Design Pitfalls
Falsifying the Development and Theoretical Foundations
My plan was not necessary to return today to the topic of design again, but in a roleplay design group on Facebook a model which seemed very flawed were brought up. Instead of pointing all flaws in it, todays article here concerns itself about pitfalls in the design and shortcomings in the underlying philosophy.
Hopefully the article about Design From First Principles was sufficient to make a case for why having a theoretical framework to build a model on which the development of a concrete roleplay system can be constructed. But that is only one side of the coin, the flipside which can be observed in academic research and the scientific method is that a thesis has to be tested. Or in the open market one could speak about viability studies, but my leanings (some might call it biases) towards education instead of the business world should be by now very apparent.
The beauty of this falsification process is that it leads to better models, theories, and products. Since the development or research of any project does not stop after a success, which can be nothing more than a false positive. No, it looks for the design weaknesses and tries to eradicate them.
In a perfect world the peer reviews and playtesting for roleplay systems would be sufficient to analyse, criticise, and discuss all the issues. Sadly, in reality some motivated reasoning might still slip through, leading to academic fraud or faulty products. The pivotal part here is not to fall into despair or to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Fail Faster
Imperfections are actually a boon, while thriving for perfection usually remains a fool’s errant. Instead of endless doubts and trying to find all the minute friction points, it might be much more healthy to be transparent and let people look into the projects on the regular.
Having such a mentality allows to gather different perspective often and thus to iterate on the projects faster. But this requires to let go of the ego. Which brings us to the other problem with perfectionism — some people cannot stand that they could be perceived as less than infallible. And there are a lot of people who mistake confidence for competence. The whole Dunning-Kruger things is based on that, but that is a topic for another day.
The linked YouTube video of a TED talk is over a decade old, and still one of my favourite presentations ever given. Maybe because I yearn for the same thing and can actually enjoy updating my views on the world or what I thought I knew. Of course this can be exactly the trap I warn here about, that conformation biases are seductive. But I try (not always successfully) to point out when something is just an opinion or preference and when I present an idea I will usually frame it as a hypotheses like in my article about horror in which I present a counter proposal to Lovecraft’s idea of the oldest and strongest fear. While so many people love to present their ideas as facts.
Getting stuck in a paradigm or making any idea part of one’s identity and thus become ideological about it might cause stagnation. My progressive attitude (some might call me woke) could be seen as an ideology as well, but I am not bothered by such labels. It is after all the nonconform folks that usually bring innovations to the table, which puts me in good company. I would say, even Jesus (should that be a historical figure) was obviously quite a rebel who could not stand people who only lived by the book.
Scenario Writing
All these considerations are not just for system design, but equally of interest for the development of adventure modules and scenarios. I pivot here to that topic because it feels to me that the scenarios are very often a mere afterthought for many roleplay systems.
Techniques for pacing or tension are often lacking or contain horrible advice like fudging dice or railroading players towards a predetermined outcome so that a story happens. That is why the bulk of my design addresses the moment to moment play and the core procedure to facilitate that.
In a sense one could compare me to the pantser in the book writing space, while I love to have plenty of theory knowledge under my belt, I dislike to outline my narrative pursuits. Instead in writing as well as in play, I like to explore the themes together with the figure which I puppeteer through the fiction. Just like I did with my dolls when I way little.
For me the emergent narrative based on thematic exploration through character driven play is what I am striving for. That means my design is not about combat encounters, monster stats, or random tables. Instead the plan is to have after the core manual is published scenario anthologies and sagas (I might have said that in my very first article on the blog here already). This means that scenes are all optional proposals to be picked in order to portray the figure in the light the participant of play wants to have. And the scenes themselves are instead of encounters or event tables, a presentation of prompts which allow to interact with the theme of the scenario.
How does this relate to todays topic? Easy, like in system design there are many ideas of story beats. I have mentioned John Truby in various article, Blake Snyder is another that has a beat sheet for his Save the Cat framework, and Josep Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is another outline that allows the steps along the journey to be read as beats. My distaste for pretty much all of them is no secret.
My biggest gripe is that they all lead to plot driven narratives, but like I said, my preferences are more in literary fiction which is usually more character driven. And thus all the beats have to be interrogated to fit a different type narrative context. That is the field in which I seek exchange with others, not just module writers, but all kinds of fiction authors or lovers of improv theatre and what have you are welcome to join discussions about how to have these narratives.
I do all this for the love of narrative media, but if someone would choose to become a paid subscriber, then I can promise that I will provide special time for consultation in these media to the extent of my capacity. But again, there is no pressure here or missing out if one just reads along.
As a small tease for February: I plan an article about a story beat that I found missing in Campbell’s work, as well as Burton’s (who I mentioned in my previous article with his The Heroine’s Labyrinth), even though it is a scene that can be found in the Iliad, the bible and pretty much every book of the A Song of Ice and Fire cycle by George R. R. Martin. Some folks who follow me on various social media might already know what I am talking about, since I have complained about this missing before. But I have not yet ever written a full article on it.