Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
edit- doublepost, sorry, see below.
Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
I have seen numerous discussions about TTRPG (hereafter shortened to RPG for brevity) theory on EnWorld. And while I have found many of the conversations to be interesting, and filled with knowledgeable people (for are we all not knowledgeable gamers?), I have also found them almost completely unsatisfying. At best, they provide a few interesting observations. But at worst (and they always, always end up at the "at worst" state) conversations about RPG theory devolve ... or perhaps ... degenerate into attempts to elevate one playing style or variety of RPG over another. Given that we are going through a cycle of OGL-related contentiousness, I thought I'd create a thread distracting us from that and why RPG Theory and Criticism can be hard and contentious, and why it always ends badly.
After all, to quote the great moral philosopher Brian Flanagan, Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end.
As my posts are often compared to the forum equivalent of War and Peace, assumedly because I tend to elevate the nobility of the Russian peasant, I thought I'd start with a general thesis statement for those who like the upfront summary so that they can leap to commenting without worrying about injuring their thumb scrolling through the wall of text:
Conversations about RPG theory are difficult because 1) there is no single agreed framework or definitions that are widely used; 2) many of the basic definitions used have argumentative connotations and are themselves subject to argument; 3) RPG theory is, for many people, inextricably linked to other battles; and 4) the conflation of descriptive and normative- the confusion of what "is" what "ought" - means that most RPG theory puts the cart before the horse, by arguing for how games should be without understanding why games are the way they are.
Most of these points are interrelated and feed into each other. However, I'll try to break them out as best as I can. Note that I have covered this topic before, and you can see a post with resources here, and a selection of essays here.
1. The Lack of a Single Unified Language of Criticism Hampers Serious Analysis
The chaos and dislocation of the OGL fiasco were so great that people had stopped paying attention to celebrity dogs on twitter.
When any media has a well-developed body of work, and of serious study and criticism, certain terms and definitions become codified so that people can more easily discuss them. Many of these are so well known that you don't have to be especially "in the know" to understand them, or have read back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma or dived into S/Z in order to participate in the conversation. If I'm talking about a "montage" or a "jump cut" or "diegetic and non-diegetic sound" when I'm discussing a movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You understand the technique, and from that point, you can immediately begin the conversation about whether the technique was accomplished in a manner that effectuates the overall purpose of the author and is intelligible as such to the audience. It's the same with literature; whether it's as simple as a metaphor or an allusion, or more complicated like low and high mimetic, there are general terms that have been agreed upon.
This agreement on basic terms is key to any type of useful criticism. You have to be able to discuss the basic building blocks - the structure - of a work before you can even begin to understand if it is accomplishing its goals well.
We ... don't have that unified language for RPGs. At all. In fact, I've seen many threads wherein people can't even agree on what constitutes an RPG. As the boundaries between improv, freeform, LARP, DM-less games (like Fiasco), and various types of TTRPG and CRPGs blur, the question of what even constitutes an RPG can matter. The very same techniques that might constitute best practices for a LARP might not work, or even be anathema, for a traditional TTRPG.
That said, even when looking at just traditional RPGs (TTRPGs, with a "GM" and "Players" and rules and procedural mechanics to resolve issues), there is no universal agreement on even the most basic of definitions, so you end up with interminable debates between people and person A saying, "Well, by player agency I mean X" and person B saying, "But by player agency, I mean Y." Instead of having a conversation about the RPG, they simply are engage in a debate about the definition of a term.
When the basic terms used to describe a work can't be agreed upon, it's impossible to develop theory and do appropriate criticism. It would be like two people discussing a scene in a film, and one person saying, "I loved that scene because it was a perfect use of a jump cut." And the other person saying, "Well, I hated the scene, because I hate montages."
2. Defining Terms for Victory Only Ends in More Argument
When folk music became popular again, it reminded people that they had ancestors, and then, after a considerable delay, that their ancestors had done bad things.
There is an old debater's trick of defining your terms absurdly in your favor in order to load the scales and assure victory. The classic example that is often trotted out is that if you're forced with the task of arguing that monarchy/autocracy is the best form of government (hard), you would just find a way to insert "benevolent" into there- and suddenly the job gets that much easier. Because one of the primary issues with an autocratic government is accountability to ensure that they are, in fact, benevolent- working to ensure maximum weal to the populace. Once you have defined that problem away, your job becomes that much easier. You've defined away a major problem with autocracies!
We find the same issue when it comes to most RPG theory and criticism. For many reasons, the basic building blocks that people use when discussing RPGs aren't to describe specific issues of play or mechanics, but instead to describe the goals of RPG design, often with language that is borrowed and pejorative. The basic units of conversation in most RPG theory conversations, therefore, are topics like "player agency," "DM Force," "illusionism," "railroading," and "Mother May I."
Imagine if similar terms were the basic terms used in other criticism and other theory. Instead of examining the differences between, say, Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino on a more granular level by looking at the dramatic visual differences in their films using established vocabulary, you engaged in endless debates over how they best accomplished "audience fun" and whether or not they were good, or bad, examples of "cinematographer agency," or whether they just used "Director Force" to accomplish audience fun.
