MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games

I’ve been thinking more about the MDA Framework and how it can apply to tabletop adventure games. This is a framework related to video game design, and while it has received some criticisms and unanswered questions, it has pretty much stood the test of time in that field.

I’ll do my best to briefly summarize the framework, but it is a pretty easy paper to read, and I’d highly recommend it.

The framework posits that games are artifacts¹, created by the designer, and consumed by the player. Games get broken down into kind of three components, or lenses – Rules, Systems, and “Fun.” Note the quotes on that last term, as the framework distinguishes that there are different kinds of fun for different kinds of people, so the term is only used loosely.

It’s also worth noting that Rules and Systems are distinct here. Often in tabletop games, we use the two interchangeably, or often indicating that a System is the sum of its rules, but “System” in MDA is much closer to the Baker-Care Principle: it’s how things are “resolved”, the kind of emergence of play.

Each of these three lenses has a counterpart that is more formally described by the framework – for Rules it is “Mechanics.” This is very close to the terms we use in tabletop games. These would be the mechanisms and (many) procedures as outlined in the rules texts – rolling a d20 and adding a modifier to see if AC is breached to score a hit is an example of a Mechanic.

For Systems, the corollary is “Dynamics.” Dynamics are the emergent gameplay features that arise out of the players’ interactions with mechanics. This includes such things as pacing, notions of challenge, degrees of autonomy and agency, etc. An example of this would be how the players decide to interact with D&D’s various “clocks” in the dungeon crawling procedures – the wandering monsters, choices related to resources, deciding if making a loud noise to bash through a door is worth the time saved by picking the locks or going around, etc.

And last, and most certainly not least, the equivalent to “Fun” in the model is “Aesthetics.” The Aesthetic lens pulls the conversation away from more ambiguous declarations of “gameplay” and, coincidentally, “fun,” and more so onto components found within a game that may be of interest to the table. These are the desired emotional responses to the game, as well as the priorities sought out by players (consciously or unconsciously).

In the paper, there are eight kinds of Aesthetics outlined, although they mention that this is not intended to be exhaustive. These types include:

• Sensation: the notion of sense-pleasure. This ranges from responses to the quality of the art around a game, the tone of the writing, the feel of rolling specific dice, the look of a character sheet, and quite a bit more. I also think this heavily revolves around some of the place-and-space related to gaming, how cozy a table may be, the association of snacks and drinks with a game, and more.
• Fantasy: this is not just “fantasy” as a genre, but rather the imagining of another world, another life. This is the appeal of “What would it be like to be in Star Wars,” or diving deep into picturing what it would be like to be your favorite fictional character (or their serials-removed equivalent).
• Narrative: this is closer to what we would call “story,” a forever contentious term in this area of the hobby. In video games, this would be judging the plot of the game as a compelling (to you) tale or not. In our hobby, this would be more the tales one tells of the game – the transcript of events, and the high and low moments your table remembers. This could also cover notions of “plot” in terms of railroaded or participationist games, but I’m not an expert on that subject.
• Challenge: our classic “mastery” aesthetic – the notion of rising to and overcoming obstacles (or not). Of course, challenge is always a little wiggly in tabletop games because there are probably as many “types” of challenge as there are referees or players (for example, combat-as-war and combat-as-sport are two classic examples of different expectations around challenge), but this is mostly the joy of being presented with something to overcome, and using one’s abilities to do so.
• Fellowship: the joy in games as a social activity. Seeing your friends, making people smile (or gasp, or frown, or whatever your goal may be), showing acknowledgment to each others’ ideas and creations, fellowship is in many ways one of the defining aesthetics of tabletop roleplaying games.
• Discovery: finding out new things, going to uncharted locations, unearthing the DEEP LORE, as well as being there for extremely novel outcomes of such things as random generation and emergent procedures. Like Challenge, Discovery has many forms, particularly in our sub-niche of adventure games.
• Expression: game as a means of communicating one’s self. Creating characters to highlight some aspect of your personality, aligning oneself with games and scenes that exhibit personal qualities akin to your own. Choosing a style of play that aligns with one’s interest and expressing that in-game to the other people around the table, either mechanically or descriptively.
• Submission: the fun of submitting to the notion of “the game” as a part of one’s life. The idea of setting aside time for “game night,” the lifestyle stuff, cons, the juggling of other aspects to be a tabletop adventure gamer and show up for your game.

These Aesthetics are usually described as being associated with, or served by, specific games, but with many tabletop adventure games, so much is left to the table, that many games can be melded to fit their tables’ aesthetic interests.

So the interaction of Mechanics with player “input” creates the Dynamics, and the Dynamics serve to create or reinforce the Aesthetics. Old-school, low-level D&D games often get cited as deadly(ish) games of resource handling with a tension similar to roguelikes. So these Aesthetics come directly out of the limitations on choices players make and the often dire repercussions that occur when a player opts to move much slower to carry a bunch of treasure or lose the AC bonus from a shield to ensure that they are the one holding the torch.

Now, how does this framework apply to tabletop adventure games? Well, I think the overall model fits very well. Some of the Aesthetics are framed in terms of video games, but I think I did a decent job of explaining how they fit adventure gaming. Similarly, in video games, we describe the Designer as “creating” the game in MDA order, whereas players experience the game in ADM order. I think this is largely true of tabletop games – you’ll often pitch a game by saying “You’re all the holders to secret pieces of information that could free a world ruled over by a dark lord who has suppressed that learning, and you can do magic!” But it is also not uncommon for gamers to eventually seek out games from a more Mechanical or Dynamic perspective. Not that I think this invalidates the theory, it is just something to think about.

Are these eight kinds of fun sufficient to describe most tabletop games? I think I already noted that I see some tension in a few of the classes – for example, the Fantasy of imagining crop rotation in Harn is a different kind of Fantasy when picturing awesome powers with whatever 5e subclass you are drawn to. There’s kind of that “immersion” vs. “world authenticity” vs. “OC” aspect to that, which has distinct parallels with the Expression aesthetic. Expression varies in terms of types of immersion, stances, character voicing and description methods, etc. In Narrative, we have the classic “railroad” (or “story before”) vs. the story now/after crowd.

We may have different aesthetics with tabletop adventure games, or perhaps my perspective is just one of a “splitter” rather than a “grouper.”

Finally, what use is all of this? Well, I think it’s useful to always think about your own (and your tables’) preferences, and realize that while the Dynamics may not necessarily force any one specific set of Aesthetics, they may do something along the lines of broadcasting likely subjects.

I think the framework is useful for thinking of kinds of fun as springing out of the interactions with the Dynamics and how they are perceived, rather than assuming that given X rule one will get Y result (having a to-hit and hp system does not, on its own, produce Challenge fun).

This all mostly gels with how I think about tabletop refereeing (because I think refereeing and playing is game design, as much as writing a rules text). Rather than thinking of what rules to add, I often think about what interactions can get us to where we want to go. It’s only when we decide that an interaction is procedural enough, needs to be abstracted, etc. does it need to become a “rule.”

Thank you for reading. That’s just something that’s been on my mind lately. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

1. Note that I don’t personally agree with this, particularly for RPGs – rules texts are artifacts, and games to me are reified instances of play, living only at the table, created by everyone involved. I do not think this breaks the intention behind this model which may be a later blogpost. ↩︎