Heya,

I suppose I should call these non-rants, but in the end it’s not really important.  This is a follow-up to the rant I wrote here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16809.0
Again, I make a point and then a request for help :)

The Point:

In that thread, Adam Cerling expressed some difficulty in grasping the meaning of the questions that I outlined in my initial post.  I can empathize with him.  When I first was asked “what is your game about” I was working on Ember Twilight.  I was like…. “whattya mean what’s it about?  It’s about playing a game and having fun.”  I’ve come a long way since then, and a lot of it is thanks to the folks here at the Forge who had the patience to work with me on it.  Now I’d like to share what I’ve learned with those who are also struggling in this department.  Here’s how I’ve come to interpret and use these questions:

- What is your game about?

This question can offer a high initial barrier to receiving helpful replies.  For newer designers it can be very hard for them to articulate what their game really is about without giving a huge exposition on setting history, chargen, or the combat system.  Typically, those aren’t what a game is about.  A game “is about” accomplishing something. 

A sub-question of “What is your game about” is “What does your game accomplish?”  As in, what style of play does it support?  What will be the outcome of a campaign/session/reward cycle?  What product (if any) will it produce?  It is important to know what your game can do before you start thinking about things like character races, equipment, or setting history.

I asked three other designers to answer this question.  I learn best by example, so I thought I’d include them here so that others can see how they answered what their game is about.

-Ron Edwards (Sorcerer): Both the price and the potential of arrogance.

-Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard): It's about these young men and women who ride from town to town, holding the Faith together. It's about the problems small towns face, it's about sex and lying, and most of all it's about violence. What use is violence? What justifies violence? What are its consequences?

-Ralph Mazza (Universalis): Universalis is about creating stories:  100% of the mechanics are designed with this idea in mind.  The rules provide the means to ascribe attributes to people places and things.  Components are nouns, Traits are the adjectives, Events are the verbs.  Coins regulate how much control a player has over the story and Challenges and Complications are simply mechanical ways of deciding whose version of the story sticks

These games play wildly different from each other, but each has a solid answer to the question.  Contrast the length of Ron’s answer vs. the length of Ralph’s.  First thing that should strike everyone is that neither are very long, but Ron’s is very brief and to the point.  When you are creating an answer to this question for your game, be aware that you don’t have to have a three page dissertation (or even three paragraphs for that matter) describing what your game does.  All three answers above are excellent and do not go into the minute detail that I sometimes see designers go into for their games (and I’m also speaking to myself as I write this).  The minute detail will come out in subsequent posts as people ask further questions and you have the opportunity to further explain your design.  When someone posts their initial answer to this question it is most helpful to keep it to a single, informative paragraph or less.  The answer should be the *essence* of your game.

Also, if your game is a game that supports Narrativist tendencies, then is this an excellent place to mention your Premise (see Ron’s and Vincent’s answers).  If your game is Simulationist, then this is an awesome opportunity to briefly state which component of a game (character, setting, situation, system, color) your game intends to explore.  If you are creating a more Gamist design, then this is the place to let everyone know the importance of strategy, tactics, gamble and crunch (see Ron’s essays) in your game.

Trust me, an answer DOES exist for any role-playing game ever made.  The problem is, sometimes it’s not a very good answer.  The example used over and over around here is that DnD3e is about “killing monsters and taking their stuff.”  That is very true and is a great thing for DnD to be about.  It is not a great thing for someone else’s game to be about.  When deciding what your game will be about, it is important to know what others have done and do something (at least slightly) different from it.  You’re not going to out-DnD DnD.

Synonyms for this question include: “What is the point of your game?  What is the most interesting facet of your game?  Why should someone play your game?”

- What do the characters do?

This can be another question that intimidates new designers.  When I was first asked (again on Ember Twilight), my answer was “the characters go out and have adventures.”  To my thinking, that’s just not a very good answer.  Almost all games have adventures of some kind and in just about all of them the characters “go” somewhere. 

