Tag: theory

Towards an Interaction Model

I have been chatting with several people about my last post, MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games. In particular, Sam Sorensen posted his thoughts on the framework—suffice to say, he is not a fan and does not feel the model applies to tabletop games and, in many cases, not even video games.

I appreciate the discussion I’ve had on this subject – and I’m a big fan of Sam’s and find many kindred points in his post, especially in his New Simulationism pamphlet, which purports a play perspective very close to my own and many of us flag-waving in the FKR (although I am a fan of dropping pretty much all terminology that got associated with the Forge, of course “Simulationism” predates that place, so it is very much ingrained into the hobby and I need to get over myself about that).

Speaking of FKR, a big reason I’ve been gung-ho about that gaming culture and why I even posted about MDA was that I am specifically interested in discussing how interactions elicit different emotional responses among people. The interaction of coordinating play tests in video games that held MDA (at least lightly) reminded me of how I view referees and players iterating over the techniques they use at the table.

This is not meant to be dismissive, but in many of these conversations, I almost feel like we sometimes get stuck in the whole “self-reference” Russel Paradox of set theory. The details of this paradox aren’t super important to this discussion, but suffice it to say that it is easily circumvented through axiomizing the details. If we have a problem of “who shaves the barber!?” given the condition that “the barber shaves all men who don’t shave themselves,” – create a new theory where you add an exception to this, and see if anything breaks down.

Coincidentally, when working in research and development for video games, I often dove into this kind of discussions quite a lot. I would cite something for potential reference, usually an experimental game or toy, and the first response I would receive would be, ” But is it a game?” To which I’d shrug and say, ” Whether it is or not, by whatever definition you have, I still wanna look at it for potential influence.” Determining what is a game can be enlightening, fun, whatever – it’s just not something that currently interests me.

I honestly couldn’t care less about “defending” MDA from a strict “does everything in this paper line up with what we now know” standpoint. I think it was born out of a very specific context, and while it was doing a lot of trailblazing, I do not think every statement contained within was ironclad. I am more interested in looking at my personal experiences with the model and asking, “Can I extrapolate/adapt this to make running games more fun for me and my players?” Maybe yes, maybe no.

Defining an MDA-like

So, given what I said about definitional arguments, let me post how I see an MDA-like (or MDA– or MDA++ or pMDA or however you wanna phrase it – I care absolutely nothing if people see this as an extension/adaptation of a theory or something else) working for tabletop adventure games.

Note the emphasis on adventure games, if whether or not this is applicable to story games or solo games or lyrical games, or anything else is not my current concern. This is not to disparage these games, they’re just not in scope of what I am thinking about.

Also note that in game studies, there is generally no consensus on what things like a “game” or “rule” is, so I am not proposing these are universally definitional, rather just short hand for the following ideas when talking in this context.

So an Adventure Game is outlined by Retired Adventurer in this post.

The word Game in this model refers to an instance of play. Sometimes we’ll use “game” as shorthand to refer to the idea of, general assumed rules and procedures, and culture of a particular adventure game title (eg. the “game” of Dungeons & Dragons), but really all that matters is what is living at the table (and to a lesser degree, how it is discussed/remembered in retrospect).

To me, every player and referee in an adventure game is a Designer. I don’t think there’s any special privilege to anyone who has produced a rulestext. Every game being a social interaction obviously changes dependent on who is involved – each game is designed by the participants, even if this “design” is just how they make rulings out of pre-existing rules, or if they’re coming up with their own defined rules (or many more cases).

Mechanics are all the rules, procedures, ludemes, fictional facts, etc. as they exist – on paper, or in peoples’ heads, or anywhere else. I know Sam wanted to distinguish mechanics as mechanisms as “instrument of play,” but I think we all kind of know that is not how roleplayers refer to mechanics, and honestly fit with the definition as I learned it in my game design courses (as well as many books on the subject). Things like “Roll a d20 and add your to-hit bonus, compare to your opponent’s armour class, and if you meet or succeed you hit” is an example of this. Also “falling into lava kills you,” as well as “the referee describes the world – ask questions to clarify then declare intent.” Basically its the idea of how anything gets resolved in game.

Dynamics are the actual reified moments of play where humans interact with each other and the Mechanics. So “rolling to hit” as outlined above is not a Dynamic, but when Joanna says what she’s doing, the referee asks her to roll to hit, and then she does is a Dynamic.

The way we perceive these Dynamics produce emotional responses, which are fine to call Aesthetics. I copied the original eight kinds of fun in my previous post – I certainly don’t think they are exhaustive, and I think when applied to tabletop there’s quite a few interesting bits of overlap and places we split some “types” of fun, and call out particularly interesting, recurrent unions between multiple types.

