Why Incoherent Games Sell

[Balbinus]

I think incoherent games sell because they appeal, in part, to more people.  A strictly Narrativist game appeals only to Narrativists (if I can mis-use the terms to make my point).  A strictly Gamist game appeals only to Gamists.  But an incoherent Gamist-Narrativist jumble has at least some elements that appeal to both people.

Then, people selectively ignore, forget, misinterpret and/or change the rules in the book to fit what they really want out of the game - just like you talk about, Mike.  

I've seen it happen in my own game, where it's mostly Sim, but with some elements that I think lean towards Gamism.  Some groups latched right on to those parts... in fact, one just had fun using it as a sort of vehicle arena combat simulator and dropped all reference to role-playing.  

I'm still debating with myself on the topic of whether incoherence actually helps a game sell (as I brought up in a thread quite a few months ago).  Coherence may produce a better game, but does it produce a better product?

I think Justin really has something here.

Few people use all the rules of a game.  Incoherence will often mean that with a little picking and choosing, a little homeruling, most people get something they want to play.

The irony is that one group playing V:tM is not necessarily playing the same game as another group playing V:tM.

Often I've been surprised in discussions of games which I have played for years to discover during a debate that rules exist which I was basically unaware of.  On checking I usually find that I have simply always ignored the rule in question because it did not fit my playstyle.  Similarly I am sometimes surprised to learn that a particular rule is not in a game but rather is a common understanding our group has in play, a houserule in effect although never written down.

This is the strength of incoherent design.  It appeals to more people because there is more in it.  Also, incoherent designs are frequently more flexible than coherent ones.  If I feel like one kind of game this week and another next week I can play one incoherent game but focussing on different aspects each week or two separate coherent games.  If I choose the former we can continue with our same characters and maintain campaign continuity.  A desirable thing for most gamers.

So, good points Justin and I strongly agree.

One last thing, I would strongly caution people against making the error of thinking that stuff you don't like is popular because people are stupid or ill-informed.  That path leads only to essentially solipsist game design, where rather than learn what people want and enjoy a designer chooses instead to design for nobody but themselves and their own group.  The point of games is to be played, nothing is achieved by writing off the players as unworthy before you even pick up your pen.

[Balbinus]

I think that D&D was successful because it was easy to play.  The dungeon map and key allowed a DM to run an adventure without a huge amount of work, without being a master storyteller, and without railroading the players.  Dungeons are a limited environment, but they are non-linear.

Vampire was successful in my opininon because it was social.  I was stunned by the first edition rules, where the combat rules were only a small fraction of the mechanics rules, and the sample adventure was a party.

Exactly.  

When people say that VtM and DnD are only played because they are popular they fundamentally miss the real question.  Why did they become popular in the first place?  What did they do right that their competitors did not?

VtM was not the first game in which you played vampires.  I am aware of at least two predecessors.  But VtM was the breakthrough game, spreading at the grass roots level to eventually become an rpg behemoth.

People look at the status of that game now, but not where it came from.  It was, originally, decidedly not a standard rpg.  It was not familiar.  It's emphasis and approach was not like other games.

And yet it succeeded hugely.

That is the interesting thing, and any explanation which fails to give credit for it being in some areas at least an extremely well designed game is I think necessarily incomplete.

[damion]

I'll try to address Fang's goal of getting people to continue playing the game. There are I think two axis here, people can play a long time with a small number of characthers, or players can swap characrthers often, but still use the same game system.  I think providing for both these modes is important.

I think the primary reason people will continue playing a game is what John Laviolette  said about soap operas, play must be familiar and different as the time of playing grows.  The difficulty is providing the correct ballance of these two things.  There is the obvious DnD method, i.e. many classes, Prestigue classes, items, ect, i.e. a wide variety of flavors of familiar play(frex Diablo II).
This seems to be the dominant method in traditional games, and is favored by Complexity.
Other methods of providing a wide variety of familiar play would be generic systems(gurps)
and simply having a wide open system(Multiverser ??), or a bunch similar systems(WoD).
(Exploration of System?)
From a design point of view I think that it is interesting that Illussianist and Gamist systems must utilize the system to create a different/familiar play, while many Narrativist games utilize the creativity of the participants.

