D&D General RPG Theory and D&D...and that WotC Survey

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't think that's a coincidence. While I doubt Peterson intended for it to be that way, I came away from The Elusive Shift feeling rather depressed, since what I took from the book was that the RPG community has not only been struggling to define the various permutations of our hobby, but has largely failed at promulgating what ground has been broken, leading to the same contentious back-and-forths to be repeated across decades as we all flail about for terms and definitions for things we can intuit and perceive but only barely articulate.

Which just shows what a waste of time it is to try and define the indefinable essence of a thing. If we can intuit it, we don't need to define it, we can just do it.

 

[Alzrius]

Which just shows what a waste of time it is to try and define the indefinable essence of a thing. If we can intuit it, we don't need to define it, we can just do it.

We can, but that makes it rather hard to discuss with others, hence all of the ink (both physical and digital) that's been used trying to do exactly that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We can, but that makes it rather hard to discuss with others, hence all of the ink (both physical and digital) that's been used trying to do exactly that.

The reason you can't define the essence, is the essence is different for everyone, and constantly shifting. It's not just hard to discuss, its impossible to discuss. The solution is don't try to talk about the essence, just focus on specifics.

 

[Reynard]

I think it is important to remember that while RPGs we're around for a few decades by then, very little serious criticism (in the academic sense) had been done at the time. That's where this stuff is coming from. It's not really meant to be distilled into advice for use at your table. It is like academic philosophy or very specific history discussions: mostly of interest to specialists, and otherwise largely misapplied and misquoted by everyone else.

 

[Professor Murder]

I think it is important to remember that while RPGs we're around for a few decades by then, very little serious criticism (in the academic sense) had been done at the time. That's where this stuff is coming from. It's not really meant to be distilled into advice for use at your table. It is like academic philosophy or very specific history discussions: mostly of interest to specialists, and otherwise largely misapplied and misquoted by everyone else.

All this. For a bad analogy, this is more the physics of game design than the practical mechanics. Can one benefit by examining this? Sure. But one can also go down some deep rabbit holes of some rather dedicated navel gazing and not come out with practical applications for one's own game design, be it for one's own table or for wider publication. Knowing what motivates "Players" doesn't mean as much as knowing what motivates "my players", but having some notion of these concepts can help on some level evaluating what "my players" want. Part of the issue is that it takes proper reflection for anyone to really know what they want. People often claim they want Bold flavored coffee, but statistically, people prefer mild. Are they lying? No, it is simply that Bold sounds better than Mild.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

People at WotC posted a number of articles with really good insights about game design over the years, that didn't end up getting considered in their own design.

yeah if you read some 3e blogs and some 4e blogs and some 5e blogs you would think that not only were they not talking about the same game...but that they might be competing games trying to prove there way was right...

 

[Ovinomancer]

All this. For a bad analogy, this is more the physics of game design than the practical mechanics. Can one benefit by examining this? Sure. But one can also go down some deep rabbit holes of some rather dedicated navel gazing and not come out with practical applications for one's own game design, be it for one's own table or for wider publication. Knowing what motivates "Players" doesn't mean as much as knowing what motivates "my players", but having some notion of these concepts can help on some level evaluating what "my players" want. Part of the issue is that it takes proper reflection for anyone to really know what they want. People often claim they want Bold flavored coffee, but statistically, people prefer mild. Are they lying? No, it is simply that Bold sounds better than Mild.

Understanding oneself is important and hard, but I think you've reversed some things here -- a framework can help with self understanding. It's the extremely rare individual that can divine thier own thinking without such tools and then articulate one. Most of that work is done by sharing and curiosity and discussion with peers. Which I'd certainly however come to better understand my own preferences and also, on topic, evaluate a rule set to see how it both is supposed to work and how it supports, or doesn't, my preferences. And I can articulate this very clearly to peers that have done similar work.

 

[ersatzphil]

The reason you can't define the essence, is the essence is different for everyone, and constantly shifting. It's not just hard to discuss, its impossible to discuss. The solution is don't try to talk about the essence, just focus on specifics.

Wouldn't the essence of a thing be the same for everyone, even if the specific permutations of their lived experience of it are different?

 

[Oofta]

Wouldn't the essence of a thing be the same for everyone, even if the specific permutations of their lived experience of it are different?

Is it? Take a look at D&D. You can do everything from classic dungeon crawls where you're just there to kick down doors and chew bubble gum and you're all out of bubble gum to spending hours on RP and political intrigue. The game grants a specific structure, but can easily be tweaked and modified to serve multiple purposes. How well it serves those purposes is a question of implementation, expectations and preference.

So I don't think the essence of the game taken as a whole really means all that much. Certain aspects could be if there were common definitions. However the terms have been redefined to have specific meanings for various analysis framework (and are different from what they mean in casual language) which doesn't always help because people don't have a shared understanding of what those terms mean. I can look up the term "gamist" and a blog will tell me that it only really applies to games like chess or MtG. Then someone else comes along and says that's all wrong because if you look at the definition over here it doesn't mean the same thing.

We're all like the parable of the blind men trying to describe the elephant. On touches the tail and says "It's a rope", another bumps into a leg and says "It's a tree" and so on. Because we experience and interpret the game differently while also having a different frame of reference it all gets muddled. Which is why I think this is a never-ending philosophical debate.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't think that's a coincidence. While I doubt Peterson intended for it to be that way, I came away from The Elusive Shift feeling rather depressed, since what I took from the book was that the RPG community has not only been struggling to define the various permutations of our hobby, but has largely failed at promulgating what ground has been broken, leading to the same contentious back-and-forths to be repeated across decades as we all flail about for terms and definitions for things we can intuit and perceive but only barely articulate.

Well, we can’t even agree on a basic definition of what RPGs are, so of course we can’t get to anything like working models or theory.

The problem is multifaceted. A big part of the problem is we are doing it backwards. Instead of the few people who have really studied game theory and design working up models and theories, we have every random player trying to sound smart and talking about things they largely don’t understand and are not educated about. Being able to drive a car does not make someone a mechanic. Another problem is the lack of data, which is a rather dramatically insurmountable hurdle. Another problem is that we as a community have this odd knee-jerk reaction to be hyper inclusive in our definitions of things. We cannot be allowed to define what we even mean by RPG for fear of maybe, possibly excluding some game somewhere that maybe five people have ever even heard about.

Weirdly, the younger video game industry is just trucking along with all kinds of models and theories about the whats and whys. People who are knowledgeable and educated in game theory and design are working on it. And they have gobs and gobs of data. It’ll be far easier to simply use their models and theories and apply them to RPGs.