To make this more concrete, I would use an example that see repeated over and over again in debates over RPG theory; the issue of so-called player agency. Now, putting aside the obvious irony of what is almost always GMs debating player agency (heh), you get to three very fundamental issues:
a. "Player Agency" is a loaded term. No one would say that they are ... against ... player agency. Sure, they might joke about it, but I don't think most people would say, "You know what I really hate? Players being allowed to make any sort of meaningful choice. Ever. I love me games that completely remove any and all meaningful agency and/or choice from players. In fact, the three things I love best in life are clubbing player agency, clubbing baby seals, and going clubbing with yo' mama." Well- this is the internet. Someone, somewhere, sometime probably has said exactly that (no judgment about your mother, btw). But generally a person doesn't say that. So while two people can look at a film and discuss whether a jump cut was good or bad, or listen to music and discuss if they think the use of a minor scale was appropriate as a counterpoint to the upbeat lyrics, the use of this term immediately causes a fight about the term.
b. "Player Agency" means different things to different people. The very things that are important to one player, are not important to another. The choices that are important to one player, are also not important to another. Heck, entire game systems are built around this premise. Think of something so completely as banal as ... inventory. What an alter ego in a RPG is carrying! For some players, the idea of player agency includes a predictable set of rules, weights, and fiddly bits for inventory; for others, the whole idea of containing play by pre-planning inventory is anathema. Which enhances so-called player agency? I don't know, because I am not all players.
c. "Player Agency" itself can be used to describe anything from table manners (don't tell me that my player can't kill everyone else at the table!) to selecting an AP to dangling adventure hooks in a sandbox game. When people cannot even accurately describe the contours of the term, it loses and useful application.
Instead of observing individual games and seeing which decisions enhance particular play styles, people end up in interminable debates over the very meaning of terms.
3. It's Not About the Money (It's About the Money)
It had also once been the place where you sounded like yourself. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other.
I'm not going to delve too deeply into this issue, other than to note that a lot of the battles over RPG theory are not battles over RPG theory, but are, instead, battles over the direction of the hobby or over preferences. I've written about this previously, see, e.g., here, so it's not worth detailing too much. Generally, I think that Don Miller provided the answer at the beginning of 1981, that "players and GMs are influenced in their FRP playing orientation by the particular set of rules that they are exposed to ... [players] may be permanently prejudiced by their first indoctrination to FRP. ..." Miller proposed that systems should have typologies. Stating that he was in the "creative vanguard," Miller then articulated that the rules could no longer be designed without thought or sophistication, and that "a game's underlying philosophy affects everything that the game's systems do or fail to do" and that designing systems can be aided with theory to serve the interests of particular groups.
Generally, though, we see the same thing playing out- RPG criticism and theory is almost never neutral, but is instead used to advance particular gaming systems; because it is almost always tied to advocacy, it often fails in its explanatory power.
4. Normative (Ought) v. Descriptive (Is).
If you can't find the suspect part of the Wikipedia entry, the whole entry is suspect.
This is the most important issue, as far as I am concerned. If you're all into grammar and spelling, you probably instinctively know the difference between prescriptive and descriptive. This is a similar distinction; the notion that there is a distinction between theory describing things that "are" as opposed to using theory to bootstrap ideas into things as you want them to be ("ought"). This can be referred to as the distinction between normative (how you want it to be) and descriptive (how things are).
So a quick digression to show how this should work; there is little that can be as off-putting as seeing people use jargon, or theory, to explain to you that you should like something that you don't. In most areas, we can instinctively understand this. For example, if someone tells you, "Opera is the best form of music. Jargon jargon music theory you should be listening to opera, not that stupid hippy hop music you like," you would probably recoil from that. Because that's using theory to bootstrap normative opinions about preference into prescriptions about how others should appreciate things. You can probably think of this in a lot of different areas; regardless of how you felt about Scorsese's statements regarding superhero movies, it certainly didn't elicit a very favorable reaction from the popular audience; no one enjoys either being talked down to, or being told that their preferences are wrong.
With RPGs, this issue can be more acute due to the lack of a precise vocabulary and the intense knowledge of many fans of RPGs. But ... RPGs are not a monolith. People play for different reasons. Some play for deep immersion. Some for beer & pretzels. Some for intense and short character arcs. Some for long zero-to-hero grinds. Some love comedy-based sci-fi one-shot systems, others love intense grimdark fantasy campaigns that last years. Some people love genre-bending, others don't want any science fiction in their fantasy, thank you. And, of course, almost everyone likes different things at different times!
Imagine if you took any other area- music, film, literature, and you tried to apply a one-size fits all approach to it. That a director who made a comedy, or a thriller, or an art-house movie, or a big-budget super hero movie, or a documentary, or a short animated feature, all had to be subject to the exact same normative demands!
"Sorry, your film didn't have a compelling character arc. FAIL. RAILROAD."
"Um ... you know it was a documentary, right?"
The approach in theory should be to instead view the work on its merits of what it is trying to accomplish, see how it accomplishes it, and determine if it is effective at doing so. IMO.
