Quote from: estar on June 02, 2023, 10:17:53 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
The fact you don't see a connection doesn't mean no such connection exists; it just means you don't see it.

I coded video games back when the tech was such that it was possible for a programmer to make something decent in their hobby time. Later, I coded up a complete simulation of the Mercury Space Capsule that was accurate enough that you could use the original NASA check lists using the Orbiter Space Simulator.
https://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/. In my day job I deal with user interfaces for metal cutting machines as one of my primary responsibilities. Coupled with the fact my company is a small manufacturing firm, there isn't an area of software development that I don't code for at some point during the year ranging from web interfaces, database development, 3D graphics, and computer-machine I/O. Also, I had several suggestions accepted by various researchers working on the design patterns for software development.

Any particular qualification I am lacking to render an opinion on the difference between videogame and RPGs?

Yes, actually. Cognitive or Behavioral Psychology. All these games are arguably algorithmic psychotherapy devices. I am not going to say that I require a PhD or something--this is a forum for laity--but if you don't know what shock induced aggression is, or the difference between short term and long term memory....you probably have some reading to do.

A working knowledge of informal fallacies and argument composition would also help. Appeal to authority is an informal fallacy, and your argument below is an amputee victim from a John Carpenteresque movie.

Quote

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AM
Video game design is literally derived from tabletop RPG design. The Fallout SPECIAL attribute system resulted when Obsidian lost the rights to adapt GURPS into a video game medium and hand to re-brand.

A tabletop RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a human referee.

A computer RPG is where players interact with a setting as their characters where their actions are adjudicated by a software algorithm.

Sound pretty close right? Except for one thing. What a software algorithm can deal with versus what a human referee can deal with. That one element makes the two completely different experiences even if they use the same mechanics under the hood.

Tabletop roleplaying campaigns work because there is a human referee listening to what a player wants to attempt, adjudicating, and describing their circumstances. How does a human referee adjudicate? They have options, they can adjudicate on the basis of their life experiences, what they know about the setting, or using procedures found in a wargame. The human referee can judge that given the circumstance the outcome is certain and describe the results accordingly. Or it is uncertain and the use of dice is called for.

In contrast, a software algorithm is a series of predetermined judgment calls. The developer along with their team imagine as many circumstances as they can for the setting of the game and then code the responses. Yes they have similar options to the human referee before they decide to code. But once decided it is baked in stone until they have a chance to make an update and change their mind. As a result, CRPGS are just more sophisticated "Choose your own adventure" books. Even if you introduce the latest AI models, it is still an elaborate "Choose your own adventure" style book.

...And?...You realize that you're not done, yet, right?

If you're just arguing that video games =/= tabletop RPGs, no one will disagree with you. But that doesn't actually establish that you can't learn things from one field and apply them in the other. To make that case, you need to assemble a deductive logical syllogism, and you would need a second premise and a conclusion.

As you did not feel good enough to finish the argument, I am now compelled to write up a straw man for how I would have completed this argument.

• Major Premise: Design principles from one game genre cannot be applied to another game genre with fundamentally different internal workings
• Minor Premise: Video games and tabletop RPGs have fundamentally different internal workings.
• Conclusion: Therefore you cannot take lessons from video game design and apply it to RPG design.

Put like this, the problem is more apparent; the major premise is exceedingly pessimistic and is probably not actually warranted.

Quote

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:46:47 AMThat is also what limits a human referee game model; the human referee only has so many skills and knowledges. There are things that individual GMs can't do if you over-rely on the GM because, while the GM might know everything about the game, the GM also almost certainly doesn't know everything there is to know about game design. You need to have a fair three-way handshake between the game designer, the GM, and the players.

Other forms of roleplaying such as LARPS, MMORPGs, CRPGS, etc. require a team of people to pull their campaigns off. You have to coordinate the efforts of dozens if not hundreds of individuals in a particular way. For what they do the results are amazing and there is no way for tabletop roleplaying industry or hobby to compete. Unless you focus on what they can't do.

Where you see limits, I see possibilities. Game design is not the challenge. The challenge is help hobbyists be better referees in the time they have for a hobby. Since the focus of what we do is players pretending to be characters in a setting. The primary focus is on helping referees come up with interesting settings, interesting characters, come up with some aids (i.e. mechanics) to help adjudicate when players do things as their characters, and finally advice and support how to keep this going throughout the session and the campaign.

