Reply to Glandis, regarding Gamism

[Eero Tuovinen]

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.

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.

[Joshua Bearden]

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.

[Callan S.]

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.

[Eero Tuovinen]

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.

[Callan S.]

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.

[Eero Tuovinen]

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.

[glandis]

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.

[Ron Edwards]

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

[Ron Edwards]

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 and [D&D 4E] Vryloka + Blackguard: would you let your daughter marry one?

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

[Eero Tuovinen]

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.

[Callan S.]

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.

[RangerEd]

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

[glandis]

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...

[Moreno R.]

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...  :-)

[Troy_Costisick]

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.

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?