5. Conclusion
The room is drunk. It is whirling around and flinging people at me.
So is it all useless?
No, of course not! Many newer "art forms," whether its RPGs, or computer games, struggle to find appropriate words and vocabulary to build up concepts for theory and critical analysis. When you have a form, like RPGs, that are both somewhat difficult to define and also can involve numerous disciplines (from writing to acting to genre conventions to public performance to random elements and so many others) it can be even more difficult- but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
However, caution should always be applied. In the end, theory should always be used to make your own experience better, not to argue that the experience of others is worse. In addition, more care and attention should be paid to the closely-compatible areas, such as videogames, that are developing a vocabulary for dealing with criticism and theory. In addition, we should look to the formal academic work that is being done (both in America as well as in Europe) in order to use more standardized language as opposed to continuing to use contentious hobbyist terms. IMO.
After all, to quote the great moral philosopher Brian Flanagan, Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn't end.
As my posts are often compared to the forum equivalent of War and Peace, assumedly because I tend to elevate the nobility of the Russian peasant, I thought I'd start with a general thesis statement for those who like the upfront summary so that they can leap to commenting without worrying about injuring their thumb scrolling through the wall of text:
Conversations about RPG theory are difficult because 1) there is no single agreed framework or definitions that are widely used; 2) many of the basic definitions used have argumentative connotations and are themselves subject to argument; 3) RPG theory is, for many people, inextricably linked to other battles; and 4) the conflation of descriptive and normative- the confusion of what "is" what "ought" - means that most RPG theory puts the cart before the horse, by arguing for how games should be without understanding why games are the way they are.
Most of these points are interrelated and feed into each other. However, I'll try to break them out as best as I can. Note that I have covered this topic before, and you can see a post with resources here, and a selection of essays here.
1. The Lack of a Single Unified Language of Criticism Hampers Serious Analysis
The chaos and dislocation of the OGL fiasco were so great that people had stopped paying attention to celebrity dogs on twitter.
When any media has a well-developed body of work, and of serious study and criticism, certain terms and definitions become codified so that people can more easily discuss them. Many of these are so well known that you don't have to be especially "in the know" to understand them, or have read back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma or dived into S/Z in order to participate in the conversation. If I'm talking about a "montage" or a "jump cut" or "diegetic and non-diegetic sound" when I'm discussing a movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You understand the technique, and from that point, you can immediately begin the conversation about whether the technique was accomplished in a manner that effectuates the overall purpose of the author and is intelligible as such to the audience. It's the same with literature; whether it's as simple as a metaphor or an allusion, or more complicated like low and high mimetic, there are general terms that have been agreed upon.
This agreement on basic terms is key to any type of useful criticism. You have to be able to discuss the basic building blocks - the structure - of a work before you can even begin to understand if it is accomplishing its goals well.
We ... don't have that unified language for RPGs. At all. In fact, I've seen many threads wherein people can't even agree on what constitutes an RPG. As the boundaries between improv, freeform, LARP, DM-less games (like Fiasco), and various types of TTRPG and CRPGs blur, the question of what even constitutes an RPG can matter. The very same techniques that might constitute best practices for a LARP might not work, or even be anathema, for a traditional TTRPG.
That said, even when looking at just traditional RPGs (TTRPGs, with a "GM" and "Players" and rules and procedural mechanics to resolve issues), there is no universal agreement on even the most basic of definitions, so you end up with interminable debates between people and person A saying, "Well, by player agency I mean X" and person B saying, "But by player agency, I mean Y." Instead of having a conversation about the RPG, they simply are engage in a debate about the definition of a term.
When the basic terms used to describe a work can't be agreed upon, it's impossible to develop theory and do appropriate criticism. It would be like two people discussing a scene in a film, and one person saying, "I loved that scene because it was a perfect use of a jump cut." And the other person saying, "Well, I hated the scene, because I hate montages."
2. Defining Terms for Victory Only Ends in More Argument
When folk music became popular again, it reminded people that they had ancestors, and then, after a considerable delay, that their ancestors had done bad things.
There is an old debater's trick of defining your terms absurdly in your favor in order to load the scales and assure victory. The classic example that is often trotted out is that if you're forced with the task of arguing that monarchy/autocracy is the best form of government (hard), you would just find a way to insert "benevolent" into there- and suddenly the job gets that much easier. Because one of the primary issues with an autocratic government is accountability to ensure that they are, in fact, benevolent- working to ensure maximum weal to the populace. Once you have defined that problem away, your job becomes that much easier. You've defined away a major problem with autocracies!
We find the same issue when it comes to most RPG theory and criticism. For many reasons, the basic building blocks that people use when discussing RPGs aren't to describe specific issues of play or mechanics, but instead to describe the goals of RPG design, often with language that is borrowed and pejorative. The basic units of conversation in most RPG theory conversations, therefore, are topics like "player agency," "DM Force," "illusionism," "railroading," and "Mother May I."
