Yudhishthira’s Dice

Hi Brand,

I think you’re misreading the idea of a Creative Agenda. Ron’s essay argues that you get better design when you focus on one CA, but at no point does it have to be “hardcore”.

TSR’s Black Box Intro to D&D has been one of their best selling products in their history- because it both supported a single CA (gamism) AND refused to get hardcore about things(compared to AD&D, and even D20).

Forge theory never argues that CA has to be intense at all. My silly campaign of Feng Shui was just as Narrativist as Dogs in the Vineyard- even if it was less emotionally harrowing. A game of Teenagers from Outer Space can be just as Simulationist as a campaign of Twilight 2000. And sure enough- T&T can be just as gamist as Rune or D&D 3.5 with every single supplement and issue of Dragon Magazine.

And yeah, I’ll agree with you- people play to have simple fun with clear goals- the problem is that some games give you contradictory goals. That’s when a game is trying to be everything to everybody instead of picking a CA.

And I’ll also agree that single CA games won’t necessarily have a better chance of getting folks into gaming. What WILL is a socially popularized game, either by a massive advertising campaign, or else something where people can meet attractive people of the opposite sex, and celebrities endorse it. But a single CA game WILL avoid a lot of the problems that you can see simply by checking any forum of a game that isn’t clear on its CA- “My players are power-gaming” “What is realism?” Etc. Etc.

Bankuei,

You are right, that is what CA is in the official documentation, and pretty much what it should be.

However, there is a very definite hard core element to many discussions on the Forge and the diaspora in which “Story Now” and “Maximum Game Fun” become synonymous (falsely) with “Play Hard All The Time” or “It’s only Narrativism if you make a hard point” or similar things.

To pick on Vincent for a minute* did you see this article about theme and making theme in games? Spot the part in which he calls out Master and Commander because it takes the “easy way out” and doesn’t make the hard call and say you can’t have both? Okay, then up to this post and my response about how even if you have both main characters as duel protagonists it’s got a theme, but it’s a softer more “acceptable to the bourgeois” theme?

That right there is a part of what I’m talking about. To lumpley (and me, in my personal games) theme only sticks if it hurts. To the many, many people who loved Master and Commander it was good because it let both protagonists get both the things they wanted, as long as they worked hard and were good people. That’s the simple “American values” message of the movie, that is the theme, and that is why those people liked it. Because it didn’t make them hurt their notions of what is possible, because it had a happy(ish) ending, and because it said you can do both.

So while it’s great that we want to step on up and go for the TPK, and have the theme where you can’t keep both duty and friendship, we also have to remember that isn’t what a lot of people game for, nor what they watch movies or read books for, and so need to keep that in mind when dealing with CA. Not all CA is about the extremes of CA, and most of it is, in fact, pretty damn tame. Egri is great for writing plays that bite the soul, not so great for writing a Hollywood blockbuster.

*Which isn’t fair, because Vincent never says he’s designing for everyone or for non gamers, he’s designing specifically for himself and people that like specific things out of their games, but I’ll pretend that isn’t true to make the point.

Or, to put this all more clearly:

CA is good. I like CA.

However, we get a lot of things tossed into the soup with CA, and often take them as the same. We, like bad ghost busters, cross the streams.

We also assume that because we like something, because it made our games better, others will like it as well. This is partly true, but not so far as we often want to make it so. I do not believe that Sorcerer, for example, would ever be a successful mainstream game — it hits it’s CA well enough, but it doesn’t hit the intensity that most people would be comfortable playing.

So, really, I’m sort of riffing off and disagreeing with Ben’s post right here to say that it isn’t just that no one CA has the lock on the “breakthrough to mainstream” (or even “non indie players/theorists”) area — but that ANY CA will fail to do so if it is not at the correct level of intensity for the players you want to get in your game. Giving fluff to an old school goth won’t sell, and giving hard and morality challenging choices to someone popping bubblegum and watching That 70s Show won’t either.

So it isn’t just “gamist vs. narrativist” it is actually against the whole idea of “strong player choice about difficult or important decisions is what will make a game popular with group X” in any situation where group X is not people that like making important and/or difficult decisions — which is (so far as I can tell) the majority of both mainstream gamers and mainstream non-gamers. You don’t just have to hit the right CA, you have to hit it with the right amount of force.

