Surrounded by Genius

[Andrew Morris]

The games that catch my imagination most usually have some psychological depth to them. They often deal with death

As an aside to the discussion, Graham, you sound like you really need to check out Death's Door.

[Josh Roby]

Wow, I love threads that go to three pages in two days, and I have to read read read to catch up.  *Huff puff*

First off, Kirk, you're not as far off as you think you are.  Have you playtested The Order yet?  I think you'll find that you've created an awesome game.

Secondly, one of the things that any game designer really needs to understand, and understand in a bone-deep way, is that a roleplaying game book is not a roleplaying game.  You can talk and talk and talk about the words on the page and the names of attributes and rules that the book outlines, but if you do that, you will never be talking about the game.  A roleplaying game is a social structure that is created from or inspired by that book, and by addressing the book you will only ever be looking at the social structure obliquely and indirectly.  That's why I don't think the Forge needs an Analysis forum; it already has one in Actual Play.  Some of the threads aren't as descriptive or exhaustive as they could be, but this is the data that we need to be looking at and processing, not the words on the page of the book.  Then, when you sit down to write out a game, you can think of the people playing the game, rather than the "content" of the game itself -- think of five people around a table rather than the heroes, monsters, and castles.

Thirdly, Nathan is picking at an important point over at Hamsterprophecy, where he's asking about Structured and Emergent games.  The things that make players go "Oooo" are the emergent properties -- the things that are not nailed down in the rules, but become real because of the rules.  The "story" of a game is an emergent property; the thrill of competition and victory is an emergent property; immersion is an emergent property.  It's hard to think about emergent properties directly, especially without lots and lots and lots of actual game play and playtesting to observe them.  The book does not have the emergent properties in it (except maybe some verbiage about what the game is about, or the rare very very good examples of play), only play does.  Look up the rules for Fantan or Spite&Malice (both card games) -- nothing in the rules suggest how cut-throat and manipulative actual play of these games are, and it's that emergent quality that makes the game fun.

And lastly, in addition to playing lots of games (something that I don't do, much to my chagrin), you can get a lot of mileage out of designing and playtesting short games, especially microgames.  There's a reason that a lot of the articles here have little microgames attached to them -- these little things allow us to focus on one or two mechanics and hammer away at them to see how they work.  These are the testing grounds where we develop the tools and where we develop our understanding of the tools.

Oh, and another 'lastly'.  Whenever I write any game text for any purpose, I keep my sister-in-law in mind.  She games with us, she enjoys it, but she is not, shall we say, hardcore.  I'm sure you know other gamers like this.  Whenever I write or read anything about games, I consider whether she would understand it and enjoy reading it.  It needs to be clear, direct, and without any unnecessary or tangential bits to get hung up on.  If it passes that test, then the social structure that those rules inspire will be streamlined and at least playable.

[Kirk Mitchell]

First off, Kirk, you're not as far off as you think you are.  Have you playtested The Order yet?  I think you'll find that you've created an awesome game

No, actually, I haven't. My roleplaying group has recently splintered apart and I'm having a lot of trouble finding people who are interested in this sort of thing. Thats the trouble when you live in a small community. [shameless plug] If anybody is interested in playtesting the game for me, drop me a line! [/shamless plug]

All I think I'm looking for is a way of applying game theory, something that can be understood at a cerebral level, rather than the flounderings that a lot of people seem to have. I realise that those microgames are the testing grounds for our tools, and our understanding of those tools, but I want to sort of try and develop something a bit more comprehensive than that. I also think I made the comment earlier on that all of this must be supported by actual play experience, and an understanding that a game is the play, not the book. This thing about emergent properties is good, and is exactly the sort of thing that I want to explore. How these things "...become real because of the rules."

Am I making any sense at all, or am I still off track? To me it seems that some of the things I want to find out are scattered about, declared implicitly throughout a wide range of essays and other writings. What I want to do is come up with something cohesive and stated explicitly. I still think that there would be some merit in comparative studies. Contracycle said it best:

And yes, before you ask, I do have a practical suggestion.  Why not...create threads for the dissection and examination of existing games, especially those that command wide-spread appeal and those which we feel are the most cutting edge of Indie designs. Create a set of analyses as to HOW a particular mechanic acheives its effect, how it interacts with other mechanisms to achieved the "feel" of the game, and then armed with this, also conduict comparisons of other games that attempted to create the same effect, with whatever degree of success, or games which would have benefitted from this such a device but did not employ it

That is the very essense of what I want to do, with or without an Analysis forum.

