[Cracks his knuckles and begins typing...]

Okay, today's the first asymptomatic day I've had since I got that cold; I think I'll celebrate by trying to unravel what I've wrought. If you want to understand the point I was trying to make, keep reading. If you think it's all a bunch of hooey, the door is right over there.

Anyway, as the title suggests, the realm I've been meaning to discuss is that of elegance and deliberateness in role-playing game design. In this discussion, any relationship between elegance and deliberateness in design isn't relevant. Furthermore, it should be very clear that elegance means different things to different people at different times. However, I think we can say a lot more than "write elegantly" and "good luck with whatever that is."

To me the concept of 'what kind of elegance' in role-playing game design is like the presence of a 'neon sign' outside a 'stained glass window.' You can always tell that 'something is out there' is shining in, but you can't always read the message (even if you get real close to the window). What I've been trying to get at is the internal consistency or coherence of the elegance (and any 'statement' that might make). It's important to separate this from your garden variety 'coherence essays;' they're basically talking about making a good 'stained glass window.' (Nothing wrong with that, so let's assume that you've got that under control as much as you like.)

The thing about a 'stained glass window' is that light is supposed to pass through them. During the day, all you see is the 'window' and the totality of its image. At night however, what 'neon signs' cast their glow becomes more evident. As the designer, you can control both the 'window' and the 'sign' (this is deliberateness; simply affecting these things would be otherwise). As a deliberate designer, I really feel that some advice is needed and possible, but often cannot find the words. If you can, why not create both 'neon' and 'stained glass' in concert? I seek to discuss issues regarding the 'neon sign' here. (If you only 'play during the day,' pray, don't continue reading.)

So let's jump into a few examples, shall we?

Let's say you editing a list of spells and you've come across one called 'Pebbles into Jelly Beans' and you've decided to keep it because 'it fits' what you want. There are a number of elegance-based choices you could make:

• Relate this spell to the spell 'Create Food' in terms of quantity, nutrition, sustenance, and pleasingness
• Consider how often and how much 'impact' use of the spell will have on 'game play as you imagine it' compared to others
• Make it 'optional' and ignore it
• All three
• None of the above; just call it miscellany

All of these choices each create a 'different kind of elegance.' I don't see any of them as particularly better or worse, but a few create a 'neon sign' that would (if I can see it) turn me off of the game. Now there are a few issues going around here. (And many other potential choices, this is just an example.)

First is how the choices relate to each other. I'm sure some thinkers have gone, "That one's a physics-based choice, that one is game balance, and that one...." I believe still others seek to pigeonhole the whole list in GNS terms; "Gamism, Narrativism, Simulationism, Incoherentism...." These are all fine analyses, but the miss the overall point. I'm not talking about so superficial a point as 'keep your game design consistent,' I'm saying 'what message does your consistency give?' I'm suggesting looking for that 'neon sign.'

The second issue is how well they relate to similar choices made throughout the game's design. This then becomes more than a simple issue of 'stick to the same priorities throughout,' but accepts the fact that for different aspects, different priorities apply. For example, some designers would simply cut a spell like this because it superficially looks like 'filler,' others might keep it out of some concept of 'color,' still others won't consider any cool idea worth cutting regardless of what the 'neon sign' winds up saying.

And finally, the issue I've been 'reaching for,' how does the presence of a 'Pebbles into Jelly Beans' spell in general, suggest an agenda for the overall game and how does that relate to your choice of how to make use of it. This goes a little deeper than 'control the color aspects of your game' and gets at a kind of presentation agenda. In this example, if we include lots of these spells, it suggests certain things about completeness of listings, eccentricity of 'game world,' how much of a 'suggestive text' the game should be considered (as opposed to 'nothing else exists' texts), and so on. I take this to a 'higher level,' by suggesting that each of these agendas might actually together relate to the 'neon sign' of the game. That is to say that 'having spells like Pebbles...' and using it to illustrate the 'eccentricity...' together say something in the overall 'movement' of the design; what this says is the message 'written in neon.' (And it’s a different message from 'having spells like Pebbles...' and 'completeness of listings' or sidelining 'spells like Pebbles...' and making it 'suggestive text.')

How about another example?

You've decided to include a listing of 'the popcorn grenade.' This is a prop that, when activated, fills the room waist-deep with popcorn, three will blow out doors and windows. Again, you're faced with a number of elegance-based decisions:

• Will this make use of mechanics that slow the game while the characters sort out the problems of being half buried?
• Should there be mechanics to determine what happens outside of the assumed room? How complicated should those be?
• Should the results be considered trivial so that both the players and the characters can press on to the next unlikely event?
• Will 'leftovers' even be considered once the scene of the explosion is left behind?
• Because the '...grenade' is just example text, should you just leave these details to the imaginations of the participants?
• How well does the game suggest that this is a frequent/infrequent/rare circumstance?

As before, these equally valid questions to consider and each makes a statement about 'what the game is about' both on the 'stained glass' way and in the 'neon sign.' The 'stained glass' works on 'what it is like in the game for the characters,' but also what kind of 'style agenda' the game pursues (cartoony, wacky, post modern, or counter-culture, to name a few). The 'neon sign' speaks about how 'just having' popcorn grenades relates to the 'style agenda.'

