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I thought I'd start a new thread to reply to Glandis from over here (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=209.msg1813#msg1813).

QuoteCallan,

This is just me, not Ron/GNS, using a not-RPG analogy that (while I think it can translate just fine) may not translate to RPG play like I think it does. Hopefully, you know/play poker, or that's another way this may not translate.

You know how, in poker, someone with a good hand (NOT the "nuts", the guaranteed best), may choose to fold their hand in the face of a big raise? And that the general reaction might (depending on a lot of complicated factors involving past history, pot size, stack size, etc.) NOT be "what a wimp!" but "smart laydown"? Or alternatively, if they don't fold and lose, the reaction at the table might be "gutsy call", not "hahha, you lost"?

Gamism is a lot more about "smart laydown" and "gutsy call" than it is about winning and losing.

At least, that's my current take on it.

I've played poker and...I can never remember the rules afterward (not like I can for chess).

That said, in regards to what I'm talking about, what your describing basically slides down toward one end of a spectrum. Sure, as a secondary priority, you can say gutsy call or smart laydown. Comforting someone about a loss is nice and IMO, part of it - but it is nothing like the primary goal of the agenda.

I guess I would suggest playing with someone who doesn't consider the 'smart laydown' or 'gutsy call' or Ron's 'not losing' to be particularly gamist for the way it's shirked winning (ie, that they are drifting down the spectrum toward not being on it at all) - play with such a dissenting voice and see if the play is gamist or not.

If such play is, in your evaluation, gamist, it now depends on how you face that evaluation?

Or I guess one avoids playing with a dissenting voice to begin with.

A good link to check out is Sirlin's book on play to win (http://www.sirlin.net/ptw).

Ah, Sirlin - yeah, I've read that. Most of what Sirlin is talking about (if he's talking about anything meaningful and not just jerking on the chain of the internet*) is, IMO, far removed from "Creative Agenda" - he's talking about an individual drive, not a shared aesthetic priority. Gutsy call or smart laydown isn't (primarily) a comfort thing, it's an acknowledgement of the realities we face in play and a show of respect for doing so effectively - in a way that really may turn out to give you the win, ultimately. In some game, if not this one. Sometimes you can only learn about your opponent (for use later) by making a gutsy call. A smart laydown saves you money, by definition. Managing risk is never a sure thing, and in poker (like any game I'd enjoy getting Gamist with) you can NEVER be certain you'll win every time. No one does. In Sirlin's world, something where you could always be certain to win is the BEST place to be. In a Gamist CA, that would totally suck. Winning isn't the point, social proof of (it's probably wrong to say "fitness" and Ron'll expose me as insufficiently educated to use words like that for mentioning it), um, skill is the point - and Sirlin's (my paraphrase) claim that winning = skill just doesn't carry 100% to Gamism.

Which is fine, because like I said I think Sirlin is talking about an entirely different thing than CA.

(*I think he's BOTH got meaningful things to say AND is jerking on the chain of the internet, computer strategy gamers in particular.)

Oh, in RPGs - the guy "who doesn't consider ..." I think I've played with him, and I guess usually no CA manages to manifest at all, maybe because he's got his attention in entirely the wrong places and really ought to be playing something that isn't an RPG? There was a group I played with for a while that eventually decided that boardgames were more their thing.

On the other hand, I've also played with a guy who kinda seemed like that guy, but who also usually paid attention to a shared aesthetic, and it was Gamist play. Not always the most fun for me, as I knew that he *might* decide that the chance to raise the stakes everyone else seemed up for was too likely to put his winning in jeopardy, and so he'd maneuver to keep that from happening rather than let us take the risk. "Winning" as more important than "challenge" always seemed LESS Gamist to me, though I tried to abandon more vs. less and just call it different.

Moderating: If this thread continues, I want some actual play in it. Like me talking about the 4E game, that level of detail.

Also, "glandis" is Gordon.

I think this goes to what I was saying in 4E, yeah. It's less about winning or losing, and more about "Wow, that was a smart play." Note that the dice can screw you over (though less in 4E than in other editions). The point is that if you played well, you still "Stepped On Up," to use Ron's term, even if you lost. 4E rewards this in that if you play cleverly, you can save your daily powers for later encounters. Dailies are often last-ditch moves that save the party's bacon, and you feel bad if you have to use one in the very first encounter.

(This is, OTOH, a problem with 4E if you don't want to play it as chains of encounters. You pretty much have to stick to that for this to work right.)

I remember an account of Dave Arneson playing, sure, a tabletop wargame, but...it was called 'We come for your women' or something, with aliens invading to abduct our womens!

What Areneson did, taking into account that the aliens lost a massive amount of warpoints if they killed a human woman, was to have his men hand over their guns to the women! Sure they had crap to hit skills, but it didn't matter, the aliens couldn't kill them because of the warpoint loss and the women would hit eventually. So the women cover the men and are evacuating them out of the area (in a delicious role reversal, I might add!) and winning the game! Not 'not losing'. Winning the game!

I'd actually highlight how that, if you cease laying fiction over it, dips into the 'hardcore'. Cease laying fiction over the mechanics and Arneson is being some kinda abusive metagamer over the loss of warpoints which is abstract, bla bla bla. Or keep laying fiction over the mechanics and instead figure out reasons why the aliens are lothe to kill the human women.

I give it as an example where the SIS is not the end itself of play - it's just (heresy!) a means to an end. Yes (blasphemy!) you may even discard the SIS, in ones efforts to win, and retroactively add fiction to cover that gap. Rather than the traditional 'if we can't figure fiction for it, it can't happen (even if the rules say it can happen)'

Currently I'm running a Rifts campaign once every two weeks at the same games club I do the encounters at. I'd actually explicitly said at it's start that it was about getting to level five - if you can. I wasn't pitching some 'forever' game. Part of the very reason I did that is because then, even if they flaked out, you get a result - they never got to level five! They could not make it. Anyway, now they are on average at level seven - having achieved the original objective (though one main PC died (along with three other PC's, two of which died on the day their players joined - long story, short death) and restarted at level one) and I'm seriously considering setting a new overall level goal, because it's meandery. Actually, if the combat were like the old 4E encounters program where it was one combat per session, that could work as much as T&T's 'can you get out of the dungeon', with each session having it's own relatively concrete finish line (sorry, that T&T quote just has a finish line, IMO). But given the nature of the game the number of combats in the rifts games varies - so with no combat being 'the combat of the evening' to win or lose (whether lose is run away or TPK or just getting your face mashed), it does not aleviate the broader meanderyness of no set goal/no gauntlet thrown.

Anyway, I spoke about playing with someone who dissents against 'smart laydown', 'gutsy call' or 'not losing' as being sufficient/the whole of the activity (and heck, I give a disproval method for my theory - does the play seem gamist still? Maybe it wont (if actually played) somehow?). As much as actual play accounts are called for, I'll call for any further discussion (if any) to either be from the perspective of looking toward doing just that in real life at some point soonish, or explicitly opting out of doing that. Without any talk that simply ignores the two options. PS: I'm not gunna just dump on anyone for opting out - indeed I'd admire the explicitness of the choice.

I don't think that anyone is saying that winning isn't an interesting goal, or that making good moves is the only goal. Yeah, a big win is a big reward for a gamist. It's just not the only reward.

See Ron's concept of the Gentleman Gamist, too. Where you intentionally handicap yourself to make it harder to win. So that if you DO win, it's that much more impressive. And that if you do lose, you're a magnificent bastard for having the guts to have attempted it in the first place.

There are LOTs of internal Gamism goals. Goals and motives have always been omitted from Creative Agendas. That's not to say that they don't exist. Just that we don't equate any one goal or motive with any one agenda.

Callan - I'm not sure how to interpret your someone who "dissents against 'smart laydown', 'gutsy call' or 'not losing' as being sufficient/the whole of the activity." Is this someone who is plain and simply all about the winning? As I mentioned, I think I have played with such people, sometimes resulting in play that had no CA, sometimes (in Mekton, which can be played in a very wargamey way) with satisfactory Gamism.

