Setting? Character? Explored?

[Frank T]

The search function didn't really help much on this one, so I'm just going to ask. What theoretical approaches to Setting and Character has the Forge developed up to now? I'm really struggling with this mass of RPG Theory, hoping to have reached some basic understanding of the Big Model. As far as I can see, the Big Model states nothing more about Setting and Character than the fact that they are there and that exploring them (and the situations they compose) is part of The Right To Dream.

This strikes me because when I tell Joe Street-Gamer, "I'm designing an RPG", and he says, "Cool, what's it about?" then he almost certainly means the Setting and the available Characters. If you ask that same Joe Street-Gamer what Vampire: the Masquerade is about, he'd probably tell you something like, "You play a vampire in a gothic punk version of our own world." Setting and Characters are vital to any RPG. No reasonable roleplaying can take place without establishing some Setting elements and at least one Character into the Shared Imagined Space. The choice of Setting and available Player Characters obviously is of great significance with regard to the actual playing experience, no matter what the Creative Agenda might be.

It is my belief that a good and innovative concept on the side of Setting and Character is much more important for gaining "normal" player's attention and interest than any new mechanics. So what I wonder is: what elements of Setting and Character can be abstractly distinguished? How do they affect play? How do they interact with the mechanics? What should be considered about the qualities of Setting and Character when designing an RPG? Where are the areas with space for innovation?

I don't have any answers to these questions yet, but I thought there might already be something on the issues on the Forge.

Frank

[DevP]

For one thing Vincent (lumpley) had the wonderful idea that you could just define 3 elements from Setting/Character/System/Situation/Color, and that's all you need - challenging thought experiment that.

So, a lot of people do express similar feelings (i.e. where's the theoretical work behind Setting & Character?), and I'm not sure either about how much theoretical work there is on Setting or Character. I think I had some thoughts about setting-design on my kitchen-sinking post, and in a few days I might actually post the results of those thoughts, as I am creating a setting from the ground up, where I am challenging the addition of each elements by the standards I put in there (and, moreover, trying to make sure each setting element is focused on generating the desired kind of play).

Some cool posts I like:

[*]Does Setting Matter? - Ron talks here about why Setting gets less attention
[*]Setting, Metaplot, and Context - more
[*]Genre mixing - thoughts on mixing genre in your setting[/list:u]

From "Does Setting Matter?", Ron talks about front-loading setting with a creative agenda (Riddle of Steel and Narrativism in this example):

The Riddle of Steel - This thing is setting-loaded. There's crackloads of info in here. Each country, though, instead of being intricately detailed, is set up with just enough information that the sort of conflicts that might happen there are very apparent. Take the country of Farrenshire, my favorite. It's sandwiched between Stahl, the country of atheist militarism; Oustenreich, the quasi-German sell-out nation that licks Gelure's boots; and Angharad, the nation of clan-based pirates and mysticism. What might happen to these wine-drinkers and cheese-eaters? Well, being a country with a good sea-front, it can be a good launching point for Gelure in a war, so there's some conflict as Gelure tries to rule it. It's close enough to Stahl that they might try to annex it and it's got a very traditional feudal system, so the gentry and the peasants could be at each other's throats in an instant.

That's narrativism without even looking at the system - a setting absolutely packed with conflict is presents.

And this is some wisdom from the Kitchen-Sinking post.

Adding something to a world carelessly will damage and weaken everything that has gone before. For example, I haven't watched all of Firefly (yet) but I get the impression that adding space-ninjas would substantially disrupt what made the setting work.

So, I think one part of good Setting design is: each component that you add, question how this will promote the play you want. (A similar algorithm as recommended for system design.) And, not to beat a dead hoss, but same with Character design - what parts of a Character's definition are you making mandatory, and which parts or optional or left out? And why?

[neelk]

It is my belief that a good and innovative concept on the side of Setting and Character is much more important for gaining "normal" player's attention and interest than any new mechanics. So what I wonder is: what elements of Setting and Character can be abstractly distinguished? How do they affect play? How do they interact with the mechanics? What should be considered about the qualities of Setting and Character when designing an RPG? Where are the areas with space for innovation?

Here's how I think about setting. Good setting information helps answer the question, "What can I have my character do?"

1) Note that just rattling off a list of mechanical options doesn't really answer this question -- to weigh the alternatives and have a genuine choice, the player also needs to have some idea of the consequences of his or her actions. To put it in a slightly different way, narratives usually have an internal logic to them -- what happens is caused by other events. (For example, pushing a fragile vase off a ledge will cause it to fall and break.) What effective setting information does is reveal to all the players what the significant causal relationships in the game are, so that they can purposefully shape what happens in play.

