Something by way of a counterpoint.

[Cadriel]

I'm going to hop right back up to the beginning since I'm first arriving here, and offer my take.  Iappears to me that many of the people attacking the Manifesto are reading in social contract things that aren't necessarily there.  Here's my take on it, section by section:

Role-Playing Game Manifesto
These rules are written in paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.

Sounds to me like a boiler-plate indictment against rules lawyers, as well as an affirmation of the group's power over their own game.  No problems here, though I'd state some of these a little differently, since the seemed aimed a rules lawyers to begin with.

I have a lot of problems here; my counterpoint was actually in large part because of some of these very "standard" assumptions.  I see "System Doesn't Matter" implicit in these points.  Many people don't, but I find that when you start saying "Rules are suggested guidelines" you're justifying a trivialization of the rules that is very "System Doesn't Matter."  And frankly, my reading of Big Eyes, Small Mouth suggests to me that GoO feels this very strongly; the system is "rules light," implying that intervening in most areas will upset the flow of the game.

I remember a deconstruction of Storyteller (I forget who wrote it off the top of my head) that basically pegged it as - the authors don't really trust the players to get everything right; they're rather expecting the players to screw it up royally.  I see a lot of echoes of this when you start your book off with a flashy-looking manifesto that contains anti-rules lawyer ammunition.

When dice conflict with the story, the story always wins.

This one I do disagree with.  If I were going to rephrase it, I'd say "When dice conflict with the story, you're too committed to a story."

I'd also add "Dice are unpredictable, but not random.  Trust them."

I would certainly not jump to Cadriel's conclusion that there must be a system problem when story and dice have conflicts.

Of course, I recognize my own Sim and Fortune preferences in my two statements, so I'd leave all versions out of the Manifesto.  What a GM does with dice/story conflicts is his own business (with the group's input), but this affirmation of GM power is already in the Manifesto.

I was perhaps being a little over the top, but then I was writing this the same day I figured out that what I enjoyed in ostensibly Simulationist games were actually Narrativist elements.  (Go fig.)  I do believe what I said; if you're really concerned with story, and the dice are getting in the way, you probably need a new system.

I was thinking of an alternative version, something along the lines of:  For crying out loud - you're creative.  If the dice 'mess up' your story, make something with it."  Which is also pretty much true to what I believe.

Min/maxing and munchkinism aren't problems with the game; they're problems with the player.

Not so sure I agree with this one either.  It's like saying alcohol isn't responsible for alcoholism because some people are genetically predisposed to addiction.  Yes, there's a problem with the player; but many systems encourage the problem.

However, despite my disagreement, I think newbie role-players will benefit from this statement and so I'd leave it in.  It takes many players a long time to recognize that munchkins are a problem in and of themselves, not just symptoms of a flawed system.

Ah, but I think my counterpoint put it better.  Sometimes, a problem player is simply in the wrong group; in a Simulationist or Narrativist situation, a Gamist who is not identified as such will look like a power-gamer or a munchkin because, quite frankly, he or she is enjoying different aspects of the game, and doesn't coexist nicely with everybody else.  Likewise with a Narrativist in a Gamist or Simulationist game, or the third such situation.  These are people who could benefit from a shift of group to one where their needs are met.

Then there are genuine problem players, ones who are in it for the entirely wrong reasons and cause trouble even in their stated mode of play.  These are the ones who don't belong in any groups.

The Game Master has full discretionary power over the game.
The Game Master always works with, not against, the players.

Where does everyone get Illusionism and the Impossible Thing here?

What I'm reading is a statement that says the buck stops with the GM, but he works on behalf of the players' interests.  Thus, it's only encouraging Illusionism if that's what the players want.  There's nothing here that limits player input or control anywhere short of saying they can't overrule the GM.  And (in any game that has a GM), it's important that players accept his authority without constant conflict.

The former line encapsulates assumption that the game belongs to the GM; thence Illusionism and the Impossible Thing.  If the game is the turf of the GM, then anything the players do is essentially at his indulgence.  For a lot of people, I don't think this is the way to go.

And to be blunt:  this doesn't really do much for a much more real problem in "traditional" roleplaying:  the nature of the GM.  Many of the times, GMs set themselves up as auteurs of a story, or as tin gods; a line like "full discretionary power" is only encouraging this style of running games, saying it's okay.  That it's contradicted in the second statement is just a weak attempt to refute some fairly sensible Gamist assumptions.

A game that is no longer fun - it's a chore.
This book contains the answer to all things.
When the above does not apply, make it up.

All of this section sounds good to me, though it appears to have a little contradiction for the sake of humor more than anything else.

Cadriel, you wanted to dicker over the game/chore distinction.  I think they're perhaps over stating their point, but is it really different from your own admonishment?  The point is to do something different if you're not having fun and we can all agree on that.

