S/Z: On the Difficulties of RPG Theory & Criticism

[Numidius]

@Hussar I get your point, but it is always tricky with metaphors.
Say "the game" is not actually baseball, which could be Just a metaphor for the combat rules in dnd , instead, and the real game is owning & managing a team.
Now you have perfect procedures for combat/matches, but no one tells how to manage your team.

Does it make sense?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[prabe]

@Hussar I get your point, but it is always tricky with metaphors.
Say "the game" is not actually baseball, which could be Just a metaphor for the combat rules in dnd , instead, and the real game is owning & managing a team.
Now you have perfect procedures for combat/matches, but no one tells how to manage your team.

Does it make sense?

This is perhaps where the evolution of team strategies (front office/team-building) and tactics (on-field decisions) come in. There is a passage quoted at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY, about Walter Johnson in the first quarter of the 20th century winning (I think) three consecutive games in New York, pitching complete games all three times. Modern starting pitchers start every fifth game, and are doing well if they go six of the nine innings of the game. The way the game is played has evolved, but the written rules are very much the same (there are some differences; the pitching mounds were lowered in 1969, for instance).

I would be inclined to call the differences between how tables play the same game (and I think to be fair it would need to be the same edition; there'd be less value in comparing my 5E games to the 1E games @Lanefan runs (if I understand correctly)) more like the differences in how different teams play the game of baseball (since that's the comparison we've been going with for a few pages, now).

Upthread, there was a question about whether one could re-create a game from the past. In baseball print reporting, there's a thing called a line score, which in concert with the rules allows you to just about do that. I'm not sure how that relates to RPGs, but there you are.

 

[Numidius]

Moreover, in a videogame a Player does manage a team, in all its minutia.
The match itself could be resolved by actually playing it, or just skipping to results by the AI.

 

[pemerton]

@Hussar, I don't understand what you're arguing. I can't speak to baseball, but the rules of cricket don't define spin vs fast bowling, nor when to use one or the other. They allude to "leg theory" (bodyline) only obliquely, via the rules around dangerous bowling and field placement. They don't say anything about the difference between a player who is good at batting, one who is good at bowling, and an all-rounder.

Yet cricket teams manage to arrange batting orders, choose bowlers, make decisions about spin vs fast based on player skill, condition of the pitch, condition of the ball, etc. Making those decisions is part of what it is to play cricket. The rules for Classic Traveller have tables to roll on for patron encounters and say that it's the referee's job to decide what the patron wants. The rules for Burning Wheel say choose a setting and situation and give some advice on how the participants should go about this. The rules for Cthulhu Dark imply that something similar needs to be done; choosing Boston c 1930 as the setting is part of what it is to play Cthulhu Dark. Just like a cricket team needs to choose who to send in to bat, who should bowl each over, etc. I think most games require participants to make choices, and those choices affect the way the game unfolds and produces its results.

Now maybe every game of baseball is near enough to identical to every other - I don't know, it's not a sport I know very much about. But not every game of cricket is the same. From the rules of cricket you can't reproduce any given match. That would depend on the particular players, their choices, plus external factors like weather, pitch condition, etc. The same thing is true, mutatis mutandis, for Australian football (the only other field sport I know much about). And it's true for RPGs also.

I don't really see how any of this is controversial.

 

[prabe]

@Hussar, I don't understand what you're arguing. I can't speak to baseball, but the rules of cricket don't define spin vs fast bowling, nor when to use one or the other. They allude to "leg theory" (bodyline) only obliquely, via the rules around dangerous bowling and field placement. They don't say anything about the difference between a player who is good at batting, one who is good at bowling, and an all-rounder.

Yet cricket teams manage to arrange batting orders, choose bowlers, make decisions about spin vs fast based on player skill, condition of the pitch, condition of the ball, etc. Making those decisions is part of what it is to play cricket. The rules for Classic Traveller have tables to roll on for patron encounters and say that it's the referee's job to decide what the patron wants. The rules for Burning Wheel say choose a setting and situation and give some advice on how the participants should go about this. The rules for Cthulhu Dark imply that something similar needs to be done; choosing Boston c 1930 as the setting is part of what it is to play Cthulhu Dark. Just like a cricket team needs to choose who to send in to bat, who should bowl each over, etc. I think most games require participants to make choices, and those choices affect the way the game unfolds and produces its results.