But again, I don't think their being plain and simply all about the winning is DIRECTLY associated with a Gamist CA, so - am I bowing out of your challenge? I'm not sure. I'm prepping for a game right now with a player who tends a bit in that direction, but I don't think he'd dissent from me that honoring/not honoring his "win" goal is a different thing from whether a game is pursing a Gamist agenda. I'll be paying some attention to these issues with him, but I'm not sure that really qualifies for what you're asking.

It'd be great to hear what you make of any games you've had with such players, too.

-Gordon

Gordon,

I suppose it's a cruel challenge in a way - it's like if the riddle of steel had no spiritual attributes, but I challenged someone to go play narrativist in it. Possible? Yes. Mechanically supported? Not really. So a cruel challenge.

Most RPG's, even ones like tunnels and trolls, have no strongly supporting fiction to mechanical advantage mechanic in them, like TROS has in regard to it's CA (humour me here - engaging the SIS to get mechanical bonuses is a technique - it's agenda neutral. I should be able to refer to a technique in another agenda as being transportable to the gamist agenda). At best maybe you have D&D 3rd editions +2/-2 rule for converting fiction events into a potential advantage, but it's freakin weak sauce, only affecting one roll in 10 (the new advantage rules in 5E, despite the texts trying to say to hand it out rarely, might be another kettle of fish at effectively a +5 bonus - it might start reignighting 'engage the SIS to gain mechanical advantage' gamist culture. More chandelier swinging! Not for genres sake, but for the sake of winning!).

So you have no clear examples of someone playing to win by engaging the SIS in order to leverage major mechanical advantage. Because there are no mechanics around that convert engaging the SIS into major mechanical advantage.

So you'll bring up Mekton, which has no way of players engaging the SIS to leverage major mechanical advantage, and treat it as an example of how play to win people wont engage the SIS/wont do any creative agenda kinda stuff. But is that because they are disinclined to do so? Or that the game simply does not let them?

Quotebut I don't think he'd dissent from me that honoring/not honoring his "win" goal is a different thing from whether a game is pursing a Gamist agenda.

So if he wins, you wouldn't say he's won? Do you have an AP example of how he feels about when he wins but you don't acknowledge that, Gordon? I'd be really surprised if he's indifferent to that lack of acknowledgement?


Mike,

Do you have an AP account of someone agreeing they'll give you esteem if you handicap yourself? If so, I agree in that case. But I don't agree that somehow if you handicap yourself you will automatically get esteem from someone, somewhere, as if they owe it to you? I'd think most would just think 'Why on earth did you do that?'. Do you have any examples where handicapping (without asking anyone) forced others to grant esteem latter on? Let alone for being 'a magnificent bastard for trying', after handicapping without asking anyone?

Callan,

I may be jumping into a discussion where I have no dog in the fight, but in answer to Mike's point...the examples of AP supporting the esteem earned from handicap are so ubiquitous as to be cliché. "I can do it with one hand tied behind my back." "Look ma, no hands." "And now my lovely assistant will blindfold me for my next trick." And so on. I have a friend I strongly suspect is Gamist, and he LOVES to handicap himself to prove his superiority in whatever game we play, Settlers and Axis & Allies especially.

Does this idea help expand upon Mike's point?

Ed

Quote from: Callan S. on October 22, 2013, 09:19:08 PM
So you have no clear examples of someone playing to win by engaging the SIS in order to leverage major mechanical advantage. Because there are no mechanics around that convert engaging the SIS into major mechanical advantage.

The way we've been playing D&D (and Tunnels & Trolls, and Runeslayers to a degree) over the last few years is all about leveraging the SIS for significant mechanical advantage. In fact, it's often so significant that it might even seem non-mechanical; when a player "avoids a roll" by manipulating the SIS, that might be considered a complete success on the scale ranging from "my plan is so bad that it'll fail automatically" to "my plan is so good we all agree that it's going to succeed automatically".

This is a completely everyday dynamic for us. I mean, we'll be playing a session today, and I am 100% certain that it'll be more of this stuff, because that's what it's been like for the last hundred sessions. That's what playing the game is.

And it's not merely skipping rolls, it can also be various bonuses to the rolling. When I GM D&D myself, there's a rich technique/rule set of various fiction-based bonuses and roll variations in there, and it's intentionally statistically more significant than the static bonuses you get from character build and whatnot. The most important of these mechanics in my personal D&D version is the 3rd edition style task resolution DC, which will routinely provide as much as the equivalent of a +10 bonus or -10 penalty to any given roll, simply depending on how well-thought a player's plan is. A sad +2 for being a 2nd level Fighter or whatever just doesn't compare.

Quote from: Callan S. on October 22, 2013, 09:19:08 PM
Do you have an AP account of someone agreeing they'll give you esteem if you handicap yourself? If so, I agree in that case. But I don't agree that somehow if you handicap yourself you will automatically get esteem from someone, somewhere, as if they owe it to you? I'd think most would just think 'Why on earth did you do that?'. Do you have any examples where handicapping (without asking anyone) forced others to grant esteem latter on? Let alone for being 'a magnificent bastard for trying', after handicapping without asking anyone?

In my D&D campaign playing a "good guy" is generally considered a handicap: you limit your option set in advance in a way that might or might not prove significant, all for the sake of succeeding with style. Players choose to do this exactly because we're not playing a childish game of "try to do what the GM says"; we can choose the nature of our challenges among the group, and one of the more common sources of difficulty is that players want to succeed without having their characters be complete assholes. It's very much the same as e.g. Hero System, which considers having personal moral convictions a handicap worth character creation points.

Being a Paladin in our campaign is an extreme example of the "good guy handicap": the player character commits to a certain moral protocol by holy wows, and woe be him if he cannot uphold his promises when the rubber hits the road. We've even intentionally removed most of the traditional magical razzle-dazzle from the paladin to make the handicap more starkly visible - not that it ever was actually useful to be a paladin in e.g. AD&D in comparison with the disadvantages, but in our take on the concept you can't even pretend that there's any reason except gamesmanship to tackle the challenge. It's very interesting and worthy of the respect of the other players when a given player commits their character to paladinhood.

Other common handicaps that come up in a campaign of this sort are fighting for the underdog in a geopolitical struggle (e.g. swearing fealty to a small city state in danger of being conquered), joining an army (it's a handicap because you lose a lot of personal freedom in choosing where and how you're endangering yourself), being a woman (there's not much in the way of mandatory gender-based mechanical differentiation, but the setting is historical fantasy where it is usually easier for an adventurer - or anybody else for that matter - to be a man), belonging to an ethnic minority of some sort... it's a pretty central conceit to the game that in the process of choosing our challenges we voluntarily take on handicaps that become part of the accepted strategic landscape: it is very rare in this style of play to face any sort of "pure" challenge that would be entirely unencumbered by any sort of handicap, as the handicaps pretty much are the game. There is no such thing as a purely non-handicapped player character, everybody's limited in some way by their fictional positioning and personal identity.

As for whether we get esteem for our handicaps "in hindsight", I don't think that is a meaningful distinction in a clearly phrased gamist endeavour like this. I mean, as we're on the same page regarding our creative goals here, of course it's a given that I'll be getting esteem for my bold and flavourful choices. Sometimes it comes in advance in the form of other players encouraging me to make a choice ("Come on, you totally should play a leprous beggar, it'll be great!"), other times some or all of us notice how great a given choice/handicap was only afterwards, at which point you're given esteem for going for it. Of course there is a difference between being foolish and being brave, both in tactics and strategy: if you intentionally chose to resist the evil emperor because your character just wouldn't play along with his evil plans, then that's bold play worthy of respect (it's always worthy of respect when a player sticks to their character concept, just like any time a player commits to the way the SIS lays), but if you resisted because you're a naive fool who didn't realize the consequences, then that's something others might berate you over.

