The Six Cultures of Gaming

[Ovinomancer]

In fairness bleed, and the other concept are interrelated, as they both have to do with layers of seperation between you and the character-- some people play TTRPGs to stand in the 'shoes' of their character, which often has to do with winning and losing, fighting a dragon isn't something the characters just overcome in the story, WE AS PLAYERS are also trying to slay the dragon, or in the abstract to overcome the challenges and 'beat' the game, its the concept of wargame, but as applied to fantasy adventure story that sits at the roots of the genre. I 'as' Emrys the Wizard are trying to slay that dragon, if I don't manage it thats a failure state for me in playing the game, not just for Emrys himself.

What other concept? Also, your description here isn't bleed -- these motivations aren't really aligned, even though they have the same goal, and possible frustration at the end. Presumably, the PC is feeling lots of emotions and has lots of reasons for fighting the dragon, and none of them are winning the game being played. This is a parallel issue, where a player can be emotionally invested (although I find this to be a shallow example)

Meanwhile, in some other games, there's more of a separation-- like in Masks, while the players are fans of their characters and want to see them eventually succeed (and that's usually how the stories the game is emulating end anyway) they're way more interested in creating all the drama that goes into that along the way, its not such a massive breach of etiquette when a player has their character stop doing things because they're having a panic attack mid combat, or surrender. I can have my Soldier playbook character Ronin, do something that will unknowingly put him at odds with the rest of the party, knowing it'll make things more complicated later, because we're not just doing our best to win, we're doing our best to have dramatic stuff happen.

That doesn't seem like the intended play of PbtA games at all. You're suggesting that these games feature shifting between advocacy for character and advocacy for story, and, while I suppose you can do this, nothing in the games directs you to do this and in fact they stay pretty rooted in character advocacy. The drama in these games is a function of GM framing and characters with meaty issues - these come up without the player choosing to force one for the good of the story.

In fact, I've seen tighter connection with character in my Blades games than in most of my D&D games. I chalk this up to the focus on character that Blades has, vice the focus on adventure that D&D has.

Then all of that ties into the ideas of challenging the player, vs. the character, and how our emotional states bleed into our characters-- for instance if you and I are primarily playing in the first person, an argument between our characters might reflect our actual plans for what to do in that situation (regardless of the separation between what we would do in real life, vs. here) and therefore we might be personally invested in the outcome of the argument, rather than in the narrative implications of it, leading it to be more of an actual argument than just roleplaying if we aren't careful. If I'm really trying to slay the dragon, then when your character gets in the way of that, they're getting in the way of me trying to slay the dragon, not just Emrys doing so. That's part and parcel of bleed I think, when you want something, and someone else is frustrating your efforts.

This is bleed-in, where the player's emotional state becomes the characters. This is being talked about as something to avoid, although I haven't spent much time thinking on it. The point of "bleed" in the article is for the player to align to and feel the emotional state of the character -- if the character is sad, the player feels sad. This is the "bleed" in the article. It's not about driving the character to act as the player feels.

Notably, this is also kind of in contention, how one 'should' play roleplaying games, some people lean all one way (you aren't trying to win, no matter what game you're playing) other people lean all the other way, and others are mixed, and then even express that mix in different ways (I draw the line at deliberate underperformance in solving the game's obstacles, within reason, before anyone brings up the idea of policing slightly un-optimized characters as a logical conclusion to that.) Heck, the differences are even baked into the different personalities discussed in the DMG player personality section-- the actor wants to express their character, the thinker wants problems they can enjoy solving, and so forth. I think that while DND and such can kind of support either, its very much more about overcoming the obstacles together in the game world, in the first person, thats just how the mechanics are designed, they're levers you pull to make progress towards solving problems.

The mechanics don't care about 1st person at all, but, other than that, I agree with this bit.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

What other concept? Also, your description here isn't bleed -- these motivations aren't really aligned, even though they have the same goal, and possible frustration at the end. Presumably, the PC is feeling lots of emotions and has lots of reasons for fighting the dragon, and none of them are winning the game being played. This is a parallel issue, where a player can be emotionally invested (although I find this to be a shallow example)

That doesn't seem like the intended play of PbtA games at all. You're suggesting that these games feature shifting between advocacy for character and advocacy for story, and, while I suppose you can do this, nothing in the games directs you to do this and in fact they stay pretty rooted in character advocacy. The drama in these games is a function of GM framing and characters with meaty issues - these come up without the player choosing to force one for the good of the story.

