Thinking About the Purpose of Mechanics from a Neo-Trad Perspective

[The-Magic-Sword]

The thing is is that I'd hope if one is seeking to discuss theory that they, in turn, are willing to then accept a more objective discourse. Its not lost on me that improv has baggage as a term, but I can also put that aside and focus on whats actually being said through the word, and not what we colloquially associate with it.

Back in the day I used to run into the same issue with political theory, in particular the baggage of the word "anarchy" when it came to discussing anarchism. If one can't or won't be more objective, it just leads to the conversation being held hostage as we try to skirt around the least convoluted word to describe something because it has colloquial baggage.

Its a lot more concise to just say anarchy than it is to say anarchist society or whatever, and we can take the steps to ensure that contextually we understand whats being said.

The use of improv in this case is the same sort of situation.



It'd be a mistake to assume I'm the only one with my thoughts. I do interact with people in real life, and we collectively think the way we do for a reason.

But more than that, it misses what I meant by that, which is completely on me as I didn't elaborate. My bad.

When I said those games aren't fun, I was referring to specific core elements of them, rather than the overall experience. What we might call the "G" parts of the RPG.

The RP part is always consistently fun, and that tracks. The people I play with are all pretty good at it, even when entirely divorced from any sort of G, and that we all recognize that RP is what we're doing plays into that.

The G parts however are seldom that consistent, and this is related to another wide reaching opinion of mine that finds the fact that so much of the hobby is the same 5 or 6 game systems copy and pasted a million times over distasteful.

Too many games have more or less identical game loops, and even where the quality is at its best, its often not any more fun than the original was.



I was saying that simplification requires abstraction. The jargon laden crosstalk I was referring to is more or less the opposite.



I'm using analysis in the colloquial sense, not the literary. If you don't believe analysis is necessary for game design, thats fine I suppose, but that is so incredibly flabbergasting a stance to take that I can't even engage with it on an objective level. Its patently absurd.

So to be clear, I did understand your connotation, I am asserting that the G elements themselves were likely fun for people with different tastes than you, in the same way that Fighting Video Games get a lot of heat for being clunky or unfun but have a devoted following that enjoys them, and converts who used to feel that way but don't anymore (like me!) It's telling that games you would identify as having more or less identical gameplay loops nevertheless engender vicious edition wars and other schisms over the outsized impact of their small differences-- if the G portion of the difference between say, Pathfinder 2e, DND 5e, and Old School Essentials (three games with extremely similar loops) didn't matter, it mattering wouldn't have such a large impact on the scene.

Your distaste for that in the abstract, is more disqualifying than it is informative, novelty isn't itself, much of anything.

As for Anarchism, that itself is a fraught field because not only are there connotations and whatever you believe it really means, but also other people's identification of the core of that movement (Against Me's hit song "I Was a Teenage Anarchist" comes to mind as a pithy expression of what I mean.) The desire to use it anyway and dismiss the baggage it comes with as orthogonal to it's core meaning doesn't really withstand scrutiny because your authority over the term isn't capable of imposing itself on the generalized meaning of how the term has been experienced. This also gets into the nature of simplification, because control of language determines control of the concepts that can be discussed, if we cut away the seemingly problematic baggage of the term, we might be eliding the problematic portions of the concept itself from discussion, rather than some kind of red herring. It's a No-True-Sctosman, problem, in other words.

Analysis in the colloquial sense has the trouble of being whatever you'd like it to be, in this case it appears to be a mechanism by which subjective assertions of tastemaking are laundered into something more authoratitive, which I'm not looking to be permissive towards, as an intellectual stance. People will like things that you don't, and that's fine, the discussion isn't really about rejecting the form, the form is self-validating on the basis that there exist people who enjoy it or who find meaning in it or whatever means it derives value for some group, it's about understanding the form and how it operates, and what is appealing about it for those people. There is a lot of analysis going on in this thread, it's tastemaking masquerading as analysis that we might have a problem with, at least to my mind.