Now maybe every game of baseball is near enough to identical to every other - I don't know, it's not a sport I know very much about. But not every game of cricket is the same. From the rules of cricket you can't reproduce any given match. That would depend on the particular players, their choices, plus external factors like weather, pitch condition, etc. The same thing is true, mutatis mutandis, for Australian football (the only other field sport I know much about). And it's true for RPGs also.

I don't really see how any of this is controversial.

Baseball is similar, in that there are enough random (or, more probably, mathematically chaotic) events that literal re-creation is (I would think) practically impossible. As I mentioned above, one can gather a lot of information about sequence of events from a line score, but that's not the same thing as what I think people are talking about, which would be literally getting two teams together to play a game and literally re-creating, say, a game from the 1927 World Series.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton, on the other hand, believes that RPG theory helped him, and is essential to good game design, and believes that the theories promulgated on the Forge (since they helped him and have been incorporated, either with recognition, sub silentio, or unknowingly for editions prior to the theory such as Moldvay) are universally helpful and provide the basic language (or jargon) to discuss games.

Seriously?

I believe it's contrary to board rules to engage in this sort of imputation. In any case I think it's pretty cheap.

Here's an actual quote, from my first post in this thread:

Here's a passage from The Traveller Book (1982, p 123); it is found in a description of types of adventures, and has no equivalent in the 1977 version of Classic Traveller:

The choreographed novel [my emphasis] involves a setting already thought out by the referee and presented to the players; it may be any of the above settings [ship, location or world], but contains predetermined elements. As such, the referee has already developed characters and setting which bear on the group's activities, and they are guided gently to the proper locations. Properly done, the players never know that the referee has manipulated them to a fore-ordained goal​

For RPGers who want to use the approach describe in this passage, The Forge has nothing to offer and I don't know of any alternative useful body of criticism. Probably the main reason The Forge has nothing to offer is that The Forge places a great premium on transparency of technique and resolution, whereas the approach set out in the passage just quoted emphasises "gentle guidance" and "manipulation" that the players don't know about. (The Forge calls this illusionism.)

I don't think any elaboration is necessary.

 

[pemerton]

I think this misses Fiasco. I'd like a definition that includes games like Fiasco that are clearly roleplaying and clearly games.

I don't know Fiasco except as a name, and that it is GM-less. (Or has the participants sharing the GM role?) So it's no surprise that I haven't picked it up!

There's no guarantee you're going to get a descriptive characterisation that will capture all and only what you want - you might have to point to core instances, and then identify their key identifying processes and functions, and then extrapolate from there. Even then you'll still probably get borderline cases (my chemistry is a bit weak, but maybe is hydrogen a metal or something like that might be the analogue).

 

[pemerton]

Sigh. I must not be explaining my point well enough.

ANYONE can pick up the rules for baseball, follow the steps listed in the rules, and play baseball.

<snip>

EVERY game of baseball (again, with allowances for variants) will be played IDENTICALLY.

Your claim about being played identically is true only at a certain level of abstraction. For instance, the number of pitches thrown, or strikes struck, etc will all vary. (In cricket the variations would be in respect of number of balls bowled - can vary based on no balls etc, number of overs bowled - can vary based on how long it takes to get the other side out, number of balls struck - will obviously vary based on the skill of the batting team relative to the bowlers, etc.)

Every game of Cthulhu Dark will also be played identically at the appropriate level of abstraction.

This is not true of any RPG. Following the rules of that RPG will NOT create a campaign. The players at the table create that. The players at the table PLAY THAT campaign, the one the players at that table created and which cannot be created using the rules of the RPG at another table.

The second you decide on your setting - Boston c 1930 - you are going beyond the rules. The rules don't tell you to choose that setting.

The rules state, or imply, that a setting is to be chosen. They don't say what it is. The rules of cricket state that ball is to be bowled. They don't state whether it should be fast, or slow, or play the leg side or the on side, or aim at bowling out or generating a catch or just wearing down the stamina of the opponent being bowled to.

It doesn't cease to be a game because it demands decision-making by the participants.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*