Eero and Ed,

I find some of those handicap examples vague, and the retroactive esteem one fairly wobbly. But ignoring that (since it doesn't directly contradict your point), my point is that esteem isn't a cash register exchange - no one has to give you any esteem for adding a handicap. I may simply have a problem with how you and Mike put it - for example, you say "then that is a bold play worthy of respect', where with a literal reading of that is that it is saying it's definite you get respect. Where as in regard to being berated you say 'but if you resisted because you're a naive fool who didn't realize the consequences, then that's something others might berate you over.', treating it as a mere possibility they might. You can write me up as pedantic on a detail if you want - my point is just that you do not automatically get respect if you take a handicap. Someone decides (often in the moment, but sometimes it can be well before the moment). I don't think anything you've said contradicts that.


Eero,

QuoteThe way we've been playing D&D (and Tunnels & Trolls, and Runeslayers to a degree) over the last few years is all about leveraging the SIS for significant mechanical advantage. In fact, it's often so significant that it might even seem non-mechanical; when a player "avoids a roll" by manipulating the SIS, that might be considered a complete success on the scale ranging from "my plan is so bad that it'll fail automatically" to "my plan is so good we all agree that it's going to succeed automatically".

My point really is that in regard to the Mekton players, they want to engage the rules. They want to roll. They don't want to engage an SIS so as to avoid rolling. And there are not any strong examples (though below I ask you about your +10/-10 example) of where by wanting to engage the rules, you will as a subset of that (!) want to engage the SIS to leverage advantage within those rules.

QuoteWhen I GM D&D myself, there's a rich technique/rule set of various fiction-based bonuses and roll variations in there, and it's intentionally statistically more significant than the static bonuses you get from character build and whatnot. The most important of these mechanics in my personal D&D version is the 3rd edition style task resolution DC, which will routinely provide as much as the equivalent of a +10 bonus or -10 penalty to any given roll, simply depending on how well-thought a player's plan is. A sad +2 for being a 2nd level Fighter or whatever just doesn't compare.

I'm really not familiar with bonuses with such a wide range? What edition are you refering to, Eero? Can you give some game text examples to help me catch up?

The particular D&D we're playing is heavily house-ruled: it's essentially a mechanically streamlined take that I developed to capture this style of play even better than by-the-book D&D does (all particular editions of the game do have their own failings, after all, for various historical reasons; only a considered and play-tempered house version may attain to perfection historically). Personally I consider it a bunch of minor variations on superficial mechanical solutions (that is, I call it "D&D" instead of giving it some funky name of its own), but I've heard differing opinions. If you're interested (and there's no reason why you should be - a very particular topic, this), a pretty good overview can be found by following this bunch of links (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=63.0).

In case you're curious about the particular D&D scholarship of how difficulties are manipulated in our play, the core conceit, borrowed from 3rd edition, is that the DC (difficulty class, the target number) of various task resolution checks is determined on the basis of realistic fictional difficulty of achieving the task described by the player. For this reason a player's arguments based on positioning and tactics in the SIS have a massive influence on the odds of success: the difference between having to roll for a 20 or a 30 (effective +10 to the roll) is nothing more than whether you're attempting an easy task or a difficult one. For example, climbing the same wall with or without a rope might account for a difficulty swing of this magnitude.

In the style of D&D we play, leveraging the SIS "through the rules" or otherwise is not really a meaningful distinction, because we do not acknowledge the existence of any "outside the rules" arbitration. I understand that this is rare - many people read the D&D game with a false dichotomy where they perceive a freeform portion of play and a rules-constrained portion of play, and the DM's main authority is to decide when we move from one to the other. However, I've found that this is all bullshit, and the way D&D is supposed to work ("supposed" as in "this is how it can be fun, as opposed to not being fun") is by putting all fictional events through the exact same procedural wringer. Sometimes that wringer warrants dice rolls, and sometimes it doesn't, but that is strictly an incident of the process, not a sign that we're somehow avoiding or embracing "the rules", as if they were something that only applied to dicing and not to everything else.

In this mode of thinking the pertinent question in how a character positions and how he attempts to accomplish his goals is not really fundamentally about mechanical manipulation: you don't primarily do something because the rules say that doing it provides you with X leverage in the mechanics; such play will fail you at the most inopportune moments, for it's not you who decides that the rule may be used, but rather the table concensus or the DM. It is more effective for every action to principally derive from realistic fictional consideration: you get a charge bonus for your attack if you have the appropriate weapon, positioning and psychological position against your enemy, not just because you're 10' out and that's what the rules demand for a charge. (I mention this example as a minor pet peeve of mine; LotFP rules, which we've been rocking lately, have some rather stupid notions that will only work when applied correctly.) Ultimately, all minor mechanical details of the rules are subservient to the macro-scale procedural rules of play, and thus only a fool who misunderstands the nature of the game relies on any particular rule. Trust in the courage and strength of your troops, for that's an established fact in the fiction, and may thus be the basis on which to derive mechanical strength.

(Do note that I'm writing here with the understanding that we're interested in concrete actual play examples of how this sort of gamism works in practice, and not in whether any particular published game is a well-realized presentation of such. I mention this because there are a bunch of threads active right now where we're talking about D&D specifically, and in those threads it is entirely fair to brush my particular D&D experiences aside with the note that I'm not playing "real D&D" and therefore it doesn't matter what we do and how we do it.)

Regarding handicaps, I do agree that esteem is somewhat subjective, in the exact same way the creative goals are in the first place. You've got to sell the other players on your handicaps, to make them compelling. For example, deciding to play a crippled character might fall flat if everybody finds it a ridiculous and unfeasible thing to do - they don't see feasible and interesting challenges arising out of it in the context of the on-going game. However, it might also be a very popular choice, assuming the situation was such that being crippled would be cause for an interesting challenge. For example, we actually had a character in a wheelchair in our campaign last year: Peitsa, one of the players, had rolled awfully low physical statistics, so we decided for fun that he went everywhere with a servant rolling him in a wheelchair. This is ludicrous in a dungeoneering context, of course, but the adventure of the moment was more akin to a murder mystery, and we were in a jocular mood, so the idea was well-received. I'm sure that had play veered towards a dungeoneering environment, and had the player chosen to retain the character, we'd have found that the character could walk under his own strength, despite tiring easily.

I'm still not clear on the specific players you're talking about, Callan - are you saying they do NOT consider the old-school "use a 10-foot pole to avoid making a Trap roll" to be a Step On Up "win"? I'm sure you agree there are players that do find that - and those that'd consider it "right" in the Right to Dream or a great (say) paranoia-example for Story Now (more specifically, players exist who might find it so within the scope of specific instances of play, to go all Big Model-pedantic). I mean, I recognize Eero's play as G, but it seems like you're pointing to players for whom it's not G enough. That seems possible, but I'm not sure yet exactly why you're saying such players would find it so, nor what that means beyond "tastes vary within agenda as well as across them."

I can talk about how Mekton CAN connect SIS stuff to mechanics (one trick - if a player wants to design mechs (HUGE potential source of mechanical advantage), their character has gotta have the Mech Designer skill, and the fiction has to include the building process). But given the current D&D focus, maybe letting that continue is better. I mean, I'm worried that all I have to say is that the win-focus Callan is talking about (I think) is just not, in my understanding, opinion or experience, the whole or core of Step On Up play. But maybe there's something I'm missing.

Gordon,

QuoteI'm still not clear on the specific players you're talking about, Callan - are you saying they do NOT consider the old-school "use a 10-foot pole to avoid making a Trap roll" to be a Step On Up "win"?

Well in two different respects, yes and possibly yes. Yes, in that you gain nothing by bypassing a trap in itself. Yes possibly, as in my reply to Eero on black boxes.

QuoteThat seems possible, but I'm not sure yet exactly why you're saying such players would find it so, nor what that means beyond "tastes vary within agenda as well as across them."

Here is where, when I read you literally, you have ceased engaging any kind of gamism.

No, it's not about tastes - do you take up the challenge of winning rather than 'not just not losing' and the challenge of being told you lost, not just being told 'smart laydown'? Or NOT?

