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Ron Edwards wrote: What always puzzles me is that people who assert that incoherent game design is a good thing, because apparently it's desirable to tinker rules to taste, also assert very clearly that a game's design affects how well it plays.

I would put this at even the more extreme end of the scale--but yes, I do agree with it. I liked VtM's language. I liked their artwork and setting and world. I liked the powers and the concept of the clans. I felt the combat system had a weakness--aggravated damage--but I saw what they were trying to do with it.

Frenzy wasn't something we focused on, neither was hunting. That didn't happen too often in the game (although both did happen). Mainly they didn't happen because of *setting* and not *system* (okay, well mechanics, really).

That's not exactly shaving off a spear ... I see it more as *painting* the minature ("Hey--the army on the box is red--and you did it blue!")--but analogies are, I think, more damaging for role-playing discussion than anything else: they propogate ill-suited terms (story, protagonist, etc.).

If someone had designed VtM (with our example of functional play) off the game we ran ... it'd look a hella-lot like the book, I think. Now, if you removed everything we didn't *play* with (*poof* goodbye Ventrue!) yes, there'd be some changes--at that point, what does Drift become vs. the kind of decisions every GM makes ("I can't put *all* the monsters from *all* the books in my dungeon ...")

Surely Ron wouldn't be surprised by someone who says "I really like how AD&D was played ... but I never cared for some of the goofier monsters nor the psionics ... or the bard class--but that didn't change my appreciation of it!"

-Marco

Because you like to change games it's good that they need changing? As if you couldn't change a game that doesn't need changing?

I'm totally not getting it. Kit-bashing is great, I do it constantly (I rarely run a game that isn't of my own design, or two or more other systems smashed together). How does that mean that a game that doesn't work as written is good?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: How does that mean that a game that doesn't work as written is good?

Mike

Marco, between this and Fang's thread I have long since lost any sense of what your point is.

I am left to believe that you have your own personal hangup with the word "drift" and are working overtime to distance yourself from it, trying mightily to demonstrate that whatever it is you enjoy doing is not associated with the word drift in any way.

Some months back you went through similiar gyrations to try and make sure no one would slap the dreaded Narrativist label on you.

I'm not sure where the hang up is, you like to Drift games, great. So do alot of people. Some games are designed to require Drifting, great, so what. Drifting is work. Some times hard some times easy...alot of people find that work enjoyable...again, so what. All of that has been stipulated time and again. Whatever personal distaste you have for the word "drift" whatever negative implications you read into the word "work"...frankly doesn't interest me in the least.

I would really enjoy seeing some discussion on this that doesn't involve personal vocabulary preference. Because frankly I've long since grown weary about worrying whether a particular term meets someone criteria or personal preference set.

Ron uses "Step on Up" in his gamist essay. I personally can't think of a sillier more ridiculous term than than (though I fully understand its derivation). But so what, I'll get over it.

Seriously. The amount of energy wasted on vocabulary nonsense is getting quite old.

This whole thing is ridiculously simple:

1) Coherency occurs when all players can play within their GNS behavior set without interfering with other players ability to enjoy the game from within their own GNS behavior set.

2) Incoherency occurs when the above is not the case. This may be the result of group social dynamics or it may be the result of GNS incompatable rules. The former is a social contract issue that has nothing to do with game design, GNS, drift or anything else. The latter is very much a design / GNS issue. An incompatable rule may be the result of how the rule was written or how a particular group chooses to interpret or apply how the rule is written.

