Scribbles and Horrors

Abandoned missile silos and bunkers are particularly dungeon-like places. Beyond just being big underground complexes with lots of empty space, they are places into which vast resources, technology, and people have been poured, while their purpose and functions remain almost mystically incoherent.

A missile silo is a subterranean structure intentionally built in the middle of nowhere whose sole purpose is to be able to completely obliterate some as-yet-unchosen corner of the world, because maintaining this installation somehow means cataclysmic war is supposedly less likely. Their logic is twisted and insane. As fundamentally evil as they are cleverly built.

It is time for another combative theory shitpost upstream from play.

Dungeons and Dragons is not improv theater. I call it a wargame because that’s sort of what it calls itself and others call it a roleplaying game which is fine, but D&D is not improv theater and it’s not group storytelling in the way that writing a novel is personal storytelling. D&D is a game: a game is a structure of rules and conventions in which participants take playful action.

It would be quite reasonable for you to @ me with complaints that my playstyle isn’t everyone’s, or that the way some people play D&D actually does resemble improv. I won’t dispute that there are many different ways to understand games, and I have absolutely no interest in telling people that they are playing a game wrong. When I say Dungeons and Dragons I just mean what Dungeons and Dragons is to me as I’ve experienced it.

The term “Yes, and” seems to come from improv theater, and my vague understanding of it is that it’s a method for getting actors all on the same page during a scene. “Yes, and” is a solution to two problems during spontaneous performance.

1) Yes there’s no time to discuss what the reality of the scene is, so the actors agree to take what’s been given as accurate. Whatever performance a scene partner gives, whatever facts or implications are presented, that’s Yes. It’s already existent in the scene, and we just gotta go with it.

2) , and the thing about scenes in theater is that stuff happens in them. There has to be action of some kind, otherwise the characters are likely to hang around listlessly. To prevent a situation of passive “yes”s, the “, and” insists that a performer pushes the situation beyond what it was before. It’s not enough to confirm your partner’s reality; you must also move that reality along.

This framework is great for performances on stage or in living rooms. It’s fun to do in practice, and it makes for entertaining shows. I don’t, however, think it is a very good way to think about what a referee does in the game Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes

Firstly, D&D is asymmetric. Unlike improv, the players and ref have different roles with vastly different relationships to the imaginary world. “Yes, and” makes sense between equals co-creating a scene, but in D&D, where the ref has binders full of secret places and pages of hidden rules the “yes” principle doesn’t hold.

At best a referee “Yes” in the mode of “Yes, and” is somewhat condescending and one-sided. Can a player “Yes, and” a ruling the referee makes? Certainly not in the same way! Really what’s being presented is something like permission: the referee deigns to give permission for players to take some novel action or do some cool thing. Framing such rulings as “Yes, and…” puts the referee in the uncomfortable position of constantly having to dispense narrative control when players ask for it, or, worse, sometimes deciding not to.

I think a better approach this is for players to have narrative power from the start. Not delegated by the referee, not affirmed by them, but simply there, in the rules. Players can take game actions without the referee’s permission. On what authority can they take these actions? Why, the rules! Sure, the referee is here in a new precarious role, making decisions about the rules and how to apply them reasonably-–this takes sensitivity, kindness, and common sense-–but in my opinion it’s more honest to the situation and fair to the participants. The rules mediate between the referee and the players.

Narrative power is inherently vested in the players through the actions they can take; there is no need for the referee to mete out control to players in an attempt to acquiesce to the “Yes, and…” principle. I hope I’m making the distinction I see here clear.

, and…

Secondly, D&D is a game, not a performance. Obviously there are performative aspects to D&D–its very worth it to do funny voices in front of your friends–but even this kind of affect is distinct from anything onstage with an observing-only audience.

It is okay, for instance, for games to be boring or tedious. It’s okay for not much to happen, or for much of what happens to be banal discussion. The process of playing a game is far more important than whatever stories come out of it. A game is more akin to rehearsal than performance: there is no audience.

Framing the referee as an entertainer is a mistake, I think, because that robs players of their agency in a game situation. The dungeon is not a show the referee is putting on; it’s a game space full of interesting things which the player characters can inhabit. The pressure to “, and…” anything in service of some kind of entertainment ideal can push the referee to avoid otherwise fruitful scenarios. Sometimes an empty room is just an empty room, and it’s important to allow players to feel the full weight of that reality, with all its implications and incongruity.