To take it up or not take it up are both gamism, I would agree. To ignore the challenge and go on about tastes - either the person is not gamist inclined or are but are trying to avoid making the choice (I would like to have stated this in a much more negative way, as it seems the gamist version of bad apples).

I would agree that 'smart laydown' and 'not losing' are potentially part of a gamism for folk who have not yet been challenged with something harder by anyone. They could also be something else. Hopefully not, though.



Eero,

It's interesting that you developed such a strong potential mechanical benefit, much as I'm talking about. Bit of an off topic question, how often do people get a full +10 (or even a 8 to 9)?

On the 'macro-scale procedural rules of play', I think it's too much of a black box - sure, the GM could be judging it all with a harsh scrutiny, but he could also be colluding with them, or even swinging from one to the other at various times. I know alot of GM's will insist that no, they are super impartial - and sans any way of measuring it (since it's all hidden in a black box), I am inclined to not believe them - I don't even believe I am some kind super impartial when it comes to 'you get to skip the rolls' decision - I could be colluding without even realising it (most people think they could never do something without realising it, I know, I know).

I don't mind some play hinging on the black box. That's fun and all. I guess if one has faith in the capacity of the human mind, one can hinge all play upon the black box. But no, I just don't share that faith. The six o'clock news keeps putting me in an unfaithful state each night. I prefer to hinge the lions share on mechanics. If 'the nature of the game' hinges entirely on a black box and that black box colludes on a regular basis, then the nature of the game is borked.

Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2013, 07:39:36 PM
It's interesting that you developed such a strong potential mechanical benefit, much as I'm talking about. Bit of an off topic question, how often do people get a full +10 (or even a 8 to 9)?

Oh, all the time. As I've explained, the actual semantics of the matter is that we modify the target number, but it's the same thing mathematically. And I mean that this is a constant thing: first a player asks for the DC to climb a wall, and it's 30. Then he asks whether his character knows what it'll be if he throws a climbing hook and a rope on the wall, and it's DC 20.

This isn't in any way a special procedure, it's a constant measure of how sensible and rational the input of the players is: try to do simple, easy things, and your DCs are low or success automatic. Try to do stupid, foolhardy things, and the DCs are high. Of course sometimes you have no choice but to try something difficult.

Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2013, 07:39:36 PM
On the 'macro-scale procedural rules of play', I think it's too much of a black box - sure, the GM could be judging it all with a harsh scrutiny, but he could also be colluding with them, or even swinging from one to the other at various times. I know alot of GM's will insist that no, they are super impartial - and sans any way of measuring it (since it's all hidden in a black box), I am inclined to not believe them - I don't even believe I am some kind super impartial when it comes to 'you get to skip the rolls' decision - I could be colluding without even realising it (most people think they could never do something without realising it, I know, I know).

It might depend on the players, I suppose. We don't feel that it's a black box, though, because there is no GM fiat involved in any of this - the GM is under constant scrutiny in his task of setting difficulties, just like he is in his other roles. If some numbers seem off, the players have the right to hear the justifications for it, and the numbers can be corrected until an acceptable consensus or compromise is reached. It's a subjective process, sure, but it's a subjective process of the entire group, and it's solely up to the group whether they manage to elevate and glorify their play by being harsh, objective masters of their fictional reality.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on October 23, 2013, 08:02:27 PM
It might depend on the players, I suppose. We don't feel that it's a black box, though, because there is no GM fiat involved in any of this - the GM is under constant scrutiny in his task of setting difficulties, just like he is in his other roles. If some numbers seem off, the players have the right to hear the justifications for it, and the numbers can be corrected until an acceptable consensus or compromise is reached. It's a subjective process, sure, but it's a subjective process of the entire group, and it's solely up to the group whether they manage to elevate and glorify their play by being harsh, objective masters of their fictional reality.

OMG Eero!  You're doing it again.  Just  as I'm in the depths of personal angst about how to make/keep D&D fun, you make it sound so bloody easy!  Please tell me Finland needs common-law trained public defenders, and/or health administrators.  I'm sure I can talk Martha and Freyja into moving.

Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on October 23, 2013, 08:02:27 PM

Quote from: Callan S. on October 23, 2013, 07:39:36 PM
On the 'macro-scale procedural rules of play', I think it's too much of a black box - sure, the GM could be judging it all with a harsh scrutiny, but he could also be colluding with them, or even swinging from one to the other at various times. I know alot of GM's will insist that no, they are super impartial - and sans any way of measuring it (since it's all hidden in a black box), I am inclined to not believe them - I don't even believe I am some kind super impartial when it comes to 'you get to skip the rolls' decision - I could be colluding without even realising it (most people think they could never do something without realising it, I know, I know).

It might depend on the players, I suppose. We don't feel that it's a black box, though, because there is no GM fiat involved in any of this - the GM is under constant scrutiny in his task of setting difficulties, just like he is in his other roles. If some numbers seem off, the players have the right to hear the justifications for it, and the numbers can be corrected until an acceptable consensus or compromise is reached. It's a subjective process, sure, but it's a subjective process of the entire group, and it's solely up to the group whether they manage to elevate and glorify their play by being harsh, objective masters of their fictional reality.

Call it a literal reading on my part, but no, it's not solely up to the group - gamism means a challenge can come from anyone, really. I'm pitching mine - who judges the judges in this case? This hardly escapes the black box issue, it's just a one step recursion and now the black box is amongst the players. It's even closer to being able to collude with themselves, to unknown degrees. Check out a book like Cordelia Fine's 'A mind of it's own' -  summerisations of various cognitive science studies - with chapter titles like 'The Vain Brain', 'The Pigheaded Brain', 'The Weak-willed Brain' and 'The Bigoted Brain', if it doesn't make you think you (even as, or especially as, a group) are prone to sometime indulge yourselves* - well, I dunno. It makes me think that about, at the very least, myself. And as such a person, I put forward the gamist challenges that I do.

* I'm inclined to think that 100% indulgence toward cognitive biases is the very definition of simulationism.

I don't disagree, really - people deceive themselves on the local scale, and groups have groupthink-related weaknesses in their thinking. I don't think that any of this really invalidates the challenges presented and resolved in a roleplaying game, though. Perhaps we have a different understanding of what is a "real" challenge, or something like that?

I do know that I get satisfaction of a game well played if we plan and execute a successful commando raid in the game. I only get this, however, if the DM provides intelligent critique of the plan, or otherwise shows that we're playing at a high level of competence. If he's just giving in to whatever bullshit (and yes, we constantly test for bullshit - players are constantly pushing to see where the limits of credence lie), the challenge disappears and the game becomes a ritual. I would characterize this psychological process as elevation via communication: we elevate and glorify each other's competence by validating our choices as good ones.

I don't know that it matters for the above psychology whether a challenge is "real", or if we're just deluding ourselves and shooting bullshit while we think that we're being really clever. I mean, basically it's a matter of self-worth, and belief in your chosen partners in the endeavour: you want to play with intelligent and knowledgeable people who are factually capable of elevating you with their points and disputation. If you play with dimbulbs who won't be capable of doing that, then I guess the black box will produce only trash instead of valid insights.

Ultimately, going back to my favourite example: once we have chosen the challenge of beating a dragon with a fully panoplied knight, the real value of gamism comes from the insight the imaginary struggle provides. Did you learn something about the world (knights or dragons, perhaps) or of virtue (courage and its nature?) or of small group skirmish tactics, for example? Or did you just learn false self-importance and ridiculous lies? The value of gamism is the same value you get out of all conventional games, it's a chance to match your wits or other qualities against challenges, with the chance to learn and gain respect of your peers. How well this works in the case of a rpg depends on how good your peers are, largely.

Eero,

You attempt to prove your point, but do you attempt to disprove it at all? Something like 'If X is the case somehow, then what I'm saying is false or atleast partly false'? I went through this question with Contracycle (Gavin?) once and he found the idea he should put any effort into such as being ludicrous (he thought it was everyone elses job to disprove him). But cognitive science studies tend to indicate confirmation bias is a real thing - people simply cherry pick what supports their claim and just don't think much about the things that might undermine their claim.

