Monopoly vs. RPGs, rule evolution, and the social contract

[rafial]

I was inspired with the following thought based on Christopher Kubasik's thread on clarity in rule writing, and his choice of Monopoly as an iconic game to represent the world of "traditional" games:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=95289

My observation is this:  There are interesting parallels between the history of Monopoly, and the history of that thing we call Dungeons & Dragons.

Monopoly originated as a folk game, the rules and play of which were transmitted primarily orally among a community (quakers and communists of the early 20th century).  At a certain point, somebody formalized those rules and published them commercially (and claimed sole invention of them), creating an "official way" to the play the game.  And yet, if you go play Monopoly with most people today, you'll find that the game they actually play is not precisely the game printed on the inside of the box lid, rather each community adds embellishments and house rules to taste (the money under Free Parking is a widely cited example).

Dungeons and Dragons also evolved within a community (tactical wargamers of the 70's) through transmission of ideas in the culture, and it was also eventually commercialized (and sole invention claimed for it), but as Ron has pointed out in his essay on the subject, the games that get played and called D&D are all typically melanges of "official" and local variations.

This accords with David Parlett's view that games are naturally a cultural construct, which are typically transmitted though unofficial social mechanisms, and in fact they resist standarization with only small exceptions likes chess or bridge.

Is it in fact tackling the wrong end of the tangle to say that "less confusing" rules are what is needed to bring RPG style games to the masses?  Could it be that what needs to be transmitted are not rule mechanics, but the social conventions in which they are embedded (social contract?)

[Callan S.]

Err, I'm not sure what you mean? So this is a question post:
Do you mean like the conventions that RPG's don't use any particular board? (perhaps a bad example, ignore if so)

Or do you mean something which will give the reader the right 'mind set' to absorb the rules "Oh, its a game about ninja warriors who fly all the time or stunt away from damage, that's why there's no falling damage given"

[jdagna]

rafial, what sort of social conventions do you see needing to be transmitted in the rules?  

I may not be understanding what you mean, but as far as I can tell, Monopoly makes no effort to transmit social contract, while D&D other RPGs have always made extensive attempts to do so.  For example, nowhere in Monopoly do you find a rule saying "ignore these rules if they're less fun" or a section describing how to play (technique-wise, such as RPG instructions on which stances to use) and how to enjoy it.

I also think much of the rule-changing associated with D&D stems from reconciling apparent contradictions within the rules.  For example, you're told that you should role-play the character's personality, but you're only rewarded for killing things.

So... if I'm understanding you correctly, I think the answer to your question is an emphatic NO.  Monopoly's rules produce the desired player behavior all by themselves, while RPGs' rules do not.  RPGs attempt to overcome this by simply telling you how to play with what amounts to social contract advice and thereby creating natural friction between "behaviors encouraged by the text" and "behaviors rewarded by the rules".

[rafial]

Monopoly's rules produce the desired player behavior all by themselves...

Aha!  But do they?!?

I think what I am fumbling toward is this:  A player that comes to Monopoly for the first time is already equipped with alot of cultural knowledge about "how you play board games".  As a cheesy example, a rule that says "roll two dice and move your pawn that many spaces", if you think about it, implies alot of assumed knowledge about how games are played.  If we were able to give a Monopoly set to somebody who'd never experienced a "move around the track and pick stuff up" style of game, would Monopoly's rules be as clear and consise to them as we imagine them to be?  Is Candyland training us to someday play Monopoly?  Does War help us to someday be Bridge players?

In fact, most people don't ever read the rules to Monopoly, unless they are the compulsive rules reading sort like me, they are just taught to play by somebody else.

Because RPG type games are not mainstream, there is not this body of cultural assumption about "how the game is played" to tap into when writing rules.  And like anything cultural, by the time we are inculcated enough to be designing games of our own, the assumptions on which our games are predicated have long since submerged below our concious awareness, and we forget to put them into what we write.

[jdagna]

I think anyone with a firm grasp of English (or whatever language their copy of the rules is in) should be able to play Monopoly without any cultural knowledge whatsoever.

