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Games People Play: Looking at the Gaming Aspects of D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 8988455" data-attributes="member: 7035894"><p><em>Mujik Is Dead</em> is incredibly focused and I can imagine that it would produce extremely intense game sessions. As a writing teacher, my first thought was that it is very imaginatively constraining - there is an implicit (actually fairly explicit) narrative expected, with the outcome obviously predetermined by the title, but the major story beats are also fairly inevitable (that is sort of the thematic point). Thematically, this is a game intended to have narrow appeal. The game is designed for one-off play, which makes sense as this does not seem like an experience that players would want to repeat on the regular.</p><p></p><p>These are not criticisms; it seems to me obvious that these are all very intentional choices by the game designer, who has their own powerful authorial vision and wishes to see it executed during gameplay - it is almost an authorship by proxy situation, which I find fascinating, so that even though all players have a say in the storytelling, the designer retains a powerful role. I think you could only play this game with an extremely copacetic group of players, consent would be very important, and everyone would probably want to have a drink afterwards.</p><p></p><p>Okay, so D&D is obviously not that.</p><p></p><p>Since we are both familiar with <em>Dread</em>, I will say what I like about that game, hopefully leading us back to the topic of D&D, because this is a D&D sub-forum and it seems only polite. Again, I emphasize that I am trying to share my own ideas and learn from others, and underlying premise is that "good" and "bad," with regards to art, are always contextual statements.</p><p></p><p>I use <em>Dread</em> in my creative writing class specifically because it helps young writers better understand the importance of building dramatic tension. As their decisions make the "Tower of Dread" (it's just a Jenga tower) more unstable, their character's choices become more and more important, and this does a great job of replicating the emotional tension found in a good thriller or horror movie, which is the intent. There is a central author, a game master, who prepares the story set-up and acts as the more or less omniscient narrator, which is similar to D&D. Players, as in D&D, narrate what their characters do, and the Tower replaces dice as the chance mechanism, but with an added skill element (this is significant; it turns out I am terrible at pulling Jenga blocks).</p><p></p><p>What I love about <em>Dread</em> is that it is an intuitive game, so that it take virtually no time to start playing, and the Tower of Dread acts as an obvious visual metaphor so that everyone understands immediately what the stakes are. The fact that there is a central narrative authority gives the game focus and makes it much easier for players to participate without needing to assume a lot of storytelling responsibility. This immediately widens the appeal of the game, but it also reinforces power structures that could be problematic. The game is a fast, fun way to get players involved in shared storytelling in a limited way. Students love it.</p><p></p><p>Narratively, D&D and <em>Dread</em> are basically the same. So D&D takes that basic structure of a paternalistic game master and then overlays a complicated rules structure. Because it <em>is</em> still a an improvisational storytelling game, the rules are never going to comprehensively cover every possible situation in a detailed simulation kind of way, but they go a lot further than "pull a block to see if you succeed."</p><p></p><p>The result is a kind of hybrid game. <em>Mujik</em> is almost pure story, in some ways quite limited in scope, where everyone is a more or less co-equal storyteller. <em>Dread</em> is also almost pure story, but the narrative agency of all players but one is tightly constrained. D&D is story plus game, where knowledge of the rules plays an extensive role, and the DM has control to a significant degree, though contained by rules and dice roles (to a debatable degree).</p><p></p><p>One way of looking at this is that D&D doesn't do any of these things particularly well. The reliance on gameplay makes it an unwieldy storytelling device, particularly during combat, which is when it becomes its most game-like. But the reliance on storytelling means that the game rules can seldom perfectly replicate what the players or DM want to be happening. There is some structure, but not enough that any particular situation can be perfectly optimized.</p><p></p><p>Another way of looking at this is that D&D's potential flaws are actually behind its appeal. It has <em>enough</em> story to give a sense of purpose and continuity to the session, so that players want to keep coming back. They want to continue the story. It has enough gameplay elements so that players can engage in creative problem solving within various tactical and narrative restraints, and can aspire towards improvement if not perfection. Could it not be that D&D's "jack of all trades, master of none" design manages to strike a happy medium? It is, at its heart, a kind of half-assed game, and my conjecture is that Arneson, Gygax and co. kind of caught lightning in a bottle with this sort of game structure, in ways that work really well to trigger more or less addictive reactions in human brains.</p><p></p><p>Humans love stories (I would argue that humans <em>are</em> stories), and we love to see ourselves, or idealized versions of ourselves, in them. Humans enjoy tangible, measurable improvement. All creatures with brain stems enjoy intermittent rewards. D&D-style games give us a lot of things that poke at our brains in pleasurable ways.</p><p></p><p>Why is D&D the gorilla in the room, instead of Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu or Pathfinder or one of any number of other games that are, design-wise, more or less the same? I don't think marketing is the answer; D&D has a history of crap marketing. I think it was there first, colonizing brains, and none of those other games are really different enough to overcome that basic fact. I also think it involves themes that are inherently conservative, so the game basically feels safe. A game like <em>Dread</em> is going to have an inherently smaller niche. A game like <em>Mujik</em> significantly more so. And neither of those games, especially the latter, push those same brain buttons.</p><p></p><p>None of which, in my mind mind, makes any of them good or bad. To me, this becomes very much like an argument about whether or not pop music or big budget blockbusters are good or bad. At a certain point, this just becomes a discussion about politics. Aesthetically speaking, they offer different things. I love playing D&D, but I love a good game of <em>Dread</em> or <em>Fiasco</em> even more. On the other hand, those games don't give me the long term pleasures of a D&D campaign.