Conflict of design goals or: THACO - To Hit Adesign Class 0

[Callan S.]

I'm trying to get over some writers block at the moment ('moment' as used here could include several years, actually). Specifically for this thread, there's something I've been thinking about for awhile and that's RPG fun in ten minutes. Some post about convention play spurred that awhile ago - surely if it can be done at all, it can be done in ten minutes. Hell, even one minute, surely?

My primary aim is gamist design - one big issue is the conflict between these two goals : Writing a hard to beat system (but unfortunately by doing so, knowing how to beat it. This assuredly sucks) VS writing a system which I know isn't easy to beat.
NOTE: Most board games you can find get over this simply by pitting player Vs player - each player is an unpredictable roller coaster of variable challenge. However, where such player Vs player occurs, it squeezes out for player Vs imagined space.

One approach I've considered recently is to make the game compelling not by it having renown for it's complexity (such as a soduku or cryptic crossword has), but by having an compelling issue at its core. Then simply taking a menu of resource management mechanics and using each whenever it would seem fit for the issue, and linking them together resource map style (think relationship map, but gamist!). This still has the potential for a glaring 'short circuit' where you can simply beat it by doing X right at the start. But that's okay because the initial impulse to engage the issue in some way is met, and thus it's still a possitive outcome.

Probably causing trouble for myself without really thinking about the choice, I've aimed toward pulling resource management mechanics from D&D 3.5 for the purposes of this first attempt. They are intriguing and...yeah, I wanna beat D&D in some way.

Block. It sounded good, but it's still hits writers block. Reflecting on it now, it's because every single resource mechanic in D&D is reliant on others being there for them to provide any difficulty. Otherwise they are pretty damn simplistic when issolated from each other. Once they're like this, it's the first half of the problem from above - writing it and knowing how to beat it, as each mechanic is so transparent I can work out how to beat it as I write it. Damn it! Damn it!!

Is there something I haven't seen there - some angle I've missed? That's one question.

Okay, swinging back to the idea of a game in ten minutes - I was wondering if I'm engaging in bloat by habit. Why do I want a game that has lots and lots of rules - why couldn't the whole game be over in one roll, for example? To put it more exactly - why am I trying to write more than one roll? That's a pretty good question for any designer really - why more than just one roll? Do your goals back up/need any roll added after the first? Back to me though...

One roll can do it - sure, it defaults to gamble gamism, but that's better than this fucking writers block. The only other thing you need is to up the ante on that gamble: what you might call 'dream catcher' mechanics - ie, 'play' which is just going through procedures that are evocatively named in relation to the big issue being called upon. It's really just busy work procedure (laced with system relevant rewards to drive it), there to make you think about the issue over and over, spurring an imaginative process/dream about the issue, so the eventual gamble has a big 'ante' on it, rather than a small one.

But. I. Want. More. I want more than just a gamble. I want those chewy resource conomdrums I engage in a bunch of comp/card games. At the same time, that single roll is better than being in design limbo.

Where do I go from here? I've thought about perhaps a process where players adding rules in somewhere to make more difficulty for themselves, but ages ago I posted a design here where players could opt to make their character vulnerable to various damage types when otherwise they would be perfectly safe, and the responces around here were 'why would a player make themselves vulnerable - so it supports the gamist player by letting him penalise himself??' - so I'm not sure anyone gets the idea of adding difficulty for fun, even though my group of friends have done it while setting up PS2 timesplitter shoot em up deathmatches against comp controlled bots (set number of bots - set the weapons they can use - all 'penalising' ourselves in the name of gamist play).

I could be wrong about my assumption way up at the top - that player Vs player squeezes out player Vs imagined space. The imagined space can affect that PVP battle - it's just that again I might, as GM, be able to see the win before they can. On the other hand, the end result is still unpredictable - you don't know which player will win, even if you can see a win yourself. That might be one way to go.

Any other ideas?


PS: Any mention of THACO was pure hyperbole on my part, hehehehe - gotta have fun with something!

