I've read the book and I think it's okay. If I understand your post, it seems your biggest problems with it are the result of the quiz, which I don't think is Laws' fault, and his categorization or pigeonholing.

The quiz wasn't made by Laws, it was made by someone else and I don't think Laws says that finding someone's preferences is as simple as that. Instead, he says to figure out for yourself what "type" each player is. I think this part of the book could improve someone's GMing if that person is starting from a low-moderate level of success and experience. That is, you could do worse than to think about your players' preferences and then try to include a little something for each player. This holds whether you're thinking at the campaign level or the scenario. Although Laws doesn't explicitly say that people might have hybrid interests (that I can find on re-skim), he doesn't come across as doctrinaire as GNS advocates and I think in context one can see the "types" as rough guesstimates. For that matter, without worrying too hard about which player is what, the "types" can at least illustrate some of the dimensions of taste which an aspiring GM might need to be reminded exist. E.g., throwing in a chance for a little butt-kicking isn't a bad idea no matter how much you think your players are going to love the deeply meaningful relationships in your game.

What I really didn't care for about the book is that it basically assumes and pushes the story-structure-planning approach. He gives lip-service to so-called "unstructured scenarios" (read: dungeons) but you know where his real interests lie.

Other parts of the book offer various tips that could be useful or at least worth mulling over. For example, he basically advocates a KISS approach to picking a game and a genre. What I thought was amusingly frank was his suggestion to choose a new game system not because newer is better but because the novelty will make it easier to attract players.

Overall it's more of a "tips" manual than a work of theory, and it's focused on play, rather than design. Even within that narrower area, it is as I said, just one approach.

Quote from: everloss;615991And, as someone else previously stated, do it in a way that the reader is engrossed in the book as if they were playing an RPG. Perhaps as a choose-your-own-adventure kinda of thing with dice rolling involved.

that would be AWESOME

Quote from: Mistwell;616083I think one essential accomplishment is it became the backbone of a movement to include the use of comics in modern universities.   There are now many professors that assign it as the first book in such courses, prior to assigning some graphic novels.

I can attest to this, as it was the first assignment in my Comics as Literature class.

Quote from: David Johansen;616154It's not like you'd want an rpg where you created players who played characters in various rpgs, though I'm told Leading Edge did have rules for that in Phoenix Command."

Oh man, my older brother had the Phoenix Command box set when I was a kid. It seemed insanely complicated. In my defense, I was 10.

I'll answer both as a DM/RPG player and a professional comic book writer.

The key difference is that in comics either one "complete" author or two (the writer and the artist - add the colorist if you want) have complete authorial control on the end result. This means that they can dictate rythm, atmosphere, frequency and kind of dialogue, panel composition according to effect sought and so on.

As a DM the "author" delegates part of the way the story is expressed to the players. Even in the most railroaded adventure, an "exciting, furious combat" (what the DM had envisioned) can become an agonizing step-by-step roll of the dice, maybe because after a random critical hit a character survival hangs on a thread. A serious drama can become a farce - and a good one at it. You can describe a scene the way you would describe a panel to your artist - but with your artist you can work on the result until both are satisfied. In an RPG each player "pictures his own panel" - colours and pervading atmosphere included - and you have no control on it.

Comic books, movies and plays are born from the cooperation of many talents, but at the end they have a (director/writer/producer) who imbues them with his own vision. The evolution of the ways a given media can express things gives more opportunities to the artist's "palette" - but at the end it is him/her that has the final word. For every actor who has a good idea, there is an actor whose idea is refused because "even if good, it doesn't work in this context/scene".

True, a DM can do the same - occasionally. Do it always and it becomes... theatre.

I lost count if the times I thought a out a set piece the way I would have thought it for a comic book only to see happen everything but. The story, in an RPG, and the best way to tell it, is defined after the facts. And still, ask to four players to write and draw it, and you will get four different stories with four different stylistic approaches. Believe me: 75% of my players are comic book artists.

I'll try to summarise this as I see it - the 'understanding comics' book was written so that anytime someone says comics are just for kids, everyone can point to it and say "read that". Its good because it reduces the perceived (juvenile, immature) stigma associated with adults enjoying comics and hence grows the market for the entire industry.

I don't think any such stigma really exists for RPGs though, most media depictions feature people of all ages playing them. Its not hard to understand and appreciate what they do, no apologia required, so I'm not really sure what purpose such a publication would serve. Maybe try to put a little distance between the hobby and the likes of the catpiss men, but I've no idea what sort of scholarly work could achieve that.

Sound about right?

[pt. 4]

Before I go any further, a few notes about myself. Like everyone else, I'm an amateur. I haven't the background or desire to write "Understanding RPG's", but I do have the background to contribute a little to the subject.

I graduated with a degree in Radio and Print Journalism (the oft-maligned Communications degree). I worked as a Talk Show host for three years, and a newspaper opinion columnist for two.