Most of this is not addressed by a game. When it is, the result invariably feels constrained and limited. They are mostly metagame issues about how a campaign is setup and managed.

As for as game design goes a good RPG will
- Communicate how the setting works for example the combat and magic subsystem.
- Tersely describe elements of the setting for example a character sheet, or a UWP from Traveller.
- Teaches a novice what they need to know to run a campaign in that setting (or genre) for example the various GURPS worldbooks like GURPS Egypt.

Finally, folks have a remarkable ability called abstraction. Pick the right abstraction and whatever complex task you are trying to teach will become far more manageable. Something I learned through the experience of developing and supporting software for metal-cutting machines for four decades. Writing a good RPG is about abstracting a setting (or genre) in a way that a hobbyist finds fun and enjoyable as a hobby. Even detailed systems like GURPS with all the options are abstractions of how a setting works. Part of what makes a good RPG designer is figuring out the right level of abstraction for their work.

If you actually believed what you just said, you would have no reason to play anything besides The Pool or perhaps FATE. Even Lasers and Feelings has extraneous fluff which will get in the way of your human adjudication.

I think a better metaphor for game design is a bonsai master wiring a tree.

If you aren't familiar, bonsai is a horticultural art where you carefully shape and prune a tree, usually containing it into a small size and giving a young tree mature or weathered appearances. If the tree took any shape it naturally wanted, the tree would grow to a full size and probably not have a particularly aesthetically pleasing appearance, so the bonsai master prunes leaves and limbs and occasionally wraps the trunk and limbs with wire, which pull the limbs into a specific shape.

Is the wire the bonsai? No. In fact, when a bonsai is going to be displayed the wire usually comes off. But the wires guide and shape the tree into growing in an aesthetically pleasing way rather than in the purely natural way.

This is the purpose of game mechanics. Game mechanics aren't there to limit your creativity, but to shape it and direct it into a few particular tasks, rather than trying to accomplish every task you can.

EDIT: Quote tags

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on June 02, 2023, 03:17:23 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 02, 2023, 12:23:36 PM
This is where the storygames tend to fall short.  By abstracting to a level that allows unified mechanics to operate for everything, storygames often reduce challenges to mechanical operations, using metagame concepts.  They often force players to think outside the character's perspective in the world in the moment to resolve their hurdles using a mechanic contrived to fit a pre-established pattern ("Roll skill plus 2d6 plus attribute, 6 or less fails") rather than mechanics that fit the in-world physics of what has occurred.  Based on the setting and shared world, why should a 6 or less fail?  How does that mechanical operation simulate crossing a chasm?  Why are those odds appropriate to the chosen action?  None of these questions are answered by unified mechanics  So, while unified mechanics can be easier to learn, I feel like they also can abstract mechanics to the point where the mechanics are based in metagame concepts, rather than grow from the needs of the chosen action in that moment.

Elaborating on that thought ...

Unified mechanics (and abstractions too, for that matter), are useful when done well and always in danger of being pushed too far.  It's true in games.  It's true in software.  It's true in anything that uses a model or even a model-like thing in its design. 

In RPGs, because of all the reasons estar has listed, you can get away with a lot of mistakes with mechanics and abstractions, both too unified or not unified enough, too abstract or not abstract enough.  The rulings and the GM having some common sense can paper over a lot of trouble. Still, there's a point at which even that giant saving throw isn't enough to bail out the thing.

Not infrequently, the trouble starts when someone confuses mechanics and abstraction.  For example, I doubt anyone would advocate to change AD&D to use a different mechanic for each weapon attack.  Only swords get to use a d20 to hit.  We'll use 2d10 for axes.  And 2d8 for daggers.  And then we'll blend some of the assumption for the weapons vs armor chart into the dice chosen.  Though doing something like that would certainly be a way to make every group of weapons feel unique--and done well, might even incorporate some other interesting distinctions into the choices. Even done well, it would still have "issues", I'm sure.  Not least of which is requiring another column on the character sheet for each weapon so the players aren't expected to remember all the distinction.  Never mind the poor GM and the more inflated monster stat blocks.