A good answer to this question should include the motivation for character action, the consequences of character action, and how the player-characters interact with each other and with the NPC’s.  Another way to state the question is “What’s the point of playing a character in your game?” or “What can the characters accomplish in your game and why would they want to?” 

This can kinda get into the fuzzy area of “will the players find it fun?”  Chances are that they will, so when answering this question do not worry about explaining why the players will think it’s fun.  That’s an answer to a totally different question.  Instead, just describe what the characters can do.  The replies you receive will tell you how fun people think it will be.

I asked this question to the three designers I mentioned above.  Here is how they responded:

-Ron Edwards (Sorcerer): Summon, bind, and command demons to serve their goals. The demons have their own inhuman issues as well, so every sorcerer-demon relationship is a time bomb.

-Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard): The characters confront the problems in the communities they serve and try to put them right. They root out sin and corruption, they fight demons and heal the sick and broken, they pronounce judgment and fulfill promises.

Ralph Mazza (Universalis): Question two is a little harder for Universalis.  As the second sentence above says every story needs characters.  Since Uni doesn't have a specific setting, theme, or genre defining what the characters do is hard.  Basically characters do whatever characters do in stories.  The first phase of the game establishes the Tenets for that session of play and it is during the Tenets phase that settings, and genres emerge.  After that phase of play it should be clear what the characters for that game do.  In fact the rules for establishing Tenets in chapter two now includes the following:  ".  A good sign that you don’t have enough Tenets to begin play is if you can’t yet imagine an interesting character and what that character should be doing in the story."

I knew Ralph might have a hard time with this question, which is why I really wanted to ask it of him.  But if you read close what his answer says, it tells us that the characters in Universalis are tools the players use to address What the Game is About.  They are components for “creating stories” as he put it above.  It is an excellent answer.  But also look at what Vincent wrote for Dogs in the Vineyard and what Ron wrote for Sorcerer.  They’re saying essentially the same thing.  The characters are the tools the players use to explore the game.  And more importantly, each tells HOW the characters are used to explore and address the game.  It’s the “time bomb” in Sorcerer, the “confronting problems” in Dogs, and “establishing the Tenets” in Uni.  A good answer to “What do the characters do” will tell how the players use the characters to experience what the game has to offer.

Synonyms for this question include: “What will the characters experience in your game?  What is the point of playing a character in your game?  What are the capabilities of the characters in your game?  What makes the characters of your game different from characters in any other game?”

- What do the players do?

Of all the questions, this one I think can cause the most confusion.  I remember asking this to one of my buddies (Frank) who was designing a game.  His answer was, “Aren’t the characters and the players basically the same thing?”  The answer is a resounding no! 

The characters and the players are two separate entities that interact.  Player motivation and character motivation are sometimes congruent, and sometimes not.  This question wants to know what the players do to impact the Shared Imagined Space (SIS).  This includes, but is not limited to, the meta game currencies a lot of games have.  Plot points and drama dice are two common examples of this currency.  How do the players use them to affect their characters, everyone else’s characters, and the setting?  If there is no meta-game currency, what can the players do to alter the SIS?  How do they interact with the story through the system?  Or, how does the system aid them in affecting the story and its elements?  IMHO, this is a far more important question that #2, but it can only be answered after #2 is established. 

Here is how the pro’s answered it:

-Ron Edwards (Sorcerer): Exert massive influence over the conflicts faced by their characters, as well as the character's full ability to decide anything the player decides - keep or abandon their demons, stick to or abandon their goals, ally or combat with whomever they want.

-Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard): The players play their characters, fully and with passion. The GM prepares towns in crisis and then plays the people there, also fully and with passion. The resolution rules make sure that the "fully and with passion" part really happens.

-Ralph Mazza (Universalis): Players in the game develop characters, setting, and a plot.  They do this by taking turns to spend Coins to purchase facts about who the characters are and what they're doing and by setting up plot complications and conflicts in order to earn more Coins.

