I don't like it

It's a tool but a blunt one. It's dissecting a frog with a hammer. sure you make it past the skin but what's inside is rendered unrecognizable.

I think it had it's place but it's about time we stop asking what a game is about.

I think it's time to start finding and defining the structures and forms that are common to our work. to find this I think we must give games more credit, they can not be about something.

what is a frog about?

what is a car about?

what is a painting about?

Ask anyone these questions and the answers will vary from person to person. you will learn a little bit about those things but some information will be conflicting or unnecessary, to put it simply it's a poor question .

I agree that the "aboutness" of a game is a tricky question, that is not always easy to understand. I normally try to use questions like "what experience do you want your game to produce?" or "what kind of stories do you want your game to tell?" instead, because I hope they are easier to understand.

The reason why these questions are important is there are this common belief that you can make a game that can be about anything, that can tell any story, that can fit to any setting, and so on. But this is just not true. If you try to make such a game you will only end up failing, so it is important early in the design to decide what is the focus of the game.

A game will always be about something, and this aboutness is defined by the rules and the instructions which are written in the game - no matter what you do (at least I have never seen a game where this is not true). What I normally see when people try to make a general game is that they largely just copy the experience from the systems they use to play (typically d20, storyteller system, basic roleplaying system etc.), and then don't really design their own game experience. And I think that is a shame.

- Anders

Is lord of the rings about friendship? addiction? sweet fantasy battles? loss? fate? sweet elves?

I think asking what a game is about is a stupid question because there is no good answer, making the one asking feel smart and the one asked perplexed.

Much worse the continued use of this question will firmly obscure the real issues at hand, the form and shape of what games are.

thinking a game can be "about " something is to really short change the experience of playing a game.

it's not that I'm against asking questions, far from it. I want to ask better questions.

This topic is too abstract, Tyler. If you want to pursue it as you've framed it, a better site would be Story Games. To continue this conversation here, please provide some concrete idea about a game you'd like to design, and show how "about" is not helpful in dealing with it.

Also, I want to stress that there is no official policy or structure for how to discuss a game here. If you personally don't want to answer "what's it about" for a game you're working on, then when someone asks it, say "I'm not interested," and that's all you have to do. Your post is aimed at trying to structure how the community addresses the question, and that's not allowed here either.

I permitted Luke's thread about the Power 19 only because it helped deconstruct what had accidentally become, over time, an assumed mandate in this forum to apply the Power 19 to one's design. He was right to challenge that idea in order to make First Thoughts threads more personal and specific to the needs of that particular person. If he'd offered instead to say "we should all do XY&Z," then I'd have moderated him just as I'm moderating you now.

I'm happy to see this thread continue. But it must be about a game you're working on, and if you don't want to answer "what is this game about," then simply say you don't want to and move on.

For the record, I agree with you that the "about" question is too blunt.

Best, Ron

It seems to me that most fiction does have some central theme or themes (using "theme" in the literary sense, not Forge-terminology). In that regard, although Lord of the Rings has a lot of smaller ideas, it's really only about one or two major themes. Maybe "fighting against the allure of darkness in order to defeat it" or something; I'm not a literary major.

So in THAT regard, asking the question "What is your game about?" *might* be a good way to make it a lot more cohesive by bringing that to the surface. If you can figure out what your game is really about, it could certainly tie everything together.

On the other hand, I agree that this question isn't necessarily agree that this is appropriate for all RPGs, such as your own (and mine!)

Just my 2c though,
Dan

Ah the power 19 thing is what made me think this kind of tomfoolery was admissible.

I would argue that about question is just as strong if not stronger an assumed mandate as power 19, but that's just how i feel about it.