 

[Emberashh]

if the G portion of the difference between say, Pathfinder 2e, DND 5e, and Old School Essentials (three games with extremely similar loops) didn't matter, it mattering wouldn't have such a large impact on the scene.

Those three don't have the same loops. Theres an identical heritage between them obviously, but one is a specific tactical combat oriented game, and the other two are two of the main ones that get copy/pasted ad nauseum.

The desire to use it anyway and dismiss the baggage it comes with as orthogonal to it's core meaning doesn't really withstand scrutiny because your authority over the term isn't capable of imposing itself on the generalized meaning of how the term has been experienced.

Which isn't the intent. The intent is we're attempting to have a productive conversation and we can approach words with baggage in a way that doesn't prevent that.

I did already offer up alternatives. If we really must waste time and energy on litigating language, then actually do it and offer up alternatives. Rejecting the conversation isn't that, and thats what one is doing if they're forcing the conversation to be about language and not about anything that was actually said.

I'm not here to debate what a word implies or negotiate over what words we use, Im here to talk about game design. If negotiating language has to be the gatekeeper to doing that, then fine whatever, but lets not mistake that for being a game design conversation, nor forget to actually have the game design conversation.

This also gets into the nature of simplification, because control of language determines control of the concepts that can be discussed, if we cut away the seemingly problematic baggage of the term, we might be eliding the problematic portions of the concept itself from discussion, rather than some kind of red herring.

Okay, then prove it. Actually talk to me, and waste no more time on this soapboxy language gatekeeping.

Analysis in the colloquial sense has the trouble of being whatever you'd like it to be

Words mean things, and analysis has a colloquial definition:

a·nal·y·sis
/əˈnaləsəs/
noun
detailed examination of the elements or structure of something.

in this case it appears to be a mechanism by which subjective assertions of tastemaking are laundered into something more authoratitive

In other words, you don't like my opinion and in service of rejecting it you'll go to the length of rejecting something non-problematic like analysis, because I made it clear that analysis is what lead me to my opinion.

Surely you'll understand why I can't really take this seriously, given you're in turn asserting without evidence a definition of "analysis" that in reality is just you saying I'm lying.

Its pretty cleverly hidden, but its pretty plain to me that you're no longer engaging whats being said. You're going after me because you don't like my opinion, and you buried it so that may be it wouldn't be noticed. But I did.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Which isn't the intent. The intent is we're attempting to have a productive conversation and we can approach words with baggage in a way that doesn't prevent that.

I did already offer up alternatives. If we really must waste time and energy on litigating language, then actually do it and offer up alternatives. Rejecting the conversation isn't that, and thats what one is doing if they're forcing the conversation to be about language and not about anything that was actually said.

I'm not here to debate what a word implies or negotiate over what words we use, Im here to talk about game design. If negotiating language has to be the gatekeeper to doing that, then fine whatever, but lets not mistake that for being a game design conversation, nor forget to actually have the game design conversation.



Okay, then prove it. Actually talk to me, and waste no more time on this soapboxy language gatekeeping.



Words mean things, and analysis has a colloquial definition:

a·nal·y·sis
/əˈnaləsəs/
noun
detailed examination of the elements or structure of something.



In other words, you don't like my opinion and in service of rejecting it you'll go to the length of rejecting something non-problematic like analysis, because I made it clear that analysis is what lead me to my opinion.

Surely you'll understand why I can't really take this seriously, given you're in turn asserting without evidence a definition of "analysis" that in reality is just you saying I'm lying.

Whats with the aggrievement regarding other people not agreeing with the stance you want to take? Is it really so intolerable that 'most games are only fun because of improv rp so they miss their own point' isn't something you're agreed with on? Or that other people feel you're engaged in an activity that isn't really germane to the topic?

In what way does the:

detailed examination of the elements or structure of something.

