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Check out this article:

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?040301crbo_books

I think the thesis of the book reviewed, if true, has some interesting implications for RPG design. For one thing, it certainly explains why a game with a limited number of classes/clans/archetypes/splats often does better than a similar game with more freedom of choice.

It also gives some hints of how to deal with this issue without just caving into the desire to have splats, as (for example) many recent GURPS books have done by abandoning the "wide open" feel of the system and providing "templates" people can use.

Instead, assuming the game isn't particularly Gamist, the trick is for the game text in a more freeform game to encourage players to "satisfice" rather than "maximize", but in a positive way: Encourage people to pick what's "good enough" rather than trying for the "best thing", rather than just engaging in the "min-maxing is bad, mmm 'kay" anti-Gamist prejudicial text one often sees in such contexts.

(Plus, there is always the Feng Shui solution, where you're allowed to change the character after chargen to avoid "buyer's remorse".)

I've been a firm believer in a template style of design for sometime and years ago I came up with a bunch of classic fantsy templates for GURPS.   It gives players who'd like the structure that classes provide something to work with, but if you want to build from scratch you can to.   Personally, I've always found class systems like D&D to restrictive, but I can certainly see the appeal.   Character creation is simplified and streamlined and players have a better feel how their character can fit into the setting.

Which GURPS books have been including the templates?

Quote from: NuadhaWhich GURPS books have been including the templates?

We're wandering off the topic here, but nearly every GURPS setting book includes them nowadays.

Even before they started doing this, I noticed that GURPS characters pretty much always followed some kind of template already, whether consciously or not.  Everyone in GURPS Fantasy used their points to design a warrior character, or a mage, or a thief, etc.  Occasionally you'd get someone designing a salesman, but it's still a class-like stereotype.  I know I prefer games with splats.  I think it's part of that instinctive need for a group identity.  It can devolve into cliqueishness, but I'm surprised how much having a limited set of character "types" to choose from can often spark ideas and imagination instead of limiting them.  One of the easiest formulas for making an interesting character is to take one archetype, and reverse one of the stereotypes associated with it.  So I've seen sensitive Brujah, violent hobbits, atheist paladins, humorous dwarves, etc.  With too many choices, the perspective gets lost, and their seems to be a paralyzation in charater ideas.  From my experience, anyway.

This is why one of the most important questions to ask at the outset of any RPG (adventure, campaign, series, whatever) is "What, in general, do the characters do?"

Until everybody agrees to at least a broad outline here, you look like your list of characters are the set up for some joker to tag "They fight crime!" onto them.

Once you've got your baseline, it's like laying down a rhythm or bass in music. You can start doing all sorts of funky stuff, or stick to rock steady within the beat as deep as you like. Without it, you've got what folks think experimental jazz sounds like (it ain't, but that's a whole 'nother story).

It's also why I'm beginning to groove on laying down the conventions of a genre at the outset of a campaign, session, design, whatever. They're not rules, they're givens, the way things tend to be. De Facto, they "restrict" player choice, but simultaneously, they give what choices are made greater significance.

For a case study in progress, have a look at some of the notes coming out about the design of the new Paranoia RPG: specifically, the designers are looking to reduce the differentiation between characters statistics, because all characters are essentially in the same situation, and great differences between characters lessens one of the  thematic drives of the game: you're all clones, you're all traitors by birth (mutations), you're all traitors by choice (secret societies). I remember some time ago folks complaining about games that restricted their expression through their characters, due to "forcing" certain choices on them. When Paranoia was brought up, IIRC, the reply was "Well, it's just a comedy game, you're not supposed to take any notice of comedy games..."

Paranoia play is all about how the player reacts to the restrictions of the game, pardon my synedoche, not how your perfect character expresses your inner clone... in the crucible of Alpha Complex, that expression can't help but come out.

Recently, my group had done two one-shots of classless systems (HeroQuest and Unisystem). Given the nature of the sessions and our limited time, we used pre-gens.

