Savage Gamism

[ethan_greer]

If a game has a rule that says when a character meets a challenge that the player rolls a die and then checks a chart to see what happens, that's a challenge to the character, but not to the player. If, instead, the player has to make important decisions, such that in the end he can claim as a player to have done well or poorly, that's the player challenge or, as Ron calls it, Step on Up.

But that doesn't rule out the possibility that SW is high-challenge/ low-Step-On-Up Gamist. I'll also add that tactical decisions, player skill, and player challenge can all be factors in all the GNS modes, and don't necessarily indicate that Step-On-Up is happening. TROS comes to mind - heavy tactics in the combat, and player skill is a factor, but not a Gamist game.

My feeling from this back-and-forth dialogue (and from my read of the text) is that SW is easily Drifted in play to support either G or S. Or perhaps it's a functional G/S hybrid.

[Mike Holmes]

Actually I think that TROS combat is highly Gamist. Just well cordoned off in that from the rest of the context of play. Hell, it works so well as a Gamist game that we had a little tourney at GenCon where Ralph kicked my ass.

Which must be why he so underestimates my ability to analyze the game. It so happens that I read most of those rules he refers to as we played (hence why I was actually hardly paying attention), and he may also remember that I querried Hensley on the subject specifically when one of the games was over. On your side of the argument, Hensley pointed to those same rules as being about player challenge. But it seems to me that he was under the impression that I was being critical, and he was trying to sell me a copy (and would have had a different answer had the question been different). :-)

Put it this way, to the extent that this is a Gamist game, so is GURPS. The only things that you guys have identified as the Gamist elements are found in GURPS (including mass combat systems that exist for it). But what GURPS does not have is bennies given out for doing heroic deeds, and playing in genre. So I have to conclude that SW is less Gamist supporting than GURPS is.

Mike

[rafial]

So I have to conclude that SW is less Gamist supporting than GURPS is.

Hmmm... then I must have a deep misapprehension of what Gamist implies (I have read the essays).

So: D&D3.x is frequently held up as being a design that supports and promotes Gamist play.  Do you concur with that statement?  If so, perhaps you could enlighten me by explaining what "Gamist promoting elements" it contains that SW lacks.  My familiarity with the D&D rules set is at the level of having read the manuals several times, but never played.

I'm not being snarky here, I honestly am trying to refine my understanding.  I just got myself in deep trouble on the PTA Imperium Confidential thread vis-a-vis Narritavism, and now here I'm in deep waters on Gamism.  I'd go for the hat trick, but I haven't been playing anything that I though was Sim lately.  Or have I? ;)

Anyway, if you are willing to do some education Mike, I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say.

[Mike Holmes]

It's not that there's no Gamist elements in SW, indeed there are many. All I've been pointing to is a strong Sim element as well. Uh, like the previous poster pointed out about it being a G/S hybrid (or potentially incoherent).

Further, depending on what D&D edition you're refering to, there's Ron's point that Gygax was trying to make the game more simulationist, and that some of these things got into a lot of editions.

For example, in Basic D&D when a character got enough EXP he just went up a level. No attempt to explain where the ability came from, just an assumption that suddenly, Bang, the character was better. Very pawn stance for Gamism there. In AD&D1 there suddenly appeared all this text about how a character had to go off for X number of weeks and train. An attempt to make the event more plausible in terms of in-game action.

So, yes, most D&D editions have Gamist support elements. But there's a lot of Sim in there as well. Yet it's always been an irony to me that D&D is actually a bad "game". That is, while there are some tactical considerations that stem mostly from resource management that you cite, there's very little real mental challenge to it all. It's a wargame with one somewhat complicated unit per player. Pretty easy decision making (fight! Run!) I used to say that D&D didn't really have a combat system because of the abstracted one minute rounds.

Most of the challenge, in fact, comes from GM's making up puzzles in dungeons. Which, unlike say T&T, there are few rules about. Basically, it seems to me that GM's are informed that the game is Gamist by it's reward system (EXP/Level) and the "modules" available that they feel it neccessary to add to the player challenge. Again, it's all the reward system that's the cause.

In the SW reward system you see that players are rewarded on the spot for playing in-genre. Yes there's an experience system, but that actually seems to have little to do with challenge. As you put it, it's for finishing the adventure. Which, given the feeling I get that the players seldom "lose" (fail to achieve the goal), seems to me as yet another reward for playing. No different really than points given for attendance. Also, the rewards delivered are Sim "gradual improvement" effects which players react in a less aquisitive way than levels (which are quite cathartic in terms of the massiveness of the reward). These are actually more social rewards, I think, and don't really relate to a GNS preference in any way; just a thanks for playing. Again, from what I can see, the mechanic that's going to have the most effect on in-play decisions are the bennies. And, relative to D&D EXP, that's a Sim sort of mechanic.

Want a really Gamist game inn terms of high levels of player challenge? Try Rune, where the real skill is building an advanture that will defeat the characters, but not kill them all off. Now that's a challenge. I think that SW is a Sim game with some nifty Gamist options (the mass rules, mostly) thrown in.

Mike