Necessitate a a pronouncement of taste, and in what way can examining these elements and structure lead us to an assertion that a game is unfun? At what point is the 'fun' factor of a game actually decided in this examination? What objective criteria for 'fun' exists beyond perhaps observing people having it? In other words, why is this idea something fit for the consumption of others in an intellectual way, specifically, how can it be engaged with by them in a meaningful way?

Those three don't have the same loops. Theres an identical heritage between them obviously, but one is a specific tactical combat oriented game, and the other two are two of the main ones that get copy/pasted ad nauseum.

One is a [a statement of what the game does] while the others are [a statement of their intertextuality]?

Because I think you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that 5e at least wasn't designed with the same tactics game DNA as Pathfinder (though Pathfinder executes it better, in my eyes), and arguably basic (and therefore OSE) was as well, given that it was initially defined as type of wargame, though it does so in a fairly different way. The loop of all the of the above games generally involves overcoming obstacles via the tactical application of character abilities, gaining resources used to progress, and then doing it again while stronger, over which a layer of narrative theming is applied which beyond the texture presented by their simulative mechanics (what a fireball, for instance does), is utterly flexible (as discussed earlier in the thread, you could have a game where the character sit around and chat and drink and that's it, or a game that's just fighting in encounters, and less controversially, a format where the characters spend an awful lot of time drinking and chatting in taverns, but also go spelunking for more drinking money.)

Its pretty cleverly hidden, but its pretty plain to me that you're no longer engaging whats being said. You're going after me because you don't like my opinion, and you buried it so that may be it wouldn't be noticed. But I did.

I'm not sure how productive it would be to deny it, but no, my frustration is more regarding the rude dismissal of the previous twenty-something pages of thread and the wonderful insights and arguments contained therein, and the content of my responses to you pertain to the substance of that dismissal, rejecting the proposed process of simplification that hinges on these acts of pronouncement masquerading as analysis.

 

[Emberashh]

Whats with the aggrievement regarding other people not agreeing with the stance you want to take?

It is fascinating that one can read me saying pretty explicitly that I want people to actually talk to me and not at me and will just not register it, and instead invent alternative facts about what a person thinks.

Is it really so intolerable that 'most games are only fun because of improv rp so they miss their own point' isn't something you're agreed with on?

Case in point.

Necessitate a a pronouncement of taste, and in what way can examining these elements and structure lead us to an assertion that a game is unfun?

Is it really so intolerable to you that I feel the opinions I derive from my analysis are relevant to the conversation and subsequently share them?

Perhaps one has gotten a little too caught up in identifying with certain things and are feeling under attack when they have no reason to be?

Any inkling of badwrongfun you believe is at play here are entirely imagined.

At what point is the 'fun' factor of a game actually decided in this examination?

Gameplay is the cumulative emergent result of mechanics, and this is an important thing to note especially when certain kinds of games are being merged together, as is the case with RP/Gs as we know them today.

If you drop the RP, whats left? Not a whole lot thats worth doing, and anecdotally we can observe that being a desirable distinction given the biggest RPGs in the world right now all have much more substance, at least, in the G Elements than your typical rules light or storygame experience. So theres value in a substantive G. (And surely we'd want that substance to be fun)

But even in those cases, stripped of the RP, the experience becomes lackluster in a lot of cases. Some, like your Tactical RPGs, fare better, and older style games do too with non-combat elements.

But many just don't. Without the RP, the game loses what makes it fun, because the G isn't the fun part.

And what that tells us is that the overall experience being generated by these games, with RP and G Together, is that there's a lot of room for improvement. These games are less fun because an portion of the game may as well not be there for what it actually adds to the experience.

I don't believe I ever recognized it for it, but thats something I think ICON is going to find success in, simply because by design is going to emphasize both relatively equally, and from what I've seen, some okay integration between the two. Combining the generally "best" ideas of storygaming with tactical combat is a nobrainer, and I can appreciate it on that basis even if I have different preferences for approaching narratives in the fantasy genre.