Assume for a moment that OD&D had started that way.  Then AD&D comes along and unifies the attack on a d20.  It works, because it's about one thing (attacks) and the trade off in fancy details is probably worth it for all the nice things that come with some consistency. 

Then someone notices that the saving throws also use d20s.  So they assume that saving throws should work exactly the same as the attacks.  Two different abstractions, same underlying mechanics--on the surface.  But the "mechanic" is more than the d20.  It's the d20 and the modifiers and how it all connects to the rest of the system.  Maybe saving throws and attacks can be unified under the same mechanic.  Maybe not.  But if they can, you can bet it's going to change one or both in some way, possibly losing something in the translation.  Might still be worth it in that case, but it's not this supremely obvious thing that some people seem to think it is.  It's Chesterton's Fence.  Once you've fully understood both, then you are only now prepared to explore and possibly make a case for unification.  That case should include "what will be lost" in the unification.

Partially. I think abstraction definitely dilutes the haptic feedback--the game feel--of RPGs, to the point that most people here think that RPGs do not have game feel at all, and one of the key reasons I like Savage Worlds almost as much as tenbones is that it provides a lot of game feel in the form of exploding dice.

I personally don't like unification; I prefer gameplay loops built out of feedback loops because this gives the players a logical sequence of game mechanics interacting with each other.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 02, 2023, 07:10:00 PM

I personally don't like unification; I prefer gameplay loops built out of feedback loops because this gives the players a logical sequence of game mechanics interacting with each other.

The point is that "I don't like unification" or "I do like unification" is an incomplete, misleading statement.  Everyone likes some unification, which will become apparent as soon as someone starts "making things different just because".  Everyone dislikes some unification, which is also easy.  Just take any unification drive to an absurd length.  Eventually, you'll hit every person's threshold. 

Now, I get it.  What you are saying is shorthand for a dislike of this crazy quest lately to drive everything towards unification in RPGs, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.  It's a reaction to people who think that more unification is somehow always an unabashed good thing, without regard to context or feel or any other aspect of the system.

It's not contradictory to think, for example, that AD&D 1E could be improved with some degree of more unification and also think that some of the people who have made the attempt have botched it.  I would suggest that most of the botches are due to chasing theory instead of practice, testing, and consideration of the art of balancing competing interests.  That's also design, but it's not in the realm of theory.

*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 02, 2023, 08:28:30 PM
*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Pretty much.

At this point we're just watching a dick measuring contest which will somehow make the winner objectively right, because God forbid people have different ideas on the internet.

I am perfectly happy to declare myself Team "different strokes for different folks." What's playable for one person could be unplayable for another and visa versa. Likewise watering things down to a single unified standard is just a recipe for bland grey goo rather than having bold contrasting choices.

All I've gotten so far is that...

Major Premise: TTRPGs are games.

Minor Premise: Video games are games, and (some) of them are based on TTRPGs.

Conclusion: Therefore video game design principles can be pushed whole cloth to guide TTRPG design or be used authoritatively to dictate changes to TTRPGs, without taking into account the fundamental differences between tabletop and pre-programmed digital gameplay experiences. 

Quote from: Chris24601 on June 03, 2023, 07:41:28 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 02, 2023, 08:28:30 PM
*waiting for the goalpost to move again*

Pretty much.

At this point we're just watching a dick measuring contest which will somehow make the winner objectively right, because God forbid people have different ideas on the internet.

I am perfectly happy to declare myself Team "different strokes for different folks." What's playable for one person could be unplayable for another and visa versa. Likewise watering things down to a single unified standard is just a recipe for bland grey goo rather than having bold contrasting choices.

Greetings!

Yep, Chris, right on target. I thought Estar's commentary was definitely more based in what TTRPG's are about. The other stuff is pretty much nonsense. Different people want oftentimes very different things from games. I'm also not sold on how seeking to hyper-fixate on technical elements of "Game Theory" is really worthwhile. When people were 12 years old playing D&D or GMing D&D, nobody gave a damn about bloviating about "Game Theory". Beyond that, seeking to bring academic logic rules of structure into a discussion about running RPG's...*Laughing* Yeah, ok.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: VisionStorm on June 03, 2023, 08:11:16 AM
All I've gotten so far is that...

