Jonathon (ErrathofKosh) wrote: Players design characters, GM's design settings and situations; those are considered play, so why wouldn't the game designer designing system be play?

I believe in guiding people to the style of play I want to see, not whatever style of play they want to see.

They're welcome to not like my style, and not play my game, but I write games that say things like "This is about your character proving their worth", rather than "This is about whatever you decide it's going to be about".

Am I misinterpreting what you meant?

I don't consider chargen or GM prep to be play, either. I have a tendency to confuse the two, and get over-involved in them because it gives me that nice escapist gaming feeling, but ultimately it's just fooling around.

Hiya,

At the risk of this thread becoming a poll ... but maybe a few perspectives are necessary before it gets going ... so OK ....

I'm with Tim and DannyK. Play as I see it requires an SIS, which in turn requires events, i.e., System in action.

One can delay aspects of character creation and prep until play has already started. HeroQuest's "mostly blank sheet" character creation option is a good example of the former, and various No Myth techniques are (by definition) the latter. That seems like a viable option.

But to call the GM working out maps and NPC attributes "play"? Or a fellow hanging around and making up character sheet after character sheet? I've spent too many hours doing both and have a hard time considering either to be play in any way.

Best,
Ron

Ron, is your objection to character-generation as play that there is an imagined space, but in many cases it isn't shared?

For instance, do you feel differently about Master generation in MLwM? Is that play, or does it still require (as you say) "events"?

Hiya,

It's both, Tony, and that's a valuable distinction you're making.

First, it's a shared thing.

Second, it's an events thing. So yeah, Master creation in MLWM doesn't count for me either.

If I had to pick between the two, I'd say the second was more important, but also that I'm talking about SIS events, so (e.g.) lifepaths during character creation wouldn't count although they were "events."

Best,
Ron

Yeah, I didn't intend for the thread to become a poll. I was trying to address an attitude I've come across from a number of sources. Let's see if I can elaborate.

I was speaking with a friend - who's a writer/ film critic - and we started talking about rpgs. He's all about putting a 'statement' into his works. He thought I could write a game that made some sort of of inherent statement. I tried to tell him, "No, I can't make a statement with another group's game, I can only encourage the group to make a statement in their game."

This relates to some of the discussions on humor that we've had here. A game can't force people to be funny. A game can only try to encourage funny situations and give players tools for being funny.

I know I'm repeating myself, but the role of a designer is to encourage certain situations in play, not create specific situations. Even if the designer is creating a setting, a good setting acts like a tool, it encourages certain types of situations.

I'll use MW as an example. The players play ronin. This is a tool. Ronin are people who were at one time honorable and productive members of society, who, for whatever reason, became dishonored. I don't dictate why or how they became dishonored, this is up to the players. This freedom allows the players to mold the situation into what they want it to be. Maybe the characters were wrongly dishonored, maybe they deserved it.

How's that?

timfire wrote: I was speaking with a friend - who's a writer/ film critic - and we started talking about rpgs. He's all about putting a 'statement' into his works. He thought I could write a game that made some sort of of inherent statement.

There is a form of game in which the designer can embed an inherent statement, if so inclined. Gamist games.

No game can force players to "go where you want and get off where you'd like," as Raven so well put it. But a Gamist game can require players to go where you want and get off where you'd like in order to achieve success. That's almost as good.

If you play a conservative fiscal strategy in Monopoly, saving for a rainy day instead of buying every property you can get your hands on, you will lose against good players (unless you get extremely lucky). Monopoly therefore conveys a (literal) "go for broke" message, not through playing the game but through learning what's required to win it. It's left up to players to intepret what that message applies to: only the game itself, investment strategy, or life in general?

Most versions of AD&D similarly convey a message urging caution and patience as the keys to success (more so, when played close to as written) -- quite at odds with its supposedly heroic and adventurous trappings, but quite in tune with the way a majority of players approach real life (more so in earlier days than today, I think). Computer role playing games have tended to enforce and amplify that same message to the nth degree. (Someday I'll play a heroic CRPG that actually rewards the player for acting heroically. This will happen shortly after the drug companies lower their prices to help sick people.)

This issue doesn't seem to bear on the topic of design as play, though. Crafting such a message embedded in a game system doesn't make design any more play-like as I see it. Is anyone arguing for the "design can be play" proposition? I'd like to hear from Jonathan if he wants to further advocate the idea.

