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Sep 28, 2010 -- 3:35PM, MThomason wrote:

I actually find it fascinating that there's two different views here (taking these specific quotes just as an example, guys, it's the whole thread I'm more interested in).
At first I thought it was perhaps a generational thing, with older players being more in the "simulation" camp and newer ones being more "gamist", but the more I read it obviously isn't something this simple.  Maybe it's just that 25 years ago we didn't have message boards like this to discuss it on, and people simply grew up playing different ways?

I'm seeing a lot on how people feel and why, but I'd love to see more on how long they've been playing that way, maybe even the first RPG they played, just to try and get a feel for whether theres a pattern here or simply just human nature being it's usual eclectic self (I'm leaning towards the latter).

In the very earliest days I guess I probably played a (fairly clueless) version of gamist.  With the development of AD&D sim became a big vogue.  Of course, I didn't think of it in those terms, then.  It was all just "the correct (sic.) way to roleplay".  Then "story" - usually interpreted as some "story arc" that the GM was supposed to invent and the players were supposed to follow like good little doggies on a lead - became the "new black".

Around the late '90's I read a series of threads on the old rgfa mailing list about "aims, or reasons for roleplaying".  This was about the first time it really occurred to me that the primary focus elements of RPGs might actually be identifiable, not all bound up hopelessly in some esoteric gestalt, and might even be different enough to be problematic if all pursued simultaneously.  The Forge "RPG Theory" site eventually refined the thinking on this to where I could see the different strains in what I enjoy about roleplaying clearly laid out, and see how the rules of the game could naturally support one of those "agendas" for play above the others.

Right now I find I can enjoy all of the so-far-identified agendas for play.  I find Nar the hardest to really grok - partly me, partly finding other players who really want to grok it, I think.  I have had some really good moments with it, some frustrating ones.  Gamism and Sim I find as easy as falling off a log

Sep 28, 2010 -- 3:52PM, hametsuj wrote:

No exceptions?  Does the story take a back seat as well?

Hmmm...  what do you mean, exactly, by story?  One fairly common meaning is the "plot" laid out by the GM.  These days I use such a thing only to give an often flimsy and tenuous connection between gamist encounters - in which case it certainly takes a back seat.  The players (as opposed to the GM) have no real agency in such a story, so it's not really very important.

In a Sim or gamist game, the real "story" is just what happens in play - no more, no less.  In a Nar game the idea is to give the players agency over the story - in which case the question doesn't arise of it "taking a back seat", as the system used will always put the story at the pointy end of conflict resolution.  In other words, if a character dies, it will only ever be for story reasons.  If this makes no sense to you, try looking at "Primetime Adventures" or "The Pool" roleplaying systems.

Sep 28, 2010 -- 4:02PM, MThomason wrote:

Sep 28, 2010 -- 3:29PM, Balesir wrote:

In a 'gamist-aspiring' game, I let it happen.  I should explain that this is emphatically not the only style of game I play (or, indeed, run) - but if I was running another type of game I would probably use a system other than D&D, to be honest.

Hmm, thats a good point that hadn't occured to me - how much the actual gaming system you're playing influences how you play.  Personally I just have "my playstyle" and make every game adapt to it, and simply hadn't considered that others may play differently depending on the ruleset.

Yep, I used to be the exact same way.  Over the last, what, 5 years (?) I have come to realise that trying to find the "one, true and perfect way to roleplay" is like trying to find the "one, true and perfect ball game" - it amounts to chasing a mirage.  I experimented with "alternative" systems - diceless (Theatrix), simplified (FUDGE), realistic (HârnMaster) and 'Narrativist' (Primetime Adventures) - and found that this hobby is not about just one "perfect game" but lots of possibilities.  To make a 'good' roleplaying game I now consider it vital first to decide the design goals - what sort of game is the system trying to support?  Depressingly few designers state outright what game they are trying to support - the myth of the "perfect game - the one game to rule them all" is still pervasive - so I often have to read between the lines.  But I have found games that support their chosen target well - D&D4E is one of these.

Sep 28, 2010 -- 4:26PM, MThomason wrote:

Yeah this is what always put me off high-level play.  I don't like people to feel safe from the figure in the shadows across the street just cause they're wearing +5 armor and have a ton of hit points.  The problem with that is that I always ended up with the populace having to level up along with the players, which just didn't feel right.  I mean, the city guard are supposed to be the city guard, not a bunch of skittles a L30 character can bowl over with both eyes closed.  Going back to my way of NPCs following the same rules, if the city guard can't deal with the PCs how are they dealing with those fifteen L20 bandit gangs that are living in the surrounding forest?  If I was those bandits, surely I'd be tearing down the city walls by now and shrugging off those single d8 hits from the silly guardsmen.

This is precisely what I mean by "D&D has never really been good at supporting Simulationist play".  Any world in which some characters are hugely more powerful than the mass of the populus - to the extent that they can take on armies (or, at least, companies) and win - cannot be a truly functional world.  Narrativist supporting systems have the exact same issue - if the efficacy of characters is decided by story concerns rather than skill, ability or talent, then the world is going to be a pretty strange place if it works that way all the time.

It's like the old saw about "no-one ever goes to the toilet in Star Trek"; does that mean people in the ST universe don't need to poop?  The same might be said to apply to RPGs.  As a viewer or a roleplayer, you have several options:

- You can say "this is not relevant to the show/game, so we ignore it"

- you can say "yes, they have to poop, but it happens off screen/out of play"

- you can say "yes, they have to poop and here are the rules/guidelines for it in play", or

- you can say "no, they don't need to poop - now, what implications does that have for the game world?"

For a gamist or narrativist approach, choice one is all you need, but the second would also work.  For a sim approach, you can choose any of the last three.

For clarity, simulationism is most usefully thought of as being about a consistent and coherent world that operates without "deus ex machina", not about "realism", per se.  Flatland could be used as a sim world - but D&D4E as written could not (because PCs and the rest of the world are qualitatively different).