While the Forge is a role-playing design community, any amount of theory is worth investigating how it applies to our design.

This is an hour-long lecture on design -- but that of open-ended computer games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgQyq3hEPo&feature=channel
Sims creator Will Wright delivered this lecture on Game Design in 2003.

Things to note:
1. Notice how Wright is coming from the same war-game background as many of the role-playing "fathers." His own fascination of game design's appearance in academia mirrors the evolution of The Forge and the Big Model (as I've followed it). Interestingly enough, he coins the term "possibility space" in the same way some role-players define "shared imaginitive space."

2. Listen to his response at the question at about 1:17:00. He's swimming narrativism and gamism playing modes as it relates to his open-ended game.

3. While the discussion about systems dynamics may be out-dated (by six years now), individual indie-game designers might benefit from an understanding of dynamics.

4. In the Q n' A section (as well as earlier), Wright lays out exactly the reason how videogames overcame an obstacle ahead of role-playing games. That is, the computer can be the GM, and other players, for the single human player interested in a game.
Thought-provoking question: How do you see indie-RPGs overcoming that issue? What strategies can they employ?

5. Re: Women game players. Check out his comment at 1:29:00. "Women gamers tend to be more personally invested in their avatars than men." Not that there's a direct correlation to role-playing games, listen to how he deals with first-person or third-person perspective uses in gender.

That is, the computer can be the GM, and other players, for the single human player interested in a game.
Thought-provoking question: How do you see indie-RPGs overcoming that issue? What strategies can they employ?

Indeed, it is hard to imagine role-playing alone, Raven.

My question should have been better phrased:
"How can designers' games help 'lone players' (ie: individuals who want to play but don't have a group) form a new group?"

If role-playing games is incumbent on an audience of groups but individual customers, helping those customers make groups would be a logical step.
Edwards has said in the past that he can't imagine a role-playing market without that 'introductory friend.' (In the 2002, discussion on 'What would make a non-gamer play your game?') Making it easy to be that 'introductory friend' sounds like a valid marketing step for game designers.

I really question this 'it's social!' assertion and it's foregone conclusion certain doors are to be treated as if they are forever closed - is football 'social' because other human beings play in it? I can play practice mode in quake live, with a computer running the opposition. The damn things can even bluff! Other people being in a game doesn't make it a 'social game' - their efforts can be treated as no more than bots, in facing off with them.

The real question for any of us is whether, for our individual cases, roleplay as an activity is like going to the pub for drinks - it's actually about socialising? Or whether it is about winning or engaging hard questions and socialising is actually an add on - as much as people might be in a workshop, creating things, but having a chat while they do it. Are you there to have a chat and the creating is just to keep your hands busy, or are you there to create and the chatting is a nice social thing to do on the side? Which has priority? I think calling roleplay a social activity is just pushing one type of priority, with no evidence that that priority is THE priority for the activity.

It's your thread, HT, so if you want to close that door, okay. But don't assume too quickly it has to be closed.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. That does indeed change things.

Unfortunately, I have no answers for that one*, mainly because I truly suck at that aspect of gaming. Or at least I do now. When I was eight, I was the kid who introduced a bunch of my friends to D&D and so started my hometown's three core groups of gamers throughout grade and middle-school.

However, I am reminded that the Red Box D&D set made this particularly easy, by providing a simple adventure at the beginning of the Player's booklet that served to showcase and teach the system bit-by-bit to the reader-player, and then had a basic adventure included in the DM's booklet that they could run their friends through. It was a very easy introduction, avoiding so many of the pitfalls found in games since then (the two big ones: a dry morass of rules to wade through and no play until you can find a group).

The rulesbook has to act not just as a lecture about the rules, but as that surrogate 'introductory friend'**: the one who knows the rules and sits down to play the game with you thus teaching you the rules, so you can not only 1) get excited about playing, because you just played and boy was it cool and fun! but 2) know the rules because you've played using them and now you know how the pieces work together! Making it MUCH easier to teach others, as it provides both knowledge (I know this) and confidence (I can do this because I have done this).