Whether you choose to 'mechanize' or 'flavor-text'ize this material is not always controlled by your choice to include it. It is the combination of these factors that begins to bend the glass tubing for the 'neon sign.' It may seem inelegant to resort to mechanics for wading through popcorn or to force calculation of volumes, but taken with the possibility of popcorn grenades (and suitable rules) it can make for a certain kind of elegance in you choose to pursue it. To not consider what kind of elegance you are creating runs serious risk of making the game seem 'slapped together' in the bad way.

An additional possibility also results; keeping the elegance in keeping with the 'stuff' in the game is a good thing I think. I do this deliberately, others easily rely upon ready talent. An example would be slapping together a Tank Girl game and depending upon the 'slapped together' feel of the elegance to carry forward the 'presentation agenda' of the overall impact of the game upon its audience. Abandoning a certain 'completeness' would work in favor of the elegance of the game. Conversely simply depending upon crude construction would run the risk of simply turning off the audience because of poor 'ease of use' issues. Furthermore, each designer has different opinions upon what is crude and what isn't that varies depending upon issues relating to 'what the game is about.' The consideration of this is what I'm calling the 'neon sign.'

Let's take this a different direction:

Say you're creating a game with superpowers. You've decided to allow things like web-shooters in the game. These are minor things, you think, which allow 'more design freedom' in character generation. How you handle them becomes a different set of elegance-based issues:

• How broadly do you want to interpret the capabilities of different types of these gadgets?
• What about the 'relative' consequences of possessing these unique items to others similar?
• Are you going to mention consideration of the high-tech applications and marketing of the underlying technology?
• Should the technology needed to create, maintain, repair, and use these items even be a consideration to ongoing play? How will you manifest that in the text?
• How much of a headache will it be to detail out all the possible technological applications?

This is another set of equally valid questions that not only deals with both a consistency of structure, but one of authoring as well. The level of sophistication which the rules and game apply themselves to this sophisticated type of prop says something more than 'this game is consistent' or 'this game is realistic.' It 'switches on' that 'neon sign' when the players 'get familiar' with the game.

Are you going to be saying that play should be as unrealistic as the rules are about web-shooters without intending to? Will you want the game to play as detailed as you make the rules regarding web-shooting, maintenance, and repair? Do you want the range of game play to contrast the range of gadget selection? The inclusion of web-shooters may say something about the quality and depth of the 'game world,' but I'm talking about how both the "inclusion" and the "depth" 'work together' to make a 'neon sign' representing your game's 'type of elegance.'

This is why I'm having so much trouble discussing the whole issue. Practical applications of design tend to obscure discussions of any 'overall movement' of elegance. We get so caught up in talking about things relating to the 'stained glass' and that terminology so that it throws us repeatedly back into 'stained glass' discussions, that I haven't seen any discussion of what you can use elegance for. Topics like the application or 'properness' of the inclusion of something overshadow the 'big picture' result of its inclusion. Discussions of the functions of things within the game 'drown out' talking about the relativism of how that functionality relates to the functionality of the overall game and what 'ease of use' aesthetics are felt from that relativity. Analyses of the relationship between 'things within the game' and 'the larger game' tend to block how that reflects and affects how players should relate to the game.

It's all a matter of elegance (and for me, deliberateness) in game design. I'm thinking we can talk about looking at it, but obviously haven't the language yet to get past discussions of 'stained glass window' issues to get at 'what shines through.' I'd like to think this is more than just an accident of talent or a topic of obscure interest that cannot practically be considered.

But in that, I might be wrong.

Fang Langford

In Laymen's terms, would this be:

Yeah, let's talk about the game as it relates to the larger picture of gaming, but let's also accept a game for what it is and talk about the finer points that it has to offer in the context of the game itself.

So a game about Aardvarks and the French Revolution could be discussed on a Stained Glass level about whether or not it's GNS and how it measures up to historically based games? While the neon sign of the game is how well the aardvarks overlapping plates can withstand random gun fire (considering on not considering that games mechanics)?

JOE--

So, Fang, I'd like you to clarify what you mean by 'elegance' here. I think I'm seeing something behind your post, but I'm getting hopelessly mired in your examples and frenzied topic-switching. I'd really like to know what's going on.

If I'm not mistaken, you're bringing up a question of how the game interacts with its players, NOT how the players interact with the game, which is the 'stained glass' component of the discussion.

Hey Joe,

Very thought provoking addition...

dragongrace wrote: In Laymen's terms, would this be:

Yeah, let's talk about the game as it relates to the larger picture of gaming, but let's also accept a game for what it is and talk about the finer points that it has to offer in the context of the game itself.

dragongrace wrote: So a game about Aardvarks and the French Revolution could be discussed on a Stained Glass level about whether or not it's GNS and how it measures up to historically based games? While the neon sign of the game is how well the aardvark's overlapping plates can withstand random gunfire (considering on not considering that games mechanics)?

Hey Shreyas,

Wow, I wish I'd thought of that angle.

Shreyas Sampat wrote: I'd like you to clarify what you mean by 'elegance' here....

If I'm not mistaken, you're bringing up a question of how the game interacts with its players, NOT how the players interact with the game, which is the 'stained glass' component of the discussion.

Just trying to understand. Deliberateness then is a matter of the purpose of a game's elements. The inclusion of aardvarks into a French revolution setting should be meant to have an obvious(Neon Sign) purpose for the point of the game, like a symbolic representation of a Traitorous nature.

Stained glass efforts mire the purpose by focusing on less important issues such as combat effectiveness, organic plating, favorite foods, etc.