What objective criteria for 'fun' exists beyond perhaps observing people having it?

There's a million and one anecdotes about people playing 5e for the improv and then finding it a drag whenever initiative gets rolled. Many have just as much fun doing both, but as related above, it can be better.

G that can stand on its own can only add to the overall fun, and its the Designers job to ensure that it doesn't impact the RP.

Hence, the analysis of RPGs having a fundamental improv game, as that then leads to the practical design methodology, in other words, stating clearly what the design problem is so we can actually address it and prevent issues from emerging in our games, and address them when the human element inadvertently causes them anyway.

The design problem I identified is this: RP/Gs commonly struggle with one of its two primary elements being unviable as an independent game, limiting the overall potential of the game to be fun for any given audience, in turn limiting the appeal of the game.
This then leads to the intent of the methodology: To maximize the overall potential of a given RP/G, every element of both RP and G must simultaneously integrate with each other, never contradict one another, and be independently interesting.

And then on to practical design: if we run into an issue, we can quickly identify if its an issue of integration, contradiction, or independent interest, and from there seek out solutions that address the issue.

As posited in other topics (I can't remember if I did here), the single biggest thing any RPG could do, without changing any single thing about the rest of the game, is just including a section that acknowledges improv, teaches how to use it in the context of the game, and provides advice on fixing improv issues.

Going farther than that is preferable, of course, but this is the bare minimum, and theres not a single game that'd be made lesser for doing this. Every single one would get better.

Because I think you'd be hard-pressed to suggest that 5e at least wasn't designed with the same tactics game DNA as Pathfinder (though Pathfinder executes it better, in my eyes)

5e is 4e with a lobotomy. Of course it has a tactical element, but 5e isn't about tactical combat, just combat in general.

I'm not sure how productive it would be to deny it, but no, my frustration is more regarding the rude dismissal of the previous twenty-something pages of thread

If you can't step away from a conversation you enjoyed and evaluate it honestly, you're a little too lost in the sauce. Whenever I, for example, lose myself and elaborating on something interesting my game does, it isn't lost on me that there could be a lot of context missing if I'm not on point about it, nor for that matter that it can come off as though I'm marketing or even bragging.

But, I also still do it because often times its the best way I can use to illustrate an idea I'm trying to discuss, as opposed to providing a half-baked example I made off the top of my head. My games ideas are proving successful at what I intend them to do, and so it follows that they're the best way to illustrate the ideas.

I just don't get upset if someone picks up on those unintended elements and says something about it.

Likewise, when one spends 25ish pages engaging in a lot of ephemeral talk and virtually nothing practical, one has to step back and wonder what the point is and what we expect to produce. I saw the linkage of the Six Cultures essay and then read through the entire topic, and as I observed, it was yet another topic of what I could describe as theory for the sake of theory, which I've frankly read so much of at this point (and gotten no where) that I can't really help but point out that it doesn't really produce much.

I've said elsewhere that I don't think its a coincidence that my efforts in game design only started going somewhere when I stopped relying on theory for the sake of theory for help.

I'd rather see people spend their time like I did when I wasted it doing things like reading 20 years of RPG hobby discourse looking for answers, because they won't find very many doing it that way.

 

[Emberashh]

As an aside, there's something to be said for this idea that I find being disagreed with "intolerable".

I don't really care if one agrees with me or not, but if one is going to go through most and respond to the thoughts therein, I am going to do them the respect of doing so in kind.

in doing so one ostensibly had the patience to read what I put out there, and is demonstrating interest in discussion by replying to those ideas directly. Ergo, I'll respond back because thats the least I can do, even if that means we're now arguing.

All too often, this simple feedback loop (ha!) repeats until somebody decides they no longer care about getting the last word or until someone gets heated and booted out of the topic.

