here is that of the "what would make the best story?" sort. When the players -- or the author(s) of a fictional work -- start asking themselves "what would make the best story here?" at the expense of "what would the characters in question do here?" or "what's within the realm of the established possible for this setting?", the road to contrivance is short, and steeply downhill.


Oddly, despite what many of the proponents of Narrativist play seem to assert, that sort of "The Story" metagaming is apparently not the heart of Narrativist play -- a definition I keep seeing is instead something like this: "Narrativism relies on outlining (or developing) character motives, placing characters into situations where those motives conflict and making their decisions the driving force." -- and if that's accurate, then "narrativism" is actually quite character-centric, despite the name.

Rather, it seems that perhaps the key component of "The Story" metagaming would be, in GNS theory, "Drama resolution": "Participants decide the results, with plot requirements the determining factor." For some reason, Drama Resolution and Narrativist Focus appear to have been heavily conflated in certain games designed after the advent of GNS theory became an influential school of thought.

[Lacuna Caster]

Ah yes, Ron Edwards.
A decade or so ago I picked up the "Sorcerer" game, and the "Sword and Sorcerer" supplement. I loved the sketches of settings, and the bibliography in the supplement, but the core game left me cold, mostly because I just don't want to learn rules that are so unfamiliar (I'm sure you've noticed a theme in my posts).
If I had a young agile mind (and a lot of free time), and I was just getting into RPG's I could see wanting to find "novel", and "ideal" rules, but these days I'm frankly lazy. If I can't learn the rules fast either because they're simple or they're close to rules I already know, I'm probably not going to bother.
The only way I can imagine being motivated to spend a lot of time studying new rules, is if I was really excited by the setting and there is a group of people who I want to game with, who also want to try the game.
Those are pretty high bars these days.

Yeah, I can understand that. I rather liked the exotic settings from the Sorceror supplements myself (particularly the one where the 'demons' were subcutaneous insect symbiotes), but never did get a proper group together for it.

[Segev]

To me - and I am no expert on "GNS Theory" - "narrativism" is about "the story," yes, but not telling a pre-set one. All narrativism means is that you're primarily interested in the story. You want to play the characters and build the narrative around what they're doing and how the world reacts around them.

In a sense, to me, a GOOD simulationist game will also cater to a narrativist view, because the simulation will include rules that guide how the world reacts to character actions and choices. The story evolves from the simulation as the players push the buttons and pull the levers that represent what their characters' choices would be.

And that, too, factors in with a good gamist game - the gameplay IS the development of the narrative through the simulation.

Which is what I look for in an RPG.