Elegence in this then is how well the idea is delivered. If the mechincs and writing of the game reinforce the idea that the Aardvark is a symbol and all else being equal the focus of the game is the idea of realtionships and betrayal. The aardvark used as the symbol for this becomes an aesthetic designer based decision.

JOE--

Fang,

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the 'Neon Sign' is the overall message of the game that gets transmitted through the 'Stain Glass' of the game itself?

Put another way, the sum total of interactions, comparison points, and contrasting points within the game add up to the Elegance of the game, which is the 'Neon Sign' that the designers are putting across (either intentionally or unintentionally).

I'm not equating 'message' here with Premise/Theme and their analogues. The message may be as simple as 'this is how this game is player or this is what this game is about'. The message can also be a shared asthetic feeling as well, on a real emotional or visceral level, as I see it.

Assuming my statements above are anywhere near true - how would a designer go about deliberately putting up a Neon Sign that says specifically what they want it to say?

Cheers,



Jason

Hey Fang,

What your talking about does seem to resemble theme and symbology to me. Orwell put the hogs in charge of the farm for a reason (neon), regardless of his grammar (stained glass).

Doesn't this really dip deep into the area of talent and artistry though? A craftsman must be well familiar with the materials and the tools if there is any hope of the product being finely made.

-Chris

Hey Joe,

dragongrace wrote: Deliberateness then is a matter of the purpose of a game's elements. The inclusion of aardvarks into a French revolution setting should be meant to have an obvious (Neon Sign) purpose for the point of the game, like a symbolic representation of a Traitorous nature.

dragongrace wrote: Elegance in this then is how well the idea is delivered. If the mechanics and writing of the game reinforce the idea that the Aardvark is a symbol and all else being equal the focus of the game is the idea of relationships and betrayal. The aardvark used as the symbol for this becomes an aesthetic designer based decision.

Yow Jason,

If you put "elegance" as plural, it really sounds like you've got what I'm talking about.

deadpanbob wrote: Assuming my statements above are anywhere near true - how would a designer go about deliberately putting up a Neon Sign that says specifically what they want it to say?

C. Edwards wrote: What your talking about does seem to resemble theme and symbology to me. Orwell put the hogs in charge of the farm for a reason (neon), regardless of his grammar (stained glass).

C. Edwards wrote: Doesn't this really dip deep into the area of talent and artistry though? A craftsman must be well familiar with the materials and the tools if there is any hope of the product being finely made.

Um, I think people already do this. To the extent that they fail it's not because they don't understand it intuitively, they do. It's because it's an art, and part of a developing hobby. That's why, IMO, you can't find a way to discuss it. As designs improve so too will success here inevitably.

It all sounds to me like you're suggesting "have a plan and go with it." How do you achieve a plan? Well, Start, Find, Add. Which is sound advice, but not particularly new.

But then I'm probably grossly misreading this one, too.

As for Elegance, I wish you had used a different term. Not that it's way out of whack here, but it already has an application to all areas of design. That being greater simplicity without reducing quality. If this term sticks, we'll have to speak of Design Elegance, and Stylistic Elegance, or something.

Mike

Hey Mike,

Good to hear from you. It's always good to hear another side of an issue. You seem to be right on top of this idea too. (I'm not surprised, you're a good designer; you probably 'write in neon in your sleep.')

Mike Holmes wrote: I think people already do this. To the extent that they fail it's not because they don't understand it intuitively, they do. It's because it's an art, and part of a developing hobby. That's why, IMO, you can't find a way to discuss it. As designs improve so too will success here inevitably.

Mike Holmes wrote: It all sounds to me like you're suggesting "have a plan and go with it." How do you achieve a plan? Well, Start, Find, Add. Which is sound advice, but not particularly new.

Mike Holmes wrote: As for Elegance, I wish you had used a different term. Not that it's way out of whack here, but it already has an application to all areas of design. That being greater simplicity without reducing quality. If this term sticks, we'll have to speak of Design Elegance, and Stylistic Elegance, or something.

I think I see what you're going for, Fang, and I agree that elegance is perhaps not exactly right, nor exactly wrong.

To parse it in my own words, you're looking at the quality of communicating something - your 'neon sign' - through the characteristics of all elements of the piece. Their unity, dissonance, coherence, incompleteness, etc. as part and parcel of the work.

And what you're wanting to do is talk about ways to promote, analyze, and cross-check these meta-characteristics.

An analogous act in novel-writing might be to convey a theme of 'endless repetition' by making every chapter exactly the same length, always begin them on a left-hand page, always open a chapter with dialogue and follow with action, and so on.

I'd suggest that looking at them as meta-characteristics is, at least in a limited mode, useful. (Endless regression of "meta's" and efforts to separate their levels rigidly is always pernicious taxonomy.) Not only should the details of the piece (the rules content, the setting description, the chargen process, etc) reflect your themes, but the characteristics of those details (the length of the rules section, the completeness of the setting, the pacing of chargen) should do so as well. And, moreover, that the relationships between those characteristics, the meta-characteristics, should also reflect your themes... in a game about growing from innocent childhood to a brutally regimented maturity, the chargen process might be free, easy, and quick, but the conflict resolution system might be coldly rigid, and the contrast between the two would support the feel of the game.

This can regress infinitely, because every facet of a datum, every relationship, is itself a datum. As you point out with your Tank Girl example, the very inelegance, the blithering incoherence, of the design could be considered elegant, because it does so to an end and with clear purpose. The elegance of the design is a meta-characteristic of high order, stemming from the interactions of meta-characteristics of lower orders, and is itself part of the message the game sends, just as is every other characteristic of the game, meta- or otherwise.