The other issues is that,  I think in the long term, System disappears, i.e. people will play in whatever mode they want, no matter how Incoherent the system is. Of course an Incoherent system makes this point harder to achieve, also it will affect new people, along with having a residual effect on play(your unlikely to use modes the System discourages to much). I think this is different from drift(although they usually go together), rather than changing the rules, people know the rules well enough that they can 'go through the motions' for modes they arn't interested in without breaking stride.

My way of synthesizing this would be for the commertial/marketing reasons mentioned previously, people played Incoherent games long enough to render the Incoherence less relevent. Also, the incoherence becomes part of the familiarity, possibily why you still see new games with detailed combat systems. Finally, the Complexity of the system draws people in, helping them get past the initial Incoherence.

Hope that makes some sense, sorry for the long post.  

(I apologise in advance for any incorrect termenology uses)

[C. Edwards]

Few people use all the rules of a game. Incoherence will often mean that with a little picking and choosing, a little homeruling, most people get something they want to play.

The irony is that one group playing V:tM is not necessarily playing the same game as another group playing V:tM.

Often I've been surprised in discussions of games which I have played for years to discover during a debate that rules exist which I was basically unaware of. On checking I usually find that I have simply always ignored the rule in question because it did not fit my playstyle. Similarly I am sometimes surprised to learn that a particular rule is not in a game but rather is a common understanding our group has in play, a houserule in effect although never written down.

I think this phenomena needs to be emphasized. I've introduced a good many people to role-playing through AD&D. The only version of the system they knew was what they experienced during play. This was vastly different from what was in the books, not due to house rules tweaking but to the complete disregard for rules on my part in an effort to make the game play with all the drama and urgency apparent in the play examples. Only when somebody wanted to run a game themselves did they discover, with some dismay, how different what I did was compared to what the books said to do.

The point being that in any given game group there are often only a couple people with enough system knowledge of any particular game to really see the trouble spots (those spots often vary for different people and groups). Whoever is running the game often does so in a way where those trouble spots are smoothed over well enough that the rest of the group is fairly oblivious. When or if those folks decide to buy the books themselves they often do so with the version of the game they've been playing in their minds, not the actual text of the books. Then it becomes a matter of "Well, Joe made this game 'fun' when he ran it so I can too." Tweaking ensues.

I'm not saying that is the only factor responsible for sales of incoherent games, just that it I think it is up there with the few strong factors.

Oh, just as a note, I'm also a self-taught role-player.

-Chris

[woodelf]

I think incoherent games sell because they appeal, in part, to more people.  A strictly Narrativist game appeals only to Narrativists (if I can mis-use the terms to make my point).  A strictly Gamist game appeals only to Gamists.  But an incoherent Gamist-Narrativist jumble has at least some elements that appeal to both people.

This is definitely true.  One of the threads that comes up periodically in various places (i've participated at least thrice on RPGNet) is why *anyone* would prefer AD&D2 to D&D3E.  And i always have to point out that, while AD&D2 was a bit of a jumble, a large part of that jumble was trying to appeal to narrativist sensibilities to a certain degree, and to increase the simulationist elements without losing the game.  Now, i don't think it actually succeeded in juggling all those elements.  But, if i had to rate it i'd say that AD&D2 was a 6 for gamism, 4 for simulationism, and 2 for narrativism [n.b.: all numbers pulled out of ass--consider only relatively].  D&D3E is, say, a 9 for gamism, 3 for simulationism, and 0 for narrativism.  I tend to play in some sort of narrativist/simulationist hybrid style, with as little gamism as the group will allow me.  Thus, the very incoherent AD&D2 provided me *some* support, and didn't work as hard against me.  The actually fairly coherent D&D3E, OTOH, actively fights me with almost every element of its being, *and* provides almost no support for what i want to do.  

