D&D General Rules, Rulings and Second Order Design: D&D and AD&D Examined

[Snarf Zagyg]

Personally, it seems to me like you are missing @EzekielRaiden 's point as well.

Because a person cannot discuss what is fun until they know what it is that may or may not be fun.

I mean when someone says the end goal of D&D is to make it fun... then I could just say "Okay, put a roller coaster in it." Roller coasters are fun. If all that matters is fun, then a D&D that has a roller coaster in it satisfies the request.

But of course that is a ridiculous statement to make even though it is true. Because what we are actually talking about are the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game. What we are discussing are whether the rules-- the it-- are or are not fun. Which means the actual goal isn't "fun" in of itself, it is having "game rules that ARE fun". Step One: Make a game rule. Step Two: Have that game rule be fun to play. Step Three: Profit.

The end-result you are both looking for is the same-- a fun D&D game. It's just where your focus is to be able to get there is different.

I literally just discussed this. The whole "unexamined life is not worth living?"

As I wrote, the reason you don't understand the conversation is because you don't understand the fundamental disagreement. At a certain point, I respect that people have different ideas as to how to get to "fun." I also respect that people may not always be able to articulate what is "fun" for them, yet still be able to have said fun. People that repeatedly insist that fun is not a design goal have the implicit argument that a person's fun is an insufficient reason to play a game- something I wholeheartedly reject.

Finally, I do find it remarkable that you are insistent on "talking about the rules of the Dungeons & Dragons game" in a thread focused on second-order design.

Seriously, on the very first page I wrote this in response to @Pedantic ....

Yeah. no. I know that we have a few different theory conversations that go on here ... but the vast majority of conversations about any given RPG concern rules, and how to make them better.

Seriously. Look at 99% of conversations about D&D. They will be discussing the rules of the game. They will be discussing how the rules work (or don't work) together. They will be proposing rules modifications. They will be looking at the UA rules and parsing the language with a fine-toothed comb to look at possible issues. People will be arguing, ad infinitum, about how rules should be interpreted - RAW, RAI. Heck, I've probably seen the canons of statutory construction used more for examining rules in D&D than in your typical Supreme Court opinion.

So I absolutely, 100% can't agree with this! "Bad design" (bad rules, for example) not only goes examined, it is examined constantly, over and over and over again. But if people want to discuss .... oh .... FKR .... or talking about something else ... what happens?

Why can't you talk about rules? Do you know what never gets attention in D&D? THE RULES!

If you want to "push design forward," then please (PLEASE!) start a thread where you discuss your thoughts about good rules and bad rules. As I have stated (now, repeatedly, in multiple threads), that's not something I find particularly interesting in terms of this particular issue.

In other words, in a post focused on second-order design (quite literally, the "fun" people are having at the table, using a quote that featured "playability and enjoyability") we have people demanding that we actually look at, yes, the first-order rules. Because we never discuss that, right?

 

[DEFCON 1]

:: Okay. Well, then you literally are discussing something that appears to not make any literal sense. So yes, we seem to be unable to understand an un-understandle discussion. So be it. If it makes sense to you, great. But to me it just means you said whole bunch of gobbledy-gook then. If you are okay with that... then cool.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

As I wrote, the reason you don't understand the conversation is because you don't understand the fundamental disagreement.

I have seen people emphasise "rules must be fair", "rules must be consistent between tables", "rules must be realistic", "rules must support the lore" ahead of "rules must be fun".

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I have seen people emphasise "rules must be fair", "rules must be consistent between tables", "rules must be realistic", "rules must support the lore" ahead of "rules must be fun".

That's because those are micro-goals. The overall goal is to make the game fun.

Fun for whom? Well, that depends. People have subjective differences. For example, and to borrow the cooking analogy, some people like spicy food, and some people don't. If a cook wants to make food that tastes good, a "good tasting" spicy food will not appeal to someone who doesn't like spicy food. For that matter, if someone has a shellfish allergy, it doesn't matter how good the shrimp tastes; that person won't eat it.

There is no perfect design, and there will always be tradeoffs. Just look at the rules you list (other than "fun"). Rules that are fair will not always jibe with rules that are realistic. For that matter, some people want rules that are tightly integrated into the lore, and others want rules that are more lore-agnostic. Ideally, you are balancing these different concerns in a manner that makes the rules fun for a subset of people.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That's because those are micro-goals. The overall goal is to make the game fun.

Or... making the game fun is a micro-goal to the overall goal of just making a game.

We can argue things both ways. Having the game be fun is just one of the myriad things you need to make the game. It isn't #1 on the callsheet above all others. There are plenty of games that aren't fun at all but still are games and work as games. Just ask any of our military when they partake in wargames if they are having "fun" when they are working.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's because those are micro-goals. The overall goal is to make the game fun.