Communications is an odd degree. Half the department is a trade school. You learn to handle mikes (on radio and TV), how to use cameras, how to write newspaper stories to AP Style and edit them, and so forth. Practical, nuts-and-bolts skills you need to get employed in the media.

The other half is a scientific research endeavor. Marshal McLuhan ("the medium is the message"), media selection effects, and so forth. You learn statistics (including calculating the statistical significance of data), devising and carrying out scientific studies, writing articles for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal, and the skills you need to become a professor and academic.

That's my background: studying the media, in a practical and academic sense. I'm not a Literature student, and I don't approach RPG's from a Literary Criticism background. (A Freudian analysis of Jurassic Park: "The island is the egg, and the helicopter a sperm, fertilizing the egg and releasing life..." That's not a hypothetical, just so you know.)

That sort of approach is inappropriate to RPG's, in my opinion, and lends itself to generating self-important twaddle that does nothing to advance practical understanding of what is, at its core, a pop culture medium. RPG's aren't obscure, inaccessible post-modern novels, and don't need to be.

When you write an RPG, you're not A Great Artiste, and playing an RPG isn't Making Great Art. You're playing pretend, imagining that you're an elf, superhero, or hard-bitten detective. It's pure, imaginative fun, and that's all it ever has to be.

So, instead of a self-important Critical Theory approach, designed to cement RPG's as A Fitting Subject for Serious Academic Inquiry, I want to look at the nuts-and-bolts of RPG's, how the medium itself functions. This isn't prescriptive, I'm not trying to fix them or tell other people how to play them. I don't have a Grand Unified Theory of All RPG Games and Players.

It's as descriptive as possible: how people are (or have been) playing RPG's is probably the way they should be played. There are tips and techniques we can share from GM to GM, or player to player, and methods to develop mechanics, but the medium itself (and its implicit rules and conventions) don't need a revolution.

We just need a little practical, grounded understanding to correct the misinformation promulgated by the Literary Criticism wing of the hobby. I hope to contribute a little to that understanding.

So, now that you know a little about where I'm coming from, my next post will be an analysis of what the RPG medium itself is.

[Again, multi-part post, to be continued.]

This is my favorite thread so far. Not because of my posts, but because of the quantity and quality of responses.

Nearly every reply has been thoughtful and helpful, many have suggested resources (books and articles) to peruse, and a few have offered practical suggestions. Like this one:

Quote from: The Traveller;615934I've often felt that the GM's art could benefit from a few lessons delivered by the Irish Seanchaí, professional storytellers whose traditional arts are descended directly from the old Fila, the poet-druids who maintained the ancient oral tradition.

Part of GM'ing is how you describe the world and portray NPC's. Doing it well makes for a better game. And storytelling techniques can definitely help GM's spice up their games.

So, I agree.

On a larger note, I think an "Understanding RPG's" would need to cover at least four very different areas:

1.) What an RPG is. (History, development, and practical description of the medium.)
2.) Game design. (How to make an RPG.)
3.) GM advice and techniques. (How to run a game session and campaign.)
4.) Player advice and techniques. (How to play an RPG and maximize your enjoyment, and the enjoyment of others.)

Omit any one, and the work would be incomplete.

(My own endeavor in this thread is more narrowly focused. It's one small part of one aspect of #1 on that list.)

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;616185If I understand your post, it seems your biggest problems with it are the result of the quiz, which I don't think is Laws' fault, and his categorization or pigeonholing.

Then I did a shit job of writing that post, because I'm saying that Mr Laws categorisation in the book is even more incorrect than the quiz.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;616185I think this part of the book could improve someone's GMing if that person is starting from a low-moderate level of success and experience. That is, you could do worse than to think about your players' preferences and then try to include a little something for each player.

And I think that is the path to 'gerrymandering' gaming experiences, to borrow the turn of phrase that Matthew Miller used in the comments to my post.

The point of that blog post is that I don't want one thing more than the others - I want a range of experiences, and trying to 'identify my type' as a gamer actively works against that, particularly when his types are so wildly wrong to begin with.

Well, take a look at the book if you get a chance (if you haven't already). There's a fair amount more than what's quoted by John Kim.I think Laws comes across as actually kind of naive in terms of theory, but he's not terribly prescriptive. I don't know if this is because of his audience or because he really isn't too interested (or just wasn't plugged in to the Internet discussions which I've seen since the mid-90's).

But I think your estimation so far is colored by GNS and perhaps the Threefold, both of which are focused far more on dysfunction or clash due to alleged incompatibilities between types. The passage you quote in your blog does have some of this, but my impression of the book is more that it's about keeping everyone happy by giving them what they crave--achieving a balance--than it is about excluding things or separating people.

Regarding the main thread, I've picked up my copy of Understanding Comics and am giving it a complete read. So far, it has some good ideas and insights, but also some ideas that are puzzling or obviously motivated more by an ideological program than pure analysis. (I'm looking at http://www.hicksville.co.nz/Inventing Comics.htm alongside my reading.) It's true that McCloud's aim isn't just to understand comics but also to make them respectable. In RPGs we've seen the same thing, and it often has negative effects. Something to watch out for.