3) Certain rules sets have different parts that service different GNS modes to a greater or lesser extent. Players may find that they cannot play within their desired GNS behavior space without adjusting the rules in some fashion. Adjusting may mean adding rules that are missing, modifying rules that are present but don't support the desired GNS mode as well as desired, or dropping rules that interfere. This is Drift. Adjusting may occur entirely for aesthetic reasons that have nothing to do with GNS mode. This is not Drift (though I suspect that most supposed "aesthetic" changes have a GNS root somewhere)

4) When play is Incoherent due to incompatable rule design it may be possible to Drift it back to coherency as described in #3. If this is not possible, than dysfunction will result. Dysfunction will result because the definition of Coherency is the ability to play within ones preferred (at that time...there is not universal permanent preference) GNS mode without interferring with another player's enjoyment. If you are interfering with another player's enjoyment and you can't fix it through Drift or Social Contract negotiation, than you have dysfunctional play. Period

It doesn't get any more basic or simple than this folks.

My point was that when Ron says this:

"What always puzzles me is that people who assert that incoherent game design is a good thing, because apparently it's desirable to tinker rules to taste, also assert very clearly that a game's design affects how well it plays."

I was responding that "tinker rules to taste" is not incompatable with "game design affects how well it's played" unless one makes some assumptions about tinkering.

Maybe you could tell me if it puzzles you.

-Marco

Hello,

I'll clarify that passage ... I am referring to the claim made recently by a number of people in the RPG.net thread we were both on, specifically Chris Dicely and to a lesser extent Bruce Baugh, which is that a game which must be tinkered with offers a distinct source of enjoyment, and that an extremely important aspect of role-playing hobby is somehow diminished by focusing game design in GNS terms.

Best,
Ron

Roger that--I missed the context when looking at Jack's post. I still think that Drift needs some modifiers:

:: top of my head ::

Heavy Drift: extensive modification of a major rules system.

Resolution Modification Drift: changing the way in-system mechancial resolutions are interpeerted (could be fortune in the middle-but most severely: ignoring dice rolls)

Light Drift: ignoring non-relational sub-system/rule (no Aging rules)

Medium Drift: lots of light-drift--still staying away from major systemic subsections (combat, resolution mechanics, char-gen): dissalowing the Bard class is probably light drift. Not playing with elves and dwarves is probably medium (IMO). This is still a judgement call--and should be held porportional to the size of the rules (GURPS requires a good deal of drift to reach the medium point, Nicotine Girls probably goes straight to Heavy when you change something).

Correctional Drift: a change to a rule that is done to correct a percieved mechanical flaw. Different from Heavy Drift in that it is usually seen as more of a tweak (by the person doing it--maybe not by anyone else) than a change in philosophy. May also be applied to correcting what the reader regards as a typo.

Situational Drift: creating a scenario/situation that avoids the use of certain rules. Only *obviously* drift when the creator does it intentionally (otherwise it might be inferred--but can't be proven).

So we look at me:

I played AD&D with light to medium drfit.

I played Vampire with Situational, Correctional, and Light drift (to my recollection)

I would play MayhemPT (as currently posted) with Heavy drift.

-Marco

Cool. Categorization. I dig.

Is Heavy Drift the point at which it would be easier to just use a more appropriate system? Or would that be "Extra Heavy Drift"?

Mike

Mike,

That *is* the question. Some people will say you should be using a new system at light.

I think the lightbulb for me is this:

Despite the fact that I'd heavily drift MayhemPT--I'd still have excellent utility for it over TFOS or GURPS IOU. The kicker is this: my modification (gear rules for robo-racers) would:

a) fit nicely in the system and play to its strenghts
b) leverage the rest of the cool-ness of the system in ways I like
c) The existence of robo-racers (and the background in particular) feeds well into what I want to do with it. That doesn't exist in IOU (which has the gear and vehicle rules I'm askin' for ... but damn dude, I'm a gear head and ... well, you've *seen* that book!?)

So no. Drift never means you should use another game. Big over-generalization. Maybe the big overgeneralization. It's really a very indivualized matter.

-Marco

Ultimately EVERYTHING comes down to a very individualized matter. But its completely useless to default to that as an answer to everything.

Models are by definition a simplification, abstraction, generalization of reality. That is their purpose. To take a reality that is too complex and detailed for analysis and put it into a manageable form. The net result is a guarenteed, and EXPECTED loss of granularity.

