Today, let’s get down to the heavy-duty theory!

I do a lot of design ‘cross-training’; I read academic articles on the concept of role-playing games. (Yeah, I know, technically these are about computer role-playing games, but you’d be surprised how well their work speaks to ours.) Just reading through what they have makes me think very much about what I’m doing. Many times, my thoughts are not even related to what I read, like this one.

Aside from the fact that I naturally choose trios for structuring ideas, I think this gathers some of the concepts loose in role-playing game design into a coherent set that provides for new thinking on how these things work together. Otherwise, this set of ideas is probably useless; caveat emptor!

Static Elements
Let me start with a simple idea; every game has parts that don’t change. These have many direct and indirect uses in play and can even inform play that they are not a part of, but largely they do not change throughout play. Otherwise they wouldn’t be static? Wow, a circular definition!

In-game props don’t, by themselves, do anything alone, but they still matter in play. No matter what happens in the game, doesn’t the setting remains largely the same? What about ‘classes’? ‘Classes’ themselves don’t really change. And so ratings like strength, intelligence or agility are static too. Many things like these are not only consistent, but virtually static. I think the same goes for many elements of the game text, things like artwork and semantics or presentation.

Abstractly you could say these are just a number of fixed symbols. And I’d say that from the myriad relationships between these symbols arises the basis of play. I think if these were dynamic rather than static, this symbolism would make play too incoherent and quite hard to manage.

Participation
When you abstract all detail away, isn’t participation just the revisioning of game context? Take damage? The context goes to ‘injured’. Go on a quest? The setting context changes. Go up a level? The efficacy context. Re-roll your character? Your contextual basis reframes your point of view.

Now let’s get a little hard core; this revisioning changes the semiotic interrelationships of the static elements. If you follow this perspective, it exposes the subtle changing relationships within the fundament during play. Win ‘the war’ and the symbolism of countries warring is changed to one conquering. The static elements, the countries, don’t really change, but their relationships can and do.

And then there is the apprehension of language into imagination. I’ll tell you, communication is key, but not the whole. Not to mention how your exposition not only changes the contexts of the things it touches upon, but changes further contexts within the comprehension of the other players. Beyond the obvious rearrangement of the contextual opportunities, I’ve found improving current understandings (learning), evolving the expectations of future contexts (changing play direction) and many other resultant changes. This revisioning of context can even change the whole outlook of a game (like the cities after war, above).

By the way, this is not simply a one-to-one or one-to-many flow; there are also possibilities such as two-to-many or many-to-many. It’s clear there are as many different forms of mutual context revisioning, as there are ways for people to work together.

It has been covered better elsewhere, that additive revisioning is also bricolage. I feel that this bricolage is what separates tabletop role-playing gaming from other forms; other media do use bricolage in generation, but rarely in portrayal. I have to say that I think very little game participation excludes bricolage.

Guidelines
A lot of tabletop role-playing game theorists get caught up in the place for rules, ’system’ et alia. (Including me!) Sidestepping the whole issue, let’s refer to these as the structural bases of interchange. I believe that any guidelines brought to play mostly focus on expressing these structures.

Guidelines are also effective at shaping the expectations the participants have about play and the direction or expected destination of play. Without these expectations, I’ve seen many groups founder with participants taking play in several directions. With careful use of the presence and absence of material, a designer gives an idea of play and some clear and unlimited possibilities.

I recognize that certain expected contextual freedoms are explored by the samples offered by guidelines. These samples often serve as a learning ritual for new players, helping them identify play expectations and exposing them to expected directions of play.

I’ve seen samples imply potential (in-game or out-of-game) enticements. This process can be designed to create or enforce a specific ideal of play. I believe it is a strangely popular thing for guidelines to mostly entice play towards the designer’s aesthetics. This comes in more forms than just simple mechanical enticements as reinforcement.

I seen many designers restrict their efforts to enticements that guarantee the play they idealize. More explicit enticements to enact ’story’ would be quite interesting (rather than the focus on causing ’story’ as an emergent result). And hey, could we discuss the possibilities for non-explicit enticement guidelines?

As always, comment if you’d like to take this to the forums.
Fang Langford

I was reading my feed reader and I came across a thoughtful post on Levi Kornelson’s blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

What can a trait be?

…Here’s the bit I’m puzzling. Which is, what can they do?

They can:
1 - Give you…the right to declare that your character does thing A.
2 - Grant mechanical access to an attempt to having your character do thing B….
3 - Act as [an] access point for gaining currency….
4 - Indicate and inspire relationship stuff….
5 - Act as an unresolved issue….
6 - Act as a means for creating yet other traits….

…What else springs to mind for you? …What I want are both the really different ideas, as well as the ways to fine-tune the ones already named.