[Thenomain]

Have you considered looking into the mechanics used by Roleplay Card Games (or Card-Gamey RPGs) such as Roach or GameGame?  GameGame is more of a creativity exercise than an RPG, but most of the elements are there.

[Eero Tuovinen]

So, ten minutes and a gamist design? Sounds fun! Are you thinking a game that can be finished in ten minutes, or one that starts being fun in ten? I've done a couple of the latter ones (with perhaps one major success), but never a gamist one.

My first instinct is to go for a fast, level-based game, like the arcade games of the '80s. Get rid of having to balance the game by making it start easy and get hard with successive play - provide "passcodes" for starting play from a higher difficulty level instead of having to play through the lower levels. Make the goal of a given game level always the same, yet provide either a scenario booklet or means of writing new scenarios on the fly. Perhaps provide a way to count score, so players can compare results and try for a higher score.

Gamist design is something I've been thinking about a bit during the late seasons, so one important point about that: the challenge in a good gamist game should not route attention towards the system, like we usually see around here in gamist efforts. The setting and situation should have major impact on the game, and the game should allow the player a wide leeway of utilizing the exact fictional situation in his solutions. The challenge should not be winning a bunch of HP and an attack bonus, but winning a dragons, fangs and all. Having a game where you chat a bit about the fiction and then roll dice, without the chat affecting the roll, is pretty pointless. Or at least you should realize that in that case you need the make the results of the roll feed solidly in the fiction, because otherwise you have a disconnect between the rules and the fiction.

Given that, you need an evocative environment and situation where not only there are various possible characters and events, but also intuitive interactions between elements, so the players know what they can do in the game without being familiar with a complex rules system. I would perhaps investigate superheroes myself as a possible setting background, that provides a varied opportunity for all kinds of scenarios.

[Noclue]

Why more than one roll? Because rolling dice is fun. The game isn't a result; its and experience. There's fun to be had in the maneuvering and using awesome skills and rolling dice. This gives a chance for tension to build up and for other variables to come into play (lack of resources, allies, additional skills, etc.).


A note on adding complexity to make a game more interesting. I understand making the challenge more difficult in order to increase the fun, like your friends do in their PS2 deathmatches. I understand adding character flaws to min/max a point build in a gamist environment. I understand adding character flaws with no other benefit in a story focused game to increase narrative conflict. But I don't believe that players will respond well to penalising themselves in a gamist setting, even though it could be argued that increasing the difficulty of the oponents is effectively the same thing as decreasing the PCs effectiveness. Given your system design goals (i.e. gamist RPG fun in 10 minutes), I do not believe that most PCs will take a penalty without a mechanical benefit associated. Mathmatically making the PC more vulnerable might be the same thing as increasing the power of the opposition, but its not psychologically the same thing.

[Filip Luszczyk]

Callan,

An RPG session is a social event in the first place - people gather together to have fun for some hours. So, there needs to be something that engages the group for some time. This is why, normally, people don't want the game to end in ten minutes - but rather to have a lot of shorter cycles that taken together fill the whole social gathering.

There's no reason a ten minute game couldn't be functional of course - only it would require different expectations from the group than an average game would. Effectively, you'd have many separate instances of play per social meeting, probably. Works for many computer and board games, so it would probably work for RPGs as well.

If you have an idea for a role-playing game that could be played out in ten minutes, and you see no need to add stuff that would make it possible to fill the whole meeting with one instance of play, go on. However, I think at this point it would be good to consider if you really need role-playing elements in it - cause, maybe you're nearing a point were actually getting rid of SIS and making a straighforward board game out of it would be a better way to go?

As for adding difficulty for fun, are you adding handicaps durng the deathmatch, or before it "officially" starts? Cause, if it's the latter, you effectively prepare the challenge for yourself to take. I think it's important to be aware when the preparatory phase of the game ends and facing the challenge starts. Cause, in the first phase adding difficulty makes a lot of sense. In the second, it would be a poor strategic choice and nothing more (unless there are some trade-offs involved).

