All this talk of social hacking actually does have some application, and that is what we shall discuss today.
The Forge design philosophy is closely tied to its play philosophy which, over-simplified, is that you play by the rules precisely as they are written. You do not tweak them, at least not without playing them as-written enough to understand what those rules do.
There is, however, an extremely common opposing philosophy which I shall call the ‘pick and choose’ model of play. This model is built around the idea that every play-group is playing a game that is ultimately idiosyncratic. They are constructing their own procedures of play by pulling useful tricks and techniques from myriad other games to support whatever the group’s play goals are.
In some ways, the Forge model is an interesting sort of shortcut for writing roleplaying games. (Note that this is not a bad thing, merely the way things are.) Specifically, writing for people who utilize the Forge model of play allows you, as a writer of games, not to explain yourself. You can include a rule that is designed to (say) control pacing of the game, without explaining that that is the purpose of the rule in the text. (Note also that this is the model of the vast majority of board games.)
This works because you may assume that the players will play the game as-written and thus learn, through play, the purpose of the rule in question. They will experience the ways in which that particular mechanic impacts pacing, and with that experience will come some ability to modify the mechanic to alter its effects. Also with experience comes evaluation: it may be decided that the group does not require a mechanic to regulate pacing, perhaps they can handle pacing better on their own using their own procedures.
This model teaches players and groups how the mechanics impact play based entirely upon using those mechanics in the real world, with little (if any) exposition within the game text.
Unfortunately, this is pretty incompatible with ‘pick and choose’ style play, in which players will be evaluating whether they wish to utilize certain mechanics before experiencing those mechanics in play. This a priori (before experience) judgment of mechanics stems from a desire to maximize fun now. The group does not want to have to test the mechanic over a couple of sessions only to find out that it actually is not as much fun to play with the mechanic. (Note that this is partially, perhaps even significantly, a function of the staggering length that a unit of play has in roleplaying. Properly testing a mechanic for group suitability could take anywhere from four to twenty hours.)
Writing for ‘pick and choose’ style players requires an explanation of mechanical purpose. What does this mechanic do for play? The group needs to know up-front, at least in outline, why they should bother with your mechanic. What is it that this mechanic provides that their group would love to include in their play?
One big thing that explaining your mechanics does that can be seen as a negative is that it makes subversion difficult (if not impossible). If you (for instance) have a game designed explicitly to make people question their beliefs, and you feel questioning beliefs is something that everyone should do (especially people who don’t want to do so), then explaining your purpose will cut out that critical target audience. You can’t ‘trick’ your audience into learning something that they would not have sought out on their own, which is unfortunate.
I really want some discussion on this topic. I’d love to hear from both sides of this issue about why one system is better than the other, or even just a list of advantages to be had from one or the other. I’ve gotten us started above, what else have you got?
Tags: Applied, Dense-post, Publishing, Theory
Just a brief consideration: It may not be that Forge-ites really oppose pick and choose, but they see it as part of a design process rather than as a play process. In other words, that by the time you get to play a game, the picking and choosing (where’s my banjo?) has already been taken care of. Pick and choosers get part of their joy from ‘making’ the game a little after-the-fact, tinkering. (Tinker contra engineer?)
In a similar vein, a lot of the rationale appears on the Forge itself, again sort of loaded into the design process rather than the product. Not quite an answer, maybe just a furthering of the question.
Designing for pick-and-choose raises costs, doesn’t it? You need to produce a longer text – labor – and if you sell print copies spend more on production and shipping.
Ian,
I’m not sure I’m parsing you perfectly, but I think I disagree anwyay :)
Specifically, at some level, Forge-style play is pick-and-choose. It’s just pick-and-choose at the ‘what game should we play?’ level. But if you are playing Dogs in the Vineyard, then the expectation is that you’ll play it as written.
Which isn’t bad. That’s a fine expectation, and Vincent is perfectly right to tell people who don’t play it as-written and then complain about not having fun that it’s their own dang fault.
But, that’s a different beast altogether from an explicit expectation that people aren’t going to be playing games as-written. In Forge circles, we simply don’t expect that you’re going to snag some mechanic from this game and some mechanic from that game and just use them whenever you think of it. There’s an expectation of consistency, but that’s not the only way to play.
Thomas
Jim,
I think it depends on how you go about executing your game. Personally, I think it’s possible to make a pick-and-choose game that looks pretty much just like (say) Primetime Adventures.
Of course that’s because I don’t think that games designed with a pick-and-choose philosophy of play have to be designed so that they are the only source for picking-and-choosing.
I imagine it might be possible to simply release a book that is ’15 clever pacing mechanics’ or something like that. As it stands, I think that people tend to pick-and-choose, at least in design. Consider how many games have retrofitted Vincent’s Raise-See-Raise mechanic from Dogs in the Vineyard, but not taken the rest of the mechanics. Dogs didn’t have to be an especially big game to be pick-and-choosable.
So, I guess that, ultimately, I don’t see why pick-and-choose games would be any different in terms of size. I see why they might be, but not that they must be.
Thomas
I don’t think we are disagreeing yet, but let’s see what we can do to fix that ;) What I am trying to say is this: i can look at a Forge game and see a passle of citations to other Forge games, both mechanically and otherwise. Those aren’t incidental, they are part and parcel of it being from the Forge community. The designer has picked out mechanics they think work, combined them others, and layered in their own mechanics. The Forge game is played ‘as-is’ because so much thought and development goes into that.
Which is what I take most picking players to do after-the-fact, without the design process to back it up. It isn’t that the Forge games aren’t deeply indebted to a picking process, it’s just that they don’t think it can be done terribly well in play, after design.
Which is just to say: I think there are similar motives in both communities, it’s just that the Forge thinks those motives are best addressed in a design process rather than a play process. And I’d be willing to grant certain Forge games exemption from this pick and choose model, esp. the early ones that set the tone for later games.
I think rather, “these motives are better analysed and designed for, rather than designing to possibly satisfy a variety of motives via players recombining a smorgasbord of mechanics.”
This enables us to design faster, sleeker, tighter, because we’re designing for real live play rather than hypothetical motives that may not even exist.