A pity the word has been coopted, because 'coherence' would be a much more appropriate word here, as I understand it, than elegance. Not just GNS coherence, but coherent message-sending from the whole body of the work, so as to reinforce whatever it is the designer is trying to say. Holistic coherence of the game.

Elegance in the sense of greater simplicity without affecting quality is one route to this end, but only one. If you could improve the holistic coherence of the Tank Girl RPG by adding a layer of random complexity to chargen and changing nothing else - to help convey a sort of helplessness in the face of a bizarre and whimsy-ridden universe - this would not affect simplicity, but it might improve holistic coherence. In this case, elegance in the sense Mike is suggesting may not be the design goal.

Elegance in the mathematical sense is, IMO, a little harder to pin down; one solution could actually be simpler, but another one more elegant, though it's rare. The distinction would be that the second one crystallized its concepts better, had them fit together seamlessly and without extraneous detail. It's the mathematical equivalent of making an acrobatics trick look easy.

As such it's definitely related to your original conception, but there is still perhaps a distinction to be drawn between a holistically effective game and an elegant one. A holistically coherent game applies all its elements to its message, achieving maximum communication from designer to reader via all available avenues. An elegant game communicates with the reader - again via all its avenues and meta- levels - in a way which is seamless, smooth, and pleasingly consistent. If the message which a holistically coherent game wishes to convey is, itself, inelegant, then the two diverge, the game feels evocative, but inelegant. (Kill Puppies For Satan may be an example; I haven't read it.) A minimum level of each one is required for the other one to be visible, but elegance pertains to the level of style in the communication of a message, and holistic coherence to the interaction of the various elements within that communication.

All of that being said, I have one suggestion for another way to look at Fang's deliberate-design guidelines, which is as "filters". Take each element of the design, and treat it as a 'filter' through which you view the rest of the design. Observe interactions which help you, and ones which contradict the themes you're looking for. Then come back at it with those interactions themselves as filters through which you view the design. If you're talking about a game of disunity, then perhaps having every element of the game be unified in talking about disunity might produce a less effective message than a little disunity at the meta-level... let's try letting one section be unified throughout its text as written, and use the dissonance at the meta-level to stress our themes instead.

Finally, Fang, this talk of deliberateness and elegance does flag exactly my own issues with Scattershot, which I find perhaps the most interesting thing of all in this. The play content of Scattershot is designed to be highly variable and customizable... but the presentation is not holistically coherent with this, because the very deliberateness and methodical quality of the design shows through, and is a 'neon sign' which signals (to me, on some subtextual level) "Everything has been thought through in this, there are no loose ends left hanging." Which feels like it contradicts the level of variability the game strives to support - stress on feels like because it's exactly on the difficult-to-pin-down level we describe with terms like elegance.

(Edited shortly after post to fix BBCode errors. No other content changes were made, but the meta-content improved dramatically. Grin.)

- Eric

Eric,

I just want to say that I think your post is absolute poetry, not only in content but also in structure and use of vocabulary. I guess that would be reinforcing meta-characteristics. Great stuff, man.

-Chris

I think I see what's being talked about here, and I'd like to try to apply a real world example. This is based on an article "How James Wallis ruined my character's life" and Wallis' response on Critical Miss. (Warning for those who don't know the site; it's not appropriate for young folk.) Basically, in a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying campaign, the 'zine's editor had some bad things happen to his character, and asked the game publisher why this happened.

In Wallis' reply, he says this about Warhammer FRP:

... you note that Warhammer FRP isn't like D&D, and the monsters don't automatically carry gold and magic items. D&D is about quests for glory and riches; WFRP pretends to be the same, but in fact is about the PCs' day-to-day fight for survival in a universe that hates them.

Hi Fang. I think I get what you mean by elegance, in this context. Let me give an example of this in a game, which aught to show if I've got you there.

In Sorcerer, the game focuses on moral issues, dilemmas, and is customisable on which area of morality or humanity it explicitly focues (This is the window). However, it has a recurring theme of human relationships - the Pc's together, the pc-demon relationship is setup to be dysfunctional, and large chunks of the GM's advice focus on these relationships. This is the light, human relationships.

So, if that fits with what you were thinking, can I offer a refinement on your analogy. The lamp and the window. It is actually the light that is percieved through the window that is important. If both work together, then the light through the window is a beutiful thing. However, both can be good independantly, but not quite feel right together.

Let me recast that into game language. The window is the game - rules, setting and all the rest. Within literature, it would be the text, the plot. The lamp is hidden behind the text, it is the sub text, the deeper intent. It is the synergy between them that you are refering to as elegance, I think.

By generalising to a lamp and a window, I think it highlights some design methodologies: a simple lamp and complex window; and simple window and complex lamp. Both of these translate to clear methodologies - a simple message through a complex and detailed game, and a complex message give through a simple, and striaght forward game. I'd submit that the former covers many popular RPG's [0], whilst the latter is not a normal design philosophy, for good reason [1].

With all that said, can I offer anything constructive? I don't believe that not paying attention to it, and have it fall out is a good approach. It's not possible to give a recipie that will always work [2], but it is possible to give procedures that highlight approachs that will tend not to work.

A strategy I have used is to identify what your are attempting to achieve, and write it down. Then, break it down into the elements, both in the window and in the lamp - the explict and the implied. In my experience, I've never seen more than 2-3 implied elements, and the design aims for the explicit elements tends to be about 10-12. Then classify how each element interacts, into one of three groups: harmonising, non-interacting, and contrasting.

