im thinkin about this post which compares tabletop rpgs to computer rpgs to books
what i want from a computer rpg is generally a single player experience, played over a long time, a deep system of mechanics to explore, i like making builds, i like making decisions to affect the outcomes of worlds, i like exploring weird societies and outlooks, i like buildng and maintaining structures and factions. i like being a subtle manipulator rather than a chosen one and a boistrous leader of men - so i want the game to give me different modes i can employ, in the space where i can choose the mode i want. i like having little dudes and customising them and moving them around. i like executing combos. i like setting things up an knocking them down. i do not like canned narratives, i like procedural narratives.
most computer games don't offer all of this, so i'll take what i can get, but its the more the better. in hte past i've said that the more the thing is like what i want, teh more it is a rpg, but its semantics. books and tabletop rpgs are not a good way to get near this desired crpg experience though. tabletop rpgs being necessarily short experiences where you have to do what other people want, and youre limited what youre friend is willing to imagine, dont offer the deep systems and long games, the system mastery angle that im looking for. you get the thing where you want to act liek a dick because thats what your character would do but actually youre obliged to not act like a dick, to be nice to your friend.
but the think im really trying to get at is - there is this hollow feeling that you get over time with games. you start to see the edges of the simulation, and you cant do all you want, and you have to play within the constraints of the game. ive been playing dragon age inquisition and it wants you to be a specific character that isnt the character i want to play , sort of the geralt problem, the fallout dad problem, and im making do. you get bored with mechanics and stories once youve explored them and youre just doing the same things over and over. you get to where youre just trying to get to the next area and see all teh content even though the system has becoem boring and youre not really engaging with it anymore. games are good at being skinner boxes and you get the 'one more dungeon' pageturner thing where you feel like youre obliged to keep playing even if you dont want to.
in general i assume this means the game haas offered a hollow version of the system i want, and that i'd be satisfied with a richer version of the system. but i still end up feeling hollow with games that deliver rich systems like for example with games like slay the spire - even where the mechanics and systems are quite rich you will wear them out eventually
i like to think that games can be a affirmative and worthwhile and meditative experience while still offering endless and generative play - but its a difficult goal to achieve and a lot of games dont strive for this, and still make money and are successful in the ways we define success for games - and i feel like not everyone wants what i want, so maybe the kind of experience im looking for is niche and not that desirable a thing to strive for as a developer - and even a game striving for this thing still can leave me unsatisfied, i might never be happy with anything
i dont think having a blast with friends is teh solution to this problem, i dont think this is generally a problem with single player experiences but with the abject horror of existence
in conclusion i like rpgs because they let me make a little guy
Friday, 17 December 2021
feeling hollow
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I had a "seeing the seams" experience relatively recently. Some friends gathered to play Outlast and, not having touched a controller in god knows how long, I was excited about going back to my digital roots. The experience was nice at first, we were willing to become immersed and let the game scare us. We took turns playing, passing on the controller when the asylum killed us. After a couple of tries, it soon became clear to me that we weren't playing a horror game but a puzzle. I could see that the game wanted me to get from A to B while trying to avoid X obstacle, and I was groing increasingly frustrated at my inability to find the most effective way to do so (plus, I was never very good with controllers). I tried to convey this frustration with my friends, and they thought that the tension I experienced had to do with the game being scary. I could see that they were not experiencing the game in the same way.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this feeling you describe is an unavoidable part of becoming intimately familiar with something, anything. When you know a thing or two about literature, a book stops being a book, and you somehow start to see how the whole thing has been assembled and executed. The clever tricks and the masterful choices. The same applies to architecture, music, gardening, hairdressing or cheesemaking. There is delight to be found here. And a whole 'nother dimension of disappointment, of course.
Perhaps that's why we (try to) build ttrpgs in our little corner of the internet? To become those neat little tricks that we would've liked to see somewhere else and share them with others, so that they can become equally marvelled... or as severely disappointed as we often are.
Anyway, thank you for the post!
i agree that things coming apart is not a video games phenomenon strictly, narratives can also fail to transport you, the problem has something to do with promise of games is different than the promise of narratives
Deletelike writing a narrative about a vr experience is easier than filling out all the edge cases and actually building that vr experience from the ground up. in the narrative case there are fewer moving parts and lower skill ceilings and its easier to get it right. systems are harder to build than narratives, theres more edge cases, theres more moving pieces
so even within video games its easier to write a narrative about a system than it is to build this system, so a lot of games cheat, i want to say cheat, by not even trying to build the system. they build some hybrid thing thats more makable. there can exist more games that dont really deliver on the promise of games, than there can be games which do. and they sell just as well, or even better, so its as though the promise doesnt matter… but um, i think it matters
but then a game can try its damnedest and still feel hollow… so its a moving target and its hard to satisfy. we dont expect narratives to be endlessly replayable. you can watch the same movie over and over but its not expected. they expect that youll watch it once and move on, its not expected to work the same way every time, in perpetuity, its not really fair for me to ask this of games, but i do
another problem is that writing a spec for a game is actually writing a narrative rather than writing a system, so you can write spec for whatever fanciful games you want without testing these, which is sort of like writing posts on an rpg blog, the post can be taken to represent the system but its not actually the thing unless it truly delivers on the promise, whatever that really is
but a good post on a rpg blog doesnt really have to be a game, it can almost just be a idea for a game, if it conveys the idea for how to play that game at your table, the actual simulation can be a potemkin representation of that simulation, so long as the idea is ultimately conveyed to that other person, the reader or the dm or the player at the table can fill in the blanks, thats basically the magic of tabletop games
but for me writing down the mechanic that is the rule is better, stronger, because the thing really is the thing.