Who wants to talk theory?

[pawsplay]

I've finally sat down and jotted out my thoughts on RPG theory, and this is what I've come up with so far. Does anyone feel like commenting?

My basic goals are to describe immersion and come up with a sensible way to talk about the metagame.

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A definition of a role-playing game:
1. Narrative Principle: A role-playing game takes the form of a narration, with play consisting of a series of logically connected events.
2. Action Resolution: Critical game decisions are made collaboratively by using a set of rules.
3. Immersive Persona: At least one player takes on the role of a specific character, making decisions "as if" that character.
4. Freedom Principle: Any possible action that could be taken by a character can be adjudicated within the immersive framework of the game.

The basic tasks of game design are:
1. Achieve suspension of disbelief
2. Engage the players
3. Fulfill the expectation of excitement

The generalized goal of an RPG is a flow experience in an imaginary world. Examples of this flow experience include:

1. Experiencing a character as being, seeing a world through the eyes of the imaginary character
2. The thrill of victory in overcoming an imaginary obstacle
3. The sense of the imaginary world having substance, logic, and importance

In a role-playing game, any of these examples incorporate the active participation of the player.

You

“You” are a player experiencing the imaginary world of the game through an envelope of experience. This veil separates reality from imagination but connects them both. Hence, games are always experienced by the player, whether in persona or in their meta-game consciousness. Decisions “as if” someone is a character describe a player inhabiting the character through the envelope of experience. The player is ultimately authorial.

Stages of the Game Experience

There are two stages of the game experience, design and immersion. Design is the meta-game stage. Design includes the creation of a world, objects, characters, and dramatic trajectories. The goal of design is to enable the Freedom Principle. Immersion is the state of experience participating in the game. Because a game takes place in an imaginary world, the goal of immersion is to engage the imaginary elements of the game.

The two elements can occur simultaneously, but design must always precede immersion.

Story

Story in an RPG has two parts, interpretation and decision-making. Interpretation can be divided into anticipation, experience, and history. Anticipation is the belief in likely future events. Experience is the understanding of the possibilities in front of the player. History is a recollection, with analysis, of what has transpired.

Story in an RPG is similar to the experience in a fictional story. However, experience and anticipation are not simply guesses about the authorial intent. They also include the player’s input into the system. History is not simply a record of events, but also a recollection of participation and decision-making. The meaning imposed on a story is therefore contingent on each player. A final consensus is only possible when the game ends. Until then, intentionality prevents the players from having a unified interpretation. This leads to the maxim, "There is no plot."

Decision-making has three stages: analysis, a goal-seeking decision, and feedback. Analysis is deciding on a goal or priority based on the player’s interpretation. Then, a goal-seeking decision is made. Immediately after, the player experiences a reaction to their action, and react in turn. Decision-making is circular within the game, as every decision follows another. The first decisions made in a game are necessarily meta-game ones because no analysis of the current game is possible if nothing has yet transpired. Instead, the player proceeds from desire, expectations, and an act of creativity. Similarly, a game can only end when the player is satisfied meta-game conditions have been fulfilled. Of itself, a story is indefinite.

Interpretation and decision-making are circular. Interpretation leads to decision-making, and decision-making to interpretation. The player begins with an intention, and leaves with a fulfillment of this intention, whether this experience is evaluated as satisfactory or not. To reiterate, design must precede immersion.

 

[Korgoth]

Do you consider "Create a situation in which players are forced to make interesting choices" a basic goal, and if so do you include it in one of the stated basic goals or would that be a fourth basic goal? I consider the formulation in the quotes to be a principle of good game design.

 

[jdrakeh]

Do you consider "Create a situation in which players are forced to make interesting choices" a basic goal, and if so do you include it in one of the stated basic goals or would that be a fourth basic goal? I consider the formulation in the quotes to be a principle of good game design.

Words like "interesting" are wholly subjective, as is the entertainment value in being "forced" to do things. You like these things. Other people don't. Hence, being entirely subjective qualities, I think that they would best be included under the heading "Fulfill the expectation of excitement" which specifically addresses the subjective "expectation of excitement" (i.e., the desired end result of applying other subjective qualities in the pursuit of entertainment). Codifying any specific subjective qualities as necessary robs theory of any useful purpose by knocking it back into the land of My Way Is The Only Way And Your Way Sucks.

 

[pawsplay]

Do you consider "Create a situation in which players are forced to make interesting choices" a basic goal, and if so do you include it in one of the stated basic goals or would that be a fourth basic goal? I consider the formulation in the quotes to be a principle of good game design.

