28 juin 2018
Upgrading the Baker-Care principle.
Upgrading the Baker-Care principle. As you know, it states “System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play.” I find it unsatisfactory for thinking about games, being entirely focused on the imagined events at the expense of the general play experience. (I am tempted to write gameplay but I am not so sure about that.) Of course, the play experience isn’t bounded by the fiction, it is much wider. Games like A Penny for My Thougths, Microscope or Fall of Magic aren’t that specific by the fiction they generate but by the experiences they produce. This formal definition of system is too restrictive to consider this, and isn’t in line with how designers think about the system, at least nowadays. I’d like to upgrade it to something like “System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined as the specific means by which the players generate and experience the play experience.” (Of course this breaks BM/GNS compatibility.)
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How are you defining "play experience" here?
RépondreSupprimerJason D'Angelo Same question here - I was trying to work around the word, ut basically, I want to know what is in ou out your definition.
RépondreSupprimerThe "experience the experience" element of your definition reads like it might be a bit circular to me. I'm also not sure that focusing on the subjective experience of play is the right way to go about defining system. The definition of the "system" of a sport like soccer/football probably wouldn't talk about the subjective experience of playing that kind of game (which isn't to say that the subjective experience of playing a game isn't important, just not necessarily the way I would define its system).
RépondreSupprimerMy take on the Baker-Care principle is that there are two parts of it: the first is that System is about a system of arriving at agreement about the current game state. All games have this: in soccer/football you have to have a system that gets the players to agree when the ball is in-bounds or out, how many points each team has, etc. The second part is that in a roleplaying game a lot of this game state will involve the state of things in a fictional world -- this is specifying a feature of a genre, just like we'd call something a "card game" if a bulk of the game-state involved the placement and control of cards, or that something was a "ball game" if the location and physical properties of a ball were central to establishing a lot of of the game state.
In the original Baker-Care formulation, the fiction is a goal in itself. In your reformulation, the fiction is a means to an end (the experience of play). I find this very interesting. The new version is definitely more inclusive of more kinds of gameplay.
RépondreSupprimerJason D'Angelo Pierre M How do I define play experience ? A tentative definition might be: everything the players feels and thinks that is due to playing, at the moment and in retrospect. Patterns of emotions, sensations and thoughts.
RépondreSupprimerDan Maruschak experience the experience, yeah, it sucks. That'll teach to write first in French then translate. What about undergo the play experience?
For football/soccer... I fall into another translation issue. I settled for players, but maybe partakers would have been better. The experience is for the spectators (and gamblers, and maybe investors?), the players are performing. But maybe that's not what you had in mind?
I totally agree about the technical aspects and functions of the system, these are of course fundamental areas of system design. But I do not see the value of defining the system (as the coordinated group of things that generate the important stuff we design) as only the technical part,I'd prefer to consider and design for the whole experience.
In designing a PbtA system, we are mostly designing the conversation. The conversation might be about the fiction before anything else, but it isn't the fiction.
Or do you find it clearer to speak about the game for the whole thing and about the system in the classical Baker-Care way?
Nick Wedig my goal, exactly. Thank you.
So, the amended definition reads “System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined as the specific means by which the partakers generate and undergo the play experience.” Better?
Gherhartd Sildoenfein
RépondreSupprimer"For football/soccer... ... But maybe that's not what you had in mind?"
I was thinking more in terms of the players on the field, like in a recreational game not a spectator event. Any game involves a subjective experience of play that's affected by the system (kicking the ball across the goal line to score a point for your team probably involves a different subjective experience than just kicking a ball outside the context of a game), but I think if we were talking about the system of soccer/football we'd be talking about things like what scores a point, how players are allowed to touch the ball, etc., not how thrilling it is to make a great shot or how gratifying it is to make a dramatic save. Those subjective experiences might be why people play, and they might be the intended consequence of the system, but I think it's a conceptually distinct thing from the system (and the same for RPGs).
"Or do you find it clearer to speak about the game for the whole thing and about the system in the classical Baker-Care way?"
I'm not sure it's hierarchical with one concept inside the other. I think it might make more sense to call the thing you're talking about something like "experience", I think some people talk about "experience design" for things like software UIs that seems analogous to what you want to focus on about the subjective experience of engaging the system.
"A tentative definition might be: everything the players feels and thinks that is due to playing, at the moment and in retrospect. Patterns of emotions, sensations and thoughts."
This seems similar to me to the way some people talk about art. I think most people would agree that the point of art is to produce some emotional or aesthetic effect in the mind of a perceiver. But I don't think we'd generally talk about that subjective experience when discussing what a particular "work of art" is -- there we'd be talking about the techniques and materials like "It's an oil painting" not "it's a thing that generates sadness with a slight undercurrent of hope".
Of course the subjective experience, though consequences of the system, is distinct from the system. What I say is that the system is the means to create and undergo the experience, not the experience itself.
RépondreSupprimerOn talking about art, I find that I speak both of the techniques and material and of the subjective experience, be I speaking as a enjoyer of art or as an artist (and technician). I find it richer to open the conversation to both sides of the question rather than restrict it to one side.
I find that there is a point, as always in rpg theory, where it is very difficult to draw the limits between rules (as a part of the system that is relatively easy to isolate, conceptualize and talk about) that directly affect the fictions (part of the Baker-Care system) and rules that don’t. For example rules like “only speak in the third person and in the past tense” or Polaris’ ritual sentences or candle. Not only it is difficult to determine if they’re part of the (Baker-Care) system, but I don’t see the added value in doing so.
I believe a ttrpg designer designs systems to create experiences, not necessarily only “means of agreeing to imagined events”, and that recognizing that through the definition is important to open this conversation. The Baker-Care definition, while perfectly on point and necessary for GNS theory (and probably BM theory) is tied to that precise point of view. I wouldn’t say it limits the conversation to that point of view, because that isn’t my experience. However, while talking to players and game-designers (and play-designers) I noticed that we were nowadays using "system" to speak about things that affected the whole experience, in many different ways of playing, but were always referring to the BCP, oblivious to the fact that it didn"t match. I was going to write about some other things, different kinds of gameplay, pulled up the definition for reference and this discrepancy jumped to my face. I try to resolve that.
"I find it richer to open the conversation to both sides of the question rather than restrict it to one side."
RépondreSupprimerI agree, but I guess I'm not following how a new definition of System would impact that one way or another.
"For example rules like “only speak in the third person and in the past tense” or Polaris’ ritual sentences or candle. Not only it is difficult to determine if they’re part of the (Baker-Care) system, but I don’t see the added value in doing so."
This may be the source of why we're not on the same page in this conversation. To me it's not a hard question, they are part of the system. Things that shape the emotional tone and context in which play takes place will have an impact on what does or doesn't seem "reasonable" or "appropriate", which influences what people will naturally accept into the fiction, which is part of what people will agree becomes part of the fiction, which means they're part of the system according to the classic principle.
"I believe a ttrpg designer designs systems to create experiences"
I agree, but doesn't every type of game designer (or maybe even every type of artist) do that?