With this, you can do various analysis. If there are too many non-interacting elements, then your message is not likely to come through (too disparate). If the elements tend to separate into clumps, with strong interactions within each clump, and weak or no interactions between them, then, well, it's a bit fractured. And if the explicit elements do not interact with the implied elements, then there will not be clear transmission of the message through the game. [3] Few contrasting elements will tend to make a game where everything is in step with each other - a trait of an easy to use system



[0] Consider, say, a/state.

[1] If the game is too light to contain the message well, then the message will come through in a very explict fashion. And (most ?) people want a game first, with depth available, not with the meanings push in their face.

[2] See mathematical theory on emergent phenomena.

[3] Note that this is not a complete, or even nearly so, set of things to look for. It's one set - there are others that would also work, and compleatly contradict this set. This does, however, suffice for example.

Hi, Fang.

Interesting post and discussion. It reminded me of my Michelangelo discussion a while back.

Just a few comments:

1. I'd avoid making comparisons, including negative ones, to novels. I can think of a number of novels which exactly fit the description you give of being elegantly crafted. I don't think the difference is essential, and will lead us down the garden path.

2. This kind of theory has arisen various times in the context of traditional aesthetics. The basic principle, using your terms, would be this:

If the window refracts the light in a manner supportive of the artist's conception of the light, then you have elegance. If the window refracts the light as little as possible, such that one sees the light directly, you have a didactic piece. If the window is all you see, you have art as a surface, a depthless object, which is classically considered a bad thing but has been elevated by Warhol et al.

To put this differently, let me paraphrase Slavoj Zizek's discussion of the aliens in the movie Alien.

Classical aesthetics dictates a correlation of form and content. If form (window) dominates content (light), you have shallowness: the aliens look cool as rubber suits, but aren't very interesting. If content (light) dominates form (window), you have shock power: the aliens' interior seems to be on the outside, thus they're drippy and have a sem-exoskeleton and so on, thus are terrifying. If content and form are perfectly balanced, you have beauty (elegance), something undesirable in the aliens, but very desirable in lots of other art-objects.

So as I understand it, what you're saying here is perfectly in accord with classical aesthetics. It's a question of building a window that's exactly suited to the light.

2a. Let me note here that sometimes an imbalance is desirable. For example, one could argue that the perfect balance for octaNe would be an almost total lack of light, and a really brilliant window, as the game is about shallowness in a sense. Similarly, some of the WoD games are extremely didactic (e.g. Werewolf), and an ideal version might have minimal window to get in the way of the light.

3. To your list of types, I'd want to add another stage: refinement. As your vision of the light becomes clearer artistically, you need to refine the window technically to refract it perfectly. This requires endless revision and polishing, as in any art form.

4. My only worry is that this balance can become quite delicate, and in the dynamic give-and-take of actual play, might get broken. Any ideas on robustness, or am I worrying about nothing?

I want to back up a second. It sounds like this is refering to the first two steps of art as described in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. For those unfamiliar with this, the steps are:

[1]Idea/Purpose: The impusles, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies of the work...the work's "content."
[2]Form: The form it will take..will it be a book? A chalk drawing? A Chair? A song? A sculpture? A pot holder? A comic books? [A rolplaying game?]
[3]Idiom: The "school" of art, the vocabulary of styles and gestures or subject matter, the genre that the work belongs to...maybe a ganre of its own.
[4]Structure: Putting it all together...what to include, what to leave out...how to arrange, how to compose the work.
[5]Craft: Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem-solving, getting the "job" done.
[6]Surface: Production values, finishing...the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to the work.


So, if I'm not mistaken, we're refering to the step 1 Idea/Purpose of the work. Am I right?

If I understand Fang right, he means 1 as light, and the rest as window.

clehrich wrote: If I understand Fang right, he means 1 as light, and the rest as window.

Eric,

Harlequin wrote: I This can regress infinitely, because every facet of a datum, every relationship, is itself a datum.

A pity the word has been coopted, because 'coherence' would be a much more appropriate word here, as I understand it, than elegance. Not just GNS coherence, but coherent message-sending from the whole body of the work, so as to reinforce whatever it is the designer is trying to say. Holistic coherence of the game.

In this case, elegance in the sense Mike is suggesting may not be the design goal.

The play content of Scattershot is designed to be highly variable and customizable... but the presentation is not holistically coherent with this, because the very deliberateness and methodical quality of the design shows through, and is a 'neon sign' which signals (to me, on some subtextual level) "Everything has been thought through in this, there are no loose ends left hanging." Which feels like it contradicts the level of variability the game strives to support - stress on feels like because it's exactly on the difficult-to-pin-down level we describe with terms like elegance.

Mike wrote,

Could we have GNS coherence, and Creative Agenda Coherence?

Wow, so much to respond to. You guys are really rockin' with this concept! I've only a few clarifications left....

Hey Eric,

You really blew my doors off with your post. Awesome!

Harlequin wrote: To parse it in my own words, you're looking at the quality of communicating something - your 'neon sign' - through the characteristics of all elements of the piece, their unity, dissonance, coherence, incompleteness, etc. as part and parcel of the work.

And what you're wanting to do is talk about ways to promote, analyze, and cross-check these meta-characteristics.

An analogous act in novel-writing might be to convey a theme of 'endless repetition' by making every chapter exactly the same length, always begin them on a left-hand page, always open a chapter with dialogue and follow with action, and so on.

