Quote from: beejazz;616642I don't disagree that 3e is potentially interesting. I just see it as a common-ish phenomenon. Vampire is often cited for its discrepancies between fluff (which is taken as designer intent) and actual play, to give another example.

It is common, yeah. Which says something about the state of RPG design, probably.

QuoteIn c) are you talking about 3.5 or 4? 'Cause if 4 was meant to patch 3's new mode of play, it failed in exactly the same way (by producing a third mode of play). But at the same time I can't see this as unexpected because of the much more deliberate alteration of the pace (among other things) in 4.

I meant 3.5. I don't really know what they were thinking with the changes they made there, but whatever the intent was, the result was certainly not to steer the ship back towards promoting AD&D style play.

Quote from: Grymbok;616644

Quote from: beejazz;616642I don't disagree that 3e is potentially interesting. I just see it as a common-ish phenomenon. Vampire is often cited for its discrepancies between fluff (which is taken as designer intent) and actual play, to give another example.

It is common, yeah. Which says something about the state of RPG design, probably.

I've got some stuff to do, before I can respond to the comments. But this one is very interesting, I've had some thoughts on it recently, and it ties into the next post.

Games come alive in play. Designers can write anything they like in rulebooks, but it's GM's and players who actually implement it, who actually play the game, and who actually decide what the game is.

Designers have little control over how the game is actually played.

There's the example of Gygax (which I learned from reading the "Reading Dragon" thread). He made a lot of rules, rules he pretty much followed, but many of them were ignored by the player base. The real game, as it existed "in the wild" differed from the Platonic ideal, as it existed in Gygax's gaming sessions and Gygax's mind as the designer.

Use is evidence of utility. If people use a rule, it's because it's useful. (Or how they implement it is useful.) If they don't use a rule, the rule isn't useful. (Or they don't understand the rule, because the designer didn't describe it clearly.) Players and GM's determine whether a rule is used, and hence what the game is actually like in play.

This means game designers cannot predict or dictate the game's gestalt. The gestalt of the game is how it operates as a whole. The feel, or the mood and experience of playing the game emerges from the gestalt. The gestalt of Call of Cthulhu is different than Savage Worlds, which is different than Shadowrun or AD&D.

The label "Old School Play" is all about the gestalt of the game. "Yes, playing Adventurer, Conqueror, King is strongly reminiscent of how we played OD&D/AD&D/RC back in the day."

OSR games are knowingly designed to produce a gestalt which resembles that of vintage editions of D&D. The designers have some influence, but cannot absolutely dictate, what their game's gestalt is.

Here's the upshot: Game designers are at the mercy of GM's and players. They determine how your game is going to be played. This is a good thing.

You shouldn't try to dictate to players and GM's. To the contrary, you should try to understand what people find valuable and fun about your game (or RPG's as a whole), and enhance those aspects.

Rules falls by the wayside. This is inevitable. Rather than raging against it, accept it and use it. Find out which rules are disused, determine why, and either get rid of the rule (streamlining your game) or alter it so it's useful.

As a game designer, you are not the master. You are the servant. Suck it up, accept your role in the universe, and help your players and GM's. Do it well enough, and you might actually be able to make a living at this.

I figure rules get widely (note the qualifier, I'm talking about the everyone-does-it stuff, not individual table house rules) ignored for one of a few main reasons:

1) The rule isn't well explained or sign-posted in the rules and/or comes up rarely, and so people just forget it exists
2) The rule is so poorly explained that players can't agree on how to implement it, so it gets left out.
3) Players believe the rule is problematic in some way and the game is better without it
4) The rule slows down play and doesn't add anything of commensurate value

There's probably more I've missed.

My thinking is - if RPG Design was more mature (and criticism and education are parts of this, hence why I'm posting about this in this thread), then RPG Designers would be better able to teach the intended game through a rulebook, and so 1 & 2 wouldn't happen as often. Conversely, an accumulated body of knowledge of the kind of rules which trigger 3 & 4 would also help designers in avoiding creating more in that ilk.

So. I agree with you that designers cannot control how the game is actually played. But what I do think is that they can improve both in their ability to design games which are playable, and their ability to explain to you in the first place how they intend for the game to be played.

Gygax is a great example, of course. In his games, henchmen and hirelings were vitally important. In the game "in the wild", they were less so, because people didn't start from the assumption that of course you would have them. Gygax provided rules for how to have henchmen and hirelings, and what they could do for you etc. - but he never stopped to explain why you should have them and how they supported the game he had designed, and so they got missed.