Ironically, I'd probably be more convinced by efforts on your part to disprove your claim (ie, if condition X (which you don't think currently exists) is the case, then your claim is incorrect). Richard Dawkins might be a bit of an annoying person, but he'll treat evolution as proven false if a rabbit skeleton is found in the wrong fossil record. Ie, he doesn't just look for ways he is right.

Beyond that I guess I'm left to devise some sort of roleplay exercises, to test instances where folks think one they aren't biased toward a result, but test by emperic measure whether they were. Already at the moment the following observation is fairly common in regards to people think they roll alot of 1's or alot of 20's, with the observation being if they emperically just wrote down all the numbers they rolled, it'd show they rolled the same range as usual. So I guess I'm left to inventing exercises to create new observations along those sorts of lines.

I haven't really attempted to disprove this assertion, no. Never felt the need to. I do agree that human cognition can be unreliable, though, so you may take my observations about our play in whatever manner you wish.

I'm not sure we've got a focus for this thread - I mean, there's good stuff in it, but what are we figuring out? If it's rebuilding/redefining Gamism, that seems ... out of place (and time?) But maybe the question "how important is winning in Step On Up play?" remains current. My point in the initial (other thread) post, summed up in a "how important is winning" context and for this thread, is this: the heart of Step On Up is clearly evident in play like Eero's, and actual "winning" is a sometimes-secondary consideration. "Sometimes-secondary" meaning sometimes it's present, sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's primary, sometimes it's secondary or lower. Callan, you seem to be saying the opposite ("no winning=no Gamism - or at best weak sauce Gamism"), and while I certainly acknowledge the existence of a "winning is everything" goal, such a goal is not, by my understanding, a Big Model Creative Agenda. "Winning is everything", in it's purest form, is something outside CA - a Social Contract issue? A matter of Technique preferences? I'm not sure. But since winning (stripped of "is everything") itself (as a minimum in the "not losing" form) *can* be incorporated into the Step On Up CA, it's perhaps not surprising that some confusion can result (I can easily identify parallels for Story Now, and would bet they exist in Right to Dream too).

My actual play experiences with individuals who pursue a winning is everything goal has been either a) focusing on that rather than a Creative Agenda leads to play that really has no CA (which is hard for me to talk about, as outside rare social-level disasters no-CA play is not very memorable for me), or b) some combination of factors (I'm not sure what) keep that goal supportive rather than disruptive of a Step On Up CA. I'd put my experiences at about 50/50 between a) and b). In the b) case (and to respond to Callan's "how does he feel?"), one trick seems to be balancing opportunities to concretely see a win (your mech was flat-out better than the other guys) with an understanding that the game itself is about more than that (more than winning a mech battle). If the group as a whole can't enjoy and acknowledge the mech fight, it fails. If the "winning is everything" guy can't accept that the opposition ejects and the pilots get kudos for performing well against a superior technology, it fails. With both, it can work.

I really hope that's useful, and that this - or SOMEthing - gets a focus to the thread, otherwise I think we're off in the weeds. I've made two other attempts at this post that I'm glad I re-read before posting, because man, did they drift! I suspect that's really easy to do here.

Hi, I'm thinking we should let the thread cool off for a while. Not because anyone has been mean or behaving wrongly, but because the ideas relate directly to my latest, not-yet-posted experiences with playing 4E and Hank specifically. I want to post about that either here or in the "marry your daughter" thread, and then we can take this discussion up again with a hot-and-steaming touchpoint.

Best, Ron

First not-so-great session last night. Here we saw all three of the players in my first session (me included), and four others, the designated core-players, two or three of which were present in the previous session. The player I hadn't met played a tiefling wizard; she and the guy playing the halfling are a couple.

So counting down ... human (or half-elf?) paladin, human cleric, vryloka blackguard, halfling rogue, human bard, elf sorceress, tiefling wizard. It should be a pretty formidable bunch, going by the roles: two leaders, two strikers, one defender, two controllers, two at least optimally built (Hank and the elf sorceress).

Well, I'm kind of disappointed. I think what happened and my sensations about it are relevant here; for reference about the game and Hank, see [D&D 4E] My goth guy is much tougher than yours (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=209.0) and [D&D 4E] Vryloka + Blackguard: would you let your daughter marry one? (http://indie-rpgs.com/adept/index.php?topic=214.0)

The general or framing play was excruciating. In the prior session, we learned of a scary observation by the Duke's (our boss') people: a huge shipment of "fireworks powder," a substance often imported into the city, is unaccounted for - obviously someone is making a bomb. I was expecting some investigation this session, only to discover that the map we'd been given was so explicit (somehow) as to inform the Duke to tell us, "go here." There's a house, it's on the map, something about it screams "bomb makers are here," and off we go. Elapsed time about five minutes.

Now for the part which will make Mike and Moreno and Callan weep, and whatever their differences in theory and practice, acknowledge themselves as brothers. We go to this house. No one has any idea of what to do. Knock on the door? Sneak around the windows? Break in? Multiple proposals are made, separate dialogues begin over one another punctuated by "what? what?" between them, miniatures are endlessly positioned and re-positioned, the sorceress knocks a couple of times to no effect, people lose track of what one another said or what was just agreed ... this goes on until I investigate the attached out-building and a couple of city guards bother us. We fail every imaginable roll to make them go away until we finally get one, and they go away. Shawn repeatedly mentions that people in other houses are looking at us more and more. I raise the point that why should we care about any of this; we work for one of the most powerful dudes around - the rest shush me, acting like under-21s with a six-pack.

We finally decide to hang out at a tavern nearby and watch the building to see if anyone goes in. A family of halflings occupies the table we want. Much role-playing ensues, basically amounting to the fact that we can't have the table. Can anyone look at that list of characters above? These seven uber bad-asses are uneasily standing in a tavern trying to get a table. I ask if we're hanging out here, am told "yes," and suggest to Ben, the paladin player, that our characters probably talk about religion; we dice-off and I lose, but we briefly feel like we're doing something. People start doing random shit. I'm feeling the max-cool Color of the game bleeding right out of play, spreading across the table, and dripping off the edge into oblivion, never to be recovered. The wizard tries to scare the halfling kids away with a spell, fails, the kids start saying "Booo!" and playing with one another. I step outside and keep an eye on the building from there. Tony, the player of the elf sorceress, has her join the halflings and watch from there, as the player desperately tries to restore relevance by chatting up the mom to get an idea of various events from the common person's view. Shawn enjoys playing bratty halflings and their mom trying to hit on the characters. The bard tries to play a song and rolls a 1 (has no one in this group heard of taking 10? it's in the rules, I checked). The wizard tries to blow out a candle with magic for some reason and fails.

Finally someone goes into the house. With great difficulty (no one is listening to anyone at this point), Tony (the sorceress player) and I get this across and we all go over there - to do a repeat of the previous dithering. After many proposals and counter-proposals we finally kick in the door, discover that everything is empty and boring, miniatures get moved around with about 50% correspondence to what everyone says they're doing, and finally people look for a secret door, find it instantly, and we go down into a dungeon. Well, cellar, right? Except that it's totally a dungeon.

I hope you can all confirm that I'm not crazy and the only thing to do is a heavy-weapons assault. We can't use fire and lightning - precisely our wizard's and sorceress' respective specialties; we have a paladin and a blackguard (totally not stealthy). As everyone milled around in the vestibule of the dungeon, I suggested to Ben, that we heavy-hitters simply charge, letting the others follow up and support. He smiled: "It's crazy, but I like it for some reason," and in we went. The dungeon required we go past a sentry and around a corner to get to the big room where the guys were making the bombs.