- Walt

Yes. I think design and prep are not play, though they are not divorced of it.

Last Traveller session, our GM interrupted play to create two new player characters; one for the new girl and the other for a player who'd tired of his active character's story arc. (Traveller's chargen sort of has its way with you. BW's lifepaths offer a more pleasing blend of choice and restraint.) Anyway, those two and the GM certainly exhibited engaged behavior; they weren't playing, but they were engrossed in gaming activity. Libby's date chimed in, but Cory and I were pretty solidly out.

Does this topic have any bearing on the various arrangements of play and play-supporting activity different systems represent? Would the world creation mechanics in a game like Universalis reflect sprinklings of non-play per instance?

Walt Freitag wrote: Is anyone arguing for the "design can be play" proposition? I'd like to hear from Jonathan if he wants to further advocate the idea.

Ron Edwards wrote: First, it's a shared thing.

Second, it's an events thing. So yeah, Master creation in MLWM doesn't count for me either.

If I had to pick between the two, I'd say the second was more important, but also that I'm talking about SIS events, so (e.g.) lifepaths during character creation wouldn't count although they were "events."

Heya John, what's being gotten at is that the act of coming up with and detailing the lifepath is not a SIS event -- sharing it, on the other hand, is.

Prep and design are fun, at least sometimes.

Fun things are often play. Sometimes they are not.

What are qualities that make fun things play?

Hello,

Raven (greyorm) clarified my point, I think. Coming up with anything about the character or setting or situation is not itself "play," because the SIS has that crucial "shared" element. And telling one another isn't good enough either - shared refers to the imagining, and imagined space requires imagined events.

If my character creation includes a lifepath as a homeless guy in the city sewers, then it's not part of the SIS until it's evidenced in some way among the group - as our imaginary characters move, act, and speak in the imaginary situation.

In my experience, that's usually accomplished within the first eight minutes of play, via some telltale or comment or other. It can be even faster, in that the player simply tells everyone else, or the GM has read the sheet and tells everyone, and thus establishing it in the SIS is even faster because several people have the opportunity.

Slowing the process down is what tends to be more problematic, hence the ongoing (decades-long) discussion about "player secrets."

Also, to be clear, we are not discussing play in the general sense of the word, but using it as short-hand for "role-playing" as an activity (rather than a hobby label), which itself is is a lousy word for whatever it is we are all doing with these games. Didn't think anyone was having trouble with that, but just in case.

Best,
Ron

The way I'd put it is:

1) Design is not play.

2) Design can and does occur within play.

3) Design can and does occur outside of play.

4) Design which is removed from play typically involves some simulation of play, which can generate similiar enjoyment to play, although less preferred.

-Mendel S.

Seems to me that play is not completely limited to SIS. Further, design can happen in SIS. So it's not quite clear how we should distinguish design from play. There is probably value in doing so, but I think it's worth being very careful about this.

Play isn't limited to SIS
Character design is, it seems to me, play, for Mendel's reason #4. But it doesn't happen in SIS. I tend to think of play as creative and constructive involvement in building the SIS, which can happen outside of it. That way, for example, GM preparation isn't intrinsically something totally different from play; GM's do play, and in fact this is one of the things that makes GM-ing so much fun.

Design can happen in SIS
Drift, meta-manipulation, etc. are all design happening within SIS. Maybe my sense of "design" is rather broad, but I'd also see leaning on a CA like Story Now, particularly through Director Stance, as a kind of design: you're reinventing the SIS and the structure of how play will work.

The point being that design and play probably should be differentiated, but it's not yet clear how to do so.

Let's ignore the game prep issue for a few moments, I think that, at this time, it needlessly adds confusion.

An idea I was trying to communicate through this thread is that I believe actual play and design are (should be?) characterized by completely different mindsets.

I think actual play is characterized by "What do I specifically want to do right now?"

I think the process of designing a game system is characterized by "What do I want other people to do, and how do I convince/encourage them to do it?"

Do people agree with that?
__________

Walt Freitag wrote: There is a form of game in which the designer can embed an inherent statement, if so inclined. Gamist games.
...
Most versions of AD&D similarly convey a message urging caution and patience as the keys to success...

timfire wrote: An idea I was trying to communicate through this thread is that I believe actual play and design are (should be?) characterized by completely different mindsets.

