RPG Theory

Seriously fuck them. I'm from that era, I grew up on ad&d and all those other early games, and I still very much prefer modern game design over older. Early games were designed by amateurs, and understandably so because it was an early field. But like anything invented new, it only gets improved on over time. RPGs, boardgames, wargames, whatever is no different

I don't know. Can you repeat the question?

Reply hazy, try again.

You're not the boss of me now.

What stupid shit is this?

It's telling a story with your friends. Everything that makes a good story makes a good RPG.

Still butthurt about D&D 4E being a complete failure, eh?

Don't cry, you can still keep playing your dead game.

Forge was a bunch of people desperately trying to reinvent the wheel to seem relevant.

You are celebrating the triumph of ignorance as a victory of your own.

Amusing.

I feel like the search for a meta-model to categorize how to best discuss rules by which we construct make believe stories for a group of friends, possibly with the aid of dice, is a pretty tough niche.
Once you have *that* model, that theory, what do you do with it? Tell people their games are bad because they're too Skub-ist for your tastes?

If you want to use it to design better games just start designing a game and playtest it as much as you can, that's really all you can hope for.
You're clearly critical of the pitfalls and shortcomings of existing games since you're looking for this. So I'm sure you have some idea of what you'd want in a system.

Get to writing.

No, because the whole field of study is trapped in a cycle of getting co-opted by shitty internet message boards that will take any theory no matter how useful it could have been and reduce it to "my game is better than yours."

GNS was a great theory brought down by a bunch of assholes who wanted to use it to argue their own pet points rather than actually use it to describe reality, where games that appeal to wide swaths of players are greatly more successful than ultra-forcused games that have only a single point of appeal.

/thread

In my experience it's a whole load of bull. But to be fair not many Those Guys are gonna try to play something like Kagematsu.

You have no idea what a That Guy is.

or you are one

You're not the boss of me now, and your not so big.

The forge and anything related to it is undistilled shit

Most of my programming career has been about filtering input, trying to take what the user entered and clean it into something usable for computation. I had to imagine what the most imbecilic user would enter and make the program handle that.

While it is mostly automated in the digital world, a lot of RPGs leave this interpreting task up to the DM, making the game hinge on the DM's ability.

Rules about stats aren't strong enough filters for input. Rules about what players can say when- those could be. But too tight, and they would stifle the fun of the game. I have yet to encounter a RPG system that does this.

If you're still defending 4th edition, then you were terrible at using it as a system. Everything on the battlefield was constantly throwing down modifiers and that shit gets kludgy fast and their business practices were shit.

>thing I liked was unpopular.
>clearly it must be because of ignorance, they simply didn't understand why it was better than all the other games!
The arrogance of 4rries is truly boundless.
Or maybe d&d players simply wanted a more simulationist game with less of a disconnect between player choices and character choices than 4e offered them.
Personally I have mostly moved on to Unisystem and gurps. But I could play fate if the mood strikes.

I dunno, but I think applying dialectical approaches in game design has potential.

Yes. It is whatever combination of narrative, game play, materials, and snacks makes for an engaging game for you and your group.

It's not what the players can say, it's what the players can _do_.

And this is basically the approach PbtA uses.

That was part of my problem with Fate. It's a simple, straightforward system overexplained using weird and confusing language. So people think the system is weird and confusing

How would one go about doing this?

Exactly. It's the same reason why student films mostly suck. Theory is all well and good, but it needs to be grounded in experience to be of any use. It seems like hardly any of these people have done anything anyone cares about, and even when they have it's usually out there, high concept stuff. I have nothing against art games, but how many Noumenon campaigns are you really going to play?

>If you're still defending 4th edition, then you were terrible at using it as a system. Everything on the battlefield was constantly throwing down modifiers and that shit gets kludgy fast

That's just not my experience. I prefer 5e's simplicity on some level, but 4e never crawled to a stop like that for me.

> and their business practices were shit.

Why should I care, I pirated everything.

But that example is terrible. It explains how choosing fewer issues will affect the game.

But that's completely obvious

This is true. In rewriting the core rules for other players I managed to cut it from about 300 to 50 by just simplifying the language and not trying to explain every possible effect of a choice.

So? Lots of gamers seem overwhelmingly capable of missing the obvious.

Besides that, do you want everything written with the clinical sterility of a legal document or something?

