I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I need to find out what term to search for. The idea I've been having in the shower is start with a proto-game and start from there. Just like how scientists defined the proto-life, I wish to start with a very basic framework and start a game design from that point of view.

It's sort of like having a Premiere set of a TCG, then adding sets onto it.

So for instance, the proto card game would be a deck of cards, with one card on the very top describing a rule. Fluxx is sort of an example.

The proto game would be a "heads or tails", with no rule beyond guessing a binary output, with the knowledge of exactly 50% chance of success and failure.

The proto role-playing game would be to describe to a person, "pretend you are a pawn. you see another pawn. what do you do?"

...and describing it to another person with the phrasing "pretend that you" is important because otherwise, it would still be a board game. In that case, it would have been "there are two pawns here. maneuver this pawn".

I dunno. This is very undeveloped, and obviously unorganized, and I hope there is a thread out there that has already advanced this line of thought. After reading this board on and off, I get the feeling that the perfect RPG is in here somewhere, just brewing, with the perfect marriage of gameplay mechanics and backdrop. Because any G RPS still needs a backdrop, otherwise it wouldn't be an RPG. As is the perfect TCG, and the perfect board game. The synapses are firing often enough. It's already here, just waiting to be typed up.

Hello!

As far as proto-RPGs go, I think that at its most basic any RPG is simply imagining a situation and describing it to someone else, and having them respond in kind, without any restrictions. Anytime you add a restriction to what you can or can't say, contradict, whatever, then you're creating more system, but it's all built on the basis of multiple people collectively imagining something. The way to create a good RPG is to figure out what you want to get out of your shared imagination, and then create rules and restrictions which encourage that. That's what the GNS theory is all about, in practice.

Are you trying to come up with an optimal way of designing the system for a game? A sort of meta-RP system to design actual RP systems? Or what?

I don't think the 'perfect RPG' is out there in the way you seem to mean. In fact, one of the things I've learned from the Forge, and what seems to be one of the basic tenets of discussion here, is that any RPG is liable to be very good for some things and very bad for others. Some are 'better' than others, in that they do what they're supposed to do more effectively, but there are as many 'perfect RPGs' as there are games to be played.

If I understand you correctly, what you mean by a "perfect" RPG is one that is built from the purest mechanic possible, and thus can in effect do anything. As Jinx pointed out, however, it is generally agreed around here that there is no RPG that can do everything perfectly.

Consider where you started: "pretend you are a pawn. you see another pawn. what do you do?"

Already you have imposed considerable restrictions:

• There is some implied Immersion here, meaning that this situation asks the player to pretend he is someone or something other than he actually is. Why is this necessary? It's usual, but necessary?
• The game is dependent upon interaction, in this case between like beings. Again, this is usual, but is it really necessary?
• The voice of this suggests that one player has the task of presenting situations, and the other of reacting to them. Why should this be required?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that any of these things is bad. But I don't see how it's possible to formulate a setup for a "proto-RPG" without already implying some notions of how it ought to be played, and that narrows considerably the range of things the game can do well.

One could probably actually formulate a purist proto-game in terms of symbolic logic, but I don't imagine it would be very worth doing except as a weird intellectual exercise; it certainly wouldn't produce a playable game, much less a perfect one.

Or have I misunderstood?

No, both of you are perfectly correct. If there's one thing I've learned from this forum, it's that every system/setting combination is good for certain things and bad for other purposes. There are very few absolutes of fun/unfun, although they do exist.

And yes, I was trying for a ground-up meta-design way of coming up with a good system/setting combo. Already I don't think it has much merit except as a purely intellectual exercise, and academic, stratified thinking doesn't make for very fun games. I point to the game, err, "Wff n Proof" as an example of an intellectually pure game, whose premises I think are just silly in terms of fun factor. Personally, I think a miracle of design is Deadlands, a jumbled mishmash of mechanics and settings, and I doubt the creators stood in a shower thinking of the roots of roleplaying. He probably just went ahead and jotted down some ideas he thought might be spiffy.

asdfff wrote: And yes, I was trying for a ground-up meta-design way of coming up with a good system/setting combo. Already I don't think it has much merit except as a purely intellectual exercise....