There’s a difference between focusing on story and flavouring the game with story; the former and D&D take some serious work, while the latter works just fine. Gradual transition may or may not work well but is worth an experiment.

Rip; I think that it is both easy and fun to run games with story that have no railroading. I do it all the time. This may be just a case of different definitions, though.

Tommis last blog post..There shall be war.

In regards to the term incoherence, it’s just that I’ve seen it used in so many conflicting ways just to try to prove how D&D was badly designed that I grew tired of the term in general.

I’m not trying to censor you,. You just caught me off guard with your tangential rant a bit is all.

I’ve not encountered “GNS Nazism” before; I used the terms purely to illustrate a (belaboured, possibly) point that the point of an RPG wasn’t necessarily “story telling”. I agree 100% that few games are “pure”, and that most D&D games dip into narrativism domains (via a structured plot) – most of MY D&D games dip into simulationism as well. And I’ve yet to run, play, or observe a White Wolf game that wasn’t played in a fairly gamist “superheroes with fangs” fashion – though I’m perfectly prepared to believe they exist.

I apologise for use of the term “coherence” there Chatty; I used the term because I dislike saying “realism” for games that involve magic and fire breathing winged reptiles. Would you prefer a different term, or is it just that you think complaining about things like that is largely unimportant? (I’d probably agree with that; the inconsistency doesn’t necessarily detract from playability in practice, because most groups have a social contract to prevent that sort of thing).

When ever a story is involved, some amount of railroading is going to take place, and it should! PC’s generally need directions on where to go next, thus we need to give them options during the game on things to explore further, sometimes these are meaningful to the story that is taking place around them, and sometimes it is a total red-haring. The ultimate purpose of this is to let the DM know what he needs to focus on during his prep time, of course, the PC’s could chose to simply ignore the planned adventure, this could be on purpose but most of the time it is on accident, which when this happens, it separates the true DM’s from the people who have just read the DMG a couple of times.

Another thing to think about is that the players want to play D&D, that is why they are showing up, and it is our duty as Dungeon Masters to provide THAT game, vs. our own. Not to say that we need to depend on modules and settings and never create our own worlds, this means that we need to stay true to the rules, and use established monsters over our own fabrications. . . well, most of the time. It never hurts to put ourselves into the game by creating a new monster or religion, but as long as they stay true to the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons, then we aren’t changing the game to suit us, but enhancing it for our players.

My main point is, to much of anything is always a bad thing. To much story can kill a game, just like a dungeon that is nothing but traps and puzzles, or a game that is nothing but combat. Any session needs to be balanced, it needs conflict to keep all of the characters moving, puzzles to slow the game down, strategy to avoid potentially lethal errors, role-playing to give information to the PC’s, and, of course, rewards. Though, I think that randomness has a very important place in the the D&D game too. Randomness keeps the Dungeon Master in line, and allows the world to really come alive, vs. total railroad jobs. It also allows for mystery and danger which the DM can’t properly establish unless he is willing to allow the gods of the dice to have their say.

Good Article Chatty!

-RIP

None of that hatred was actually targetted at you, GAZZA, or at anyone who finds the system helpful.

Hell, I find the terms helpful sometimes.

It’s just the vocal jackasses that bother me.

I completely get your points Gazza and I’m happy that the labels help you. Like Graham, I too am not too keen on the more vocal proponents of the theory and I really don’t like discussion on coherence or lack thereof (and fail to see the relevance, and please don’t try) of a RPG. I’ll stop there lest I start ranting.

I think that what really counts is player preferences (including the GMs) as pointed out by Gazza. Since I’m tackling this in chapters and I already

Now for the subject at hand, my main points of divergences with Robin Laws are:

1) Unstructured Adventures aren’t all that common (or at least tend to gain structure) as a playing group explores the possibilities of RPGs (either within the same family of games, or by switching systems)

2) For adventure design, I really think that you should pick any structure and mix freely so you the GM/DM gets the adventure in the best possible form that you pictured.

But it doesn’t really matter, because GNS pisses me off anyways.

Or, rather, many of the proponents of GNS piss me off.

GNS is a thought experiment, and a design guide. Some of these people? They just take it way, way, WAY too seriously.

They’ll talk down about “gamism” as though it was a cardinal sin, they’ll tell you you’re playing your game “wrong”.

Sigh.

/rant

I think I’m done now.

In any case, my favourite game theory is, of course, Jeff Rients’ RSP model, followed closely by Cheetoism.

I love to tinker with things like economic systems, small scale battles, and stuff even when I’m playing D&D, but like I allude to – it’s not really designed for that, and rather than try to achieve “one game to rule them all” it’s arguably better to try different games.

On the other hand that’s highly dependent on whether your group shares your enthusiasm. Sympathise with my plight: there are four of us, and I prefer narrative games (though I’m partial to simulationist as well), one of my buddies loathes narrative style (but loves simulationist), and the other two loathe simulationist (but like gamist). So we’re always forced to pick something that will annoy the least number of us, and we switch around a lot.

But having labels for these things at least allows me to understand WHY my enthusiasm for game X won’t necessarily be shared. (REALLY disappointed that my simulationist-fan friend didn’t like Capes though, as the other three of us had a ball).

Your comment about simulationist game seems to be the exact way I was GMing my GURPS games back in the day. Branching/simulationist as always been my default GM style.

It requires heavy preparation (defining the world) and serious improvisation skill (running the game). The major problem is to guide your player to avoid stagnation. Since you don’t have a well defined plot. My usual ploy was to have something huge fall in the hand of the player and move on from there.

“You’ve find some CD and when you try to read it’s content it’s heavily encrypted… (Unknown to the player it’s classified military secret that multiple agencies will do anything to get)”

Or use the capacity of one of the player to feed plot hooks.