Major Premise: TTRPGs are games.

Minor Premise: Video games are games, and (some) of them are based on TTRPGs.

Conclusion: Therefore video game design principles can be pushed whole cloth to guide TTRPG design or be used authoritatively to dictate changes to TTRPGs, without taking into account the fundamental differences between tabletop and pre-programmed digital gameplay experiences. 

How much of this is legitimate misunderstanding and how much is just being obtuse for the sake of comic extremism?  Let's start with a different explanation.

If you were playing a video game and it took you five minutes to progress from the first stage, fifteen in the second, and an hour in the third...that's called a Skinner Box, which is a behavioral conditioning cage where rewards are slowed as you progress further. Understanding that you can scale back rewards at a logarithmic rate is key for how many video games are made addicting, and people sometimes argue that all video games are Skinner Boxes to some extent or another.

Now say you're playing a different kind of game. This game gives your character levels, and when you reach new levels you get new abilities or attribute buffs, and the XP required to level up follows a rough logarithmic scale. How do we describe this kind of game? That's right; as a Skinner Box. The fact that it happens to roughly correlate with what you'd think of as a character learning curve is a happy coincidence. The behavioral psychology which makes one kind of game tick also applies in another. There was a reason I listed psychology in my response to estar.

However, there is a big difference between tabletop game design and video game design which estar didn't touch on; video game development is pretty darn expensive and the video game market as a whole is about 100 times more financially lucrative. "Theorycrafting" for video games is much higher stakes, which means the video game design discussion tends to include rabbit holes like Skinner Boxes. It tends to get omitted in tabletop game design circles because reading up on behavioral psychology is a lot of effort to take on a lark. This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game. Relevant and irrelevant are the wrong way to approach this; RPGs by their nature may rope in practically all human endeavors into their composition. But some material is more easily applied than others, and just because I don't see an application now doesn't mean I won't some time later.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
-snip-

I suppose we should all just play knuckle bones then. Since that's the peek of game design and all games are just elaborate variations of knuckle bones.

It's not like we have whole different genres, philosophies, markets, players or goals when it comes to games. Afterall, they are all called games.

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 04, 2023, 02:19:31 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

Greetings!

Powerful, sir. And excellent. I agree entirely.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 03, 2023, 11:33:54 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
This combination leads me to my opinion that if you want to learn to make a good roleplaying game, you at least need to know about video game design and interpolate towards the tabletop game.

And your opinion is incorrect (which is what everyone here is trying to tell you).  There's a difference between the specifics of TTRPGs compared to video games (starting with the capabilities of the referee compared to the limitations of programming, and extending to the role of the players' imaginations in each).  Cats and cows are both mammals, but studying a cow's digestive system isn't going to make you competent to treat a cat.  TTRPGs and video games are both games, but the specific context, interface, and goals of each create different requirements in each medium.  Not totally divorced, but very different in some aspects.

The fact that EVERYONE else here sees this and you don't is NOT a sign of your superior "discernment."  As the old saying goes: When one person treats you like an asshole, he is probably the asshole.  When EVERYONE treats you like an asshole... you're the asshole.

Greetings!

Ruthless, my friend! That's quite the rapier work you've demonstrated here.

And funny as hell, too. *Laughing* Great stuff!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Don't have much to add.

1. Fheredin is being a twat ofc.
2. Fheredin is right that some game design principles are relevant to both TTRPGs and to video games.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 04, 2023, 02:19:31 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on June 03, 2023, 09:46:27 PM
*Commentary*

With all due respect, your interactions with others have a tendency to come across as extremely condescending. Knowing about how a skinner box works and why it's relevant to game design as a general topic is no longer an exceptional trait in the age of YouTube video essays, longform content, and all the world's collected knowledge only a click away. You'd have more success engaging in discussions such as these if you approached the topic either with more humility or at least more levity and humor rather than a sort of bitterness I'm perceiving.

Your point about games sharing some fundamentals is fine, but missing context. There is overlap between action movies and landscape paintings in the form of things like composition, color theory, and all that, but there are still genre and medium-specific lessons which can/must be applied for success when approaching an artform. It seems to me that you're granting more credence to video games and their techniques because you view that their designs are more sophisticated (partially because it's such a profitable industry). RPGs as a medium are not less sophisticated (quite the opposite IMO), they're less formalized and less easily engineered for profit by their nature.

