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Post by tetramorph on Sept 11, 2015 13:57:21 GMT -6
Just read this great book: Characteristics of Games by George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, and K. Robert Gutschera. Really well written, clean, concise, level-headed and (at least seemingly to me) no axes to grind. Of course everything cool that they said made me think about D&D, so I thought I would start a thread. In this post I will comment upon what struck me in the introduction. So they refer to one of my favorite architects (I seem to remember that kesher likes him too): Christopher Alexander. They make a point about new games vs. old games: "even very intelligent people can have trouble designing complex systems as good as the ones that have evolved gradually over time. . . Many problems that crop up repeatedly in deliberately designed games have been "evolved out" of classic games. Indeed, for many characteristics one can go to modern games for examples of problems, and classic games for examples of solutions -- not because ancient people were geniuses, but because the classic games that survive today have undergone a long process of evolution and of weeding out." p. 4. The newer the game, the more it relies upon gimmick. The older the game, often, the more abstract and, concomitantly, the less gimmick: chess, checkers, parcheesi, etc. I know I for one enjoy a solid game of parcheesi over "Monopoly" (another race game) any day. D&D related comment: I think I am committed to original edition because it represents more the culmination of a long-standing game tradition (war-gaming) rather than the birth of some new and overly-complicated system: role-playing games. They are really careful not to overly or reductively define what a "game" is. They give Salen and Zimmerman's definition: "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." Is a crossword puzzle a game, or no? They list D&D as NOT fitting this definition. I was taken aback by that, but, then, I realized that by D&D they are talking about the role-playing game that goes by that name, rather than the set of standards for wargames campaigns which the title originally referred to. Alas. Original edition: artificial conflict? Yes: where is the treasure? Quantifiable outcome? Yes: in-game "gold-piece" abstraction; meta-game: Experience-points. (They call this a "two-track reward system." They like it because it prevents "snow-balling." More on that stuff when I post about later chapters.) They distinguish between roughly two major categories of game characteristics, qualifying that it should be taken as fast-and-loose, not hard-and-fast: systemic and agential. Systemic is what it sounds like, characteristics of the game as an abstract system. Agential means what the players bring to it. They warn against approaches to the study of games that privileges one of these types of descriptors over the other ("it all comes down to the system," vs. "it's all about player interaction," etc.). Anyway, great book, good stuff. I hope y'all will want to engage it with me. And I intend to post on it chapter by chapter, trying to keep to about once a week. Fight on! |
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Post by derv on Sept 12, 2015 8:10:27 GMT -6
Sounds like an interesting read for all of us deconstructionists. Link for the lazy?
Recently, I've been pondering this long held proposition that OD&D was written by Dave and Gary as some sort of new wargame. The suggestions are, at the time, the player's were all wargamer's. They viewed and played the game through those lenses.
Up until this point, I've accepted this as a casual fact, having known how the game developed. But, I've never taken the time to unpack what that meant in terms of the game itself. I have a feeling it means different things to different people. To me, it had this general meaning about the use of tactics in play, player motivations, or taking certain facts and terminology, that were common knowledge among wargamers, for granted.
As an exercise, I tried to look at the 3LBB's as a literal wargame. Using the Alternative Combat System, support and upkeep costs as a point system, movement rates, treasure & gold as objectives, etc., taking everything as written, with the intent of setting up a table top battle with miniatures. The information is there for a long term campaign as well.
This simple act of treating OD&D as a literal wargame has helped cause me to mentally shift in what I have come to understand is meant when people say OD&D was developed out of wargaming.
