[Waypoints] RPGs Are Engines for Making Interesting Decisions
I’ve appreciated the writings of Martin Ralya for several years, from his excellent Treasure Tables site (no longer updated but still an excellent archive of yummy rpg-fodder) and now via his regular participation on Gnome Stew. This morning I encountered his latest Stew entry and decided to jump it right to the front of the line of this week’s planned Waypoints posts. Here it a favorite excerpt, follwed by a link to the entire article:
“Ever since I began thinking explicitly about RPGs from this angle — as being engines for making interesting decisions — my perspective on gaming has shifted. I find myself drawn more and more often to game systems that do that well not just in combat, but in other areas, too.”
- Martin Ralya
RPGs Are Engines for Making Interesting Decisions – from Martin Ralya via Gnome Stew.
Martin is probably not saying anything that’s particularly new or surprising to people who hang out in some play cultures, but I’m very appreciative of the clear and fairly universal way he expresses his point – and that he’s sharing it on Gnome Stew where he’s likely reaching a lot of folks who maybe are thinking “Hey, I haven’t really looked at it from that angle before.” Martin has a nice habit of doing that fairly often, actually, but I think this one is especially potent.
When you look at rpg mechanics from the perspective of empowering players to make interesting decisions and choices (and I include whoever’s running the game as a “player” too) then I think it re-frames the whole process in a way that really appeals to me. In fact, when it is spelled out as clearly as Martin has done, it helps me realize that I would not personally be interested in a game session where players making interesting decisions/choices was not an explicit priority of play. For me, it’s the baseline. Sometimes I’ll be in the mood to make interesting tactical decisions, oftentimes I’m in the mood to make interesting narrative decisions, and there are different points-of-focus and different sockets that I might want to plug into at different times, but I’m always going to want to have compelling choices and make interesting decisions – and experience my friends making them as well – and see what comes of them. Any sort of play that doesn’t facilitate this is going to turn me off. In fact, I have to admit that I am capable of becoming pretty childish and petulant when I encounter gaming situations where I feel like player choices and decisions are not made a priority. I think maybe that’s my personal definition of railroading. And I tend to be that guy who will do everything I can to knock the train off the tracks if I feel railroaded.
Anyhow, that’s a bit of a tangent.
Getting back to the concept of rules-as-decision-engine, I think that Martin’s essay has also helped me clarify something that I think is in the process of forming over my last few Waypoints posts and will continue on into the next several. Now that I so clearly recognize that “interesting decisions” are my baseline for enjoyable play, I can build on that and clarify some other things about my preferences.
For example – let’s say we add in the idea of “meaningful choice” alongside “interesting decisions.” Some of you may recall that last September on Canon Puncture we discussed illusionism, participationism, and meaningful choice, which was inspired by an LJ post from Adam Dray that really rocked. In a blog post related to that discussion, I wrote this:
“It’s all about being able to make meaningful choices. Choices that affect the world, the fiction, the other characters, and my own character as well, of course. It can be big and dramatic and world-shaking, or it can be small and subtle and personal, or anywhere in between, as long as it is a true choice that affects the way things play out.”
Well, I still feel that way – but now I’m able to recognize that there is a difference between “interesting” and “meaningful.” I think if a decision or choice is meaningful, it is also always going to be interesting. On the other hand, I think there can be interesting decisions/choices that need not necessarily be meaningful, at least in the sense that they “affect the world, the fiction, the other characters.” And while in most cases I tend to prefer my play experiences to have lots of meaningful impact, I think I can still occasionally have fun playing in a so called “non-meaningful” way as long as it is still interesting.
I think this whole thing is related to a couple of my recent posts, especially the one about John Harper’s thoughts on “story” games.
I think that somewhere in the nebulous aether between interesting and meaningful is the line (or my line, at least) between focusing exclusively on dynamic moments of collaborative play and focusing at least to some extent on “storyforming” in the literary sense. To me, adding in the notion of “meaning” suggests that a narrative is being enacted – that an interesting premise is being transformed into a meaningful theme. (see the Forge’s provisional glossary if you’re wondering where the hell I pulled out the distinction between “premise” and “theme” in rpgs)
Now, those interesting dynamic incidents of cool collaborative play – those “pearls” if you will – seem to me to only be possible if the players are making interesting decisions in relation to conflicts that arise in a given situation (conflicts of any sort, by the way – not just physical ones). That’s why I would consider the “interesting decision” thing to be my essential baseline.