All in all, its fine to disagree, but one is also asking for conversation by doing so in a way that invites me to respond. One can just not do that, and if they do anyway, they shouldn't be surprised when I respond back and don't just acknowledge their disagreement.

Nor, for that matter, should they act like I'm in the wrong for engaging in debate when that's what I'm getting from others.

If one doesn't want me to defend my ideas, don't challenge them so brazenly in a way that invites me to do so. You can just disagree and move on, or say nothing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

But many just don't. Without the RP, the game loses what makes it fun, because the G isn't the fun part.

Most of the rest of what you said is in this interpersonal dispute where people are being accused of coming after you, or you're patting yourself on the back for experience, or trying to litigate what response is ok to give you, but to actually discuss this which is the real meat of this post:

I think that this somewhat misses the fact that generally speaking, the assorted elements you would claim to be the failing part of the genre, are themselves extremely popular on their own-- there's a reason video game RPGs have always done so well padding themselves out with the same G as TTRPGs essentially invented for them.

You disclaim this to some extent in your discussion of tactical or old-school RPGs (so are, we discussing the mechanical playability of the average PBTA or something?) but they're just processes that lies at the center of just about every RPG, enacting and influencing a resolution mechanic, when those processes are anemic, it's generally because of the design of the game is a reaction to percieved overinflation of those element-- pursuing minimalism and maximalizing the output of that minimal structure so that the emphasis falls more on rapid alterations of narrative trajectory (literally turns in the story) and narrative velocity.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the lure of RPGs for most people is the G, and that RP is usually built in afterwards, if at all historically (though that said, if the narrative of an RPG like Final Fantasy is an acceptable introduction to the concept of RP as it exists in TTRPGs, you could argue that the G and the RP are more even, in terms of practical appeal of an RPG before you get into it.) In other words, most people are here to slay dragons and get loot, rather than to be theater kids (unless you come from a very OC background where you learned to RP without a G, I suppose), they learn the appeal of being a theater kid as they go if at all.

 

[Emberashh]

I think that this somewhat misses the fact that generally speaking, the assorted elements you would claim to be the failing part of the genre, are themselves extremely popular on their own-- there's a reason video game RPGs have always done so well padding themselves out with the same G as TTRPGs essentially invented for them.

Video game RPGs (ie, the ones that are actually copying the same sort of loops TTRPGs use) are overwhelmingly elaborating on the original experience, or, as is the case with your 3.x DND heritage, making it more easily playable.

The suggestion that they're 1:1 copies is disingenous at best. The most recent example of such a game, BG3, is consistently noted for pretty heavily changing how 5e works, in ways that are now being consistently asked for in the tabletop version.

In other words, most people are here to slay dragons and get loot, rather than to be theater kids

This to me tells me you don't interact with a lot of new people in the hobby.

Which is fine; I didn't either for a long time, but this year especially Ive been introducing these games to a lot of people between extended friend networks and the clubs I supervise at work. What people want and expect is a lot more diverse than that, and while this could just be due to either where I live or something I do when I run games, many of those people are wanting both. Including myself.

But you don't have to rely on my anecdote; the simple fact that one of the biggest reasons the hobby has grown overall are due to improv forward (if not focused) media, generalizing the appeal of the hobby away from that is unsubstantiated.

And to me seems like a coy attempt to try and position the games as still being "cool" and not that icky "improv theater kid" stuff.

It strikes me that if there weren't an incentive to disagree with me as soon as I noted it, certain people would express that they don't like the expectations Critical Role or D20 brings to the hobby, and lament them as a misrepresentation of what RPGs are "really" like to play.

 

[Umbran]

This suggests to me that you're letting your disdain for improv theater cloud your judgement.

...
You don't like the implication of improv, and no matter what preemptive steps are taken to ensure clarity, the use of the word is just a step too far I suppose.

... You're too caught up in the cruddy imprecision of the English language ...


...Then you should be more open minded.

