Worlds of Design: There is No Spoon

Following up on the previous column “You’re Playing it Wrong!,” what should the “spirit of a game” be?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Neo : There is no spoon? Spoon boy : Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. --The Matrix

The Wrong Way to Play?​

Can there be a “wrong way to play” in games? This is a difficult question even if we don’t get tangled up in notions of “sportsmanship”.

For video or board games, of course, if you don't play the way the game is intended you often can't play at all. Single player video games are frequently puzzles with one or more correct solutions. If you don’t follow a correct solution to the puzzle then you don’t succeed. If you aren’t worried about succeeding, then you’re still not playing it wrong; but if you want to succeed you’ve got to play it the “correct” way.

If it’s a boardgame you can play it by not following the rules; but if you follow the rules then you may be playing it “wrong” in a sense because you don’t win the game. It’s certainly likely that, if you don’t play according to the rules, the game will not work as well as it could.

It's different for role-playing games. When someone declares there’s “One True Way” to play RPGs, or even to play a particular RPG, then what they really mean is there is one way for them to play, regardless of how they may think of it. Role-playing games, by their nature, are more free-form. And as a result, every game is unique even if the players follow all the same rules. The players involved greatly influence the game's outcomes. It's a collaborative work.

Here's an example of how this works in other mediums: Bob Dylan is one of our great songwriters, and his most covered (played by other groups) song is “All Along the Watchtower”. When Jimi Hendrix played it, it was quite different from Dylan’s own rendition. When Dylan heard it, he changed how he performed the song. In other words, if Dylan was the game designer of his song, he watched how someone else played his game, and then changed how he played it because he thought the changes were an improvement. Having heard both, I think Dylan made the right choice.

So What’s the Right Way?​

Some games are more “robust” than others. The more robust the game is, the better the game will work even if the players get a rule or three wrong, or deliberately change the rules. Keep in mind, players are likely to get things wrong. This is why I include a one-page summary of play (“cheat sheet”) in my board games that some players will read.

RPGs, which are intended to be modified by the players and GM, can be played different ways to accommodate different styles, I don’t treat rules as law. Rather, if I read a rule and question either its clarity or its intent, I ask myself, “as a game designer, what way do I think is best?” Speaking as one of the prominent people who advocated for D&D as a wargame way back when (see Jon Peterson's book "Elusive Shift"), here is my view: there is no wrong way to play D&D, but some ways remove it from the realm of "game" to something else.

In a boardgame, as a player I am much more likely to follow the rules as written, compared with an RPG. Boardgame rules ought to be much tighter, much more well-integrated, than an RPG, because the boardgame covers a very limited situation, and because most boardgames are overtly competitive rather than (like RPGs) normally co-operative.

The Only Wrong Way​

I had a student who liked to use software exploits in online video games to screw up other players, an unfortunately common occurrence in such games. He thought it was funny. I reminded him that his victims were unlikely to think that, but it didn’t change his mind. He was an unusually nice person normally, yet this was “wrong” fun. When it comes to griefing, screwing people outside the rules, bullying, mocking, trolling -- I consider all these approaches to gaming the wrong way to play.

Your Turn: Is there a right way to play?

 

[aco175]

I think that most people agree that if people are having fun, then there is no wrong way. The main crux is that these games have a DM/GM where much of the power in steering the fun lays. There are several threads on the power of the DM and if he is a player at all, but the DM controls the dials of things like house rules or campaign rules on races and classes. The players can form a coalition and challenge this, but in the end the DM generally wins. If the DM is 'forced' by the players to play a campaign with pirates in outer space instead of a city undead game, then it is short-lived, pitters out due to lack of motivation, or morphs into a city campaign with undead.

I like the Bob Dylan reference, but can relate to the Whitney Houston song- I will always love you and how Dolly Pardon wrote it and sung it first with a more country flavor. It is ok, but not Whitney with hew pipes and power. Although, I did hear Dolly sing Wrecking Ball with Miley and thought it was better than just Miley.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is there ONE right way to play? No, not at all--that would be patently foolish.

Is there A right way to play for a specific game? Yes, absolutely, so long as the people who made it tested it to make sure it works.

The difference? The former says, "Any way that isn't this specific way is necessarily wrong."

The latter says, "We can only say with confidence that this specific way is right."

Unfortunately, a lot of people--including many designers--think that the latter and the former are identical, when they absolutely are not. This leads them to the conclusion that you shouldn't bother with having confidence that any way is right. That you should just shrug and give up when faced with evidence that the systems you designed for might not actually do whatever they're designed to do when people use them. Just throw out whatever makes sense in the moment, design be damned; DMs will figure it out, it's fine, nobody really cares anyway.

You cannot stop people from choosing to use your rules in ways you didn't intend. You cannot stop them from, as you say, potentially misremembering, misinterpreting, or simply missing parts of your rules. That is simply a fact of life with anything at all.

But you can do the work to say, "Yes, these things do in fact work as intended when used as presented." And if you make mistakes, you can fix them rather than just shrugging and saying oh well, mistakes happen, people will just figure it out themselves I guess.

 

[overgeeked]

I think bad sportsmanship in RPGs is something that should be talked about more. As with your example student, there are wrong ways to play. Most of them come down to bad sportsmanship.

 

[sevenbastard]

My four year old loves to play the old NES games on the switch. He doesn't understand the goal but he has fun just controlling the action. Often he invents his own goal and if he accomplish it then he is happy and entertained.