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Post by tetramorph on Sept 17, 2015 16:05:34 GMT -6
derv, kesher, et al.: Chapter 1. Basics The first full chapter focuses on what they think are the three such basic characteristics of games that we often forget to talk about them: 1. playtime, 2. number of players and 3. "heuristics." What they mean by heuristics are those "rules of thumb" by which players come successfully to play the game (not the "rules" of the game itself). So, e.g., the rules state that a fireball fills a 20' radius and conforms to the volume of the space in which it is cast. A good "heuristic" for a player with a magic-user is to be aware of the size of the space he is in before he casts one! They give this great list of differing and sometimes overlapping units of gameplay length (pp. 12ff): 1. atom = smallest unit of play where you could walk away and say you had actually played the game a little 2. game = what is usually thought of as a standard round of play (most of the time, the determination of a winner) 3. session = a single continuous period of play (e.g., an evening of poker) 4. campaign = a series of games or sessions linked together in some way 5. match = a series of games grouped together to determine an over-all victor (e.g. best 2 out of 3, etc.) They use the term "metagame" to refer to things like trinkets, "merch," fan-talk about a game at the water-cooler, etc. So "campaigns" usually engage a lot of "metagame," e.g., the "season" of any given sport, etc. They then dive into examples (rightly so). But when they get to D&D, again, they get it "wrong" (IMHO) because they are thinking of the newer group-story-telling party games than the original fantastic medieval wargame campaign. Here are my thoughts: 1. atom of D&D: the recovery of treasure and/or the awarding of XP 2. game of D&D: the leveling-up of a given character 3. session of D&D: a typical gaming session 4. campaign fo D&D: the on-going shared game world of players and referees allowing the continued advancement of characters (and their in-game goals, e.g., warfare, etc.) 5. match of D&D: reaching "top level" The authors tend to see D&D as having no structure comparable to other games. But, again, this is because of their new-school story focus. An old school wargames campaign was just that: a game. I think what struck me after I contemplated an attempt to match up their differing time structures to the game we all love is that players can engage in the game simultaneously, apart, as a team, against one another: but "victory" conditions, etc., are all character-focused and driven and independent of any other character. The player is competing with himself in order to develop his character(s) from mistakes hard-learned, etc. Someone reached "name level" in Planet Eris the other day. We all kind of had a spontaneous party - we all knew that was the goal of our characters as well. Sadly, the player retired this character! I was ready for the WAR game to start! Oh well. He had "won" his "match." Nice. "Many games with 'good' atoms (short atoms with clear and satisfying boundaries) are point-based." p. 20. Hence my description of the "atom" of D&D being, ideally, the accrual of XP, but, at least, the discovery of treasure (gp). The section on number of players was less interesting for me with regards to D&D. I know there are engines for solo-dungeon crawls. I cannot imagine many of us accepting players who gave their characters XP based upon such adventures! They then move on to "heuristics." They give two major types: positional and directional. Positional heuristics evaluate the state of the game (score board check, etc.), directional heuristics guide the players in terms of strategy / tactic to achieve a new game state, etc. Of course, these are closely related and tied to one another, but still conceptually distinguishable. They then say that some folks are attracted to games because of the quality of the heuristics, regardless of the rules. Players derive great enjoyment from "climbing the heuristics tree," e.g., learning the kinds of things that help beginners, heading through the plateau of minimally helpful but necessary heuristics to get through "middle game," and, finally, those last, difficult, but ultimately rewarding heuristics of "end game" (think, especially, chess here). So, they say, per any given game ask if the heuristics are: clear or muddy; rich or sparse; satisfying or unsatisfying; powerful or weak? When I first returned to playing D&D after many years, I had forgotten a lot of basic heuristics. I bought a bunch of equipment for Nimrod the dimwit barbarian, thinking leather armor and a spear would be a good way to go till I found some more gold. Well, he died fast. Heuristic: buy the best armor you can afford, per class, ASAP! That is a clear, rich, satisfying and powerful heuristic! And it kept me coming back. But it is NO WHERE stated in the rules. For obvious reasons! Thinking this way has helped me to see how many basic and helpful heuristics there really are for D&D! Players really don't need the rules: but they sure need the heuristics. One final thing I want to point out about this great chapter. They shy away from single, unified, normative definitions of games. But then they inadvertently throw a really great one into a footnote! ". . . games are to some extent abstract and purified models of everyday human existence." (p. 32.) Wow. I could talk a lot about that one. But I think I will just conclude this post here. Let me know what y'all think!
