MDA specifies what it means by mechanics. Insisting on a different definition doesn’t allow us to say anything useful about or using MDA anymore. If we want to use MDA as a framework, we have to use the structures it provides. We can call them other things (as
DDE does), but the meanings are the same. If DDE can account for tabletop RPGs, then it follows that MDA can as well. All that means is MDA has poor terminology, which (as you quoted Lantz in
post #225) is a known problem.
It could be simply that MDA implies too narrow a scope for "stuff designer controls", where DDE uses better language and examples. With MDA I find I cannot fit some phenomena in, and in other cases its not clear whether something is on the M side or A, such as the style of an art asset. Dynamics doesn't apply quite as well to TTRPG - "play" is better (and has been suggested by others for the framework overall.) Once it is read or reframed that way, then I would agree with you that it can say some useful things for TTRPG design. In a nutshell (
@pemerton might be interested here)
Design is simply stuff designer can control. That can include rules (both constitutive and regulatory), principles and other exhortations to uphold the desired practice, examples of play, setting description, premade characters, illustrations. The designed layer is game-as-artifact. Think of the other layers as lying atop it. They perhaps couldn't exist without it, but they are not reliably isomorphic to it. We can put the game text here.
Play is the engagement with the system by players, activating it. For videogames, "dynamics" is reasonable because you can have systems that run themselves. For TTRPG it can only be thought of in the form of play. That would include any procedures one player carries out even in the absence of others. The play layer lies atop the designed layer. We can include player imagination here, even if as I contend it includes a form of game mechanic, on the assumption that it's compelled or constrained by the design.
Experience is entirely on the player side: their feelings, satisfactions, tensions, excitements, frustrations, hopes, learnings and so on. The effect of the game on the player. In MDA and similar frameworks, an attempt is made to classify these into creative motives like challenge, exploration, fellowship, expression. The aim is to move away from generic terms like "fun" which means something different to each player.) Experience subsists in or emerges from the play of the game. Think of it as the top layer: what the game is like to play... its effect on you.
The idea is to work out what experience you want to deliver, and then design toward that. Good advice. What's particularly relevant for us is the implicit and crucial notion that
designers do not directly control experience. I make a big deal out of that, because one of the more subtle ideas of MDA/DDE/DPE is that a designer can make the experience
likely but not certain. So in relation to neotrad I say that they can't make it likely enough unless they explicitly design for what GM does, because otherwise it will default to trad.
I've often said play is process not product. Performance might be a better word. Game-as-artifact is a highly specific tool that can be used by players to achieve particular performances. Much as hammers can be used by carpenters to achieve nails set in the wood, which they do not to set nails in wood, but to build a birdhouse.
What “neotrad” means seems to be part of the issue. I took Härenstam’s definition at face value, “A hybrid between simulation games and Story games. Often looks like traditional simulation games (expensive books), but contains a lot of inspiration from the indie games mainly in terms of mechanics.”
In another thread I independently suggested "neosim", which could feasibly be what Härenstam had in mind. However, I think it is more important to try to understand his motives for posting
...the very purpose of the thread was to protest against the, in my opinion, destructive and unnecessary division into indie and trad. To give suggestions for other ways of looking at things, other categories.
IIRC there are five pages of comments, and among those to my reading TH makes it clear that he's not hung up on his taxonomy. I was clear in my OP that I'm using the label "neotrad" to include such enduring modes of play as OSR, sandbox, sim, and trad.
Baker assumes a goof faith attempt to play the game, which is what I also assume. I think the issue of how to get people to follow the rules is intractable, so I don’t worry about it. It’s like trying to make your game resilient in case the sun explodes while people are playing. There’s not much you can do about that.
(Emphasis mine.) In AW and DitV Baker does almost exactly the opposite! He doesn't leave it to good faith attempts, he lays out exactly what he expects from the GM. On first read it's kind of astonishing, and refreshing. Here's one pithy example addressed to MC
Everything you say, you should do it to accomplish these three, and no other. It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them, or to get them through your pre-planned storyline (DO NOT pre-plan a storyline, and I’m not naughty word around). It’s not your job to put their characters in double-binds or dead ends, or to yank the rug out from under their feet. Go chasing after any of those, you’ll wind up with a boring game that makes Apocalypse World seem contrived, and you’ll be pre-deciding what happens by yourself, not playing to find out.
Utilizing the MDA/DDE/DPE framework, which hopefully I've offered an effective olive branch in regard to, text like the above is design. Baker controlled what he wrote there. What he can't control is precisely what experience player engagement with that piece of text will lead to. But actually his approach is one of redundancy.
The design (D) guides to play (P) of the design (D); securing the intended experience (E). So Baker has designed both the game mechanics (like moves), and an agenda and principles for engaging with them. That's not relying on good faith. It's including in the game design exactly how you are positioning GM.
When would a designer choose to engage this philosophy?
When they wanted their design intent to matter, faced with otherwise overpowering default assumptions.
