Edit: This post was nominated for a Bloggie Award! Thank you for all your support everyone!

My hill to die on this week, is just we need to stop moralising the type of games people play. This overly long post is a summary of the ideas I’ve spoken of the last day or so on the topic. Bits have been taken from a bunch of conversations, and honestly I can’t remember what I said to whom. It’s not a response to any three-hour long video essays, but rather the discourse that they may have generated. I, like Marcia, am vagueposting the discourse.

Part I: It’s fine to just not like it

Here are some basic points that I’m just going to lay out there without any argument because I’m not interested in getting into discussions about what evil is.

• Scaffolding isn’t inherently evil and guilty of coercion or “mind control”.
• Playing free of scaffolding isn’t inherently inferior and players who prefer it are not allergic to narrative.
• Bad creators do not equate to bad design.
• Bad design probably doesn’t exist, and if it does, it is entirely subjective.

I am becoming frustrated with defending uninspired PTBA games and 5e because people on the internet keep criticising them on dubious moral or “bad design” grounds instead of the primary valid grounds to criticise them: I don’t like it.

It is super valid to not like something. It doesn’t need moral justification. Here’s some reasons we might not like a game:

• “I don’t like 5e because it’s hard to DM”
• “I don’t like 5e because I don’t want to support WOTC”
• “I don’t like OSE because i want my characters story to be more supported”
• “I don’t like Dread because i think jenga blocks are childish”
• “I don’t like Unspeakable Power because it doesn’t adapt Apocalypse World’s themes to the new setting and genre”
• “I don’t like Mausritter because i hate little cardboard backpacks”
• “I don’t like Lancer because the lore is too white person”
• I don’t like D&D because it’s a petit bourgeois race war fantasy

Honestly it’s fun and liberating to just not like things rather than moralise them. I can like or dislike anything for any reason! Or for none! I have never read the Wretched but I don’t like it (sorry Chris). Furthermore, I can still criticise you for liking something I don’t like! It just doesn’t grant me the moral high ground! It just makes me a snob!

Don’t moralise the games people play or the players of those games. You’re allowed to have design preferences. You don’t even have to justify them. Neither does anyone else.

Part II: But the designer is coercing me!

No they’re not. Claims that designing to incentivise my acting like a rogue or a superhero or whatever are “mind control” are overblown and short sighted. Wanderhome playbooks are not a form of coercive abuse.

Like, be a high school debater for a second and google the definition of coerce. I’m opting into the game, so it sure isn’t against my will. What’s the actual threat here? If I don’t like how your game makes me feel I won’t be coerced by it, I’ll change the rules or play another game. There are already too many damned games on my shelf, let alone in existence. These are inherently absurd statements and we need to make some less absurd claims (see “Reasons Not To Like Games”).

The terms “coercion” “low trust” and “mind control” are at best hyperbolic, and at worst attempts to erect straw men. But they do refer to something, which is something I prefer to call scaffolding or maybe scaffolded design (oh shoot, bad essay design, I mentioned this at the top didn’t I? too late to rewrite).

Scaffolded design are design decisions that are both supportive and restrictive. I mightn’t want that — I usually don’t and hence I am resentful I’m even writing this damned post — but plenty of players do and honestly it’s rude to assume they’re bad people or stupid or whatever derogative we’ve chosen today for players of games we don’t like.

Tangential aside: “I’m not criticising the players just the game” or “just the designer” whatever imaginary theorist, stop applying moral judgements based on someone’s theory of game design. Game designers are utterly impotent the moment they go to print, half of them tell me to ignore their rules (an apparently arrogant or negligent act), and games have no capacity to enforce anything. Neither designer nor game have any actual agency in this situation, so the judgement being cast falls on the player, even if we’re pretending it doesn’t.

The Monomyth Thread is one interpretation of a very long discussion, but suffice to say one valid interpretation of that discussion is that, in fact, some players feel unsafe when exposed to unscaffolded play (or at least feel safer when exposed to scaffolded play). Again, not me, I chafe against highly scaffolded play. But it’s just preference. It’s all just preference.