I want to talk about the game/chore distinction because I think it matters.  I think that when you say "it's no longer a game," you get out of analyzing why the game's not fun any more.  I'm talking about implications here, and this implication is to simply dump the bad game without a second thought, not looking back at what went wrong with it.  This is the same reason that I call bull on their "Rules are suggested guidelines."  A lot of this stuff is waffle that tries to excuse itself from any examination of why games break down, what goes wrong with games, or how to really improve them.

So I think that the core philosophies the statements reflect are in opposition, and that the GoO philosophy is wrong.

I can understand how a Manifesto like that might bring back bad memories.  Dysfunctional GMs often say things like "I'm the GM so my word goes."  But functional GMs should say the same thing - the difference between them is when they say and what has lead to them saying it.  Likewise with many of the other statements.  However, taken as a whole, I believe it discourages dysfuntional play (even if it fails to necessarily encourage functional play).  

I firmly believe that this is good advice for an amateur player or GM picking up their first game book.  Perhaps they'd want a different manifesto after a decade of play - but you can bet that your first grade English teacher gave you different advice than your Lit 101 professor.  It would be absolutely innappropriate to haul GNS out in front of a brand new player or expect them to understand the finer points.

I think it does encourage dysfunctional play (System Doesn't Matter and GM superiority are implied).  I have no idea why the assumption exists in roleplaying that newcomers to roleplaying are going to be better suited to dysfunctional play than functional.  A new roleplayer is generally a reasonably intelligent, educated human being.  No, it wouldn't do to sit him or her down with System Does Matter, or to be conversant with the ins and outs of the Forge.  But what to do?  This is interesting, and rather than continue it here I'm going to split the thread and ask this very question in its own thread.  So don't answer anything beyond the first sentence of this paragraph in this thread, if you don't mind...

-Wayne

[Marco]

Cruciel,

Great post. And very clearly and well said on a number of points. I agree with your extension of the "GM has all the power" line. Yes, it would be good to say that. There are probably very definite reasons why they don't write all their text that way--but I like your version *much* better.

I also agree that the behavior you cite is real.  Absolutely.

I don't think it comes from misunderstandings and I don't think it comes from game books. I've seen (and everyone else has seen too, if they think about it) that behavior across a wide spectrum of situations that have no instructions nor anything to do with gaming.

Since I don't believe any single person actually *does* believe the impossible thing, it comes down to a GM running the game in a naive or overbearing manner ... and players deciding that's a perfect place to scratch their power-struggle itch (IMO).

I agree that people can and will read into things what they want to. They'll ignore what they don't want to hear. Yes. At that point though, you have people doing what they want to regardless of instructions. Therefore, the instructions are not the cause. An excuse, perhaps. But not the cause.

An attempt to make the rules a less vaild excuse is fine--but here, in doing so, I think people blame the rules themselves, that loses sight of real cause of the behavior (or, at least, what I precieve it to be): the need to power-struggle.

-Marco

[efindel]

Role-Playing Game Manifesto
These rules are written in paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.

Cadriel takes these as implying "System Doesn't Matter" -- and taking them that way, I can definitely see the objection.  However, to me, these seem more to be saying "System Does Matter -- so if part of our system doesn't work for you, you can change it".

IMHO, "System Does Matter" does not imply "you're not allowed to change the system".  What it does imply to me is that "before you change a system, you should ask yourself why you're changing it -- and whether or not you might be better off just starting with a different system".

And some reactions from me to Cadriel's manifesto (leaving out some bits I have no comment on):

-Don't say you're using a set of rules if you're not going to use them.

- But you can take part of a set of rules without taking the whole thing, as long as it's clear to everyone involved.

-Find rules that suit the game you want to play.  Never settle for less.

- Or make them yourself.

-If the group agrees on the set of rules, then they are rules and not guidelines.

- But only insofar as the group agrees that they are rules instead of guidelines.

-The Game Master does not have full discretionary power over the game.  It belongs to the players as much as to the GM.

- Power over the game belongs to whoever the group assigns it to.  If a group is happy with a "GM" having full power over the game, then that's fine.  Just remember that that's not the only way to do things.

-Know what you want from a roleplaying game.  And don't be afraid to demand it.

- Or to make it yourself.

--Travis

[Marco]

I'm going to hop right back up to the beginning since I'm first arriving here, and offer my take.  Iappears to me that many of the people attacking the Manifesto are reading in social contract things that aren't necessarily there.  Here's my take on it, section by section:

Role-Playing Game Manifesto
These rules are written in paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.

Sounds to me like a boiler-plate indictment against rules lawyers, as well as an affirmation of the group's power over their own game.  No problems here, though I'd state some of these a little differently, since the seemed aimed a rules lawyers to begin with.

