Different games, different problems

I’ve been spending a bit of time watching videos on games criticism, most of which haven’t been particularly stand out, but I do notice that a major difference in quality of analysis depends on how well a person can figure out what issues they’re pointing at and to what level these are solved or solvable problems.  So, some categories for thinking about game issues, both useful for analysis or design.

Baseline Function

The first question is whether the game is possible to play at all.  For videogames, this is obvious, since the game crashing, freezing, control problems, deleting saves, etc. is out and out unplayable.  For tabletop games, the question is about whether the rules are communicated well enough that people can play.

In Tabletop RPGs, this particularly is a hard one to mess up, since so many people are used to just fixing issues on the spot or simply inserting play expectations from other games.  My stance that you shouldn’t HAVE to do design work for a game you paid for has been one of the most contested ideas, but it’s one I stick to.

This category is pretty rare to find as a major concern, though a lot of gamerdom likes to take any issue and say “This game is completely unplayable”, which, of course, means you have to try to pick out exactly what they’re talking about.

Actual Design

Assuming the game functions (which is, the lowest of bars to meet), then you can actually get into what kind of game you have created, where the fun parts are, what choices or skills you have to develop to play it well, and where it challenges you and what feelings the game can induce.

For a good understanding here, you have to be able to identify – what kind of fun the game is aiming at, how it does that and whether that’s working for it or not, and to separate whether it’s your preferred kind of fun or not.  Again, unfortunately, we see a lot of people say “not MY type of fun = broken”.

Content Length

Content length is probably one of the best things to get a grasp on in all forms of media, games included.  What makes a great (movie, book, tv series, videogame, rpg campaign, etc. etc)? It knows when to stop.  Every kind of thing has a limit to about how much good you’re going to get out of it, and beyond that, you just dilute what is good with time wasting badness.

For example, there’s been plenty of comedy movies made where you  take some joke or schtick that is probably great for a 5 minute skit, where it would be hilarious, but it’s painful to watch as a full movie.  Or a TV series hits the point when it’s not good anymore, because they’ve mined out the good stories (or, at least, the stories their team is capable of envisioning.).  Videogames and tabletop RPGs both suffer the problem of often working backwards – “X part is fun, therefore if we add another 50 hours onto it, it will be 50 hours of more fun, right?”, which isn’t true.  Other types of games are usually much better at realizing different types of fun can only put out so much, and to cut it around that.

Game analysis about content length is usually… not great.  That pitfall of “Well just give me 50 more hours of what you gave me in the first 10” is something a lot of gamers get into, as well.   The reality is that anything that is really fun, leaves you wanting more because it stops before it stops being fun.

Artistic

There’s definitely something to be said for games as visual, auditory, or crafted materials done right.  We love a great sound track, a good sense of visual style, illustration or character design, animation, a great set of cards, a crafted token, etc.

Review on these grounds typically tends to be more informed, if only because all these artistic aspects we already have existing critical language and tools of analysis for.

Media Violence

First – I don’t mean “oh no, this game depicts violence” but rather, when the game is a propaganda piece of emotional violence – racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

It’s not hard to see the problem if the whole game has an overt premise along these lines, but what often becomes the point of contention with the usual gamer population is when a game is about a normal game thing (“Save the Kingdom” “Fight the aliens”) and throws in these things on the side, mostly because the creators have internalized the bigotry so deeply they don’t even SEE what they did as wrong.

Nothing kills fun as fast as getting randomly hit with “You people should know your place” equivalent when you were,  you know, playing a game about racing or something.

Communicated Expectations

Understanding what you’re getting into with a game is more important than many other types of media – because the commitment level is higher.  You may have to learn new rules or mechanics, develop skill to play the game.  It may be hard to tell how long you will be playing the game overall, though the more time you’re expected to put in, the more you need to communicate what kind of game it is.

This is also why short games can be more experimental.  If you have some weird one-trick pony game that gives a unique experience, but isn’t that “fun to play”, and it’s only 5 minutes long, that’s not so bad.  If you have a game that is 80 hours of play, I want to know what to expect ahead of time before devoting time to it, much less 80 hours.

You also need to understand the longer the game is, play itself creates the expectations – switching it halfway through, or at the end, might actually anger players.  (Much of the backlash to the Mass Effect games was that a core game loop – make a story decision, get a cutscene or NPC acknowledgement about those choices, was removed for the end of the trilogy.).

Some of the communicated expectations happen in the lead up to the game being released, as well as the advertising and imagery around the game.  You can find a lot of criticisms about games where these things mismatch – whatever genre you tell people to expect out of a game, that’s what they’ll be looking for.  And some of it might be having to deal with existing preconceptions – if your game seems “close” to something that exists, you’ll need to highlight what it does different so people don’t get caught up expecting it to do what it’s not about.

Commitment Design

When you create a game, you’re creating an experience.  Like any kind of art, it need not always be fun or enjoyable in the immediate sense of the word, but it should be something people are generally glad they experienced.

It’s also true that sometimes, unexpected experiences* are part of what you are crafting.