**Importantly, the actual rules of the game are all at the back of the book. The introductory adventure/rules training-play are at the front as the very first thing in the book. Which is exactly how it happens if a flesh-and-blood friend brings their game over: you play, you learn, then you read the rules. (And, IME, most people who are handed a rulebook and told to make a character/read the rules quickly decide they aren't that interested in playing after all. Completely and totally unsurprisingly.)

I've actually mentioned all this a number of times in the past, especially in regards to how to improve indie games, but as yet I'm unaware of anyone who has taken up the challenge to design their books as actual teaching/training aides rather than as essentially technical manuals rules compendiums for gamers. There is a difference between training and telling: RPG rulebooks, indie and otherwise, tell. Even if they do it in a fun manner, they still just tell.

**(Ok, maybe I did have an answer for that one.)

As a matter of fact, HT, it's interesting to me that you bring this subject up.

There are a LOT of different variations playing RPGs these days especially in indie circles; i.e for divvying up narration and content-introduction responsibilities. This is all well and good, but as a player, my own ideal play experience is to treat the imagined world as a virtual world, which is precisely what I would ask for from a computer-generated virtual world.

This is a big reason why I want to actively avoid heavily-distributed narration responsibilities, because it gives those players who share in the narration a "peek behind the curtain", revealing the virtual world for what it really is and destroying the magic. It's like getting caught in a glitch in a MMOG, such as happened to me on Ultima Online .. totally killed the experience when I fell under the world and got stuck at (X, Y, -1000). I feel this same loss when my tabletop GM reveals to me, after the game, how the in-game and apparently spontaneous experiences actually came together. (Couldn't blame him for telling me though as he was a GM-in-training asking for my advice .. but it still sucked to know.)

On that note, I've been researching theory and world on the generation of convincing and immersive MMOG virtual worlds, because there's a lot of parallel between what the designers of these games have to think about, and what the GM of a "virtual world SIS" game has to think about. Granted there are major differences: the computer can show you a particular elf entering a particular bar and ordering a particular drink, whereas the tabletop GM needs good storytelling skills to bring the point home, but in both cases, the goal is to use techniques to draw the player in and make them imagine that they're *really* watching an elf get drunk.

Furthermore, as designers of table-top RPGs, I think we can get lazy in ways that computer-game designers absolutely cannot afford to. I agree with Raven that, in D&D at least, the DM's Guide is more of a technical manual that seems to assume the person who is DM already has a strong understanding of how to run an effective game (or least, their attempts to teach DMs in the manual are really half-assed). MMOG designers absolutely must assume the players are complete and utter "noobs", and do not assume the players have preexisting knowledge (though the best games allow those players who do know what they're doing to skip the first stages quickly.) The games that scare away new, knowledgeless players are the ones that don't sell. I think we should be approaching table-top RPGs. I'd been playing AD&D 2nd Ed for a long time before 3rd/3.5th edition was even a twinkle in a Tweet eye, but when I first picked up the DM's Guide for v3.0/3.5, I literally skimmed through the book and saw the NPC-population-, dungeon-, traps-, and cosmology-generation material and thought to myself "what the hell IS this shit? when am I going to use it?"  I still have no answer for the latter question.

For my own game, I'm going to assume that the GMs are smart enough to build content and share it with each other on their own (or that books can be written with more specific content). For the core GM's Guide, I'll be attempting to weave subtle hints on storytelling techniques and social cohesion (such as the group-building techniques you might find at a business getaway, but not quite so hideously obvious). I say I want to do it in a subtle manner because, also as Raven points out, it's not fun being told I have to do this-and-this to have a great gaming experience, because it feels like I'm being lectured. If it's woven into the rules, it becomes unobtrusive. If the game manuals are transparent and "user" oriented, I think the gaming experience will be a hundred times more fun.

