Toy Quality (A fresh start)

[Callan S.]

I was going to mention the SIS bleeding in, in the Tekken example, but didn't want to complicate it.

Anyway, ahhh, I think I get you now. This is why I took so long to...your not talking about the game part of an RPG, your talking about an entirely independent game, which is used within another game as well (an RPG).

Looking at the definition at the start: "Any part of the game that is enjoyable when divorced from the SIS"
This isn't some sort of toy quality parts of an RPG have, this is an entirely indipendent game that is also used in the RPG.

It's like if you were LARPing and started playing poker as part of the LARP. You wouldn't say poker is "a part of the roleplay game that is enjoyable when divorced from the SIS". It's an entirely independent game being used inside another game. It is not part of the LARP rules at all, even if they call upon it's use. I'd ditch the idea of 'toy quality'...it's current use seems to revolve around the idea that some 'part' can be fun independently, but aren't actually independent despite that and it's just a part of the RPG.

Indeed, it's actually the opposite. The roleplay game is 'part' of this independent game. An RPG that uses poker as a resolution mechanic, is actually only a part of the game of poker. Certainly it isn't independent of it (it relies upon poker for resolution, while poker doesn't need the RPG to resolve).

What your looking at are components which can resolve enough to be fun, when sepereted from other rules they are presented with in a book.

And I'd chuck the 'seperate from the SIS' factor too. If I were running one game, but instead of using poker as a resolution mechanic I used the PC's themselves playing D&D to resolve my game (boggles the mind, eh?), that's clearly an independent game, and it's also one that uses SIS. Just like I can enjoy poker by itself, so could I enjoy these D&D rules seperate from the RPG in the example. I don't think it's important whether these elements can be enjoyed on ones own or in a group.

[LordSmerf]

Yes, that's basically what I'm saying.  Any further discussion over where things fit into the SIS is probably arguing semantics.

So, with this understanding: what does this mean for design?

(Note: I still want to discuss your ideas on Exploration of toys.  Hurry up and start that thread!)

Thomas

[Callan S.]

(Note: I still want to discuss your ideas on Exploration of toys.  Hurry up and start that thread!)

I can feel just the idea of doing both at the same time, frying my brain. As is I'll have to review my own previous posts to start up that thread in future.

So, with this understanding: what does this mean for design?

I think you'd start by designing the independent game first. Although I argued to not make avoidance of SIS part of the definition, I think making something like 'Lunch money' or 'Before I kill you mister Bond' etc, is a good goal (not to suggest that just making games like these are horse play, though). They are accessable and familar in structure.

What I think you'll loose in an RPG that imbeds one of these games in it: Connectivity. Many games have sets of numbers that effect each other...if you remove some of these numbers, a bunch of others becomes useless or crippled, in terms of actually having an effect. If this seperate game is allowed to go the same way, you wont be able to play it because parts of it are useless or crippled without the RPG element. You can't have the same amount of numbers depending on numbers.

It's hard to describe, but normally if you had a combat section you might have parts that are effected by social stats (and bonuses to these gained by roleplay). Now if you want that combat section to be an independent game, it can't have these ties to the roleplay section. I'm reminded of TROS, and how one dude wrote a combat emulator program. The thing was, it didn't quite show how combat works in TROS, since it didn't include SA's and couldn't have properly included them anyway because of how roleplayey they are. When the program was mentioned, this discrepancy was often mentioned.

So the independent game can't be reliant on the RPG rules to function in a fun way. But with that lack of dependency, it will become more issolated from the RP parts when you use it for RP purposes.

Then again, TROS and The burning wheel (I've never read that though), might be okay examples of how to get an independent game without issolating it too much from the RP rules. It's just that in the way the TROS combat program showed a different style of play (perhaps sometimes too deadly to be fun), you start to see how interconnectivity affects how seperatable the independent game is.

So far, that's what I've got.

[LordSmerf]

I think that now that we've established the seperate-ness of Toy Quality (as I define it), you are taking that too far.

I feel that TRoS combat has Toy Quality, it is also incredibly well integrated into the RPG part of the game throug SAs.  As its own game, the combat engine is rather fun; inside the SIS the combat engine is still fun, but is enhanced in some interesting ways.

It's not even necessarily true that the Toy Quality part acts the same way in game as it does out of game.  The only thing stipulated here is that it is still fun when you cut away SIS.  This is why a cool prop can have Toy Quality despite the fact that it may be used in a very specialized way within the SIS.

Basically, I'm not sure that you're right about developing something stand alone purely so that it can stand alone.  What about developing a system primarily for in-SIS use, but developing it in a way that makes it fun even without the SIS?