I have a lot of problems here; my counterpoint was actually in large part because of some of these very "standard" assumptions.  I see "System Doesn't Matter" implicit in these points.  Many people don't, but I find that when you start saying "Rules are suggested guidelines" you're justifying a trivialization of the rules that is very "System Doesn't Matter."  And frankly, my reading of Big Eyes, Small Mouth suggests to me that GoO feels this very strongly; the system is "rules light," implying that intervening in most areas will upset the flow of the game.

-Wayne

Hi Wayne (and Greyorm ... or anybody else really),

I'm curious: what exactly do you think System Doesn't Matter means when someone says it? I can tell you what I think it means (every time I've heard it): "I can have fun playing any system." (I'm gonna assume the speaker is usually talking about traditional games as a pretty safe given).

Can you give me a for-instance where that *isn't* what they're saying? Back when (I'm guessing here) you thought 'system doesn't matter' what did that mean to you (that none of them were any good?).

-Marco

[Cadriel]

Role-Playing Game Manifesto
These rules are written in paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.

Cadriel takes these as implying "System Doesn't Matter" -- and taking them that way, I can definitely see the objection.  However, to me, these seem more to be saying "System Does Matter -- so if part of our system doesn't work for you, you can change it".

That's exactly the opposite of what the essay "System Does Matter" was saying.  I see "so if part of our system doesn't work for you, you can change it" as being basically part of an apology for designing a bad system.  It's not about changing it if it's not good enough for you.  It's about published systems being good enough to work on their own, about games that are designed well enough that they don't have to be changed to suit a group.

IMHO, "System Does Matter" does not imply "you're not allowed to change the system".  What it does imply to me is that "before you change a system, you should ask yourself why you're changing it -- and whether or not you might be better off just starting with a different system".

I already clarified this:  it's in many ways saying that commercial systems leaving it open to "if you don't like it, fix it" is irresponsible.  It doesn't imply "you're not allowed to change the system."  It means you shouldn't have to change the system for satisfactory play, and I think that a manifesto like the GoO one is saying that it's okay to design such a system.

And some reactions from me to Cadriel's manifesto (leaving out some bits I have no comment on):

-Don't say you're using a set of rules if you're not going to use them.

- But you can take part of a set of rules without taking the whole thing, as long as it's clear to everyone involved.

If it's what works.  I was trying to articulate a position that actually admits that rules are rules, not the namby-pamby crap that is peddled in the industry.

-Find rules that suit the game you want to play.  Never settle for less.

- Or make them yourself.

I have to call you on that one.  Not everybody has the time, inclination, and skill to be a game designer, and saying that they should is bull.  I hate this about the roleplaying industry - the people who are supposed to be designing the rules say that the players should be able to switch them about.  Which is nonsense.  It's my manifesto, and I say that roleplayers should stick up against lazy game authors.

-If the group agrees on the set of rules, then they are rules and not guidelines.

- But only insofar as the group agrees that they are rules instead of guidelines.

Actually, I'm sticking with my wording.  I have this funny thing in my thinking, where rules are rules and shouldn't be just guidelines.  I think that "just guidelines" creates too many problems, and basically I don't see why RPGs need to be all defensive about the fact that they have rules.  If this needs a caveat, it's a different one:  know thy system.

A lot of my wording comes from my thoughts on rules, which is that they shouldn't be changed except in extreme circumstances, as opposed to the rather loose philosophy espoused by GoO.

-The Game Master does not have full discretionary power over the game.  It belongs to the players as much as to the GM.

- Power over the game belongs to whoever the group assigns it to.  If a group is happy with a "GM" having full power over the game, then that's fine.  Just remember that that's not the only way to do things.

No.  I'm actually sick of games that belong to the GM.  I want it to go both ways:  RPGs should acknowledge that the game belongs to everybody in terms of who has power and who has responsibility.  Everybody is a part of the game, it's up to the group what goes on, and it's up to all the players as well as the GM to make the game fun and interesting for everybody.

-Know what you want from a roleplaying game.  And don't be afraid to demand it.

- Or to make it yourself.

Again, I'm calling bull on this.  I don't think "Or make it yourself" is a valid option for a manifesto like this one.  I think designers should be held accountable for their games being good, and I think that the current situation is unacceptable.  So I'm just not buying anything related to games that I don't feel are top-notch any more.  I'm disgusted by the attitude that leads to "if you don't find something you like, either settle or design it yourself."  Roleplaying accepts mediocrity by the bucketload, and we don't acknowledge it.  I agree with people who say the industry's time is limited.  My hope is that the hobby outlives it by a long shot.