(Actually I think the tabletop gaming market must orient itself this way eventually to become a lot more user-friendly. Computer technology is advancing so rapidly, it may bridge the gap and finally make tabletop games altogether superfluous. I don't think this will happen til LONG after I expire, but if tabletops don't evolve, I'm worried they may die out before their time, which would be a shame.)

Dan

Just watched the video at the link you posted, HT

Thanks for posting! I especially loved the comment on how the designers have to really program TWO systems. Not just the technology, but the psychology of the users. As tabletop designers, we too have to worry about mechanics and player psychology.

Well, I’m glad you watched the video, ShallowThoughts! The way the conversation was going, I started to worry a bit.. Understandably, it is a LONG video (about an hour and 40 minutes.)

Both you and Dan have hit on an essential bridge between table-top and computer RPGs that I’ve been discovering.
Role-playing with the computer is wildly different than role-playing with friends.
In terms of its effect on the brain,
Table-top play:computer play::the book itself:movies of the book
(Let me know if I should decode the analogy.)
Computer games have had to surmount a lot of “publishing concerns” (the need of sophisticated programming) compared to table-top games – which is why they’re behind on the theory of gaming. When I was first applying into the videogame industry (note: I’m a reporter, not yet in videogames), the big push was “how do we get women to play videogames?” Interestingly, table-top play has made much more headway – even carrying the load of things like narrative and character (as opposed to chess or Monopoly.)
Dan, I loved your image of the elf going into the bar. It’s what spawned the analogy above; it also proves that computer games still have to get players to imagine – they just have different cues than a GM does.
Table-top game design may never be computer game design, but the two share so much in what they’re attempting to do. I’ve learned a lot from studying both computer design and table-top design (which oddly enough has resulted in a mere board-game, hardly a table-top role-playing game.)

Despite all this talk about what a computer game designer has learned from role-playing game design, I’m posting on a table-top games forum.
What kinds of “lessons” (concepts influential to design) can table-top RPG designers learn from computer designers?
I think Raven has pulled out one of the first and most specific concepts: using a player walk-through of sample gameplay.
Sounds like the tutorial stages of most games.

In future design, I’ll make it a matter of form to incorporate a ‘walk-through.’
(Note of interest: the first board-game that I saw this used was Starship of Catan.)

HeTeleports wrote:
Table-top play:computer play::the book itself:movies of the book

<snip>

Dan, I loved your image of the elf going into the bar. It’s what spawned the analogy above; it also proves that computer games still have to get players to imagine – they just have different cues than a GM does.
Table-top game design may never be computer game design, but the two share so much in what they’re attempting to do. I’ve learned a lot from studying both computer design and table-top design (which oddly enough has resulted in a mere board-game, hardly a table-top role-playing game.)

A solo role player is called something else, an author.

This is definitely not the first time the issue of solo roleplaying has come up on the forge. I highly recommend reading this thought provoking thread on the subject.

I think the most important lesson to learn from Will Wright is that he doesn't make games. He makes, for lack of a better word, what he sometimes calls "toys". More particularly, his "toys" are not really "about" anything. Instead, they are better viewed as a toolbox, which the player uses for his own purposes. Will's interest seems to be much more about "what do people do with this toy" than it is "I want people to investigate this experience or theme".

While the role-playing game designer may care a lot about theme and how players of his game work with that theme, it seems to me that the the role-playing game player is more interested in games as these toys/toolboxes, that they can rip apart and put together for their own purposes.

However, no game can be all things to all people. That is, no toy can be all toys. All toys have inherent constraints, no matter how they are made. Designers should not avoid constraints, but embrace them. Likewise, theme is simply a constraint, like "it's square" or "you move little people around". The job of the designer is to make the toy the most fun within the constraints provided, not to make a constraint-free toy. The job of the player is to pick toys that have the constraints that match what they want (that is, don't use a toy hammer and complain it isn't right if what you want is a doll).

Yeah, but half the fun is using the doll as a hammer.

