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+
+  Characterizing a Game's Rules
+
+This is a response to this post by lumpley
+<http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/anycomment.php?entry=156> (AKA
+Vincent). You should read at least the first few examples of it before
+reading this.
+
+It's important, when analyzing something, to simplify it to its most
+important elements, where that simplification doesn't discard anything
+important. When just thinking about something, you should be careful not
+to simplify too soon; work out the patterns, then simplify. I think
+lumpley has simplified some things wrong, so I'm going to start over
+with the un-simplified case and work down to something simpler.
+
+
+      The Eight Elements
+
+The way I figure it, the activity of game-playing can be reasonably
+characterized by the interaction of eight kinds of things.
+
+Starting from the die and proceeding clockwise, we have: mechanics tools
+(die), quantifiable game state (figures), props (crown), players (smiley
+faces), munchies (Dew), the fiction (cloud), the rules (book), and,
+overseeing it all, the gamemaster (frowny wizard).
+
+In more detail: mechanics tools are used for randomization and
+resolving, e.g. dice, coin flips, possibly calculators, measuring
+instruments at athletic events. Quantifiable game state is things like
+hit points, locations of Monopoly tokens, cards in your hand. Props are
+game-related elements that are in no way game-mechanical, like painted
+figures used for atmosphere, or an audio soundtrack played in the
+background by a gamemaster. The fiction is some set of things that are
+true about the fictional world in which the game is taking place
+(Wittgenstein: "the world is everything that is the case"). The rest are
+self-explanatory. (This is not to say that all games need a gamemaster.
+I am just avoiding oversimplifying too soon for games that do have one.)
+
+Now, when we talk about interactions that occur over the course of a
+game, any game, we can understand that those interactions are governed
+by the rules. If Bob gets pissed off and punches out Gene, and the game
+at hand doesn't involve players actually resorting to real-life
+fisticuffs, then their activity is outside the game and shouldn't be
+diagrammed on the chart. Any activity that takes place in the game is
+going to be governed by the rules.
+
+Let's take a sample rule for a monopoly-like game. "Roll a die and
+advance your token that many squares on the board."
+
+Each teal arrow is an individual interaction. Each blue arrow is a
+"moderating" effect on an interaction. (It's hard to draw a three-way
+interaction with a single arrow unless they happen to be in a line). So,
+first, the player rolls the die (as moderated by the rules); then, the
+result on the die indicates how to update the game state (move the
+token), which is performed by the player, as moderated by the rules.
+
+Now, a few things are clear. First, the player doesn't have to be the
+one to move the token. Another player might move it instead if it
+happens to be hard to reach for the first. The player doesn't actually
+have any choice; so the fact that it's the player picking up and moving
+the token is irrelevant. Second, as described earlier, /every/
+interaction is going to be moderated by the rules (at least weakly), so
+we're always going to have a moderated-by arrow from the rules; so
+there's no reason to draw them. That leaves us with this simplified
+drawing:
+
+Note that this representation of an interaction is about as
+/conceptually simple/ as lumpley's--it only has two arrows--but it has
+more information, because we haven't oversimplified the participating
+elements.
+
+Now, you could argue that I should go ahead and simplify at least some
+of the other elements away--that many of these icons are obviously
+unnecessary to the game, e.g. the props and the munchies. Just to
+confuse matters, here's a different kind of game, with rules-moderation
+arrows omitted.
+
+"If the player bounces the quarter into the cup, then the player can
+require any other player to drink the cup." Here I've used lumpley's
+notation of an arrow going through a middle item to indicate moderation:
+the mechanics of whether the quarter (represented by the icon here) goes
+into the cup or not are determined not by a random number generator, but
+by the laws of physics. Again, I think it is overkill to indicate
+moderation. Of course, this is a game best played in moderation.
+
+Now, let's imagine a game that's GMed, and has rule #2 of lumpley's: "2.
+Subtract the roll on the damage die from your character's hit points."
+I'll omit moderation-by-the-rules arrows, of course.
+
+Ok, so the player rolls the die (arrow from player to die). Of course,
+the player does this under the watchful eye and guidance of the GM, so
+we need a moderation arrow there. Then, the player updates their own hit
+points on their character sheet, again under the watchful eye of the GM.
+Guess what? Everything's under the watchful eye of the GM, so let's
+screw those GM moderation arrows.
+
+To be honest, I don't understand lumpley's arrows, so maybe lumpley
+won't understand mine. Lumpley uses an arrow from the die ("tokens,
+things, props, representations") to the faces ("the interactions of the
+player themselves") to indicate the rolling of the die. Why? No clue.
+Maybe it should be three arrows: 1. the player rolls the die
+(player->die). 2. the player reads the value of the die. (die->player).
+3. the player change the value of the hit points. (player->die)
+
+Of course, as I've pointed out, the reading of the value of the die and
+updating of the hit point value by the player involves the player in an
+entirely uninteresting way, so I don't think step #2 is interesting. But
+my way of interpreting 2 & 3 combined is to draw from (on my chart) die
+to figures; since lumpley combines mechanics tools and quantifiable
+state into a single element, he'd have to draw an arrow from the die to
+the die, which perhaps explains why he did it the way he did. Of course,
+if you want to show that this die-to-die interaction is moderated by the
+players by making it go through the players, you'll have a curving line
+go from the die to the players and then back to the die; which is
+basically the same as the three lines I proposed above.