-Wayne

[Bruce Baugh]

I suspect that there's a clash of assumptions at work on the matter of comprehensiveness. It looks to me like most Forge games are intended to do precisely one kind of thing well and to do it with laser-like intensity. If you like that thing and like the framework of concepts, you can count on liking the game as it; if you try doing anything significantly different with it, you're going to end up re-writing a substantial fraction of it (as in the various Sorcerer mini-games - they're obviously drawing on the same root resources, but changing one piece usually means changing a lot else). Games intended for the general marketplace seldom find that they can make a success at that, and very often the creators just plain don't want to. The systems and settings are set up to do a bunch of things related in varying degrees. This is not a matter of any failure in the system or in the people playing it - it's just a different relationship with the player.

I can buy a prepared baking mix or a paint-by-numbers kit and (assuming the supplier's done their job) count on getting a mighty fine dessert or pretty picture out of it. And that's a good thing. I can also buy a recipe book for people with various allergies and raw ingredients and see about adapting the recipes to my particular allergies and diet issues and get something far more tuned to my particular situation, but requiring a different sort of effort on my part. And that's a good thing, too. Sometimes I compose HTML in a bare-bones text editor, and sometimes I use one that has a lot of support for tag balancing, syntax highlighting, and such. Each of those has their place, too.

(By the way, I realize that these are inexact comparisons. I don't quite have a good word for what it is that Forge games most often seem to specify in rigor and detail. It's not "setting" in the sense of something like the World of Darkness or Glorantha - usually I'd end up building my own world. "Style", perhaps? I don't mean to suggest that either general approach ends up detailing everything equally, in any event, but to contrast different types of preparation.)

[greyorm]

Marco,

1) It's Raven, please.

2) The hijacker example was just that, an example to show that just because a majority believe something doesn't make it true or especially relevant to the actual facts of a situation. You're putting way more context into the example than intended.

I'm also wondering why you refer to it as a "political" example...what the heck is political about it? Not too important, but just mentioning Iraq or 9/11 is not inherently political, so I'm confused as to your denouncement of it as such.

3) Whoa, whoa, WHOA...if the game were as irrevocably broken as I seem to think? Where are you getting this from? I've stated nothing about V:tM or Tri-stat being broken in any fashion. We are talking about a philosophy of play here, right? Not mechanics?

It seems to me the majority of your problems with both SDM and TIT come from context you are adding into both that doesn't exist, just as your problems with my statements are coming from context you have added into my statements that simply do not exist.

4) There's a similar leap of logic on your part I'm not fully following: where you say I imply the amount of work required for functional play is intense.

The problem is that functional play for a specific group (in this case for V:tM) requires Drift -- whether that Drift is conscious or unconcious on their part -- hence the rules do not work "as written" because no one uses the rules "as written," though everyone believes they are doing so.

How can I claim this? By having seen it and heard about it repeatedly. The typical story is as such: when these same folk join other groups playing the same game, however, suddenly the rules they're used to become treated as alien things that are not the rules "as written." If you've never ecnountered this personally, or heard other gamers describing the situation, you're either sheltered or lucky.

Thus, I'm not saying there is this intense amount of Drift required for functional play -- rather, the Drift required happens almost subconsciously in each group, and is only highlighted and brought to the fore when members of these groups break off and play in other (unrelated) groups.

5) This is a sub-point of 3 & 4: simply, I can't engage in discourse with you if you're going to be putting assumptions into my mouth and responding to such as though I'm arguing what you've said. Knock it off, ok?

Secondly: the belief that RPGing is characterized by GNS dysfunction to any special degree and that game-text/systems play a part in that has to overcome two major obstacles:

This is another insertion of context on your part: the GNS essay states nothing about RPGing being characterized by GNS dysfunction! Dysfunction is brought up as the cause of people's use for the essay, and those who do not have such dysfunction can freely ignore it if they so choose.

The fact that there seem to be many persistent "traditional" role-players who choose it as a leasure-time-activity. Yes, most people have a horror story.

We're talking about people with more than just a horror-story...we're talking about people who enjoyed the activity at one point, or saw something cool in it at one point, and keep playing, trying to get that cool thing back, not having as good a time as they might choose to.

My own gaming habits are a case in point; and I personally know and have been involved in (long term) two groups whose members are precisely similar -- the most fun during the evening is socializing, but the RPGing is lacking something, which can usually be solved by application of GNS-related theory to the situation. Again, if you've never seen this or experienced it yourself, you're either sheltered or lucky.

People who have a bad experience and continue to do it may be getting something out of it, or they may be hoping to get something out of it. I can't count the number of games I played in that sucked -- I had fun (I thought), but the games utterly sucked, and in hindsight, I wouldn't and shouldn't have kept playing in them because I was frustrated by the games more often than not.