And I know that I learned how to role-play entirely from a book (Warhammer Fantasy Role-play) without external examples or teachers.  

Even if such cultural knowledge were needed, don't you think computer RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Diablo would provide most of the needed components?  Such games can certainly be called mainstream.

Perhaps it would help the discussion if you could identify exactly what cultural knowledge you think is missing from the rules of Monopoly and RPGs and how you think that affects their adoption.

[Callan S.]

And yet, if you go play Monopoly with most people today, you'll find that the game they actually play is not precisely the game printed on the inside of the box lid, rather each community adds embellishments and house rules to taste (the money under Free Parking is a widely cited example).

Dungeons and Dragons also evolved within a community (tactical wargamers of the 70's) through transmission of ideas in the culture, and it was also eventually commercialized (and sole invention claimed for it), but as Ron has pointed out in his essay on the subject, the games that get played and called D&D are all typically melanges of "official" and local variations.

I think one thing has to be clarified when talking about variations.

One type is 'This is fun, but this variation is even more fun'. Ie, they would be happy to play by the rules by tweak X is so much cooler.

The other type is 'This is not fun, I just can't enjoy this game unless some variation is used'.

I think the dynamics behind both are very different, even though they sound the same. One can't really address both at the same time.

[rafial]

Perhaps it would help the discussion if you could identify exactly what cultural knowledge you think is missing from the rules of Monopoly and RPGs and how you think that affects their adoption.

Perhaps I'm chasing a red herring here.  I'm not deeply wedded to my point, but that won't stop me from pursuing it a little further :)

So I hunted up the Monopoly rules online.

http://www.centralconnector.com/GAMES/MONOPOL.html

In perusing them, just as a quick example, I notice it mentions auctioning things over and over again, but nowhere does it teach you how to run an auction.

And I know that I learned how to role-play entirely from a book (Warhammer Fantasy Role-play) without external examples or teachers.

Oh, I know it can be done.  I did it myself (from Basic D&D).  I've been pondering that the last few days, wondering what prior experience helped me grok the game one I came to it.  And I remembered that I was a big fan of "choose your own adventure" books.  In fact, before I had managed to save up the money to buy the Basic D&D books, I used to read the back of the box and try to figure out what the game was like.  Based on the illustration, I imagined it was like a more complicated choose your own adventure, with cards that described scenes and told you which card to go next.

I'm curious if you can recall anything of what the experience of figuring out WHFRP was like.  How did you come to it?  It's an usual first, I must say, especially for a solo first.

Even if such cultural knowledge were needed, don't you think computer RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Diablo would provide most of the needed components?  Such games can certainly be called mainstream.

Would they?  That's an honest question, I haven't played CRPG since the days of the low numbered Ultimas, and at least at that time, I never felt that what got called an RPG on the computer had much connection to what one did in pen & paper RPGs.  What's the state of the art these days?

One type is 'This is fun, but this variation is even more fun'. Ie, they would be happy to play by the rules by tweak X is so much cooler.

The other type is 'This is not fun, I just can't enjoy this game unless some variation is used'.

I think the dynamics behind both are very different, even though they sound the same. One can't really address both at the same time.

I'm not sure I'm convinced.  After all, one person's amusing tweak is another persons essential variant.  To wit: I haven't played Monopoly in a long time because I find it unutterably boring.  However, with the right variants, I might find it interesting.  Yet, enough people enjoy straight up Monopoly for their to be competitive play.

[jdagna]

When it comes to words like auctions, I think the dictionary's definition is sufficient.  One definition even says "a public sale, where the price was called out, and the article to be sold was adjudged to the last increaser of the price, or the highest bidder" which is pretty clear.  However, part of the beauty is that all cultures have some sort of auctions, and you can use whatever method you want.  For example, you could do it by a Dutch auction (where you start the price high and call out lower values until someone says they're willing to buy it).