Also, if the problem is that you can see the win before the players as the GM, why not making the game GM-less?

I suggest a following experiment:

Take one of those board or card games you enjoy. Strip it from its default color - preferably take one that doesn't have too strong color in the first place. Then, add SIS by tying every element of the game to fiction somehow (i.e. assume that every player has his own character, and whatever resources there are in the game are in fact different aspects of the character). Then, require players to narrate stuff and play for some time that way.

Observe whether the addition of SIS influences the way people play on a purely mechanical level, and why.

Then, fiddle with the rules of the game a bit, allowing for fiction to affect the situation on the board. Maybe include a GM who can move things around on his whim when he deems its appropriate. Play for a while and compare your observations.

I suppose something like this could help you in finding the right level of interplay between the mechanics and the fiction.

[Aaron Blain]

Writer's block? I'll cleanse that nasty Thetan for a one-time fee of $5,000.

I personally am baffled by the Forge's understanding of gamism. Whenever someone says "gamism", it seems you indie vets always go straight to this "beat the system" nonsense. Winning a game (especially a GOOD game) isn't just a matter of exploiting the rules. It's about making a series of judgement calls about HOW to exploit those rules in a given situation. There is a HUGE difference between these two. In the latter case, there is one correct answer: Half-Orc Frenzied Berzerker + Monkey Grip. In a game of DnD 3.X, the winning player is the player whose character is closest to optimal construction. The supposed "gameplay" is just a testing of this construction, but the real gameplay (the part where you win or lose) is that three or twelve hours you spend flipping through books looking at prestige classes, etc.

In a GOOD game, however, you are constantly reacting to a chaotic (in the mathematical, fractal, indeterminate sense) system of interactions. There is sometimes a "best answer" but EVERY ACTION changes the system.

Do you think you could be a little more specific about your aspirations? I'm going to go out on a limb and presume you want a game where things kill other things. You said "no PvP", but then you used the "Jee-Em" word. Do you not consider the orchestration of the "bad guys" an active, PvP situation? Or is the Dungeon Master merely interpreting the monster's mindset to "see what they would do"?

Since Eero mentioned '80's arcade games, how about a mostly or totally GMless game where the players cooperate to kill mobs of "AI-controlled" mooks, Golden Axe/Final Fight style? Every round, each player allocates their resources, and then you look at the situation and roll to see how the enemies will react (obviously in a fairly simplistic fashion -- just like we like it!). If the game variables interact with one another thoroughly and randomly, there will never be an obvious optimum answer, and certainly never a permanent one.

Tell me about your exasperation with resource management, because this is really the crux of gamism, especially once you realise that "taking an action" is the most basic resource to be spent. Perhaps this has bearing on your "choose your own handicap" idea : My local RPG think tank has for some time been enamored with the idea of "focus points", representing the character's attention, which are reallocated each round, constantly redefining a character's strengths and weaknesses as the situation changes. You put your focus points on different enemies or skills each round. Focussed on parrying? You're safe from those swordsman -- until one pulls out his throwing dagger! etc. etc.

There is of course the very basic Golden Axe resource management -- should I throw my magic pots now, or save them for the boss? But I think things can get a lot more sophisticated.

Ignore that silly poltergeist you call "writer's block" for a moment, and elucidate. I am fascinated.

P.S. I am totally stupefied by your discussion of a "compelling issue". You want arcade action for the purpose of sociopolitical commentary or something? I think all these high-fallutin indie rpg's have totally warped your brain. Go play Pac-Man or Heretic for a few hours, and come back to this poor, maimed concept we call "gamism".

[Dan Maruschak]

My primary aim is gamist design - one big issue is the conflict between these two goals : Writing a hard to beat system (but unfortunately by doing so, knowing how to beat it. This assuredly sucks) VS writing a system which I know isn't easy to beat.
NOTE: Most board games you can find get over this simply by pitting player Vs player - each player is an unpredictable roller coaster of variable challenge. However, where such player Vs player occurs, it squeezes out for player Vs imagined space.

