Design equals... Play?

[timfire]

Players design characters, GM's design settings and situations; those are considered play, so why wouldn't the game designer designing system be play?

I think this is a good topic to discuss, especially since I want to discuss more design-related topics.

I don’t believe they are same thing. It is my philosophy that play is about… err, creation of imaginary events. Design is about enabling others to create imaginary events. Those are two different things. Designing a game should not be about what you, the designer, wants to see. It’s about guiding others so that they can realize what they want to see. It’s about giving players tools they can use.

What does every think about that? Has this been discussed before? I don’t have much time right now, so I’ll just open it up to everyone else.

[TonyLB]

I believe in guiding people to the style of play I want to see, not whatever style of play they want to see.

They're welcome to not like my style, and not play my game, but I write games that say things like "This is about your character proving their worth", rather than "This is about whatever you decide it's going to be about".

Am I misinterpreting what you meant?

[DannyK]

I don't consider chargen or GM prep to be play, either.  I have a tendency to confuse the two, and get over-involved in them because it gives me that nice escapist gaming feeling, but ultimately it's just fooling around.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

At the risk of this thread becoming a poll ... but maybe a few perspectives are necessary before it gets going ... so OK ....

I'm with Tim and DannyK. Play as I see it requires an SIS, which in turn requires events, i.e., System in action.

One can delay aspects of character creation and prep until play has already started. HeroQuest's "mostly blank sheet" character creation option is a good example of the former, and various No Myth techniques are (by definition) the latter. That seems like a viable option.

But to call the GM working out maps and NPC attributes "play"? Or a fellow hanging around and making up character sheet after character sheet? I've spent too many hours doing both and have a hard time considering either to be play in any way.

Best,
Ron

[TonyLB]

Ron, is your objection to character-generation as play that there is an imagined space, but in many cases it isn't shared?

For instance, do you feel differently about Master generation in MLwM?  Is that play, or does it still require (as you say) "events"?

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

It's both, Tony, and that's a valuable distinction you're making.

First, it's a shared thing.

Second, it's an events thing. So yeah, Master creation in MLWM doesn't count for me either.

If I had to pick between the two, I'd say the second was more important, but also that I'm talking about SIS events, so (e.g.) lifepaths during character creation wouldn't count although they were "events."

Best,
Ron

[timfire]

Yeah, I didn't intend for the thread to become a poll. I was trying to address an attitude I've come across from a number of sources. Let's see if I can elaborate.

I was speaking with a friend - who's a writer/ film critic - and we started talking about rpgs. He's all about putting a 'statement' into his works. He thought I could write a game that made some sort of of inherent statement. I tried to tell him, "No, I can't make a statement with another group's game, I can only encourage the group to make a statement in their game."

This relates to some of the discussions on humor that we've had here. A game can't force people to be funny. A game can only try to encourage funny situations and give players tools for being funny.

I know I'm repeating myself, but the role of a designer is to encourage certain situations in play, not create specific situations. Even if the designer is creating a setting, a good setting acts like a tool, it encourages certain types of situations.

I'll use MW as an example. The players play ronin. This is a tool. Ronin are people who were at one time honorable and productive members of society, who, for whatever reason, became dishonored. I don't dictate why or how they became dishonored, this is up to the players. This freedom allows the players to mold the situation into what they want it to be. Maybe the characters were wrongly dishonored, maybe they deserved it.

How's that?

[greyorm]

I was speaking with a friend - who's a writer/ film critic - and we started talking about rpgs. He's all about putting a 'statement' into his works. He thought I could write a game that made some sort of of inherent statement.

Heya Tim, I think perhaps your friend's reaction comes precisely from the fact that he is a writer -- he's a guy used to writing to an audience. In writing to people, you can force them to go where you want and get off where you'd like; they have no control over where things go.

Gaming is not writing because you don't have a captive audience...and I've a feeling that, like many others in gaming and out, he's confusing the two and figuring that "well, I can do it in writing...why not in a game?" forgetting about the completely different dynamics involved in control and participation between the two. He's not a game writer, but figures writing a game is the same as writing a novel (or a film critique).

I'd say non-game writers (and even a good number of game writers) are completely baffled by the difference between "making a statement for yourself" and "guiding others to make their own statements." Play, of course, is all about the latter, actual engagement in the process of uncovering or developing a statement. Writing a game, prepping for a game, developing characters...isn't.

[Walt Freitag]

There is a form of game in which the designer can embed an inherent statement, if so inclined. Gamist games.

No game can force players to "go where you want and get off where you'd like," as Raven so well put it. But a Gamist game can require players to go where you want and get off where you'd like in order to achieve success. That's almost as good.