Further evidence, perhaps: i had ~40pp of houserules for AD&D2.  Most of those could be considered increasing the simulationism (the many combat-system tweaks, frex) or narrativism (hero points), while very few were simply fixing gamist subsystems by making them better gamist subsystems.  And, when D&D3E came out, they managed to not fix a *single* thing that i thought needed fixing, and "broke" a number of things i had been happy with (often because they were poor implementations, from a gamist standpoint--and the less gamist, the less it irritated me).

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, while it's probably not the whole reason, incoherent games may very well appeal more than coherent games in the real world, not despite, but because of, that incoherence.  Not only does a strictly narrativist game only appeal to narrativists, and thus not get the gamist to buy it, but i suspect most groups have at least some spread in their members' preferences.  An incoherent game may, subconsciously, be the compromise that makes none of the group really unhappy--even if any individual member could be happier with a more coherent game of a particular type.

[Mike Holmes]

The tool analogy. That analogy says that the person playing wants the best tool for the job at hand. If that job happens to be tinkering, then great, make a tool that needs tinkering. But include with it a set of instructions for tinkering. If the buyer is someone who doesn't read instructions anway when kitbashing, no harm done. He can just ignore that part. OTOH, some may actually get something from the instructions.

This is why I subscribe to the Transitional model that Fang put out there. That is, make a game that can change using the system itself. That way, some participants will feel more comfortable. For those individuals like myself who will strip the game for parts anyhow, there's nothing that one can particularly do to make a game good for that individual in terms of throwing everything in. Because, if he's like me (and I think he is me), he'll be taking from more than one game, anyhow. And devising wholly new stuff on his own. There's no telling what he'll take from your system and what he won't. So designing to that spec is difficult to impossible at a guess.

Modular? Transitional? These all sound like value to the customer to me. Incoherent just means that for some people the game will be less than it could be.

That's my take.

Mike

[M. J. Young]

An incoherent game may, subconsciously, be the compromise that makes none of the group really unhappy--even if any individual member could be happier with a more coherent game of a particular type.

My wondering at this point, if I can steer the thread, is why don't such groups move to game systems that are more flexible, which allow players to define their own play priorities? I don't see any games that are on the top successes list commercially that fit this bill--they're either strongly tied to one approach (e.g., GURPS simulationist) or they're incoherent. Do we think there are no such games, or is there a reason why players would prefer an incoherent game which provides both support and conflict for each mode of play over one designed to drift or otherwise not to interfere with any mode?

--M. J. Young

[jdagna]

An incoherent game may, subconsciously, be the compromise that makes none of the group really unhappy--even if any individual member could be happier with a more coherent game of a particular type.

My wondering at this point, if I can steer the thread, is why don't such groups move to game systems that are more flexible, which allow players to define their own play priorities? I don't see any games that are on the top successes list commercially that fit this bill--they're either strongly tied to one approach (e.g., GURPS simulationist) or they're incoherent. Do we think there are no such games, or is there a reason why players would prefer an incoherent game which provides both support and conflict for each mode of play over one designed to drift or otherwise not to interfere with any mode?

--M. J. Young

My feeling is that a number of factors come into play.  First of all, groups have a lot of momentum with their current game, even if it isn't quite what they want.  Secondly, if they're not familiar with GNS-like terminology, they might have trouble communicating what they really want out of play, making it impossible to come to a group consensus about what they want and making it impossible to find a product that better fits the group's style.  Without the language of GNS, finding a better-suited system is mostly trial and error.

I'm not sure there are many flexible games designed for drift or transitional play (at least not commercially-popular ones).  My gut feeling is that the reason goes back to the lack of language to describe and understand GNS-like issues.  Without that language and understanding, how do you identify which features of a transitional or driftable game you want?

