When the Drift is the Fun Part

[Harlequin]

This is an interesting thought I had a while back, and had been saving for a rainy day.  It rained over in Elegance and Deliberateness, so hey, let's crack this small but interesting concept out.

We generally refer to the need to Drift a game as a bad thing, and consider that game to have had the potential to do more than it did.  I posit that this is not always the case.

The joy of game design is very real (thank Allah and Theus!).  And the act of drifting a game's rules is, itself, an expression of this act.  We all know people who are good at tinkering with systems, who do so as a hobby (or even as reflexively as breathing).  I would bet that they're even in the majority around here, given the overlap.

Now, what this means to me is that incoherent games, which simply cry out for Drift and other forms of house-rule modification, are managing to fail one part of their audience (the "regular players" who will try to play it as written) while simultaneously pleasing those of us who indulge in the tinkerer's vice.  You could even argue them as necessary to the long-term good health of the hobby.  If every game in the world were being written coherently, we'd have a much harder time indulging that vice - the impetus would be gone.  Which would ultimately result in fewer game designers.  [I will assume without proof that this means that there would be fewer good game designers, too, especially as my tongue is already firmly in cheek at this point in the thought, and might as well stay there.]

The game that made me think this most strongly was not an RPG, but a board game - Phil Eklund's Rocket Flight - which I picked up recently.  It's a gem, I highly recommend it... but it suffers from some currency issues (having the second Earth Boost player in a game basically splits both of their resources in half, and it's arguably the weakest spot to start with) and some internal-consistency issues (it's possible to build a factory on Mercury and yet be "unable to power it" because there isn't a solar-power station within range).  Moreover, it does not trivially extend to adding an extra player over the normal max, because the initial "territory" has a lot more to do with control over a given currency than with any real positioning, and you can't just add more currencies to the game willy-nilly.

As such, we had an absolute blast.  Because the playgroup happened to contain several people who rejoice in tinkering, and the game itself not only demanded some adjustment and Drift, but was also built in such a way that it was highly resilient in the face of changes.  (Much of the latter it derives from being an economic game without fixed values for its commodities and a huge degree of interdependence, so it has a high level of power homeostasis.)  So we went to with a will, even retinkering on the fly when a tinker didn't give the exact results we wanted.

If I had to quantify the play experience, I would say that the highest joy of that game is the convoluted economic operations we invented to struggle for advantage, the second highest joy is the sim pleasure of playing what is almost certainly the most rigidly researched and realistic (sic) space-exploration game extant... but that a strong third, pushing for second, was the joy of Drift itself.

I can think of a few RPGs which help indulge this pleasure as well, but none so vividly as this example.

As such, if the Forge dialectic ever goes worldwide and becomes solid theory, and a new designer comes to you and wants to know how he should make his game coherent, then support your hobby...

...and just once in a while...

...lie.

- Eric

[Mike Holmes]

Good points. I don't think that anyone thinks that Drift per se is bad. That is, nobody complains that people make RPGs into what they want them to be. As you said, though, for people who want a functional game right out of the box, getting a game that instead requires drift is a bummer.

But even worse than this is that a game that's percieved as needing Drift, even if the players are glad to do it, may get drifted in a direction that makes the game less than what it could be if the rules had just been written better to accomplish their original goals.

Let's do a Hypothetical. I have a game that I want to be a cool Simulationist portrayal of some sci-fi tropes. But the rules are written such as they have some Gamist elements, and the whole thing is incoherent. When played the participants find that Drift is neccessary to make it work in anything like a coherent manner. But the drift in question inevitably ends up being to the Gamist side for this game. Given that I designed the Game to be a Sim game, now the game works but not nearly like what it's supposed to work like. It would be way better if the Sim stuff just worked right in this case.

Now, given this, shouldn't the game designed to avoid that Drift?

If you really want to allow players to Drift the game, then you can include things, theoretically, that will facilitate this. This is what Fang calls Transition. That is game enabled Drift from one functional form to another. Actually, the term refers specifically to GNS mode change, but I could see it in a larger context as refering to other parts of design.

In any case the point is that it seems to me that if you are aware that a game needs drifting that you ought to "fix" it. Or, if you really want drift, then you should enable it well as a conscious part of design. Make it, as you described the one game, at the very least "highly resilient".

But I have to agree that it's cool with me that not all designers have the message. :-)

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

H'lo,

Here are a couple of threads that have touched on this issue:

Incoherence is fun!, including the four links that Mike Holmes provides in one of his posts
Incoherency and sales, especially Christopher Kubasik's post toward the end

Best,
Ron

[Harlequin]

Thanks, Ron.  Very interesting; the issue of hybrid viability was one which was kind of hiding behind this very tongue-in-cheek post, and although I thought I hadn't let it out, the first threadset was nonetheless enlightening on that regard.  You psychic? :)

The second one is closer to what I was envisioning, and - Mike - by no means was I recommending designing a game which needed to be Drifted from dysfunctional to functional (as distinct from Transition, drifting from one functional playstate to another).  Except possibly as a design experiment, designed to please tinkerers, in which case including resiliency elements like Rocket Flight did would be an excellent choice.  (Not sure how best to do so in an RPG, honestly.  Which might make it a really interesting design experiment... .)  Chris' post near the end is indeed lovely in concept, and really makes one wonder what will achieve 'legs' of that level in one's own work, and whether it can be enhanced at all.

To which I think the answer is, stop posting silly conceits about theory and Drift and go write your game, Eric.

- Eric

[Jason Lee]

This is a design approach specifically geared towards tinker-er empowerment:  modular design.

I can't think of a fully realized example (maybe I'll fix that if I ever finish my game), but Fuzion is the closest I can think of off the top of my head.

[Walt Freitag]

I have to ask, are we really talking about Drift here?

It's impossible to tell for certain from Eric's account, but it sounds like he's talking about changes and additions to a system that are not necessarily motivated by, and do not necessarily result in, changes in the game's relative support for different GNS priorities.

Tinkering with rules to correct specific perceived imbalances or currency flaws, add new areas of exploration, or handle metagame circumstances not anticipated by the system (such as the addition of a new player in mid-game) does not, I believe, necessarily cause or indicate drift. Though I agree that it can be a lot of fun to do.

But perhaps I'm wrong on the terminology. Is it still Drift if only the relative emphasis on different Elements of Exploration are changed (such as, shifting from exploring Situation to exploring Character as the main explorative agenda) within, say, an overall consistent Simulationist priority? How about if only the specific objects of Exploration are changed (such as, shifting an emphasis from one type of Situation to another)? Or are all system changes considered Drift, and some Drift alters the GNS priorities of play and some doesn't?

- Walt

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Drift is usually reserved for changing among GNS modes of play. It's tricky to specify either to play or design, because it deals with both. Technically, a group might never play Sim with (say) Call of Cthulhu, approaching it from a hard-core N perspective from the git-go with rules-tweaks and rules-throw-outs, and I'd still call that Drift.

Best,
Ron