Quote from: The Traveller;616265I'll try to summarise this as I see it - the 'understanding comics' book was written so that anytime someone says comics are just for kids, everyone can point to it and say "read that". Its good because it reduces the perceived (juvenile, immature) stigma associated with adults enjoying comics and hence grows the market for the entire industry.

I don't think any such stigma really exists for RPGs though, most media depictions feature people of all ages playing them. Its not hard to understand and appreciate what they do, no apologia required, so I'm not really sure what purpose such a publication would serve. Maybe try to put a little distance between the hobby and the likes of the catpiss men, but I've no idea what sort of scholarly work could achieve that.

Sound about right?

No, not to me.

First, I disagree such a stigma does not exist for RPGs.  It does.

But more importantly, I don't think that was ever the purpose of Understanding Comics, I don't think it's the primary use of Understanding Comics, and I don't think it would be the purpose or use of Understand RPGs.

I'll repeat - Understanding Comics became the backbone to launching comics into the University setting, along with Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art.  It's the start of scholarly treatment of comic books as a medium of art and communication.  Understanding RPGs would, presumably, serve a similar function for RPGs.

[pt. 5]

RPG's are a particular medium... but wait. Are they? Are RPG's a distinct medium? What is a medium?

The definition pertinent to communication studies, my bailiwick, is "a means of communication". Not the content, but the vehicle that delivers the content. Broadcast/Electronic media: television, film, CD's. Print media: Newspapers, books, comics. Then the spoken media: storytelling, singing, and speaking (the most basic medium).

Are RPG's their own medium? Well, are they exactly identical to any other? To newspapers, novels, television, radio, storytelling? No, of course not.

RPG's, like every other medium in existence, share elements with other media but are fundamentally their own thing.

You speak in RPG's, but RPG's are more than just talking.

You use rulebooks, but RPG's are more than just reading the rulebooks.

You speak about fictional events, but RPG's are not storytelling or writing fiction.

RPG's are their own media form, as distinct from newspapers as newspapers are from news magazines, are from radio news broadcasts, are from television newscasts.

They have their own tools (rules, randomizers), their own conventions (player characters, non-player characters), their own methods. Here's one method utterly peculiar to RPG's:

The GM reads a rulebook and learns of a particular character, described in terms of numbers and personality. In play, he interprets the personality and numbers, deciding how to depict that character (descriptively or dramatically), and extemporaneously portrays him, deciding in the moment how that character will react to other characters, themselves being depicted by players. If this character takes an action, some randomizer is used to determine how successful he is (dice, typically), and the same gamemaster depicting the character uses intricate rules (explicit or tacit) to adjudicate what happens.

Utterly bizarre. Never happens in any other medium, even those dealing with fictional events. Not novels, not film, not storytelling. Unique to RPG's, and only RPG's.

RPG's are their own thing, their own form of media. They share similarities with other forms of media, but are not identical.

[To be continued...]

Yes, I think using the term "medium" or "media form" can be misleading. RPGs are manuals for conducting a type of structured social activity.

In addition to the books I've referenced above, Markus Montola has some good stuff along these lines, much of it available for free in PDF. (Note: he's a "real" academic, so his work, while dense, has at least been subjected to review by academic advisors.)

Avoiding the word "story" here, treading dangerously with "art"

Here's a quick, somewhat generic description...

"RPGs are a mixed media, time based human participatory _____.

Broken down(for comparison with comics):

Mixed media. Can incorporate words (pre-determined and improvasational), text, images and external audio.

Time based. It is not affixed like a story or a work, but exists in a unique session that can include randomized elements.

Human. One or more humans required.

Participatory. One or more actual participants or ___-ists that take on roles, with audience attendance optional (not required or particularly wanted).

_____. Insert generic term here. "Art" does work well here, since it can be abused to mean just about anything.


Why no Understanding RPGs? I think there are some excellent works out there describing them, yet I believe an Understanding RPGs could be much more difficult to produce than an Understanding Comics - more akin to an Understanding Theater.

Quote from: Lynn;616420Avoiding the word "story" here, treading dangerously with "art"

Here's a quick, somewhat generic description...

"RPGs are a mixed media, time based human participatory _____.

Broken down(for comparison with comics):

Mixed media. Can incorporate words (pre-determined and improvasational), text, images and external audio.

Time based. It is not affixed like a story or a work, but exists in a unique session that can include randomized elements.

Human. One or more humans required.

Participatory. One or more actual participants or ___-ists that take on roles, with audience attendance optional (not required or particularly wanted).

_____. Insert generic term here. "Art" does work well here, since it can be abused to mean just about anything.


Why no Understanding RPGs? I think there are some excellent works out there describing them, yet I believe an Understanding RPGs could be much more difficult to produce than an Understanding Comics - more akin to an Understanding Theater.

It's not a fine art (like theater), but I think you could say RPGs are an applied art (serving a practical purpose of gaming entertainment).