Quote from: Grymbok;616703I do think [game designers] can improve both in their ability to design games which are playable, and their ability to explain to you in the first place how they intend for the game to be played.

Oh, absolutely. I completely agree. My main concern, when writing rules for my own little action-movie RPG, is to ensure that they're as useful as possible, and explained as clearly as possible.

Both are a struggle, and both are different endeavors (with little overlap in skillsets). And as an industry, and as individual writers/designers, we can do better, and should strive to do better.

Quote from: Mistwell;616454It'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).

RPG's are a twinned medium: the rulebooks are distinct from play, and play is where rulebooks are used and applied. Thus, rulebook design (to be any good) must be oriented towards playability, towards offering utility at the gaming table.

And if (as Wiki says) applied are is design for practical use, then RPG books definitely qualify as applied art. Which is humorous to me, because my primary inspiration in my own game designs is to mimic the utility and simplicity of a specific school of industrial design (another applied art).

"Make it clean, easily understood, streamlined, and flexible." I learned that from human interface designers, and have tried to apply that aesthetic to my work. (I'm not claiming to be successful, mind you, just that it's what I strive for.)

(Side note: At first glance, the relationship between fine art and applied art seems similar to that between pure math and applied math. Interesting.)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;616721RPG's are a twinned medium: the rulebooks are distinct from play, and play is where rulebooks are used and applied. Thus, rulebook design (to be any good) must be oriented towards playability, towards offering utility at the gaming table.

I think you are right to an extent, but this message can be taken too literally. I agree, rulebooks are designed for use at the table, but inspiration is an important part of what the rule book is for. Rulebooks are not just used at the table, they are also used in the prep phase by the GM and the players. Personally, I need that spark of inspiration from the flavor text as a GM. Often these are things that never arise in play directly.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;616629I'm staggered by this thread, DW. Awesome stuff.

Thank you. From everyone involved, really. Some really great ideas being tossed out here.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;616629If its not too premature, what might be some of the limitations/strengths of the medium in your opinion, and how they affect of the structure of a session?

I'll get to that real soon. Your comments, however, are insightful, accurate, and cover a lot of what I would. I want to expand on just one:

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;616629*mechanization: mechanics describe and partly control game events, with inputs from dice rolls to ensure fairness. This is something you don't see in literature very often

But you do see analogous structures in improvisational theater. The specific example I'm thinking of is the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. (If you'll forgive the seeming pretentiousness of bringing Renaissance theater into this.)

This was a form of improvisational puppet theater, with stock characters like Punch and Judy. Each had an established characterization that was well-known by the performers and audience, and both expected consistency from the characters. This characterization was the rules framework for each performance.

Each performance was wholly unique, improvised on the spot. Limited by the characters, but otherwise wholly free form. So long as Punch acted like Punch, the puppeteer could do anything he liked.

An interesting contrast to RPG's, I think. The puppeteers were playing a role, extemporaneously acting in character, doing things and reacting to what other characters did, creating a sequence of events that (after the fact) could be related as a story.

Yeah, it's a lot like roleplaying. I've never thought of it that way before.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;616725An interesting contrast to RPG's, I think. The puppeteers were playing a role, extemporaneously acting in character, doing things and reacting to what other characters did, creating a sequence of events that (after the fact) could be related as a story.

Yeah, it's a lot like roleplaying. I've never thought of it that way before.

Yes, it's like roleplaying, but there are contrasts. The puppeteers are playing to an audience. In fact the success of the whole thing depends on the enjoyment of the audience, who are participating in a very different, largely passive way (probably giving some feedback, but not directing the action very much). I guess the puppeteers would stop doing what they do if they didn't enjoy it, and move into another profession, but that's an extreme edge issue.

In RPGs, the players need to be more or less mindful of the other participants. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But their enjoyment is essential. This in turn gets to motivation or aesthetics; I still need to read the full MDA paper, but the rundown of aesthetics is helpful and can be expanded to specifically RPG-related aesthetics. For example, a specific subset of "Fantasy" and/or "Expression", in the form of interacting with an imagined situation or world through an in-character point-of-view. For many people (arguably not all), this is the central aesthetic payoff of the RPG-form, which seems to differ from commedia dell'arte. I haven't actually done much improv performance of any type, though, (maybe some skits in language classes) so I can't say for sure how the players perceive their activity, how mindful they are of the audience, and how important their mindfulness or non-mindfulness is to the ultimate success of the activity.