The fact that the field is expanding with completely traditional games is an Occam-Razor indication that the games (yes, with text like the above) work.

I disagree, Marco. This is another example of "people buy crap." Microsoft's product base keeps expanding, but MS does not produce quality product -- market saturation, expectation, and general ignorance of alternatives are what keep them afloat. I believe strongly a similar situation is occuring here: people either don't know any better or keep accepting the philosophy of play because that's the philosophy one is indoctrinated into by nearly every major product.

Simple psychology: people will believe what they're told first, given no other options. People given secondary options at a later time will be more critical of those options than of the first option they were given. "It works well because I believe it has worked."

Presented with secondary options, many people are fully capable of re-evaluating the actual utility of their previous option. As many are not capable of such, and would prefer to stick with what they know while deriding the secondary option (even if one of the secondary options is provably more functional).

Show me a gamer who belives, really and clearly, in TIT as interperted (as stated it's clearly possible, right?). Have them explain to me how that's supposed to work. I don't believe in them. I don't believe people actually believe in the interpertation you describe. Despite what you say, I don't think the offending passage in many RPGs has to be read that way. And I don't think people do.

This has been gone over and over with you, Marco, and it seems you just don't get it. Nobody reads it that way...nobody. No one (as I recall) has ever argued that point with you. The problem arises from what gets parsed by the individual reading it -- instead of being presented a clear format for play, the individual's own assumptions about what the format of play must be like are injected instead. That is the problem with the Impossible Thing.

The rest of what you say goes a long way towards understanding TIT, but the above is really a huge sticking point in your understanding of it, and why I find your criticisms of it severely lacking -- you're criticizing TIT based on false assumptions about what TIT says is occuring with people.

Game rules and manifestos don't cause that. I see no evidence they can cure it either.

When a game presents a play situation and says, "This is how you play" and the play is dysfunctional or supports dysfunctional habits, then the manifesto does, indeed, cause that, and can, indeed, cure it.

[greyorm]

I'm a Thomas, not a Tom by the way.

Noted for future reference. My apologies.

Yes, its a philosophy of play rather than a method to play, but its a philosophy of play that combines with a conventional system to create the tried and true play.

I get what you're saying, and I agree. Where we diverge in this instance is in our interpretation of what results from the combination of the above with any given system.

My main problem is that in combining the philosophy with a system ("conventional" or not) you cannot create a standard method of tried and true play. The philosophy itself causes the problem in that the philosophy says to ignore any standards or rules if you do not like them.

That is: there are no controlled variables, anything goes; so you can't say that the philosophy contributed to or even furthered functional play when such occurs, because the play that is occuring is occuring under its own set of assumptions for a specific group.

Another group laboring under the same philosophy may instead produce consistently dysfunctional play because of their interpretation(s) of the philosophy and their attendant alterations to the rules (which in some cases will not even be seen as "alterations" but as "the rules").

When you change the rules, you change the game -- the name doesn't change, true, but the game itself is altered and for purposes of classification should be named something new because of the changes to the original system.

Frex, playing D&D without the alignments is not D&D to some groups.

Thus, when you state the combination creates "tried and true" play, you end up talking about only particular combinations of rules with the philosophy, many of which diverge radically from one another and cannot thus be said to be play of the same type -- and the remainder which produce dysfunctional play are also divergent from one another.

So, as I said in my previous response:
When we're talking about groups that have large differences in play style because of the rules contracts change between them based on the philosophy, we aren't talking about tried-and-true methods of play.

(I should amend that to read, "under a single system-plus-philosophy.")

[greyorm]

Games intended for the general marketplace seldom find that they can make a success at that, and very often the creators just plain don't want to.

I've heard this a number of times over the past few months...and I just don't agree. How do you know they find they cannot make a success at that (given that I'm sure the majority have never thought about it)?

I can buy a prepared baking mix or a paint-by-numbers kit and (assuming the supplier's done their job) count on getting a mighty fine dessert or pretty picture out of it...

Unsurprisingly, I disagree here. I hate using analogies because they can be twisted any which the author likes in order to make a point...but keeping that in mind, I'll use one to hopefully clarify my position without making a mess of the issue. Here's where I'm coming from:

What you refer to as General Marketplace Games I would say are interpreted not so much sets of brushes, paints, and a blank canvas, as much as they are a hodge-podge of art supplies: a little india ink, some acrylic paint, a few oils, a watercolor, and a sheet of paper.

Point being, if the design intent is to help someone create a painting, providing them with all these extraneous supplies and expecting them to use what they need and chuck the rest is not the best way to go about it.