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 8988455, member: 7035894"] [I]Mujik Is Dead[/I] is incredibly focused and I can imagine that it would produce extremely intense game sessions. As a writing teacher, my first thought was that it is very imaginatively constraining - there is an implicit (actually fairly explicit) narrative expected, with the outcome obviously predetermined by the title, but the major story beats are also fairly inevitable (that is sort of the thematic point). Thematically, this is a game intended to have narrow appeal. The game is designed for one-off play, which makes sense as this does not seem like an experience that players would want to repeat on the regular. These are not criticisms; it seems to me obvious that these are all very intentional choices by the game designer, who has their own powerful authorial vision and wishes to see it executed during gameplay - it is almost an authorship by proxy situation, which I find fascinating, so that even though all players have a say in the storytelling, the designer retains a powerful role. I think you could only play this game with an extremely copacetic group of players, consent would be very important, and everyone would probably want to have a drink afterwards. Okay, so D&D is obviously not that. Since we are both familiar with [I]Dread[/I], I will say what I like about that game, hopefully leading us back to the topic of D&D, because this is a D&D sub-forum and it seems only polite. Again, I emphasize that I am trying to share my own ideas and learn from others, and underlying premise is that "good" and "bad," with regards to art, are always contextual statements. I use [I]Dread[/I] in my creative writing class specifically because it helps young writers better understand the importance of building dramatic tension. As their decisions make the "Tower of Dread" (it's just a Jenga tower) more unstable, their character's choices become more and more important, and this does a great job of replicating the emotional tension found in a good thriller or horror movie, which is the intent. There is a central author, a game master, who prepares the story set-up and acts as the more or less omniscient narrator, which is similar to D&D. Players, as in D&D, narrate what their characters do, and the Tower replaces dice as the chance mechanism, but with an added skill element (this is significant; it turns out I am terrible at pulling Jenga blocks). What I love about [I]Dread[/I] is that it is an intuitive game, so that it take virtually no time to start playing, and the Tower of Dread acts as an obvious visual metaphor so that everyone understands immediately what the stakes are. The fact that there is a central narrative authority gives the game focus and makes it much easier for players to participate without needing to assume a lot of storytelling responsibility. This immediately widens the appeal of the game, but it also reinforces power structures that could be problematic. The game is a fast, fun way to get players involved in shared storytelling in a limited way. Students love it. Narratively, D&D and [I]Dread[/I] are basically the same. So D&D takes that basic structure of a paternalistic game master and then overlays a complicated rules structure. Because it [I]is[/I] still a an improvisational storytelling game, the rules are never going to comprehensively cover every possible situation in a detailed simulation kind of way, but they go a lot further than "pull a block to see if you succeed." The result is a kind of hybrid game. [I]Mujik[/I] is almost pure story, in some ways quite limited in scope, where everyone is a more or less co-equal storyteller. [I]Dread[/I] is also almost pure story, but the narrative agency of all players but one is tightly constrained. D&D is story plus game, where knowledge of the rules plays an extensive role, and the DM has control to a significant degree, though contained by rules and dice roles (to a debatable degree). One way of looking at this is that D&D doesn't do any of these things particularly well. The reliance on gameplay makes it an unwieldy storytelling device, particularly during combat, which is when it becomes its most game-like. But the reliance on storytelling means that the game rules can seldom perfectly replicate what the players or DM want to be happening. There is some structure, but not enough that any particular situation can be perfectly optimized. Another way of looking at this is that D&D's potential flaws are actually behind its appeal. It has [I]enough[/I] story to give a sense of purpose and continuity to the session, so that players want to keep coming back. They want to continue the story. It has enough gameplay elements so that players can engage in creative problem solving within various tactical and narrative restraints, and can aspire towards improvement if not perfection. Could it not be that D&D's "jack of all trades, master of none" design manages to strike a happy medium? It is, at its heart, a kind of half-assed game, and my conjecture is that Arneson, Gygax and co. kind of caught lightning in a bottle with this sort of game structure, in ways that work really well to trigger more or less addictive reactions in human brains. Humans love stories (I would argue that humans [I]are[/I] stories), and we love to see ourselves, or idealized versions of ourselves, in them. Humans enjoy tangible, measurable improvement. All creatures with brain stems enjoy intermittent rewards. D&D-style games give us a lot of things that poke at our brains in pleasurable ways. Why is D&D the gorilla in the room, instead of Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu or Pathfinder or one of any number of other games that are, design-wise, more or less the same? I don't think marketing is the answer; D&D has a history of crap marketing. I think it was there first, colonizing brains, and none of those other games are really different enough to overcome that basic fact. I also think it involves themes that are inherently conservative, so the game basically feels safe. A game like [I]Dread[/I] is going to have an inherently smaller niche. A game like [I]Mujik[/I] significantly more so. And neither of those games, especially the latter, push those same brain buttons. None of which, in my mind mind, makes any of them good or bad. To me, this becomes very much like an argument about whether or not pop music or big budget blockbusters are good or bad. At a certain point, this just becomes a discussion about politics. Aesthetically speaking, they offer different things. I love playing D&D, but I love a good game of [I]Dread[/I] or [I]Fiasco[/I] even more. On the other hand, those games don't give me the long term pleasures of a D&D campaign. [/QUOTE]
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