Excellent way to put it, Wordman.  X-)

Wordman (BTW, what's your name? I'd rather talk to an adult than to a handle),

I feel you've ignored the point I was making in order to quip wittily.

I'm saying that theme is only a constraint: not a necessary constraint.

But not an unnecessary one either, which is what your argument seems to be: against designing according to theme, or designing a game according to a given or desired type of constraint(s), because you personally don't want something with that particular constraint. But you may as well be arguing that you don't think people should make tools that serve particular purposes because finding a rock that works is more fun.

The thing is, we're all quite aware that players are going to do whatever they're going to do with a game, regardless of the designer's intent. This isn't news to anyone. However, it is also a trusim that in this industry, designing games that "do anything" has resulted in a lot of problematic play, paradoxical or mistaken ideas about play, and general confusion. Clear, focused design that is clear about what the game is for and what you do with it--that is, what the rules actually do--solves many, many problems and makes the uses of the pieces outside of their context far clearer.

Even Will Wright's "toys" come with constraints, they're all "about" stuff, though not in a blatantly up-front way. The Sims, not matter how many different things you can do with it, is still about little people and their feelings and what happens to them in their world. It isn't an FPS, space-combat story, or exploration of evolutionary theory, and really can't be. It has constraints.

Good games provide guidance on what you CAN do with them, regardless of what a player actually does with them. If someone finds another use for it, another thing they can do with it that it works for, awesome. But no one goes around saying, "Don't design a tool that's a pounding tool! People want to find out what they can do with a tool, not be told what to do with it!"

Ultimately, though, there is no rule that "games must have theme!" and your  arbitrarily reactionary (seemingly) position towards the production of designs with that one type of constraint--rather than towards any other type of constraint--seems to imply you feel there is some rule of such sort, and that you believe roleplayers as a whole reject and dislike the idea (though these forums and the success of so-called "themed" games implies that gamers do in fact like that type of game as much as so-called "toolboxy" games). Because it is also true that some good percentage of gamers also don't necessarily find using a doll as a hammer all that fun.

I hope I'm not interrupting here, Wordman. This is an issue I have a vested interest in. (I'll shut up upon request)

greyorm wrote:
I'm saying that theme is only a constraint: not a necessary constraint.

But not an unnecessary one either, which is what your argument seems to be: against designing according to theme, or designing a game according to a given or desired type of constraint(s), because you personally don't want something with that particular constraint. But you may as well be arguing that you don't think people should make tools that serve particular purposes because finding a rock that works is more fun.

greyorm wrote:
The thing is, we're all quite aware that players are going to do whatever they're going to do with a game, regardless of the designer's intent. This isn't news to anyone. However, it is also a trusim that in this industry, designing games that "do anything" has resulted in a lot of problematic play, paradoxical or mistaken ideas about play, and general confusion.

greyorm wrote:
Clear, focused design that is clear about what the game is for and what you do with it--that is, what the rules actually do--solves many, many problems and makes the uses of the pieces outside of their context far clearer.

<swap>

Good games provide guidance on what you CAN do with them, regardless of what a player actually does with them. If someone finds another use for it, another thing they can do with it that it works for, awesome. But no one goes around saying, "Don't design a tool that's a pounding tool! People want to find out what they can do with a tool, not be told what to do with it!"

greyorm wrote:
Ultimately, though, there is no rule that "games must have theme!" and your  arbitrarily reactionary (seemingly) position towards the production of designs with that one type of constraint--rather than towards any other type of constraint--seems to imply you feel there is some rule of such sort, and that you believe roleplayers as a whole reject and dislike the idea (though these forums and the success of so-called "themed" games implies that gamers do in fact like that type of game as much as so-called "toolboxy" games). Because it is also true that some good percentage of gamers also don't necessarily find using a doll as a hammer all that fun.

Will Wright created a computer generated doll house. Simple really, it's kind of surprising somebody didn't think of it sooner. I have an (adult) sister who obsessively plays the Sims. She uses it to play god over her life.  She always makes herself, than she'll make everyone in her life, or some fantasy world (like Twilight) and control all of them.  

