Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[clearstream]

re: solo play, there are a couple of things I'd like to point out about Ironsworn.

#1 is that it is very much a game. Certain actions will trigger a move as in Apocalypse World, with a range of different possible outcomes. When all else fails, you can also ask the 'oracle'.

Something that interests me is the question of whether it is an RPG (as opposed to a G)?

#2 is that the 'inputs' that trigger and constitute moves are fiction invented by the player, but incorporated by the system.

So, what you end up with is a play loop of player imagines something -> system incorporates imagination -> system generates new play state. It's a bit like playing a duet game, but with a quasi-automated GM.

In another thread about the ontology of RPGs, is was suggested that "at the heart of RPGing is shared imagination." That may be at the heart of RPG, but it is not uniquely distinctive of RPG as there are many possibilities for shared imagination. Contextual discussion provided that "In an RPG, this [optionality and epiphenomenality of imagination] is not the case. The fiction matters." And "players contribute to the fiction first-and-foremost by saying what it is that their characters do."

Referring to the theory of fictional positioning, which places fictional positioning as the distinct technical feature seprating RPGs from Gs, I modified or expanded on that suggestion to say that RPGs are distinctly characterised by

1. ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in
2. regulatory and constitutive rules
3. a linkage from fictional position (and thus the fiction) to the regulatory and constitutive rules

This says that the "fiction" at the heart of RPG must be understood as draft and revision (a game in play) rather than final product (e.g. a novel or film.) There must be fiction and system, and arrows between them. None of this is new or contentious so far as I know (although I am giving only a superficial picture.)

In avoiding "shared", I aimed for a definition that included "Ironsworn", but then it struck me to ask "must the drafting and revising be distributed in any particular way either spatially or temporally. And that is what led us here. Where this might lead could be to abolish "shared" from the picture, and to say something like "at the heart of RPGing is a fiction that the players will continuously draft and revise."

(Perhaps "fiction" needs to be "fictional-state" or "fictional-position"? Note that "a" implies "one"... but that too isn't quite right.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is the sort of practical jargon that I think would be useful for TTRPGs.

It definitely would be, but it's hard to produce, because to gain traction they have to become popular to use, and to usefully describe something.

Metroidvania caught on, despite being a clunky term, for two reasons:

1) It usefully describes a genre of game that had no specific name, but was clearly "a thing".

2) It's immediately obvious what it means without it being explained to you if you're even somewhat familiar with both games (though will need explaining if you're not).

Also the other issue is that in TTRPGs, dissimilarly from videogames, some people seem to believe that any attempt to define what's special/specific about a game is also somehow an attempt to demean it. I'm not really sure what's going on there, I have to admit.

 

[Emoshin]

EDIT: Wrong thread, sorry!

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a tricky thing. Because it's both ridiculously easy to become patronizing, and yet entirely possible to actually not know your own taste, speaking from firsthand experience. I know I've cited the development of extra chunky spaghetti sauce in the past. That came from literally a third of the American public genuinely preferring extra chunky sauce and never, even once, mentioning it because they simply didn't know; they weren't aware of the possibility, or didn't think they would actually like it. Perspective usually requires diverse experiences, and I don't think I am saying anything especially controversial by saying that D&D players can be very attached to a single system, often the first system they were exposed to as a player.

That's absolutely true. But here's the thing: unless you know someone really well, its not likely you'll know their taste better than they do.

This makes "Try it, you'll like it" an intrinsically arrogant and infantalizing statement. And that doesn't change at all just because its sometimes true. And it gets worse with repetition.

That said, I don't want to downplay the severity of the first issue. I recognize how serious a problem that is, "oh, you just don't know what you want." That's awful! It's very close to an issue I have with certain approaches to running games (where the person running the game takes the stance of "I know what you will find fun better than you do"), so I understand why this is a huge, huge issue. "Oh, you just don't know any better" is a d!@k move in any debate, and should not be tolerated.

Yup.

I just think there is still some merit, some of the time, in saying, "It's useful to try things you don't know you'll like, both to help you understand why you do like what you like, and to get a chance to discover something you didn't know you would like." Which is the longer, more nuanced form of this idea--not making blanket statements about others failing to know themselves, but recognizing that what a person knows about their own taste is partly a function of what they've been exposed to, and thus that it is often useful to seek out novel experiences in order to better understand one's own taste.