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Post by derv on Sept 18, 2015 18:22:06 GMT -6
Nice synopsis tetramorph. Two things come to mind. When you talk about the authors experience with D&D, you refer to a "new-school story focus". I'm not sure if the authors are aware of D&D's beginnings or not, but there's an old saying, "what's old is made new again". I think some guy named Solomon said it. Arneson's Blackmoor game was a Braunstein and, as I understand, he was one of the best at improv. The other thing is that their use of "heuristics" seems to imply or have the same meaning as "experience". Really, experience is the only way to grasp the heuristics of a game. No? |
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Post by tetramorph on Sept 20, 2015 12:49:16 GMT -6
derv, I read you. I suppose I shouldn't state things in a seemingly polarized way. I also play D&D because I love role-play. I suppose I just mean, like Diplomacy, the role-play in classic D&D happens because it can. The goal is still a wargame and it is wargame success that is rewarding by the game rules and mechanics themselves. As with life, where we do not narrate every time we walk down a hall, wash-up or blow our noses, so too although a narrative may be told about the results of a session of game play, it is after the fact and selective. It seems to me that later D&D editions want to cut straight to the story-telling. In the main I have found other folks around here to agree to that general assessment and that was all I was really getting at. "Heuristics" is not just experience, unless by experience you mean kind of collective and pass-on-able experience. Hence, e.g., all those books on Chess and Go. Over all strategy and tactics. Opening game, mid-game, end game, etc. Opening game chess: "develop your pieces." Etc. This can be passed on to a keen player with no previous experience with great success that adds to their encounter with the game. My buddies and I when we used to play Risk a lot together developed a heuristic expressed proverbially, "the only sweep that counts is the final sweep," etc. Heuristics help players play better and have more fun. They can often be expressed verbally as tips, etc. But they are not, technically, rules. Does that make sense of what they are getting at a bit better? Thanks for the interaction!
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Post by derv on Sept 25, 2015 18:08:51 GMT -6
I suppose I shouldn't state things in a seemingly polarized way. I also play D&D because I love role-play. I suppose I just mean, like Diplomacy, the role-play in classic D&D happens because it can. The goal is still a wargame and it is wargame success that is rewarding by the game rules and mechanics themselves. My comments were simply impressions that came to my mind as I read you're synopsis. I consider your comments to be candid impressions as well, which they should be. Your observation about the authors may be accurate, but possibly they are aware of D&D's evolution. Either way, I find the idea that D&D can be characterized as one thing or another interesting. It seems there were people playing their very own "D&D" from the get-go and you didn't start to see a more formalized method until tournament play was introduced. "Heuristics" is not just experience, unless by experience you mean kind of collective and pass-on-able experience. Yes, this is exactly what I mean. Basically, heuristics requires there to be a person who has actually played the game. Heuristics is only achieved through play. I'm not even certain heuristics can really be learnt through a book or word of mouth unless a person actually experiences it through play. |
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Post by tetramorph on Sept 27, 2015 12:59:18 GMT -6
derv, yes, I agree with you at heart about heuristics. That said, I never want to underestimate the power of imagination. Some "beginners heuristics" can be really helpful at the start of a game even for those who have never played. Giving some opening moves and stressing the importance of the goal of check-mate vs. piece taking can drastically improve a beginner's chess game, even for their very first game. Sitting next to a new D&D player when they create their first character, talking about equipment choices, especially armor can be so helpful and immediately rewarding before game play even begins.
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Post by derv on Sept 27, 2015 16:52:03 GMT -6
I appreciate your point of view on the matter tetramorph, especially since you are the one reading the book. Though, it seems our conversation on heuristics has really boiled down to the age old question, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?". The fact that the authors choose to use the term "heuristics" leads me to believe they might come from a programming background. Maybe computer game design, specifically. In that context, heuristics are often short cuts whose results are not necessarily the best nor most reliable. Personally, I find it to be an unusually complicated term that does not lead to clarity for a concept that is meant to have practical implications. But, maybe it is the best term for the idea they want to convey. I'm also not as inclined to give the "power of imagination" among beginner players as much credit as you. But, I would be willing to lump it into the above added understanding of heuristics. Case in point, was the heuristics you used above with Nimrod the Dimwit when you came back to gaming. There was no rule that told you to buy leather, spear, and the kitchen sink. That was the heuristics that sprang from your imagination (It is a very common one among new players btw). Then he died and the experience gave you the new heuristic to buy better armor asap. The thing is, this heuristic may not be true in other people's campaigns. Consider the GM who leans more heavily on weight and movement rules in a world of deep lakes and fast moving rivers swarming with rust monsters. The later are extreme exceptions, the former not so much. In this case, you will have to learn a new heuristics through experience. In my mind, at the very least, experience precedes and prompts heuristics. More so, it goes hand in hand. Thanks for the interesting converstion. Look forward to hearing more about the book  |
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premmy
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
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Post by premmy on Sept 28, 2015 10:14:04 GMT -6