That's what models do, its what they're for.

So you have a choice. You either make a generalized statement knowing full well that there will be exceptions and outliers, but which is a useful principle to use as a discussion point and to enhance understanding.

Or you make a a vague, all inclusive, statement that because it tries so hard to not exclude anyone or anything is so broad and non specific as to be completely useless for any form of analysis.

Marco, in your quest to see that nothing gets left out and that nothing is said that you can think of a counter example for...you're going to wind up being left with model so ill defined as to be worth nothing.

It is impossible to identify every single individual play group's idiosyncracies. Therefor any statement that ends with "it all depends on individual play group idiosyncracies" is essentially a dead end, closed off to further analysis.

That to me is self defeating and to be avoided.

I do see your point, Marco, that the "new" game created by a lot of work with the old game can have advantages over any other game that exists.

How about this? Is there a point where it would simply be better to create a game from scratch than to have to deal with the problems of the original game? I can say with some certainty that when my Rolemaster game started looking a lot like GURPS that I'd crossed this barrier. No levels, no classes, all point based generation including gifts and flaws... Basically, I was taking a system that my players demanded that I use, and making it into the system that I wanted to use. Sorta underhandedly making the change in systems (all made possible by the RMCs).

Would have been much easier to convince them to use GURPS if I could have. I'd have tinkered with that as well (big Umanna fan), but at least it would have required less mess. The players rightly complained that they had to rewrite their very complicated characters every month or so as I discovered revisions I liked.

Mike

Ralph,

A model comes associated with it an error depiction. Namely where does it apply to the real system, and what is the indication of error when applied to this region. It is necessary to either constrain the application or note significant (and hence highly bluring) error terms in order to model a complex system with a very general statement. Likewise a complex model makes these elements simpler. The value of a model is derived from both the complexity of the model, it's error degree, and it's narrowness of application. Suggesting that the model should significantly reduce error by using a sliding scale, in my mind a probabilistic judge for the utility of drift. For example, the number of people who will with good reason drift falls off linearly with the increase in drift complexity. This can then be modeled with player values for cutomized and non-customized system, as well as a shifting cost scale for drift investment (necessary because some people dislike it and others enjoy it in some quantity). Once sheared down a bit, this model would be a little more complex, but would remove error easily.

Ultimately this is simply an example. Marco is not suggesting a model with no generalization, rather he's suggesting a sharper model. While I agree the model needs some development, dismissing it out of hand because it is sharper is very much over-kill.

I hope that helps,

-Mendel S.

Mike,

Designing your own game to avoid a massive drift implies foreknowledge of the destination of that drift. It's why writting a story from an exercise is easier than doing it from scratch. If you know what you want, designing the game is probably the way to go. But alas, remarkably few designers seem to know what they want. To me that should be the first rule of game design, all design decisions should have a reason, both positive and negative decisions.

I hope that helps,

-Mendel S.

Valamir wrote:
Or you make a a vague, all inclusive, statement that because it tries so hard to not exclude anyone or anything is so broad and non specific as to be completely useless for any form of analysis.

Marco, in your quest to see that nothing gets left out and that nothing is said that you can think of a counter example for...you're going to wind up being left with model so ill defined as to be worth nothing.

It is impossible to identify every single individual play group's idiosyncracies. Therefor any statement that ends with "it all depends on individual play group idiosyncracies" is essentially a dead end, closed off to further analysis.

That to me is self defeating and to be avoided.

Mike Holmes wrote: I do see your point, Marco, that the "new" game created by a lot of work with the old game can have advantages over any other game that exists.

How about this? Is there a point where it would simply be better to create a game from scratch than to have to deal with the problems of the original game? I
Mike

I don't buy it.

If I may, the kit bash analogy is weak. It may be the case that if there are no elves commercially available, you can kit bash your own elf - but how does this stand as a better alternative to being able to buy an elf?

