Game Fundamentals - The Illusion of Accomplishment

[Bluenose]

It's amazing how much better people understand me when they don't start with the assumption that I must be throwing around veiled insults.

I don't know how many times in this thread I assert that we are all as gamers at one time or the other 'ego gamers' or 'achievement driven', that that is part of the valid fun of the game, or that I wasn't setting out to diminish the value of the 'the illusion of accomplishment'. I even said that the group dynamics on the whole are helped by having players who are more so than the average driven by the need for immediate success because otherwise, if no one is paying attention to 'winning' in the short term, it becomes more difficult to achieve longer term goals and harder for the DM to keep a story moving forward. I have certainly no way accused 'ego gaming' of being badwrongfun, except to the extent that any single motivation can - when taken out of proportion and not moderated by the needs of social gaming - be bad for the table as a whole.

Yet, for reasons of there own, some people continue to be very grumpy little thread crappers repeating the same wild accusations and slanders in one short little trolling post after the other. Geez, if you are going to disagree, at least put some effort into it, and better yet, disagree with something I actually said rather than something you want me to have said.

That wasn't all you said, though, was it? You didn't restrict it to talking about how some players can be a bloody nuisance and time their characters are having problems. You specifically said that you thought a current trend among game designers and game designs was to pander to such people.

Your first statement I'm perfectly willing to accept. Your second needs supporting evidence.

 

[The Shaman]

He is an imaginary construct contrary to evidence given by any reliable psychological study.

And the reliable psychological studies you're citing to refute this are found where, exactly?

No need to quote them here; just a few links would be fine.

The edition warring is an implied claim and a "guilt by association one" that newer game designs will attract the imaginary creature and you should avoid them if you dont want to be thought to be this rat pushing his reward button or if you dont want to attract this rat pushing the button to your table.

First, these aren't "newer game designs."

Top Secret had Fame and Fortune points, a 'get-out-of-death-free' rule for a game with a very lethal combat system - that was 1980. Marvel Super Heroes characters could be injured but rarely killed - that was 1984. In both cases these rules were designed to emulate their respective genres, in this instance elite spies and four-color superheroes, respectively.

Second, it's not "edition warring" to note that D&D's mechanics changed over the years. It would take some pretty deep denial to say that World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game is the same now as it was in its early days, particularly if we compare it to one of its contemporaries, Call of Cthulhu. "Edition War!" seems as if it's a tag thrown out to dismiss any comparison between editions, now matter how benign or banal.

My personal opinion is that the genres D&D was originally designed to emulate have changed, that the speculative fiction sources for the game are different than they were in the Seventies and that D&D has become to some degree its own fantasy genre. Gamers are pushing the genre of D&D away from its more lethal roots and toward something more four-color, from what I've observed over the years. That's not a bad thing - it's just a thing.

Third and last, ego-gamers have been around as long as the hobby. I remember guys who'd howl and whine at any setback, who'd lie and cheat to gain an edge, back in 1978. They were a pain in the arse then, and they're a pain in the arse now.

Ego-gamers, in my opinion, represent a destructive side of the changing expectations in roleplaying games. I like games which work to emulate genres; Top Secret remains one of my favorite spy games, and I enjoyed a fair amount of MSH back in the day. But I don't want every game to emulate superheroes.

Ego-gamers who whinge about how their characters are supposed to be TEH AWSUM! every second of every game are arguing for a vanilla game experience, in my opinion. I don't care for the expectation that tabletop roleplaying games should be about hammering the "WIN!" button, because it turns every game experience into the same thing and genre becomes mere stage-dressing.

Ego-gamers are mercifully in the minority in our hobby, but they are vocal, so gamers who want something else from their games need to be just as vocal.

 

[amysrevenge]

Then take it to the new Who. Each story is again self contained (mostly) but truncated down to about 45 minutes.

Does that mean that our attention spans are that much shorter?

I keep getting the impression that "they" are telling us that our attention spans are shorter, not that they necessarily are.

 

[Celebrim]

That wasn't all you said, though, was it? You didn't restrict it to talking about how some players can be a bloody nuisance and time their characters are having problems. You specifically said that you thought a current trend among game designers and game designs was to pander to such people.

Your first statement I'm perfectly willing to accept. Your second needs supporting evidence.

Ok, sure. I thought I'd provided some evidence, but if you wanted more evidence of that there was such a trend, I can understand. I'm not sure the evidence will be forth coming, because as I said, I'd need to spend hours googling up examples, and then having done that, I'd have to deal with people providing counter-examples and then we'd end up in an unwinnable debate based on impressions of something that can't be directly measured. All that is however something I can understand as a reasonable objection or method of objection.

What I don't understand is people demanding I provide evidence of perfectly ordinary and generic RPG experiences. That's were I've been stuck most of the thread.

As for the more reasonable objections, I don't think that there is much contriversy that both 3e and 4e designers said that they were taking some inspiration from video games (or that were it wasn't said it could be noticed), and I don't think that there is much contriversy that PnP game designers have frequently wrote articles in which they implied that PnP games were in a compitition with video games or that video games had something to teach PnP designers (whether you agree with the claim or not). Likewise, I don't think there is much argument over the fact that increasingly video game design and PnP design is seen to overlap (by designers on both sides of the divide), and in fact, the only thing that might provoke argument in that claim is 'increasingly' because very clearly, video game design has been heavily influenced by and often outright attempts at emmulation of PnP games or at least some aspect thereof.