They give this great list of differing and sometimes overlapping units of gameplay length (pp. 12ff): 1. atom = smallest unit of play where you could walk away and say you had actually played the game a little 2. game = what is usually thought of as a standard round of play (most of the time, the determination of a winner) 3. session = a single continuous period of play (e.g., an evening of poker) 4. campaign = a series of games or sessions linked together in some way 5. match = a series of games grouped together to determine an over-all victor (e.g. best 2 out of 3, etc.) [...] They then dive into examples (rightly so). But when they get to D&D, again, they get it "wrong" (IMHO) because they are thinking of the newer group-story-telling party games than the original fantastic medieval wargame campaign. Here are my thoughts: 1. atom of D&D: the recovery of treasure and/or the awarding of XP 2. game of D&D: the leveling-up of a given character 3. session of D&D: a typical gaming session 4. campaign fo D&D: the on-going shared game world of players and referees allowing the continued advancement of characters (and their in-game goals, e.g., warfare, etc.) 5. match of D&D: reaching "top level" Though not strictly central to the discource at large, I personally would suggest a different interpretation for DandD: 1. atom: Announcing one action for your PC and performing the necessary die rolls and bookkeeping ("actions") including reacting to enemy attacks, saves, etc.. This is the smallest self-contained unit of activity in DandD. Consider this: a game starts with the party at the dungeon's entrance. You all step in, get attacked by goblins. They win initiative, one of them attacks your PC in the first round and kills him. Have you been playing a bit of DandD? Yes. What does that manifest in? Doing the bookkeeping for getting attacked and subtracting your HP loss. 2. game: I would say that "a standard round of play" would be either a single delve into a dungeon (in a megadungeon-style campaign), or one particular "adventure", i.e. an emergent story arc: the village is threatened by orcs, the party does things, the threat of orcs is eliminated. When you're reminiscing about past adventures, you always say something like "Do you remember how we helped Taramis become the right-hand woman of the Priest King?](A story arc.) That was really cool!" You don't say "Do you remember how we finished looting the Tower of Birds (which began earlier) , got into some trouble at Stone Gullett, got thrown into the Pits of Lamentation, escaped, met Taramis and started helping her (but didn't finish doing so) ? That was really cool, but I'm patently not commenting on the first half of the Tower of Birds or the second half of Taramis." (the stretch of one of your character levels). As players, we don't naturally think about the span of a single level as a self-contained unit of play; we think about delves or adventures. 5. match: I disagree that reaching maximum level would count as some sort of victory condition, which the book seems to imply. For one, you can play on with your character after reaching name level or what have you; two, a campaign can end with some sort of resolution without all PCs reaching maximum level. I would say that while a "campaign" means the process of an RPG campaign, a "match" in these terms would be a campaign that has a definitive resolution and denouement: the world is saved, the crown is won, all the PCs retire, whatever. Contrast this with a campaign that simply disintegrates because of loss of interest, half the players moving out of town, etc., which would still constitute a "campaign", but not a "match". Similarly, a one-shot adventure, say, at a con, would also count as a match. |
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Post by tetramorph on Sept 28, 2015 13:47:07 GMT -6
derv, really, I think we would both agree that, fundamentally, there is no chicken-egg issue with "heuristics." It is play experience first. I just think that imaginative people can, to a certain degree, have such knowledge passed down to them outside of direct experience. Until they experience it, however, it won't be "locked in," so to speak. Yeah they are all MIT people, so I am sure they have some programming background. Good points about different referee styles needing different heuristics! Busy week, but I hope to return to my review within about another week. premmy, thanks for joining the conversation. I really like your interpretation of their various game units and game-time units. You know, I really don't think there is probably just one answer. That is what makes D&D so hard to classify and talk about -- and also so fun! derv's point, above, about needing different heuristics based upon different ref styles comes to mind. You know, they define "atom" more specifically as smallest satisfying unit of play. I think you are right that bookkeeping would count as play. But it would not fulfill (at least for me) a sense of satisfaction. Also, there is no reward for bookkeeping a combat encounter. But there is reward for finding treasure. Since treasure is a goal, I wanted to base my "atom" on that. Like getting past a level in Pac Man. Just my thoughts. I think you are on to something too. I also love the emerging story arcs, and that is also what I tend to talk about. But they are not rewarded by the game part of the game. I could imagine an 80's tennis player saying "man, do you remember that time McEnroe threw his racket so hard it broke? Dude, that was awesome. Yeah, and then they started yelling at each other . . ." But that has no game outcome to the game or match of tennis (except, perhaps, being penalized for foul behavior, or something). When I talk D&D, I talk story. When I play D&D for my character, I am looking for gold so that I can reach the next level. Call me a cynic! Yeah, I was stretching with the name level as "match." I still like it. It fits with the notion that one is really competing with one's self: can I keep this character alive that long! Yes, a "match" is probably an old 1e con game run by Gary! But you can't blame me for trying! Anyway, I like your definitions too. Thanks for the interaction.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Sept 28, 2015 16:09:51 GMT -6
