Vincent Baker on mechanics, system and fiction in RPGs

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It is a textbook on game design, the one that (AFAIK) pioneered the idea of game patterns, and the book breaks down not only how to identify them but also how to construct them, and why and how they work as a design syntax that can be applied to every game ever made and ever will be made.

Game designers followed in the footsteps of software engineers, who had themselves picked up the idea of design patterns from architects writing from at least the 1970s. There had been for at least a decade prior to Adams others proposing game design patterns including scholars such as Holopainen or Fabricatore, who had been writing papers alluding to them at that point for at least a decade.

Adams was more the sort of writer who was able to communicate concepts others had developed to a wider audience, rather than said anything especially new. But perhaps I am underselling him as he articulately advocated a structured approach to game design.

 

[FrogReaver]

Game designers followed in the footsteps of software engineers, who had themselves picked up the idea of design patterns from architects writing from at least the 1970s. There had been for at least a decade prior to Adams others proposing game design patterns including scholars such as Holopainen or Fabricatore, who had been writing papers alluding to them at that point for at least a decade.

Adams was more the sort of writer who was able to communicate concepts others had developed to a wider audience, rather than said anything especially new. But perhaps I am underselling him as he articulately advocated a structured approach to game design.

No dog in this race, but often what's truly revolutionary is taking a hodge podge of pieces from different sources, putting them together and making a useful and coherent model out of those pieces. I don't know if that's what happened, but if so the fact that some people had some preliminary notions but didn't put all the parts together into 1 big cohesive pictures and he did is big and new IMO.

 

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All elements considered in their proper context, i'm not sure rpg design and video game design are substantially different.

I hope you won't mind if I say that made me smile. Have you read the debate on that question among games scholars! Anyway, much turns on what you call substantial. I would say they are substantially different, on the grounds that while there is much in common, each has substantial problems one does not have to solve for the other. For example, what TTRPG designer has had to worry about number of foes in a scene versus what the expected GPUs can render in a frame? Or the complexity of pathing, collision, and physics, in a similar light?

RPG's are more open ended - or at least can be. Video games aren't, or at least not yet - though that's more due to technical limitations than aspirations.

Yes, in a sense it is the open-endedness that counts. And the norms that constrain that open-endedness. And how the mechanics appeal to and reshape those norms. TTRPGs must structure the flow of conversation, with all the unwritten rules of language at play in full. Videogames are as you imply far more contained.

Also Note video games typically concern themselves with story quite a bit. Compared to an RPG it's usually alot more railroady, but the basics of having the mechanics and story work together are all there.

Story in a videogame is substantially different from that in TTRPG. The reasons for that are what the narrativist-movement has been about!

 

[FrogReaver]

I hope you won't mind if I say that made me smile. Have you read the debate on that question among games scholars! Anyway, much turns on what you call substantial. I would say they are substantially different, on the grounds that while there is much in common, each has substantial problems one does not have to solve for the other. For example, what TTRPG designer has had to worry about number of foes in a scene versus what the expected GPUs can render in a frame? Or the complexity of pathing, collision, and physics, in a similar light?

Imo. Most of the concerns you cited can be mapped to a similar concern in a ttrpg. Like your GPUs, in a ttrpg that’s the cognitive load the dm can endure. The same thing happens in both. The game slows down to a crawl or crashes.

Yes, in a sense it is the open-endedness that counts. And the norms that constrain that open-endedness. And how the mechanics appeal to and reshape those norms. TTRPGs must structure the flow of conversation, with all the unwritten rules of language at play in full. Videogames are as you imply far more contained.

Right, but as technology advances that’s going to be a more and more a video game problem as well. Imagine a generative AI tailoring game content to a players completely open ended ttrpg style choices.

Story in a videogame is substantially different from that in TTRPG. The reasons for that are what the narrativist-movement has been about!

Depends on one’s ttrpg experiences I suppose. That said even the more narrative games will one day be able to be cared for by generative ai in the video game space. Whether they are commercially successful might be a bigger question - but the tools will be there.

 

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I'm not convinced anything you have just said is actually a problem. It seems like you're just trying to pass off your personal preferences as "best practices", but you have provided no actual argument for them. In any case, it has little (if anything) to do with Baker's OP.

I felt @Manbearcat rightly picked up on the character sheet as establishing a fictional position (as well as a system position) that as @pemerton stressed is usually tied to a player. A significant design problem that arises is how to properly give effect to the implications of that position so that the fictional implications are aligned with the system implications?

The problem includes how to ensure that the player grasps the fictional position in the way connected with the intended play, and to what ends all that anyway?

It might be you're thinking of "problem" as a negative. I take it in this thread to be meant in a neutral sense: as much a feature, opportunity, or consequence.

 

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Imo. Most of the concerns you cited can be mapped to a similar concern in a ttrpg. Like your GPUs, in a ttrpg that’s the cognitive load the dm can endure. The same thing happens in both. The game slows down to a crawl or crashes.

I may have chosen bad examples, but I was thinking about something like this. "In the yard is a red wheelbarrow". What colour red are you thinking of? What does your wheelbarrow look like? Is it made of wood? Metal? Both? Something else? How big is the yard. Does it contain anything else? In a videogame, one decides those things as absolutes, and they are constrained by system capabilities. At a TTRPG table, players can imagine and continue to imagine things in the yard, so long as they like. They can walk to any point in the yard. Jump, crawl, roll etc. In a videogame those things can only happen if provision was made for them in the software. What then, constrains what players should imagine?

TTRPGs addres a vast and fuzzily defined space - human imagination as shaped by experiences and norms. Computer games must translate any such thing into specifics. And this applies to rules, too.

That said, when I say "incomplete overlaps" I mean both words. There are overlaps aplenty. And there are non-overlapping facets.

Right, but as technology advances that’s going to be a more and more a video game problem as well. Imagine a generative AI tailoring game content to a players completely open ended ttrpg style choices.

Yes, I think they will overlap more and more, and eventually converge, and then Vincent's concepts will be even more relevant!

Depends on one’s ttrpg experiences I suppose. That said even the more narrative games will one day be able to be cared for by generative ai in the video game space. Whether they are commercially successful might be a bigger question - but the tools will be there.

At that point, there will still be a distinction - some non-overlaps - between the design problems for TTRPG+CRPG, and those of other kinds of games!

 

[pemerton]

Well... this sentiment explain alot!

Do you prefer arguing from ignorance?

 

[pemerton]

No, you proved that the people who said these things have designed games. You haven't proven that what they said can actually be used to do so.

Thats why its an argument from authority, as you're counting on pointing at Baker making his games to stand in for you proving your contentions.

If you read Anyway - Vincent Baker's blogs - you can see the design of Apocalypse World being worked out!

Your contention that there's no connection between his professed methods, and his actual design of games, is quite odd and unsupported by any evidence that I'm aware of.

 

[FrogReaver]

If you read Anyway - Vincent Baker's blogs - you can see the design of Apocalypse World being worked out!

Your contention that there's no connection between his professed methods, and his actual design of games, is quite odd and unsupported by any evidence that I'm aware of.

Indeed. It would be a very extraordinary claim for that to be the case!

 

[FrogReaver]

Do you prefer arguing from ignorance?

Be better!