Quote from: Grymbok;616634OK. In the context of attempting to bring criticism to RPGs, that seems an odd measurement to use, to me.

Use evinces utility. A movie that gets watched, a record that's bought and played, a book that gets talked about and read, is successful. And everything successful provides some utility to those who consume it.

(An technically superior, as in superior in technique or craft, but less popular work may provide greater utility in some areas, but it simply didn't service the needs of the audience as well as more-popular works.)

This is proof that, whatever flaws 3e had (and there were many), it was done well enough to gather and maintain an audience. It maintained its audience even after it was killed and reincarnated as Pathfinder. (An event that would have killed most RPG's, bands, TV shows, whatever.)

It was obviously doing something right.

Quote from: Grymbok;616634I don't think the rise of Pathfinder means that 3e was an unqualified success - it just means the 3e-4e transition was a failure.

Pathfinder didn't just survive, didn't just thrive, it became the leading game in the hobby. That's a phenomenal event, something no other RPG managed, ever.

(And is almost unimaginable in any medium. Imagine a TV show being moved to another network, with mostly the same actors and mostly the same sets, but a new time-slot and a new name. Just moving to a different day on the same network kills most shows. Moving to another day, on another network, under another name, with some striking changes is almost assuredly lethal. Yet Pathfinder managed something akin to that.)

Even in the salad days of White Wolf's ascendency, Vampire (et. al.) was second to D&D. Even in the dark times, with TSR collapsing, D&D still sold.

Don't get me wrong, the transition to 4e was botched to hell and back. But WOTC's biggest error, it seems, may have been abandoning the very popular 3e. An updated 3e, with a less radical revision, might have maintained 3e's audience, instead of driving them to other venues.

Quote from: Grymbok;616634But if we're going to think critically about RPGs, then to my mind two of the questions to be considered are "how effectively can an RPG author teach the play of their RPGs?", and "to what degree can an RPG ruleset enforce a desired mode of play?"

Those are good questions, and I don't have precise, well-supported answers for either. For the first, clear descriptions, streamlined rules, and well-written examples can do a lot. This is a field that is constantly being plowed by, for example, textbooks and the "Dummies" series. There should be a lot of information available.

As to the second, my opinion is that trying to rigidly enforce a specific play style cripples the one strongest virtue of RPG's: flexibility. RPG's are a protean medium, and GM's and players can do nearly anything they wish. They can change rules, add rules, subtract rules, misapply rules, and everything will work out.

Trying to go against that, in my opinion, is not only foolish (as you're fighting against what the medium does well) but, in a sense, wrong.

The players (and GM) are sovereign, kings of the castle. Designers are jesters or itinerant actors, their utility dependent on how entertaining they are; they serve at the pleasure of the kings. Trying to force the kings to behave a specific way is... arrogant. You can influence, but you cannot dictate.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;616724I think you are right to an extent, but this message can be taken too literally.

Your points are well-taken.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;616736Yes, it's like roleplaying, but there are contrasts.

True, that's why I said "An interesting contrast to RPG's, I think."

They're not the same thing, no doubt, and you did an able job of describing the differences.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;615935So, the question: where is the "Understanding Comics" of RPG's?

The original work is mostly respected inside circles of comic fans, and only had a minimal impact outside the community. The general population might enjoy the "Avengers" and still sneer at comics themselves. Corporate America sneers at them anyway, but is willing to take the profits. Academia just sneers at comics. The exceptions are few and far between and usually serves as "exceptions which prove the rule."

As such, another question is, what good would a "Understanding RPGs" do for the hobby?

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;616725But you do see analogous structures in improvisational theater. The specific example I'm thinking of is the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. (If you'll forgive the seeming pretentiousness of bringing Renaissance theater into this.)

This was a form of improvisational puppet theater, with stock characters like Punch and Judy. Each had an established characterization that was well-known by the performers and audience, and both expected consistency from the characters. This characterization was the rules framework for each performance.

Each performance was wholly unique, improvised on the spot. Limited by the characters, but otherwise wholly free form. So long as Punch acted like Punch, the puppeteer could do anything he liked.

An interesting contrast to RPG's, I think. The puppeteers were playing a role, extemporaneously acting in character, doing things and reacting to what other characters did, creating a sequence of events that (after the fact) could be related as a story.

Yeah, it's a lot like roleplaying. I've never thought of it that way before.

I think the comparison to improv theatre is an interesting one, though it wasn't quite what I was trying to get across.

With 'mechanization' what I was trying to articulation was how the rule structure - the game part of a role playing game - affects proceedings, as compared to say literature or comics which are raw imagination.