Callan, can you clarify what you mean here?  By "beat the system" do you mean figuring out the optimal strategies?  To my way of thining any game which has an "optimal" strategy is not fun for a gamist player -- he figures it out and then simply goes though the motions -- it's not a challenge anymore.

Reflecting on it now, it's because every single resource mechanic in D&D is reliant on others being there for them to provide any difficulty. Otherwise they are pretty damn simplistic when issolated from each other.

Simple systems that interact with each other produce complexity -- it's the number of systems and interactions that produce complex (and compelling) gameplay in traditional game design.  And here I'm using "complexity" in a mathematical or system analysis sense, not in a "convoluted, difficult to follow set of instructions" sense.  If you're going after gamist design you're going to want complexity.

Why do I want a game that has lots and lots of rules - why couldn't the whole game be over in one roll, for example?

It depends on what you mean by "roll".  Solitaire is a classic game that has only one randomization step.  It does have decision points, though. 

The only other thing you need is to up the ante on that gamble

High ante straight gambling doesn't strike me as solid gamist design.  What is the challenge?

Where do I go from here? I've thought about perhaps a process where players adding rules in somewhere to make more difficulty for themselves, but ages ago I posted a design here where players could opt to make their character vulnerable to various damage types when otherwise they would be perfectly safe, and the responces around here were 'why would a player make themselves vulnerable - so it supports the gamist player by letting him penalise himself??' - so I'm not sure anyone gets the idea of adding difficulty for fun, even though my group of friends have done it while setting up PS2 timesplitter shoot em up deathmatches against comp controlled bots (set number of bots - set the weapons they can use - all 'penalising' ourselves in the name of gamist play).

The question is what challenge is being addressed?  Is it "I can kill that monster with... 3 penalties!"  "Oh yeah, well I can kill it with 4!"  "Alright, kill that monster!"?

it's just that again I might, as GM, be able to see the win before they can. On the other hand, the end result is still unpredictable - you don't know which player will win, even if you can see a win yourself. That might be one way to go.

Can you clarify what you mean by that?

[David C]

Several reasons people fall back onto the "multiple rolls."
1) To allow specializations. For example, in D&D, you can be specialized in *hitting* a monster (+ attack.) Or you can be specialized in *damaging* a monster. (+ damage) You always make those two rolls, and in theory they average out to be the same thing.
2) To give the illusion of control. You know why people hate "save or die" spells? It only has one roll. It really isn't any different then being hit by two fireballs that together can kill you, except you have more chances to avoid dieing, and more "control."

[Noclue]

The question is what challenge is being addressed?  Is it "I can kill that monster with... 3 penalties!"  "Oh yeah, well I can kill it with 4!"  "Alright, kill that monster!"?

I have been reading a bit of John Wick's design journal for his Houses of the Blooded game and he has a mechanic in it where you bid for initiative by giving up dice. Essentially trading speed for accuracy. The more dice you bid the faster you are, but the less effective. Its an interesting concept.

[contracycle]

You could resolve a complex interaction in a single roll, if you go through a series of preparatory phases in which tension builds first.  This is essentially poker; a series of calculated guesses followed by a single climactic resolution.

Callan, when you say the problem is making a game you yourself know how to beat, do you mean beat the game wearing your Player hat or wearing your GM hat?

[Callan S.]

Ruminated on the thread for a few days, thanks for all the responces. I think of Ron's gamism essay where he notes a general "'oh, gamism' we all know what that means" it culture, when I see a diversity of responces on gamism. Clearly it isn't cut and dried.

I've meandered from the ten minutes idea, as you may see from my post. I think I grasped it not as a goal, but more as a pruning device, for cutting away everything that isn't important (I think 48 hour game cheifs or those french one page RPG's have similar pruning qualties). It's not a primary goal, but I am holding it close for the purposes of clarity in design.

Quoting a few people here, as an overall responce. I'm listing the understandings I'm working from - if you can find a supporting arguement against them, we can go from there. I haven't covered everyones questions, sorry - I've focused here to either figure out some shared understandings as ground work, or if needed, examine some of my understandings.