Compare these answers to the ones from above about characters, and it’s easy see how different they are.  I’ve seen some people overlap their answers for 2 and 3, but that is a massive mistake.  They should be answered narrowly and concretely for each.  When answering what the players do, one should keep in mind that it is indeed separate from what the characters do, but it must show how the player makes the character do what he does. 

Most importantly, look at how each of these games empower the players.  Your game should do likewise.  The players need something to do, and more importantly they need responsibility and ownership of the game as they play.  By ownership, I mean they need to have a mechanism (supported explicitly by the system) through which they invest their time, emotion, and personal interest in the game as it unfolds.  This is how the players engage the game.

Synonyms for this question include: “What are the responsibilities of the players and GM in your game?  Where does player power begin and end?  Where does player stop and character begin?”

In closing, I feel these questions are very important in guiding design, especially for newer designers.  It is vital they be addressed and answered.  But you know what, you don’t have to know the answers to start posting in Indie Design.  You really don’t.  Sometimes you might not know the answers, and that’s okay.  That’s what we’re here for- to help you discover the answers for yourself.  Please, I implore anyone who is thinking of designing a game, ask questions.  Do not be afraid to admit that you don’t know something for sure yet.  That’s okay.  The folks here are here to help, not score points or show how dumb you are.  They are here to help make better games.  It’s in their best interest as better games make better gamers, designers, and thinkers of us all.

The Request:

I am by no means an expert on game design.  I am no better than anyone else reading this and am probably worse than most.  What I am requesting is a double-checking of what I wrote.  What I would love to see people supplement my explanations of these questions.  It is important that more than one point of view be seen.  Don’t post if you’re just going to reword a sentence or two of what I wrote.  That will just convolute things.  What I’m looking for is another insight that will help me, and anyone else who reads this, design better games.  And in the end, that’s what we’re all here for.

Peace,

-Troy

Excellent post, Troy. This is the first time that these questions have really clicked with me--I've seen them a hundred times before, even asked them myself, but I never really get around to addressing them fully when I write a game. I now find myself mentally going over the answers with respect to the projects that I'm currently working on. Well done!

One thing that struck me, though, is that you don't directly address how what Players A, B, C, and D do can be completely different. (Vincent spoke to that topic anyway, giving separate responses for the player and the GM.) Many new designers assume that the standard player/GM split is the only way that things can be done. Specifically pointing out that typical game master duties can be distributed among the players might be a good idea. Examples of games with atypical player/GM setups: Rune, with rotating GM duties; Great Ork Gods, where each player is in charge of setting the difficulty levels for a couple of types of action; and the Shab Al-Hiri Roach, where the rules on scene framing and NPC control and conflict are explicit enough that a traditional GM isn't really required.

In short, I think that question 'What do the players do?' could be made more useful by addending another query: 'What is the specific role and function of each player?'

Jeff

Heya,

Good point Jeff.  I should have mentioned that especially in Ralph's answer for Universalis.  That's about as decentralized as GM duties can get.  I appreciate that feedback,  good stuff :)

Peace,

-Troy

I'm mostly concerned with "What is your game about?"  The other two questions are certainly useful, especially at untangling traditional player/GM duties and the sally-forth-and-adventure format and presenting the possibility of something different and potentially greater.  Those two questions don't need any changes; the only difficulty with them is separating the player/character equation and recognizing that the GM is a player just as much as the others at the table.  Once you clear that up in your head, you can run forward at full speed.

But "What is your game about?" is the killer question.  First off, it assumes that your game is about something, which may not be a good foundational assumption.  It certainly serves narrativist games well, but its use for the rest of the vast landscape of roleplaying I find somewhat dubious.  This is highlighted by Troy's assertion that every RPG out there has an answer to this question, and I don't think that's the case.  What is GURPS about?  Or alternately, consider Changeling: the Dreaming, which I best heard described as "Five different games masquerading as one."  Changeling doesn't have one answer to this question, it has five answers to this question -- and that's one of the systemic problems with Changeling as written.