+
+Now, note that if the GM follows the same rule to handle an NPC, on my
+chart I'd have to change the source of the first arrow. I don't need to
+update the second arrow. I'm not distinguishing between state
+represented physically on a character sheet and state kept entirely in
+the GM's head.
+
+Ok, here's a more complex lumpley rule: "5. If your character's opponent
+tries to disarm your character, make a Hold Weapon check. If you fail,
+your character is disarmed, and you thus suffer the unarmed penalty
+until you retrieve your weapon."
+
+Again, imagining a GM'd game, we have the following sequence. The GM
+(pointy hat) decides that the the opponent tries to disarm (fictional
+cloud). This state of the fiction requires that the player make a Hold
+Weapon check (die roll). [Note that, in truth, the hold weapon check
+involves various quantifiable state--character level or strength or
+whatever, so perhaps the arrow here should be more subtle.] On a
+failure, we imagine the character is disarmed in whatever manner
+(non-quantifiable fictional cloud) and also in the quantifiable state
+(figures).
+
+Note that the GM-causing-the-fiction is something I added explicitly to
+clarify. Note that it's misleading to draw an arrow from the fiction to
+the player; really it should be that the fiction moderates the need for
+the Hold Weapon check. But hang on for a moment; really, the GM chose to
+put the NPC in the "state" of "trying to disarm this player character";
+since there are some limited numbers of such states that the rulebook
+has explicit resolution rules for, maybe /that/ should be considered
+quantifiable state, too?
+
+This is important because lumpley notes in the comments that a
+distinguishing characteristic of the RPG is the fact that arrows emerge
+from the fictional cloud at all; no matter how cleverly you describe
+events transpiring in Settlers of Catan, none of the other players are
+going to let you build an extra road segment.
+
+So maybe the arrow from the fictional cloud should point to the
+quantifiable state: sometimes the fictional cloud implies certain
+discretely quantifiable states-of-the-world for which there are explicit
+game-mechanical rules. That state then mandates the Hold Weapon check.
+(I still don't like the idea of "mandates" being given by an arrow.)
+
+If you go look at lumpley's
+<http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/anycomment.php?entry=156>, I'm
+not sure what's going on there. The long arrow from the fictional cloud
+to game-tokens/state is "make a Hold Weapon check"? Basically, I think
+I'm not sure on where lumpley's coming down with quantifiable vs.
+non-quantifiable state, so I'm trying to be explicit about this.
+
+The other thing we can conclude is that, for this rule at least, we
+might as well have folded the GM in with the players into a single icon
+on the chart. The "Hold Weapon roll" rule is going to apply to any
+character--whether PC (rolled by player) or NPC (rolled by GM)--and
+whether they were attacked by an NPC (action chosen by GM) or PC (action
+chosen by player). However, in a classic game-mastered game, the players
+have limited director powers compared to the GM, so there may be other
+sorts of rules where this distinction is significant. (Or perhaps more
+in a meta-rules sense?)
+
+Finally, I want to suggest that while it is true that RPGs make special
+use of the fictional cloud, this is not a trivial matter. On the one
+side, as suggested above, if there's a rule for it, it must be on some
+level quantifiable and belong to the quantifiable area. Looking at the
+flip side, it's argued that for a game like Settlers or Monopoly, the
+fictional happenings can never affect the game outcome; they are purely
+atmospheric. However, I carefully included a "props" element here that
+is purely atmospheric /even for an RPG/.
+
+Lest you think that this simply applies to gamers wearing silly hats,
+consider that in some gaming groups, players are not rewarded
+game-mechanically for talking accurately or realistically as if they
+were their character (e.g. so as not to penalize members of the group
+who are poor actors). Similarly, in some groups, a character with
+fast-talking skill will succeed independent of that character's player's
+plausible fast-talking scenario (as long as the player at least tries);
+in which case any of those details are purely atmospheric.
+
+Vincent could still conclude (fairly) that these elements are indeed
+atmospheric; they are part of the fun and style of the game, but they
+are not interesting from a standpoint of how the game works /qua/ game.
+However, as you move away from strongly-mechanical games and you move
+into more freeform narrative games, removing any notion of quantifiable
+state, this gets fairly muddy. Perhaps this means quantifiable state
+starts to blur into fiction state. But if that blurring and slipperiness
+means it's hard to distinguishable quantifiable state from
+non-quantifiable fiction state, I definitely think it's wrong to try to
+clump quantifiable state with game-mechanical tools.
+
+
+      Other Directions
+
+The eight elements also offer up some opportunities to think about other
+things. (A friend points out an important scenario: an arrow from Dew to
+rules to GM to fiction: somebody spills soda on the GM's rulebooks, and
+the GM has the character attacked and killed by magical blue lighting,
+no saving throw.)
+
+In a computer game, the computer takes over the responsibilty for
+managing most (all?) interactions. However, those interactions still go
+occur, simply moderated by the program. There are still quantifiable
+states, mechanics for updating them (possibly randomly). There may be
+fiction (human-authored, mostly), and this fiction is updated and
+revealed as a consequence of the mechanics. (There is, of course,
+generally never any feedback from this non-quantifiable fictional state
+back into the game; it's text and cut scenes that are output-only.)
+
+
+      Comments
+
+You should probably comment back on the original thread
+<http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/anycomment.php?entry=156>.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+home <~/index.html> : sean /at/ nothings /dot/ org