Imagine if similar terms were the basic terms used in other criticism and other theory. Instead of examining the differences between, say, Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino on a more granular level by looking at the dramatic visual differences in their films using established vocabulary, you engaged in endless debates over how they best accomplished "audience fun" and whether or not they were good, or bad, examples of "cinematographer agency," or whether they just used "Director Force" to accomplish audience fun.
To make this more concrete, I would use an example that see repeated over and over again in debates over RPG theory; the issue of so-called player agency. Now, putting aside the obvious irony of what is almost always GMs debating player agency (heh), you get to three very fundamental issues:
a. "Player Agency" is a loaded term. No one would say that they are ... against ... player agency. Sure, they might joke about it, but I don't think most people would say, "You know what I really hate? Players being allowed to make any sort of meaningful choice. Ever. I love me games that completely remove any and all meaningful agency and/or choice from players. In fact, the three things I love best in life are clubbing player agency, clubbing baby seals, and going clubbing with yo' mama." Well- this is the internet. Someone, somewhere, sometime probably has said exactly that (no judgment about your mother, btw). But generally a person doesn't say that. So while two people can look at a film and discuss whether a jump cut was good or bad, or listen to music and discuss if they think the use of a minor scale was appropriate as a counterpoint to the upbeat lyrics, the use of this term immediately causes a fight about the term.
b. "Player Agency" means different things to different people. The very things that are important to one player, are not important to another. The choices that are important to one player, are also not important to another. Heck, entire game systems are built around this premise. Think of something so completely as banal as ... inventory. What an alter ego in a RPG is carrying! For some players, the idea of player agency includes a predictable set of rules, weights, and fiddly bits for inventory; for others, the whole idea of containing play by pre-planning inventory is anathema. Which enhances so-called player agency? I don't know, because I am not all players.
c. "Player Agency" itself can be used to describe anything from table manners (don't tell me that my player can't kill everyone else at the table!) to selecting an AP to dangling adventure hooks in a sandbox game. When people cannot even accurately describe the contours of the term, it loses and useful application.
Instead of observing individual games and seeing which decisions enhance particular play styles, people end up in interminable debates over the very meaning of terms.
3. It's Not About the Money (It's About the Money)
It had also once been the place where you sounded like yourself. Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other.
I'm not going to delve too deeply into this issue, other than to note that a lot of the battles over RPG theory are not battles over RPG theory, but are, instead, battles over the direction of the hobby or over preferences. I've written about this previously, see, e.g., here, so it's not worth detailing too much. Generally, I think that Don Miller provided the answer at the beginning of 1981, that "players and GMs are influenced in their FRP playing orientation by the particular set of rules that they are exposed to ... [players] may be permanently prejudiced by their first indoctrination to FRP. ..." Miller proposed that systems should have typologies. Stating that he was in the "creative vanguard," Miller then articulated that the rules could no longer be designed without thought or sophistication, and that "a game's underlying philosophy affects everything that the game's systems do or fail to do" and that designing systems can be aided with theory to serve the interests of particular groups.
Generally, though, we see the same thing playing out- RPG criticism and theory is almost never neutral, but is instead used to advance particular gaming systems; because it is almost always tied to advocacy, it often fails in its explanatory power.
4. Normative (Ought) v. Descriptive (Is).
If you can't find the suspect part of the Wikipedia entry, the whole entry is suspect.
This is the most important issue, as far as I am concerned. If you're all into grammar and spelling, you probably instinctively know the difference between prescriptive and descriptive. This is a similar distinction; the notion that there is a distinction between theory describing things that "are" as opposed to using theory to bootstrap ideas into things as you want them to be ("ought"). This can be referred to as the distinction between normative (how you want it to be) and descriptive (how things are).
So a quick digression to show how this should work; there is little that can be as off-putting as seeing people use jargon, or theory, to explain to you that you should like something that you don't. In most areas, we can instinctively understand this. For example, if someone tells you, "Opera is the best form of music. Jargon jargon music theory you should be listening to opera, not that stupid hippy hop music you like," you would probably recoil from that. Because that's using theory to bootstrap normative opinions about preference into prescriptions about how others should appreciate things. You can probably think of this in a lot of different areas; regardless of how you felt about Scorsese's statements regarding superhero movies, it certainly didn't elicit a very favorable reaction from the popular audience; no one enjoys either being talked down to, or being told that their preferences are wrong.
With RPGs, this issue can be more acute due to the lack of a precise vocabulary and the intense knowledge of many fans of RPGs. But ... RPGs are not a monolith. People play for different reasons. Some play for deep immersion. Some for beer & pretzels. Some for intense and short character arcs. Some for long zero-to-hero grinds. Some love comedy-based sci-fi one-shot systems, others love intense grimdark fantasy campaigns that last years. Some people love genre-bending, others don't want any science fiction in their fantasy, thank you. And, of course, almost everyone likes different things at different times!
Imagine if you took any other area- music, film, literature, and you tried to apply a one-size fits all approach to it. That a director who made a comedy, or a thriller, or an art-house movie, or a big-budget super hero movie, or a documentary, or a short animated feature, all had to be subject to the exact same normative demands!
"Sorry, your film didn't have a compelling character arc. FAIL. RAILROAD."