“You’re part of a private investigation team driven by the vision of one of your member who is somewhat precognitive”

The “game theory” of RPGs says that most games fall into the category of Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist (with hybrids possible). I’m not going to go into what that means here, because a) I may well be preaching to the choir, and b) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_Theory does it better.

Much of my distaste for the way D&D is “typically” run (read “by the guys I game with” rather than “by everyone”, since clearly I can be an authority only on the former) is that it is fairly strongly Gamist, and that later incarnations of the game (2nd edition+) are “incoherent”. It is the combination of the two rather than just the former that bothers me. 1st edition AD&D was “about” killing things and taking their stuff, which rewarded you with experience points that made you better at killing things and taking stuff, and so on – an almost purely Gamist implementation. (I’m not saying that I’m a 1st edition grognard – far from it; the 1st edition of the game was terribly unbalanced and poorly executed – but the overall design philosophy was coherent). 2nd edition introduced the idea of “story based XP”, which essentially translates as wizards that research spells get better at killing things and taking stuff – the coherent (if bizarre) “practising at X means you get better at X” is broken. 3rd edition does not have SPECIFIC awards for anything other than “overcoming challenges” (which translates, often, as killing things and taking their stuff) but the house rules for Story Based Awards are so prevalent as to be “virtually” part of the core.

I think D&D SUFFERS by trying to introduce plots and stories; I think that doing this tries to make D&D do something it’s not particularly good at, and that other games might be better at achieving. This is obviously just IMHO, and lest it be said that I am accusing D&D players of never having plots or stories, let me unequivocably state that I am NOT saying that – I am just saying that gamers who introduce those elements into their D&D games are doing so largely in spite of rather than because of what the system supports. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t successful by any stretch of the imagination – a good enough GM makes the rules set largely irrelevant – but in the best of all possible worlds, your game would directly support the types of activities that you intend to have within it. All D&D directly supports – I claim – is the structuring of challenges with the intention of rewarding successful overcoming of these challenges with increased ability to overcome similar challenges in the future (by means of experience points and, at least currently, better equipment).

But Gamist RPGs are not (IMHO) the best way to tell stories; Narrative games are. I use the term “games” here rather than “RPGs” because there is considerable dispute about whether games like Capes actually qualify as roleplaying, but there are relatively uncontroversial examples as well – HeroQuest, for example, I believe is largely accepted as a genuine RPG. HeroQuest plays very differently to D&D; the things that are important in D&D (hit points, power level, equipment, mortality, and so on) are much less important in HeroQuest, while the things that HeroQuest deems important (connection to the community, dramatic importance of actions, mythic significance, and so on) are much less important in D&D. Narrative games are “better” for telling stories but often have less character “improvement” in the sense that D&D has; success is not necessarily better than failure in a narrative game, and sometimes you literally do have more fun if you mostly fail at your actions (to the extent that in some games like Capes or octaNe the mechanics determine not success or failure, but rather who gets to narrate – as that ability is far more important to these sorts of games).

Now, there is the possibility there that someone will take offence that I’ve claimed narrative games are objectively “better” at telling stories than (say) gamist designs, but understand that this is NOT saying that narrative games are better in any absolute sense; to derive that implies that storytelling is what RPGs are about, which is – in many ways – what Robin is saying above, and what Chatty is disagreeing with.

I think the entire argument is moot, because I don’t think storytelling is INNATELY what RPGs are about. It’s what narrative games are about, no question, but I think D&D is best enjoyed as a game with a very loose storyline where you don’t really try and conceal the fact that, while you might SAY you’re rescuing the princess because it’s the “right thing to do”, you’re REALLY doing it because you figure that the adventure will give you enough XP to reach level 10. Such games are fun, and no matter what anybody tries to tell you, it is not innately “wrong” to play D&D this way. (However, understand that gamist RPGs, of the three types, are the ones most susceptible to automation – you will see far more MMoGs that play a reasonable game of D&D than you will something like Amber. That’s not a bad thing – just an observation).

But it’s when you consider the third category of games – the Simulationist type – that things really start to unravel. When you’re playing a Simulationist game “properly”, you’re really trying to force a square peg into a round hole if you try to impose a plot. When you’re preparing for a session of something Simulationist (and GURPS is probably the most well known example of a game system that tries to do this), you should be designing the world, not creating a story. Stories will undoubtedly occur, but they will do so organically – things will happen for reasons internal to the game world, rather than because the GM has decided that NPC X is the subject of tonight’s adventure. These types of RPGs are hard to do well – lots of players tend to drift in the absence of the clear goals that a Gamist adventure has, or the dramatic necessity of a Narrative adventure – but they can be a lot of fun because of the tremendous flexibility and exploration possibilities that are afforded. (And these are the easiest of all, theoretically, to automate – indeed, many MMoGs simulate a world using rules that would be far too tedious to use in a tabletop game run by a “mere” human).

Sorry for rambling, but my point is basically this: RPGs are done a disservice by the “modern” view that they are “supposed” to be about telling stories. It’s not that you can’t do that in D&D or whatever – it’s that you shouldn’t feel that you HAVE to do that. “Pure” gamist campaigns where the objective is a very thinly veiled “get to level 20 and then attain godhood via a series of killing things and taking their stuff” are not inferior to structured epic campaigns on the order of the Iliad.

All IMHO, of course.

-Ben.

Bens last blog post..WTF: Excerpts from the new DMG

“Dante of Stupid Ranger has already tackled this and I invite you to checj it out as I’m close to hitting the 2000 word mark!” <– This link appears to be broken.

- Brian

Brians last blog post..Why I Can’t Play the Newest Branches of the D&D Tree