I think actual play is characterized by "What do I specifically want to do right now?"

I think the process of designing a game system is characterized by "What do I want other people to do, and how do I convince/encourage them to do it?"

Do people agree with that?

Jonathan (ErrathofKosh) wrote: Players design characters, GM's design settings and situations; those are considered play, so why wouldn't the game designer designing system be play?

timfire wrote: I think the process of designing a game system is characterized by "What do I want other people to do, and how do I convince/encourage them to do it?"

I passed over this yesterday, but coming back to it I think I've got something to suggest.

There is a degree to which what we call character generation is not the creation of the character; it is the creation of the character sheet. The distinction is not meaningless. Who this person is within the shared imagined space will be created as it is revealed there. This is only an outline providing some framework for that creation. In this sense it stands in the same relationship to the character itself as the rules in the book stand to system: it is an authority to which the participants appeal in presenting the defined character in play.

On that basis, prep is not play; it is creating the authorities needed for play. The time the referee spends creating the world or the situation outside the game is not part of play, it is his way of being ready to play. Play happens when that is shared as part of the imaginative experience.

To analogize it to something more concrete, before we can play baseball we have to acquire a bat and ball, set up the bases, agree on the rules, choose teams, and decide who bats first. We don't start to play until that part is finished, even though in retrospect we might say that that was part of the game. It is part of the game, in that during play those preparations impact what happens. The selection of rules, the development of the world, and the creation of the character sheet are all preparatory to play, creating the authorities that will impact events once play begins.

That isn't to say that prep and design aren't fun; but if they aren't part of the ongoing creation of the shared imagined space as they are created, they aren't role playing, and if they are, then they are.

--M. J. Young

Ok, so for example, in Everway where there is a character story sharing time, this part of "character creation" would be considered play because at that time, the character is being inserted into the SIS.

In Universalis, the tenet phase which produces some of the same stuff that a GM of a more traditional RPG might produce in preparation for a campaign is play because the players together are forming the SIS, they are just starting from a totally clean slate, whereas the traditional GM often brings a pretty full slate to the table (especially when using a commercially published setting like Glorantha, Tekumel, or Forgotten Realms).

Hmm, what about Traveler character creation where the player is running his character through the services? I think that isn't play because while he is generating information through something that resembles play, it isn't entered into the SIS until he musters out and brings his PC to the table. His activity during this phase of creation doesn't interract with the other players at all.

Frank

I think we need to be careful in distinguishing what isn’t play in current games and what cannot possibly be considered play when thinking about character generation. Suppose we decided to design a game very much like Puppetland, but where all characters start out as blank sock puppets. The characters start with zilch, not even a name. There is nothing to distinguish one sock from another, nothing to provide a character with any kind of identity. Nothing to make a character into something unique. So, there is no basis for saying that character generation is complete. Then, we put them into the world of Velcro and, as part of the game, allow the characters to add features to themselves. In effect, we specifically make character generation part of play. A session might start as follows:

Puppetmaster: “All the sock puppets woke up snug and safe in their beds. Everything was dark. Everything was quiet. Suddenly, Sock 1 felt a sharp pain in his side. “

Sock 1: “Mmmmrrmmm. How fortunate that, as I bolted up from bed, I bumped into this velco mouth. Ouch! That hurts! What could possibly be distressing my soft sockish self?”

Puppetmaster: “But Sock 1 had no eyes and couldn’t see what was paining him.”

Sock 1: “If there was a mouth lying around here, perhaps there are some eyes as well. I shall thrash about until I find some. Ouch. That still hurts!”

Puppetmaster: “Sock 1 thrashed around the bedroom, getting all kinds of velcro things stuck to him. Three eyes of various sizes and colors, an ear, and a polka dot tie all ended up adorning him helter skelter.”

Sock 1: “How fortunate that I now discern the cause of my ailment.”

Puppetmaster: “Sock 1 looked down to see a big round nametag whose pin was stuck entirely through his middle”.

Sock 1: “Why look! A nametag! I wonder what it says.”

Puppetmaster: “Sock 1 read that the nametag said ‘Argyle’”

Sock 1: “That must be my name! Oh, joy. I shall call myself Argyle from this day forward. Now, what to do about this painful pin! Surely there is an arm lying somewhere about that I could procure.”

