The quotes on those websites look like they come from a common source though, my bet would be that first issue of Pegasus.

Also, and I am not making this up – I think I ran into this exact same woman once. At the very least, it was the same “conversation,” right down to the “talk so much and say nothing” line. It’s not just a Midwestern thing then, as this was in the South.

All I can think of is http://xkcd.com/592/

No, it’s not an exact analogy, but come on. “We introduced this discussion about a complex conflict to the internet, and then the conflict was magnified! WHO KNEW”

Before the crazy lady, Hans is right, the audio is fine on headphones. After that, he gets quieter and the kids get louder, but at that point, I’m not about to stop listening.

So I would say: yes, people should follow the rules. But, as designers, we should also design rules that people will follow. Is that enough agreement for you to say what you were hoping to say?

It gets worse after the crazy lady. It dampened Davids spirits a bit and lowered his voice volume. I didn’t recognize that on-site.

I’ve only started listening, but the audio is fine. The background noises never intrude upon the discussion, but I’d probably recommend listening as headphones-only, as the levels vary quite a bit when going from your voice to David’s (you’re much quieter than he is).

Can we agree that as a game designer it’s reasonable to expect people to play by the rules? Assuming they’re not broken, or the few times we have a weird situation pop-up? If that’s something we can’t agree on then there is nothing else I can say, as it’s built on that.

The reason I ask is; we can decide to play any way we like, as humans with free will. But I’d like to explain fictional causes more, or at least my likely slightly flawed interpretation of them.

Also, I’m not trying to set some trap, and hit you with, “cause the rules say so.”

I think the important thing Vincent is getting at is understanding why the “you have to tie it to the fiction” effect happens. As I understand Vincent’s argument, the reason that the dice->cloud then cloud -> dice relationship causes this to happen is because the fiction is a vital step. You can’t “forget” to do it without the game stopping. If you push forward a 17 on your dice in Dogs, the opponent doesn’t know what to do with it until you say what the fiction of your raise is. In contrast, in D&D, if you roll your damage against me, I can just look at your die result and mark down my lost hitpoints. Even if the rules tell you to give a vivid description of your attack, it’s easy for that to fall by the wayside because we don’t NEED the fiction there the way we supposedly do in Dogs. As I understand the argument, the cloud->dice stage is the critical step that makes that happen because that’s what makes the other guy sit there and look at you expectantly until you give him the fiction.

That’s a pretty good argument. However, if I know that’s what you’re waiting for, why do I still give my fiction instead of short circuiting the process by saying “this is 17 coming with d8 fallout” instead of the fiction I’m supposed to provide? Is it the fact that it’s supposed to be your decision? What reliably distinguishes dice->cloud;cloud->dice from dice->cloud;dice->dice?

Basically, I think the cloud/dice analysis stuff makes some sense, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to understand or agree with all the nuances until I see it applied to some subtler situations, or see other places where the games working well (or not) are the same places that this theory predicts they will work well (or not).

I reviewed your site when you commented. I’m not exactly sure what you’re offering? I am interested in seeing the card game is it something that is sold, or was there only one copy used for academic purposes?

On the Fictional causes thing. I think the problem may be that you’re thinking of it as a tool to anaylze play as it occurs? I think the perspective is more of as a designer looking at rules.

What I mean to say is you can make your decisions for all kind of reasons that I can’t address, but when you make that decision and push forth the dice, you have to tie it to the fiction. Those are the rules. It’s not necessarily about how you make your decisions, but what happens after you do.

Now I think you can have rules that help, and support people wanting to play in a specific manner, but I believe that is likely considering your design on a more macro level.

I am I making sense… does this address your question?

Sorry I’ve been lax on replies… going to try to get to it over the next few days.

I really wish Vincent would write a book about game design, he has a way of explaining things in terms that make sense to me. However, from a few of his comments in the interview, it sounds like that is not something he’s interested in.

I’m really glad you talked a bit about the culture of The Forge. As an person who just recently returned to gaming it was one of the first places I went for help designing a game and, although I did learn a lot there, most of it had nothing to do with game design.

Just like you, I’m finding that getting answers to game design questions is difficult and confusing. There doesn’t seem to be a single good source for information and I think that is partially due to the number of varying theories in the game design community. I’m finding that the answers I need are out there, but I have to search a few dozen threads on different forums, listen to 3 podcasts, read a number of blog posts or articles and buy a couple of games and then assemble the information on my own, to find a suitable answer.

You took the provocative position that The Forge doesn’t teach game design and neither do various sites that are part of the indie crowd.