You don’t just have to hit the right CA, you have to hit it with the right amount of force.

I don’t think anyone who is trying to hit large markets and has a good understanding of people is going to argue with you on that.

Chris

Dude, don’t be dissing on That 70s Show. They sneak the theme-till-it-hurts into more episodes than you may think.

I get what you’re saying — that if we want gaming to expand, we need to tailor it to be where the audience is, we need to make it fit into people’s living rooms rather than force them to come outside and play.

I agree, but I think you’re playing Captain Overstatement again, and you’re coming off a little too forcefully against Forge-ish specialized play, which I don’t think is your intent.

It’s not that either theme-till-it-hurts or been-n-pretzels play are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it’s whether you are matching your design to your audience, and no one design will appeal to all audiences. There will never be the One Game That Everyone Plays. There won’t even be the One Game That Mainstreams Roleplaying. There will always be games for the hardcore gamers, and games for the softcore gamers — as it should be.

No one (sane) really argues which is the better game, Monopoly or Diplomacy; they’re different games for different markets, and for different times and situations to play them in. One of the things that I’ve actually really liked about Ron Edwards is that he started his Big Model thang, clearly has a preference for Narrativist play, and then turned around and made Donjon, explicitly gamist, and revitalized his own interest in gamism and showed how it could be fun for completely different reasons than narrativist play.

One of the problems (I blather on) is that for so long the gaming community has had to made due with what they had or to force one system to play in a different style that we have a sincere ‘anything can work in any way’ sentiment. I’ve heard people argue that you can use Risus for deep emotional roleplay. Well, I suppose you can, but why would you want to? You can also make sculptures out of mashed potatoes; that doesn’t mean that clay isn’t a better medium. But gamers have this kneejerk reaction whenever you try and affix a label or even an intent to a game. Whenever you say “Game A is good for Style B” there’s a chorus of “But you can use it for X, Y, and Z, too!” This sort of forceful retrofitting of system to different style is probably a large part of that geek baggage that puts off potential new gamers; in the rest of the world, there are specific tools for specific tasks. In our world, everybody seems to think that everything is a Universal Tool… when it’s really not.

More games for specific markets, in conclusion: good idea. Those games may or may not be something to make the Forge Boys slaver and howl, but… oh well.

Um, beer-n-pretzels, not been-n-pretzels. Having actually been in pretzels in that terrifying industrial snack foods incident in 1983, I wouldn’t recommend it as a style of play.

La Lud,

A couple points: 1. Ron didn’t make Dunjon — that was Clinton. However Ron did do a lot about how Tunels and Trolls kicks ass, and is in general a very cool guy. I’m not ranting specifically against Ron (belive it or don’t) or Vincent, or Ben — it’s more about the ideas generated by that those who read their work without fully getting why they say what they say.

2. “More games for specific markets, in conclusion: good idea. Those games may or may not be something to make the Forge Boys slaver and howl, but… oh well.”

Yes.

So, I cannot accept the idea that games designed strongly to one CA or another will have any better chance getting people into gaming.

I have to totally agree with this. I think if there is ever going to be a game that sucks people into hobby it is going to have to be some hybrid beast so it can appeal to people who are just looking for a new diversion, while subtly showing them that there are other posibilities (which could be something as simple as advertising for other games).

Oops, Clinton. Anyway, point still stands: after the Forge defined GNS and had its own preferences, the folks there worked to experiment and enjoy styles of play outside its kneejerk preferences.

…if there is ever going to be a game that sucks people into hobby…

I don’t think there is ever going to be a game. It’s far more feasible that there will be a couple games, and there’s no reason they can’t each be geared towards a different CA — just not with the volume knob turned to 11.

Keith,

I hear ya. I also hear La Lud. And Bankuei.

I also, every time I get into this, wonder if I’m not full of sound and fury but signifying nothing, because I keep hearing John Tynes, who said something like: “Sure, RPGs will be mainstream and vastly popular. They’ll be a cultural obsession. But not until we have more immersive technology. Once you can have a MMORPG that lets you be there….”