The first question's casual use of the word "game", which conflates a number of meanings in this context, is problematic.  By this question are we asking what the social-activity-that-is-the-game is about, or are we asking what the rules-that-compose-the-game are about, or are we asking what the imagined-content-created-by-the-game is about?  I think this is probably the root of so many people responding to this question with long lists of rules -- they hear the question and they think that 'the set of rules which are in the gamebook' is the 'game'.  In order to get a useful answer to this question, you have to draw the distinction between what I like to call the Book and the Game.  Everything you write, everything you publish, everything that gets put onto paper is the Book -- and trust me, players will read it, go "That's nice" and then go do their own thing.  That part -- "their own thing" -- is the Game.  When they sit down at the table, start talking and rolling dice and telling stories, that's the Game, and as "game designers" we really have to recognize that our influence on the Game is at best indirect and at worst completely irrelevant.  I'm sure there are some gamers out there somewhere playing Sorcerer to kill monsters and take their stuff, and there's nothing that Ron can do about it.

"What is your game about", when unpacked, can explode into something more like "What do you want gamers to accomplish when they play your game?"  To me, this screams control issues all over: I, the game designer, want to reach out into the world through my book and dictate the actions of five strangers, ensuring that since they do what I want them to do, they will have fun.  The assumption that the game is about something means that, if people play the game and don't address what it's "about", they are then "playing the game wrong."  The gamebook becomes an implement of control for the game designer, often someone dissatisfied with their prior game experiences, and attempting to wrench things into the shape that they "should" be.  It's sort of the grand-daddy of the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast and Illusionism: game designers supposedly have a total control over the game, under which the players unwittingly follow all the designers' plans for them.  By answering "What is your game about" the designer somehow dictates what people playing the game will be playing about, which is pretty much absurd.

Up to this point, it probably sounds like I don't like the question.  In truth, I don't like the phrasing of the question, because it's just waiting to be misinterpretted in all the ways I've outlined above.  Now I'll be more positive.

A better way to unpack and rephrase the question, and one that is, I think, a little more realistic about how the product that game designers create and how it actually gets used, abused, and ignored, is to ask, "What kind of play does your gamebook support?"  This avoids the "game in what sense" issue, since it asks about play, not "the game".  It avoids the control-freak element by recognizing that the game is not about anything so much as it (hopefully) supports a specific kind of play -- perhaps it even supports play addressing a specific premise -- but five fourteen-year-olds can still use it to kill monsters and take their stuff.  (Because they will.  And they won't really be fourteen, either; they'll be thirty-something professionals who just want to unwind).  You can't play the game "wrong" -- at worst you're simply not using some tools that you have access to.  Perhaps those tools would have only got in the way for what you're going for, which is something completely different than what the game designer intended. (And how cool is that?)  Lastly, and I think most importantly, this patently allows a multiple answer: my game supports character-driven stories and/or high epic action.  It's assumed that some players will go for the character-driven stories and some will do the high epic action, and some will do both, and all three are okay.

The question remains: what are you, as a game designer, providing for your consumers?  That's a question worth answering.

Joshua,

Can you find ways to unpack the other questions Troy raises as well?  I really liked how you rephrased the "What is your game about" question because, as you said, it's sort of awkward in games that do not have a specific setting or a specific premise to address.  How do you think you can apply the same process to the other questions?

Josh and Green,

Before you start down that path it might be useful to examine the assumptions at the core of your questioning of the question.

Can you find many games for which there is no immediately obvious answer to "what is your game about"...you site GURPS and Changeling as examples.  But why do you assume that those games wouldn't be better if they did have a concise concept of what the game is about?

Isn't it possible that there are alot of games out there that have been designed without asking that key question, and as a result don't have a good answer...and that maybe...asking the question and having a good answer is actually a better way to design games...and that maybe those games would have benefited greatly from some cohesive thought along the lines of these questions when they were being designed...