Given your system design goals (i.e. gamist RPG fun in 10 minutes), I do not believe that most PCs will take a penalty without a mechanical benefit associated. Mathmatically making the PC more vulnerable might be the same thing as increasing the power of the opposition, but its not psychologically the same thing.

The understanding I'm working from is that a player can only take damage or a resource hit from the SIS, if they invite it to happen. It ties in with the lumpley principle. This is in direct conflict with what you describe, which I acknowledge is a real issue. Personally I think if you want to engage the SIS, you have to get over this point - accept that you have to make yourself vulnerable. I see skateboarders falling over again and again as they try to learn their tricks, for example - they just accept it. Same goes here - just accept the vulnerability while you learn (note: GM's/people who try to hurt you as a person are another issue, but to many being vulnerable and abuse are the same issue. Well see how discussion pans out here).

As for adding difficulty for fun, are you adding handicaps durng the deathmatch, or before it "officially" starts? Cause, if it's the latter, you effectively prepare the challenge for yourself to take. I think it's important to be aware when the preparatory phase of the game ends and facing the challenge starts. Cause, in the first phase adding difficulty makes a lot of sense. In the second, it would be a poor strategic choice and nothing more (unless there are some trade-offs involved).

My understanding is that there can't be strategy until there are stakes. I think that went wrong in that previous post - there was an assumption that if the GM's talking about the game world and even the players are, that play is happening and thus anything you do is strategy. In my opinion, it isn't - its just talk if there aren't any stakes. And as the design had you invulnerable until you decided to make yourself vulnerable, a stake only exists once you make yourself vulnerable. Before that no stakes exist and thus strategy isn't possible - so making yourself vulnerable can't be poor strategy.

Couldn't find the old post on seach (title was "Rocks fall, everyone who bid their HP dies" or some such), search isn't working well.

In relation to Dan Maruschak post, my understanding is almost a complete opposite on each point. An optimal strategy in a game is fine - once you find it, your done with the game and walk away, another notch on your belt. That's a great ending in my mind. My issue is simply that I don't want to do a whole bunch of work only for it to be undone immediately - thats lots of work for little play. Also I don't want to invite my friends around only for it to end in a rapid anti climax (hmm, more of a social expectation though - on reflection, might be outside the area of game design). In line with the work issue, complexity doesn't equal stakes. Putting in lots of work making it complicated doesn't mean anyone has to take it up as some sort of challenge.

High ante stakes isn't solid gamism? Umm, it's not my first pick, but it's still far more fun than nothing. Another good activity for a designer is to go and play snakes and ladders - preferably with a young, excitable person. You'll find pure gamble is fun - you just forget that when the human element is removed. Err, I mean to say this as another understanding of mine.

The question is what challenge is being addressed?  Is it "I can kill that monster with... 3 penalties!"  "Oh yeah, well I can kill it with 4!"  "Alright, kill that monster!"?

With the design, it allowed stakes to occur at all. The actual specifics 'I can kill him and probably only take a few points of damage' come after that. After all, saying you can beat the monster with three penalties means nothing if nothing is at stake - it's just statistical grandstanding. You need to confirm there is actually any risk, before you can boast about what you can do in the face of risk. Though I suspect for some simulationist inclined people, the lack of risk empowers their statements into the game world "I (my PC) can take him!" - for them, if risk actually made that statement false, it'd be a bitter social contract breach. I'm meandering though - onto clarifying what I meant in the last quote: Well, if two players are pitted against each other, you can't be sure which will win. That's not the same as seeing a player pitted against a game world and finding out how or if they can overcome it, but it's certainly better than nothing at all.


Finally in general, on 'why one roll' I was really aiming this at myself and just mentioning it to others as a design question as a casual after thought. I'm really surprised that people have tried to justify it to me - as I said, is it justified in relation to your goals - there's no just getting by in justifying it to someone else - you have to justify it to yourself. Which is sometimes the hardest thing to face.