In fact, I've seen tighter connection with character in my Blades games than in most of my D&D games. I chalk this up to the focus on character that Blades has, vice the focus on adventure that D&D has.

This is bleed-in, where the player's emotional state becomes the characters. This is being talked about as something to avoid, although I haven't spent much time thinking on it. The point of "bleed" in the article is for the player to align to and feel the emotional state of the character -- if the character is sad, the player feels sad. This is the "bleed" in the article. It's not about driving the character to act as the player feels.

The mechanics don't care about 1st person at all, but, other than that, I agree with this bit.

(Excerpts are from Masks: A New Generation, by Magipe Games and Brendan Conway)

I just went back to double check my Masks book, the game explicitly bills itself as being about playing to find out what happens:

Consider how this intersects with things like Clearing a condition:

The intention here is that my character can be hurt by something you did, even while I know you were just trying to clear angry, or you might flee from the fight with the villain to clear afraid, or you might decide to attack the bad guy while the rest of your team was in stealth. If we're playing to win in a simulationist sense, these are all actions that might make your teammates annoyed at you, but around the Masks table, the mechanics are working to create situations in which you might flee the villain, or screw over a teammate, because the emotional fallout of that happening is the point, not so much actually defeating the villain. We see this in some playbook moves too.

There's still some sense of playing to win, you'll have a harder time passing checks if you don't clear your conditions, so there's an incentive to do that, but in actual play, these feel more like prompts to encourage you to play for the fiction, and away from the 'playing to win' mentality. If you play to win all the time, by not doing things that are harmful to your party in a cohesion/tactical sense, the game will go out of its way to make your life harder.

You might still identify with your character a lot, but the actual sync of "I want to punch Isidro in the face" and "Thomas my character wants to punch Isidro in the face" is more distant, because your character has incentives to act in ways you wouldn't, they can be made angry against their will and need to clear it even when you would decide to not be angry at the thing that made them angry if it was DND. Hell, the Beacon has a bucket list of goals, one of which is "Punch out a teammate" among all of the others. DND doesn't have those kinds of expectation distancing your current emotional state from the characters, for the most part, so your character can be more of an avatar for your own desires and plans, they don't decide to be angry at people you think are quite reasonable unless you go out of your way to produce that.

(Disregard any text that was here, Masks is under a Creative Commons Attribution License.)

 

[overgeeked]

Well sure, but that's not what anyone was suggesting, so it seems odd to make a big deal about objecting to it.

You are suggesting it when you say horror games are about scaring the players.

 

[jmartkdr2]

You are suggesting it when you say horror games are about scaring the players.

Scaring, not traumatizing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Oh, and to respond to the part before the PBTA thing, I think it depends a lot, my characters have a lot of seperation in their personalities, but very little in their long term goals (and I make them that way intentionally) or they tend to be a specific part of me that I let take over. I'm putting on a mask, but I am thinking and planning in the first person, generally-- I feel actual accomplishment when we win. My motivations are pretty in line too, I can suspend disbelief enough to care about the village we're saving, or to want to learn about the setting lore in the same way my character does. Angry GM has a great article about this too, I subscribe to.

 

[Ovinomancer]

(Excerpts are from Masks: A New Generation, by Magipe Games and Brendan Conway)

I just went back to double check my Masks book, the game explicitly bills itself as being about playing to find out what happens:

View attachment 135834

Consider how this intersects with things like Clearing a condition:

View attachment 135835
The intention here is that my character can be hurt by something you did, even while I know you were just trying to clear angry, or you might flee from the fight with the villain to clear afraid, or you might decide to attack the bad guy while the rest of your team was in stealth. If we're playing to win in a simulationist sense, these are all actions that might make your teammates annoyed at you, but around the Masks table, the mechanics are working to create situations in which you might flee the villain, or screw over a teammate, because the emotional fallout of that happening is the point, not so much actually defeating the villain. We see this in some playbook moves too.

There's still some sense of playing to win, you'll have a harder time passing checks if you don't clear your conditions, so there's an incentive to do that, but in actual play, these feel more like prompts to encourage you to play for the fiction, and away from the 'playing to win' mentality. If you play to win all the time, by not doing things that are harmful to your party in a cohesion/tactical sense, the game will go out of its way to make your life harder.