I was the GM for the first one, and for the three players I created fighter guy, negociating guy and spy girl. I was a player in the second and we had fighting guy, negociating guy, technical guy and local guy.

For all the openness of the games, we ended up with groups that might as well have been created with a class system.

Well, I'd fight shy of flatly defining HQ as classless: the Keyword system is too strong for that, it's got templates built in. The advantage, to my mind, is the forcing of two, usually three, keywords onto each character: Occupation and Homeland, with Religion as usual 3rd. The assumption is that everyone is from somewhere, and that's affected them, and everyone does (or at least used to do) something for a living, and that's defined them to an extent. In practice, the HQ generation system is very much "Take a template and customise it" rather than "Take a compeltely blank sheet and fill it as you wish."

I've no experience of Unisystem, but I thought it was template based...?

Can someone chime in with experience of, say, Universalis? Does everyone work "top down" from a stereotype / archetype / template and then refine?

Hello,

I strongly recommend that people review the discussion in The class issue, which I think provides some necessary groundwork for this discussion to make the most sense.

Also, the general principle at work has led me to think that many RPGs have fallen into the trap of maximizing the lengths of their "column A, column B" lists in the mistaken assumption that diversity of character design is a consumer draw.

One of the design goals of Trollbabe was to focus mechanical character definition down to near-minimum - simply to remove the options outside of playing a wandering fighter/magic-er trollbabe, case closed. Is this what I'd recommend for all role-playing? No. But it's surprising how far you can push it to the "closed-option" extreme and still have a game which appeals to a lot of people.

Best,
Ron

Also, I think we're wandering a bit. I'm less interested in how a large amount of freedom leads to sterotypes anyway than ideas on focusing thinking about a more freeform design in such a way to prevent decision paralysis, and to make reasonable use of the options available.

According to Saussure and later linguists, words function less to set what that word means and more to set off what that word doesn't mean.  That is, the word "boat" is more important in excluding all things which are not boats than it is in defining what a boat is.

The same principle stands in the relationship between the individual (and on one level, every person is a unique individual) and the normatives of her/his society.

In other words, we understand and operate by way of contrasts.

If there are no pre-existing templates to play off for, to use as springboards, to interact with (the old vision of interaction notion), then there are not any immediate pre-existing contrasts right off the bat.

I recall that one of my old gaming group used to love using the classes in AD&D specifically because of the joy in playing off them and varying from them and contrasting our independently created classes from them.

Without templates, of course many an RPGer can create her/his own characters, but then normatives and springboards have to be created first or the player has to operate completely independently of any such templates, springboards, pre-existing groundings, etc. (the old vision of independence notion).  I think in those cases, the game master (or gaming group if GMless) actually end creating de facto templates of a sort, normatives as it were, even if they don't have any official ones.

Doctor Xero

I think it's important for each character to have his "specialty," the one area where he or she shines and has the spotlight.  When describing a splat, it is usually described in terms of the role such a character would play in a group.  So whatever roles are needed would dictate what templates would fill them.  Generally, some kind of fighting specialty, healing specialty, stealth specialty, magic specialty, social specialty, nature specialty, technology specialty, etc.  They can also reflect more social roles, such as a clan/tribe/race for rebels, for aristocrats, for crazy people, for scholars, etc.  So whether using a class syste, or not, it's a good idea to keep in mind what specialties people will want to develop in their characters to make them distinct.

Thanks fr te link to the orriginal New Yorker article, it's a very good read.

Quote from: Ron EdwardsIs this what I'd recommend for all role-playing? No. But it's surprising how far you can push it to the "closed-option" extreme and still have a game which appeals to a lot of people.

Pendragon was a good early example of this. Everyone plays a Knight, but are you a Christian or a Pagan? Are you rich or poor? Who's you Liege? etc...