I think the real lesson to be learned here is (in general) men are interested in experiencing a fantasy as an individual and women are interested in experiencing a fantasy as a community.  

I would disagree with Will Wright about computer games overcoming an "obstacle."  I don't think GMs ever have a problem running the game, but only don't enjoy all the work that goes into planning a game. Instead, they just shifted the work load from the GM to the game developers. The only obstacle that computer games have overcome is finding a group of friends to play with...

Despite his successful career, I'm not sure Will has a very good idea of what makes a successful game. The Sims online showed that he had no idea how/why the Sims was successful.  (With the interactive doll house version of the game, many players just cheat to get money so they can design a perfect life. They also refer to play as a "community.")  In the Sims online, money was hard to come by, so you couldn't just build a dollhouse and play a perfect life. You had to work for it, just like real life, what's the appeal in that?  Also, you only controlled one character, not a whole community.

Spore showed me that he had no idea how rewards affect player behavior (or more specifically, the desire to keep playing.)  All your creature design decisions were wiped out as soon as you advanced ages. If you worked harder at a particular age, it didn't matter as soon as you advanced to the next age. If you designed your creatures or buildings, you couldn't view them as soon as you advanced an age or two.  The penultimate space age had about 0% to do with the first 4/5ths of the game.  You could lovingly raise your creatures or design your worlds, but at the end of the day you weren't *rewarded* squat.

I think the important lesson that Will can teach us from the other end of the games industry is that you must watch how your players play the game, and design it to maximize fun in that style of play.

Heya Daniel, line-by-lines aren't usually productive. Either you get what I'm saying, and you can respond to that, or you don't, and can't. I can't respond piecemeal, because my point isn't piecemeal. I'm presenting ideas and facts, and going "Oh, you used the wrong word so now your point is totally invalid! Hah!" is a failure to engage in productive communication. Seriously, I'm supposed to dicker over the use of the correct usage of the word "truism" or "purpose/theme/constraint" in order to defend the point? I don't even know if you GOT the point I was trying to make.

Given that, the only part of your post I can actually respond to as a point in the discussion is:

I can still build a deck of cards for the purpose of being able to use it for a variety of different varieties of games. I can build a swiss-army knife to be useful in lots of odd jobs, with only a vague idea ahead of time on what those jobs will be. Both of these tools have constraints, but their applications are still virtually limitless.

Is it a flawed knee-jerk reaction that people who participate in these games (i.e. the players themselves) use them in so many ways besides that main way to play? You're going to tell everyone they're having fun the wrong way, because they're banging nails with dolls instead of hammers though still having a great time?

greyorm wrote:
Heya Daniel, line-by-lines aren't usually productive. Either you get what I'm saying, and you can respond to that, or you don't, and can't. I can't respond piecemeal, because my point isn't piecemeal. I'm presenting ideas and facts, and going "Oh, you used the wrong word so now your point is totally invalid! Hah!" is a failure to engage in productive communication. Seriously, I'm supposed to dicker over the use of the correct usage of the word "truism" or "purpose/theme/constraint" in order to defend the point? I don't even know if you GOT the point I was trying to make.

greyorm wrote:
Given that, the only part of your post I can actually respond to as a point in the discussion is:

I can still build a deck of cards for the purpose of being able to use it for a variety of different varieties of games. I can build a swiss-army knife to be useful in lots of odd jobs, with only a vague idea ahead of time on what those jobs will be. Both of these tools have constraints, but their applications are still virtually limitless.

Yep. You can. Just said this.

greyorm wrote:
< .. >
I'm all for better design of so-called "toolboxy" games, rather than designs that folks believe are completely toolboxy, but suffer significantly because they aren't, or aren't as much as the designers think they are (AD&D 2nd Edition comes to mind, as does GURPs: they're both toolboxy, trying to be/provide everything to everyone, but their actual constraints, constraints that really do significantly affect play and what can effectively be done with the tools in the box, are completely glossed over and ignored as though they don't exist or matter).

greyorm wrote:
But whether or not toolboxy games should or shouldn't be created, or even how they should be designed, wasn't the point of my argument.