So maybe you just can't buy an elf 'cos thats the way it is in the market at the moment, too bad so sad. But - that is exactly WHY concern for coherence should appear at the design stage. In fact I would go so far as to say that the assertion that some designers/publishers make that they expect their product to be kit-bashed exhibits contempt for their audience.

Even there, I can see an argument for it - like the elf, what you as an individual may want may be a niche or specialiust market for which the costs of produciton are just too high to be viable. Thus you are left to figure it out for yourself. But this is NOT superior to a scenario in which the producer is able to recognise your desires and prioduce accordingly.

This may never happen for a given individual. But I cannot see how drawing attention to the problems with incoherence can fail to be an asset.

contracycle wrote: I don't buy it.

If I may, the kit bash analogy is weak. It may be the case that if there are no elves commercially available, you can kit bash your own elf - but how does this stand as a better alternative to being able to buy an elf?

So maybe you just can't buy an elf 'cos thats the way it is in the market at the moment, too bad so sad. But - that is exactly WHY concern for coherence should appear at the design stage. In fact I would go so far as to say that the assertion that some designers/publishers make that they expect their product to be kit-bashed exhibits contempt for their audience.

Even there, I can see an argument for it - like the elf, what you as an individual may want may be a niche or specialiust market for which the costs of produciton are just too high to be viable. Thus you are left to figure it out for yourself. But this is NOT superior to a scenario in which the producer is able to recognise your desires and prioduce accordingly.

This may never happen for a given individual. But I cannot see how drawing attention to the problems with incoherence can fail to be an asset.

Actually, the purpose of the miniture analogy was to answer Ron's question about the seeming contridiction by some that drifting the system is part of the fun but the game's design effects how well it plays. That is, You don't convert an dwarf mini into a elf and, most likely, you will start with an elf mini you like the look of, not some ugly thing. That's about it.

Marco wrote:
If what I want is to play the same game over and over in the same way each time--and I'm not especially in love with something like, say, the
AD&D monster list or the Paranoia list of secret societies then sure: mail me my perfect game.

You'd also have to have the right sub-sector of the mode I'm looking for. Dunjon's mechanic doesn't do Gamist for me. Nicotine Girls *is* Gamist for me. As a designer both of the intents (as I understand them) wildy missed the mark for me. I think you're aksing for something that no designer can realisitcally plan to deliver.

The best you can do is make the game you want to play--and then let people do what they wish with it.

If that sounds like I'm saying an incoherence is a good thing--rest assured I'm not. It's a bad thing. But, taking the definition of a game that must be drifted for fun play leaves us, presently, nowhere. What you think that means can be (obviously is) way different from what I think that means. It's not, really, definitively saying anything at all. It just sort of sounds like it is

contracycle wrote:

You'd also have to have the right sub-sector of the mode I'm looking for. Dunjon's mechanic doesn't do Gamist for me. Nicotine Girls *is* Gamist for me. As a designer both of the intents (as I understand them) wildy missed the mark for me. I think you're aksing for something that no designer can realisitcally plan to deliver.

Possible solutions:
1) the author blew it when designing those games
2) you don't recognise your preference correctly
3) neither of the above, but some other element is aesthetically displeasing to you

None of these is an argument against coherence as a design goal.

contracycle wrote:

Marco wrote:
If what I want is to play the same game over and over in the same way each time--and I'm not especially in love with something like, say, the
AD&D monster list or the Paranoia list of secret societies then sure: mail me my perfect game.

Hang on - a game that is simply coherent is not a Perfect game. Coherency =/= personal taste. A perfectly coherent game may well turn you right off (not becuase of its coherency, though).

Marco wrote:
Advocating clean design is fine--I'm not arguing that. If in play no one uses a rule: throw it out--or put some meta-rules around it discussing it--or alter it so it *is* used. Fine--all good.

But going and thinking *your* clean design where all rules are used and there's no need to change anything will be precieved by *me* that way? I wouldn't wanna bet on it.*