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Worlds of Design: What’s Your Objective?
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9013994" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>I still hold to my "game purposes" concept, noting in advance that my list is NOT claiming to be <em>comprehensive,</em> just <em>useful.</em> To design a roleplaying game, you must define a proverbial range or space of interest (some property or state or action worthy of pursuit), and a method by which that may be tested, evaluated, or compared. For every TTRPG I've ever been exposed to, at least one (often multiple) of the following game-(design-)purposes applies:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Score & Achievement</strong><br /> The classic, oldest, and most widely-used purpose, which has given it outsized influence over the hobby. The premise is simple: "Score" is the tool for evaluation, giving a (semi-)objective <em>measure</em> of how strong/successful/effective one or more players is, and Achievement is the act or process of proving that you are up for the challenge. In Forge circles, the phrase "step up to the plate" often appears around this notion. That is, you are challenged with a difficult task, to see if you can actually earn the Score that will give you the Achievement. This is also what leads directly to things like an opposition to "Monty Haul" gaming (having a "hollow" Score and thus invalidating the Achievements associated with it), a focus on <em>some</em> form of "fairness" (but different sets of players define this wildly differently: both "old school" and 4e D&D players care about some kind of fairness, but define it in very different ways), and most but not all forms of competitive gaming within the nominally cooperative TTRPG space (the few other forms will come up in the next bullet point.) S&A play often involves grappling with rules, though those rules may not necessarily be written down; the infamous "Tucker's Kobolds" are an example of breaking some of the unwritten assumptions about how creatures will behave, and in so doing radically increasing the Achievement conferred by defeating them, even though their <em>written</em> statistics remain unchanged. Such situations often shift the Score from being more tactile (identifiable tools used cleverly) to more abstract (cleverness displayed through finding or inventing new and unexpected tools), but still preserve the focus on objectively "earning" a victory by overcoming an obstacle.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Groundedness & Simulation</strong><br /> Newer than the previous but still older, this game-(design-)purpose got a LOT of attention in the late 90s and especially the early 2000s. "Simulation," here, refers to what is sometimes called "process sim": the world is one massive proverbial engine, a model of a fictional space, which advances forward based on the state of that space and defined rules for how it should advance. (This is why some folks call this "rules as physics," but I don't care for that term myself, as it has incorrect implications.) "Groundedness" is how you establish the "rules" for reasoning within the simulated space, how you set things up so that the <em>players</em> can predict what the world-space will become in the future. G&S design puts huge value on maintaining what I call "intuitive, naturalistic reasoning." That is, a person can, by applying what they "already know" about our physical world, and the small handful of exceptions allowed for fantastical stuff (aka the new Grounded foundation), <em>usually</em> make useful and productive predictions about how things will change in response to an event. This is usually the players' choices, but it can also be predicting how the world will change after an opponent acts. Often, this game-purpose prioritizes the ability to see the causal chain over other concerns, so it doesn't really matter if things are unbalanced or tactically stupid (S&A concerns), nor that any particular <em>meaning</em> arise from the process of play beyond ticking the world forward to its new state (narrative is the concern of thr next two purposes.) What matters is that the world makes sense if you have enough information about it, and the world is predictable and controllable to the extent that you have power to influence it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Conceit & Emulation</strong><br /> First real newcomer on the block (since S&A was the hobby's root and G&S appeared almost immediately after the hobby escaped Gygax's direct teaching-lineage.) This is about story understood as examining theme and exploring the implications thereof. That's what the Conceit is: the core premise that drives play. There were pretty early manifestations of this even in D&D, with players wanting to (effectively) re-enact their favorite fantasy literature, often Tolkien, but it really takes off with games like <em>Vampire: the Masquerade</em> and <em>Werewolf: the Apocalypse.</em> These games articulate a clear and consistent Conceit that undergirds every other part of their design: <em>very</em> briefly, "human sanity and weakness vs monstrous power and corruption" for the former, "human connection and corruption vs spiritual purity and rage" for the latter. This Conceit is then allowed to play out, and the players stick to what conventions are necessary for making it work, even if that necessarily results in doing tactically unwise (against S&A) or "unrealistic" (against G&S) things. "Superheroes" is a typical example given here, because it has such a clear and well-known Conceit, and because the Emulation thereof often requires things like ignoring the fragility of the mundane humans that interact with said supers, or not revealing your enemy's secret identity, or intentionally holding back rather than going all out to defeat your opponents (see: Superman's "World of Cardboard" speech.) But even bog-standard D&D can have the Conceit of "adventuresome heroes," with Dragonlance perhaps being the poster child thereof, and thus the demands of Emulation may require that character death isn't permanent because that would ruin the Conceit (even as both G&S and S&A fans grumble about the costs of doing so.