They give this great list of differing and sometimes overlapping units of gameplay length (pp. 12ff): 1. atom = smallest unit of play where you could walk away and say you had actually played the game a little 2. game = what is usually thought of as a standard round of play (most of the time, the determination of a winner) 3. session = a single continuous period of play (e.g., an evening of poker) 4. campaign = a series of games or sessions linked together in some way 5. match = a series of games grouped together to determine an over-all victor (e.g. best 2 out of 3, etc.) That's interesting terminology. Here's my thinking regarding D&D: 1. atom = any amount of game time spent as a resource in game, the length as chosen by a player. 2. game = Campaign. A campaign of D&D is one game of D&D played until completion 3. Session = Same. "a single continuous period of play". D&D is a very, very long game usually taking dozens (hundreds?) of sessions. 4. Campaign = As Game above. Interacting in a series of modules may be its wargame source, but these never are "completed" or go away in D&D. 5. Match = Not Applicable. D&D is far too long and it's not a competitive game. It's cooperative. There is no victor. Each player can either improve, tread water, decline, or lose. |
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Post by tetramorph on Nov 24, 2015 9:43:54 GMT -6
derv , premmy , howandwhy99 , kesher , et. al: Ch. 2. Multiplayer Games This chapter seems like it may have a lot to say about D&D, but, in the end, as interesting as it is, I think it turns out not to be too very germane to our conversation here. Still, I thought I should provide a brief summary before moving on to Ch. 3. The chapter has five sections: Player Elimination, Interactivity, Politics, Kingmaking and Teamwork. A multiplayer game to be truly multiplayer (according to their heuristic) must actually be multisided. Two teams playing one another is still a "two person" game with two "sides" of "teams" working together to eliminate the other "player." With this regard chess and soccer are the same. They are both two sided games. D&D as most of us experience it is really one of these kind of games. The "referee" "plays" the non-player character baddies while the "multiple players" are not really multiple as they work together as a team against the "baddies." I am exaggerating to make a point here. But I do not think I am far off in most of our common experience of how the game is run today. This is different from the original campaigns where each character acted fairly independently (not always as a "party") and where the referee truly refereed between wargames that would crop up between players. In true multiplayer games the authors distinguish between "races," and "brawls." A race winds up being a one-player game with multiple instances. Each competes against themselves for time and the best time wins. A brawl is built up from a two player game where extra players are added and rules determining elimination are set. Races have logical elimination and therefore (when played fair!) low player interaction. Races include foot races but also scrabble, candyland etc. Brawls can have, in addition to logic elimination effective or perceived elimination. This allows for greater player interaction, meaning, greater possible influence on a player's elimination by other players involved. The more this increases, especially when such interaction can be deliberately targeted, the more that such "metagaming" realities such as politics and kingmaking come into play. So, for example, poker can almost never get political because, even though there is much interaction, that interaction (unless you are cheating and counting cards) cannot be targeted. But you can target interaction in, say Risk. The most obvious example of this emergent phenomenon of targeting and politics is in one of the key games of our gaming history, the political, kingmaking brawl par excellence: Diplomacy! They give an abstract example called "The Chip-Taking Game": Diplomacy is, ultimately, just such a chip-taking game. The mechanics do not matter. That is why the mechanics, from a wargaming perspective, are so simple. They really, in the end, don't matter. If you get particularly good at the mechanics of Diplomacy, in the end, it may not really help you much. You had better be really good at politics. Once people figure out you are particularly good at either the mechanics, or the politics, they are likely to gang up on you and eliminate you so they don't have to worry about such a good player spoiling all their fun anymore! Cynical, but true. To make sense of this affect, they give this interesting example: I think this may be important to bear in mind in D&D campaigns that truly turn wargames campaign: where players are no longer "the adventuring party" but antagonists at war with one another. Keeping the mechanics pretty simple will keep play honest, as it will really come down to factions and alliances. They give a long list of strategies that they claim simply will emerge in any game that turns out truly to be a political (i.e., "chip-taking") game. It is long, so I'll just select my favorites: They conclude that if "the game has enough targeted interaction, the above effects will dominate the game, and in some sense all games with enough targeted interactino are the same game" (p. 52.). I just love that. Then, they add in a footnote that the "cynical (or realistic, depending on your point of view) may see some resemblance to life in general." Cute, but well stated. Kingmaking is where one perceives that one is all but logically eliminated from the game, but uses whatever resources left in order to make sure a certain player does (or does not) win the game. This is pure politics, as it will have no in-game rewards for the kingmaking player. Finally, the chapter concludes talking about teamwork. They present cooperative games as a special case. Most team-based games boil down to two-player games with each "player" consisting of a team. Teams usually consistent of differentiated roles. For folks on a team to feel like they are having fun, they need to feel that they are contributing in some way to the over-all win for their side. This leads to a need for relative balance between different roles. (Uh-oh. Dangerous to say on an old school forum. I will only whisper it <"character balance."> I have whispered it. I will say no more.) It could be argued, of course, that D&D is a cooperative game (most of the time, the way we find ourselves playing it), with the ref adjudicating impartially. I do hope that is the case. It often feels more like a two-player game (team against one), especially under certain strains of old-school refs who pride themselves on their "killer dungeons"! Just sayin.' Okay that's that chapter. Next chapter: ch. 3. Infrastructure, coming soon!