Kirk

[Kirk Mitchell]

I'm still half expecting Ron to come in and either say that he's written this already, or that I'm totally on the wrong track.

Kirk

[gsoylent]

The games that catch my imagination most usually have some psychological depth to them. They often deal with death - so I love My Life With Master and Cthulhu-esque games. Or they go into some fairly dark moral areas - hence my current obsession with Dogs In The Vineyard and Paranoia (straight style).

I don't think that's just a personal thing. At the risk of being pretentious, most great plays deal with death and moral dilemmas; most great films do too; so I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the RPGs that seem "deep" are concerned with some fairly deep, life-changing issues.

Actually, I do think it's a personal thing. There have always been artists who have writting about the big issues in dramatic fashion, but there have also been artistis who have looked for truth in the small, mundane things as well as those who have used irony and satire to great effect. Which you prefer is a matter of choice, I don't think you can set one above the other.

The heavy drama approach might generated stronger emotional reactions,  but that is not necessarily transalte to deep or meaningful.  Horror films can elicit strong  emotional reactions too, and they are usally pretty silly when you stop and thing about it.

A lot fo people are fascinated by the dark side of the human psyche, and that's okay. But personally I think Homer Simpson has a lot more to say about the human condition than many darker, more dramatic characters.

[contracycle]

Paul Czege:

I'd follow such threads with a great deal of interest. Is this idea out of scope for the RPG Theory forum?

Not as such, but then any given effort would just become one more thread among hundreds.  To keep the analysis focussed, and not just a series of "I feels", it should have its own space and its own rules of conduct.  Once a game is discussed and mapped and conclusions drawn, it should be stickied, for example.

Arturu

And about tools... I don't think you can do real RPG-engineering, as well as good novelists are not engineers due to the artistic part(Gods bless Inspiration!). Of course, knowing the theory and the rules of how-to is important. You cannot flesh your ideas into working mechanics if you do not understand how to do it.

Bugger the artists.  Artists needs pens and paints and easels, and those are built by engineers.  At the moment RPG design is mishmash of building both the tools AND expressing the art at the same time.  That is why it is hit and miss, unequal, and exhibits little actual progress.  We are not really learning lessons from the work done by others.  The Romanticism of art is not a sufficient argument for the absence of engineering.

Isn't that sort of analysis covered in the Actual Play forum?

Not even remotely.  Actually Play borders on "what I did on my holidays".  While there is value in this it is of only the most basic, observational kind and simply cannot give us any real insight into mechanics proper - the plural of anecdote is not data.  If RPG were archeology, we have accounts of various digs but we do not have a systematic analysis of pottery layers compiled from multiple sites.

Joshua BishopRoby

A roleplaying game is a social structure that is created from or inspired by that book, and by addressing the book you will only ever be looking at the social structure obliquely and indirectly.  That's why I don't think the Forge needs an Analysis forum; it already has one in Actual Play.  Some of the threads aren't as descriptive or exhaustive as they could be, but this is the data that we need to be looking at and processing, not the words on the page of the book.

Yes and no.  You are quite ciorrect to distinguish between the game and the book - however the problem then with the AP forum is that it deals with the PRODUCT that you can actually purshase, which is necessarily the book.  Obviously the act of play is indeed a basic requirement for analysis of the system it contains, especially to capture the emergent properties you mention which lend significance to the actual structure of the design.  But in describing the operation of a given system in isolation we are not developing generalisable insights into mechanical structure.

--

Let me try to give an example: the Humanity stat in Vampire can be described as a "slider" - it covers a fixed range and is an integral part of the system.  The skill entry for Firearms might be described as a "score", because although it appears almost identical to Humanity in its expression on the sheet (albeit only half the range) it is not a universally required element of the character - it is in fact a variable which may, or may not, be populated with a value in any give instance.