If I buy an "oil painting art set" I would expect it to contain precisely the materials I need to create an oil painting, rather than a bunch of extraneous materials I don't want or desire to use -- and if don't have an art background, I may not realize that some of the stuff in the set is not meant to be used for oil painting, or not the best materials to use to achieve what I'm looking for.

Most gamers are unaware that you can't or don't mix certain items to achieve a specific result being looked for -- that the result they desire is actually achieved by (or achieved better by) some other material entirely.

Now hold on, I'll go into that more further on down, but first:

What you refer to as Forge Designed Games aren't so much like paint-by-numbers as they are focused art sets ("You want to create an oil painting? Here you go!") opposed to someone who wants to create an oil painting purchasing a whole art set ("Sure, it has watercolors in it!").

Ok, now given that people will buy big art sets with all sorts of stuff in them because they can use it all at some later time, why do I think creating and marketing the gaming equivalent is a problem?

First, most of the individuals who buy such all-inclusive art sets know what portions to use for the result they want: they don't need to experiment to figure out what gets used with what, or what produces what...or they can ask someone else and find this information out.

Very few people in gaming want to experiment with a little of this and a little of that, at least not in the same game set, often because rewriting the game to self-fit is time-consuming and annoying; as well, very few games are created specifically as a complete series of optional rules from which to create a cohesive, stylistic whole -- the rules are not labeled in regards to what they produce (unlike an art set).

Further, games aren't generally designed to be muddled with on such a high level (ie: "I don't like gamism, so let's take out all the gamism-promoting items in D&D."), since rules systems are intertwined and internally balanced (or such is generally said to be desirable by the gaming public), and often lacking vital components by which to create a complete style.

To return to the art example, it's hard to paint black in oils when what you're given for black is india ink -- but this is the way many of the games you're referring to are developed, "a little of this, a little of that" -- to get the desired effect, you have to throw out the india ink and buy black (that is, create a replacement rule whole cloth (or borrow from another system)), and (more importantly) you have to know to throw it out.

Now, given that the majority of gamers find a specific style they like and get into that groove, producing (in)complete art sets is not cost effective for that gamer -- it isn't targeting that gamer, and it isn't helping him do precisely what he desires.

For example, if the person just wants to create water color paintings, then buying an art set that includes oils is not cost-effective; even when they discover after the purchase that painting watercolor is what they like best.

Now, if you can sort out my mixed metaphors, I hope you see where I'm coming from with all this, because I really do understand precisely what you're saying. I just don't agree it actually is cost-effective for the consumer, and is actually harming the main market.

That is, if more gamers understood how the "art sets" they were buying were incomplete grab bags, they would be turned off to the idea as a whole. Providing focused art sets helps solidify the foundation of the market by providing something at cost the consumer can enjoy without scaring the less intensive off with necessary modification (a high learning curve).

That is, most people would prefer to be able to say "I like this. I don't like that." than to have to figure out what they do and don't like and seperate it out from the whole.

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

I think a key point that's always overlooked when we're talking fuzzy stuff like style, philosophy, etc, is that the reason why ideals like this, that push this sort of play as functional, fail to provide guidelines to make it happen.  

That is to say, the reason that games like Donjon, or Inspectres can be successful in terms of their philosophy to actual play, is that their intended goal is written right into the rules.  Games that typically promote the TIT do not have guidelines, or examples of functional play.

The key reason that TIT stays impossible, or many of the ideals that are pushed in this sort of philosophy are rarely functional, is that we're talking about a communication impasse.  

Consider these implicit assumptions-
-"The players have full control of their characters"
-"The GM controls the world & story."
-"The players are supposed to do what the GM wants(whether a prescripted plot, module adventure, or 'freeform' story created by GM), without the GM communicating what are the 'correct' choices"

You can see that the first and the last statements are contradictory, and that the last statement by itself is tantamount to "Read my mind!".

The sort of play you can make with these games can either be protagonistic or participationist, but only if you choose to either drop the player control and "read my mind" factor, or else if you drop the GM controls story aspect.

In other words, the ideals promoted by such advice cannot be acheived without making a commited choice one way or another, and this advice gives you no sort of help in determining this vital, vital aspect of play.  TIT wants its cake and to eat it too, but you just can't.  You have to make a choice, and drop one or the other for functional play.  

This is probably the reason these games come up as incoherent so often, because coherent play can't happen without a clear decision.  And TIT dodges the responsibility of making that decision, or of even giving folks the tools necessary to resolve that decision.

Chris

[Marco]

Okay Raven, let me see if I've got it.

People believe a lot of things that aren't so (I agree)

The fact that something sells well doesn't mean it's good. (This smacks of "You think you're having fun but I know you aren't" to me--in this context--but it's arguably true for other contexts so I guess it's a toss up).

It's your experience that VtM is drifted. (It certainly is your experience. I'd need to see more to know what you think the implications of this are).

