"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[Scott Christian]

Sure, but there are lots of tables with lots of different situations. Diagnosing what is happening is the first step. There is no silver bullet, and there very well could be no problem at all.

I agree. I was just stating another possible solution that hadn't been mentioned.

 

[Aldarc]

The essays weren’t written in a vacuum, so I can understand why Edwards would keep simulationism at the time (regardless of when he realized “The Right to Dream” was based on a flawed idea). However, I don’t think we need to hold ourselves to that today. The discourse can continue to develop and change.

When I talk about goals of play, I prefer to discuss specific goals instead of a goal taxonomy. The taxonomies are too rigid and too politicized, and the tendency to apply those taxonomies to players and games is incredibly annoying. If there are some traits shared between goals, identifying those can be good, but I’d only want to do that if the grouping provides value (e.g., it allows you to make new inferences or intuit gaps that could be addressed).

Agreed. One of my issues with taxonomies and classification, much as Edwards also says, is that people tend to use them categorize themselves and games and, subsequently, weaponize these taxonomies against other players and games, which I generally find to be quite toxic for the hobby. (It's similar to why I also dislike D&D's Alignment system.) Nowadays, my brain tends to tune people out when they say things like "I'm a simulationist and therefore..." As you say, I would prefer to discuss actual goals of play and how a game's design enables or impairs those goals.

 

[Umbran]

Yep, one thing I think we run into in the hobby is this idea that "if only others would see the light, they would know how bad they have things."

Edwards is hardly the only condescending self-appointed expert in the gaming community. Also not the only person who has a mad on about a particular game or games.

I submit that this attitude, which seems painfully common in the design theory segment of our community, is a large part of what has left our body of design knowledge and principles in such a mess. That condescension is a mark of lack of empathy. But empathy is required to develop practical design principles - the game must serve the people playing it, and you can't figure out what serves them if you don't empathize with them.

Good design doesn't come from, "I know what is good for you." I comes from, "I listen to you to know your needs and desires."

 

[Emberashh]

Good design doesn't come from, "I know what is good for you." I comes from, "I listen to you to know your needs and desires."

The thing is, there's nuances involved. You can empathize a game into a bland experience, aka, make it appeal to everyone and thus it appeals to no one.

The important thing about empathy as game design isn't that you're there to coddle or eliminate unpleasant things, but to understand what feelings your game evokes and hone them to deliver the experience you want.

The practical applications for doing that are when we get into things like game feel and start examining what the game does as it progresses from a physical to an emotional experience.

For example, think of to-hit rolls. When used, they can evoke a solid tension, and the uncertainty results in potent emotional reactions. When we have a flat distribution, ala DND, we have two extremes and generally a lot of "meh" in the middle, and that then gets compounded when many if not most results don't advance the gamestate.

If you took that and did it with a bell curve, the worser results are minimized, and the best results become even more exciting, but this all trades off with a far more consistent meh result.

And of course, at a physical level, to-hit rolls are just slow, and elongates the player-game interface.

So what if we nixed them altogether? Just straight up deal damage immediately, with whatever method?

Its faster, and as a result emotionally feels more immediate and impactful and more like you're doing rather than hoping to do something. You do lose the immediate tension and release, however.

I don't think its a coincidence in an era where video games are ubiquitous that more than a few games are dropping to-hit rolls altogether, or at least doing Degrees of Success, as the tension and release loses its luster when its used in this way to govern more or less everything you do. If it was instead used sparingly, and where it made intuitive sense that you could miss, then it becomes more desirable again.

Missing with artillery feels better than going to smack someone with a sword and now the DM has to figure a reason you just missed.

 

[zakael19]

Edwards is hardly the only condescending self-appointed expert in the gaming community. Also not the only person who has a mad on about a particular game or games.

I submit that this attitude, which seems painfully common in the design theory segment of our community, is a large part of what has left our body of design knowledge and principles in such a mess. That condescension is a mark of lack of empathy. But empathy is required to develop practical design principles - the game must serve the people playing it, and you can't figure out what serves them if you don't empathize with them.

Good design doesn't come from, "I know what is good for you." I comes from, "I listen to you to know your needs and desires."

Good design in all things tends to come from "I have a strong vision for what I want to achieve, and set out to do so."

 

[Scott Christian]

Edwards is hardly the only condescending self-appointed expert in the gaming community. Also not the only person who has a mad on about a particular game or games.

I submit that this attitude, which seems painfully common in the design theory segment of our community, is a large part of what has left our body of design knowledge and principles in such a mess. That condescension is a mark of lack of empathy. But empathy is required to develop practical design principles - the game must serve the people playing it, and you can't figure out what serves them if you don't empathize with them.