Damnit, Daniel. I'm not talking out of my ass here. Really. I'll PM you shortly with a more in depth answer on the subject because that whole part of this discussion is off-topic for this thread. Just please review site policies and etiquette and in the stickied topics Etiquette at the Forge and Charitable Reading.

On the actual thread topic, I am seeing from the later part of your response that there was clearly some miscommunication and that my point and the purpose of various statements I made in service to that point were NOT as clear as I'd thought. For example: I did not say theme was both necessary and unnecessary, I said it was neither necessary nor unnecessary. That theme was not something you HAD TO have in your game, but also that it was not something you SHOULD NOT have.

Does that make sense now?

Re: sucky designs. That wasn't what those examples were meant to indicate. Yes, clearly, avoid sucky designs. But what is a sucky design? I'm not talking about something so vague as all that. Here's what I meant for you to consider regarding the two example games I mentioned:

AD&D 2nd Edition is incoherent as heck because it is trying to be all things to all people: it literally doesn't know if it is a game about dungeon-crawling (ie: traps, monsters, treasure) or a game about a medieval fantasy narrative (ie: simulating the people of a pseudo-medieval society) or creating a tale of adventure (ie: heroic sword & sorcery stories about mighty warriors and wizards). It has pieces of all of those, but nothing coherent, and many of the pieces that serve one "about" don't serve (and often detract from) the other "abouts", making play a frustrating mess and leading to endless houseruling to "fix" the rules so they do "what they're 'supposed' to".

GURPs is a solid, coherent design, it isn't trying to be a half-dozen different things. But it is also confused. It says it is a generic RPG--that you can do anything with it--without recognizing and passing on that various parts of its design make it unsuitable for doing SOME things with, that without changing or ignoring certain rules, certain genres and styles and "feels" of game can't be emulated well, without extreme difficulty, or at all. There are certain superhero or pulpy-style games that just don't work well with a GURPs ruleset because of the inherent constraints of the basic rules, an idea which isn't even on people's radar who and really believe that it can do anything and that any rule can serve any purpose: that rules don't influence how play is perceived, felt, experienced, contributed to, and what develops from it.

Knowing that about the examples now, is the point I was making--about games that want to try to be toolboxy needing to be clearer about what they can and can't do, and how the idea of "do anything" games has resulted in a lot of problematic play, paradoxical or mistaken ideas about play, and general confusion in the hobby--more clear? And how that relates to the big question about being "toolboxy" or "themed"?

Finally, I want to call you out on a double-standard you just used: the arguments you contest above, where you say are just "Raven says", have been based on observation: because it has been studied and observed (that's why it is a truism: it is a statement of fact whose supporting arguments are not being repeated for purposes of brevity). You can't say, "Oh, that's just how it is seen from your bubble," then turn around and tell David, "I trust Will Wright's argument because he's seen and observed these things!" because you are arbitrarily deciding that one person's observations are fact and another's--actually, a whole group of skilled, intelligent people who have spent the better part of a decade studying these issues in the hobby climate--are just opinion.

If we are going to argue "I trust Will Wright. Will Wright knows what he's talking about. We should listen to him!" then we have to have a standard to judge by which we can make the claim that he "knows what he's talking about": does his understanding of design produce games that support what his understanding states? David has provided some indication that Will's opinions, that is his understanding of how to build games enjoyed by a diverse player base or why one of his games was enjoyed so highly and was so popular, has not created reproducible results with his other games. On that basis, we could call into question the idea that was put forth of toyboxy design being the reason for his game's popularity, or that it is a better way of creating games (rather than merely one among many).

what a cool post!

AzaLiN wrote:
what a cool post!