“Yes, and…” frames the whole affair as an improv experience aimed solely at being exciting to viewers, and I just don’t think that’s what pen-and-paper games are good at.

This post was directly inspired by Permissiveness in RPGs, a post which I entirely agree with I think.

Here we have another essay by Pedantarius, in response to Fantasy Games are More Than Nested Rulesets. I urge readers to remember that I am posting these out of familial obligation rather than any opinionated zeal of my own. - Scribble

Rules are Bigger Than You Think

By Pedantarius Wobble

My illustrious cousin appears not to have a clear idea of what a rule is, and so doesn’t realize they are making the very same point I am: games are about player experience mediated through a constructed situation.

Largely this is my fault for not defining my terms properly. I do not disagree that players are experiential beings, and I also do not disagree that players’ imagining affects their rules-choices.

What I’m saying is that, when it comes down to it, what’s really happening during the activity of play (not to get too spiritual-psychological) is that players are reacting to a material-social scenario. The player would not imagine a forest at all unless they were prompted to by words or dice. The idea that an imaginary situation itself has any substance is a meta-fiction, and this metafiction isn’t particularly distinguishable from other metafictions within games.

For example, in games in which there are winners and losers players assume the roles of rivals. They intentionally act in such a way as to exceed the others as much as possible. This is a metafiction–the players all know that in the real world they are friends, and that play of the game is for mutual benefit.

Indeed, as Natura points out, the experience of this metafiction affects the way players interact with the game. How often in Diplomacy does a player feel feelings of betrayal, and begins to make reckless moves as a result of this emotional reaction?

The metafiction encompasses all its parts. This includes written rules and mechanical status, sure, but it also includes the metaphysical components, the most important of which, to be clear, is the players’ experience.

Why do the proponents of diegeses want to downplay the experience of one metafiction over another, for the sole purpose of reifying the Imagined Setting? You miss important and interesting components of play when you do this.

By expanding the term rule to what it really means–not mere writing, not simple agreement, but the whole defining context in which play occurs, I am allowing space to consider under-examined parts of games.

The rule “Natura decides what rules should be applied based on their experience imagining a character lost in a forest.” is a perfectly good one. But we should recognize it as a rule. We should pay attention to when we use it and when we discard it.

To be clear: I am not saying that human game activity is reducible to writable rules structures. What I’m saying is that depth of personhood is contained within my understanding of the term rule. Take the human player as a unit capable of experience, rationality, and creativity, put them in a rules situation, and a game comes out.

The diegetic vs. non-diegetic rule dichotomy limits conception of games to a very narrow paradigm, one which hides crucial aspects of all games. We have to stop thinking of games from entirely inside of their metafictions, and pay attention to play activity as a whole.

- Pedantarius Wobble

After the publication of Against Diegesis I have received a response written by another dear cousin, Natura. Not wanting to play favorites, I will share their essay here as well. Once again, I wish to stress that the opinions of my family members are their own. - Scribble

Fantasy Games are More Than Nested Rulesets

By Natura Moiety

My cousin Pedantarius believes they’ve discovered a fundamental truth about games after playing Nomic once. Their rigid too-stuck-up-to-play-make-believe ruleset nonsense ignores the most worthwhile aspect of fantasy games.

The shared imaginary is, in fact, vital to the substance of games. Being make believe doesn’t reduce the relevance of the imaginary, it enhances it. This is in fact the Great Mystery of these kinds of games. It’s the whole point.

For the sake of argument, I won’t dispute Pedantarius’ half baked philosophical position that imagined objects are inventions of the imaginer’s mind, wholly subject to it. Let’s say that’s true. I’ll also concede that applying rules to imagined objects requires wilful effort.

I disagree with their followup:

But, don’t you see that making tactical decisions in such a setup is merely interacting with the rules and not the object itself? The imagined object needn’t be there at all, in fact. It is only window-dressing for what you’re really doing.

I don’t see that, actually. Pedantarius is here forgetting the experience of imagination. Precisely because applying rules to the imaginary requires wilful effort, the player has to experience it. This experience directly affects the player’s mental state–they come away with observations, feelings, and wants.

Pedantarius claims that

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that imaginary worlds speak back to us.

Well, they do speak back to us, because we encounter worlds–even imaginary worlds–as experiencing beings.

When a player imagines being lost in a dark and foreboding forest, they actually experience feelings of dread, curiosity, and longing for home. This experience directly informs rule-selection choices. A player touched by dread may choose to explore this by incorporating diegetic rules about their character’s mental state. They may incorporate less-diegetic procedures for navigating home. The imaginary is a means by which a rules-situation can be mediated through human experience.