I think I see what your point is - how having limitations helps with creating a shared fantasy, or connecting with the 'audience'? - but its a broader idea than what I was trying to articulate.

I see mechanics as a particular subset of the limitations on the RPG participants. Setting/fluff is a limiting factor on what can happen in an RPG session as well - I think thats' more analogous to how Punch's personality affects what's possible in a Punch play.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;616842Pathfinder didn't just survive, didn't just thrive, it became the leading game in the hobby. That's a phenomenal event, something no other RPG managed, ever.

What many seem to forget is that Pathfinder didnt just appear out of the void.

Paizo had both the Dragon and Dungeon license, and their campaign setting and modules were initially all OGL based. A significant number of Paizo staff members worked for WotC at some point. Before the actual Pathfinder RPG came around, they had access to a huge number of customers who also played 3.0/3.5/OGL, and had a lot of time to figure out what people liked. There are quite a few really smart people at Paizo.

The phenomenal event I dont think would otherwise have been possible if it weren't for all these things going for them.

[pt. 6]

Let's talk game design. If you have the time, take a look at this article. It discusses the recent Les Mis movie, and why the camera work in it undermined the director's goals.

The writer of the article is a professional screenwriter, who has a knowledge of how to control the experience of the audience by manipulating the sound, the writing, and the cinematography of a movie. He knows enough of his craft to make deliberate choices.

This is the mark of a true professional: knowing enough about your field, to be able to make precise decisions about how to implement your craft. Chefs, doctors, sculptors, painters, whomever: professionals know their field.

Even very successful game designers are, by this standard, amateurs.

To be a professional photographer, you must have exact and correct knowledge about lighting, shutter speed, focal length, types of lenses, types of film, developing, printing, and so forth. You must know how minute variances in shutter speed will affect the picture.

You must know how to set up a camera for a night shot, a day shot, shooting a building, shooting a single flower. It's precise, controlled, and very, very technical.

There is a lot to learn to become this skilled. And photographers have a body of knowledge to draw upon, to study, so they can become better photographers.

Game design lacks that base of technical knowledge. There is no body of work would-be game designers can consult to become professionals.

Roleplaying game design is a largely unexamined craft. We simply lack the codified base of knowledge available to film students, actors, writers, painters, photographers. We're a very immature medium.

In a mature medium, we'd be able to say: "Here are some options for game design. And here's how these options affect play." Lacking that, we design based on individual tastes (I enjoyed D&D, so my game has classes), we design based on inherited assumptions (see the many games which have D&D attributes, nearly exactly), and we design based off of "similar to Game X, but" (D&D, but with my house rules).

These games can be great. They can be interesting, they can be compelling. Even amateurs can craft great works. But they will never be professional. They will never be as good as they can be, if we knew more about our medium.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;616736Yes, it's like roleplaying, but there are contrasts. The puppeteers are playing to an audience. In fact the success of the whole thing depends on the enjoyment of the audience, who are participating in a very different, largely passive way (probably giving some feedback, but not directing the action very much). I guess the puppeteers would stop doing what they do if they didn't enjoy it, and move into another profession, but that's an extreme edge issue.

In RPGs, the players need to be more or less mindful of the other participants. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But their enjoyment is essential. This in turn gets to motivation or aesthetics; I still need to read the full MDA paper, but the rundown of aesthetics is helpful and can be expanded to specifically RPG-related aesthetics. For example, a specific subset of "Fantasy" and/or "Expression", in the form of interacting with an imagined situation or world through an in-character point-of-view. For many people (arguably not all), this is the central aesthetic payoff of the RPG-form, which seems to differ from commedia dell'arte. I haven't actually done much improv performance of any type, though, (maybe some skits in language classes) so I can't say for sure how the players perceive their activity, how mindful they are of the audience, and how important their mindfulness or non-mindfulness is to the ultimate success of the activity.

My murder mystery busienss is basically an improv theatre group with a situational plot structure and a few specific 'events' that are planned.

So in that situation I have 12 actors. Only the murderer knows who they are i deliberately don't tell the rest of the cast. they get a character and that character's knowledge of events relationships etc. The guests have characters and a tiny bit of knowledge apart from that which they can observe and deduce. Actors are not told to lie or tell the truth they are just told what their character is like and they improvise within the framework.