I think you are being more reductionist than people really are. How does how other people play affect my fun? When I say "it's more important for my game to be fun than to be realistic" I know what I mean by that, even though for some people realism is the fun.

 

[Oofta]

When I've seen it articulated well, the pushback for "fun" as a goal is that "fun" is too broad - there are many different kinds of fun. I've seen academic papers define at least 8, and one was "challenge" - a broad concept in itself. A game being fun is as good at directing design as saying it should be "good." Yes, a game should be good rather than bad, fun rather than boring, and playable rather than unplayable. But those are such broad and low standards that it's not telling you much.

Link to the article: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf (it's a PDF not a web page. It's also a pretty easy read)

Exceptions to the objection to fun-as-goal:

1. A game being "not fun" is a vague way to say it's not working - "unplayable" is a more damning phrase but "unfun" is still telling the designer they done goofed. But it's not really telling the designer how they failed or what needs fixing. (Of course, playtesters are notoriously bad at telling designers what's wrong, just that something's wrong.) "Enjoyable" is the same thing as "fun" in this context.

2. If you've already defined the game's genre, "fun" might have an understood (by people into the genre) meaning. If I'm making a dungeon-crawling game, then I've probably already decided to make it challenging rather than submission, exploration rather than narrative, etc. You've also probably decided on the kind of challenge you want to present - it's about conserving resources for long-term success. Once you're at a certain point of theme-picking, "fun" becomes a shorthand for some more specific concepts than can meaningfully drive design.

3. Although first-order design frames second-order design, the players can always add new kinds of fun if they really want to. You can roleplay parchisi if you want to; the cops can't stop you.

And? I don't see the point, the designer needs to know they failed at their goal, that's the starting point. More important though is that we are talking about games and individuals don't matter, the aggregate of your target market matters. If I'm publishing a Cthulhu game, I don't expect it to appeal to a particularly broad audience, but I do want it to be fun for people that enjoy eldritch horror. Even if some individuals that enjoy eldritch horror don't enjoy your game, that doesn't necessarily matter. You can't please everyone.

The game being fun for the target audience is still the primary measurement. How to fix it is a different issue.

The biggest issue I see is that when people say "designing for fun leads to worse results" what they really mean is that it is not fun for them. Because they are not in the target audience that the designers were targeting, it doesn't matter how many people find the game fun. It doesn't matter how much I say "I really enjoy this, it's a lot of fun. My group and I have a blast playing the game and ___ is part of what makes it work." The response is always "But that doesn't matter because the game isn't supposed to be designed for fun". In other words "I'm not having fun with it and they should have done it the way the I would have more fun."

Saying "designing for fun leads to terrible results" is just code for "I don't like it, therefore it's bad design". I'm perfectly fine with discussing design features and what I think they add to the game. Just keep in mind that what any individual will find a worthwhile design element (because it makes the game more fun for them) will not be a worthwhile element for every individual (because it does not make the game more fun for them).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think you are being more reductionist than people really are. How does how other people play affect my fun? When I say "it's more important for my game to be fun than to be realistic" I know what I mean by that, even though for some people realism is the fun.

Not really- you're saying the same thing.

For you, realism (for whatever that value holds for you) is not really a component of your fun. Similar to what Jaquet was discussing in the OP.

On the other hand, there are those for whom realism (or verisimilitude to the genre) is absolutely a part of the fun.

Anyway, this is kind of far from the point of the original post; again, the reason I find it necessary to disagree with those who repeatedly discard "fun," is because I've seen those arguments play out for two years, and it's always to denigrate people who are playing different games. If someone is having fun playing something, or if a game is designed that a lot of people enjoy, then the responsible thing to do if you want to understand it is to understand it on its own terms, not to substitute your terms in order to try and prove that other people can't, in fact, be having the fun that they are claiming.

YMMV, etc. And with that, if you haven't understood my point by now, further explanation by me will not help.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think you are being more reductionist than people really are. How does how other people play affect my fun? When I say "it's more important for my game to be fun than to be realistic" I know what I mean by that, even though for some people realism is the fun.

Yep. Exactly.

To go further, "Fun" in and of itself is a meaningless statement. Fun is a descriptor for something else. It's an adjective. And an adjective without the thing for which the adjective describes means nothing.

It's like saying "game are fast". Okay? Games are fast. What does that mean? Without that term "fast" describing what it is that we are talking about, it is literally a meaningless phrase.

 

[Oofta]

Or... making the game fun is a micro-goal to the overall goal of just making a game.

We can argue things both ways. Having the game be fun is just one of the myriad things you need to make the game. It isn't #1 on the callsheet above all others. There are plenty of games that aren't fun at all but still are games and work as games. Just ask any of our military when they partake in wargames if they are having "fun" when they are working.

How do you judge the value individual design elements if you don't look at whether or not they make the game more enjoyable for the target audience?

I would certainly hope that military war planning is not supposed to be fun. It's also not at all relevant to a conversation on games.