So, yea… the system in .hack//SIGN would make us go mainstream. Probably nothing else will.

::shrugs:: I am Don Quixote, and this my windmill.

Hi Brand,

I don’t know, I think if we had either a media blitz of advertising with very hip celebrities pushing rpgs and/or a tv show or movie focusing on it as a hip thing to do, we’d see it hit mainstream.

For example- what if instead of what we got for the D&D movie(ugh), it was instead about playing D&D? And actually cut back and forth from the folks at the table and what happens in game, ala The Never-Ending Story? And you throw in Jennifer Aniston or some other equally popular folks, and before you know it…

In comparison, we can look at the violent upswing of longcoats and shades after the Matrix hit theatres…

Chris

Bankuei,

You said “In comparison, we can look at the violent upswing of longcoats and shades after the Matrix hit theatres…”

There was? Maybe living in LA and Toronto has skewed me, as I thought people had been dressing like that for years.
Anyway, we’ve already got Vin Diseal talking about how D&D roxxors on Jay Leno, the chick that was the vulcan on Enterprise talking about how she played RPGs once and thought it was sexy, and so on. It isn’t a blitz, and a big enough blitz may do something, but the early signs on my 8 ball point to “It doesn’t seem likely.”

Or at least not in the long run. Even if we got Jennifer and Selma making out while playing D&D we’d probably only see a minor and temporary jump in interest. We’d be like parachute pants and MC hammer.

Or I could be wrong. It happens about every other time I say something, so I’m used to it by now.

Why do we want to gaming be mainstream?

Do we think the quality will go up (unlikely)? Do we think that game designers will get paid more (a very few will)? Do we just want to be able to say ‘roleplaying’ and have people on the bus understand what we’re talking about?

Immersive technology has already made some roleplay common, if not mainstream. More people understand WoW and EverQuest than D&D/WoD/Exalted/Insert-Game-Here. But the roleplay available there — and the roleplay available through any technological immersive medium — supports only a Simmy or Gamey kind of play, and not even the broad scope of those kinds of play. People interacting online is fundamentally different (not worse, not better) than people interacting around a table. There are some things that can be done better (pretty graphics, quick system computations) but a whole lot that can’t measure up (discussion of social contract issues which includes non-verbal cues and in-depth interaction with your fellow gamers).

Maybe when we have plugs in the backs of our heads, we’ll be able to do all of that online, too, but at that point, there will be so many changes to the broader culture that ‘now we have it’ is kind of a moot point.

Hi Brand, La Lud,

I’m not necessarily advocating that it needs to become mainstream, I’m just looking at it from how every other advertising agency has pushed whatever they wanted to blow up.

And I also recognize that it would, at best, produce a fad, unless it happens to be backed by a stronger social structure to keep it going. The things which normally turn a hobby into something longer lasting definitely don’t apply to gaming as it stands now:

- Group competition(such as leagues)*
- Gambling
- Pick up games at bars, clubs, the beach, etc

I’m simply pointing out that the issue of making a game go mainstream of course has nothing to do with CA and everything to do with larger, stronger social structures and issues.

We’d need a media blitz for the initial fad, but we’d need a different social structure to gaming to keep it around.

Chris

*and, yes, tournaments do happen, just not on the “Win 10,000 dollars for Magic” variety. LARPS also address some of these issues in terms of social structure as well.

Bankuei,

You are correct sir.

To make them mainstream we would need three things: the media, the social structure, and games they would want to play on an ongoing basis.

We can’t do much about number 1, and number 2 is difficult because those kinds of structures are not only needed to support the numbers, they need the numbers to support them. Which is why, I think, I put so much (too much) emphasis on the game aspect — because its the one thing I think we can do right now at the level we’re at.

La Lud,

I don’t necessarily want it to go mainstream. I’d actually be kind of happy if the “industry” went boom in a couple years (after my publishers get their moneys worth out of the stuff I did for them, of course) and we went to a more cottage industry model in which all games are “indie” games to one degree or another.

