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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9239804" data-attributes="member: 70468">I assume you are referring to <a href="https://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2995" target="_blank">this article</a>? Lantz isn’t challenging the framework itself. He’s pointing out issues with the terminology and how its usage is confusing. If that’s the only issue with using MDA with tabletop RPGs, then there’s no functional issue with it. I was expecting a different issue to be raised.From what I’ve seen, the issue with MDA raised with non-digital games is the arrow of perspective (for lack of a better term). MDA has mechanics coming from the designer, resulting in dynamics at runtime, which create aesthetics the player experiences. The player first experiences the aesthetic, then observes the dynamics, and finally operates the mechanics.MDA posits that players experience the aesthetics (the intended emotions not the visuals of the game), observe the dynamics, then operate the mechanics. Non-digital games confound this because you have to understand the mechanics before you can even start.In my mind, this criticism is a UX issue. Non-trivial digital games also have this problem. Consider a game that pops up a window when you start telling you which shapes to match. Games with higher levels of complexity may defer telling players how they work until those mechanics come up in play. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 drops you into the game during the opening areas, but once you get to the game proper, it drops you into a tutorial area to tell you explicitly how things like combat and hacking work.Maybe it’s possible to solve this for board games and tabletop RPGs through better writing and better visual design as part of the on-boarding experience. There’s certainly a lot of bad design in the tabletop RPG space where materials are written for consumption rather than use at the table. Regardless, I don’t think this problem undermines the utility of the MDA framework as a design methodology when it comes to non-digital games.It’s important to understand my reply in context. You were postulating imagination as mechanics. I pointed out that mechanics properly belong to the boxes —the real world things. That’s what the designer controls. You invoke a mechanic, and it either changes your mechanical position (such as manipulating a currency) or your fictional position (such as taking position on a hill). The designer doesn’t control imagination. It’s not something you can offer, but you can create mechanics to prompt a player to use it. In Baker’s <a href="http://www.lumpley.com/archive/156.html" target="_blank">notation</a>, that would be a box with an arrow pointing to the clouds.I appreciate the recommendation, but it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to listen to an actual play for this discussion.My issue with “neotrad” as a design school is I view it as just design. If we look at the design taxonomies outlined by Tomas Härenstam that you translated in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-neotrad-ttrpg-design-manifesto.701957/post-9236313" target="_blank">post #42</a>, it can be split into two groups: those with “indie” mechanics and those without. The group of those without are all games based on past designs. That’s two flavors of D&D (modern and classic) and BRP-like sim games. Everything else is some flavor of “indie”-influenced game: neotrad, storygame, or co-narrator.I actually think he’s looking at this the wrong way, and MDA is my tool for showing this. Take the D&D category. He includes Pathfinder in this category. As we know, Paizo redesigned Pathfinder quite significanlly for its second edition. It is mechanically incompatible. Is it still Pathfinder? Yes. I would argue that Pathfinder 2e has almost the same dynamics as Pathfiner 1e. That is how people can recognize it as still Pathfinder and how it can be used to play the same kinds of games. However, there is one exception: combat.Paizo changed the dynamics of combat from PF1 to PF2. Unlike PF1, the combat mechanics actually do what they are intended to do. Combat is balanced, and the encounter-building works. You cannot build your way to success. You have to fight effectively as a team, leveraging your synergies and teamwork to create advantages you can exploit. This is a fundamentally different dynamic from PF1, and it is unsurprisingly a point of controversy. Those expecting PF2 combat to operate like PF1 combat are in for a rude surprise, and it eliminates (or at least greatly hampers) the ability to optimize a character to overcome challenges.I would postulate that you can preserve a game’s dynamics while incorporating “indie” mechanics. PF2 has social conflict rules. You can use the VP subsystem to run a social conflict like you would in Blades in the Dark. D&D 4e can do this as a skill challenge. Even D&D 5e has a limited from of social conflict (the social interaction rules on pp. 244–255 of the DMG, which [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] has written here about using for that). TIBFs and Inspiration are arguably an “indie” mechanic (since it’s kind of like a poor man’s aspects and Fate currency). Don’t forget consequences resolution.Would people put these games as indie games? No. Thomas himself includes D&D 4e in the D&D category. That’s because these games have the same dynamics (more or less) that they’ve always had. It’s just that the mechanics have changed, and some of those changes incorporate newer tech and design ideas. That is why I view “neotrad” design (as articulated here and by Thomas) as just design. It’s a just the current state of the art.This is getting into the nature of play. How do we enforce that rules are observed? My solution is not to worry about it. I assume people will make a good faith effort to follow the rules and play the game as designed. If they don’t, there is nothing I can do about that. There are no rules that exist above the game I can use to make them play as intended, so I assume good faith and don’t worry otherwise.(Plus, even video games aren’t immune to being played in unintended ways. Look at how people break games for speed running or mod games to do new things [like new content or randomizers] or develop their own experiences. You can’t tell me the nightclub scene was anticipated by the FFXIV developers.)MDA is a framework for thinking about game design. It doesn’t have all the answers, and (as you note at the beginning of your post) it’s not intended to provide them. Just what kind of dynamics you want to manifest from the mechanics you create requires looking at other ideas (theory, practice, etc). That seems perfectly reasonable to me, and it’s why I have mentioned a few time how existing RPG theory can be useful for that.However, I don’t know what you mean by “organization design”. If you mean to design the game with the GM as the central authority over play, then I disagree pretty strongly. That is one way of doing things, but it’s not the only way. Thomas provides co-narrator games as an example of games that don’t have a GM. There are also solo games that obviously don’t have a GM. Even Apocalypse World constrains the GM in ways that would prevent them from being that kind of authority. Starting from a traditional mode of play also risks creating an iteration on the status quo, which seems not in the spirit of “neotrad design” being used here.Communication to manage external dependencies is not an extension of agile. Communication is fundamental:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Individuals and interactions over processes and tools</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Working software over comprehensive documentation</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Customer collaboration over contract negotiation</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Responding to change over following a plan</li> </ul>Every single one of those items from the <a href="http://agilemanifesto.org" target="_blank">agile manifesto</a> is about communication. Need something from a vendor? Communicate. Need something from another team? Communicate. Scope of work bigger than expected? Communicate. That’s not a gap in agile. People over processes.I’m also not sure where you got that I was alluding to other frameworks. I have little love for stuff like SAFe. These approaches are often traditional ones dressed up in “agile terminology”. They’re peddled by consultants as a way to “go agile”, but these frameworks often conflict with the original manifesto.This side discussion is getting way off topic, so let’s bring it back on topic. One thing that’s interesting is how you talk about “extending the framework”, but the agile manifesto is not a framework. It’s a set of practices. It’s prescriptive about what you’re supposed to be doing. That’s what a manifesto is. Is a “neotrad design” manifesto expected to be that fluid? (Which wouldn’t help my feeling that such a thing would be of limited use if so.)table it. However, I would point out one thing that brings it back on topic. If the “agile manifesto” is so functionally meaningless (in that there are a bunch of “agile” practices that don’t really follow it but are marketed under it), then what is the purpose of a “neotrad manifesto”? Is it expected to be treated with similar fluidity?</blockquote>

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