I actually came to RPGs through choose your own adventure stories much like you did, and the Lone Wolf series had a lot in common with RPGs including a rudimentary combat and character advancement system.  Mostly, though, I wanted a game that didn't limit me to three choices.  Part of my thinking there went back to "cops n robbers" style games my brother used to play.  We'd make guns out of Legos and run around shooting imaginary enemies - talk about the ultimate free-form RPG.  I wanted a level of structure somewhere in between the two.

Anyway, I picked WFRP largely because it was there.  That store only had a few RPGs and I knew so little about them that it took me about three months of looking through books to realize that WFRP was an RPG and BattleTech wasn't.  I picked WFRP for a few reasons, but the main one was that it wasn't boxed (so I could be sure of what I was buying) and only required the one book to play.  $30 was a pretty big investment at that age...  

My biggest impediment in shopping was trying to envision what a game session would actually look and play like.  However, MOST games have that problem for me.  For example, I'd have to play Monopoly to know if I liked it - the rules alone wouldn't tell me.  A short transcript of a game would have made my purchasing decision much, much easier, but I don't remember having any difficulty with the rules.  WFRP does a good job of spelling out what each person does during play and how they do it and I started playing the game within about a month after buying it - and this on my school's playground with 10-15 people playing for our 45-minute lunch break.  Talk about a GM's baptism by fire!  It also made me teach the game to a lot of different people, and I really didn't have any trouble with that except that no one else had a book so I had to translate their action requests into game terms and then help them resolve it.

[Callan S.]

One type is 'This is fun, but this variation is even more fun'. Ie, they would be happy to play by the rules by tweak X is so much cooler.

The other type is 'This is not fun, I just can't enjoy this game unless some variation is used'.

I think the dynamics behind both are very different, even though they sound the same. One can't really address both at the same time.

I'm not sure I'm convinced.  After all, one person's amusing tweak is another persons essential variant.  To wit: I haven't played Monopoly in a long time because I find it unutterably boring.  However, with the right variants, I might find it interesting.  Yet, enough people enjoy straight up Monopoly for their to be competitive play.

Well, for one thing, 'This is fun, but this variant is even more fun' is IMPOSSIBLE to stop, unless you send ninjas to peoples homes. If the thread starter is trying to address this it can only be to suggest ways to say 'hey, stick with the original rules, their cool' or such.

If its 'This is not fun, I just can't enjoy this game unless some variation is used', then its sort of more managable, sort of in the 'hey, you accept how stupidly pieces in chess move, so just accept this'. Suggesting more subtle versions of this tact, of course.

[rafial]

However, part of the beauty is that all cultures have some sort of auctions, and you can use whatever method you want.  For example, you could do it by a Dutch auction (where you start the price high and call out lower values until someone says they're willing to buy it).

And that is exactly my point.  One set of "rules" produces many games that play in slightly different ways, because rules make no sense except as they are interpreted through a culture.

Part of my thinking there went back to "cops n robbers" style games my brother used to play.  We'd make guns out of Legos and run around shooting imaginary enemies - talk about the ultimate free-form RPG.  I wanted a level of structure somewhere in between the two.

Ah, thanks for the reminder.  We also had similar games, except our tools of choice were rubber band guns, and ninja swords and throwing stars made out of newspaper.  When I first came to role playing, I immediately saw it as a way to do the same stuff (without the running around), but without the interminable arguments about if you were dead or not.  Okay, so that last part didn't always work out :)

remember having any difficulty with the rules.  WFRP does a good job of spelling out what each person does during play and how they do it and I started playing the game within about a month after buying it

I'll have to dig my copy out of storage and look through it again.

Well, for one thing, 'This is fun, but this variant is even more fun' is IMPOSSIBLE to stop, unless you send ninjas to peoples homes. If the thread starter is trying to address this it can only be to suggest ways to say 'hey, stick with the original rules, their cool' or such.

I'm actually saying that this is a good thing, and should be encouraged.  Evolution of the rules via "more fun" variants is the natural state of the way games are played.

[contracycle]

And that is exactly my point.  One set of "rules" produces many games that play in slightly different ways, because rules make no sense except as they are interpreted through a culture.

