I touched on this extremely briefly on Thursday, sort of by accident. Mendel then pointed it out in passing. Here’s where I expand a bit on one of the things that theory is good for.
The purpose of playtesting is to provide you (the designer) with some sort of understanding of the emergent properties of the rules. We call these properties “emergent”, generally because they’re fairly unpredictable to us. It’s not that these properties are unpredictable by nature, but rather that we don’t have solid models to predict them.
A solid theoretical model of roleplaying helps us to predict how the game will work in action. At the moment, rather than predicting, we are generally reduced to trial and error to figure out what’s going to happen.
But contrast that with modern engineering, or even marketting. To some degree there’s still trial-and-error, there’s still a lot of “get out there in the real world and see what happens”, but there’s also a lot of accurate modelling and prediction. You want to build a bridge? Well we can build an extremely accurate computer model before putting down the first bit of concrete. You want to market a product to a specific demographic? We’ve got techniques that are effective for that.
Contrast this with roleplaying: for the most part we have only the vaguest idea of what a specific mechanic will do in play, and there are lots and lots of unpredictable emergent things. This is why playtesting is so important: we don’t really have solid models for predicting complex interaction of various mechanics. We don’t even have very many solid models for the impact of specific mechanics on play.
Now, to be fair we do have some very broad things, and we’re getting more stuff all the time. There’s a pretty good understanding of some of the dangers of using certain techniques (such as “Task Resolution” mechanics), and we’re starting to see that there are powerful techniques out there like explicit scene framing, but… To be honest, we don’t have a lot of good models that help us understand when we should use explicit scene framing and when we should use some other technique. We don’t, generally understand the advantages and disadvantages of many techniques, or the alternative techniques we could be using.
For me, one of the big things theory does, is teach us about that. We can use the models developed by theory-heads to better design games up front, to reduce the length of the playtest cycle. Since roleplaying is a fundamentally human endeavor, and humans aren’t really fully predictable, playtesting will always be necessary, but I imagine a day in the future when we have a good enough grasp of theory that first draft designs do, for the most part, what the designer intended.
Sure they’ll be imperfect, and sure new techniques will be developed that don’t fit into the existing models, but people will be able to look at a design and see the sorts of behaviors it is supposed to promote in much more detail than we currently can. I can look at Dogs in the Vineyard and pretty clearly see that it’s set up to test for escalation, I can look at Capes and see that there’s a strong economy between “winning” and “losing”. But the deeper details? I can’t see them from the text alone, I’ve got to see those rules in action. Maybe one day, I’ll see much more without the action.
That’s one of the things theory is for.
Tags: Foundational, Theory
What about the difference between Designer and Reader levels of understanding? For example, CR does mostly what I wanted it to, but readers don’t know how it’ll behave without playing.
Maybe DitV behaved exactly like Vincent wanted it to, and each bit he put in resulted in what he thought it’d result in, but for us readers, we can’t see anything unless we play it.
So, what will theory do? Both? But what is actually more important? I think helping the designer is more important, the readers are meant to play it anyway.
Guy,
I meant to get back to you about this earlier. Anyway…
There is no difference, at least not at this level, between ‘designers’ and ‘readers’. There is only the level of theoretical understanding you have. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a professional civil engineer or just a construction worker when I read a set of blueprints for a bridge, all that matters is my level of theory understanding.
That’s not to say that I can’t be a construction worker and just do as I’m told and get a fully fucntional bridge. It’s not like I have to have a theoretical understanding to get anything out of the blueprints, but in all honesty the engineer is in a similar boat. He doesn’t actually have to have a deep theory background, he can just use trial and error until he figures out what bridge-building techniques work and which ones don’t. It would be expensive, probably in cash and lives, but it could be done.
All that said, theory is likely of more utility for a designer than for most players because the player can simply follow the designer’s instructions. But that doesn’t mean it’s more important to the designer. He can generate the same instructions through numerous cycles of trial and error (playtesting) without any real understanding of theory. It’ll just take him longer.
Thomas
But what do the players get from understanding Theory?
We know what the designer gets, shorter playtest cycles and less unknown variables, but what about the players?
Two things:
1. Knowledge, which is a worth thing to have all on its own.
2. Evaluation skill. If you know how games work, then you’re much better able to evaluate whether a given game will work for you and your group without playing it. This includes the ability to tinker with the mechanics effectively, changing the things your group doesn’t like and putting in things they do, but this bleeds into the designer thing.
Thomas