"Um ... you know it was a documentary, right?"
The approach in theory should be to instead view the work on its merits of what it is trying to accomplish, see how it accomplishes it, and determine if it is effective at doing so. IMO.
5. Conclusion
The room is drunk. It is whirling around and flinging people at me.
So is it all useless?
No, of course not! Many newer "art forms," whether its RPGs, or computer games, struggle to find appropriate words and vocabulary to build up concepts for theory and critical analysis. When you have a form, like RPGs, that are both somewhat difficult to define and also can involve numerous disciplines (from writing to acting to genre conventions to public performance to random elements and so many others) it can be even more difficult- but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.
However, caution should always be applied. In the end, theory should always be used to make your own experience better, not to argue that the experience of others is worse. In addition, more care and attention should be paid to the closely-compatible areas, such as videogames, that are developing a vocabulary for dealing with criticism and theory. In addition, we should look to the formal academic work that is being done (both in America as well as in Europe) in order to use more standardized language as opposed to continuing to use contentious hobbyist terms. IMO.
payn
Legend
The problem with RPG discussion isn't RPG theory at all. It's about general devolution through social media into a positions over interest culture. Folks want to win, they want to be right, and they want these things above a good discussion. It is also accentuated by gamers propensity for being anal retentive and overly pedantic.
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overgeeked
B/X Known World
Great post.
Video games are a slightly older art form than RPGs and have a fairly well-established set of terms and theory. We could do worse than adapting those to suit our purposes. But most RPG people seem eager to reject those terms and theory.
As you say, RPGs are not a monolith, more like 2d20 things stacked on top of each other in a trench coat pretending to be an adult. Likewise, gamers are not a monolith and want different things from the same games. But to make things even worse, the same game can be multiple things, pull from multiple art forms, and need multiple sets of (often contradictory) terms at the same time…to describe one thing.
There’s also the matter of serious academic study of RPGs. There basically isn’t any. A few people are starting to write about the history of RPGs from an historical or journalistic point if view, but there’s no serious academic study of RPGs. The few names that come to mind that might loosely fit are Robin Laws and Tracy Hickman, and both are hyper focused on RPGs as story emulators over games per se. So perhaps quite good for that limited application but they utterly fail at seeing RPGs as anything else. Someone will inevitably mention Ron Edwards, but given his “anyone who likes that is brain damaged” comments and similar, he’s easily dismissed out-of-hand as someone to not be taken seriously.
And what of the original creators of the genre? Maybe we can ask them? Nope. One is dead and the other has disavowed RPGs as a hobby and gone back to wargames. I’m speaking of course about Dave Arneson and David Wesley. (What is it with guys named Dave in this hobby?)
To circle back, we could do a lot worse than borrowing from video games. They have spent a lot of time and money developing their terms and theory. There’s a lot of overlap and several obvious places where there are pot holes. So it should be a fairly painless lift and shift.
Anyway…great post, Snarf.
Video games are a slightly older art form than RPGs and have a fairly well-established set of terms and theory. We could do worse than adapting those to suit our purposes. But most RPG people seem eager to reject those terms and theory.
As you say, RPGs are not a monolith, more like 2d20 things stacked on top of each other in a trench coat pretending to be an adult. Likewise, gamers are not a monolith and want different things from the same games. But to make things even worse, the same game can be multiple things, pull from multiple art forms, and need multiple sets of (often contradictory) terms at the same time…to describe one thing.
There’s also the matter of serious academic study of RPGs. There basically isn’t any. A few people are starting to write about the history of RPGs from an historical or journalistic point if view, but there’s no serious academic study of RPGs. The few names that come to mind that might loosely fit are Robin Laws and Tracy Hickman, and both are hyper focused on RPGs as story emulators over games per se. So perhaps quite good for that limited application but they utterly fail at seeing RPGs as anything else. Someone will inevitably mention Ron Edwards, but given his “anyone who likes that is brain damaged” comments and similar, he’s easily dismissed out-of-hand as someone to not be taken seriously.
And what of the original creators of the genre? Maybe we can ask them? Nope. One is dead and the other has disavowed RPGs as a hobby and gone back to wargames. I’m speaking of course about Dave Arneson and David Wesley. (What is it with guys named Dave in this hobby?)
To circle back, we could do a lot worse than borrowing from video games. They have spent a lot of time and money developing their terms and theory. There’s a lot of overlap and several obvious places where there are pot holes. So it should be a fairly painless lift and shift.
Anyway…great post, Snarf.
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Parmandur
Book-Friend
Yeah, I think we are probably a generation or more away from where people will start coming up with really robust theory for RPGing...video games have an advantage, being basically more like traditional boardgames or literature/film/music in form. TTRPGs are in the realm of psychology or political science (where precursors to TTRPGing like roleplaying therapy or the Model United Nations can be found).
MGibster
Legend
I went to graduate school and some of my favorite classes involved working on theory for both history and anthropology. There's a point in every grad student's life, at least in the liberal arts schools, where he or she looks at all those theories and asks themselves a vital question: Does this really mean anything or is it all bull$%#^? I even remember this exchange form one of my fellow students and our professor in class.