That said, the more time, energy, effort, cost, someone has to commit for the experience?  The more you should be giving them in the way of information about expected experience so they can decide if they want to put the commitment in, or not.

This is critically true of games, if only because games usually require more investment for someone to play them (learning rules, possibly mastering some level of skill) and, unlike most other media – there’s no standard for how long a game is (especially when we talk about games played over multiple sessions).

This is why, media that keys off an unexpected experience, usually works best if it is short.  If I play a fun little puzzle videogame, that turns out in the end to be really dark and heavy, but it was only maybe 30 minutes long – if I didn’t like the experience, I also didn’t invest too much time and effort into it.   If I play a game that demands 90 hours of my time, then turns around and changes the expectations drastically, I might be actively pissed, since I put a lot of energy into getting whatever I was getting from the majority of the game.

(Longtime readers might remember my analogy of people wanting to play Hearts and getting Poker suddenly thrust into their face – this same logic applies to a game design as well, especially where the game dictates specific experiences.)

A well designed game makes the experience of playing it part of the reward – it’s fun to play.  And, of course, if you pull that out from people to something they don’t enjoy, you have effectively “punished” them for the effort of playing your game.

*Obviously, I mean the overall experience – such as a genre or type of story or gameplay, not, say, “Wow everyone should know the entire plot of a story before experiencing it”.  If I watch a comedy, I don’t expect heavy tragedy.

Conflict, Flags, and Communication

We’ve been playing a Universalis game, and we’re about 7 sessions in so far, and the game clearly has legs for a lot more, if we wanted.  One thing that occurred to me is that we’ve always managed to do a good job finding the juicy conflicts we all enjoy, without the need for a Flag mechanic in the system.  Which got me thinking a bit more about what is happening differently here?

Flag mechanics in action

Flag mechanics are used a lot in Narrativist focused games where protagonists are controlled by a single player, and circumstances of fictional conflict around that protagonist is created by someone else (usually the GM, though other players often can contribute as well, through other characters’ actions and dialogue, if not authorial level mechanics).

What the Flag does, is allow the player controlling a protagonist to say “Here is where I think the fun conflict is for my character” to everyone who can bring that conflict into play.  You can take the same character – “Master Swordmaster” and have very different games and stories depending on whether their Flag is:

• “Face my rival and take back my Sifu’s school” or;
• “Let go of the path of killing”

Both could be really fun and interesting – but again, very different.

Alternatives to Flags

Other games have different means of getting around this.  Ben Lehman’s Polaris, for example, uses the antagonist player’s declarations and the bargaining mechanics to allow people to hone in on what conflicts are actually meaningful rather quickly (if a player isn’t fighting back against the conflict, it doesn’t matter to them.).

Universalis, takes a very different approach – everyone can be the generator of character motivations, declarations of success/failure, and circumstances that create conflict.

You don’t need a Flag because there’s no separation of who is the one controlling character motivations and who is the one creating conflict throughout the game – you only make the division potentially within a specific scene, and, often enough, we might take up the side of characters we don’t actually WANT to win the conflict, but in order to just see the most interesting thing happen.

For example, if I want to see two brothers end up in conflict, I could, simply spend points to set up motivations that are at cross odds.  Because this is happening in front of all the players, and everyone has the potential to challenge or block me, it’s not like I need a singular Flag to point it out – people go “Oh! I see where you’re going!” and either stand aside or drop more points in to further cement/twist that situation, or oppose it.

Underlying Play Structure

Ultimately, in all these Narrativist games, we’re basically looking at the classic story formula:

(A Character) -> (Has a Motivation) -> (Takes Action towards that) -> (Thing in the way of the Goal) -> (Outcome, potentially with costs) -> (feeds back into Character to change or stay true to their current self).

So the question is, where and how do your mechanics help the group walk through each of those steps?

Flags fit well for games with traditional player/GM roles because they tell everyone the Motivation (sometimes which Actions might make sense or not) and also allow the GM to come up with fitting Obstacles and Outcomes in that chain of events.

In the case of Universalis, however, every single step in that chain can be passed around the table, so players are not stuck trying to “throw messages over the wall” to the GM, but can, take direct action and give traits/facts to characters producing Outcomes as well as changes to the character leading all the way back around.

Luck vs. Skill in games

A generally good talk on the differences in game experience and what it means for your game.

While this is directly applied to gamist RPGs, the interesting twist to realize for other types of RPGs is that you are looking at how well the rules allow you to navigate either in a Narrativist experience or Simulationist one as well, and the level of mastery required.  Also, and specific to tabletop RPGs, is the element of how much the fictional positioning plays in this whole experience.

Tactical games, stats, and balancing

This is a pretty excellent video explaining the issues around balancing with attributes and stats, and the issues of things like dump stats and so on.  Since the videogame in questions is directly descending from D&D, and the speaker is also a tabletop gamer, the information is very directly applicable to tabletop games and design.