If you play a conservative fiscal strategy in Monopoly, saving for a rainy day instead of buying every property you can get your hands on, you will lose against good players (unless you get extremely lucky). Monopoly therefore conveys a (literal) "go for broke" message, not through playing the game but through learning what's required to win it. It's left up to players to intepret what that message applies to: only the game itself, investment strategy, or life in general?

Most versions of AD&D similarly convey a message urging caution and patience as the keys to success (more so, when played close to as written) -- quite at odds with its supposedly heroic and adventurous trappings, but quite in tune with the way a majority of players approach real life (more so in earlier days than today, I think). Computer role playing games have tended to enforce and amplify that same message to the nth degree. (Someday I'll play a heroic CRPG that actually rewards the player for acting heroically. This will happen shortly after the drug companies lower their prices to help sick people.)

This issue doesn't seem to bear on the topic of design as play, though. Crafting such a message embedded in a game system doesn't make design any more play-like as I see it. Is anyone arguing for the "design can be play" proposition? I'd like to hear from Jonathan if he wants to further advocate the idea.

- Walt

[Bill Cook]

Yes. I think design and prep are not play, though they are not divorced of it.

Last Traveller session, our GM interrupted play to create two new player characters; one for the new girl and the other for a player who'd tired of his active character's story arc. (Traveller's chargen sort of has its way with you. BW's lifepaths offer a more pleasing blend of choice and restraint.) Anyway, those two and the GM certainly exhibited engaged behavior; they weren't playing, but they were engrossed in gaming activity. Libby's date chimed in, but Cory and I were pretty solidly out.

Does this topic have any bearing on the various arrangements of play and play-supporting activity different systems represent? Would the world creation mechanics in a game like Universalis reflect sprinklings of non-play per instance?

[John Kim]

  Is anyone arguing for the "design can be play" proposition? I'd like to hear from Jonathan if he wants to further advocate the idea.  

I'm not sure what the argument is.  Is this just a semantic argument over what "play" includes?  I mean, I don't feel strongly that "play" has to include design -- but on the other hand I'm not clear on the criterion by which people are excluding it.  For example, is sitting around creating world background "play"?  If not, then if at any point during play someone creates world background, have they stopped play then to do that?  

First, it's a shared thing.

Second, it's an events thing. So yeah, Master creation in MLWM doesn't count for me either.

If I had to pick between the two, I'd say the second was more important, but also that I'm talking about SIS events, so (e.g.) lifepaths during character creation wouldn't count although they were "events."

Hold on, you're saying that events from the lifepath aren't part of the Shared Imaginary Space?  Why?  It seems to me that if they're shared,  they're imaginary, they involve the same space -- well, then they're part of the SIS.  

One definition, albeit a nebulous one, is that play requires linear time moving forwards a fictional present.  So making up events before the "present" isn't play but rather background-writing, but defining events in the "now" is play.  By this definition something like http://www.20by20room.com/2003/11/lexicon_an_rpg.html"> Lexicon isn't really play but rather background generation.  I'm still not familiar with Universalis, so I can't comment on that, but it seems like potentially another questionable case.

[greyorm]

Heya John, what's being gotten at is that the act of coming up with and detailing the lifepath is not a SIS event -- sharing it, on the other hand, is.

[Vaxalon]

Prep and design are fun, at least sometimes.

Fun things are often play.  Sometimes they are not.

What are qualities that make fun things play?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Raven (greyorm) clarified my point, I think. Coming up with anything about the character or setting or situation is not itself "play," because the SIS has that crucial "shared" element. And telling one another isn't good enough either - shared refers to the imagining, and imagined space requires imagined events.

If my character creation includes a lifepath as a homeless guy in the city sewers, then it's not part of the SIS until it's evidenced in some way among the group - as our imaginary characters move, act, and speak in the imaginary situation.

In my experience, that's usually accomplished within the first eight minutes of play, via some telltale or comment or other. It can be even faster, in that the player simply tells everyone else, or the GM has read the sheet and tells everyone, and thus establishing it in the SIS is even faster because several people have the opportunity.

Slowing the process down is what tends to be more problematic, hence the ongoing (decades-long) discussion about "player secrets."

Also, to be clear, we are not discussing play in the general sense of the word, but using it as short-hand for "role-playing" as an activity (rather than a hobby label), which itself is is a lousy word for whatever it is we are all doing with these games. Didn't think anyone was having trouble with that, but just in case.

Best,
Ron

[Wormwood]

The way I'd put it is:

1) Design is not play.

2) Design can and does occur within play.

3) Design can and does occur outside of play.

4) Design which is removed from play typically involves some simulation of play, which can generate similiar enjoyment to play, although less preferred.

  -Mendel S.