Student: So you're basically saying history is a bunch of bull$%#^?
Professor: Yes. But it's well constructed bull$%#^.
At one point, I could talk to you about functionalism, a Marxist interpretation of history, structuralism, etc., etc. intelligently (believe or or not), and use those theories as tools to do my own analysing! But when I talk about RPG theory, my eyes glaze over, and I find that I ask myself a critical question that I still have no answer to: Does this really mean anything or is it all bull$%#^?
Criticism, huh, yeah /
What is it good for? /
Absolutely nothing, uhh /
What is the purpose of criticism? Is it to better understand a particular game or trends in gaming? Help us decide whether a game is right for you and your group? A way to help people improve their game writing skills?
How do you criticize a game? I start by trying to figure out what the game creators were trying to accomplish and determine if they succeeded. I'm not going to criticize Call of Cthulhu because it doesn't have rules for Hong Kong style action because that's not what the writers of CoC were trying to accomplish their their rules and setting.
Student: So you're basically saying history is a bunch of bull$%#^?
Professor: Yes. But it's well constructed bull$%#^.
At one point, I could talk to you about functionalism, a Marxist interpretation of history, structuralism, etc., etc. intelligently (believe or or not), and use those theories as tools to do my own analysing! But when I talk about RPG theory, my eyes glaze over, and I find that I ask myself a critical question that I still have no answer to: Does this really mean anything or is it all bull$%#^?
Criticism, huh, yeah /
What is it good for? /
Absolutely nothing, uhh /
What is the purpose of criticism? Is it to better understand a particular game or trends in gaming? Help us decide whether a game is right for you and your group? A way to help people improve their game writing skills?
How do you criticize a game? I start by trying to figure out what the game creators were trying to accomplish and determine if they succeeded. I'm not going to criticize Call of Cthulhu because it doesn't have rules for Hong Kong style action because that's not what the writers of CoC were trying to accomplish their their rules and setting.
payn
Legend
Exactly. Academic theory is just a pretentious level of I know better than you. It hurts me to say that as I think there is a large problem with anti-intellectualism currently; but do we really need an academic level to discuss RPG theory? The point of the courses are to discuss the topic's nuance and context, the definitions are just the sign posts. I mean, seriously cant folks just accept somebody only meets 75% of their criteria of what a sandbox is to continue on with the discussion? Sadly, the answer seems to be no all to often. "Something must be done to stop these people! Somebody publish a book, wont a university offer a course?!"
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
I think it would help. Don't get me wrong- it's not like having common definitions would end the debates. Just because people agree on terminology in film, for example, doesn't stop people from arguing about cinema! But it would at least help provide some baseline to allow us to better critique and improve games without having to constantly re-invent the wheel.
For example, people often get caught up in over-arching debates about, oh, "typologies" of games. But what we don't look at are the smaller things that can be usefully examined to improve the gaming experience- the type of things that are worked out in videogames, which pay attention, and iterate, when it comes to basic concepts like "how should doors work."
Here, unless I've missed it, there doesn't seem to be any basic work on how underlying mechanics feel. IIRC, I remember that surveys were done that showed (while designing versions of D&D) that people prefer to "hit," which is why we have moved toward the "bag of hit points model." But there isn't a lot of shared vocabulary and testing specific to RPGs that goes into basic issues like the use of randomness.
Allow me to elaborate. I once was in a discussion with another person here about why people prefer rolling dice to using averages. The other person asked why people wanted to roll dice for, say, weapon damage when they could just take the average. My reply was that it's for the same reason people like going to Vegas instead of just sending small amounts of money to the casinos on a regular basis.
But do we really examine that? When does the illusion of control and thrill of randomness outweigh loss aversion? Why is it that people, generally, prefer rolling damage and "to hit," but get squirrely when it comes to rolling hit points and ability scores? This is something so basic you think we'd have more on it, and yet we often engage in endless arguments about it without having a real foundation.
If we can't answer specific and "simple," questions like this, what are we doing even thinking about discussing the variations in systems we see at a higher level?
payn
Legend
I think those questions are answered all the time. Just not to folks complete and utter satisfaction. You will never be able to brow beat the "mail a check to Vegas is just as good" guy. If they refuse to acknowledge any different playstyle, dynamic, or design theory that's on them. This is a discussion board and it's not just you and me; its you, me, and all of EN World. The answers and applicatons will vary. That's the point of the discussion!I think it would help. Don't get me wrong- it's not like having common definitions would end the debates. Just because people agree on terminology in film, for example, doesn't stop people from arguing about cinema! But it would at least help provide some baseline to allow us to better critique and improve games without having to constantly re-invent the wheel.
For example, people often get caught up in over-arching debates about, oh, "typologies" of games. But what we don't look at are the smaller things that can be usefully examined to improve the gaming experience- the type of things that are worked out in videogames, which pay attention, and iterate, when it comes to basic concepts like "how should doors work."