…

Okay, so it's not the greatest example. But, I think it illustrates my point. Just because current games don't make character generation part of play doesn't mean it's not possible to do so. All that is required is that characters start as indistiguishable blanks and alterations to that standard form be allowed as actual modifications to the Shared Imagined Space.

Can't post . . . laughing . . . uncontrollably . . .

I can hear Kevin Neilan's voice in my head: "Or, wait, what about Potato Head: the RPG, and everyone starts out as an untouched spud!"

** ** **

Seriously, (wipes tears away) I went to a coffee house at a church tonight and I saw this whole progression in action: you write the material, you prepare it and then you present it. Sharing alone does not qualify play. Universalis was co-written, right? And (I think) Legends of Alyria requires two players to GM, which may suggest shared preparation. (I'm speculating about the system there, but my point remains.)

I think it's a group-connected SIS that establishes play.

An interesting side topic is dysfunction as inability to complete the above cycle. It may be broadly characterized as pursuing one stage in an effort to gain what another provides. This reminds me of a friend who's been writing poetry since high school, but won't read others' work and refuses to workshop his stuff.

This course of thought is reminding me of one of Ron's postings to a recent Publishing thread in which he admonished the poster to define his own success. I'm making the connection that doing so informs activity at every stage.

bcook1971 wrote: I think it's a group-connected SIS that establishes play.

I've played in a game recently that somewhat resembled the sock puppet example. I'll make no claims to the universality of my experience or that lack of familiarity with the system wasnt also a concern.

The game was Fudge playing superheros in a near future setting. We started our characters with names, a superhero catch phrase and little else. We begin unemployed and looking for work, we've heard a nearby corporation may be looking for people so we head there. As we approach a big blue man crashes out of the front of the building and storms down the street. We decide to approach him and find out what's going on, it rapidly turns into a battle and one of us finds a situation where his catch phrase seemed appropriate. He says it and the gm dealt out cards to all the players, whoever got an ace gained a superpower, a face card was an aspect (like skills), and the joker was a negative aspect.

This is the point where the game ground to a halt. We all had to stop and think about our newly gained abilities, question the gm as to the appropriateness of our ideas, then mark them down on the character sheet.

Design happened during the game but it wasnt the same activity as play. It wasnt something taking place in the SIS, it was very personal that would later be shared in play. I think this holds true for other activities as well such as solving a riddle or puzzle, or the playersor gm stopping to think what they should do or what should happen next, they affect play but they arent actual play.

To take the superhero example a little further, though, suppose you had simply been given the narrative power to define your superpowers on the hop?

So you're chasing after one of the bad guys, and he leaps into a passing getaway car and takes off in traffic. You say, "I pick up speed, running even faster than the car." You have now defined that one of your character's powers is that he can run faster than a speeding getaway car. Maybe we didn't know that before, but now we do.

Another character next to mine also wants to chase the car, but let's suppose there can't be precise overlap between powers for some reason, so he can't just run fast as well. So the player says, "I jump into the air and fly after him." Okay, so he flies, and my character runs, both real fast.

A third character says, "I use my super magnetism powers to hold that car just where it is."

And so on. After a few sessions, everyone has clearly defined powers and minimal overlap. If you wanted to, you could even have this "discovering my power" thing be part of the story, where the characters didn't know they could do this stuff until they really wanted to catch that bad guy.

Of course you'd need to think out how this works, whether balance matters, what the limits are, what the weaknesses are, but I don't see it as a problem. Now my run-real-fast guy is chasing someone on the Bullet Train, and we decide that no, he just can't go that fast. Okay, we've got a limit. Or maybe a villain laughs at the magnetism guy, "Ha! I have a moon rock in my trunk, Ferrous-Man, negating your power! You'll never catch me now!"

Sorcerer comes pretty close to this at times, when you summon a new demon, and it could be made even more part of regular play if you wanted to do so.

Dang, I'm wondering whether people read my post.

Frank has it right. In Traveler, the life-paths are generally done as prep, not as play; the character is developed to some degree independently, and then brought into the game. I think from what you describe of the other two games, yes, that's all part of play, even though it looks like prep.

John Kirk wrote: I think we need to be careful in distinguishing what isn?t play in current games and what cannot possibly be considered play when thinking about character generation.