I'm reminded of one of my former role-playing groups debate over luck as presented in the Bubblegum Crisis RPG (based on the Fuzion system).  Basically, luck was a pool of points that could be spent on extra dice.  I think the game meant it in a Narrativist sense, to allow players to influence the storyline by practically guaranteeing success.  I always hated it - it didn't fit with my Sim tendencies, though I couldn't explain it then.  I wound up using it a strictly Gamist mode which totally changed the campaign's feel.  It was supposed to be about a bunch of outgunned cops trying to make a difference and became a story about a hapless criminal who couldn't ever win against the clever cops.  The GM had clearly wanted something Narrativist (and liked the luck mechanism), while I and another player wanted Sim (and hated the luck mechanism) and two other players were more Gamist (and liked the luck mechanism, but for entirely different reasons than the GM).  We never could decide whether or not to use it, or even how to effectively describe why we did or didn't like it.

A game would have to devote a lot of its pages to educating people about GNS modes (or something equivalent) in order to get them to a point where they could use and appreciate transitional design.  Anything less would just create a series of debates over the optional rules (or whatever was used to make it driftable).

[Balbinus]

The lesson to be learnt here is I think a simple one.

Either:

A)  Incoherent games are more popular because in general they are more playable and more fun than coherent games; or

B)  Incoherent games sell for reasons unrelated to coherency and the simple truth is that GNS coherency is largely irrelevant to how fun and playable a game is.

My money is on a mixture of both.

Concentrating on A though, I would argue that incoherent games are for most people simply better for that coherent ones.  

Individual players may have play preferences, groups however generally have a mix of preferences.  Few of us choose our gaming buddies on the basis of GNS preference.  I have people in my group who's preferences are distinctly different to my own, however they are such good players that I find their presence at the table entertaining and desireable regardless of such differences and despite the fact our divergent priorities occasionally cause problems.

So, most groups are GNS divergent.  That means a focussed game will only apply to a minority of players in most groups.  An incoherent game by contrast has something for everyone, gamist elements for the tacticians, narrativist elements for the story bods and sim elements for the actors and immersionists.  A bad incoherent design lets these disparate elements conflict.  A good incoherent design gives each its space so that everyone in the group, whether G, N or S, is happy and served by that game.

For a game to have longevity in play in any given group everyone in that group must be happy to play it long term.  That's obvious.  Without incoherence that is unlikely though to happen.

So, I reject strongly the notion that consumers are uneducated or stupid.  I think the opposite is true, consumers know what they want and GNS incoherence is a positive choice, not an accident.

To summarise, that GNS incoherent games sell is not an accident, it is a product of the fact that they are for most people inherently more playable than games which are GNS coherent.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Max, you wrote,

Either:

A) Incoherent games are more popular because in general they are more playable and more fun than coherent games; or

B) Incoherent games sell for reasons unrelated to coherency and the simple truth is that GNS coherency is largely irrelevant to how fun and playable a game is.

I think you're missing an important variable: that "sell" is not as simple as people are making it sound.

It would be wonderful if the following equation worked at all time-scales:

Customer demand drives retailer orders, retailer orders drives distributor demand, distributor demand drives publisher's profits.

But it doesn't. I do think RPGs are subject to a market, but I don't think that it operates (a) at the short-term time scale necessary for the above equation to work, or (b) in such a way that supply is literally coming from the publisher.

Most of my discussion about this awaits my completing the Industry Essay, unfortunately. For now, all I'll say is that the phrase "the game sells" is a very, very vague and untrustworthy thing for RPGs.

Best,
Ron

[Jack Spencer Jr]

A)  Incoherent games are more popular because in general they are more playable and more fun than coherent games; or

B)  Incoherent games sell for reasons unrelated to coherency and the simple truth is that GNS coherency is largely irrelevant to how fun and playable a game is.

Correction:

A)  Incoherent games are more popular because in general they sell more copies than coherent games; or

B)  Incoherent games sell for reasons unrelated to coherency and the simple truth is that GNS coherency is largely irrelevant to how much a game will sell.

We seem to forget why Ron wrote System Does Matter in the first place. I had already addressed this in the d20 Push thread in Publishing. I am loathe to repeat myself again.