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Respeckt Mah Authoritah: Understanding High Trust and the Division of Authority
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<blockquote data-quote="RareBreed" data-source="post: 9101133" data-attributes="member: 6945590"><p>I haven't played D&D in a looong time, but by the definition given above, I prefer "low-trust" game design, but perhaps for different reasons than most.</p><p></p><p>I am a software engineer, and for the majority of my career, have worked with and contributed to Open Source software. Open source seems like the epitome of meritocracy or democracy, but it isn't. That is why you see a lot of forks of software, because someone disagrees with the direction that the project is going and forks a new project based on the old. Some will tell you that is horrible for an open source project, because it divides the community and splits the amount of engineering resources that can contribute. And yet, forking is the ultimate in freedom and "agency". It basically says, "I think I can do this better, so let the best code and maintainer style win".</p><p></p><p>What I learned, IMHO, is that the best run open source communities have what we call BDFL's or "Benevolent Dictators for Life". For example, Guido van Rossum (who relinquished his BDFL title not that long ago) of the python programming language, or Linus Torvalds for the linux kernel. Other projects which had no central authority, such as a council, steering committee, corporate sponsors or some other diffusion of power ultimately devolved into political infighting. Meritocracy, or what should have been the best code, no longer always won and got committed. It was "which group has the most influence" to get their code committed into the project. I feel that games which allow players to "direct" the narrative, rules, or other game decisions ultimately becomes like these "design by committees". They look and feel fair on the outside, but I think it can devolve into politics. Also, design by committee lacks a centralized "vision". While some artists and engineers do create great works while working collaboratively, often, there needs to be a single "source of truth" or vision as to where things are going.</p><p></p><p>As I learned more about programming language theory and learned new languages, I came across, at the time, the near religious war between the dynamic type proponents, and the static type proponents. For those who don't know, a dynamic language is one where some variable's <em>type</em> can change (eg, in one part of the code, it can be a string, and in another part of the code it can be a number). More importantly in dynamic languages, in the code that you wrote, you don't have to declare its type ahead of time. The dynamic proponents argued that:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">there exist valid programs that can't be typed (true, but in practice this is almost never encountered..static languages are still Turing or Church Complete)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">it stifled creativity by forcing a programmer to fix the type</li> </ul><p>As type theory became more advanced and graduated from academic languages like Haskell or Idris to more mainstream languages like typescript, rust or even python, some of the arguments that the dynamic proponents used lost their power. For example, type inference removed the need (in most cases) to specify the type of a variable in the code because the compiler could figure it out. But more importantly, companies and engineers realized that as their code base grew in size and complexity, the "freedom" to dynamically change types was too costly. Refactoring code became a nightmare for dynamic types, and performance was also lost (because the compiler interpreter couldn't make optimizations knowing that a type would always take up a fixed amount of memory for example). To put it another way, the "creative freedom" of the individual developer had to come second to the group as a whole.</p><p></p><p>I would say that dynamic type proponents lost the war. More typescript is written than javascript (the former is the statically typed version of the latter) and even most python code has type annotations now. The last popular languages I can think of that were mostly dynamic were Elixir and Julia, both coming out in the early 10's. However, both have support for type annotations too. So "creativity and freedom of expression" lost out due to the problems they posed.</p><p></p><p>I also came across a quote by Mokokoma Mokhonoana while learning Clojure (a lisp dialect)</p><p></p><p>If everyone gets a say, it become "design by committee". If everyone is allowed to influence the outcome (at a metagame level. not through their actions while playing), then I think it becomes a kind of "blank cheque". The irony is that everyone having a say in the direction, narrative, rulings, etc of a game actually can have an opposite effect. The same I feel is true even of "rules-lite" systems where much of the arbitration and adjudication is done by whomever is in charge (hi or low trust). The rules themselves should help so that less arbitration and adjudication is even needed in the first place. The rules act as constraints, and I am a big believer in constraints.</p><p></p><p>To go with a programming analogy again, you can have something called a <em>Generic</em>. It's like a placeholder for a type. Maybe the Generic will become a String, or an Integer. But here's the catch: if a type can be <em>anything</em>, there's really nothing you can do with it except to contain it. If I don't constrain what the type can do, how do I know what can be done with or to that type? For example, I can't add two generics together, because they may not support the "+" or "add" operators. In Programming Language Theory, this is usually called a <em>bound</em> or a <em>constraint</em> to specify that some type supports some set of operations.</p><p></p><p>The rules of a game system can act as a kind of constraint or bounds. Depending on the rules, they specify not just <strong>how</strong> something is done, they can also limit what <strong>can</strong> be done. They take away the blank cheque. And I am fine with that, either as a GM or a player. It's the limitations imposed on me as a player that actually can give <em>more</em> meaning. If everyone is special and has a say, then no one really is special. Of course the game rules can't cover every possibility, and hence the need for human intervention. But once it comes to that, I would prefer a ruling by one individual. If one asks "where is your agency if you give it all to the GM/DM?", I would say my agency lies in the fact that I can choose another GM, solo roleplay, GM myself, or not play at all. That's it...I don't get any special rules.</p><p></p><p>As an engineer, I deal with reality. I have to work within its confines. I don't get to cajole, manipulate, coerce, suggest, or otherwise</p><p>get reality to conform to my liking. So I am okay with low-trust, limited agency games. I realize that is not to everyone's tastes, and that's just my personal preference.