I do not, for a number of reasons.

1. "Create a situation" implies either an authorial GM or collaborative mega-gaming.
2. "... players are forced" : Which players? What do you mean by forced? Is the GM forcing? Do players force each other?
3. Interesting choices are necessarily meaningful choices. If the choices are meaningful, the players have the freedom to choose "incorrectly" from an authorial standpoint. If the players have choices, they have the choice to make un-interesting choices, which leads to a contradiction. While interesting choices are good, I don't think they can be presupposed by any design. What is "interesting" varies from one person to the next.

I think your formulation is fine for a certain style of game. It does incorporate the idea of game (unknown outcomes, lack of information about the future) and it does at least imply meaningful choices. But I think it implies an authorial GM; I believe players are authorial for the characters. A GM can tell them where a character might be from, but they can't tell a player what a character must do unless that particular authorial decision is delegated to the action resolution system. I think your formulation falters when the PCs are resistant to "the plot." The freedom principle, as I describe it, allows the PCs to wander off the map, and once that happens, any ability to "force" them evaporates.

Impelling PCs to do interesting things I consider a matter of GM technique, not game design.

 

[pawsplay]

I wanted to throw in a little psychology, as a commentary on what I think people should be doing in a game, and why gaming is cool:

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following as accompanying an experience of flow:

Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging[2].
Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.

 

[Korgoth]

Words like "interesting" are wholly subjective, as is the entertainment value in being "forced" to do things. You like these things. Other people don't.

Wait a minute. First of all, your point about the word "forced" is just plain false. Every game forces you to make choices. In Monopoly, you are forced either to buy a property or not buy it. That's a choice, and it's one you're forced to make when you land on a property that isn't already sold. Likewise, Settlers of Catan forces you to decide whether or not to build a road segment when you've got Wood and Brick. You can choose to do that, or something else. It's a choice that you have to make, because other people have turns too so you can't sit there and forestall it for an infinite amount of time. If you weren't forced to make a choice, you wouldn't be playing a game.

Now on to "interesting". Do you mean to say that it's not a principle of good game design for the choices to be interesting? "Ah," you say, sounding like one of my students, "but maybe what is interesting to you is not what is interesting to me." That's true... there are good games that I'm not interested in and there are probably good games that you're not interested in. It would be much more helpful to try to define "interesting" than to simply flush it down the toilet of relativism.

Codifying any specific subjective qualities as necessary robs theory of any useful purpose by knocking it back into the land of My Way Is The Only Way And Your Way Sucks.

This is where you're most wrong. If you're not discussing something that is ultimately objectively real, you're not doing theory. It's just jaw flappin' at that point. And the "onetruewayism" charge is merely Autonomic Groupthink Response Syndrome. I can't emphasize this enough: even if something contains a subjective component, that does not mean it is the opposite of objective or that it exists in some fuzzy realm beyond cognition, observation or analysis.

That particular bit of groupthink was set up to establish a Theoretical Free Parking Zone so that anybody can say basically anything (well, anything except a reference to reality) and it is as equally valid as anything that anybody else says. At that point what people incorrectly call theory is just a soapbox where one gets up and says a whole bunch of high falutin' stuff that no one else is allowed to question (because if you do dare to question it, I'll just ding you with "onetruewayism" and you're now a pariah).

 

[pawsplay]

Wait a minute. First of all, your point about the word "forced" is just plain false. Every game forces you to make choices. In Monopoly, you are forced either to buy a property or not buy it.

But that seems to imply that "Create a situation in which players are forced to make interesting choices" reduces to "create a game." What am I missing? If what you are saying is, Foster the sense that these choices are interesting, then jdrakeh is right, that is covered under fulfilling expectations of excitement. You could phrase that goal your way if you like, but I think your description is more limiting. It implies that only dilemmas or gameable situations are worthwhile, whereas I believe participating in a story is intrinsically exciting (to a greater or lesser degree).

It's true, Monopoly forces you to make a choice. But it doesn't force you to make interesting choices. You could simply circle the board, time again, taking advantage of no opportunities to buy properties. Is that a problem with Monopoly's design?

 

[Korgoth]

But that seems to imply that "Create a situation in which players are forced to make interesting choices" reduces to "create a game." What am I missing? If what you are saying is, Foster the sense that these choices are interesting, then jdrakeh is right, that is covered under fulfilling expectations of excitement. You could phrase that goal your way if you like, but I think your description is more limiting. It implies that only dilemmas or gameable situations are worthwhile, whereas I believe participating in a story is intrinsically exciting (to a greater or lesser degree).