But I also have to admit that most of the time, I also prefer that there be some discernable objective meaning in my play. Say, a cause-and-effect throughline that strings those pearls together to form something that ends up being more than the sum of its parts. And thus far in my roleplaying experience, that end is usually best served by some attention being paid to story structure. And so that has been my default way of thinking up to this point.
However, later this week I plan to share some interesting points from John Harper, Rob Donoghue, and a few others that have made me see some other angles regarding story-play. So please stay tuned over the next few days as I work through a few more waypoints. And of course, depending on the nature and content of any comments I might get about this or other recent posts, maybe also engage in some cool dynamic collaborative discussion that takes this whole semi-planned process in possibly surprising directions. Who knows? That’s the beauty of this thing.
EDIT: I thought I’d add an example in case I’ve convoluted things too much above.
Railroad: (GM sez) “You’re here to rescue the princess. Roll with it because it’s what I’ve planned”
Decision/Choice: “There’s a princess imprisoned here on this enemy battle station, and you want me to help you rescue her, Farmboy? Yeah, so what?”
Interesting Decision/Choice: “Oh, wait, she’s RICH? And there will be a big reward? Hmmm.”
Meaningful Decision/Choice: “Okay, I’m in, and I’m going to say it’s because of the money, but really, I am a big softie and your idealism is sort of making my own deeply-buried idealism stir, kid, so yeah, let’s go rescue her, and who knows, maybe I’ll even end up falling in love with her and having Jedi babies.”
7 Responses to “[Waypoints] RPGs Are Engines for Making Interesting Decisions”
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Heya!
I am dubious of this “interesting but not meaningful” category. Can you give me an example from your recent play of a choice you made that was “interesting” but did not affect “the world, the fiction, the other characters,” or your character?
The tricky one is “the fiction.” It’s hard to make a choice that affects the fiction in some interesting way without also flagging it with the “meaningful” pennant.
I also want to say that my thoughts about meaningfulness have nothing to do with Premise (or Narrativism in the Forgean sense). When I say players want to make choices that are meaningful to them, I am alluding to something pretty close to Forgean “Creative Agenda,” but not any particular agenda.
If you’re simulating how your Hutt jedi fits into regular culture, then you’ll still want to make meaningful choices. What is “meaningful” to you will be specific and personal to what you want to get out of the game.
Adam
Yes, Adam I admit that I have taken your original post about meaningful choices and twisted it a bit for my purposes.
My angle on “meaningful” here is, as you suggest, focused on the in-game fiction. I’m not talking about meaningfulness to the player – although I totally recognize that as a valid thing and agree with what you’ve written about it. I mean “meaning” in the “impact upon the ongoing narrative” sense, not the creative agenda sense.
Or maybe the more useful way to put in this context is to say that yes, “interesting” and “meaningful” are essentially synonymous in the creative agenda sense, as you are suggesting. And I can enjoy playing in a way that is interesting to me in the creative agenda sense, and is thus meaningful to me as a player. I can – and occasionally do – enjoy making interesting tactical choices and/or interesting choices that remain true to the simulation of the milieu. There are ways to hook me into those that will keep my short-term interest, even if there isn’t any long-term impact on whatever constitutes the game fiction.
i.e a random encounter with a band of goblins could very well be interesting. And thus it would be meaningful to me in that sense. But if it is truly a random encounter, then it might very well have nothing to do with the ongoing narrative, and thus would have no meaning to the characters or narrative impact upon the ongoing fiction.
And I guess that presupposes that I really need to believe that there IS an ongoing narrative in the first place. I”m like Neil Gaiman, I like things to be story-shaped, and I will tend to make up my own story-shaped construction if one is not present. In fact, I usually choose to construe some sort of story even when playing Heroclix. I don’t need to enforce that story on the other participants if they don’t care about it, it is just something I construct in my head so that I’ll be engaged. It’s my socket, I guess.
Which is probably why I’ve said I need at least the presence of “interesting choice” as a baseline. Because I can build off of that, even if it’s in my own head. I’d much rather it come out and impact what’s going on at the table, mind you, but I can at least occasionally satisfy my own tendencies even if it is sublimated, as long as I have a hook to hang something story-shaped on.
Interesting. This opens up whole new cans of worms, I suspect. Thanks Adam for challenging me on this, because it is very helpful and you’ve gotten me to dig deeper.
“i.e a random encounter with a band of goblins could very well be interesting. And thus it would be meaningful to me in that sense. But if it is truly a random encounter, then it might very well have nothing to do with the ongoing narrative, and thus would have no meaning to the characters or narrative impact upon the ongoing fiction.”