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><strong>Values & Issues</strong><br /> The true young buck, Values & Issues (sometimes called "Story Now") is something where the concept mostly developed first, and new design was pioneered to fill that need, rather than the concept being <em>mostly</em> fulfilled by existing games and getting more refined expression later. This can make it tricky to talk about, because zooming out too far from it can make it look like it's just one of the previous ones, when it very much is not. "Values," as the name implies, are the things characters care deeply about, the things that motivate them to take risks because the prize is worth the price. Money, power, morals, obligations, these are all obvious Values, but things like loved ones, revenge, becoming the most popular cheerleader at school, recovering the Holy Grail, all these things are also Values. "Issues" put Values to the test. "<br /> What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want? How far are you willing to go before it's too much? Etc. Games like <em>Dogs in the Vineyard</em> and, of course, systems <em>Powered by the Apocalypse</em> are all about this sort of play. Moment to moment, the players are put in the position of having to make difficult choices and decide who and what their characters wish to be; hence why some have framed this as being about "protagonism," because in the ideal case, the game's design puts frequently puts you in the hot seat as <em>the</em> protagonist of the moment, the hero of your own (character's) story. Though it shares Score and Achievement's focus on pursuing worthy goals, it eschews interest in any objectivity, focusing instead on specifically subjective value, and while it shares Conceit and Emulation's interest in narrative, it eschews rhe idea that genre conventions should take center stage (noting, however, that many PbtA games do in fact start from genre conventions, e.g. Masks, Monsterhearts, or even the original Apocalypse World.) It is least like G&S, being so focused on rhe subjective and narrative, rather than the character-independent "objective" world and procedure.</li> </ul><p>Again, there may be others, but these have thus far been enough to cover any game I have needed to talk about.</p><p></p><p>And, in case it wasn't clear, these game-(design-)purposes can be mixed, though some more easily than others.</p><p></p><p>Most games, due to having numerical mechanics, have <em>some</em> element of S&A, but not always. G&S is often a "nice thing if you can get it" sort of thing, even if it isn't a top priority. C&E often shows up in the <em>premise</em> of the game...but may be sorely lacking in execution if either of the previous two are too dominant (looking at you, D&D 3e.) V&I, as noted, was generally designed <em>intentionally,</em> as opposed to the more serendipitous manifestations of G&S/S&A, so it tends to be more "pure" in expression, but there are exceptions (e.g. 4e D&D can be interpreted as serendipitously V&I due to the player-authored quests and some other components.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9013994, member: 6790260"] I still hold to my "game purposes" concept, noting in advance that my list is NOT claiming to be [I]comprehensive,[/I] just [I]useful.[/I] To design a roleplaying game, you must define a proverbial range or space of interest (some property or state or action worthy of pursuit), and a method by which that may be tested, evaluated, or compared. For every TTRPG I've ever been exposed to, at least one (often multiple) of the following game-(design-)purposes applies: [LIST] [*][B]Score & Achievement[/B] The classic, oldest, and most widely-used purpose, which has given it outsized influence over the hobby. The premise is simple: "Score" is the tool for evaluation, giving a (semi-)objective [I]measure[/I] of how strong/successful/effective one or more players is, and Achievement is the act or process of proving that you are up for the challenge. In Forge circles, the phrase "step up to the plate" often appears around this notion. That is, you are challenged with a difficult task, to see if you can actually earn the Score that will give you the Achievement. This is also what leads directly to things like an opposition to "Monty Haul" gaming (having a "hollow" Score and thus invalidating the Achievements associated with it), a focus on [I]some[/I] form of "fairness" (but different sets of players define this wildly differently: both "old school" and 4e D&D players care about some kind of fairness, but define it in very different ways), and most but not all forms of competitive gaming within the nominally cooperative TTRPG space (the few other forms will come up in the next bullet point.) S&A play often involves grappling with rules, though those rules may not necessarily be written down; the infamous "Tucker's Kobolds" are an example of breaking some of the unwritten assumptions about how creatures will behave, and in so doing radically increasing the Achievement conferred by defeating them, even though their [I]written[/I] statistics remain unchanged. Such situations often shift the Score from being more tactile (identifiable tools used cleverly) to more abstract (cleverness displayed through finding or inventing new and unexpected tools), but still preserve the focus on objectively "earning" a victory by overcoming an obstacle. [*][B]Groundedness & Simulation[/B] Newer than the previous but still older, this game-(design-)purpose got a LOT of attention in the late 90s and especially the early 2000s. "Simulation," here, refers to what is sometimes called "process sim": the world is one massive proverbial engine, a model of a fictional space, which advances forward based on the state of that space and defined rules for how it should advance. (This is why some folks call this "rules as physics," but I don't care for that term myself, as it has incorrect