Now to me its just roleplaying. Apart from the events which are also roleplaying but they 'will happen' in the worst railroady sense.
The actors are either amateur dramatic types, semi pro actors (either ex professionals or drama teachers),I used to have a couple of lap dancers who were great actors as you can imagine and my roleplaying mates. So from a cast of 12 I might have 4 RPGers 4 semi-pro actors and the rest am-dra types or strippers
The roleplayers find it far easier than the actors. The role players are generally better at improv dialogue, better at extending the character beyond the confines of the role on the fly without crossing the plot. The actors are much better at givong me emotion. So if i need a someone to cry an actor will beat a Roleplayer likewise if I want someone to be really nasty, actor every time.
There is probably some releavance to this post but I can't work out what so ... um carry on.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;616842Use evinces utility. A movie that gets watched, a record that's bought and played, a book that gets talked about and read, is successful. And everything successful provides some utility to those who consume it.

(An technically superior, as in superior in technique or craft, but less popular work may provide greater utility in some areas, but it simply didn't service the needs of the audience as well as more-popular works.)

This is proof that, whatever flaws 3e had (and there were many), it was done well enough to gather and maintain an audience. It maintained its audience even after it was killed and reincarnated as Pathfinder. (An event that would have killed most RPG's, bands, TV shows, whatever.)

It was obviously doing something right.

I don't think our thinking is too distinct here - was just my poor word choice in talking about "success" which sent us off down the rabbit hole.

Here's the thing though - whilst an "Understanding RPGs" would give RPG criticism a significant leg up, I don't believe we're in a position now where no criticism is possible. In the absence of a corpus of knowledge and an agreed language we're certainly not in the place today to support something like Film Crit Hulk's dissection of Les Mis, but that doesn't mean we can't do anything.

To my mind, there are going to be certain games which for one reason or another are going to be more profitable to examine critically. And knowledge of the designer's intent is one of those levers that will allow us to find starting points for criticism, as it gives us a very clear place to start from saying "did they manage to do what they were trying to do?" I'm not trying to say that's the only question of value when looking at a game - but I think it's one that it is possible to make some headway on from where we stand right now. D&D 3e is an obvious case here for a game with known goals - others I know of personally include Savage Worlds (there's a long designer's notes out there on the net) and Everway (which was an experiment in more involving character design, with the rest of the game sort of tacked on the side).

OD&D is also a candidate in this area due to the degree to which it's known people were playing it differently to Gygax.

I'm not sure at this point whether "system doesn't support the setting goals" is the same question or a different one. It's an area to explore. Vampire is of course the famous example here.

Another area to explore is the question of "is this game complete?" In other words, would an alien with an aversion to house-ruling be able to play a given RPG based only on the information in its core book(s).

QuotePathfinder didn't just survive, didn't just thrive, it became the leading game in the hobby. That's a phenomenal event, something no other RPG managed, ever.

(And is almost unimaginable in any medium. Imagine a TV show being moved to another network, with mostly the same actors and mostly the same sets, but a new time-slot and a new name. Just moving to a different day on the same network kills most shows. Moving to another day, on another network, under another name, with some striking changes is almost assuredly lethal. Yet Pathfinder managed something akin to that.)

Even in the salad days of White Wolf's ascendency, Vampire (et. al.) was second to D&D. Even in the dark times, with TSR collapsing, D&D still sold.

I think that, given Paizo's position as preferred 3rd party for 3e, it's a bit more like Howard Stern changing networks and keeping his audience. But you know what - you're right. I probably am wrong to dismiss Pathfinder's sales as being solely WotC's doing, and there doubtless is an interesting study to be done on how they were able to convert 3e players to Pathfinder.

QuoteAs to the second, my opinion is that trying to rigidly enforce a specific play style cripples the one strongest virtue of RPG's: flexibility. RPG's are a protean medium, and GM's and players can do nearly anything they wish. They can change rules, add rules, subtract rules, misapply rules, and everything will work out.

Trying to go against that, in my opinion, is not only foolish (as you're fighting against what the medium does well) but, in a sense, wrong.

The players (and GM) are sovereign, kings of the castle. Designers are jesters or itinerant actors, their utility dependent on how entertaining they are; they serve at the pleasure of the kings. Trying to force the kings to behave a specific way is... arrogant. You can influence, but you cannot dictate.

I think what designers can do better in this area is provide information to GMs about what will happen if they tinker. Along the lines of "if you're thinking about taking out wandering monsters, you should be aware that this removes an incentive to the players to move quickly through hostile areas, and so may lead to players resting after every encounter", say.

In other words, not trying to enforce a play style, but being clearer about the assumptions underlying the ruleset and what the expected play style is.