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Post by howandwhy99 on Nov 25, 2015 8:44:49 GMT -6
Interactivity, "Politics", Teamwork? This sounds like a very important chapter as it relates to OD&D.
You've got the right of it. Every single player in OD&D is playing for his or her own self. Each has an individual score for their class. And each player scores only for what they individually do. However, this can be achieved as part of a larger group.
For example, any soldier gains experience fighting. But if they only fight as part of a unit, they will gain experience as part of the group's achievements. They individually still gain experience, get tougher, better at shooting, making decisions, and such. But they aren't doing it alone.
So as you say D&D is a multiplayer game with a referee running the game system, not playing.
OD&D is a "brawl" where the only real possibility of playing the long game (more than part of a single session) is cooperating with other players. There is no rule players must cooperate in D&D (or any actual cooperation game). Cooperation emerges as the best possible strategy for each player. But each player may attack other players at any time (a Chaotic act).
In our game, act Chaotically/Competitively enough and your PC becomes an NPC. Chaotic-aligned. (There are ways to bring a former PC, now NPC back to playable status though).
(BTW, his definition of Race sounds like a brawl against the clock.)
"Politics" is what has historically been called games Negotiation and is a huge portion of OD&D. Whenever the players interact with each other they are negotiating. Under no circumstance do they actually need to cooperate or follow any agreements devised while negotiating. But if their pieces have abilites and are in such positions where they can communicate with other players, then negotiation may occur.
"Metagaming" is about using out of game knowledge and actions to influence the game. In OD&D it is by definition against the rules and cheating. Negotiation is not metagaming as the author confuses it.
The mechanics in games like Diplomacy do matter. There are people who have a difficult time understanding the game, but are adept with people. After all, if none of the players understand the rules of the game, they aren't going to actually be able to play the game in the first place.
Also, the author sounds like he is assuming "targeting" and removing players who are too capable at the game is commonplace or even inevitable. He makes games sound like 'Lord of the Flies' and competition the only manner of play. That's not how games MUST go. He's biasing his examples.
D&D is a cooperative game because of its design. It benefits players who work together. A group of pieces in the game can be made more powerful than any one of them individually. Once this is recognized players will usually take aim at working together (i.e. cooperating).
All of the strategies you list in your "politics" games are Chaotic Behaviors in D&D. D&D is not "winner take all" which sounds like the only kind of game he's referring to here. (In fact, those may be the only kinds of games this book is about.)
Every mechanic in OD&D must be rigorously balanced before being added to its design. However, it is not balanced to keep players balanced between each other or "benefitting the team". In OD&D the latter really comes in to play for what classes qualify as playable to begin with. IOW, overlap enough in scope with other classes so they aren't NPC-only classes. (The game being a Doer game rather than like a Builder or Maintainer one).
The balance in OD&D is like all cooperative games (see any well-designed "beat the game" computer game). The balance is between the class abilities and the system each player will be seeking to master. (i.e. roleplaying)
So, 1st level Fighters are a set difficulty level (I believe measured in XP needs) against the 1st level Combat System design. Entering 2nd level designs while a 1st level class means the game will be even harder than taking on those 2nd level designs once achieving 2nd level class abilities.
Cooperative games are radically different the competitive ones. The author does not include any cooperative games designs beyond cooperation between players in team competitions (like any team sport). Where is Arkham Horror? Knizia's Lord of the Rings? Where is the other team to compete against in those games? (the designers?)