Note that what's ruled out as a causal relationship is often as important as what's ruled in. For example, the Exalted setting material is totally definite on the point that there is no one and nothing numinous anywhere in the universe. The game universe is totally animistic, but not a single one of the myriads of gods, demons, fairies, or ghosts is transcendent and mythic, and worship is absolutely not a sacred moral act linking man to the Infinite -- it's somewhere between a commercial transaction and a protection racket.  The character I play is a rebel against the divine order. He's instituting what amount to free-market reforms of the celestial bureacracy, as part of an effort to win over enough gods to his side that he can ignore the mandates of Heaven.

This would be a bizarre and senseless thing to do in, say, a Glorantha game -- Gloranthan gods are spirits eternally re-enacting the foundational myths of the world, and it simply doesn't make sense to be a purely political enemy of Orlanth. A sensible rebel against the cosmic order in Glorantha must have a fundamentally moral difference with the universe; but in Exalted it's perfectly reasonable to have a political  difference with it.

2) I said that "narratives often have an internal logic to them". That's because you can construct them in other ways, too. For example,  you can write a novel by putting together a set of thematically linked episodes, that otherwise have no continuity between them. You can do the same thing with game setting information, by demonstrating what sorts of things are thematically appropriate to the game.

For example, Nobilis has an immense amount of setting information, organized mainly along these lines -- the setting serves mainly as an extended example of the sorts of themes and motifs say Nobilis. In my Nobilis campaign, the specific setting information in the books was used only intermittently by the players -- instead, they (and I) made stuff up that fit the Nobilis style. This, again, is an answer to the question "What can I have my character do?", albeit in a different register.

[M. J. Young]

In the back of my mind, I recall Ron asserting long ago that a game could have highly developed characters or highly developed setting, but not both.

I was going to suggest why that is, but I don't want to put words in his mouth, and it's been a long time. Suffice it that the two are likely to conflict, and you have to have space for the players to create something or you don't have much of a game.

--M. J. Young

[ErrathofKosh]

Yep, IME developing both leads to difficulties and I also vaguely remember Ron saying something like that.

Cheers
Jonathan

[neelk]

In the back of my mind, I recall Ron asserting long ago that a game could have highly developed characters or highly developed setting, but not both. I was going to suggest why that is, but I don't want to put words in his mouth, and it's been a long time. Suffice it that the two are likely to conflict, and you have to have space for the players to create something or you don't have much of a game.

Can you or Ron elaborate on why? This does not match my experience, so I'm curious why you think so.

[simon_hibbs]

In the back of my mind, I recall Ron asserting long ago that a game could have highly developed characters or highly developed setting, but not both.

That seems odd to me, because in theory I don't see much distinction between characters and setting. Characters are part of the setting, it's just that some characters happen to be the (primary) vehicles in the game world that we use to interact with the rest of it.

Simon Hibbs

[M. J. Young]

Can you or Ron elaborate on why? This does not match my experience, so I'm curious why you think so.

Well, I was hoping that I wouldn't have to do this, because again I think this is something Ron observed, and I'm really attempting to relay his thoughts, which I cannot recall well at all. I hope he'll appear and clarify, but I know he's backed up in everything subsequent to GenCon, so I'm going to make a stab at it, at least briefly, and let him correct as he sees fit.

When you create a highly detailed element (i.e., of the five elements of exploration), you are making a statement regarding what the game is about.

That's why Mike comments on the degree to which having separate mechanics for combat focuses play on combat. To the degree that the rules create system for specific aspects of play, those aspects of play are pushed to the fore by system. In the same way, if color is highly evolved, the game focuses on color.

Character and setting are important in this regard, because situation arises from the interaction between character and setting. They are in that sense two halves of the same thing, and they are both highly influential in determining situation, and thus in determining the focus of play.

When a player creates a highly detailed character, he is making a statement concerning what play will be about. It is his own personal statement of what he expects from play. Such play becomes character-focused; it is about the expectations of the players, in relation to what they created in their characters. A good referee recognizes this and incorporates it into play--and thus we have the advice commonly repeated here that when a player buys a disad, he's asking for play to revolve around that at some point, and the referee should ensure that it does. (Similarly, if a player buys rare or unusual skills, the referee should expect that the player wants those to come up in play, and should develop situations in which they will.)

When someone creates a highly detailed setting, he is making a different statement concerning what play will be about. This is also a statement of what is expected from play, and such play becomes setting-focused: it is about the expectations of the designer, in relation to what was created in the setting. A good system brings this to the fore, in the sense that it forces the players to deal with elements of the setting through their characters.