I don't understand The Impossible Thing. (okay)

Good rules will prevent dysfunction that's caused by bad rules (how much of that there is, you don't say. I think any kind of persistent dysfunction is something people actively seek and rules won't stop it or cause it. I don't think *misunderstandings* lead to persistent dysfunctional play).

From the above you conclude:

That the existence of the boilerplate doesn't say anything about System Does/Doesn't Matter (because an inferior game can still sell well and continue to sell despite better alternatives being offered).

Do I get it?

From the above I'd say: I think people can tell when they're having fun. I think the rule-sets in question enable people to have fun as written (note, I mean as the book is printed--I don't purport to know if they play with all the rules as I'd interpert them).

Unlike software--or really almost any other analogy you might choose--RPGs are a medium for creative expression, not the end-result of an act of creation (I mean, the physical RPG is--but once created it's a medium for someone else's creative expression). As such Drift is pretty much a non-issue and manifestos are pretty much a non-issue save to say where the authors stood on their work.

Something like GoO's manifesto might make some more people feel at home engaging in their creative expression with it.

-Marco

[ross_winn]

Fair enough, Blake, I can see that. But why cater to this crowd? Is there really any pleasing such dysfunctional approaches? Why in the world waste space on these people. Devote that space and instruction to people who WILL play the game in a more functional manner. And, hopefully, they'll be more apt to become viral marketers and repeat buyers for you.

I think it is part and parcel of good design to state goals that you have as a designer in the text of your game, and I no more judge GoO that I would judge you. I understand that these are not your goals, but they are goals that I can, generally, support.

Boilerplate is for insurance forms. The very idea of such instruciton as boiler plate flies in the face of System Does Matter.

Actually I would argue, and have gathered considerable data to support that NONE of the RPGs published to date give sufficient instruction or direction. This is from the perpective of technical writing and document construction. I think that 'boilerplate'' has a place in anything that endeavors to instruct new, or to change previous, behaviors. Just because something is not artistiic or 'inspired' does not make it inherently bad.

The reason that it's so irritating to me is that this becomes part of the tradition. That gamers assume this is the way gaming Is Done. And the next ambitious soul who hits a home run with a game like BESM keeps this kind of boilerplate stuff in his game to cater to the fundamentalist majority. I view this as profoundly unhelpful to the hobby of RPGs, an I don't really care too damn much what it might mean to GoO's business model.

I think it is very important to note that what is done here at the Forge is a part of what is done in the hobby. It is not inherently better or worse than anything else put forth by any company, group, or designer simply because it is 'independant'. Closing yourself to the possibility that any of these ideas have merit is coming dangerously close to the same kind of intolerance I have fought all my life.

[ross_winn]

I have a lot of problems here; my counterpoint was actually in large part because of some of these very "standard" assumptions.  I see "System Doesn't Matter" implicit in these points.  Many people don't, but I find that when you start saying "Rules are suggested guidelines" you're justifying a trivialization of the rules that is very "System Doesn't Matter."  And frankly, my reading of Big Eyes, Small Mouth suggests to me that GoO feels this very strongly; the system is "rules light," implying that intervening in most areas will upset the flow of the game.

Have you read all of the Tri-Stat system? The dX version is over 100 pages and GoO has published something on the order of 300 pages of rules in total. Tri Stat is marketed as a simple system,  but that hasn't been true in fact or execution for five or six years.

As far as suggesting that rules are 'carved in stone' and have to be interpreted a certain way flies in the face of the very idea of a simple mechanic. Being a referee or a player in any RPG requires thousands of judgement calls, many of them below the conscious level. I do believe that rules matter, but I also believe that no system can accurately map more than a few percent of the human experience; and to think anything different is, in my view, crazy. We have to understand that no system will ever be able to do everything, and we have to acknowledge that judgements will have to be made.

[Bruce Baugh]

Games intended for the general marketplace seldom find that they can make a success at that, and very often the creators just plain don't want to.

I've heard this a number of times over the past few months...and I just don't agree. How do you know they find they cannot make a success at that (given that I'm sure the majority have never thought about it)?

I'm about to go lock myself in the closet for a few weeks of finishing late projects, but this is an important question that deserves a good answer.

The simple answer is: the history of the field cumulatively illustrates the point.

Unquestionably, the most successful narrow-focus game is Call of Cthulhu, and at that, Chaosium's been in and out of bankruptcy multiple times and the subject of repeated grievances from professional writers' associations for stiffed payments and such. It has more good rep than good sales.

Ars Magica is one of the higher-profile games to take on a lot of the conventional wisdom about player organization and focus of play, and, well, it did okay for a while, but these days it's barely hanging on. In the hands of a publisher who was less intensely successful at managing a company on razor-thin margins than John Nephew, it would have gone away by now.