Mod Note:
If we went back, and looked at how many times one of the moderators told you to not make the discussion personal, what do you think we would find?

Or, are you "too caught up" in arguments to care?

I went to look. The number of times you have been reported since March is ... very many. I won't put the number here, but it is enough to think that you have been given far too much slack.

So, please do not expect more slack.

And if you didn't like the fact that someone made a post about you, personally, and your less than great aspects... maybe you shouldn't do it to anyone else, hm? The Golden Rule should apply.

 

[Campbell]

Theater kid here. 6 years of drama club from 7th to 12th grade. I have done some community theater stuff, although not in the last couple of years. While I'm a software engineer now I started my undergrad experience with two years of film school. I like improv comedy theater as its own thing. I've done some workshops in the past even.

Sure, in the sense that we're collectively improvising details about a fictional experience taking place in a nebulously defined fictional setting we're doing the same thing in a roleplaying game and improv theater, but like how we're going about it and the principles we rely on are often completely different.

First and foremost, the biggest improv sin, blocking, is fundamental to roleplaying game play. While it may have uses in specific circumstances, we're generally not doing a lot of 'yes, and' in roleplaying games. Instead of relying on consensus building we rely on interpretive judgement based on the fictional situation, rules on who gets to say what and when and resolution mechanisms. We play the game to find out what happens.

There are a lot of different ways to structure collaborative conversations about what happens in the imagined space. Improv comedy is not the end all be all on that score. There's even a fair amount of dramatic improvised theater setups that don't rely on comedy improv principles. I think it's fruitful for different roleplaying games likewise to structure that collaborative conversation differently.

I know some people will feel differently, but I personally am not a fan of independently interesting mechanics. I want the fiction of the game to feed into the mechanics and for those to feedback into the fiction. Synergy so that the mechanics help you to step into your character's shoes and so you are never not playing a game.

I also think it's one thing to have a preference for a certain structure of play, but quite another to claim games that don't match that structure are bad games. Sometimes a design can be a solid one even if it does not fit the intended experience that you are looking for.

 

[kenada]

@Emberashh I apologize for not replying earlier to your response in post #267. I was busy this morning preparing for and then this afternoon with running my homebrew system for my group. It’s the first session we’ve had since early November, so I didn’t have a chance to check the forum until after dinner. Seeing how the discussion had progressed, I wanted to catch up before replying and dragging things back to where they were.

First, I would like to thank @The-Magic-Sword and @Campbell for explaining things better than I could have done, though I regret how the conversation ended up so focused on the language issue. Maybe I was too hung up on it myself, but being put on the defensive due to the shift in attitude wasn’t helpful either.

Regarding the issue of improvisation in tabletop RPGs and its centrality to play, I would agree that it’s important. Coming up with and responding to things in the moment is pretty fundamental when playing a tabletop RPG. I even agree with the sentiment that games could do a better job of communicating how and when and why you should be creating or doing things on the fly. Note that I’m avoiding the question of centrality because I want to provide space for playing with that assumption. Or to put it another way: No, not central but important.

That’s not because of some issue I have with improvisation. There were a number of things I created on the fly today during our session. It’s critical to the functioning of my homebrew system. The whole point is to run a hex crawl without actually having to prep a hex crawl. What I don’t want to do is to classify some play as wrong¹. If a game is ignoring or subverting or messing with improvisation, and people enjoy it; then I want to incorporate that into my my model. I was trying to generalize by shifting to “social interaction mechanics²”.

---

1: There’s too much Bad Wrong Fun™ BS in the hobby. That’s not to say one shouldn’t look at a design and evaluate whether it succeeds at what it is trying to do, but I want to refrain from passing judgements.
2: If one wants to suggest I’ve appropriated Adams’s phrase for “social interaction mechanics”, they can. It’s not exactly untrue, but I’m not wedded to it. I can use something else as long as it’s appropriately evocative and its meaning follows intuitively from the plain meaning of the words.