Good design doesn't come from, "I know what is good for you." I comes from, "I listen to you to know your needs and desires."

While I agree with everything you say, the last sentence is not really on point. Sometimes, people have a vision, and others don't see it. It's the old spaghetti sauce test (Malcolm Gladwell's TED Talk). Sometimes the designer, be it video game, TTRPG, board game, or any design choice really, can see something other's don't. And they are often heralded for it. Many board games were created with this premise. Heck, some of the beloved D&D rules never went through any testing or listening to other people's comments. It was just people with a vision.

The issue comes when vision blinds you to what is good, and often what is good, can be assessed through the general public's taste. But again, not always, We all know how we all love food analogies: But there have been many a heralded chefs that have not listened to the public, and instead followed their instincts - and their instincts turned out to be right.

But again, these visionaries are not always right. Many (or even most) of the times it's just ego.

 

[Celebrim]

People continue to play World of Warcraft long after they've exhausted all the content. They do so often because it's simply habit and it's where your friends are. The game stops being the point of the activity. The point is to hang out with friends and do some activity. It could be bowling or poker or board games or D&D. I think for a lot of people, the purpose of the game is to be the activity that fades into the background but fills space when there's nothing else going on. The enjoyment changes from learning new things and challenging yourself, to exercising your practiced skills in a flow state.

One of the problems with GNS is that it denied fellowship was one of the reasons players played a game. In other words, it was developing a theory of fun that kept excluding exactly why many or even most people found the game fun. It also kept denying that games which were enjoyed by so many people were fun, taking his own frustrations and bad experiences with the game as proof of something other than his or his friends on failures to engage with the game in a functional way. And let's not get into an analysis of his own games that presumably are what he thinks is fun.

(As a simple proof that fellowship can be part of the design of a game, you can design a game with strong competitive aesthetics - for example the fact that an RPG like Aliens often assigns players the role of traitor or Paranoia often has the players on opposing secret factions - and players primarily playing for reasons of fellowship will often find that aesthetic interferes with their enjoying the game. It's not wrong to design a game that way, but here we have a tangible element of game design that affects player fun and which lies outside of the agendas of play described by GNS. Good design here doesn't avoid or use that design, but it does address to the participants whether and how they should leverage that aspect of design based on their group goals. And yes, you can have conflicting agendas were some players think it would be great to play a backstabbing game and others don't think that would be fun, but that conflict at some level exists outside of any possible mechanics of the game.)

I disagree with his description of how to design a game then, and I disagree with his revised description now.

At a fundamental level, an RPG session is a work of collaborative art created by the participants and art is subjective, and in this case personal, and its creation can't be described by any set of rules simple enough to put into a book. Making that art requires talent by all participants, and the process of making that art in a way that everyone enjoys requires empathy by the participants. You can't make empathy out of mechanics.

One of the easiest things in the world is to see that something has problems. But the ability to see that something has problems is completely disconnected from the ability to figure out solutions to those problems. A lot of people become convinced that because they see the problems that they also have the solutions and become true believers in their own pet theory.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, they go into that a bit:
1. Sunk costs
2. Inertia and cultural resistance ("we've always played it this way")
3. Social/personal control issues

The person who is unhappy would need to realize they are unhappy and be willing to do something about it rather than suffer in silence. There's no helping anyone who doesn't want to be helped.

Well, there's sometimes less a "doesn't want to be helped" but "is concerned that the consequences of trying to fix the problem may be worse than the current situation". There's a lot of grey areas here.

They also mention that it's not always a system change that needs to occur in order to bring happiness to the table. Some approaches to any traditional game can make for better experiences so it may not be completely necessary to pry everyone away from D&D 3e in order to get to a happier state.

Also absolutely true; the only reason I mentioned other games is frequently they have other approaches baked-in if its not fundamentally a mechanical/structural problem.

 

[Umbran]

Good design in all things tends to come from "I have a strong vision for what I want to achieve, and set out to do so."

If "what I want to achieve" is not strongly aligned with someone else's needs or desires, what you have isn't design, it is art.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the group is having fun, that there might somewhere be an even better game for them is not a "problem".

You do realize that response was in the context of gaming groups having problems, right? (Though my "absolutely" was overly strong, as the problems might not be amenable to systemic fixes if they're not rooted in system, but in either case it was in no way addressed to people who are genuinely happy with what they've got).

Having something good isn't a problem. Making perfection the enemy of good is.

However, there's "imperfection" and there's "persistent irritation". I quite agree that some people are prone to having standards that are far more rigid than others and that the latter don't need to upend their gaming experience just because something is imperfect, but if the system is putting a rock in your shoe you should seriously think about taking it out.