Now, after reading responces I hit upon an idea, which when I first got it I thought it as a 'dirty, dirty, dirty metagame idea'. It's perfectly simple - elements of the game world, whether thats an ogre, a pack of gobo's or a fire gout trap, are placed however you usually do. But in game when it gets to that room - the GM grabs a small object like a dice and...no he doesn't roll the bloody thing! God, just about everyone knows how to illusionist rig the percentages! No, he throws it - trying to get it in a cup X amount of distance away from him! If he does, the element stays, if he fails, it's absent.

And that's it. Yeah, not complicated, but instantly no one in the whole world knows how things will turn out or what the right solution will be, because who knows when he'll miss? Any missing element makes the final solution quite different - a solution no one can be certain of!

I like it. Must try it soon - though at the moment I'm having the odd condition of not knowing what I'm trying to make when adding any element - after all, whatever I add might just well dissapear. However, that's not a block anymore, it's more likely to spur me to make odd ass dungeon designs - which is kind of a flashback to the early days of gaming, anyway!

[Noclue]

The understanding I'm working from is that a player can only take damage or a resource hit from the SIS, if they invite it to happen...I see skateboarders falling over again and again as they try to learn their tricks, for example - they just accept it.

Well, to use the metaphor, the skateboarders increase their fun by trying harder jumps and more complicated moves in the process of which they sometimes fall. They don't starve themselves for two days or put out an eye to make the same jumps more and more difficult. 

I guess I should try to clarify my understanding of the phrase gamist fun as there does seem to be some diverse pov's on the subject. When I hear you say "gamist fun" I understand that to mean an RPG where the fun is focused on using strategies based on the game mechanics to overcome obstacles of increasing difficulty as the character evolves. There may be story considerations, and there may be some attempt at modeling a coherent SIS, but the focus is on using mechanically based strategies to overcome challenges. That's how I hear that term (not saying I hear good).

Finally in general, on 'why one roll' I was really aiming this at myself and just mentioning it to others as a design question as a casual after thought. I'm really surprised that people have tried to justify it to me -

I reserve the right to answer rhetorical questions.

[Dan Maruschak]

My understanding is that there can't be strategy until there are stakes. I think that went wrong in that previous post - there was an assumption that if the GM's talking about the game world and even the players are, that play is happening and thus anything you do is strategy.

Callan, can you clarify what you mean here?  To my mind, in the vast majority of gamist games (or traditional board or card games) you've already got stakes when you sit down to play -- whether or not you're good enough to beat the challenge.

My issue is simply that I don't want to do a whole bunch of work only for it to be undone immediately - thats lots of work for little play. Also I don't want to invite my friends around only for it to end in a rapid anti climax (hmm, more of a social expectation though - on reflection, might be outside the area of game design). In line with the work issue, complexity doesn't equal stakes. Putting in lots of work making it complicated doesn't mean anyone has to take it up as some sort of challenge.

I think that when you design a gamist game you ought to assume that your players are going to be good at gamism.  They're going to be the type of people that that are quick to pick up on patterns, and quick to find the good solutions, and therefore quick to lose interest in your game if there is one optimal strategy.  To me, that implies that you should try to avoid optimal strategies, since they make your game seem less fun to your target audience.  And perhaps I wasn't clear about what I meant, but you don't necessarily need to put in a lot of work or have complicated systems to generate complexity.  As an example, look at chess -- not very complicated rules, but a very complex game.  It's the interactions of things that make systems complex, and you can have very straightforward, elegant designs that are nevertheless full of complexity and fertile grounds for lots and lots of strategies.

Another good activity for a designer is to go and play snakes and ladders - preferably with a young, excitable person. You'll find pure gamble is fun - you just forget that when the human element is removed. Err, I mean to say this as another understanding of mine.