Here, unless I've missed it, there doesn't seem to be any basic work on how underlying mechanics feel. IIRC, I remember that surveys were done that showed (while designing versions of D&D) that people prefer to "hit," which is why we have moved toward the "bag of hit points model." But there isn't a lot of shared vocabulary and testing specific to RPGs that goes into basic issues like the use of randomness.
Allow me to elaborate. I once was in a discussion with another person here about why people prefer rolling dice to using averages. The other person asked why people wanted to roll dice for, say, weapon damage when they could just take the average. My reply was that it's for the same reason people like going to Vegas instead of just sending small amounts of money to the casinos on a regular basis.
But do we really examine that? When does the illusion of control and thrill of randomness outweigh loss aversion? Why is it that people, generally, prefer rolling damage and "to hit," but get squirrely when it comes to rolling hit points and ability scores? This is something so basic you think we'd have more on it, and yet we often engage in endless arguments about it without having a real foundation.
If we can't answer specific and "simple," questions like this, what are we doing even thinking about discussing the variations in systems we see at a higher level?
Also, I'm well aware that "mail a check to Vegas is just as good" guy will likely shutdown the larger contextual discussion, but it always happens after the good discussion. Just take my pro-tip and stop reading threads after 8 pages. Your perspective may change entirely.
Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
Whizbang Dustyboots
100% that gnome
The internet has also meant the end of gatekeeping of who gets to be a reviewer or content producer generally. (Which is 99.99% A Very Good Thing.)
That means no one tosses back garbage reviews and says "this makes no sense and you have no supports for your arguments." And now we've had at least two generations of people who've grown up with reviews that are just "I don't like it, bleah," and the whole process has gotten dumbed down.
Even the actual good reviewers get yelled at for "that's just your opinion, man," which doesn't exactly encourage anyone to do better.
And that in turn means that ordinary people, who don't necessarily have any aspirations to be reviewers, typically don't have models for good analysis and criticism. (The handful of English majors and academics can't hold back the tide on their own.)
Haiku Elvis
All raise the inflatable haddocks!
payn
Legend
Yes, and no. Just because there are more voices than ever doesn't mean good meaningful discussion isn't happening. Its just the overwhelming bollocks is deafening. You need to discover your own noise to signal method.
Whizbang Dustyboots
100% that gnome
There's definitely good reviews still out there -- typically the folks that do have people they answer to who tell them to do better on their reviews and analysis -- but more and more, people just see the equivalent of howler monkeys throwing feces at stuff they don't like.
And I definitely agree everyone needs to find quality sites to read and learn from.
Haiku Elvis
All raise the inflatable haddocks!
Anyway on a more serious note.
Like @MGibster I've also had the delight of studying archaeological theory which also suffers from the disagreement about what the word/field actually means. It doesn't seem to different from RPG theory to be honest. Substitute "Narrative games" for "New Archaeology" and you can probably keep a good chunk of the disagreements intact.
Like @MGibster I've also had the delight of studying archaeological theory which also suffers from the disagreement about what the word/field actually means. It doesn't seem to different from RPG theory to be honest. Substitute "Narrative games" for "New Archaeology" and you can probably keep a good chunk of the disagreements intact.
Whizbang Dustyboots
100% that gnome
If the new archeology is abandoning whips and fedoras, I don't want it.
MGibster
Legend
Your old archeology is a dusty relic that belongs in a museum!
Bacon Bits
Hero
It seems to me that because RPGs (TTRPGs) blend both games and narratives, that it should follow that any criticism should similarly use both game criticism and narrative criticism to arrive at style of play criticism. I don't think most TTRPG criticism really does that. I think most of it tries to synthesize an overarching scheme that all RPGs have to fit into.
I'm reminded of a YouTuber who, in two hours of "I'm a video essayist without an editor" levels of detail, reviewed Super Mario Odyssey as though it were a Dark Souls game. Not exactly, but basically. Unsurprisingly, he found the game wanting. He's playing it because he's making a video about the game. He ends up frustrated with the game's challenge after multiple complete playthroughs (yes, multiple complete playthroughs of Odyssey). He plays games for the skill challenge (e.g., Dark Souls) and Mario... isn't intended to be a deep skill challenge! I think he fell into this trap because his entire channel had gained traction by doing extremely detailed reviews of the Dark Souls games. However, I think it's the same trap we can fall into when criticizing or analyzing RPGs. Often when someone criticizes a game, it's because it doesn't do what they wanted it to do regardless of what it was designed to do. It's not that they're doing it wrong, it's that they just don't agree with the original design intents. On the one hand, this means we're not taking the game for what it is, and on the other, we're often compelled to criticize a game for how well it is or isn't specifically D&D. I think this is what theories like GNS mislead us into doing. It gives us language that ultimately isn't useful.
One of the real issues is that most games seem to be designed to generate a game with a certain style of play. But style of play is incredibly broad and diverse. Pathfinder 2e, Amber diceless, 10 Candles, and Call of Cthulu are, ostensibly, the same type of game. That's absurd! They attempt to tell entirely different stories with entirely different goals for the game and in many cases barely share a mechanic between them.