If you start with highly developed characters in a highly developed setting, you have two elements vying to be the focus of play, and they are more likely to conflict than not. Players may expect play to be about their characters, but the system is going to treat setting as central, and if these don't mesh you wind up with dysfunction between elements in conflict.

This does not mean you can't have highly detailed setting and characters working together. It means rather that you must start with one of these at a low-detail point and develop it through play. Such in-play development will ensure that the elements are consistent with each other as they become more complex.

Ron's assertion is that it does not matter which of these elements is detailed. If you have low detail characters in a complex setting, they will grow and develop into high detail characters that fit the setting. If you have high detail characters in a sketchy setting, the setting will expand to provide opportunities for the characters until it, too, is complex. (Also, you can start with both sketchy and develop both over time.)

That's how I understand the problem, anyway. As I say, I could be mistaken.

--M. J. Young

[Frank T]

Thanks everybody for replying. Dev, I'll check out the links as soon as I find the time. M.J., what you write seems sensible to me. Would you agree that these statements are true regardless of any GNS aspects? And, as an afterthought: Isn't it more of a ballance than an either/or decision? Coudn't you have Characters and Setting equally, but not too, detailed and see where that leads you?

Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

To be clear.

In the discussion which is being referenced, I was talking about the degree to which the imaginary "space" was detailed prior to play.

I suggested that spending a lot of time prior to play detailing or giving depth to the setting worked best if one's characters were left a tad sketchy, even perhaps stereotyped. The idea is that they "find their feet" during play, in terms of depth and action over time.

Game texts which seem well-aligned with this idea include HeroQuest ('Wars at the time of that discussion) and Castle Falkenstein.

I also suggested that spending a lot of time prior to play detailing and giving depth to player-characters worked best if the setting were left a tad sketchy, whether due to familiarity or to plain old "not filled in." The idea is that for the settings and locales to gain depth and detail as a function of prep for individual sessions and of whatever happens during play.

Game texts which seem well-aligned with this idea include Sorcerer (especially Sorcerer & Sword in which it's explicit) and Little Fears.

I also discussed the possibility of sketchy-sketchy and deep-deep, and stated that starting with the latter is potentially extremely messy and unsatisfying.

To be absolutely clear, I never said that either character or setting gets Explored, but not both. Nor did I say that play was supposed to remain in the "one but not the other" state, just that it did well to start there.

And finally, the entire discussion was carried out in the context of Narrativist play. I don't claim that these points are valid in any other context.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Frank, you may find this thread of use.

Its my summation (and spin) on the Big Model and I spent some time with the elements of Exploration including Setting and Character and their relationship to Situation, Color, and System.

[Frank T]

Thanks Ralph, that has helped me to understand the role of Setting in the Big Model better. It has also straightened out some problems I've had with GNS for some time, especially this:

In my opinion, the Right to Dream is what all of role playing is about and is thus more accurately applied to Exploration than to Simulationism. (...) Consistency, verisimilitude, in-game causality, these are all aspects of Exploration that are held in common in all three Agendas.

It makes much more sense to me when put that way. I still believe the definition of Premise is too narrow, but that's not the point here and probably none of you is interested in another one of those discussions.

As for the relevance of Setting and Charcacter in game design, I believe I'm really mostly about Setting. If I now understand the Model correctly, Character is always the individual PC, whereas the availability of a certain PC is negotiated through System, probably but not necessarily based on Setting and Color.

So what I believe the majority of role-players is most interested in in a published RPG, and actually distinguishes RPGs by, is this: The pre-defined Setting elements, and the additional pre-defined elements of System that constitute what kind of PCs can be played. Genre is also an aspect, but as far as I can tell, it does not fit very neatly into the Model.

I fully agree to what John Kim wrote in the "Does Setting matter?"-Thread:

Well, everyone seems to agree that Setting matters. However, my perception is that discussions often take Settings for granted. That is, a typical conversation starts with "I have a world and genre, and I want to design mechanics for it". Then people will debate over the mechanics. In contrast, the design and effect of the Setting is not so clearly debated.
(...)
I think there is a lot of room for discussion of Setting design, along the lines of "What changes can I make in my setting to make the game work more the way I want it to?"

That sort of discussion is exactly what I'm looking for, maybe expanded on the "available PC" issue I mentioned above.

[nerdnyc]

I'm currently reading Mindscapes: The Geographies of Imagined Worlds Edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin in preparation for creating my own setting. You might wanna try to get your hands on a copy (got mine from NYU's library)

I've only just begun it, but will post a review when I finish.