There are downsides to this "sophistication" and formalism seen in video games. You only need to look at the quality issues (and ethical issues) related to video game releases of the past several years to see the pitfalls of treating a human, artistic experience as a tunable slot machine. Developers figured out how to make their games addictive and the result are cash shops, loot boxes, season passes, and endless other tricks to keep up "engagement" for the sake of monetization. These developers mistake a dopamine hit with the actual human experience of "fun". Drugs will get you there faster, and it turns out dopamine is illusory - chase it for its own sake and it will leave you hollow. Games now feel like jobs because they don't understand dopamine doesn't equal fun and it doesn't lead to satisfaction. Materialism is a hell of a drug!

Just looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

I'm not saying you specifically are doing this, but I'm seeing some of the same underpinnings as subtext which suggest to me you're too engrossed in the video game design bubble: leveling systems are not pointless or illusory or fundamentally about reward schedules. It's a cargo cult way of looking at things that illustrates someone is looking at TTRPGs from the video game perspective, where a lot of the significance of leveling systems has indeed been lost. It seems people can only see leveling systems through the lens of a video game and the assumptions around the world leveling up with you (rather than being a part of a world that exists apart from you).

For example: a level system can serve as a pacing element, or as a tutorial. That latter concept is particularly ignored, even though it's a major part of old-school D&D. You could imagine a D&D-like game where you have a stronghold from level 1 and play the game of thrones, but the first thing a player will do is destroy the setting and derail the campaign to the point where it can't be recovered. Waiting until a character reaches domain level gives the players a stake in the setting so they won't edgelord or break things for quick fun. It means that the players have demonstrated a certain level of trust and commitment, and that they also understand the setting and the game enough to be entrusted with more control over the direction the game takes. Their contributions will be thoughtful and enrich the experience for everyone at the table. Sorry for the rant but this is one of my bugbears.

I've been holding back for some time. I never gave my full assessment of estar's post because it's unflattering.

I specifically chose the Skinner Box as the illustration specifically because you were most likely to understand it without needing to consult YT video essays. On the last page I mentioned gameplay loops and feedback loops, which aren't more complex than a Skinner Box, but are a touch more obscure...and it clearly went over a few people's heads. So this was an intentional decision of mine to stick to a well known example. I also never once said that RPGs were simpler than video games, only that the theorycrafting for video games tends to be more systematic and multi-disciplinary, so I really don't know what you're responding to. But it's an interesting tangent.

QuoteJust looking at the state of video games and the underlying psychology of the designers in charge, I want them to stay far away from TTRPGs before they ruin it too (OneD&D and their VTT will be the first attempt). The first step down the road of making these awful, soulless games is believing that you need some kind of trick or gimmick to keep your players coming back. People read books without needing to pull a slot machine lever every so often. My players show up to play in my games despite them only lasting a handful of hours and being separated by a few weeks at a time is that there's more going in the game than pure dopamine hits and reward schedules.

Query: How much game design theory goes into the annual FIFA or Madden release? I'm not going to say that Call of Duty uses no abstract principles (there's a fair bit of manipulative marketing), but a fair amount of time these games get referenced to be disparaged. "When you take damage, the screen gets splattered with strawberry jam." Study of game design theory is like driving a car; you can go where you want, but you are responsible for where you go with it. And if you don't have a car, you're stuck sticking to public transportation (established systems) or walking.

I do think that we really need to have a conversation about TTRPGs being undermonetized, though. Edition cycling is quite often purely because the game isn't selling well and studios need a minimum turnover to justify their ongoing existence. New editions rarely deliver gameplay improvements worth noting to players, but are a coping mechanism for an industry with too little monetization. One of the key ways to address this is to understand how video games enable hypermonetization and discuss more responsible implementations for the RPG space. I think that RPGs are by their nature impossible to hyper-monetize. You can keep players from accessing a video game's source code and still let them play, but if you prevent players from reading the rules to an RPG, they can't play. RPGs are open source software by design because the compiler is the human brain.