That strikes me as an important design consideration: if you can grab your players on two levels it may be easier to hold their attention and increase their enjoyment.  At the same time, grabbing your audience on two seperate levels means that you are not fully engaging them on either one as you would with a system that just grabbed them on the one level really strongly.

What do you think?

Thomas

[matthijs]

Examples of "Toy quality" subsystems (as I understand the term):
- The flowchart for investigating unknown high-tech artifacts in Gamma World
- Lifepaths in character generation systems (if players can interact with what goes on at different stages)
- The car chase flowchart in Indiana Jones
- The car-racing game in Ghostbusters' "Hot Rods of the Gods"
- Ship combat in "Privateers & Gentlemen"
- D&D "Battlesystem Supplement"
- Treasure generation systems in AD&D, especially the "Deck of Many Things"
- The entirety of the CORPS Vehicle Design System
- Random dungeon generation in AD&D
- TORG's Drama Deck (integrated with the combat system)

Some functions of "Toy quality" subsystems:
They make certain situations attractive to play through. When certain situations make for especially fun gaming, the group will tend to try to get into those situations. A game with a cool combat system will make it more attractive to get into combat. A game with a fun vehicle design system can make players spend a lot of time building cars, mecha etc.

They let you play alone. A toy quality subsystem will let you try out parts of the game all by yourself, providing incentive to actually play it with your friends. When you buy a game and for some reason can't start playing it right away (no players around, everyone's in some other campaign etc), you can still sit in your room and tinker with it.

They allow for different styles of play. They diversify the play experience, so that people with different CA's can enjoy themselves during the same session. In other words, if you're a sim player in a nar group, if your group is using a cool spaceship maneuvering system, you'll still get your kicks everytime you're chasing the bad guys through a meteor storm.

[Callan S.]

I think that now that we've established the seperate-ness of Toy Quality (as I define it), you are taking that too far.

I feel that TRoS combat has Toy Quality, it is also incredibly well integrated into the RPG part of the game throug SAs.  As its own game, the combat engine is rather fun; inside the SIS the combat engine is still fun, but is enhanced in some interesting ways.

It's a litle hard to explain with TROS. Take the luck spiritual attribute, for example. The builds up from roleplay. But it's totally absent from the program. However, even one extra die in TROS can be very valuable...it's omission from the program has a significant tactical effect really.

My prob here is that TROS is a pretty good, well implemented example of what were talking about...but I'm also trying to find some pitfalls in it to talk about.

It's not even necessarily true that the Toy Quality part acts the same way in game as it does out of game.  The only thing stipulated here is that it is still fun when you cut away SIS.  This is why a cool prop can have Toy Quality despite the fact that it may be used in a very specialized way within the SIS.

Basically, I'm not sure that you're right about developing something stand alone purely so that it can stand alone.  What about developing a system primarily for in-SIS use, but developing it in a way that makes it fun even without the SIS?

:o
If it's fun by itself, it can't be anything but a stand alone product. It stands alone and is fun, when the SIS is absent. With the burning wheel this may have been unintentional with its combat system. What I'm suggesting is that since it definately becomes a stand alone product, design for stand alone from the begining.

If it's fun by itself, it's stand alone, regardless of the authors original intention. There is no middle ground where it's not stand alone, but it's fun without the SIS. If its fun outside the parameters of another game, then it's seperated from that and is stand alone. Can we establish this between us? You don't just turn the SIS off and hey, it works as a toy. When you turn that SIS off, your cutting off other rules and material that supports that and presumes its existence to function. When you ditch something and what you keep is still fun, it shows the indepenence of that fun bit from the rest.

That strikes me as an important design consideration: if you can grab your players on two levels it may be easier to hold their attention and increase their enjoyment.  At the same time, grabbing your audience on two seperate levels means that you are not fully engaging them on either one as you would with a system that just grabbed them on the one level really strongly.

What do you think?

Thomas

I don't think that when they are roleplaying, they will be working at two levels. The independent game will integrate. However, instead of working at two levels, I think they may instead keep being distracted by the potential of this seperate game you've made and want to break from the RP to play it instead. I think I've read many play accounts where people killed anything in sight, because they wanted to get into the combat part of the system. It's a 'So good, it's distracting' problem. Perhaps you could fix that with SC suggestions, so instead of some people wanting to RP and being frustrated, everyone gets on the same boat.

Also I think having a independent game/two levels thing like this is a very, very good selling point. Have you ever played Warhammer quest? It was a board game, but the book had three sections. The first was for one shot games. The second section was for a board game campaign, where you advanced and visited many dungeons. Finally, the third section described roleplaying with this. The beuty was, the user would already be having fun even before roleplay showed up on the horizon. On the downside, for that reason they may not take up roleplay because they are already having fun...but then again, as long as everyone is on the same boat, CA wise, that's not a prob.