There’s lots of great discussion, especially about ‘hit points’.

It got me thinking though. How would I break down these abstract notations? Well, I can see at least eight continuums right away:

1. Mechanical or ’soft’ - From 10 Strength to ‘cool black clothes’
2. Rights or enablements - From Plot Points to ‘Speaks: French’
3. Opportunities or compulsions - From Contacts to ‘Hunted by: Mechanon’
4. Currency or constant - From ‘Uses’ to Stats
5. Additive or transformative - From ‘Artistic Talent’ to ‘Diplomacy’
6. Transcendent or verisimilar - From affecting other things on the sheet to affecting things in the game
7. General or specific - From ‘Charisma’ to ‘Always has bus fare’
8. Relational or autonomous - From ‘Member of Serphim’ to ‘Reputation: Famous Rock Star’

However, it’s getting too late for me. Expect more later! (Or in the comments, below.) G’nite.

Fang Langford

For my first article on this new venue, I’d like to take a moment and discuss something I’ve never seen discussed. Role-playing game design.

I know, I know, but play along, okay?

I’m not talking about the actual design of role-playing games. I’m not even talking about the culture of role-playing game designers. What I’m going to attempt to discuss is the orientation of those designers to their work. Not the body of their work, but the approach to working on it.

It has been a stumbling block for me and mine for some time. No one ever discusses this abstractly or objectively. (Not that I’m all that objective, but I can get pretty abstract.) This article stems from a basic problem.

I design differently.

Disputative Design
This is probably the most heard-from and the most familiar of approaches. It establishes that not only are role-playing game systems about authority, limits and rewards, but even the discussion about them is carried most familiarly as the ‘adversarial system’ (like in the criminal justice system).

Common disputative system tenants include conflict over ‘who has say’, game / social system as arbiter, player ‘rights’ to command the narrative, as well as many other issues of control and such. This approach is frequently misapprehended as being about structure or product, and while it might look like such, what really characterizes this approach is how disagreement and unconscious conflict is (unconsciously) assumed.

On the down side, this approach will often dismiss successful play which doesn’t make use of ’system’ to assign induction as degenerate. It is also confounded by ’systemless’ and free-form gaming for having little formal negotiation processes. Disputative design has a weakness relative to players who forego the ‘authority’ for passive or internal goals. Their focus on limits and rewards can make this approach something like writing instructions for herding cats.

And this is, of course, by far the most successful and most common practice thus far. (I’m not ready to go into the gender bias issues that are stereotyped onto this, unless your comments request it.) Next, one that appears to be the obvious converse (though it isn’t at all).

Synergistic Design
This approach is characterized by a strong teamwork ideal. It holds that role-playing games should be made to support and foster unified and supportive play. Synergistic approach discussions are generally supportive and differing opinions are meant to provide fresh perspective on their subjects and the presence of questions isn’t considered detrimental.

A few of the types of the synergistic designs I’ve seen include things like supportive focus; mechanics as communication not arbitration; rules as in-game metrics; players prompting interaction from other players (instead of the setting); the game text is taken as suggestive, not prescriptive; player characters as ingredients of play and play is considered as a shared reward for the effort to come together.

Common problems to synergistic design include too little support for disagreements, tending to dismiss play around in-game goals and advancement as ‘violent’ or immature, leaving not much room for self-reflective play or escapism and for either play having somewhat ambiguous direction or a heavy-handed bearing. Synergistic approach discussions can be a given a little too much to affirmation and back-patting, lacking in serious critical input. Games designed this way can often make too many unspoken assumptions about group cohesiveness to play well in blind tests.

This approach has gathered some cachet with the new crop of independent designers, but it is struggling to find its feet in the current marketplace. The outlook is good as the hobby grows to be more inclusive.

Individualistic Design
Taking note of an approach taken by some players to gaming, these designers work to provide their kind of play directly. The focus is entirely on the personal or internal rewards of play and adopts the perspective that design is likewise a personally rewarding experience. Taking this approach means much comparing of notes and bearings of play between different games; opinions are expectantly unassailable and only get compared for orientation purposes rather than relative value.

The principles of this approach involve self-reflection, rules as a form of physics, heavy importance on verisimilitude (very often wrongly called ‘realism’), game text as canon and the player character as the ‘costume’ or window into the game-world for the player. The aspect of escapism is so taken for granted, that it goes without mention.

Designers in the approach often struggle to communicate that their concepts are set and that they look for external perspectives on them. Like many of these approaches, arguments befuddle these designers who look for an automatic mutual respect in their approach. Many player expectations find these designs too aimless and lacking in structure for ongoing play. Concepts like ’story’ or ‘narrative’ are quite irrelevant to this approach where player character point of view is king; discussion of these issues is perplexing to these designers.