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: Removed lots of superfluous parenthetical comments, and fixed some grammatical issues. I'm an Engineer, not an English Major Jim!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RareBreed, post: 9101133, member: 6945590"] I haven't played D&D in a looong time, but by the definition given above, I prefer "low-trust" game design, but perhaps for different reasons than most. I am a software engineer, and for the majority of my career, have worked with and contributed to Open Source software. Open source seems like the epitome of meritocracy or democracy, but it isn't. That is why you see a lot of forks of software, because someone disagrees with the direction that the project is going and forks a new project based on the old. Some will tell you that is horrible for an open source project, because it divides the community and splits the amount of engineering resources that can contribute. And yet, forking is the ultimate in freedom and "agency". It basically says, "I think I can do this better, so let the best code and maintainer style win". What I learned, IMHO, is that the best run open source communities have what we call BDFL's or "Benevolent Dictators for Life". For example, Guido van Rossum (who relinquished his BDFL title not that long ago) of the python programming language, or Linus Torvalds for the linux kernel. Other projects which had no central authority, such as a council, steering committee, corporate sponsors or some other diffusion of power ultimately devolved into political infighting. Meritocracy, or what should have been the best code, no longer always won and got committed. It was "which group has the most influence" to get their code committed into the project. I feel that games which allow players to "direct" the narrative, rules, or other game decisions ultimately becomes like these "design by committees". They look and feel fair on the outside, but I think it can devolve into politics. Also, design by committee lacks a centralized "vision". While some artists and engineers do create great works while working collaboratively, often, there needs to be a single "source of truth" or vision as to where things are going. As I learned more about programming language theory and learned new languages, I came across, at the time, the near religious war between the dynamic type proponents, and the static type proponents. For those who don't know, a dynamic language is one where some variable's [I]type[/I] can change (eg, in one part of the code, it can be a string, and in another part of the code it can be a number). More importantly in dynamic languages, in the code that you wrote, you don't have to declare its type ahead of time. The dynamic proponents argued that: [LIST] [*]there exist valid programs that can't be typed (true, but in practice this is almost never encountered..static languages are still Turing or Church Complete) [*]it stifled creativity by forcing a programmer to fix the type [/LIST] As type theory became more advanced and graduated from academic languages like Haskell or Idris to more mainstream languages like typescript, rust or even python, some of the arguments that the dynamic proponents used lost their power. For example, type inference removed the need (in most cases) to specify the type of a variable in the code because the compiler could figure it out. But more importantly, companies and engineers realized that as their code base grew in size and complexity, the "freedom" to dynamically change types was too costly. Refactoring code became a nightmare for dynamic types, and performance was also lost (because the compiler interpreter couldn't make optimizations knowing that a type would always take up a fixed amount of memory for example). To put it another way, the "creative freedom" of the individual developer had to come second to the group as a whole. I would say that dynamic type proponents lost the war. More typescript is written than javascript (the former is the statically typed version of the latter) and even most python code has type annotations now. The last popular languages I can think of that were mostly dynamic were Elixir and Julia, both coming out in the early 10's. However, both have support for type annotations too. So "creativity and freedom of expression" lost out due to the problems they posed. I also came across a quote by Mokokoma Mokhonoana while learning Clojure (a lisp dialect) If everyone gets a say, it become "design by committee". If everyone is allowed to influence the outcome (at a metagame level. not through their actions while playing), then I think it becomes a kind of "blank cheque". The irony is that everyone having a say in the direction, narrative, rulings, etc of a game actually can have an opposite effect. The same I feel is true even of "rules-lite" systems where much of the arbitration and adjudication is done by whomever is in charge (hi or low trust). The rules themselves should help so that less arbitration and adjudication is even needed in the first place. The rules act as constraints, and I am a big believer in constraints. To go with a programming analogy again, you can have something called a [I]Generic[/I]. It's like a placeholder for a type. Maybe the Generic will become a String, or an Integer. But here's the catch: if a type can be [I]anything[/I], there's really nothing you can do with it except to contain it. If I don't constrain what the type can do, how do I know what can be done with or to that type? For example, I can't add two generics together, because they may not support the "+" or "add" operators. In Programming Language Theory, this is usually called a [I]bound[/I] or a [I]constraint[/I] to specify that some type supports some set of operations. The rules of a game system can act as a kind of constraint or bounds. Depending on the rules, they specify not just [B]how[/B] something is done, they can also limit what [B]can[/B] be done. They take away the blank cheque. And I am fine with that, either as a GM or a player. It's the limitations imposed on me as a player that actually can give [I]more[/I] meaning. If everyone is special and has a say, then no one really is special. Of course the game rules can't cover every possibility, and hence the need for human intervention. But once it comes to that, I would prefer a ruling by one individual. If one asks "where is your agency if you give it all to the GM/DM?", I would say my agency lies in the fact that I can choose another GM, solo roleplay, GM myself, or not play at all. That's it...I don't get any special rules. As an engineer, I deal with reality. I have to work within its confines. I don't get to cajole, manipulate, coerce, suggest, or otherwise get reality to conform to my liking. So I am okay with low-trust, limited agency games. I realize that is not to everyone's tastes, and that's just my personal preference. EDIT: Removed lots of superfluous parenthetical comments, and fixed some grammatical issues. I'm an Engineer, not an English Major Jim! [/QUOTE]
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