It's true, Monopoly forces you to make a choice. But it doesn't force you to make interesting choices. You could simply circle the board, time again, taking advantage of no opportunities to buy properties. Is that a problem with Monopoly's design?

To clarify: I was under the impression that you do in fact recognize that a game is a framework of choice (another way to talk about "forcing", I suppose), and that the choices should be potentially interesting. Rather than pushing a certain sort of game design agenda, I was trying to tease out whether you placed this aspect of design under one of your 3 listed basic goals or if it merited adding a 4th basic goal to your list. Part of it is not knowing what point #3, "Fulfill the expectation of excitement" actually means. That phrase could be replete with meaning and I just need to be clued in on that meaning, or perhaps the statement is overly vague and requires elaboration so that we can all know what we're talking about.

Going back to your earlier post, I certainly don't mean to imply authorial or collaborative stances. Perish the thought! I'm just trying to get clear on the list of basic goals and their implications. Though I don't agree that an interesting choice implies an incorrect choice (though there may be such things; I just don't think it's implied). But again, perhaps that's clear from my rejection of the authorial stance. To take the example of Settlers once again, at the setup you have some interesting choices to make. Not every player has the same interesting choices because of the way the setup rotation works. But you get to choose early on what type of strategy you're going to use to fulfill the established victory condition (you can always make up your own, I suppose, like "Attain Longest Road at all costs if it costs me the game"... but just to stick with the established goal for a second); "How am I going to win this game?" That's an interesting choice. You may have to change your plan at some juncture. Another interesting choice, and so on. The choices are interesting because they involve weighing various outcomes, opponents and complexities and sacrificing one thing to prioritize another. None of which implies that a given gamer is interested in Settlers just because it has choices which are interesting.

Getting back to Monopoly: games have to strike a balance. There's no one game for all people, most likely. Some people are interested in the relative performance of the co-axial machinegun on a Panther A... for those people, Advanced Squad Leader warrants consideration. Other people don't even know a Panther from a T-34/85. For them, not so much. ASL leans very heavily on technical minutiae. Monopoly does not... it's a very casual game. When you land on an unbought property, you only need to think about a few things: how much money do I have, do I need this for a monopoly, does my opponent need it for a monopoly, can I use this property in the future for any reason, can my opponent use it in the future for any reason, etc. Not really that much to weigh, all things considered, and the opportunity for those decisions is very much governed by luck. On the balance, Monopoly tilts strongly toward the casual game (though it's nothing like Candy Land, which has virtually no player choice... but it's as much a pedagogical device as a game, anyway, so it serves its purpose). So depth of choice is something to consider, as is the balance between choice and luck (Chess and Go obviously are all choice... but there's no denying that games involving luck are a lot of fun, and for many of us are more fun than pure choice games).

 

[pawsplay]

To clarify: I was under the impression that you do in fact recognize that a game is a framework of choice (another way to talk about "forcing", I suppose), and that the choices should be potentially interesting.

Something that did not go in my OP is a concept I usually call "meaningful choices." A meaningful choice is when you get to decide, and that decision affects something in the game. It doesn't have to an exciting choice. Just as an example, most games offer meaningful choices for character names; you can pick anything you like, within the constraints of the game world.

Now, as to what choices to offer, strategically that is folded under Design in the OP, and the goal is the fulfillment of expectations of excitement.

Rather than pushing a certain sort of game design agenda, I was trying to tease out whether you placed this aspect of design under one of your 3 listed basic goals or if it merited adding a 4th basic goal to your list. Part of it is not knowing what point #3, "Fulfill the expectation of excitement" actually means. That phrase could be replete with meaning and I just need to be clued in on that meaning, or perhaps the statement is overly vague and requires elaboration so that we can all know what we're talking about.

To me, that means certain kinds of challenging, exciting, emotionally acticating events occur. The first basic task is pretty obvious; until you get people imagining the game world, nothing happens. The second is when you draw people in. But it's possible to be drawn into a game and be disappointed. The third basic tasks is essentially "try not to disappoint people," or to put it in a positive light, "give the people what they want." Task 2, engaging the players, addresses their meta-game wants. They are now goal-seeking. Task 3, fulfill their expectations of excitement, essentially means to provide tasks, challenges, drama, excitement and so on. That's where "interesting choices" would go, more or less.