So, is your target audience young, excitable people?  I would guess that, if you're making a gamist game, your target audience are people who are experienced at these types of games and are good at them.  I would guess that they're not likely to have the same experience as your young excitable player.  And, to bring it back to gamism, what exactly is the challenge that is being addressed in snakes and ladders?  If anything, I think we'd have to call it Simulationist -- after all, the flow of the game is dictated by "what would happen in that world".

After all, saying you can beat the monster with three penalties means nothing if nothing is at stake - it's just statistical grandstanding.

Well, it depends on the context.  If you then have to prove that you can walk the walk as well as talk the talk then you are indeed addressing a challenge.  You are humiliated if you can't, and you've got bragging rights if you can.

And that's it. Yeah, not complicated, but instantly no one in the whole world knows how things will turn out or what the right solution will be, because who knows when he'll miss? Any missing element makes the final solution quite different - a solution no one can be certain of!

Well, I don't want to rain on your parade, since you seem very excited, but I don't understand why you think you are adding unpredictability by moving from a well-understood random number generator and into something that is completely dependent on something much more predictable, like physical skill.

As a more general reply, you seem to place a big emphasis on "setting stakes" and on randomization as aspects of gamist design.  Could you go into more detail into why you think these are important?  To my mind there are plenty of classic games, like chess or Stratego, which have no random component and no greater stakes than "will I win or not", so they don't seem that they're necessarily essential to gamist design to me.  I'd like to better understand your perspective.

[Dan Maruschak]

Callan, I found your Rocks fall thread via google.  I have to say, I don't want to insult you, but I'm a bit puzzled about the way you think about gamism.  The previous thread seemed to describe a game which is either some kind of weird guessing game (I think the GM will hit me with HP damage, so I should bid mind points instead) or you seemed to be aiming for the "I'm willing to take the biggest hit, look how awesome I am" crowd.  Here you seem to be aiming more towards puzzles (at least that's what I'm inferring, from the "figure out the optimal strategy" stuff), and you express a fondness for snakes and ladders.  Maybe I'm missing something, but these games all seem to be very light on strategy.  Are you sure you want to design a gamist game?

[Callan S.]

I think there's a perception (I see it as just a perception, anyway), that if you sitting and talking with people about some fictional characters in peril, game play is happening. Speaking from my own view, no, it's flatly not. It's just alot of hot air, until stakes are on the table. The rocks fall design lets you put stakes on the table (that the whole group understands)

However, if you do treat talking with people about characters in peril as play, then it doesn't make sense to use within that 'play'.

But frankly it doesn't work - trying to do it that way is rather like trying to enforce drawbacks players have taken for points (ever tried that as GM?). If you haven't noticed the pattern in play, players will argue with this. That's because while there's even a small chance of getting out of having the drawback applied, they will try get out of it.

That's a lame result - the players don't accept losing as they keep trying to figure some arguement out of it, just like they try and argue their way out of the drawback being enforced.

That's why I don't see play happening in a group of people just talking about characters in peril. I see a great idea generating group, which is nice. But there is no play, because there will be no acceptance of losing - just a hamster wheel of denial "Oh but...", ad nauseum.

What I have seen, though, are designs where the characters had a means of escape, but choose not to take it and per chance, die. And the players can accept that because they realised escape was right there. They kept their own head under the gillotine, no one else forced it there. That's what 'rocks fall' does - it lets you head into danger, fully knowing you could have escaped it. Thus you will fully accept the results as much as it was your choice.

Then again alot of groups think they can enforce drawbacks sucessfully, and perhaps think they can enforce losing too. The 'rocks fall' design will seem entirely out of place to them, as it engages a problem they 'don't have'.

I don't understand what you mean by puzzles being light on strategy - strategy is just one big puzzle that encapsulates smaller puzzles. Unless you mean something else by strategy - as I've said, without stakes strategy doesn't exist, nothing is or can be a good or bad move because there is no stake to compare each move by. In the same light as asking whether I want to design a gamist game, you might want to reflect on your concept of gamist play and consider if you were making moves in the interest of a stake, or making moves which just seem right to make. It may have consisted more of what 'just seemed right to do', perhaps?