Once the DM says, “You are walking down the road and a bunch of goblins attack,” they are part of the fiction. They aren’t just effecting the fiction, they’re IT.
Once they begin to burn a village and chip away at players’ hit points they have effected the fiction. Now, whether or not that makes any sense, whether or not goblins have any meaning or are cool at that moment is a whole other kettle of fish.
Yep, I agree with you, Judd. Anything that enters the fiction becomes a part of the fiction and affects it. Certainly in the moment, and possibly (but not certainly) in the big picture. But I think maybe what I’m trying to get at is floating somewhere in that other kettle of fish.
I’m trying to get at the difference between “the goblins attack” and “the goblins attack because …”
I’m probably using the wrong terms to express my intent. Because all distinctions or non-distinctions between “interesting” and “meaningful” aside, and regardless of whether an incident in play feels story-shaped at the moment it occurs, or whether it becomes part of what a literary person might call a “story” after the fact, what I’m really talking about is that which exists in the space between premise and theme, in the sense in which Ron defined “premise” it in the provisional glossary.
It’s the thing that exists between the spaces where we first heard the name “Darth Vader” in Episode 4 and thought it was cool, in-and-of-itself, and later when it transformed into something even more cool because we learned that “Darth” is a title ascribed to masters of an order of Dark-Force wielding badasses, and then became uber-cool actual thematic meat when eventually we learned that “Vader” is a Nordic word for “father” and thus in the name “Darth Vader” we have the essence of the character and his inner struggles – the Sith Lord and the Father – encapsulated in two simple words that at first were just a really cool name.
What I’m saying is, I was interested when I heard the cool name and saw the cool black armor and heard the cool James Earl Jones voice. That would have been okay by me, even if nothing else ever came of it. If he wasn’t Luke’s father, if he wasn’t the eventual centerpiece of the saga when all was said and done, even if he was just some goof-ass Ming the Fucking Merciless knockoff in cool black armor, that would have been okay.
But when it was given meaning beyond that original interesting moment, when the premise of Darth Vader began to transform into the theme of the whole saga, THAT’s what makes Vader most peoples’ pick for the top 2 or three fictional villains of all time.
I like tagging that kind of thing in play. I like it when the random goblins turned out to have had a reason for attacking. I don’t need to know it in the moment. In fact, my character possibly doesn’t even need to know it by the time the saga is over – although that would be preferable. But in order for it to have felt like a really good experience for me, in some way or another, I will want it to have happened for a reason that weaves somehow into the bigger picture. The “story” if you will.
Reading this, it’s clear that you’re much smarter and more self-aware about your gaming preferences, tastes, and hot buttons than I am, Mick. I found myself nodding and going “Hmm” a lot as I read — this was a great article, and not just because of all the nice things you said about me and the Stew.
I’m also glad that my “make it plain and be open about where I’m coming from” approach to stuff like this resonates with you. You articulated more or less exactly why I write these kinds of articles, and I often wonder whether they have value to very many readers. It’s encouraging to hear, and much appreciated.
And how have I not been reading your blog all along? This is excellent work, and I have some catching up to do. Welcome to Gnome Stew’s links page.
Mick: “But in order for it to have felt like a really good experience for me, in some way or another, I will want it to have happened for a reason that weaves somehow into the bigger picture. The “story” if you will.”
That sounds a whole lot like “meaningful” to me.
Maybe it wasn’t your choices as a player that teased out that meaning, but it was someone’s. In this case, probably the GM’s choices made it meaningful to you.
Under the best circumstances, meaning is shared among players at the table, not kept to oneself. And when you showed the GM how awesome you thought his choice was, perhaps subtly through enthusiasm and your own play, that feedback becomes the stuff of Creative Agenda.
YES! This is what I’ve been saying all along!
(Of course I’m a dick when I say it, while you’re saying it in a much nicer way.)
It’s just I run into this one arguement a lot when I lament the lack of social rules in D&D. It kinda goes like this:
Me: “I wish D&D provided better mechanics for resolving social confrontations.”
Everyone Else: “What are you an idiot? Why would you need mechanics to for acting out your character. It’s called ROLE-playing, not ROLL-playing. Try it sometime.”
Me: …
(I really could tell them what idiots they are, but there isn’t a point so I usually don’t unless I’m particularly spiteful that day.)
The thing is the games I design do have broad mechanics that do allow you to accomplish anything. I consider it of the utmost importance that a good system allows the PC to resolve any action he wishes to undertake if the result is uncertain. But more than that, it determines the degree of effect that occurs as a result. It actually surprises me in this day and age that many players don’t even consider this possible, let alone a standard.
Great article.
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