Ultimately, you're right. This chapter doesn't include much pertinent to OD&D at all.
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Post by tetramorph on Nov 27, 2015 12:38:21 GMT -6
Thanks for interacting, howandwhy99. I am not sure whether the referee in D&D is playing or not. I am not sure if a D&D ref is identical to, say, a soccer ref or not. I am not sure whether refs for other games, such a soccer are or are not playing. It feels like a whole other possible discussion. But I think that is the common parlance and there is good reason for it. I do know that when I ref I feel like I am playing. I am certainly getting as much out of the experience as when I play (if not more). The authors are not confusing the term "metagaming." They are defining and using it differently for the purposes of their book. They explain it up front. I'm just giving a summary so I couldn't go into that much detail. I tried to set it off with scare quotes so folks would know they are not using the term in a way that entirely overlaps with the way role players are used to using the term. Sorry to confuse. I do recommend actually reading the book. It is easy to read and I think really very good. Yes, one has to know the basic mechanics of Diplomacy to play it. But their point, which I find convincing, is that knowledge of those mechanics do not, necessarily, aid in winning the game. The mechanics of certain resolutions are relatively irrelevant to the overall goal of the game. Like their chip-taking-with-chess example, I am unlikely to play as well as Kasparov, but if I get all the other players to gang up with me against him he will eventually be driven out of the game no matter how well he has mastered the mechanic of winning a chess game. The over all game is targeted chip taking. Playing that well requires no particular given mechanic; which is why they say that all chip-taking games are really the same game in the end. The point is: how good am I at group politics. Because of this, they suggest that games that are deliberately political / chip-taking in nature should minimize mechanics as they only get in the way of the core of the game. I don't think the authors (there are three) are biasing their examples so much as the fact that their point is to talk about known games as a whole at time of publication. They are not focusing on RPGs. They know of RPGs (but mainly the new school kind). Mainly they are trying to make sense of anything we commonly call a game, from scrabble to soccer, from chess to diplomacy. So given that breadth of sample I think they are pretty accurate. Most traditional and currently popularly marketed games rarely emphasize the cooperative. They are in the main about winning. A single player (or team) winning. I like your point, howandwhy99, about their list of political behaviors and chaotic PCs! It is exactly why I will not referee chaotic PCs! |
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 27, 2015 14:23:07 GMT -6
Recently, I've been pondering this long held proposition that OD&D was written by Dave and Gary as some sort of new wargame. The suggestions are, at the time, the player's were all wargamer's. They viewed and played the game through those lenses. I can't speak for all D&D players of the era, but my own roots began with wargames and spread to Chainmail (and the Fantasy Supplement) prior to the discovery of OD&D. Clearly that has an impact on the way I view the game. Compare this to folks who grew up once the RPG market had a strong foothold in society, where others kind of knew what an RPG was prior to playing one ... well, that would give a totally different set of past experiences and preconcieved ideas than what I had when I started. And someone like my son (who grew up watching RPGs and playing video games whose design was based on RPGs) would see gaming totally different as well. With that framework, it's not at all surprising that newcomers would design 4E, for example, with bells-and-whistles similar to the video game experience that they grew up with. It also shouldn't be surprising that a lot of modern gamers would find the world of OD&D strange and alien, as they are used to certain design concepts and having all rules spelled out rather than loose and freeform. On the other hand, once they experience a freeform rules set many of them seem to really enjoy the experience. Not quite sure where this is going, other than the fact that we probably have a really wide background base on this board and sometimes we forget that others were brought into the hobby though a very different route than we were. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2015 4:25:09 GMT -6
Well, a Napoleonic skirmish campaign begat Braunstein, Braunstein begat Blackmoor, Blackmoor begat The Fantasy Game, and from then on, whatever I write will make some grognard somewhere frown in slight disgust.
But take into account that between Napoleonics and the FFC game (meaning, Blackmoor as a regular game every weekend), there are roughly 24 months of development. Outside of any splitting of hairs, the wargaming tradition and at least "The Fantasy Game" seem inseparable. With OD&D, I am more skeptical, because by then, you had many parallel skirmish-melee-"one-player-one-meeple"-like games all over the place. But the original development seems to have been firmly rooted in the wargaming tradition.