I think those positing that gams such as HQ are just like class based games because they have templates are missing the fundamental difference. Class based systems limit choice in thegame mechanics themselves, while template systems give limited choices at the game setting level. Limiting in the game mechanics sets a hard limit that's difficult to work around, while general purpose game mechanics with a packaging or template layer are more adaptable to other setting and more amenable to customisation.

Actualy, customisation is one tactic for managing choices that isn't adressed in the NY article. If you were to offer a consumer a choice from a range of 25 sports cars (assuming no pre-existing biases), they'd almost certainly have problems making a choice. However if you offered them a choice of 5 sports cars, each with 5 customisation options, they'd probably have a much easier time making a decission.


Simon Hibbs

Personally, I was more objecting to the classification of HQ as "freeform" as opposed to "classed", and, given that little false dichotomy, I was pointing out how much each character must have a couple of usually pre-defined, dominant traits that broadly define them.

Of course, the great HQ get out clause is that you can define your own keywords...[shakes fist] curse you, Laws and Stafford!

But I think that trying to claim a great difference between a class and a template system is a little futile until we get down to which precise game rules we're talking about... AD&D (multi-class rare) or D&D 3+ (multi-class so common as to be a given)? The confusion between class, job and role (both diagetic and non-diagetic) that Ron discussed on the other thread has cursed the designs, and is raining it's curse on the discussion too.

That aside, and to extend Simon's analogy, many "open" character design systems don't even give you 25 different sports cars... they give you a handbook of vehicle design!

To drag out another analogous anecdote... one of the local oriental restaurants has the usual menu with about 100 items on it... and it has the design your dish section. DYD has five bases (rice, various noodles etc), five "ingredients" (mixes of veg, pork, beef, chicken, prawn, etc), five sauces and five optional extras (spices, chillis, etc). So you've got well over 600 possible dishes, but since it's one from each column, skip the columns you don't want, the human brain can hold the whole array of options simultaneously, while the rest of the, comparatively limited, menu overwhelms.

It seems to me that there is big difference between system applied stereotypes and perception applied stereotypes.  If the system has a class for "fast guy" and 20 players make characters using that class, they will be largely the same.  If you take a classless system like GURPS (ignoring current trend to templates) and find 20 charaters that you perceive as a "fast guy" they could be wildly different.  Even if you ask your 20 players ahead of time to make a "fast guy" with GURPS you will still probably get 20 wildly different characters.  The human mind likes to find patterns and we will call something a "fast guy" b/c it certainly isn't a "buff guy".  The 20 characters that you may call "fast guys" made in GURPS aren't "fast guys" at all except that that is what you label them.  I doubt that a class system could be made to incompass them all.  I hope everyone sees this difference.

As to the point of selling better:  I am sure that a simpler system does sell better.  Just as Jello sells better than creme brule.  Jello is fine for tuesday dessert, but sometimes I really like creame brule.

Quote from: xiombargAlso, I think we're wandering a bit. I'm less interested in how a large amount of freedom leads to sterotypes anyway than ideas on focusing thinking about a more freeform design in such a way to prevent decision paralysis, and to make reasonable use of the options available.

This "decision paralysis" can, I suppose, come from there being simply too many choices, but it can also come from those choices' not being embedded in a total structure or culture.  This is why people in real life don't suffer a simple paralysis when it comes to, say, deciding what profession to choose, where they may when choosing what movie to watch tonight if the local video store is particularly well-stocked.  (I'll get back to the RPG application in a sec.)

If you think about college and high school as times when people commonly choose directions for their lives, students are faced with a bewildering variety of choices.  And yet, most people seem to finish up with at least some decisions made.  The process is harrowing for some, straightforward for others.  What's happening here?

First of all, choices are conditioned by an elaborate system of determinations about money, status, power, lifestyle, kin and peer pressure, and so forth.  So if you decide that it's very important to you to have lots of unstructured time, not have to wear a tie, and stick by your high school friends, you may also be choosing not to make a lot of money (not necessarily, of course, but possibly).  All of this constrains your possible choices for a future job; let's say you decide that computer programming is good for you, because you can work from home in your own time so long as you complete your tasks on time.  By contrast, if you decide that money and power is where it's at, and you don't care much about long hours, you might decide that high finance is a good goal for you.