Going back to your earlier post, I certainly don't mean to imply authorial or collaborative stances. Perish the thought! I'm just trying to get clear on the list of basic goals and their implications. Though I don't agree that an interesting choice implies an incorrect choice (though there may be such things; I just don't think it's implied). But again, perhaps that's clear from my rejection of the authorial stance. To take the example of Settlers once again, at the setup you have some interesting choices to make. Not every player has the same interesting choices because of the way the setup rotation works. But you get to choose early on what type of strategy you're going to use to fulfill the established victory condition (you can always make up your own, I suppose, like "Attain Longest Road at all costs if it costs me the game"... but just to stick with the established goal for a second); "How am I going to win this game?" That's an interesting choice. You may have to change your plan at some juncture. Another interesting choice, and so on. The choices are interesting because they involve weighing various outcomes, opponents and complexities and sacrificing one thing to prioritize another. None of which implies that a given gamer is interested in Settlers just because it has choices which are interesting.

I think my answer would be to say I use the phrase "meaningful choice" because you can make a lot of choices that are yours to make which are not, per se, interesting in and of themselves. They might be quite minor, or they might add interest only in concert with other choices. What is important to me is that, within the framework of the rules, each player is free to make the choice they prefer.

Getting back to Monopoly: games have to strike a balance. There's no one game for all people, most likely. Some people are interested in the relative performance of the co-axial machinegun on a Panther A... for those people, Advanced Squad Leader warrants consideration. Other people don't even know a Panther from a T-34/85. For them, not so much. ASL leans very heavily on technical minutiae. Monopoly does not... it's a very casual game. When you land on an unbought property, you only need to think about a few things: how much money do I have, do I need this for a monopoly, does my opponent need it for a monopoly, can I use this property in the future for any reason, can my opponent use it in the future for any reason, etc. Not really that much to weigh, all things considered, and the opportunity for those decisions is very much governed by luck. On the balance, Monopoly tilts strongly toward the casual game (though it's nothing like Candy Land, which has virtually no player choice... but it's as much a pedagogical device as a game, anyway, so it serves its purpose). So depth of choice is something to consider, as is the balance between choice and luck (Chess and Go obviously are all choice... but there's no denying that games involving luck are a lot of fun, and for many of us are more fun than pure choice games).

That is the meta-game, what I call design. The immersion in Monopoly takes the form of accepting the Monopoly money as having value, viewing the game events as acquisition, and striving competitively against the other players. Some D&D players don't get much beyond that level of immersion, either, but they are still playing the same game as the next guy. That's where I get my idea of story as a feedback between interpretation and decision-making. To me, an RPG story does not have to be like a story in literature.

I agree, different strokes for different folks. I reject the idea of "incoherence" in meta-game goals. The meta-game can have very complex goals. Or very simple ones. GNS describes a lot of the "how" in design, but I reject is as a model of "why". I don't think G, N, or S, is the primary goal. Those are just facets of the mega-game, and not mutually exlclusive ones, either. I don't know if a game can be "all things to all people" but some come close, and many of those are very successful. I think D&D has more going for it than brand recognition. I think one of those things is a very solid immersive experience, and many opportunities to play all sorts of meta-games.

 

[Dlsharrock]

I'm tempted to say: you can think about a thing too much

Keeping a game compelling is obviously a good thing, but I think this has devolved to point scoring. The wording left you open to critical assassination. 'Forced' and 'Create a situation' do conjure negative connotations, insinuating an authorial stance, but if you say that's not your intent, then pawsplay's [Impelling PCs to do interesting things] is a good alternative minus the negative intonation. I think defining the nature of 'interesting' is unecessary. There's such a thing as common sense, even in subjectivity and theoretical discussion.

Moreover, your point is negligible anyway as it's covered under

2. Engage the Players

If anything you're not making an addendum to the basic tasks of game design, you're just expanding on one that's already there.

Ok, that second basic task could use defining. But *then*, woo boy, you're into the realms of subjectivity. I can think of a million different ways to engage players, from presenting them with compelling situations to giving them opportunities to explore characterisation, all of which could be plucked apart word by word in order to prove I was an evil meta-scum who shackles his players to the table and force feeds them plot. Some DMs would simply say, give 'em enough monsters to hack. Others would say use atmospheric music. It's amiguity personified, but more worthy of discussion than whether or not an RPG is a game of choice. Of course it blimmin' well is.