[LordSmerf]

I think that, at the moment, what I'm willing to concede (and this with no resevation) is that a game which is fun outside of the SIS can be considered Stand Alone.  I'm not entirely sure what effect this has in play.

I thinkyou are also probably right that having a game on two levels (the fun of the RPG-ness and the fun of Toy Quality) can be as distracting as it is enhancing.  In fact, it may fun/distracting in the same way as watching a movie with friends.  That is, you get the fun of socialization + the fun of watching the movie, but you may also get the distraction of socialization and miss part of the fun of the movie.

So, I think we're on the same page here.  I'm interested in discussing the impact on design this kind of dual-activity stuff might have.  Can we analyze the good of the second tandem activity in comparison with the bad it contributes due to distraction?

Thomas

[Callan S.]

I think that, at the moment, what I'm willing to concede (and this with no resevation) is that a game which is fun outside of the SIS can be considered Stand Alone.  I'm not entirely sure what effect this has in play.

I thinkyou are also probably right that having a game on two levels (the fun of the RPG-ness and the fun of Toy Quality) can be as distracting as it is enhancing.  In fact, it may fun/distracting in the same way as watching a movie with friends.  That is, you get the fun of socialization + the fun of watching the movie, but you may also get the distraction of socialization and miss part of the fun of the movie.

I think it being an activity which can be enjoyed entirely seperately/independently, means it can end up usurping roleplay elements. It's like the socialising in your movie example. I find mostly that people do an activity, then tack socialising on it because they can't usually just socialise by itself. Say if they find socialising to suddenly be possible by itself...then the movie might get turned off. In our example with playing warhammer quest, we never really did play the RP part much. When it came to using the boardgame rules with RP rules, it just seemed to be a watered down version of the boardgame. The oomph was in the boardgame.

I think the RP part of your game will need to compete with that. I think many RP designs have rather too subtle rewards or far too delayed gratification in them. TROS seems to handle this pretty well...up to five extra dice from spiritual attributes absolutely rocks. You might play the combat system by itself...but those SA's will draw you to the RP, as well.

So, I think we're on the same page here.  I'm interested in discussing the impact on design this kind of dual-activity stuff might have.  Can we analyze the good of the second tandem activity in comparison with the bad it contributes due to distraction?

Thomas

Ummm. I'll look at it this way. With my warhammer quest example, we might not be roleplaying with it, but damn did we play it alot. We actually played it more frequently than we roleplayed, for many months.

So someone playing your game in part is better than it being RP focused, but not getting attention. I'm thinking of D&D right now...when we started playing 3rd edition, we did it for a laugh...and we kept playing and playing and playing and suddenly we'd hit about 8th level. Then there was a sort of move to get serious about the story and...were in hiatus right now.

On the other hand, we'd get used to warhammer quest...it's just a board game and so we'd basically master it and move on. We'd only really return when our skills on it had become rusty enough for it to become a challenge again. Unlike TROS, I don't think D&D has such and attractive 'come and roleplay (some narrativism)!' to fill in the blank once you've mastered the board game section.

Any help so far? I'm better at bitching than helping, it seems! ;)

[LordSmerf]

I believe I may have mis-stated my question...

You are right, having two seperate sources of enjoyment can detract from an experience, but I'm wondering if it can enhance one as well.  I find that I enjoy watching some movies at least partially because I'm watching them with friends.

Now, a surface analysis (by me, done just now) indicates that this tends to happen with movies that are simply not as good.  With a very high quality movie I am even able to appreciate it more without the distraction of other people.

So, I am wondering if this idea holds true for RPGs too.  If you had the "perfect" RPG would enjoyment be lost through the distraction of Toy Quality?  Or would Toy Quality only enhance in this case?  Further, in a world of imperfect RPGs, does it make more sense from a design standpoint to work on Toy Quality rather than squeezing that last 1% of perfection from your system?

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

Thomas--For what it's worth, I think there's something in this idea of "Toy Quality" that indeed can make a game more fun. The problems we're having discussing it are that we can't quite get a clean definition of what "Toy Quality" is, and it seems that different people may find it in different parts of the game.