Harlequin wrote: All of that being said, I have one suggestion for another way to look at Fang's deliberate-design guidelines, which is as "filters". Take each element of the design, and treat it as a 'filter' through which you view the rest of the design. Observe interactions which help you, and ones which contradict the themes you're looking for. Then come back at it with those interactions themselves as filters through which you view the design.

Harlequin wrote: Finally, Fang, this talk of deliberateness and elegance does flag exactly my own issues with Scattershot, which I find perhaps the most interesting thing of all in this. The play content of Scattershot is designed to be highly variable and customizable... but the presentation is not holistically coherent with this, because the very deliberateness and methodical quality of the design shows through, and is a 'neon sign' which signals (to me, on some subtextual level) "Everything has been thought through in this, there are no loose ends left hanging." Which feels like it contradicts the level of variability the game strives to support - stress on feels like because it's exactly on the difficult-to-pin-down level we describe with terms like elegance.

Felix wrote: ...[Wallis] says this about Warhammer FRP:

...[you'll] note that Warhammer FRP isn't like D&D, and the monsters don't automatically carry gold and magic items. D&D is about quests for glory and riches; WFRP pretends to be the same, but in fact is about the PCs' day-to-day fight for survival in a universe that hates them.

At first glance, WFRP looks like a D&D clone, although the mechanics are supposed to lead to very different, gritty results. (It's a game I own but haven't played. However, that's the description the articles suggest.)

Now, if the thing being communicated (the 'neon sign') of the game was to "pretend to be the same, but..." then it does a good job. At first glance, the stained glass window of the rules seem very arbitrary and not unified, like a D&D heartbreaker, but that's a deliberate attempt to fool people into thinking it's similar.

If, on the other hand, the sign is supposed to say "day-to-day survival in a universe that hates them," the game rules obscure the sign. The stained glass window suggests that the characters will be the same mighty wizards and mighty dwarven warriors that they are in D&D.

Stuart DJ Purdie wrote: I think I get what you mean by elegance, in this context. Let me give an example of this in a game, which ought to show if I've got you there.

In Sorcerer, the game focuses on moral issues, dilemmas, and is customizable on which area of morality or humanity it explicitly focuses (This is the window). However, it has a recurring theme of human relationships - the Pc's together, the pc-demon relationship is setup to be dysfunctional, and large chunks of the GM's advice focus on these relationships. This is the light, human relationships.

So, if that fits with what you were thinking, can I offer a refinement on your analogy? The lamp and the window. It is actually the light that is perceived through the window that is important. If both work together, then the light through the window is a beautiful thing. However, both can be good independently, but not quite feel right together.

Stuart DJ Purdie wrote: Let me recast that into game language. The window is the game - rules, setting and all the rest. Within literature, it would be the text, the plot. The lamp is hidden behind the text; it is the subtext, the deeper intent. It is the synergy between them that you are referring to as elegance, I think.

clehrich wrote: So as I understand it, what you're saying here is perfectly in accord with classical aesthetics. It's a question of building a window that's exactly suited to the light.

clehrich wrote: 4. My only worry is that this balance can become quite delicate, and in the dynamic give-and-take of actual play, might get broken. Any ideas on robustness, or am I worrying about nothing?

(Fang - crossposting, here, but I'll come back and read yours and reply in a sec. I have to get this out.)

Wow. Normally I find myself agreeing with you, Ron. But in this instance I could not possibly disagree more.

I read your claim in crudest terms to read: "The creative agenda is equal to the GNS position chosen by the designer." I call that poppycock, and I don't think the poppycock is a result of oversimplifying your post.

The creative agenda of the designer is a complex object which encapsulates themes, moods, ways to play (plural! for they may shift during the game), and a zillion other things. Of these zillion, GNS addresses only the way(s) to play aspect. The function of a game book as a piece of art in itself, for example, is GNS-irrelevant, but matters a great deal to the creative agenda. So is a choice of "dissonance" as a theme and support of same via the techniques we've been talking about here, structurally and content-based and through meta-content and so on.

I thought you had stressed at several points that GNS was a wildly variable function of play. I know for a fact that, at different points in the exact same game, I swerve into all three modes very heavily and find that the games I enjoy most support each one in a real and solid way. This is part of an unexpressed niggling I've had over GNS coherence since reading it... on the one hand we talk about GNS as regarding a mode of play, something which one does at the time; on the other hand there seems to be a feeling that the game itself has a GNS stance, which does not match up. The game can support modes of play; that is all. GNS coherence is the advice "pick a mode and support it well." Which is fine, but explains why I find the most GNS-coherent games a touch... shallow. Because I'm looking for a little incoherence in my soup, thank you, and by overdoing the GNS coherence you can end up supporting one - but excluding the others.

Which is a different thread and one I don't quite feel up to starting right now, though I'd encourage someone to if they strongly agree or disagree with that assertion. The assertion I want to make here, right away, is that holistic coherence is completely different. Holistic coherence describes the techniques you might use to help support anything - say, a strong central theme - even in a game which was completely GNS incoherent, or for that matter in a game (Baron Munchausen, anyone?) which was 100% GNS coherent.

Certes, GNS coherence is a subset of holistic coherence, being the advice to "use holistic coherence methods to support your game's modes of play." But that's a single, specific application of those methods - they are most certainly not identical.

- Eric

Hello,

Eric, you wrote,

I read your claim in crudest terms to read: "The creative agenda is equal to the GNS position chosen by the designer." I call that poppycock, and I don't think the poppycock is a result of oversimplifying your post.