Preference is really really important. I think, for example, that 5e is not popular because it’s got Hasbro and it’s got Stranger Things and Critical Role (of course they’re factors), but primarily because it scaffolds original character design in a really satisfying way. So people really like playing it. It’s their valid preference. See part I for valid reasons not to like 5e that aren’t Bad Design or 5e Ruins Indie Designers Finances.

We’re allowed to have design preferences and not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves.

Part III: A digression, I don’t even like rules

I mentioned that I’m resentful I have to write this damned post, and that’s because I’m not even particularly interested in scaffolded game design (sorry my scaffolded design friends). C’mon ya’ll know this, I review modules and the modules that I write (go buy Hiss!) are dynamic, interconnected networks of locations and people designed with as few rules as possible, because the crowd gasps rules elide. I can build a sculpture out of knives, but knives are better used to carve the sculpture. It’s all art though. It’s all sculpting.

I play with as little scaffolding as possible. At the end of the last session I played in, completely without planning or forethought, a heroic knight questing to redeem himself but down on his luck, sacrificed himself to save a village from soon. I love the serendipity of Ferdrek dying heroically which both suited his character and happened without any design, but fate conspired to make him a hero, and that’s so cool! For me, it is less significant and satisfying when it is designed. A “Final Move” called “Sacrifice Yourself” could never be as cool as that, for me. That’s why I don’t like heavily scaffolded games as much as lightly scaffolded games. Not because they’re immoral. That would be an absurd connection to draw.

Whatever inflates your balloon floats your damned boat. It’s a preference. I’m not a bad person for disagreeing with you. I’m not coercing you or controlling your mind by putting that move into my game. I’m using a different and equally valid design theory that applies rules in different ways to different ends.

I don’t like running Lancer. Too many moving parts. But I like playing a mech pilot in it. Because different theories apply different rules to different ends. And that’s fine. It’s not a competition and it’s not a damned moral judgement, it’s a design approach. Words are not our only tools as game designers, as if painters only use paint and don’t use theories of colour and mind.

We’re allowed to have design preferences; not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves; I can just use different design theories and approaches to make different things and that’s valid.

Part IV: Manipulative Design

What if the game designer designs the game to do something that is morally bankrupt? Honestly I think this is possible. I call it manipulative design rather than mind control because I don’t want to be hyperbolic. Even this kind of design is subject to the whims of the players; designers may sometimes make bad decisions but are never gods, and even WOTC does not enforce its games rules with a private army (at least so far, although the fact that they have one is disconcerting to say the least). Design I feel is manipulative is specifically design that’s aimed at making players (not their characters) act a certain way rather than rely on them being humans.

I don’t consider games with a rigid premise or structure manipulative. Bluebeard’s Bride is an incredibly challenging text, but if you’re fully informed regarding what you’re getting into, I don’t think it’s manipulative. I don’t regard games with that encourage antisocial play manipulative. In Paranoia characters are encouraged to betray and backstab each other but if I snuck back to a friends place, slept with their spouse, and stole their valuables you can’t say Paranoia made me do it. I’d reserve manipulative design as a term for places where it’s aimed at the players as people.

Zedeck wrote at length of an example in Torchbearer, so if you’re not sure these design approaches exist, please read that. I think I personally can draw a line in the sand to say “I’m not going to use game mechanics to manipulate the behaviour of my irl friends”, and I think we need a category so we can be critical of these kind of design choices. But even so, maybe that line is harder to draw if you primarily run tournament or cons or store-based drop-ins? I can’t speak to that, but even then I question your knowledge of the human condition if you think you can design games to make people be kinder.

Conclusion: You’re Not An Idiot

We’re allowed to have design preferences; not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves; we can just use different design theories and approaches to make different things and that’s valid; I personally draw a line in the sand at making rules that dictate how players (not characters) act outside of the game. That’s the conclusion.

I write my modules (buy Hiss!) and other stuff based upon the design principle The Player Is Not An Idiot, which accompanies any other design principles I have (none of which are “game design is like dog training but with people”, because it’s not compatible with The Player Is Not An Idiot; allow me a little snark in closing). It’s a good principle, and if everyone treated everyone else in the hobby as not idiots, I probably wouldn’t have spent my afternoon writing this ridiculous post instead of taking a bath.

Thanks for reading it, though, if you got this far. Read Marcia’s post on incentives for another perspective.

2nd September, 2023

Idle Cartulary