To make an agonizing story shorter, the rest of the characters screwed around endlessly instead of charging to back us up - bothering with the single sentry, shifting a square instead of following up, not paying attention to the turn order (Shawn lost track a couple times, I think); more significantly, phones appeared and from this point forward, two or three people were texting at any given moment and tuning in only on their turns. Meanwhile the paladin and Hank were killing terrorists a bit too slowly for my liking, eating magic missiles and acid sprays. Shawn lays down some dubious interpretations of move, a corner, and line-of-sight, rendering the movement of the tiefling to join us irrelevant - this character got cock-blocked more than once, actually. Finally, finally, when the combatants are whittled down to one and a couple circling the drain, the other characters come in and we finish them off. Both of us (the ones who did the work) are down to 4 or 5 hit points; at one point, the paladin was pretty badly off but the cleric's healing saved him just in time, and Hand suffered about four rounds of ongoing acid damage due to shitty save rolls. Although I think that's pretty bad-ass, killing all those dudes while the acid ate into him and gave off clouds of steam - not that any such narration was uttered.

I call attention to two things. First, as I just stated, not one single effect of any roll was ever described. When a foe went down, Shawn said, "He's dead," and removed the counter, that's all. I am finding this truly a missed opportunity, as gaudy damage narration is clearly the essence of 4E and its most obvious callback to 1970s play. Does anyone remember what book the sword was in, the one with some kind of gravity power, so that if you rolled a critical hit, it cut the guy in half, and his top half slammed upwards and his bottom half slammed downwards, so you ended up with a double splotch on the ceiling and floor? Fellow oldies, help me out here.

Second, we simply used our high armor class and mountains of hit points as a buffer to get the job done. That's not tactics, it's an indictment of the fight setup that permitted it to work considering no backup arrived. This session was a horrible cock-up of tactics, both surrounding the confrontation and during it. The other players completely played in "my go what do I do" with no reference to the group's particular profile of powers, any issues of timing, any possibilities for coordination, or anything else. Even between the two of us doing the work, you'd think that one of us might have used an action point to do a double-hit while the other one used their primary action for a healing surge, or anything like that at all.

Tony turned out to be pissed that his character's speciality, lightning, was useless in this fight, and I find myself on Shawn's side on that one, in that no one owes you tactical setups which favor your particular optimization every session, and that you should have a plan B for when it doesn't work out. However, if I were Amy, playing the tiefling, I'd have been pissed that my character had been stalled or ineffective the entire time - as it happens, I was sitting next to Amy, and when her character (eventually) killed the annoying halfling who'd dosed my character with acid, I high-fived her basically as pure fellow-player acknowledgment that she was in there pitching (note that she had actually tried to get to us, unlike the others, and been stalled). But the second the combat was over, she was out of her seat and gone.

So now to the Gamism topic at hand. The thing is, "winning" is always and ever a value judgment, unlike "losing" which is an external and quite non-negotiable status. I'd prefer not to get into wrangling over that and will happily spot anyone whatever they mean by "winning" as long as they spot me that whatever it is, it includes "not losing." How does that apply here?

It applies here because there was no way to lose. Our position in play is to "get through the campaign," and that means doing all this bullshit for the Duke - which a third party might note is effectively assassinating anyone the Duke thinks is bad for the body politic - I mean, it's not like anyone asked these people what they wanted to blow up and why - and eventually, doing all this bullshit for the Duke is supposed to build some arc for the city and for ourselves as the heroes thereof. It's an epic campaign of wanderers who found themselves cast as heroes and then lived up to it.

But it ain't Step On Up. There is no way not to go down that road laid out for us. There is no point in protesting about it or doing something else in play because that's what we're here to do, and any such thing would be griefing. Therefore: in a given fight, we cannot lose. They're all softballs (in the sense of marshmallows, not the actual sport softball which is a very nasty item) and they're all pitched right to us so we can hit a home run every time. All while playing these characters who are, mechanically, absolutely nothing but a chance to spit in God's eye by making it through fights that should kill us.

I don't mind not winning. I mind, very much, the fact that we have no chance to lose.

I am convinced that the lackluster, incompetent, confused, and ineffective performance of most of the participants in this session are a direct function of that fact.

Best, Ron

As I've noted before, sounds like pretty average 4th edition play to me - that's what e.g. my brother Markku's play in the Helsinki 4th edition circles has consistently been like, according to his reports over the years. I mean, if you read the game's GMing instructions and how adventures are structured, the sort of creative set-up you describe here is almost inevitable. My impression is that players are generally happy with it as long as nobody bumps with the fencing around the pen, and the herd happens to move in one direction instead of milling around randomly. Seems to be pretty random in that any random dice roll can derail the proceedings.

This sort of vaguely simmy railroad has been of particular interest to a few of my friends over the last decade, to a degree where we've intentionally played games like this to pinpoint some basic tactics for making it work. One approach would be to attempt to break down the illusionism to cut down on the ancillary bullshit; I mean, the actual inefficiency in the development of play in your session report seems to be directly caused by a complete breakdown of understanding between the GM and the players over what's important, why things are being presented to the table, and what the players are expected to be doing about it. If the protocol of communication was clearer, so that the players knew at each moment whether they're supposed to be fighting or listening or adding incidental color, that should make everything be quicker and more entertaining. For example, if the group knew that the point of the inn scene was just to waste some time because the GM wanted "pacing", or because he had a realism-induced brainfart, or because he'd expected the players to just break in (that's my guess - I wouldn't have expected you to shirk from just breaking into some abandoned warehouse or whatever) and now didn't know how to communicate this expectation, it might have been much easier to either just skip the scene or use it efficiently in developing supporting fiction about team dynamics, the setting, or whatever. To me it seems like everybody at that table were constantly uncertain about whether any given situation in the lead-up to the actual fight mattered; it is unfortunate that D&D GMs like to pretend that everything matters, even if the kind of D&D where everything actually matters is played only by a minuscule hardcore.

Of course, the other thing I've learned about this sort of thing is, people who routinely play like this often have huge vested interest in pretending that no coordination whatsoever is ever needed, because "you get to play your character however you want, you just tell me what you want to do and I'll tell you what happens". So unfortunately it's not that easy to drag the unspoken operative dynamics of what's going on up into daylight, unless you're in an authoritative position in the group yourself so you can restructure everything. It's very easy to tell the players that I'm expecting them to break into a warehouse if I'm the GM; it's much more difficult to get the GM to confess to something like this if I'm merely one of the players.

This is my very point - ask Shawn if you could lose? I'd practically bet money he will say 'Yes, of course you could lose! *followed by various extended discussions, which to my ear will no doubt sound like rationalisations*". If he actually verbatim says that, I get bonus points!

And assuming he says such...how are you gunna prove him wrong?

Welcome to my shoes in this very thread!

As I said in my AP example, for the Rifts campaign, the original finish line was level 5. No, it wasn't left to always be some ambiguous value judgement - it was emperic - either step up to the challenge/value the level 5 target I set or leave!

Or if he says 'Well yeah, you couldn't lose, heh.' then my post has no support from it and I'd admit no evidence toward my point is granted from it.

But I'm betting he really, really believes you could lose. And sure, you'll think 'Well in terms of what I was engaging in terms of actually playing, you couldn't lose!' (and to me, it seems that way and I agree!) but then he'll give all these entirely new, teeny tiny lose conditions which are also very much into value judgement territory - and having given up emperic win conditions, what'll stop you from giving up emperic lose conditions, ay? It's all the slow, steady, with all the apparent good reasoning in the world, path to playing like Shawn did here, on a regular basis. In my estimate, anyway. At the very least, try playing both ways - with an emperic win condition in one campaign and in another entirely seperate campaign with what is winning left as an always and ever value judgement. Compare the difference.

Again, unless he will actually say "Nah, you couldn't lose!" in which case disregard this post (and I'll say both "Dang! I got it wrong!" and "Thank goodness I got it wrong! I didn't want it to be the case, after all! I feared it was the case!")


Gordon, I'm still thinking upon your post.

Eero,

You have wonderfully described an unfortunate game I sat through for eleven sessions over three months in Kansas City, Missouri last year. The game was an odd mish-mash of OD&D, heavily and inconsistently house-ruled. The behavior at the table was very similar to that of Ron's experience: players floating in and out (with attention if not physically) and little attention to color, context, or tactics. I was at a loss, having never experienced such dysfunction. My breaking point was the DM's ruling that transformation magic was actually illusion. In hindsight, I used that ruling as an excuse to leave. Perhaps a straw that broke the camel's back if I were inclined to be less hard on my self awareness.