Hey Jack,

That's a really canny observation there; I am quite influenced by McCloud.

Jack Spencer Jr wrote: I want to back up a second. It sounds like this is referring to the first two steps of art as described in Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. For those unfamiliar with this, the steps are:

• Idea/Purpose: The impulses, the ideas, the emotions, the philosophies of the work...the work's "content."
• Form: The form it will take...will it be a book? A chalk drawing? A Chair? A song? A sculpture? A pot holder? A comic books? [A role-playing game?]
• Idiom: The "school" of art, the vocabulary of styles and gestures or subject matter, the genre that the work belongs to...maybe a genre of its own.
• Structure: Putting it all together...what to include, what to leave out...how to arrange, how to compose the work.
• Craft: Constructing the work, applying skills, practical knowledge, invention, problem-solving, getting the "job" done.
• Surface: Production values, finishing...the aspects most apparent on first superficial exposure to the work.

So, if I'm not mistaken, we're referring to the step 1 Idea/Purpose of the work. Am I right?

Mike Holmes wrote: This is precisely what makes this so hard to deal with. And why I say it's an art. You have to go with feel....

I mean it seems odd to me that we're trying to discover a scientific way to produce an aesthetic.

Mike Holmes wrote:

The play content of Scattershot is designed to be highly variable and customizable... but the presentation is not holistically coherent with this, because the very deliberateness and methodical quality of the design shows through, and is a 'neon sign' which signals (to me, on some subtext level) "Everything has been thought through in this, there are no loose ends left hanging." Which feels like it contradicts the level of variability the game strives to support - stress on feels like because it's exactly on the difficult-to-pin-down level we describe with terms like elegance.

Huh, that's the thing I like best about Scattershot. What bugs me is the lack of continuity in the rules. I can't figure out how to play it because I can't see how part one and part A work together.

Ron Edwards wrote: I fail to see anything in this thread, from top to bottom, which has not already been established - and widely employed at the Forge - by the essay, System Does Matter.

Hi Fang,

The contrast between me and, for instance, yourself is nothing so great as you state. There is no phone booth into which some of us go, and emerge as "published game designers." It's not a position of privilege.

Anyone who's been playing RPGs successfully for an extended period of time has the cred. Anyone who has a playable rules-set available for others has the cred.

Here's all I'm sayin'. If this thread is helping you out, that's great. If it's helping others, that's great too. I'm claiming credit where it's due, as part of the process of citation that we practice here.

Best,
Ron

We may need to take this elsewhere, Ron. Because you're not reading my examples of GNS-irrelevant aspects to the creative agenda, and I think there is an important distinction to be had.

Do you agree that the function of the game book, as an art piece (cf. Nobilis), is GNS-irrelevant?

Do you agree that the choice of a particular theme is GNS-irrelevant? That one could have a game about "rigid order" which used what I've been calling holistic coherence techniques to communicate this theme, and use those same techniques to communicate that theme, regardless of the desired mode of play?

The creative agenda is not merely realized through play. It's realized through first-impression (the function as an art piece), through read-over (conveying themes occurs at this time), and then through play. The actual play of an RPG is the most important element, but not the whole of the creative work - and therefore not the whole of the creative agenda.

Ron Edwards wrote: A well-designed role-playing game - and this is merely the Edwards take, not God's Holy Writ - permits a group of people to play such that some functional combination of GNS priorities may be realized.

Le Joueur wrote: That's exactly why I'm here. I'm discovering what I need to get Scattershot into a usable form, a aesthetic form, and a form that has the impact I desire.

Ron,

With all due respect, please don't dictate.

Ron Edwards wrote: That's it. All the "elegance" and "simplicity" and whatnot of design is strictly a matter of facilitation.

...I suggest that better is a matter of coherent facilitation, and that's all.

And I'm having a very hard time seeing how anything in this thread says anything different.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm claiming credit where it's due, as part of the process of citation that we practice here.

Enjoy the thread, gentlemen. If the perceived value is there, and it seems to be, then I won't interfere further. The priority is peace. If you don't want to cite me, nothing says you have to.

However. I've bled quite a lot so that the Forge can exist. All of the concerns raised here in this thread, which permit the current topic to be discussed, at all, come from that effort, and System Does Matter is the heart of it. "Design" does matter, yes. You can say it here, now, because I fought for it. Yeah, I'd like some credit.

Best,
Ron

(Thanks, Ron.)

I think there's something pretty powerful, in trying to haul things back over to the search for elegance. As I distinguish it; I think we all have some idea of how to achieve coherence, and as Fang says, we're trying to go one better.

Something is hinting itself at me, in a combination of:

Mike Holmes wrote: I mean it seems odd to me that we're trying to discover a scientific way to produce an aesthetic.

Chris wrote: If content and form are perfectly balanced, you have beauty (elegance), something undesirable in the aliens, but very desirable in lots of other art-objects.

Uh, Fang, I didn't "miss it". I agree with Ron on this one. You seem very much to me to just be piling up language on what's already known. I said that before, and you seemed to agree then. Now Ron put's in the context of his theories, and suddenly he's "dictating"?

It seems to me that this is just another case of you adopting a viewpoint, and calling it yours as if original. And then Ron has to show that x=x? How about you show us how your theory is actually Y? How is this not all about making a game that's focused on it's priorities? How is that not System Matters? Maybe we just misunderstand you. That's fine. Make us understand.