With this sort of view we can then ask the meaningful question: under what circumstances would you establish a value as a "score" as opposed to a "slider"?  What effects fo the two structures impart to the game and how are they employed by the game?

It is this level of genuine analysis that we are not achieveing, and instead relying on fuzzy impressionism and individual genius.

[Arturo G.]

contracycle:

With this sort of view we can then ask the meaningful question: under what circumstances would you establish a value as a "score" as opposed to a "slider"?  What effects fo the two structures impart to the game and how are they employed by the game?

It is this level of genuine analysis that we are not achieveing, and instead relying on fuzzy impressionism and individual genius

I think I see your point. As an engineer I had many times that feeling, I would like to systematize everything.

But following a software engineering simile, I think your are focusing too much at implementation level. Many times you can achieve the same effect with different implementation tools. Once you know the effect you want to achieve in your mechanics, surely you can do it with different types of dices, stats, scores or sliders. Some rules may circumvent the effect of others producing a quite different effect. Trying to analyze the tools to discover what is their purpose or their overall effect is a kind of back re-engineering; and this is known to be highly difficult and time consuming.

Wouldn't be better to do a top-down analysis?
The highest impact in your product will be produced at analysis of the problem and design phases.

For example, it's more important to decide if you want a "heroes" game or a "real people" game. If you want a "heroes" game you know that, in general, you should avoid a "death spiral" in the design. But you can achieve this effect with different mechanics. In fact you can design a core system with "death spiral" and use other rules to circumvent it (perhaps even meta-game rules). But I think that even the "heroes" vs. "death spiral" rule is not really a fixed rule. Surely some people will argue about it.

Everything depends on the exact flavour you want in your game. The important decissions are taken in the upper level, and these are the ones that make the difference.

Does it make any sense, or am I missing the point completely?

Arturo

[contracycle]

Yes and no.  I agree that the important decisions are taken at the upper level.  But your example sort of gives me my point, I feel: you CAN have a discussion about the "death spiral" because the death spiral is particular form of mechanical behaviour which we have identified and labelled.  That is precisely the kind of thing I want to accumulate more of.

You see I think GNS has in many ways already solved the top level problem.  Deciding which CA your design is going to support has allowed us to do design that is more "on purpose" than the simplistic representation of causality that characterised early RPG design.  But the process breaks down precisely at the implementation level - having decided what your top level goals are there are still few guidelines as to how those goals can or should be implemented, and little in the way of terminology with which to have the discussion.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I'd follow such threads with a great deal of interest. Is this idea out of scope for the RPG Theory forum?

Isn't that sort of analysis covered in the Actual Play forum?

As things are right now, I do not believe the Actual Play forum or Indie Design forum are intended for such discussions.  Perhaps once the site is "re-loaded" and the Theory/GNS forums are 86ed, then Ron and Clinton will have the opportunity to expand the scopes of Actual Play and Indie-Design.  Perhaps Actual Play could be retitled "Acutal Play and Reflection" with the reflection being an analysis of the mechanical elements of the game.

But let's get back to what Kirk really wanted.  Tools.  The forums, as I understand, were meant to bridge the gap between Theory and Design.  I believe that they can do that, but you have to take the bull by the horns.  You have to ask questions in Design, Theory, and Actual Play.  You also have to be prepared to read a LOT of threads once they are linked to you.  So, IMHO, the forums can function as the bridge you're looking for.  That is not to say, however, that I would not support an article or post that takes up the charge of providing a tools framework for design.  Because I would support such a thing.

Peace,

-Troy

[Ron Edwards]

Clarification: the Actual Play forum is indeed "Actual Play and Reflection." See the sticky.

Kirk, "it's done." What you're looking for, it's done. It's here. You're not seeing it yet, or (given your cool Ronny submission) not realizing that you've seen it. Post like a motherfucker in Actual Play. I strongly suspect you don't have a good handle on what that forum is for, and the range of things that can be posted in it. Keep designing. Find or construct another group, which I think you'll do very soon unless you decide you like being miserable and take steps to avoid finding it.