The oddest aspect of that gaming group was the DM's use of inconsequential XP awards for any and all behavior he wished to encourage. Things like an interesting quip, interrupting a verbal free-for-all at the table with a call for order, or simply getting his joke and counter with a favorite old-song lyric could earn "50 xp" (with a creepy rising pleasure in his voice). He also awarded large bonus xp for posting game play write ups on his meetup site. Coupled with relatively poor xp awards for killing things and none for other roleplaying actions, I think the effect of his xp practice created a sort of gamist environment in which players competed unhealthily for his attention.

Just explaining that situation makes me ashamed of myself. I was desperate enough for roleplaying to stick with that group for far too long.

Ed

Ron - if "the lackluster, incompetent, confused, and ineffective performance of most of the participants" was socially acknowledged and condemned, could that salvage things? What about if the Duke presented consequences - rewarding those who actually fought, scolding and/or ignoring others? Would one or the other - or both - do a better job of creating a Step On Up environment? Or perhaps such things are still woefully insufficient? (And that was a quick cool-off, but I think you're right that your hot, steaming touchpoint helps - though I *sure* don't want to be literally touching it. I think you made clear why it's hot and steaming ...)

Callan - if your point is more about it being all too possible to pretend that Step On Up is happening when it isn't, really, I guess I agree. It's just been a LONG time since I played with anyone who didn't understand that when we're doing Step On Up, there's gotta be a (legitimate, understood) possible hurt coming from SOMEwhere. Note that this may be in part because I developed a sensitivity both to worrying about non-existent hurt (play becomes a waste of my time) and to an over-willingness by others (especially GMs) to just add some random hurt in an attempt to meet the requirement (play becomes "gotcha!" and social-hierarchy driven rather than authentic game play). Compound this with a lot of d20 (3.0/5/P) play in a functional if hit-and-miss vanilla Nar style, and I'm less exposed to the problem (call it "false Gamism", for now) that (maybe) is what you're confronting.

Which brings up a possible parallel of "false Gamism" with the "Impossible thing" in Story Now. "You're proving your skill/guts but you can't lose" seems to meet the "neither sub-clause in the sentence is possible in the presence of the other" of the Impossible thing. Now, maybe you can sub-select some areas for skill/guts and others for inability to lose, but if there's literally no meaningful area where it's possible to lose - meaningfully showing skill/guts becomes (I)impossible. Even Mike's "what a smart play" only has meaning if a stupid play really might get you in trouble. Eero's players trying to get the GM to admit you should just break into the warehouse are exposing the impossibility, so certain GMs resist it - not realizing that admitting it AND making sure there are other places/ways where player screw-ups have consequences would make life easier on them, too.

Ed - I(/we all?) have been there, sir. I console myself that at least some of the time, I legitimately was trying to learn more about how other people play...

Hi Ron!

Now, THAT'S seems like "true" D&D play to me!

You see, in the last few years I have seen lots of Indie game designer start to gush about all the "qualities" of "good old D&D", and even if many of them, like Eero, were simply playing a very personal version of their own that a lot of people would not even recognize as D&D, there was this widespread sense of "what were these people talking about? This is a beautiful game" that reminded me a lot of a specific situation I have seen often in old Italian movies.

In these old movies, often done right after WW2, you can see American or English soldiers (or, later, tourists) look at people searching (and seeing) only the "picturesque". The people have no indoor plumbing? How picturesque! They are SO near to nature, imagine how they are happy! There is no meds distribution anymore and people have to try to cure themselves with useless herbs or beverages? Look, how picturesque, they are still in contact with the roots of their culture! They are not able to read and all they know is what the village priest says to them? How picturesque, they are still in contact with their soul, imagine how happy they are, much more than us with our cold and soulless indoor plumbing, medicinals and books...

...ok, I think you get the point: people who played a few sessions and see them as a sort of holiday, so there are not problems, only "picturesque" details that titillate their sense of going back to mythic roots of the hobby, and everything is so "true", like in a holiday in a luxury resort in a third-world country...

They didn't play D&D for years. But D&D HAS TO BE PLAYED FOR YEARS. It's they way the game works. You start as a useless 1st level, and play, and play, and play, to get to higher levels, if your character die you start again, rinse, repeat, repeat, again, year, after year, after year.

And playing D&D for a long time,  you get the kind of play you describe here. Why bother describing? It's always the same. Why bother trying to come up with a good strategy? It will fail if it's not the one the DM want you to use. So he is the one who should tell you what to do. But when he do, you do another thing just to spite him because you are not enjoying the game and it's all his fault (the books say so!)

My guess? They played better the previous sessions only because it was not the usual group. There were players missing (and, in old D&D groups, this usually means that the game is more enjoyable, less bothersome people to suffer in silence), there was one new potential player (you), they had to put up a show, to make that effort, to talk, to describe, to come up with something at least a little inventive. But now, you are one of the group, so they are returning to play as always.

That kind of play can be described by almost every D&D player after years of playing (can be. Many will refuse to admit it if you ask. Then after some years I meet them again and they say to me "you were right, but I didn't want to admit it"). It's the grinding down caused by all these game sessions, every time searching for "fun" that you can find less and less.

And every D&D iteration is the same, at the end. If you avoid the unbearable railroading of AD&D2, you still have a DM that has to provide "fun stories" anyway. Even if he doesn't make that mistake, he is still under the grinding down of having to come up with dungeon after dungeon, monster after monster, and every time you don't follow the rails, he has wasted time for nothing. The game encourage railroading even if the book don't tell you to do it right in the face.

Probably, it's the right time to show them ELFS...  :-)

QuoteSo now to the Gamism topic at hand. The thing is, "winning" is always and ever a value judgment, unlike "losing" which is an external and quite non-negotiable status. I'd prefer not to get into wrangling over that and will happily spot anyone whatever they mean by "winning" as long as they spot me that whatever it is, it includes "not losing." How does that apply here?

It applies here because there was no way to lose. Our position in play is to "get through the campaign," and that means doing all this bullshit for the Duke - which a third party might note is effectively assassinating anyone the Duke thinks is bad for the body politic - I mean, it's not like anyone asked these people what they wanted to blow up and why - and eventually, doing all this bullshit for the Duke is supposed to build some arc for the city and for ourselves as the heroes thereof. It's an epic campaign of wanderers who found themselves cast as heroes and then lived up to it.

But it ain't Step On Up. There is no way not to go down that road laid out for us. There is no point in protesting about it or doing something else in play because that's what we're here to do, and any such thing would be griefing. Therefore: in a given fight, we cannot lose. They're all softballs (in the sense of marshmallows, not the actual sport softball which is a very nasty item) and they're all pitched right to us so we can hit a home run every time. All while playing these characters who are, mechanically, absolutely nothing but a chance to spit in God's eye by making it through fights that should kill us.

It seems there are two problems here: the stacked-in-the-players'-favor nature of 4e and the character of the Duke.  The first problem is easy to fix, but what about the Duke?  Ron, if the players had the opportunity to design the Duke's character and maybe large parts of the city, do you think that would have improved player engagement?

Callan and Gordon, I was pretty sure you two were agreeing, and the degree to which you've connected to my post confirms it as far as I'm concerned.

Eero, everything you wrote conforms to my experience, but I stress that nothing you wrote concerns an isolated or recent phenomenon. Moreno has it right:

QuoteThat kind of play can be described by almost every D&D player after years of playing (can be. Many will refuse to admit it if you ask. Then after some years I meet them again and they say to me "you were right, but I didn't want to admit it"). It's the grinding down caused by all these game sessions, every time searching for "fun" that you can find less and less.