The idea that this is all an aesthetic is exactly the point that Ron has been talking up for the last, I dunno, six months?

Eric, I'd actually agree that it's worth looking for what Fang calls Tools. Yes, there are ways to do this stuff better. GNS is one, for example. Now there may be other ones, but that's what the general theory here is about.

It's like Fang has said, "we need better ways to design games." To which the only answer can be, "well, sure." But asking for better or newer tools, without even an idea of where we're going is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The point is, it's not original to say that there are probably better ways to do things. Originality is actually finding those ways.

And dudes, if I had a better theory I'd be here crowing it to the high heavens. There seems to be an implication on Fang's part that we've got some secret to how to design a game. Well, I sure don't. You just do it.

As Ron said, you can continue to discuss this if it seems to be doing something for ya. But I haven't seen anything so far that's done anything. The closest is your assertion that we look at the parts and how they interrellate. Which is a good idea, I guess, but hardly innovative. I mean how else do you perform analysis? Fang already knows this one, as does any successful designer.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I mean it seems odd to me that we're trying to discover a scientific way to produce an aesthetic.

Le Joueur wrote: (Is it scientific to discuss balance, color pallet, positive and negative space, in painting? I would be a fool to think understanding these terms would give me the tools to be a great painter. They do help me learn what I can from 'the old masters.')

C. Edwards wrote: Please don’t read any harsh feelings into this post. I’ve only made it because I care a great deal about both sides of the issue.

-Chris

Hey Mike,

I'm sorry Ron's tone has rubbed off on both of ours, but I would like to take a moment to clarify things.

Mike Holmes wrote: It seems to me that this is just another case of you adopting a viewpoint, and calling it yours as if original.

Mike Holmes wrote: How is this not all about making a game that's focused on its priorities? How is that not System Matters? Maybe we just misunderstand you. That's fine. Make us understand.

Mike Holmes wrote: It's like Fang has said, "we need better ways to design games." To which the only answer can be, "well, sure." But asking for better or newer tools, without even an idea of where we're going is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The point is; it's not original to say that there are probably better ways to do things. Originality is actually finding those ways.

Ron Edwards wrote: I fail to see anything in this thread, from top to bottom, which has not already been established - and widely employed at the Forge - by the essay, System Does Matter.

Ron Edwards wrote: And I'm having a very hard time seeing how anything in this thread says anything different.

Ron Edwards wrote: I'm claiming credit where it's due, as part of the process of citation that we practice here.

Ron Edwards wrote: You can say it here, now, because I fought for it. Yeah, I'd like some credit.

Mike Holmes wrote: Fang already knows this one, as does any successful designer.

Chris Edwards hit the nail on the head, for me. Let me first try to intervene in the confusion about GNS and System Matters.

As Chris points out, these are primarily tools of fundamental competence, sometimes referred to here as "coherence." Indeed, it has been said on many occasions, by Ron and Fang among others, that GNS isn't really all that helpful if your game is going very well; it's most useful diagnostically, for picking out what does not work, and why.

What Fang is groping for in this thread, and I think Emily and I are groping for in the one on Aesthetics and Reality, is a functional aesthetic for moving beyond competence.

If the game is broken, all the aesthetics in the universe are going to amount to cheap pretensions, sort of art-house beret-wearing tripe. But if it's very good, why can't it strive toward something more? I've brought this up a couple times over the last few months, and what I usually get as a response is, "Yeah, well, we're not there yet." Well, maybe we should be. I mean, nobody would have developed all those incredibly complicated tools and techniques about painting if they didn't want to create beauty. Saying we need to develop all the techniques before we get to beauty is misguided.

Somebody suggested that I post a lot of stuff about art theory, but frankly I don't think that's going to help at the moment. The analogy is far too weak, first of all, between a fixed visual object (e.g. a painting) and a dynamic, cooperative object (an RPG). Second, nobody seems terribly clear on what sort of object we're discussing: is it the text of the game as art object, the game in play as dynamic object, or what?

My suspicion, as I duly noted somewhere in those interminable debates about religion in RPGs, is that the best analogies are going to be ritual and myth as they exist among so-called "traditional" or "archaic" societies. But we're not going to get at that without some pretty serious theory, and I have my doubts as to whether the debate is really going to happen.

Anyway, that's how it looks to me from here.

Fang - You and me both, same degree of "ouch, hey!", same response. Yours beat me to the punch (mine was mid-edit), but let's not let it dissuade us entirely. I think, and you think, that we covered something useful here, possibly original but nevermind, something that is at this point being obscured by emotion. Closed it is. The idea of building toward an aesthetic is not going to get dropped for good, and by declaring this thread closed hopefully we'll all remember that there's more friendship and collegiality here than there is choler.

If you need it, take a couple days, deal with other things than aesthetics and elegances. I'm considering it, but you also may find a new thread with a new take on all this open before then.

Lots of fodder here to not be abandoned. Maybe we'll go back to the thought of writing unwritten rules... something I derailed with my initial post simply because I thought it was lovely but had nothing cogent to say about that end of the topic, at the time. For which you have my apology, because I think you created that gem out of nothingness and we stomed it as we raced down another road...

- Eric

Le Joueur wrote: I guess what I'm working with here is how #s 2, 3, and 4 (the 'stained glass window') work together in service of #1.

Ummm, both principals on this thread have requested that it be closed.

Bold text and categorical statements aside, those were requests only, but I'm honoring them.

Closed, folks.

Best,
Ron