Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8726308" data-attributes="member: 4937">So about 20 years ago social combat systems were all the fad in RPG design and a ton of very bright and creative designers applied themselves to the problem.  And after looking at all the systems that they produced, having been initially excited by the prospect and been looking for something that could inform my play based on the stated goal of making social interactions as important to play as combat, I came to the conclusion that no one had solved the problem not because no one was smart enough to do so or because no one hadn't made the effort, but because the problem as presented had no solution.  The task as outlined was impossible.  To understand why requires talking for a bit first about what most players want from the game and why in particular players that want social interactions to matter and want to solve that with a social combat system are trying ultimately to achieve.So I have this concept I call "the transcript of play".  The transcript of play is what the game is actually producing as it's output.  It's the part of the play at the table that is the story of the game and the record of the in-character events.  A retcon for example is something that happened at the table but then by agreement gets struck from the transcript of the play.   You can think about it for example being the novelization of your game or the movie of your game.  It's what shows up in EnWorld Story Hours.  Every game has a transcript of play even if you didn't write it down.So I would argue that to a large extent production of a particular sort of transcript is the goal of playing an RPG.  When we finish the play and look back on it, we have a transcript that we remember which is the things that happened in the game.  When we remember back on what happened, our memories will focus on that imagined movie of the game more even than they will what actually happened at the table.  And for most players of a tabletop RPG, that is the aesthetic that attracts them to play.  Now I want to contrast that transcript of play with the transcript of a non-RPG like Chess.  Chess produces a transcript that is a series of movies by each player: something like "White plays Knight to f3" "Black plays Knight to c6, check".  This is also an enjoyable experience that can be replayed but it's a very different aesthetic of play to what most RPG players want.  This transcript is different because it comes from a different aesthetic of play.  I say most players because I have met players that insist that what they want from an RPG is a very complex form of fairy chess that produces a transcript that is basically like the transcript of chess only more complicated, but by the fact that games that support this sort of transcript have pretty much disappeared from the market (if indeed they ever existed) I think we can say that's not a common aesthetic.  Players that want that probably are now playing something like "Slay the Spire" or "Card Hunter" (both excellent games).The sort of person that says, "I want social interactions to be as engaging and deep as combat interactions" has some implied aesthetics of play.  They might be the sort of person that wants to produce that Chess like transcript of play only that they want the social interactions to also have a Chess like transcript of play, but I would argue two things.   First, that those people are rare and aren't a big market.  But secondly and maybe more to the point, those people don't care where the moves in the transcript of play came from.  There is nothing really missing from their game if there is no social interaction because it's all tactical moves anyway.  There isn't really any aesthetic being unfulfilled for them if the whole game is already combat.  In fact, there response to "social interaction isn't fulfilling my aesthetic of play" is probably not "we should do something about the rules" but to just forgo social encounters except maybe as meaningless "cut scenes" that don't produce the right transcript of play and get to the good stuff.The sort of player or designer that tackles "we need to fix the rules so that social interactions are as engaging and therefore as important to the game as combat", doesn't want more combat.  They want more social interactions.  And they want those social interactions to show up in the transcript of play as part of the artistic "movie" or "novelization" of the game we originally talked about that is so attractive to most players.OK, with me so far?  Does all that make sense?  Because we've got a long way to go.So it turns out there are actually two very different ways to produce an RPG transcript of play.  Both can end up with the exact transcript of play, but they get there from very different recordings of play and practices of play.  And that's what I have to address next, but this post is already getting too long.</blockquote>

Verification