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Post by howandwhy99 on Nov 29, 2015 9:59:15 GMT -6
No problem. I'm enjoying the discussion and topics the authors bring up, even if I disagree with their attempt to narrow definitions for how they understand games. Referees do not play games. They exist to enable gameplay (like in OD&D) and facilitate quick and fair play. A tennis ref is positioned to see whether a ball lands in or out of play, while players struggling to play well would be at odds against refereeing themselves because their common strategy is to move around. Most referees are placed to insure fair play, but also to stay out of the field of play. Like any other non-players referees are best placed outside the field of play because they are interference to the game. Placing a ref on the field, as in sports, is a pragmatic act to insure fair play. It is explicitly not to done in order to affect scoring by the actual players. Negotiation is a strategy in hundreds of games. It is not metagaming which is the opposite of strategizing. According to your post, it sounds like they are conflating negotiation with metagaming. Knowledge and actions within a game are what are relevant to winning at games. What you are talking about isn't gameplay, but concession. If the other players concede that one player wins they are not playing the game. They have quit the game. They game play to cause another player to win, but that is not concession. They must still comprehend and take appropriate actions within the game (e.g. handing over chips). Games are mechanics, not group consensus. There are no "resolutions" in the mechanics of games (and certainly never any "resolution mechanics"). You can claim a game's design is "irrelevant" in chip trading games, but they are still the only element for why those games result in a winner or count as games in the first place. I'd say the primary gaming there is the action of counting. Not conceding as the authors would have it. Lastly, gaming the other players is what negotiation entails. And is part of any multiplayer game. Whether a player comprehends it or not, they are always playing a game with respect to the abilities of the other players as part of the design. As well as their own abilities. That the authors do not include computer games or cooperative games in their book, to me means their book isn't about all games. Far from it. It sounds like it is about a small segment of games they suggest be thought about in a novel way. I would not at all hold the book as an authoritative work. |
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Post by tetramorph on Nov 29, 2015 13:05:09 GMT -6
Thanks, howandwhy99. So, if I read you right, you see the authors as providing too narrow a definition of games. You understand that referees do not play games. I apologize but I must not have explained this very well previously: they are using the term "metagame" in a couple of different ways from the way we are used to using the term. You may not actually disagree with them at all, once you understand how they are using the term. Again, reading them, instead of me about them, would clarify a whole lot. They are intelligent, informed and write well. I think you would find it nice to read. It sounds like your definition of a game is strictly limited to the execution of what folks generally call "mechanics." Anything else that happens, such as negotiation and the like, does not count as part of the game for you. Am I reading you right? If that is the case, then knowing the mechanics of Diplomacy would be, in fact, the only way to play that game. But that would, by definition, be true for any game and thus no new insight is really gained other than concession to the strictness of the definition. The point would be definitional and, therefore, tautological. I think the authors are trying to do something different. The authors would find the collapsing of a game into its mechanics alone as too narrow a definition of game. But, again, if you read the book you may find that you agree more than you think you do as currently you are only responding to my limited presentation of the text. You might even find that your previous opinions are changed by their arguments and presentations. They are MIT professors and all probably write code in their sleep. They are aware of and use computer games in many of their examples. I could list their examples (they provide a long list of all the games they refer to throughout the text) but it is rather long. Again, I urge you to consider taking a look at the book itself. I think you will find that they are fairly well informed and have a very broad sample of games before them in most parts of their discussion of games. They also discuss cooperative games. But given that this category of gaming is rather thin within the human tradition of gaming, they pay it the attention they understand it to deserve within the sample category with which they are working. |
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Post by Scott Anderson on Dec 23, 2015 23:56:27 GMT -6
The Referee in D is absolutely playing! There are three kinds of rewards in D:
1) the imaginary resources your imaginary dude gets, such as gold or concubines
2) the ability to better manage those resources, such as having better magic or more henchmen and
3) the table reward of the group succeeding together
the Referee absolutely gets that third reward, even if he's running the monsters that get killed! He is counted among the players in the tally that matters the most, which is "did you have fun? would you play again?"
Someone is going to take me to task for having too broad a definition of playing a game, but this is where I'm planting my flag. When I run adventures, I could not possibly describe that activity as anything other than "playing D&D."
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Post by tetramorph on Aug 21, 2016 15:21:21 GMT -6
Hey derv , premmy , Finarvyn , @rafael, Scott Anderson, and all! I have not forgotten about this. It just seems more "blogg-y" than thread-y. So I've moved it over to my blog. Here is the next chapter summary, on chapter 3, " Infrastructure." I've begun to repost much of what I described in starting this thread. Feel free to engage here or by commenting on my blog! Thanks. |
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