This is merely another of the periodic self-doubting, anxious threads we see all the time. It's a phase. It's an active thread because people like to whine in groups, or because they spy an opportunity to vent, or similar things. That doesn't mean it's a good discussion or means a damn thing, but I permit these threads because they blow off steam. You can find them in Site Discussion like clockwork, every six months or so.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

This is merely another of the periodic self-doubting, anxious threads we see all the time. It's a phase. It's an active thread because people like to whine in groups, or because they spy an opportunity to vent, or similar things. That doesn't mean it's a good discussion or means a damn thing, but I permit these threads because they blow off steam. You can find them in Site Discussion like clockwork, every six months or so.

You find them like clockwork because it is not, in fact, done.  It has not even started.  Would you like to point out where any such analysis appears?

The question remains, are we ever going to undertake a seriously methodical analysis?  And whining about misunderstood you are does not answer the point or solve the problem. 

[Ron Edwards]

Gareth,

"No." To everything you're saying, just "no." You're grossly incorrect. What I see are great games being produced a mile a minute and generating great play-satisfaction and in many cases business satisfaction. The "thing" we are doing here, at the Forge, is working. The same people who post as Kirk has posted are the ones who, a year later, release fantastic games and mentor others.

This is the second time you've made a crack about me whining. I said it in PM before, and I'll say it publicly now: fuck you.

I'll also follow up on a Site Discussion thread I began a while ago. You're a Forge parasite, Gareth. I don't see your accounts in Actual Play. I don't see you helping others in Indie Design. I don't see you doing anything except spinning your Big Thoughts.

So basically, shut up in the Theory forum, because you're worthless here. This is the last time I'll be responding to any post of yours here, and I suggest others do the same. Get to work at something constructive in the most important forums here. Help someone else. Let us know how you play and how it's going. Be an actual participant rather than this pseudo-Harlan-Ellison gadfly pose you've perfected.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Oh please.

AP is 90% worthless without any systematic analysis.  The fact that eventually, by osmosis, and despite the fact that there are no tools, people eventuially stumble across something that works does not in anyway validate the unwillingness to actually DO such analysis.

No you don't see my accounts in actual play.  Thats becuase its simply not worth typing.  No you don't see me do much in design, although you do see some, because all I can offer is my perceptions.  And you DO see my contribution in theory because I am not grandstanding on my laurels, I am actually trying to help rather than be a hindrance - unlike your self-important disdain.

You fucking well do not get to tell me to be an actual participant when you can barely be bothered to discuss your own ideas in theory.  All this high-n-mighty nonsense is worthless when you are actually frustrating constructive effort.  That horse is too high for you I reckon.

[Michael S. Miller]

Great bunch of ideas. Really. I completely agree that in-depth analysis of why a given game works the way it does is a great thing. Personally, I think about that a great deal, as can be seen in my Manifesto on Mastery, this post on how Sorcerer fits together, my brief thoughts on why Burning Wheel is built the way it is. Also, read all of the reviews, and add in Ron's comments on InSpectres

Pity none of these great ideas are going to come to anything. Reading over this thread, I see a lot of "we should" but I'm not seeing any "I am" or "I will." Kirk, if you want a comparitive study of why one game works and another one doesn't, then write it. Don't worry about not knowing what to do--you will bring enthusiasm to the project that no one else can match. Even if you just write a rough draft and post it, then folks can discuss the specific points of the comparison. The Forge will be a better place because of it.

If you want to dissect a given game to see what makes it tick, write a review. AFAIK, reviews are still open to anyone. It's funny how people desperately wanted to be able to write Forge reviews back in the days when only Ron was allowed. Once the policy changed and non-Ron reviews were welcome, only one person ever wrote one. If you want to see that trend changed, then change it.

[contracycle]

Pity none of these great ideas are going to come to anything. Reading over this thread, I see a lot of "we should" but I'm not seeing any "I am" or "I will."

Not true, I have proposed a number of systematic approaches, have posted initial analyses, but if they go unremarked, as they did than little is achieved.  That is why it is valid to advocate a particular approach, not least to explain why that appraoch is valid and potentially useful.  All the more so when it is continually and falsley asserted that this work "has been done" and that the discussion should therefore not continue.  It is not the case that it has not been attempted, quite far from it.