However, if it did go mainstream there could be some of the advantages that you dismissed. Pay for most people in the industry would be better, much better. There would be more money in general, which in our culture means there would be more tallent and different focuses drawn in over time (look at what its done for Hip Hop, video games, etc). It may not get us more games that we’d like to play, but it would get us games that would be what more people want to play, and they would get very good at what they were doing. (Or the whole thing would fold in anyway, just like all those fads that never developed the structure to support them.)

In general, however, I’m talking about it because other people have been talking about it, and I think there are some issues with many of the approaches being taken. I also have some interest in it myself, but less from the “mainstream” angle (which I don’t consider achievable of profitable right now) but more from a “different niche that isn’t currently being exploited” angle.

All:

Interesting discussion.

I’ll just chime in to say that a media blitz isn’t nec. required. A good viral campaign could do the trick, as well.

Of course, the problem with viral marketing is that it can be a victim of it’s own success.

That loops back in with the comment about needing improved social support structures to keep something like an explosion of gaming going long-term.

Which is just my way, you know, of saying that hey, Brand is right that #3 on his list, breakout games, are pretty much the only thing game designers can control with any degree of confidence.

Cheers,

Jason
“Oh, it’s you…
deadpanbob”

Brand –

I think you’re conflating two definitions of “focus,” but I forgive you because you are pointing out that everyone else does, including me.

Essentially, I don’t think that a game (in text or in play) can serve two seperate creative agendas at the same time. I think that this is totally seperate from how “hard-core” the game is wrt the creative agenda it does serve.

When, in classic Forge discourse (read: Ron), one says “a game must focus on one creative agenda” it is saying that it cannot have two, not that it must be straight focused like a laser beam.

Does that make any sense? Essentially, the focus and intensity are two seperate issues, completely. In particular — lack of intensity does not permit lack of focus.

I, personally, think that the break-out game would be laid-back narrativism (like PTA) or family-style gamism (like, say, Yahtzee). Either way, it would have to highly structured.

I would totally divorce it from any sort of advertising campaign. A good product will find its place in the world. Advertising just accelerates the time-scale and also sells bad products.

yrs–
–Ben

Ben,

Yes, focus and intensity are two separate issues. I really was talking about intensity — not in the way it is officially used in GNS theory, but in the ways that it sneaks into discussions in unexamined ways.

I was, to be honest, responding more to things the folks like Vincent and myself have said than to Ron (except in the context of Sorcerer) or generic vanilla GNS. There is what the theory says, and then there is what people building off the theory say, and the two are not always the same.

Gamism, for example, is based on step on up — which is a loaded term, but can be dealt with. However a lot of talk about gamism in design focuses on how hard and intently people will play to win, play to step on up, and so forth. However in much play, both RPG and non, this is not the way a vast number of people (possibly even the majority) play. I know a lot of poker players who play looking out the window, I know a lot of boardgame players who will deliberately not play a winning strategy in a game like Risk because they don’t want to irk people, and so on and so on.

Part of this ties into social agenda, as many people are playing to socialize rather than to play the game hard to win. However, there are even those with the social agenda of playing that don’t come to it with the intensity that a lot of GNS talk assumes that gamists will come to a game with. The focus is fine, the assumed intensity of the players isn’t.

Same deal with narrativism, and sim — a lot of people like the easy going, the simply for fun, the I can have my cake and eat it too. Not everyone wants to play the nar game where you’re Master and Commander and can’t save your friend and still catch the other ship because doing so would somehow ruin your theme (it doesn’t, btw, it just makes a theme that some — Vincent being one of them — don’t like).

So when you say this: “I, personally, think that the break-out game would be laid-back narrativism (like PTA) or family-style gamism (like, say, Yahtzee). Either way, it would have to highly structured” I think we are in agreement.

Now, as to advertising, I have to say I disagree. Of course we probably also have different ideas about what advertising is. In my books there is a very real way in which making posts to the Forge about the development of your game, opening a forum for your game, and all such things are advertising. If you don’t do at least that level of work in getting the word out the world will not find your product and it will not find its niche. And there are many a product that have wonderful abilities, that have changed and rocked the world, that only ended up working because someone advertised them correctly. There were phones before Bell, cartridge shell rifles in the 1600s, and a whole host of good ideas and great products that died on the limb because someone believed that all that they needed was a good product and it would sell itself.