Okay, now second, you presumably start taking classes in computer programming or finance, as the case may be.  You might intern, or study at home, or whatever, but you start working toward a goal that seems appropriate to your aims.  But this further constrains you.  As we all know, it's not so easy to back up once you've really started on a career path -- possible, but not easy.  Suppose you work your butt off and go to MIT and become a tremendously good computer programmer of some particular sort (AI, let's say); alternatively, maybe you spent your college years "networking" (read, drinking at frat parties) and find yourself interning for a really crappy financial company.  Your choices now are relatively limited: in either case, it's going to be very difficult to change your mind and become a doctor.  

Furthermore, by this point a number of the preconditions have changed as well.  Your parents and high school friends, for example, have changed their perceptions of you.  Sure, your grandmother might occasionally sigh, "If only there were a doctor in the family..." but by this point she doesn't really expect you to drop out and start over.  You've also met new people, and experienced new things, which are related to the path you've chosen, conditioning you further toward those goals.

At the end of the process, you're ready to start off on a career of some kind, having manipulated a vast cultural and intellectual system, and furthermore been manipulated by it.  So much of this is so obvious to us in our society that we kind of take it for granted, as "natural" and just obviously the way it has to be.  If we look at a totally different society, however, we find that the strategies and structures of choice are quite different, and play on different systems of assumptions and so on.

--
Now let's contrast this to RPG character design.  Since the world and its structures may be entirely new to you, you can't play this game of choice.  You don't know what's a strategic choice, what's a dumb one, and so on.  So if the field is totally open, you may suffer paralysis.  You simply have no levers with which to manipulate the system to your advantage, and you don't even necessarily know what constitutes "advantage."

Here is where template choice, or character class, or whatever may be of service.  The answers to these basic questions are made finite and overt.  Pick one of these 12 classes; here are the advantages and disadvantages of each.  Okay, that I can do.  In games like Champions, you design it all, but again the advantages and disadvantages are explicit; furthermore one of the fun things about character design in Champions is precisely that it gives you a system -- not a usually cultural one, but a mechanical one -- that allows you to play the strategy-of-choice game for fun and profit.

--
So if I want to give infinite choice, and want to prevent paralysis, what do I need to do?  Here are some possibilities, not necessarily all required nor mutually exclusive:

1. Provide such a detailed character universe that they can walk through a life-path thoroughly.  If I recall correctly, Palladium tried to do this (with doubtful success), and lots of other games too.

2. Set the game in a world sufficiently analogous to ours that players can infer the choice structures from their own lives.

3. Focus intensely on the play goals, and be very explicit about them.  This allows players to design characters with some sort of play advantage in mind.

4. Be clear about what sorts of advantage are worth having.  If there's not going to be much combat, a simple combat advantage is useless; on the other hand, a complicated person who happens to be a combat-monster as a result of her life-choices may be a great character.

5. Discuss how people in this world play the game, make choices of their own, and evaluate others' status and position with respect to that system.  That way the players can design characters who have status and position that is coherent within the world, and of value within at least some sectors of society.

Just some thoughts.

Chris Lehrich

P.S. Incidentally, for those who care, this is a simplistic projection of the anthropological/sociological theory of "practice," as put forth especially by Pierre Bourdieu in two fairly impenetrable books, of which The Logic of Practice is more complete.  An essential point is that choice is constrained by cultural system, and that the strategic advantage gained by any choice also reproduces the structures of the system, because otherwise the power of the choice is annulled.  Thus direct system challenge is ineffective, while strong choice supports and reproduces the system.  It's a structural theory of social choice, at base.  Marshall Sahlins and Sherry Ortner are also working in this mode; Sahlins's How Natives Think (About Captain Cook, For Example) is a demonstration of the theory of practice applied analytically to historical interpretation.