You might still identify with your character a lot, but the actual sync of "I want to punch Isidro in the face" and "Thomas my character wants to punch Isidro in the face" is more distant, because your character has incentives to act in ways you wouldn't, they can be made angry against their will and need to clear it even when you would decide to not be angry at the thing that made them angry if it was DND. Hell, the Beacon has a bucket list of goals, one of which is "Punch out a teammate" among all of the others. DND doesn't have those kinds of expectation distancing your current emotional state from the characters, for the most part, so your character can be more of an avatar for your own desires and plans, they don't decide to be angry at people you think are quite reasonable unless you go out of your way to produce that.

(Disregard any text that was here, Masks is under a Creative Commons Attribution License.)

What you're referencing is encouragement to play what the character is feeling, not make a choice based on a better story. You're importing "group play" from other games and evaluating the choices made from whether or not it harms the group rather than whether or not it's advocating for the characters. Hence, you've confused this for story advocacy rather than incentive to get into character advocacy because your play agenda is group oriented, and therefore story oriented already.

 

[Campbell]

There are some Playbook level stuff I'm not fond of, but generally what games like Masks, Apocalypse Keys, and Monsterhearts are trying to do is align player and character behavioral incentives. You as a player do not choose when your character is angry because they don't choose. Part of what game is trying to do is help you experience what it's like to try to fight supervillains while struggling with the way you see yourself and having to deal with emotions that are overwhelming to you. Sometimes it's too on the nose, but a lot of that comes to down to trying to fight against the massive amount of programming we receive as gamers when it comes to playing your character like as a person.

 

[overgeeked]

Scaring, not traumatizing.

Clearly we're using the word "scared" in two drastically different ways. What exactly do you mean by scared? What do you want your players to do? What reaction do you want from them? Describe the physical and mental thing you want. Don't use the word scared.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

What you're referencing is encouragement to play what the character is feeling, not make a choice based on a better story. You're importing "group play" from other games and evaluating the choices made from whether or not it harms the group rather than whether or not it's advocating for the characters. Hence, you've confused this for story advocacy rather than incentive to get into character advocacy because your play agenda is group oriented, and therefore story oriented already.

What the character is feeling, IS the story, and therefore my assertion of Mask's as creating a narrative separation between you and the character. When the GM of Masks tells me that Ronin marks angry due to another character insulting him, it doesn't matter how I think of the character Ronin is angry at, its the narrative asserting itself to make something happen in the fiction, I have to live with it. Making those dramatic things happen is the 'agenda' for the people at the table.

My DND games are more simulationist, with players setting and completing goals, the party is working together to overcome challenges, no mechanic incentivizes them to act out against one another, and there's no mechanics to reward them for doing so, and so its kind of a faux pas at most tables I've witnessed or read about to have that kind of drama take place. Solving the problems and overcoming the challenges is the 'agenda' for people at the DND table.

I've had DND players recoil from Masks, and get really annoyed that the system tells 'them' what to feel, because they're used to playing the characters as avatars used to overcome challenges, they feel that any interpersonal drama between the characters is both in the way, and actively detrimental to completing their goals in the game space.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

There are some Playbook level stuff I'm not fond of, but generally what games like Masks, Apocalypse Keys, and Monsterhearts are trying to do is align player and character behavioral incentives. You as a player do not choose when your character is angry because they don't choose. Part of what game is trying to do is help you experience what it's like to try to fight supervillains while struggling with the way you see yourself and having to deal with emotions that are overwhelming to you. Sometimes it's too on the nose, but a lot of that comes to down to trying to fight against the massive amount of programming we receive as gamers when it comes to playing your character like as a person.

Masks doesn't have traditional combat mechanics, it only has the emotional dimension, which leads me to feel that it doesn't care much for the particulars of combat. The only battlefield is the narrative one, in which your character makes other people feel things, and you're made to feel things by others. But that dimension of 'feeling things' is also where your characters goals and motivations sit, so they're affected by the push and pull of the narrativist mechanics. 'Goal-oriented' play in the context of the world, is limited because your motivations are whats being toyed with, its a story about the push and pull of self discovery and growing up, the beating up of Super Villains is the setting for that emotional play.

Compare to DND, where the emotional dimension is left to the players discretion completely, and all of the rules are concerned with physical simulation. The game wants you to set goals like 'get the dragon's treasure hoard' so that it can focus on the challenges that might prevent you from achieving those goals. You can add drama to that formula in a freeform way, and we often do, but the game's mechanics don't really intersect with that, nothing forces you to develop your character emotionally, so it can be played with a consistent set of goals and relatively static personalities.

Neither game is pure in its pursuit of these elements, but they're still coming at it from fundamentally different angles.