Less clearly, but I think obviously, as cRPGs mature, they've been back pollenating the PnP games that inspired them. I felt like there were obvious influences from Fallout (released 1997, the same year that WotC acquired TSR and started work on a new edition) in the rules of 3e D&D. For a simple example, feats every 3 levels paralleled Fallout's perks every 3 levels. I feel that trend has continued as 3e evolved and into 4e. I can't prove that at all, because there is no way to measure this. I could provide evidence, but I don't intend to because its more trouble than its worth.

Now, so far I've said nothing negative about the trend. I don't really have anything against cRPG design inspiring aspects of PnP design so far as it goes. Where I have problems is with attempting to get PnP's to capture the aspects of the play experience of cRPGs which are inherently superior to PnP's, and very high on that list would be the tight action/reward loops that cRPGs can provide. Game theories that are perfectly applicable applied to creating Mrs. Pac Man or even WoW and providing entertainment in that medium, do not necessarily apply in the PnP world. Therefore I cringe whenever I read some designer or blogger saying something like, "I was playing some video game and I noticed that I never had to wait for my reward, and I was always engaged, or how much it sucked to be stunned... and I was thinking how great it would be if I could apply this design lesson to the PnP world." I think I've provided at least some recent examples of design ideas being floated in those terms. I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.

 

[amysrevenge]

I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.

I think that there is a whole lot of wiggle room between the two, and that there are plenty of lessons from real-time designs that can be applied to turn-based games without simply porting one directly into the other. But then, while I've seen plenty of lessons learned and new things tried, I don't see whole lot of cases where anyone has actually attempted to do such a direct porting.


Something as simple as the concepts of Attacks of Opportunity in 3E and Immediate Actions in 4E can move in a direction from strictly turn-based toward real-time without flipping from one to the other in a binary fashion.

 

[Nifft]

I personally think that there is very little that can be directly ported between turn based designs and the real time designs that increasingly dominate cRPGs, and vica versa, and I think that in attempting to do so you decrease the competitiveness of the satisfaction PnP's provide with respect to that of cRPGs.

Maybe I should fork this to a new thread.

It's been said that RPGs are becoming more videogame-like. While that may or may not be true, it's certainly the case that video games have been becoming more RPG-like, and this trend started a long time ago. The first RPG-like video game that I remember was Gauntlet.

Gauntlet is interesting because it's also an attempt to bring RPG-like balance into video games. It's the first video game that I recall where you made a "character choice" which had mechanical effects on your game play: the parameters were pretty limited, because all you had were icon speed, attack speed, attack strength, and magic strength. But that seemed to be enough to get us to spend our hours and dollars on it.

Gauntlet was also neat in that it was a cooperative game, so the social perks we hold up as being a nice part of table top RPGs were available ("good job nailing that generator!").

It did both RPG-like balance and RPG-like social stuff, yet was real-time rather than turn-based. So, I'm not sure the turn-based thing is really a discriminating factor.

All I'm certain of is that ELF NEEDS FOOD BADLY.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Celebrim]

Maybe I should fork this to a new thread.

It's been said that RPGs are becoming more videogame-like. While that may or may not be true, it's certainly the case that video games have been becoming more RPG-like, and this trend started a long time ago. The first RPG-like video game that I remember was Gauntlet.

That might be the first RPG-like arcade game, but so far as I know the first RPG video game was Dungeon.

Gauntlet is interesting because it's also an attempt to bring RPG-like balance into video games. It's the first video game that I recall where you made a "character choice" which had mechanical effects on your game play: the parameters were pretty limited, because all you had were icon speed, attack speed, attack strength, and magic strength. But that seemed to be enough to get us to spend our hours and dollars on it.

Gauntlet is a pretty interesting entry in this thread because it pares the video game experience of an 'RPG' down to its essentials. More later when I think about it some more.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I'm surprised no one thought of this until now but isn't "ego-gamer" simply a new term for Munchkin?

 

[pemerton]

"Sophisticated" (just fyi).

I can spell. I can't always type.

Reading a book is passive. So is watching baseball. You may find these things stimulating, but don't mistake stimulation for activity. Activity is when you do something.

If you honestly disagree that sitting silently on your butt in a dark room for over an hour while you stare at a screen is you being passive, then we may not have enough common concepts to discuss more complicated things.

I'm not following you here. Running and cycling and the like are active. Sitting down is passive. I get that. But when I roleplay, I sit down rather than run around. So that's passive to.

Or: adding up and subtracting and arguing and orating are active. And sleeping and being unconscious are passive. But when I read a book or watch a (good) movie I think much harder than when I add up a few one or two digit numbers. So reading or watching a movie is (intellectually) active. Maybe not as intellectually active all the time as RPGing. But more intellectually active some of the time than at least parts of RPGing.

I really don't see the relevance of activity/passivity to the contrast between RPGs and movies. Participation and creativity seem like the more relevant dimensions of contrast to me.

And I still don't see the relevance of delayed gratification either, for the reasons I stated upthread.

 

[pemerton]

For example, the always say 'yes' approach.

Garthanos already responded to this, but I'll add in my own two cents worth.

As far as I know, the first roleplaying book to include the slogan "say yes, or roll the dice" was Dogs in the Vineyard.

Not a game generally described as aimed at the ego-gamer.

The slogan is taken up in Burning Wheel (with attribution to DitV). Another game not generally described as aimed at the ego-gamer.

Then 4e, in one of the several ways it is influenced in its design by indie games, says "say yes or roll the dice" or "say yes, but". And suddenly it's all about ego-gamers.?

I'm still not getting it.