Troy,

Good timing. Just the other day I was about to start a new thread addressing my confusion with how these questions applied to the Pool (and similar setting-agnostic games).

But then I went and re-read Ron's review of the Pool, in which he concludes:

Ron Edwards wrote: If the resulting system were presented with several light settings, this RPG would be among the strongest small-games available.

Troy_Costisick wrote:
The Request:

I am by no means an expert on game design.  I am no better than anyone else reading this and am probably worse than most.  What I am requesting is a double-checking of what I wrote.  What I would love to see people supplement my explanations of these questions.  It is important that more than one point of view be seen.  Don’t post if you’re just going to reword a sentence or two of what I wrote.  That will just convolute things.  What I’m looking for is another insight that will help me, and anyone else who reads this, design better games.  And in the end, that’s what we’re all here for.

Val--

I don't object to the question so much as I have issues with how easily misapplied it is.

That said, no, I don't think GURPS would be 'better' if it had a strong thematic focus.  It would be different, sure, and it would look a lot more like Forge games, but it would also lose most of its utility.  Changeling, on the other hand, could greatly benefit from being split into its five component games -- I personally did that with homebrew rules more than once.

Green --

The other two questions don't need much unpacking as they stand, in my humble opinion.

"What do the characters do?" concerns the imagined action -- what's the story, the competition, the events, the color?  What happens in pretend-land?

"What do the players do?" concerns all the real people involved.  It's about the procedures performed, and how they work together to create play.  You could rephrase it to "What do the people around the table do?" to eliminate the player/GM confusion, but at that point you're assuming that they're around a table -- not the case in LARPs or online gaming.

And WhiteRat --

I'd agree with your assessment from a different angle: the Pool is not a game until people are playing it.  If they're playing it, they'll create a setting, and then it's a "complete" game.  If no one is playing it, the Pool is just a book.

This is an excellent thread. It's just a shame the Subject title won't make it easy to find for those who go looking for this kind of information. Is it possible to c hange thread titles?

Heya,

The first question's casual use of the word "game", which conflates a number of meanings in this context, is problematic.  By this question are we asking what the social-activity-that-is-the-game is about, or are we asking what the rules-that-compose-the-game are about, or are we asking what the imagined-content-created-by-the-game is about?

What is GURPS about?

Before you start down that path it might be useful to examine the assumptions at the core of your questioning of the question.

Can you find many games for which there is no immediately obvious answer to "what is your game about"...you site GURPS and Changeling as examples.  But why do you assume that those games wouldn't be better if they did have a concise concept of what the game is about?

Isn't it possible that there are alot of games out there that have been designed without asking that key question, and as a result don't have a good answer...and that maybe...asking the question and having a good answer is actually a better way to design games...and that maybe those games would have benefited greatly from some cohesive thought along the lines of these questions when they were being designed...

This is an excellent thread. It's just a shame the Subject title won't make it easy to find for those who go looking for this kind of information. Is it possible to c hange thread titles?

So D&D is about "Killing and looting stuff." That may be true, I was never a big fan.  But its not exactly a very flattering way to put it especially when in the same post we have quotes of indie games, by their authors, who get to make the case for their game very elloquently.

It's a bit like if I were to say regarding painting that "Cubism is about deconstructing form in time and space" and Impressionism "is just tricks dots and light".

gsoylent wrote:
So D&D is about "Killing and looting stuff." That may be true, I was never a big fan.  But its not exactly a very flattering way to put it especially when in the same post we have quotes of indie games, by their authors, who get to make the case for their game very elloquently.

It's a bit like if I were to say regarding painting that "Cubism is about deconstructing form in time and space" and Impressionism "is just tricks dots and light".

Troy_Costisick wrote: The social activity is pre-suposed: you're roleplaying.  The imagined content flows from the rules and system of the game.  So a good answer to the question is an answer that will take all three into account and then provide the designer and/or reader with useable information to begin the design process or discussion.