Feng Shui's meta-genre focus met with a more complex fate, in that it's hard to separate out the problems caused by Jose Garcia's astounding incompetence from other matters, but again, the thing hasn't been a lasting success, even with a good fair second chance in the market thanks to Atlas.

Over The Edge, to my taste a brilliant rethinking of character definition and a fascinating approach to playing the weird, is not a success. At this point it sells a few hundred copies, which is not enough to pay anyone involved anything like a professional rate even by the highly pathetic professional standards of this industry.

Everway got killed as much by WotC's brutally ham-handed handling as anything else, so I won't count that one.

Adventure was a one-time success, but wouldn't support profitable follow-up. It will presumably go out of print this year or next.

The Ghost Dog RPG has a gorgeous treatment of modern organized crime - really modern, that is - and some outstanding advice on single-player campaigns in practical terms, and it sank like a stone.

For that matter, Unknown Armies suffers from a perception of being narrowly focused, and it's not a big cash cow. Greg Stolze isn't kidding when he says that more people bought his work in Adventure or Hunter than all the UA books combined. Likewise, while Delta Green has a glorious reputation, Pagan is perpetually cash-strapped. (I think they're missing a bet by not putting out PDFs of back stock, but there's a separate debate about that.)

It goes like that. Spread spectrum seems necessary, at least at this point, for reliable success in the gaming marketplace. That will remain the case until we see laser-focused games attracting competitive attention. And that's not "never never land" - BESM came out of nowhere that way a few years ago, and anyone else can at any time. When it happens, the mainstream players will adjust accordingly. In the meantime, it seems that when folks are offered games with tighter focus,t hey generally chosoe not to buy, at least in numbers enough to make it a venture worth pursuing. The games that do well are the ones that feel expansive and heterogeneous to enough customers. This is as true of what I think are mostly world-focused games like Vampire and Shadowrun as of, say, D&D or GURPS, because the worlds of the former are themselves diversified enough to encompass a bunch of styles of play.

BESM goes further than most in reifying genre at the level of skill costs, but the principle at work is the same - a lot of people prefer to buy one or a very few games to serve many purposes, for a variety of reasons.

Response will be patchy from here on out, but my mailbox at bbaugh@mac.com remains open.

Edit: One more datum - Nobilis 2nd edition has been very successful so far, easily outselling all but the best-selling GURPS books and nearly everything from Atlas, among others...but who knows how supplements will fare? Another test of concept coming up, once we have time for it.

[efindel]

Role-Playing Game Manifesto
These rules are written in paper, not etched in stone tablets.
Rules are suggested guidelines, not required edicts.
If the rules don't say you can't do something, you can.
There are no official answers, only official opinions.

Cadriel takes these as implying "System Doesn't Matter" -- and taking them that way, I can definitely see the objection.  However, to me, these seem more to be saying "System Does Matter -- so if part of our system doesn't work for you, you can change it".

That's exactly the opposite of what the essay "System Does Matter" was saying.  I see "so if part of our system doesn't work for you, you can change it" as being basically part of an apology for designing a bad system.  It's not about changing it if it's not good enough for you.  It's about published systems being good enough to work on their own, about games that are designed well enough that they don't have to be changed to suit a group.

I think we've got a fundamental disconnect here.  Apologies in advance if I seem to be putting words in your mouth, but to me, you seem to be saying that "if something has to be changed, it must not have been done right in the first place".  I don't agree with that -- something can not be to my taste, but still not be broken.  That is, it may work for other people, but not for me.

Having a system that just doesn't work is lazy and bad -- I agree with you on that.  But I can want to change part of a system even though it does work -- because I want it to do something else.  It's not "broken", because it works for what it was intended to do.  It's just not what I want.

I already clarified this:  it's in many ways saying that commercial systems leaving it open to "if you don't like it, fix it" is irresponsible.  It doesn't imply "you're not allowed to change the system."  It means you shouldn't have to change the system for satisfactory play, and I think that a manifesto like the GoO one is saying that it's okay to design such a system.

There's never going to be a system that everyone can agree on, because people have different things that they want out of games.  For any given system, there's always going to be someone who won't be happy with everything in it.  To put it another way, if everyone who plays a system winds up having to change things in it, then it wasn't well designed.  But if only some people who play it have to change things to have a satisfactory experience, then it was well-designed for those who don't have to change it.

As far as your reactions to my reactions to your manifesto go -- I'm not trying to tell you what to do with your manifesto.  I'm just giving my reactions to it.  To me, it seems that GOO's manifesto goes in one direction, and yours goes in another.  The main thing that I'd like to get across is that there is a middle ground which recognizes both manifestos as talking about styles of play that work.

--Travis