>So? Lots of gamers seem overwhelmingly capable of missing the obvious.
So make the explanations as simple straightforward as possible while conveying everything they need to. That's how you actually keep people from missing important details. Doing it the way they did makes readers MORE likely to miss the point.
>Besides that, do you want everything written with the clinical sterility of a legal document or something?
What does that have to do with anything? And are you seriously going to pretend this is quality writing, even without the overexplainations?
You're doing the Lord's work, user. Always meant to do something similar

Would you be willing to share that?

I just use FAE, it's like 30 pages already and cuts most of the bullshit.

Can it be cut to 10 pages?

... possibly?

Thinking about it, you could bulletpoint it really dense.

Funny story, I couldn't get through Fate Core because of how terribly written and convoluted everything was with pointless jargon and terminology, then I read the FAE SRD, realized it was literally the same fucking game without the bullshit jargon bloat, and suddenly Core made a whole lot more sense.

You can cut it down to like 2 pages, honestly. FAE's 30 pages is STILL bloated to fuck.

Yeah, I prefer FAE massively, even with the kinda busted approaches.

Slim game you can add to >>> big game you need to slim down.

Ironically enough, that was a major forge discussion under the theories of "System Matters" and "Players Matters."

IE: What you said falls under the Players Matter school or RPG theory

Approaches are super easy to "fix," too. Just use other Approaches, boom, done.

WOTC did some market research in the late ninties and discovered there's 5 types of gamer and 8 values that make good games. Unlike the theories put forward by the Forge these findings were based on actual surveys and examining data instead of making shit up and calling anyone who plays games you didn't make braindamaged. GNS and other 3-value systems BTFO.

seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html

Yepp, that's what I do.

Add Discover action, tinker with the Approaches, use the Brainstorming rules from Atomic Robo, possibly add some world specific subsystems and you are ready to go.

I agree that putting theory into practice is a necessary step, it's just that I like thinking about theoretical underpinnings of practice, more in basic terms - what is an RPG, and why people play them, and I just haven't found satisfying answers. (I understand that there are no complete answers).

Too bad there's no way to access the raw research data, the graph and the interpretation are crappy - strategic vs. tactical? c'mon

Strategy and tactics are two different things, user.

IDK about the 8 core values part. I absolutely had players who just zone out when the stuff they don't care about is happening. Saying it's the most important thing for everyone seems contrary to my experiences.

I think the version with playertypes that the 4e DMG had (and IIRC so does the 5e DMG) seems like a refinement tempered by actual play experience, and is a bit more useful.

... on a second thought, when I consider that most of their poll targets were hardcore D&D players, it makes a lot more sense.

Link?

>calling anyone who plays games you didn't make braindamaged
Ahahaha, what?

Faggot wannabe devs on The Forge honestly say that people who don't like their "genius" speshul snoflake narrative bullshit flavor of the month homebrews are "brain damaged."

> Does good RPG theory exist at all?
Yes.

the G/N/S part of GNS theory is useful

what does that have to do with good game design or game theory?

t. plebs who dont understand what a RPG is

>blindly believing in the cluster analysis of some WOTC faggots
no, thanks, i'd rather go with GNS modes which have been useful in understanding my own preferences and that of my gaming group, as well as the games we play.

but how many of those asked do understand that clearly?

Depends on if they were asked questions like "do you prefer A or B?" with A being strategic situations and B being tactical ones, for example, or if they were directly "do you prefer strategy or tactics."

If the former then it doesn't matter because the preference is a conclusion drawn from their answers, if the latter than probably not because people are stupid.

There's a breakdown of the whole brain damage thing here:
refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2014/12/22/remembering-the-forge/

>All of the people who indicated a strong interest in RPGs identified eight "core values" that they look for in the RPG experience.

>These 8 core values are more important than the segments;

>that is, if these 8 things aren't present in the play experience it won't matter if the game generally supports a given segment's interests - the players will find the experience dissatisfying. These 8 core values are:
> Strong Characters and Exciting Story
> Role Playing
> Complexity Increases over Time
> Requires Strategic Thinking
> Competitive
> Add on sets/New versions available
> Uses imagination
> Mentally challenging

> Complexity Increases over Time
> Requires Strategic Thinking
> Competitive
> Add on sets/New versions available

The survey was done with D&Drones, what did you expect?