Absolutely right. Historically, this is role-playing. I am wearily, wearily familiar with it. It's precisely what I was referencing when I wrote that blasphemous conclusion to "GNS and other matters of role-playing," when I said that most role-players didn't enjoy themselves very much. It's why I decided role-playing was broken in December of 1983 and that I didn't need to waste my time with it. (I gave it "one more try" with Champions in July of 1985 ...) It's what we encountered in that Rolemaster game that I frequently mention, and that game is notable because even the GM realized that something was terribly wrong here, and we all sought a better alternative in my parallel Champions game.

Therefore both to you and to Troy,* I stress again: quit tarring 4E with this brush. This kind of play is observed throughout the hobby, all the time, especially with D&D of all kinds, and I submit in 3/3.5E as much as any if not more. I submit as well that 4E has immense potential for successful play of a certain kind, clearly invisible to many including its developers.

I think this kind of shitty play ... wait, let's use jargon, it's the most grinding, lame Zilchplay held together strictly through a Social Contract that does not include "let's play this game," but rather, "let's be D&D people." Creative Agenda is so far removed from this picture that it's even actively discouraged. Pile on helpings of Geek Social Fallacies, unfamiliarity with any source literature worth the name, and above all, the notion that since it's D&D, it is the most real expression of this activity.

We ought to spend more time talking about that ur-ideal.

Best, Ron

* I see no evidence that 4E is stacked in the players' favor. I see marshmallow fight prep and egregious fudging.

Couple more individual responses ...

Ed, totally.

Gordon, I'm not following you here:

QuoteRon - if "the lackluster, incompetent, confused, and ineffective performance of most of the participants" was socially acknowledged and condemned, could that salvage things? What about if the Duke presented consequences - rewarding those who actually fought, scolding and/or ignoring others? Would one or the other - or both - do a better job of creating a Step On Up environment? Or perhaps such things are still woefully insufficient? (And that was a quick cool-off, but I think you're right that your hot, steaming touchpoint helps - though I *sure* don't want to be literally touching it. I think you made clear why it's hot and steaming ...)

There seem to be a couple of interpretations to interpret, but I'll stick with your question - my answer is no, a thousand times no. Social Contract and Creative Agenda concerns are never successfully addressed at the Techniques level within the Exploration (fiction). I've seen this ten thousand times, and my God, it's disastrous every time. I'd figured you'd seen this too so I'm sort of surprised you posed it.

I'm completely with you about false Gamism and its parallel to the Impossible Thing. I wrote about it a little in the Gamism essay. It seems reasonable to say that any CA necessarily has its own Impossible Thing developed from a subculture of historical dysfunction, and now that Simulationism is finally beaten into understandable shape (and no longer unfairly associated with Zilchplay), we could probably find that too without much effort - in another thread.

You wrote:

Quote... certain GMs resist it - not realizing that admitting it AND making sure there are other places/ways where player screw-ups have consequences would make life easier on them, too.

"Certain" meaning almost all of them, myself included until the mid-1990s.

Best, Ron

Damn it, missed another point - Troy, you asked whether group building for the Duke and the city might have helped. The answer is no, not as such. Again, that's trying to fix grander problems with smaller-scale techniques. The techniques, however innovative or non-standard, aren't going to do shit unless (i) the Social Contract indeed includes "let's play this game together," and (ii) Creative Agenda is firing among us. That latter, as you know, is best described in terms of Color and Reward. Techniques only work within that context.

Although you and I discovered Techniques as a road to success, that's because you and I were seeking (i) and (ii) in the first place. If people aren't doing that, possibly because they simply have no idea that those things exist, then no Technique in this world will "wake them up" to get there. As Mike explained long ago, and as you know being the main student of the Standard Rants, you can't sneak up on mode.

Ron,

I'm really pretty stoked at how you're intuitively picking up what's good about 4E, and where the obvious opportunities to make the play more awesome are being missed. The rules, as written, have a pretty laser-like focus on Step On Up play. Fudging rolls and such is completely unnecessary and would seem to undermine the fun.

(I guess it should be no surprise to me you're recognizing all the same things I did, seeing as you're the guy who called out the features of Step On Up play in the first place.)

It might be worth noting one of the two total party kills I've GMed was in 4E D&D. If the real people sitting at the table freely communicate amongst themselves to coordinate tactical combinations, the PCs are indeed pretty much unstoppable. But if people fall into lazy "pay attention only on my turn" play -- which has essentially been encouraged by every other incarnation of this game -- they will individually be torn apart. There is something kind of beautiful about how this is designed.

Ron - Well, it was a multi-part question. Looking back at it, what I was expecting was that social acknowledgement/condemnation=a start (if participants deliver/take it appropriately), and then MAYBE that can show up in the fiction as well. But I guess I posted before the thought had fully developed. Because addressing within the fiction in the absence of shared understandings/expectations IS almost-inevitably disastrous - even implying it as a potential stand-alone solution was a mistake.

I'll also say that I'd find the number of players in your latest session an additional obstacle of its own. I know people who have no problems with it, so I wouldn't call it a crucial issue, but I think it is worth calling special attention to.

Callan - I certainly see potential agreement, but I'm not sure it's full. It may not be worth struggling over the details, but I wanted to say I wouldn't be surprised if you still see issues.

I don't see any acknowledgement that if asked, Shawn, with genuine feeling, would say 'Yeah, you could have lost!'. Despite all the emperic evidence.

The idea of there being agreement reminds me of a Seinfield episode where someone agrees someone is a vegetarian - and so offers them just a really thin slice of ham in their salad. Really thin!

Shawn got to the point where he could say, despite the emperic evidence, 'Yeah, you could have lost!' because he navigates by feeling alone. And feeling can get turned all around and start going backward, but still call it forward (check out mythbuster episodes on navigating/swimming while blindfolded for a physical analogy). Call day, night. Call losing a win. And it's the uncomfortable realisation that that capacity is in all of us - we can feel exactly the same way as Shawn. His is a genuine human feeling. Were all too intelligent/wise here to have held onto the 'Oh, but that's just him! Not me!' denial card.

Just like the horizon can appear flat when we live on a round world, if something is big enough AND we are close enough, so can our view be a distorted phallacy of the actual situation. The usual track for D&D is really, really big - either level 1 to 20 or 1 to 30. That's big - big enough to see something round as something that is flat.

As an experiment, I would recommend playing a game of D&D where it is establisht/all know that top level is level 2 and you will not level up any further upon having gotten there! Play from level 1. I imagine once you get to level 2, you will continue play for awhile (possibly gaining slightly better gear, for example) but after a few hours play, you will get a particular feeling of being done with the activity. I hypothesize it will cease to be a 'forever' game (religion?) and will have a palpable feeling of an ending/a finish line having already been met.

Saying I basically agree is like saying I agree that from my view the horizon is flat - I do agree with that. But it is not the whole of my argument (despite appearing to be the whole of the issue). Indeed how easily the rest of my argument is severed away is part of my (severed away) argument.

Anyway, I've proposed two relatively easy pratical tests so far - ask Shawn if the group could lose & run a 'Level 2 is the top level' D&D campaign. I'll see some agreement from those who try them out.

I don't plan on asking Shawn anything derived from this thread. Playing with me at the table is probably trauma enough ...

Callan, I am a little turned around when it comes to your position or goals or what responses you're interested in. Your proposed questions are good food for thought, and as far as I can tell, I agree with every point you just made and with its implications. Do you think it's a good time to call the thread done?

The thread, but the experiments/questions remain open items. Maybe spawning threads in future.

Heck, now I'm curious about running a level 1 to 2 game. Though not exactly what I've described, the D&D encounters programs (that I've played in about 7 of now, at a guess) go from level 1 to 3 - as campaigns they have endings, and are roughly supposed to have you end at about level 3. So if anyone is in one like Ron or can get into one, that's one way of running a kinda similar experiment fairly easily. Though the current encounter season is around 13 sessions in length as opposed to previous campaigns taking about 8 sessions, so this one will take longer. Good luck all, in your experimentation!

I'm still very mystified by a number of points in what Callan's been saying that seem to directly contradict that Eero, for e.g., is really playing Step On Up, but - maybe future threads are better places to sort that out.