Another critique

The last time I responded to someone's ideas about TTRPG theory, it got a bit of traction... if not here, then across several of the social media platforms I'm linked to.

 

 

This is a really interesting set of ideas, and it was relatively dismissed on the TTRPG Design Community forum where it was posted. At the time of my screenshot, the majority of the comments indicated something along the lines of "That's certainly an opinion" or "You seem to have a narrow understanding of specific TTRPGs", but comments like that are pretty dismissive. It's got some merits, and yes, while it is an opinion, and while it does reflect a specific style of game, there are some elements that can be delved into.

 

It's a complex take, and probably akin to the sorts of things I'm often writing here. People look at it ad they say "I agree with this bit, but I don't agree with that...however since the ideas I like and the ideas I don't like seem to be inextricably linked, I don't know how to deal with it, so I'll just move on"

 

Let's break down some of the concepts I'm seeing here, and analyses them one by one before we look at an overview.

The initial analogy of the clock is an interesting one. Clocks are systems, and games are systems. Agreed. Yet the sophistry moving forward from that platform I can't fully agree with. Using a clock may be simple, watching a movie may be simple, in both cases, the person interacting with the system is a passive observer. Whether the person observing is interested in the mechanisms of the clock, or the artform of screenplay, they are unable to adjust the outcome that they are observing because the artisan has created their artwork and after this point it is effectively designed to be a closed system.

A game that might work this way might be the infamous "Candyland boardgame", first published in 1949. It is more of a rote activity than a game, where players draw cards, ad the colour of card drawn indictes the colour of the token moved along the board's single track. There are no decisions that can affect the outcome, there is no agency, it is purely a predetermined fate where the cards have already determined a winner before the first card is drawn and the the first move is made. There is no strategy, there is nothing but passive observation of the mechanisms of play winding down until a single player has reached the state defining them as the "winner".

This is kind of where I push the idea of diegetic and non-diegetic influence in the three-way tension model underpinning TTRPG vector theory. Choices within the narrative affect the flow of the diegetic story, choices beyond the narrative impact the flow of the non-diegetic game. Yes, "meta" could be a variant term for describing the "non-diegetic" elements, but even here we're simply working to give the players meaningful choices much as we're giving the characters choices within the narrative.

A lot of this has been discussed over the years with the seminal "clouds and boxes" essays from Vincent Baker, the concept of "The Big Three" from Jared Sorenson, and a lot of other discussions that have been happening in game design over the past 30 years. Do the events of the story impact on the mechanisms of play, the availability and likelihood of choices made by the characters, and how do they modify the experience of the players participating (if at all)? Do the results of game elements impact the story, the viability of choices made by the players, or the experiences of characters within the narrative? 

Next we see "No framed meta-moves, pushes or luck tokens, no meta-resources, or pools, or buffers. Just raw in-character choices." I've LARPed with folks like this, who would say that as far as they were concerned the immersion was ruined as soon as anyone mentioned any kind of mechanism of play or game rule. In terms I've previously used, I'd say that a player with this mindset was using "actor stance", perhaps even suggesting that they were following a "simulationist" agenda (not gamist at all, because as a player they don't care about the rules or "winning", and not "narrativist" because they don't want to tell a story, but just make the choices that their character would want to make within the diegetic setting) (Note that I'm not really using the Forge definitions of these terms because I find them too narrow and always found them a bit problematic, hence the link to a previous blog article.) So what I'm seeing here is someone who wants a style of play no more refined than kids playing make believe in the playground. Yes it's valid as role-playing, but is it an organized game or is it a freeform improvised theatre piece? (Not that this is a bad thing, but definitions matter).

We get to the point where the original post says "Clocks don't make time, they just track it. TTRPG mechanics shouldn't make the story, just track it." This is fine for a passive entertainment, but what settles disputes in an active entertainment. Even the agreed "table rules" that might exist outside the written text of the game are rules that help to shape the story. Pushing it further, even "GM fiat" where a single participant in the session has final approval or disapproval over success or failure is a table rule which everyone has agreed upon outside the narrative of the game (ie. non-diegetically). Making a story with "no meta-influence" feels like a very libertarian style of play, and therefore a style of play that values individualism over a collective and shared imaginative experience, perhaps even to the point that this style of play rebels against the solo-journalling style of "RPG" because it works against the rules that turn the experience into a game. 

Arguably, the author just wants to write their own novel with a Mary-Sue/Marty-Stu self insert (this is working on the assumption that the whole thing isn't just a troll post). Of course the other side to this kind of idea is that it goes against the "Czege Principle", which is something I've discussed a few times in regard to the three-way tension. I still count it as a game if you are working with other players against adversity in the rule set, or whether you are working against other players and using the rule set as an arbitration tool. The adversity begins as a tension from a player, the GM/Narrator, or the rules, and it gets resolved as one or more other elements in the session pull back on it.

If the rules create a tension, and the rules resolve that tension, we get the "Candyland effect". 

If the GM/Narrator creates a tension, and the GM/Narrator resolves that tension, we get deus ex machina and the participants of the game feel deprotagonised ... their escapism loses its meaning along with their agency.

If a player creates a tension then resolves it for themself, then the tension loses all meaning. They begin to understand that there was never any real adversity at all, it was all an illusion.

All that "meta stuff" is a means to regulate the way different tensions pull on each other, to ensure there is a balance of tension and for both players and characters to feel like their struggles have meaning within the context of the session. Some "meta stuff" differentiates characters, giving different participants in the story variant ways to manipulate the narrative rather than allowing everyone to be just as good as eneryone else, or simply allow the loudest player at the table to dominate proceedings (there's a few posts about this sort of thing back in my "How to Run a Game" sequence. 

I'm actually interested to see how the author's design methodology might manifest into a viable game, I'd love to see the kind of development that might force me to reconsider the paradigm. I'm just not seeing it from this post.

If anyone out there has other ideas for me to look at, please comment, leave a message, provide your own feedback on what I've written. I'd love to hear some feedback.