For example, I remember one day I was pouring over some Star Frontiers character papers, trying to figure out how to outfit our five characters with the best choice in weapons from what we had available.  Suddenly I saw the math behind the thing--how chance to hit times average damage per hit times attacks per combat period gave you a clean representation of your combat potential with any weapon. As soon as I saw that, I converted it to D&D and came up with my ADRs and Survs, statistics that would enable a player to figure out his best weapon choice, a party leader to recognize who the best melee and missile fighters were, a means of comparing high hit points to good armor class. That was toy quality for me--I could crunch the numbers behind the scenes, and increase my tactical abilities and even my strategic abilities by converting my party members into comparable numbers. I could indeed "play" with it now by running monsters through the same process and comparing the character against the monster to see which would win. In essence, I'd yanked one of the modular components out of the system and got a good look at how it worked, so that I could use it better in play.

Most people would find such an exercise homework. In fact, I used such an exercise when I was tutoring a gamer in algebra once. It didn't make it less like doing homework for him, but at least it helped him see how the numbers worked.

Meanwhile, I get nothing out of miniatures, and dice pools seem more trouble than they're worth--too many dice for my tastes. What is toy quality for one player is going to be bothersome for another.

I think it's good to build toy quality into games. You do have to recognize, though, that different players are going to react positively to different things. If you put something too far forward, you're going to alienate players for whom that has no appeal. You need to include it at a level at which players can decide whether to bring it forward or push it to the background, without hurting the game either way.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

--M. J. Young

[contracycle]

Yes, IMO this is the next step tot ake, especially for gamist design.  I think an RPG should be seen as group of inter-related games that in large part operate autonomously.  Its exactly this sort of thinking that lead to my recent "abandon ship minigame" proposition.

I think the "toyness" discussed here is a little of the mark though.  A couple of years ago I proposed this distinction between a toy and a game: a game is something you play, a toy is something you play with.  You can only play a game one way, but you can use a toy in multiple games.

Now I will agree that some aspects of existing systems are fun in their own right,  However, I suspect that this is because they are actually full, balanced games in their own right, and merely appear to be subcomponents of larger games.  Thos emoments in which people get joy out of manipulating them might be reasonably thought to be moments of latent gamism shining through.

[Callan S.]

Thomas,

Sorry, didn't read you right.

I think that's a really hard question. Currently I can only think of one thing and that is that most RPG designers seem to have some sort of message they want to hand over through their design. Now, games like chess or lunch money don't have a message like that. I think if your trying to go for a super saiyan of a RPG design, your probably following this message idea more fully. Which would be detracted from by a messageless component, either by it's lack of message in play or even by how indipendent it is of the message when played by itself.


Mike,

I think this toy quality were talking about here are: Components of a game that when removed from other components in the game, still resolve enough by themselves to be fun (and in the process, become a game all by themselves). PS: I think this applies to art and such like too. Try cutting out a tiny square of art...can you 'resolve' it from looking at just that piece? No. You need to take a lot of it so it resolves enough to be fun.

I just keep using the term toy quality, because its handy rather than it being applicable anymore.

[LordSmerf]

M.J: Yes, I think you are right, "Toy Quality" is incredibly subjective.  I may be willing to posit that there is a split of TQ preferences that is roughly analagous to Creative Agenda preferences (that is, some people are looking for certain things, and those things can be categorized to some degree).  This would mean, for design, that we can create systems that are optimized towards a specific preference, but that a focused design couldn't really coherently please everyone.

Contracycle: Yeah, "Toy Quality" is really a misnomer for what we are talking about here.  The problem is that I believe it may have been the proper term for what Ben Lehman was referring to in the original thread.  As we have discussed it here it is probably more appropriate to call it "Game Quality" or something similar.

Callan: I think you are probably right.  Current design wisdom states (roughly) that any part of your game that does not directly contribute to advancing its specific pursuit of it's CA (or possibly "Design Goal", whatever that may be) is extraneous.  I also think I agree with that idea.  Under that thinking it seems that "Toy Quality" (or "Game Quality", or whatever) is extraneous because it is a distraction from the "main thing".

So, I've pretty much answered most of my questions.  The only thing I really have left is consideration of utilizing "Toy Quality" in spite of its distracting elements, and what sort of design goals include Toy Quality such that it is not a distraction.  Both of those issues are so vague that I'm not sure that current discussion of them would be profitable.

Therefore, I'm going to give this a couple of days, and if no one jumps in with a "That's what I've been trying to say all along" then I'll close the thread out.

Also, looking back, I think it will be confusing to term what is discussed in this thread as "Toy Quality" in future discussions.  Not to mention that it probably twists the meaning of the term as Ben had intended it.  I am therefore proposing that we call what we discussed in this thread "Game Quality" instead.

So, we still don't have a good definition for "Toy Quality" but we did get some nifty discussion here.  Thanks to everyone who participated.

Thomas