implications.) "Groundedness" is how you establish the "rules" for reasoning within the simulated space, how you set things up so that the [I]players[/I] can predict what the world-space will become in the future. G&S design puts huge value on maintaining what I call "intuitive, naturalistic reasoning." That is, a person can, by applying what they "already know" about our physical world, and the small handful of exceptions allowed for fantastical stuff (aka the new Grounded foundation), [I]usually[/I] make useful and productive predictions about how things will change in response to an event. This is usually the players' choices, but it can also be predicting how the world will change after an opponent acts. Often, this game-purpose prioritizes the ability to see the causal chain over other concerns, so it doesn't really matter if things are unbalanced or tactically stupid (S&A concerns), nor that any particular [I]meaning[/I] arise from the process of play beyond ticking the world forward to its new state (narrative is the concern of thr next two purposes.) What matters is that the world makes sense if you have enough information about it, and the world is predictable and controllable to the extent that you have power to influence it. [*][B]Conceit & Emulation[/B] First real newcomer on the block (since S&A was the hobby's root and G&S appeared almost immediately after the hobby escaped Gygax's direct teaching-lineage.) This is about story understood as examining theme and exploring the implications thereof. That's what the Conceit is: the core premise that drives play. There were pretty early manifestations of this even in D&D, with players wanting to (effectively) re-enact their favorite fantasy literature, often Tolkien, but it really takes off with games like [I]Vampire: the Masquerade[/I] and [I]Werewolf: the Apocalypse.[/I] These games articulate a clear and consistent Conceit that undergirds every other part of their design: [I]very[/I] briefly, "human sanity and weakness vs monstrous power and corruption" for the former, "human connection and corruption vs spiritual purity and rage" for the latter. This Conceit is then allowed to play out, and the players stick to what conventions are necessary for making it work, even if that necessarily results in doing tactically unwise (against S&A) or "unrealistic" (against G&S) things. "Superheroes" is a typical example given here, because it has such a clear and well-known Conceit, and because the Emulation thereof often requires things like ignoring the fragility of the mundane humans that interact with said supers, or not revealing your enemy's secret identity, or intentionally holding back rather than going all out to defeat your opponents (see: Superman's "World of Cardboard" speech.) But even bog-standard D&D can have the Conceit of "adventuresome heroes," with Dragonlance perhaps being the poster child thereof, and thus the demands of Emulation may require that character death isn't permanent because that would ruin the Conceit (even as both G&S and S&A fans grumble about the costs of doing so.) [*][B]Values & Issues[/B] The true young buck, Values & Issues (sometimes called "Story Now") is something where the concept mostly developed first, and new design was pioneered to fill that need, rather than the concept being [I]mostly[/I] fulfilled by existing games and getting more refined expression later. This can make it tricky to talk about, because zooming out too far from it can make it look like it's just one of the previous ones, when it very much is not. "Values," as the name implies, are the things characters care deeply about, the things that motivate them to take risks because the prize is worth the price. Money, power, morals, obligations, these are all obvious Values, but things like loved ones, revenge, becoming the most popular cheerleader at school, recovering the Holy Grail, all these things are also Values. "Issues" put Values to the test. " What are you willing to sacrifice to get what you want? How far are you willing to go before it's too much? Etc. Games like [I]Dogs in the Vineyard[/I] and, of course, systems [I]Powered by the Apocalypse[/I] are all about this sort of play. Moment to moment, the players are put in the position of having to make difficult choices and decide who and what their characters wish to be; hence why some have framed this as being about "protagonism," because in the ideal case, the game's design puts frequently puts you in the hot seat as [I]the[/I] protagonist of the moment, the hero of your own (character's) story. Though it shares Score and Achievement's focus on pursuing worthy goals, it eschews interest in any objectivity, focusing instead on specifically subjective value, and while it shares Conceit and Emulation's interest in narrative, it eschews rhe idea that genre conventions should take center stage (noting, however, that many PbtA games do in fact start from genre conventions, e.g. Masks, Monsterhearts, or even the original Apocalypse World.) It is least like G&S, being so focused on rhe subjective and narrative, rather than the character-independent "objective" world and procedure. [/LIST] Again, there may be others, but these have thus far been enough to cover any game I have needed to talk about. And, in case it wasn't clear, these game-(design-)purposes can be mixed, though some more easily than others. Most games, due to having numerical mechanics, have [I]some[/I] element of S&A, but not always. G&S is often a "nice thing if you can get it" sort of thing, even if it isn't a top priority. C&E often shows up in the [I]premise[/I] of the game...but may be sorely lacking in execution if either of the previous two are too dominant (looking at you, D&D 3e.) V&I, as noted, was generally designed [I]intentionally,[/I] as opposed to the more serendipitous manifestations of G&S/S&A, so it tends to be more "pure" in expression, but there are exceptions (e.g. 4e D&D can be interpreted as serendipitously V&I due to the player-authored quests and some other components.) [/QUOTE]
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