Joshua wrote: "What kind of play does your gamebook support?"  ... The question remains: what are you, as a game designer, providing for your consumers?

Troy_Costisick wrote: GURPS is about providing users with massive resources and simple mechanics so that they can create adventures in whatever genre or genres they desire.

Well I gotta say, the first question I ask about any game is "what is it about?" and I mean about.

If it's not about anything, I'd rather know that before I invest another second in the game.

I'm in favor of disambiguating the question in the other direction.

-Vincent

Vincent, how do you apply that standard to games like Universalis, GURPS, The Pool, etc?  Games where the 'about' is either skeletal ("stories") or created by the players and not the game designer?

I take the cue from Primetime Adventures: in play, Universalis and The Pool are about the issues raised by the game's fiction's situations, whatever those situations and issues turn out to be. Like Primetime Adventures', their rules are designed to make that happen.

The game designer leaves the "what" of "what it's about" to the players, but in such a way that play WILL be about it.

Whereas GURPS' rules don't reliably make play about anything - GURPS leaves not only "what it's about" but aboutness entire to its players. (In fact, I'd say that GURPS - and not just GURPS, the class of rpgs it represents - isn't even aboutness-neutral, it's aboutness-hostile. It's harder to make play be about something, using some sets of rules, than to make play be about nothing.)

-Vincent

Heya,

Vincent, how do you apply that standard to games like Universalis, GURPS, The Pool, etc?  Games where the 'about' is either skeletal ("stories") or created by the players and not the game designer?

Vincent, I like your answer!  So either the game as written is about something, or it has the explicit potential to be about something.  Either way, when actually played, it will be about something.  Nice and neat.

I'll offer a limp-wristed defense of GURPS and other focusless systems in saying that most of them have a couple things that they can reliably create games about, but those things are never explicitly stated, nor are they explicitly supported.  GURPS, for instance, is very good at narrow-focus objective-based missions.  That's where it started (I have a copy of Orcslayer), and that's what I presume the central designers and writers primarily use it for.  That said, I'll join the chorus saying that a book is more valuable to the customer when it actually says what it does, rather than lets them find out after purchasing.

Troy, I'm not talking about setting.  If I were, I would have included Sorcerer in the list of games with skeletal 'abouts'.  Sorcerer has a very specific, well-defined, and well-supported 'about': arrogance, its price and benefits (paraphrase).  You can express that in whatever setting you like.  The games I listed have no setting, true, but they also have no specific focus.  That part is not in the box, so to speak.  There are games with settings but without foci -- it's just impossible to write a good setting without a focus, so these are usually pretty low-quality.  I won't name names, because with my luck one of the designers will probably be reading.  But all those games that have settings that are just piles of kewl stuff with no real unifying principle other than weak genre conventions?  Yeah, those.  It's possible to pick these up, insert a focus, and make them work, but this typically requires rewriting broad swaths of the setting material.

To sum up: the question "What is your game about?" works best when you're talking about people at a table playing the game (not the book, not the setting, not the system).  The game designer has weak control over Actual Play, but absolute control over what's included in the book, which provides tools, concepts, and opportunities that may be used in Actual Play.  The game designer can't dictate what Actual Play will be like, but he can certainly have intentions as to what he'd like it to be, and can use his control over the contents of the book to provide a set of tools, concepts, and opportunities that can help make his intentions more likely to occur.  But that's long and boring, so let's continue to use "What is your game about?" and refine from there.

Heya,

But that's long and boring, so let's continue to use "What is your game about?" and refine from there.

I've also learned from this thread. The game I'm designing has no setting, but it felt so much like it was about something that the "about" question confused me. Now that I understand how "about" doesn't require a setting, I think I can answer that question for my game.

(And the answer, for the curious, would be something like "My game is about how you choose and how you change when your goals, beliefs, and dreams conflict.")