I have owned this resource for a couple of years but never deployed it. But if you and a pal want to give it a try … who knows.

“GameGame
Ludology meets Understanding Comics.

In GameGame, players compete in designing games. Players collect and trade cards in order to create a complete game design. In between, one player gets to play a game publisher, while the other players try to sell their game concepts to her. In the end, the best game design is decided in a vote. Let the best game win!”

Here is the link: http://gamegame.blogs.com/gamegame/2006/02/gamegame_20_rel.html

It’s part of Aki Jarvinen’s dissertation:
http://acta.uta.fi/pdf/978-951-44-7252-7.pdf

And a shorter introduction is available here:
http://gamegame.blogs.com/gamegame/2005/07/digra_paper_on_.html

I too am of the opinion that players need more guidance on how to approach particular games than they have generally received.

@Josh W – I would like to hear more interviews with veteran gamers as well (like Clyde’s upcoming Dave Wesley interview) but I think that may be more about “how to run conventional RPGs” than “how to design RPGs”.

Evaluating the “hard won knowledge” and find out how older games supported a different style of gaming is something a lot of so called “old school” bloggers are doing. Sure, we fumble around a lot in the dark, and sometimes sprout jargon. It can happen to everyone.

Really good show Clyde. This will result in some hard thinking, and an attempt at solving why my latest blog post have been unpostable for a few days. I was kind of looking at an clouds and arrows problem.

I have to say I laughed at “I think that’s well explained” when you’d already suggested that getting Vincent to make sense would be your triumph.

Where I feel you make a real triumph is “how you should approach this game”, for both players and GM, quality prodding there!

I found the stuff about the forge strange. Is it that the forge from the outside is like those anecdotes that war veterans can tell each other that sound unfinished to anyone else? Like a few hard slogging post-multi-failure-designers have this background of experience that is uniquely grown, but because they’ve hit enough of the same experiences, it allows them to interpret this stuff?

So as a poor newbie designer coming to the forge, you get something that’s 50% academic term definition, 50% samurai war proverbs. But here’s where I differed; the moment you start designing your game, asking for feedback, and people start asking “what is it about” then you start entering that body of conversation that the other stuff is an offshoot of. I think that stuff like the terms crystallises on the outside of where the helpful knowledge can be found, because these people are still game designers not glossary writers!

But if you don’t go in there, make guesses, and make loads of people suggest your wrong, then you have this weird loads of offcuts from debates. I don’t know how much you asked for advice on designs, but giving and receiving advice has been a huge part of me getting some of the core ideas at the forge.

When I saw some of Ron’s essays, thought “nope but close, and well thought out, looks like there’s people here I can learn from”. But one thing I reckon though, is that many people see glossaries, essays, conversations impenetrable from the outside, and get pissed off, because this stuff seems to want to supersede their practical knowledge, short-circuit their oral tradition, piss on games they have a lot of good memories using, and uncover stuff they do intuitively that they are quite happy to continue without thinking about.

Maybe someone needs to go about interviewing grognards, valuing their hard won knowledge, particularly in how they make things work rather than dealing with “problem players” or “problem GMs”, draw out good memories, find out how older games supported that, and what they added in terms of record keeping and adjudication, and somehow find a way to make it valuable to them to think about how they do things.

Basically total charm offensive from the theory crew, bringing in the experience of those people who are recommended as good GMs. May well start to improve the opinion of “forge people” among detractors or lead to amusing cognitive dissonance at the least!

It’s also not clear to me that “fictional causes” is the right way to describe what’s happening. It seems like there’s more bi-directionality to those arrows than the diagrams imply. For example, the “figure out what fallout dice to roll” thing could just as easily be interpreted as a dice-based decision dictating the fiction you narrate — e.g. “I want him to take d10 fallout so I will describe my character shooting him.” Or maybe that’s playing Dogs wrong?

Thanks, man.

What do you mean by the “positive” part? Sounds like you extracted something I didn’t; I’m not following that.

Yes. That. I think the problem can occur the other way around. Say a game tells you to roll dice when you have a “conflict.” That’s not a very good trigger. That’s my own thinking though, thinking about what Vincent said; he never made that claim during the episode.

Clyde: Great interview as always. Very glad to see more stuff from you. Keep it up, man!

Daniel, stop beating yourself up, dude. I wasn’t wasting my time, I love that shit. Love it. You’ll likely find that my supposedly great suggestions don’t work at the table, but it’s an inch by inch thing. Just keep moving forward.

Good to run into you C-dawg, as always. See ya again at FMW!