He doesn't need to win or even understand the conditions needed to win. Most times he is actively working against those conditions.

 

[Emberashh]

There can be, but there shouldn't be and I personally see it as bad design if it can happen.

In game design theres a recognized phenomenon that basically states that no game survives intact once players come into contact with it. Doesn't matter what kind of game it is.

And in general, this isn't a bad thing and is in fact something to be designed towards as a benefit (emergence). A lot of why Chess is such a classic game comes from emergence, for example.

But where it goes wrong is when players buy into the game's rules, but then run into problems despite not really violating the rules.

I know I'm inviting arguments by pointing a finger, but this is more or less the principle flaw of PBTA and DND 5e. Both of these have an intended way to play but fail to put any actionable constraints on how players play to ensure that the intended way works across the board. Many can slip into those constraints on their own, but many don't and many just won't.

So while one can play these games and go beyond what they mechanically support, one can also play these games and unintentionally screw up what they do mechanically support. Why that is can be for a lot of reasons. In PBTA, rolling too much tends to be what kicks the flaw into gear, and just asserting that people need to learn to not do that isn't a viable constraint. A possible solution there is a round/turn structure and an "roll" economy. After all, that is how they constrain GMs in those games, so it just needs to be applied going the other way.

In 5e, there's more than a few of these, but easily the biggest one is the Adventuring Day debacle, which is rooted in how the game constructed its resource generation (rest mechanics). Theres a few solutions; Im partial to just using something else entirely as rest mechanics have aesthetic issues in addition to being a poor mechanic that then informs a bad procedure that, even if followed (and most don't on initial contact with the rules), doesn't produce the most fun gameplay possible.

In both cases, the wrong way to play directly eats into the possible fun by disrupting a core part of the game, and that needs to be resolved in the design so it can be avoided.

 

[Reynard]

If folks are having fun, then that is the right way to play for those folks. What i think happens a lot is folks translate their way of playing being successful for them into a broader, objective truth about how to play that game.

That said, people should set some expectations. if your "right" way to play ignores or alters a bunch of rules, you aren't playing the same game anymore and you should make that clear to people sitting at your table or even if you are trying to have a public discussion on the matter. if you have your own definition of terms that you aren't sharing with others, it is essentially impossible to have a productive discussion.

 

[GMMichael]

For video or board games, of course, if you don't play the way the game is intended you often can't play at all . . . If you aren’t worried about succeeding, then you’re still not playing it wrong; but if you want to succeed you’ve got to play it the “correct” way.

If it’s a boardgame you can play it by not following the rules; but if you follow the rules then you may be playing it “wrong” in a sense because you don’t win the game. . .

Arma 3 is a military video game. There's a public server game mode in which the win condition is capturing the base of the opposing players. This mode will go on for hours because many players seemingly refuse to actually fight the opposing players and instead pursue the less intimidating AI NPCs. What often results is both human teams take over their respective sides of the map, wiping out all the NPCs, but lack the skill and resources to defend their own territory long enough to make progress toward the opposing base - a stale mate.

The game features a single-player mode, chock full of NPCs, and some cooperative modes in public servers with no opposing players. So I consider their play-style wrong, to be using a player-versus-player-versus-environment (PvP and PvE), to focus on fighting NPCs when they could be doing that in other ways that don't sabotage the outcome of the game.

RPGs, which are intended to be modified by the players and GM, can be played different ways to accommodate different styles, I don’t treat rules as law. Rather, if I read a rule and question either its clarity or its intent, I ask myself, “as a game designer, what way do I think is best?” Speaking as one of the prominent people who advocated for D&D as a wargame way back when (see Jon Peterson's book "Elusive Shift"), here is my view: there is no wrong way to play D&D, but some ways remove it from the realm of "game" to something else.

C'mon. There's gotta be a wrong way! (don't look ahead don't look ahead don't look...)
This paragraph notes a distinction that deserves more attention: there's playing by the rules, and not playing by the rules. When playing by the rules, there are still many play-styles that are different ways to play. In the Arma example, I'm dubbing Wrong the style of start-a-war-without-intending-to-end-it, although there's no mechanism that forces a team toward the end goal. In D&D, two play-styles are powergame and immerse, and both are by the rules . . .

The Only Wrong Way​

I had a student who liked to use software exploits in online video games to screw up other players, an unfortunately common occurrence in such games. He thought it was funny. I reminded him that his victims were unlikely to think that, but it didn’t change his mind. He was an unusually nice person normally, yet this was “wrong” fun. When it comes to griefing, screwing people outside the rules, bullying, mocking, trolling -- I consider all these approaches to gaming the wrong way to play.

Griefing, intimidating (bullying), mocking, and trolling are all by the rules - at least, WotC's latest SRD doesn't have rules against them that I know of. I'd say their wrong if they cause another player to want to quit. But that raises an interesting question...

If a powergamer (or immerser) makes another player want to quit, does that make it BADWRONGFUN? If I role-play my bard correctly, and the rest of the group hates me for it, am I doing it wrong since it has a similar outcome to trolling? Who draws the line between one player's fun and another player's irritation, and what is that line?

 

[Yora]

There might not be a wrong way to play, but there are certainly poor ways to run games.
All games have some flexibility in what you do with them, but when you try to force the rules to do something they are poorly suited for, the game is just going to be much less fun than it could be.

 

[payn]

I've come to learn there is a right and wrong way to play for me. That doesnt mean folks who play differently are wrong or bad, although, it might mean we are incompatible players.