Note that Mechanics and Dynamics are definitely infinite, and they are mutable, within the same Game, sometimes even moment to moment. In one instance you may decide to use a traditional D&D to-hit roll in combat. In the following instance you may decide that in the current world context, or even social context (eg. its getting late let’s wrap this up we can imagine how its going to go) and elide this roll or use an entirely different mechanic. Sometimes you use rules to “zoom in” and de-abstract procedures, other times you “zoom out” and do the reverse.

I don’t think this breaks the model by any regard – each of these instances are themselves dynamics, and they’ll produce various aesthetics among the players. How, and more importantly – why they do is worth looking at. Of course dynamics and aesthetics are fractal – one emotional response accumulates and attenuates a large emotional response of the session which does for the campaign (if playing in one) which then expands out to multiple campaigns with a play group, etc. I think these are all worth investigating among a group, as they continue to drive towards experiences they want to share together.

So the above may be small fry, and for anyone looking for deeper more philosophical theory, this will either be disappointing I have spent so many words on, or seem like nothing at all. Which is fine, I’m not trying to make any real philosophical statements or not.

Why I bring up MDA is because I want to start talking about specific interactions at the table and the responses they bring up. The “Dynamics” and the “Aesthetics” terms are suitable language to use as short-hand here.

Anyway, this was a messy, long post, but I thank anyone who read through it. Let me know what you think, especially if it includes how we can better talk about the actual, in-play interactions.

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. ↩︎

Rule Zero & Others

The existence of Rule Zero in a role-playing game, or any of its other equivalents, does not invalidate the existence of any other rule. Rule Zero is roughly Referee Fiat – the idea that the referee has final say, and any content of the rules-text is subject for hacking, removal, addition, etc. by the table.

There exists a certain kind of role-playing snob who upon seeing anything akin to Rule Zero to proclaim “Then why am I buying this book, shouldn’t you have designed a system?” While ignoring all the tools, procedures, adventures, monsters, or any other useful material in the text that a referee may opt to use.

Like Jim P says “Rules are not bad or dumb” – they’re a tool to for the referee to help present the world and to determine what happens when rulings fail or the ref doesn’t feel like making one. Rule Zero should be an assumed default in every traditional role-playing game, and even if its not – no designer holds power over your table should you add it in.

Rule Zero is there to aid your gaming and leaves you free to utilize anything else in the rules-text to make your game run how you want it. It does not obviate anything that comes after. It just allows you to examine those rules as they come up and decide if they are really serving a purpose.

To do something that does not make fictional sense just because a rule tells you to do so is a betrayal of the medium of role-playing. The beauty of the game is the conversation – we can discuss, negotiate, and use our understanding of fiction to shape the imagined world. A slavish adherence to mechanics that produces fictionally incoherent world negates the strength of this hobby.

So Rule Zero is always on the table, and it allows you to use whatever rules you want to produce the game that’s right for your table. Just because you might change some things, make rulings on the fly, or even throw out sections does not mean what you keep and use does not have value.

Every Rule A Ruling

The medium of tabletop role-playing games is such that every single rule must go through a series of steps from declaring intent to do something, to the actual handling of the mechanical bits, to the resolution and reintegration of “what happens” in the fictional space. So for every rule that exists, the table must make a ruling over its use and effects.

I will try to avoid going into designer jargon land or reference dead theory [*], but the point I am trying to get across is that no matter how detailed or instructive a rule is in a game, the humans at the table still need to interpret the rule, acknowledge when and where it is going to be used, and decide amongst themselves how and what happens.

If a game tells you to roll a die when your character attacks, and if you get some number you do damage – who actually decides when this happens? What is a sufficient attack? Does the player get to direct where they attack or just their intent? Do they get any part in narrating the outcome? Does the result on the to-hit roll confer additional information, such as rolling extremely high might let the player put their opponent at an additional disadvantage?

Or take Apocalypse World’s Read a Sitch move – it says when examining a charged situation. What does “charged” mean? Who determines that? Can the player ad-hoc add context to make an otherwise un-charged situation charged? How much veto does the referee have?

Most games don’t actually explicitly answer many of the above questions. Of course the general assumption for traditional role-playing games is “the referee decides”, but how the referee and the table culture draws the line on these kinds of things varies quite heavily from table to table, and the exact differences may widely shift how the game is experienced between different play groups.

If two groups pick up OD&D and the first plays it like a very regimented wargame, the second more in a loosey goosey narrative fashion, neither are playing it “incorrectly.” Its also not an “accident” if someone interprets a rule differently from how another person tries to read the “design intent” of the game. The game doesn’t belong to the designer, it belongs to the players.

This is why role-playing games are so awesome. The game is yours. No designer and no judge has any right to come to your table to tell you that you’re doing it wrong. The methods you find to work for you, to portray and play your worlds are the right way. If you want to pick up new styles and techniques you converse with other gamers, you chat about things you tried, how that worked out, how people responded, and we as a culture refine our toolbox.

* edit: I am specifically talking about things like Big Model & IIEE, my pal Panic Pillow made a post examining this concept from a more philosophical stance, which is an excellent read