What the fuck that's not even remotely true. Was this a fucking in-house survey where people parroted bullshit to not lose their job or something?

my best guess is that they surveyed both the D&D and the MtG population

I feel like "strong characters and exciting story", "Role playing", and "uses imagination are all the same thing. You could also clump strategic thinking and mentally challenging together. Same with complexity increases over time and add ons/new versions available. "Competition" really seems like a specific brand of DnD autism because it should be cooperation.

Could competition not refer to challenge? Outside of other players or DM, you're still competing against the monsters, game rules, story situations, etc.

Except not only do the terms predate Forge, but Forgefags bastardized their usage, and renamed "dramatism" into "narrativism" for little more reason than to feel more special.

GNS Theory has zero merits, and anything you can think of that COULD be useful out of it are all concepts it ripped from other sources.

It's possible it could just be referring to "conflict."

That's the word I was thinking of.

I don't know if the survey uses the best terms, but I think the concepts are probably pretty accurate.

PbtA rules try to slot player ideas into different Moves. That's taking the digital approach and trying to force it onto the tabletop. If anyone actually wanted to play this, why wouldn't they just play an MMO? It's more convenient, no prep time required, easy reset, hints, and so on. Saying that may enrage people who have invested time and money into such games, but that kind of filter is just not indicated for RPGs.
And any RPG that does it would be made better by easing back from it, which they regularly do by publishing splatbooks. What I'm talking about is a kind of retrenching back from that, because that is too specific.

In the digital world, if I get odd input, I can do a number of things. If the input choices are very slim, I can try to correct the input and store it, but usually for those kind of inputs the UI provides a dropbox that limits what you can choose. (That's the choice similar to what PbtA is doing.) Or I can reject the input/ lack of, and demand fresh. In tabletop rules that hasn't been seriously explored, everything has been brokered as a "Yes, And" kind of improv, where the result often is "you try it and fail badly" or "you try the highly implausible action and of course it succeeds." Since the players succeed or fail by the fallible GM's descriptions, I'd like to see what would happen if the rules stepped in at the point of the player's suggestion and helped make it work without pidgeonholing it. Then the game would be driven by how creative the players can be. How many times do GMs complain that their players are boring!

PbtA tries to drill into you a "fiction-first" approach - you look at what is happening in the game, then you decide which Move that best fits, rather than picking moves videogame-style. I find it often doesn't quite work that way because the Move terminology tends to prompt you to think move-first, fiction-second rather than the other way around.

Blades In the Dark, which if I'm remembering right started out PbtA before it became its own thing, does much better at conveying this idea than most PbtA games.

Most of the time you’ll have meh people playing a game.

There is an error in your assumptions.
Moves are not inputs. They're methods that the MC uses to process the players' inputs.

>you can't have good RPG theory because of this RPG Theory that says that design matters less than the quality of people

okay

Yeah, so his own theory concludes that his own theory is bad.

As with most social endeavours, RPGs are a hideously complex thing. Other social things like that has had huge amounts of research done without anything really helpful being found, so don't expect much here.

Instead if you're making a system you need to sit down and think about things on your own. What are your goal's here? Why are those your goals? How do you reach them? How exactly does the methods you pick to reach them help? Have you actually reached your goals? Then more specifically, what exactly may this or that rule results in when you play? Is that what you wanted? Why does it do that?
And so on and so on.

Things like the GNS can help provide a framework here, giving you a starting point for all of this thinking. How important is the story telling part to you? What level of realism are you aiming for? How important is it that the rules are consistent and streamlined?

We can't make science of this shit any time soon, but you can approach it analytically, turning it form a subconscious to a conscious process where you actually have some idea what it is you're doing.

Exactly what I'm talking about.

That makes the problem even worse. In the situation where the player knows what slotted method she is using, she has some idea of what results she can expect. But hiding the method from the player makes it completely unpredictable for her, only for the GM. At which point you have to ask, is the entire game merely being played for the GM's benefit alone.

You are almost certainly correct. One of the biggest problems with market research is that it looks like a statistical study but isn't because obtaining a truly random sample is going to take too long, cost too much, and result in 99% of the effort going towards answers that can be summed up as "literally what?" Whereas "surveying" an existing fanbase or hobby segment is cheap, easy, and feels like "great feedback."