With one of the eldest, masked manners of play that this approach caters to, it is only just awakening to its market. Reaching an audience in the current marketplace remains elusive (despite the commonplace nature of this design) except with licensed properties. And that audience tends to be very dedicated.

Collaborative Design
Often thought of as affecting ’social gaming’, this approach elevates casual personal interaction. Discussions out of this approach are often signed by the assumption that all players already ‘know how to play’. The focus becomes on what motivates play and gathering as well as different approaches to player conflict mediation.

Central concepts here are appropriate play space and ambiance, running a game as a social event, game text as a point of interest, a focus on the divide between In-Character and Out-of-Character speech (as well as other issues), companionship and ‘involvability’ issues, dealing with hurt feelings and ‘comfort zones’ and an overall attention to everyone having a good time. And there is the assumption of socializing that is not game-critical in most cases. Discussions here are as much about social science as game mechanics.

Even though every game played between people has to include the issues raised by this approach, few designs ever give them any space. Most other approaches look down at this one as being ‘not serious’ about gaming. Collaborative designs mostly fall down when it comes to action-adventure play and meticulous combat systems. Designers of this fashion often struggle to create concrete rules covering the uses of social capital that don’t overly complicate the natural flow of the same during play.

It’s a shame how few designers take this approach seriously; it may be the ‘next big thing’ (only history will tell). I know I’ve been dabbling in this enough to know I’m way out of my depth.

Finally….
Of course, it is very likely you will recognize attitudes, practices and beliefs from several of these concepts in yourself. You know what?

That’s exactly how it should be.

No one is such a nut that they do things only one way. I don’t now, nor ever have, believed that anyone has or would design any role-playing games that were coherently of any one philosophy, my scheme or any others. I believe it is impossible to eliminate all other perspectives from one’s work as much as it is impossible to categorize anything as completely one philosophical genre or another. These don’t just overlap, they are at times equi-present. (Try not to be too divisive using these points.)

It should also be painfully obvious that this is an incompletely list. I’ve stretched my experience to its extreme just roughing these out, so don’t expect it to be miraculous. I’m still learning and that’s why I’ve embedded a link to a wiki page where these ideas can be clarified, complemented, grown and added to. Feel free to drop by with your own ideas; each wiki pages also has its own discussion page and I look forward to fruitful interchange.

(And if you’re disputative, don’t look here for a good fight. I don’t work that way anymore. I much more want your input and experiences; please add them when you can!)

Fang Langford

Well hello!

Welcome to my new blog site. I’ve decided to combine all my outputs into one venue; one-stop shopping as it were (well, not my Twitter account).

I think in multiple streams almost constantly. One week, I focus on one, but the next, another. Normally, this makes it look like I disappear periodically. An all-in-one site will let people know that I am over here, still doing ’stuff’. I won’t claim that any of these streams has any bearing on any other, but this will be the whole hoary conglomeration of them. (Well, at least when I’m not feeling creatively blocked.)

I have given up categorizing and naming for my health. I won’t speak to any concept that is named by others or name any myself (sorry, I’m not a biologist). What I will talk about are concepts. Not clear cut, ‘you can use them to divide things up’ kinda concepts, but the ‘messy, hairy idea spaces where, when you get close, you can’t tell where it is denser’ tangles of ideas.

I’ve really had a falling out with the idea of identifying categories in a vacuum followed by trying to fit every anecdote into them. Don’t even think of getting me to defend any of my ideas such that they can be used diagnostically; I’m not fighting that straw man. In fact, I’m planning on not fighting at all.

I have my ideas and you have yours. If mine can help you clarify yours based on my different perspective, great! If mine can’t be rectified with yours, that’s okay too; no harm means no fowl. I’m not here to convince you of anything and I hope you understand that I won’t tolerate anyone trying to convince me of anything in the public venue either. Those that must ‘take it public’ are actually trying to get attention in a larger audience; there are better places for that than here. (I will be happy to converse on convincing topics privately though. Drop me a line!)

I hope you find this a good kicking-off point and look forward to your patronage!

Fang Langford

This is the beginning of the Scattershot Games website. As of today I have installed WordPress with Simple:Press Forums as well as DokuWiki and integrated them together. I have also themed both with Monobook, MediaWiki’s basic layout. (It has these features, ya see…)

During the course of the next two weeks I’ll work some more on the integration as well as sharpening the starter templates. After that I will begin to blog, bliki and wiki here. I invite anyone interested to comment here and on the forums as well as make improvements on the wiki as we go.

This is primarily a place for me to play around with ideas that I think are interesting and fun!

Your Administrator
Fang Langford