The problem is, its almost useless. People interested in searching out new things don't need your encouragement; and people not interested are unlikely to take it in a good tone. Its the sort of thing you do with someone you know well and have reason to believe it'll be a useful statement to give. In a general conversation, its at best misguided, and at worst still presenting the idea that they don't know this.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Criticism is a two way street.

The person making the critique should only criticize the mechanics of the system, not the people who like the system.

And those who like the system, shouldn't view criticism of the system as a personal attack.

It's doesn't need to get any deeper than that.

That's not actually as tidy as you think. Its very rare for criticism of a system, even when someone is avoiding couching it in terms that make this blatant, to not have some framing that says some things about people who want like it--at the very least it tends to say they're too unclear to recognize the problems (which is, of course sometimes true and sometimes not, but that's nuance that rarely gets applied).

Basically, its like the idea of criticizing the idea, not the person; it requires more than a little care for that line to be sharp.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For sure.

But what you're describing (and what @Thomas Shey is depicting upthread...and what I've described in the past) is just organizing and associating information in the brain and then growing accustomed to this organization and association (Operant Conditioning). Because we know that neither the inputs to the fiction nor the outputs that generate the fiction are real...can we not just...cast off this mental model?

The question you're not asking is "Why should be bother? What's in it for us that doesn't make assumptions right out the gate?"

 

[Campbell]

@clearstream

The authorship component is not playing the game from my perspective. Establishing the fiction we play within is the equivalent of setting up the board in a board game. It is necessary to enable play, but it is not play. We can enjoy the process of setting up the board, but it's like not the main thing. The man thing is the decisions we make on behalf of the characters and seeing how that unfolds once the board has been set.

Like in our L5R game the part of the game where we define who our lords are, what our relationships are to various NPCs, what our characters histories are is not play in my conception. When I had a talk with the GM about how I thought it would be interesting if my character had a long standing attraction to his distant cousin that was involved the murder of Lion Clan Daimyo's son that was not an act of play. It was setup for the stakes of the coming standoff.

When I recently worked with @Manbearcat to establish my character's new rival in our Blades game that was not play. It was setup for play. It's essential to the act of play, but play happens when I am making decisions for the character to navigate through that established fiction.

 

[Thomas Shey]

IMO - Criticizing a system as ‘bad’ necessarily criticizes the person that likes it as liking ‘bad’ things.

Not necessarily. It depends what "bad" means in that context. If it means "poorly designed", its only an issue if its not serving the person's purposes. A tool can be poorly designed for its supposed use, but if someone is used to and comfortable with it, that doesn't say anything bad about them or even the purposes it serves for them.

But it also doesn't make it a good game just because it serves some people's purposes, either. You have to ask why it does and why it does so better than other options.

(This is different from criticizing a system on, from lack of a better term, "moral" grounds but that usually only comes from certain particular perspectives and is relatively rarely done; its much more likely to happen with setting material.)

 

[Aldarc]

It definitely would be, but it's hard to produce, because to gain traction they have to become popular to use, and to usefully describe something.

Metroidvania caught on, despite being a clunky term, for two reasons:

1) It usefully describes a genre of game that had no specific name, but was clearly "a thing".

2) It's immediately obvious what it means without it being explained to you if you're even somewhat familiar with both games (though will need explaining if you're not).

So like OSR?

Also the other issue is that in TTRPGs, dissimilarly from videogames, some people seem to believe that any attempt to define what's special/specific about a game is also somehow an attempt to demean it. I'm not really sure what's going on there, I have to admit.

"So is the game a dungeon-crawler?"

"No. You can do anything with it!"

"Sure, but it seems like most of the game tools are about dungeon-crawling..."

"But I can homebrew it to be about anything else!"

"Sure, and I can mod Skyrim to hell and play the game by just collecting flowers, but it's still an Action Adventure RPG."

"It's not a dungeon-crawler!"

 

[Thomas Shey]

My experience with discussing Fate on this forum (moreso in the past) was people telling me that I was having BadWrongFun playing something that wasn't a true RPG.

Well, that's people being--let's say jerks, but my opinion is stronger. Fate is a system that appears to me to be really well designed to do something I kind of don't want to do while not doing things I do, but to tell people who do get value out of it that they shouldn't or even more the laughable gatekeeping of putting it in the "not an RPG" category is ridiculous.

That said, the tendency for some Fate fans to really heavily treat it as the proper tool for all situations for all people is real. It was even worse some years ago. There's a reason it was the first place I saw the term "Its apparently a dessert topping and a floor wax."