Chris Lerich wrote: Which brings us back to Mendel's point in the first place: is there any a priori way to define what is and is not play on the basis of mechanics?

I think the answer is no.

M.J.,

We're actually, I think, in agreement. One of us is not getting what distinction was originally being made, or attempted.

I wrote: Which brings us back to Mendel's point in the first place: is there any a priori way to define what is and is not play on the basis of mechanics?

I think the answer is no.

M. J. Young wrote: Respectfully disagreeing, I think the answer is obvious: any function in which players cooperate actively to imagine the same things within the shared imagined space is play; any function which is performed individually as a way of preparing for play or providing materials which will facilitate play is not play. .... Nothing says that any part of design can't be play; it only says that for it to be play it must be shared as it happens.

M. J. Young wrote: I think the answer is obvious: any function in which players cooperate actively to imagine the same things within the shared imagined space is play; any function which is performed individually as a way of preparing for play or providing materials which will facilitate play is not play.
...
When I read the journal to the others, that's renewing the shared imagined space, and so play is occurring as I input my recollections of where we are and how we got there. The journal thus becomes part of play when it is read, but not when it is written.

M. J. Young wrote: There's nothing that delineates what must or can't be part of play or part of prep, but that that which is shared in creating the imagined space is part of play, and that which is done in anticipation of sharing it within the imagined space is prep.

(I'm sure there's a hole in this somewhere, and I could probably shoot it down myself if I took a minute to re-read it, but the gist of it sounds right to me, so I'm going to post it.)

Chris Lerich wrote: To take the superhero example a little further, though, suppose you had simply been given the narrative power to define your superpowers on the hop?

2) However, if the player were to describe his character's career at the table with the other players, that would be play.

Disagreeing with Frank, I would say that Traveler character creation done in open form is as much play as any moment in-game when one player is in the spotlight. It's also functionally the same as any mechanic in which one player has the opportunity to define aspects of the shared imagined space. I agree that it's borderline, but I think the revealing of the character to the other players is play. You're introducing the character into the shared imagined space--in the same way that my reading my journal to the players is play, because it brings everyone back to the shared imagined space.

As to play-by-e-mail, play-by-mail, and play-by-post games, the medium must be recognized. In face-to-face play, I speak into the shared imagined space, and that is how my imaginings are conveyed to others. These alternative media use writing to speak into the shared imagined space, so when I write my entry and hit send, that has the function of contributing to the shared imagined space. The process of everyone "hearing" and incorporating my thoughts into their versions is slower, but it is the same process.

Chris, I agree with what you're saying. I think (it's been a couple days since I read it) that my impression of the original question was that we wanted to know whether you could tell whether something was or was not play by reading the rules. I'd say normally you probably can, although the Traveller example suggests that there will be some aspects of some games for which the rules are not clear as to whether they are or are not. You could create a Traveller character by yourself, or alone with the referee, or with the group corporately. John makes a good case for the idea that if you do it with the group, in that you're making the rolls and introducing everyone to your character's history as you do so, you're playing--particularly if they are also doing so. You might from that argue that group character generation might always be play--if I'm rolling up a new D&D character and the rest of the players are making suggestions for what I should take and such, arguably we are cooperatively adding this character to the shared imagined space as we create him.

So I'll concede the point. Unless the rules make it clear that something is to be done with the group or apart from the group, it could be either, and you'd have to observe how it is actually done to know.

--M. J. Young

Ok, I can mostly buy that, but part of what I was thinking on the Traveler generation is that I'm not sure that as you're generating the character that you really are introducing it into the SIS. The character still exists in a vacuum. I guess if you fix the number of terms (duration of the lifepath), you could relate things to the campaign history (gee, you got that award for Meritorious Combat Under Fire in 2388, so you must have been involved with the Belter Rebelion). But in normal Traveler generation, you don't know when you're going to stop the lifepath generation, so you can't tie events as you generate them to the SIS. Only at the end, when you can tie the events to particular dates could you go back and determine when they happened.

So in this way, I think group character design where the players say "Gee, why don't you be my brother and you learned to be a fire mage in the Academy while I swashed my buckles around town..." is more in the line of play.

Traveler is definitely a good example to examine to make these distinctions.

Frank

M. J. Young wrote: I think ... that my impression of the original question was that we wanted to know whether you could tell whether something was or was not play by reading the rules.