What I think is really interesting is that he highlights the difference between characters being “viable” vs. “optimized” and that the greater the difference between the two within your given game, the harder it becomes to balance encounters.  He also points out that if something is basically required for viable play, it shouldn’t be optional, as there’s no real play value gained by hiding “gotchas” or traps in character creation, which is a pretty common problem for tabletop games.

 

Signal Boost: Emily Care Boss’ RPG Theory Roundup

Emily Care Boss has an excellent post listing links and history of RPG theory.

Given that she created the “Lumpley-Care Principle” along with Vincent Baker, which basically highlights the point that anything that happens in the game fiction, does so because the group assents to it – which is a fundamental point to how tabletop roleplaying works, you should definitely check it out.

Designing Easy-To-Modify Games

One thing that’s pretty interesting is the level to which tabletop RPGs expect the groups playing them to hack and change them.  There’s pretty much three ways to address that, and it’s worth considering how those work:

“Design it yourself” (AKA anti-design)

This would be “Rule 0” or “if you don’t like these rules, make up your own”.  This has been in rpgs for decades, and specifically is a non-helpful way to do things.  It also gets used a lot as a defense when the rules didn’t do what they’d claim they were supposed to do.

I’ve heard arguments in the past “no, no, really the game was made poorly to FORCE you to become a better gamer”… which… is ridiculous.  You might make that argument about certain forms of training and the need to ramp up difficulty, but in games?  Difficulty should be about a challenge factor in playing the game, not a challenge to making the game work – the challenge in basketball is playing basketball, not tying people’s legs together and blindfolding them and giving them a half-flat ball.

Labels/Re-skinning

This is pretty much the easiest way to make an easy-to-hack game, though the changes are all effectively superficial.  The Pool, HeroQuest, octaNe, Universalis, Fudge, FATE…  all of these games have easy to swap labels while keeping the mechanics identical.  What’s the difference between a heavy armored robot and a small fast robot?  The labels “Heavy” “Armored” vs. “Small” “Fast” applied to them.

On the other hand, while this allows easy genre and element swapping, it doesn’t actually make for any mechanical differences in hacking by itself.  Often these systems use a universal resolution and there’s not a lot more to hang on it.

Unified Principles

Vincent Baker has a nifty chart about how rules work vs. how we actually play at the table. (you should read the whole post, it’s almost 9 years old but still very relevant).

This is an idealized design-to-play set up.  The turquoise is the actual rules in the game book/text.  You’ll notice it’s like 98% within the other circle – which is “how we play at the table”.  In other words, nearly all of the rules or advice in the book are actually useful in play.   You’ll notice of “How We Actually Play”, the part that isn’t covered by the game text circle, is broken into two sections – Ad Hoc decisions, and Principled Decisions.

Principled decisions are the choices you make because they fit in with the principles the game has communicated to you on how things generally work in the game.

Say you’re playing D&D and there’s a gas explosion in a mine.  “Oh gee, the book doesn’t have rules for that… but it’s a LOT LIKE a Fireball or Dragon’s Breath.  Let’s say it does this much damage and you make a Saving Throw for half damage”.   You can make that call and it works with the game because it’s based on common principles within the game.

So part of a game design is how well you communicate the principles of your game – which doesn’t have to be pages of theory and designer notes, but it does need to be consistent across your rules.

Hacking a game and considerations

So, from the other side of this, as a gamer, it’s worth looking at what you need to consider when hacking a game, which then shapes things people should think about when we’re talking about game design for modification.

Fragility/Balance

How much does modding the game risk throwing things way out of wack?  Some games are pretty open to tossing stuff in without too much trouble.  Some games are an exacting system of currency and bumping it around breaks things quickly.  If you are designing a game with the intent for people to modify it, you need to try to aim for less fragility and be clear about which parts are more/less able to be fiddled with before breaking.

Crunch

How much effort does it take for me to hack things into your game?  Is it a few minutes or nearly hours of trying to put together numbers?  Less crunch makes easier hacking.

Complex Combinations

How many OTHER rules do I have to think about this hack intersecting with?  Are there ways it could do things very different than what I intend because of a complex interaction?

Existing Tools

What’s already in the game as rules that I could use right now or with the most minimal changes?  Why should I use one as opposed to another?  (Example: when should you make this an attribute roll vs. when should you make it a skill roll?)

Principles

What are general goals of the rules?  What are rules they follow over and over?  What sorts of things work against this?

So, here’s an example: Apocalypse World has a principle in the rules of “Soft Moves” vs. “Hard Moves”.  A Soft Move is something the GM does that warns about trouble coming, a hazard or a threat.  A Hard Move is something the GM does that has consequences, now and lasting – whether that’s injury, an NPC getting killed, etc.   A core principle is that you have to give warning, you have to go through at least one Soft Move and give the players a chance to act, before jumping into Hard Moves.

Because this is generally a good principle for a lot of action games (forewarn danger, then enact danger) as opposed to “gotcha!” traps, it is something people caught on to and find AW very hack-able to many other things (Monsterhearts, Dungeon World, etc.).

On the flipside, the D20 flood of bad materials is a pretty good example of what happens when you have both high complex combinations and little in the way of principles communicated.