I disagree.  If this were so, the utility of rules would be severely diminished.  We have a specific expression to denote the use of non-canon rules: house rules.  The rules as writ serve as arbiter between local conventions and thus ensure that people are indeed playing the same game.

I'm actually saying that this is a good thing, and should be encouraged.  Evolution of the rules via "more fun" variants is the natural state of the way games are played.

Such as what?  I have several chess variants, but none of them claims to be "chess only done right".  That may even have been the intent of the designers, that is not how they are published else it risks miusleading the buyer.  I disagree that 'evolution of the rules' is a good or a normal thing; I see the evolution of games proceeding on a less orderly pattern.  One in which dissatisfaction with a particular game builds to the point that someone writes a new game, a sort of punctuated equilibrium model.

Its definitely the case that chess evolved from prior similar games, but chess is then its OWN game, perhaps in a sequence, but not a variant of a prior game.  Do you have any examples of smoothish evolution of game rules to contradict this?  Because it seems to me this claim to gradual local evolution is more precisely an apologia for the confused state of rules use and abuse in RPG.

[Jack Aidley]

Its definitely the case that chess evolved from prior similar games, but chess is then its OWN game, perhaps in a sequence, but not a variant of a prior game. Do you have any examples of smoothish evolution of game rules to contradict this? Because it seems to me this claim to gradual local evolution is more precisely an apologia for the confused state of rules use and abuse in RPG.

Hmm, well the world tournament chess rules are tweaked from time to time, as are those of football and snooker. Big, established, successful games these.

Chess itself underwent a signifcant change about 150 years ago, when the pawn's initial double move was added. There was a considerable fuss at the time (apparently); and the rather bizarre En Passent rule was added. But still it's only one possible move for one peice.

My feeling is that RPGs state of rules variation comes from the size and complexity of the rules, and the scope of the 'game-scape' it is trying to control.

(Note: I'm English, so when I say Football I am refering to the game called 'Soccer' in America.)

[Bill_White]

I think Rafial has a good point, the thrust of which is to require us to take the notion of "social contract" seriously.

What I take him as saying is that, "Listen, traditional board games are just that:  traditional.  That means they can draw upon a whole package of common-sense knowledge that people in our culture absorb as part of their upbringing.  That's why the 'rules' to Monopoly can be printed on the inside of the box.  And that's why the way people actually play tends to vary from those printed rules:  because one learns to play, usually, by being taught by someone else."

The objection, "But you can learn to play Monopoly just by reading the box," is thus not really an objection.  Of course you can, but some of that is because you're drawing upon the common-sense cultural knowledge you possess about "how games work."  To the extent that you're not familiar with that knowledge, a game is more-or-less harder to learn.  If "Mancala" were just as intuitive-seeming to most people as "Monopoly," then there would be some objection.  In other words, I hypothesize that most Americans will find Monopoly-like "pawn chase" games easier to figure out or learn than they find Mancala-like "pebble-like games."

I've seen the emergence of role-playing among wargamers in the 70s and early 80s often described as taking place in exactly the way that Rafial describes:  origin, codification, local variation.  So those who say, "Ah, but I learned to play from the books, so Rafial can't be right" are missing the point.  It's exactly because the mechanisms of cultural transmission of role-playing games are so spotty that many role-players do feel so isolated, and that rpg game designers feel obligated to put "What Is Role-Playing?" boilerplate on the first page of the book (the Monopoly box has no "What Is Board-Gaming?" paragraph, you'll notice).

The so-what of all this in terms of game design may be simply to think about how one expects people to learn the game--can you write it so that one person can then teach others?  Would that advance any particular design goals you possess?

[rafial]

Thank you Bill!  You've expressed it so much more succintly than I was able.

[Callan S.]

So Rafial, you mean giving cultural information that is a bit more complex than referinng to simple shared culture like 'its like cowboys and indians'.

One question I have, what should it refer to most, shared culture like that above in order to get the point across, or less common culture which it would have to explain before it got the point across.