So how do we evaluate games that have different styles of play? How do we evaluate games that have different quantities of rules? Microlite20 and Basic Fantasy RPG are both games ostensibly in the same OSR-adjacent area. How do you compare them? It's like comparing Neil Gaiman's Coraline to the short stories for the Magic storylines. And comparing it to 3e D&D is like comparing Coraline to all of Erikson's Malazhan Book of the Fallen. Like, what are you even doing?
The thing is, the only concrete example of a style of play I can think of is OSR. It would take a long time to pin all the elements down (or just read the Principia Apocrypha) but I think that might be the only well-defined style of play. OSR implies things about the mechanics, about the style of story, about the means the DM uses to create content, about the primary type of content, and so on. It doesn't imply anything about setting or class vs classless, necessarily, just about that style of play.
And from there it gets very complex very fast. Like what's the difference between an Encounter and a Scene? I know exactly what kind of game is going to use the term "encounter" and what game is going to use the term "scene" and they are not the same type of game.
I'm remembering the old video game reviews that would break things down by story, graphics, controls/gameplay, sound, and performance. we don't even have that level of detail. I can tell you that Modiphius Conan 2d20 is a fantastic game that perfectly encapsulates the Hyborean Age, but that also has perhaps the worst book organization I've ever seen in an RPG and the magic rules are basically unusable as written and barely playable with the expansion book and the designers notes available online. Outside of that game specifically, I don't think I've seen a game that demands that level of technical criticism, but I don't know why we don't do it. How easy is it to prepare and run for? How easy is it to adjudicate or look rules up? Conveyance of the rules and order of play. There's just so much to cover with RPGs. The DM side, the PC side, both before and at the table. The flow of play. The utility of the books. The themes that the style of play encourages. Whether the mechanics are fun to resolve or if they become tiresome. There's so much going on with an RPG, I'm not even sure how you express all the modes of play and elements taking place.
I'm reminded of a YouTuber who, in two hours of "I'm a video essayist without an editor" levels of detail, reviewed Super Mario Odyssey as though it were a Dark Souls game. Not exactly, but basically. Unsurprisingly, he found the game wanting. He's playing it because he's making a video about the game. He ends up frustrated with the game's challenge after multiple complete playthroughs (yes, multiple complete playthroughs of Odyssey). He plays games for the skill challenge (e.g., Dark Souls) and Mario... isn't intended to be a deep skill challenge! I think he fell into this trap because his entire channel had gained traction by doing extremely detailed reviews of the Dark Souls games. However, I think it's the same trap we can fall into when criticizing or analyzing RPGs. Often when someone criticizes a game, it's because it doesn't do what they wanted it to do regardless of what it was designed to do. It's not that they're doing it wrong, it's that they just don't agree with the original design intents. On the one hand, this means we're not taking the game for what it is, and on the other, we're often compelled to criticize a game for how well it is or isn't specifically D&D. I think this is what theories like GNS mislead us into doing. It gives us language that ultimately isn't useful.
One of the real issues is that most games seem to be designed to generate a game with a certain style of play. But style of play is incredibly broad and diverse. Pathfinder 2e, Amber diceless, 10 Candles, and Call of Cthulu are, ostensibly, the same type of game. That's absurd! They attempt to tell entirely different stories with entirely different goals for the game and in many cases barely share a mechanic between them.
So how do we evaluate games that have different styles of play? How do we evaluate games that have different quantities of rules? Microlite20 and Basic Fantasy RPG are both games ostensibly in the same OSR-adjacent area. How do you compare them? It's like comparing Neil Gaiman's Coraline to the short stories for the Magic storylines. And comparing it to 3e D&D is like comparing Coraline to all of Erikson's Malazhan Book of the Fallen. Like, what are you even doing?
The thing is, the only concrete example of a style of play I can think of is OSR. It would take a long time to pin all the elements down (or just read the Principia Apocrypha) but I think that might be the only well-defined style of play. OSR implies things about the mechanics, about the style of story, about the means the DM uses to create content, about the primary type of content, and so on. It doesn't imply anything about setting or class vs classless, necessarily, just about that style of play.
And from there it gets very complex very fast. Like what's the difference between an Encounter and a Scene? I know exactly what kind of game is going to use the term "encounter" and what game is going to use the term "scene" and they are not the same type of game.
I'm remembering the old video game reviews that would break things down by story, graphics, controls/gameplay, sound, and performance. we don't even have that level of detail. I can tell you that Modiphius Conan 2d20 is a fantastic game that perfectly encapsulates the Hyborean Age, but that also has perhaps the worst book organization I've ever seen in an RPG and the magic rules are basically unusable as written and barely playable with the expansion book and the designers notes available online. Outside of that game specifically, I don't think I've seen a game that demands that level of technical criticism, but I don't know why we don't do it. How easy is it to prepare and run for? How easy is it to adjudicate or look rules up? Conveyance of the rules and order of play. There's just so much to cover with RPGs. The DM side, the PC side, both before and at the table. The flow of play. The utility of the books. The themes that the style of play encourages. Whether the mechanics are fun to resolve or if they become tiresome. There's so much going on with an RPG, I'm not even sure how you express all the modes of play and elements taking place.