The result is that no matter how noble the company sets out to be in their research, inevitably the result they get back is something in the vein of "D&D fans like D&D because they like things that are shaped like D&D." Which is obviously no surprise: the people in the hot tub like the temperature the hot tub is at. If you want to know how to grow your company, talk to the people who used to use your product but quit.

Holy shit, that is a great summary of the whole forge thing in general. I'm just going to start directing people there.

Ultimately, you can create a game that rewards specific behaviors in specific ways but you can't save people from themselves. Shitty people are going to have shitty experiences.

... You probably also want people who would play your game but don't.

... I was that for 3.5, as a dumb kid who enjoyed Diablo 2 and probably would have played 3.5 if it wasn't super clear how much less attention martials got.

... That and Diablo 2 making multi attack stuff not less accurate, but cost resources.

>But hiding the method from the player makes it completely unpredictable for her, only for the GM.
Good thing the method is open infomation to her, then?

People say similar things about horoscopes. Doesn't make them right. GNS theory is crap. It's popular for the same reason Cracked.com was. It gives the illusion of being comprehensive while actually being simplistic enough to understand after about 3 minutes.

> Complexity Increases over Time
This is a basic tenet of storytelling, ya dingus. The story starts small and basic and grows from there
> Requires Strategic Thinking
So you never try to plan ahead when you play RPGs? Is every character you play a complete idiot, or is it just you?
> Competitive
Competition doesn't have to be interparty
> Add on sets/New versions available
OK, I'll grant you that one. That one explains a lot about 3e.

You are playing around with semantics.

If the player is not told up front what "move" the action he is describing will be slotted as (like back in the days of "this book is only for game masters, players may not read it"), then any positive feedback for a player's choice is eventually eliminated by a "black box" effect. He has no idea whether he is getting better at the game or not, so his input might as well be replaced by a coinflip. When he says, "I examine the chest," he has no idea whether the game rules see that as bad or good. He can imagine how his character would do it, and he can describe it, but his description means nothing when the rules parse to "Touch=trap sprung; no touch=not sprung"

If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use, then the creativity is limited to when to act and how to string those actions together. That doesn't deter bad actors, and it hampers good creative people. Decide where your flavor of the month system fits into that.

Almost all the players I've met have come to situations where the GM says, "I can't make this work, choose something else." It's almost never derailed a game, and it allowed some games to keep going that would have collapsed. So I wonder if there's a way to slate the rules to encourage this without turning the GM into an auteur, or if it goes too far.

>If the player is not told up front what "move" the action he is describing will be slotted as
He is told up front what Move applies to his action.

>If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use,
He is not told which actions he can use.

>If the player is being told up front, via rulebook (like 4e), that these are the actions you can use, then the creativity is limited to when to act and how to string those actions together

One of the actions in 4e is "make up an action not detailed here".

Arguments about the viability of such actions, it exists and patches that hole.

> Tinker with the Approaches
Any suggestions or links?

A good story is by definition a shitty RPG. Every played with a GM who railroads everything? He's doing it because he wants to tell a "good story."

Super useful for young robots who are interested in getting into RPGs.

Maybe that's because RPG players are not computers?

>Kagematsu
Obviously not. Games with lots of content centering around obscure parts of Japan's past would never appeal to a socially stunted gamer.

A good story isn't the same thing as a strong narrative. And most railroady GMs are terrible story writers.

Here's my two cents: What you ultimately need to think about for tabletop RPG's is "assumed style of play" and how well the rules allow or enforce that. What do I mean by assumed style of play? Easy: what the game expects of you.

D&D is a game that expects you to be a party of fantasy adventurers going on crazy adventures where you fight monsters and collect gold and loot. You can argue you don't HAVE to play that way but you kinda ignore the game's focus and what you're left with is a barebones system of rolling D20's adding numbers against other numbers the DM decides arbitrarily.

How good a system is at allowing a style of play is up for debate along with the notion of "good players". Good players will understand the style of play immediately and go along with it, but this is assuming all players are 100% perfect at reading a game's intent and playing along which lets be fair is not realistic.

Some players will want to see if they can play with convention. Or perhaps see if they can use a mechanic a particular way. Or maybe even homebrew something. The problem is how much this will cause something to collapse in on itself.