Don’t you see how this might be really important for a fantasy roleplaying game? For shitty unfun games like Nomic and Diplomacy where the goal is simply to use rules to enforce dominance over the other players, maybe the imaginary isn’t as important. But for many actually interesting games it’s absolutely necessary to frame them around the wellspring of imagined human experience.

By arguing against distinguishing between diagetic and non-diegetic rules Pedantarius is attempting to flatten what is in fact a spectrum of experiential rules–from abstract to relatable. What Pedantarius regards as liberatory and human actually dilutes and obscures what, for many of us, is the driving force of fantasy play.

- Natura Moiety

My cousin Pedantarius doesn’t have their own blog, but they wrote an essay and wanted me to share it here. I have obliged, mainly out of respect for my aunt. Please know that the opinions expressed by my dear cousin are not necessarily my own. - Scribble

Against Diegesis

By Pedantarius Wobble

Diegesis is a lie perpetuated by theater kids and simulationists in a desperate attempt to justify their crummy rules and paltry performances as corresponding to an imaginary world outside of them.

Here’s the truth: there is no shared imaginary world. The objects we engage with in games are mere collections of words, numbers, and drawings. Rules are literally a set of instructions for following procedures to manipulate these, either by writing or speech. The Game exists entirely on paper (or digitally), in what is said out loud, and the activity of altering these.

“But Pedantarius!” I hear you cry, “Isn’t it fun to pretend, for a little while at least, that we really are on a fantastic adventure in an amazing place? Wouldn’t it be interesting to imagine what it would be like to live in a world of magic and unknowable terrors, and furthermore, to make tactical decisions proceeding from these imaginings? Surely one cannot deny the importance of the imaginary in fantasy games.”

This objection seems reasonable on the surface, but falls apart under scrutiny. When we imagine something we invent an object. Due to its very nature as invention, an imagined object is not subject to the laws which govern the material world–indeed, an imagined object is subject only to the mind of the imaginer.

If we wanted to apply arbitrary rules to an imagined object (say, of an imagined person, that they are capable of jumping) we can, but the rules would not be directly affecting the object. Instead, the imaginer has to decide that the rules should govern how the imaginer imagines the object–the link between rules and imagined object is sustained only through wilful effort of the imaginer.

If you wanted to make anything like “tactical decisions” in an imagined world, you must first decide upon what tactically-rich rules to apply to the imagined object, and then wilfully connect the two. But, don’t you see that making tactical decisions in such a setup is merely interacting with the rules and not the object itself? The imagined object needn’t be there at all, in fact. It is only window-dressing for what you’re really doing.

This problem is compounded if you have multiple people supposedly imagining in tandem. The only possible way for this myriad of imagined objects to correspond is with a big set of rules and social conventions holding them together. In such a situation, you are really dealing with these rules and conventions, not the imagined objects at all.

The imaginary is added after the fact-–it is a personal interpretation, a reaction to the rules situation which actually exists at the table.

“Ah, Pedantarius!” you bluster, “You have too narrow an understanding of rules! My rules sprout upwards from the imaginary according to common-sense notions about the ways in which worlds work. The ‘top down’ rules you describe are non-diegetic, which are fine in themselves, but not what we are talking about.”

To this I say that it is simply untrue that these so-called diagetic rules are rooted in an imaginary world at all. Like what you call non-diagetic rules, they are decided upon socially and applied to a game situation. There is no distinction between them, other than aesthetically.

Consider two scenarios, in a hypothetical roleplaying game in which a player controlling a unit wishes to leap over a chasm.

A. There are no written rules for jumping a chasm. The GM decides to rule such an action succeeds according to several factors: the width of the chasm, the relatively unencumbered status of the unit, the desire to reward the player for taking an action, and an interest in what the player will do once beyond the chasm.

B. There are written rules. The GM pulls out the rulebook, finds the rule, and follows a procedure which is very abstract and is not very immersive.

I say that these are substantively indistinguishable from one another. The “rules for jumping the chasm” are in both cases brought in to the game situation and applied. In both, the rules were chosen because of the existing rules-situation. The only real difference is that in the case of A it is possible the rule was invented on the spot. In both cases the imaginary (character jumping over the chasm) only exists after the rules have been decided upon and applied.

Rule mutability, even extremely freeform mutability, is no argument for the existence of diegetic rules. This is evident.

Again I hear your complaints, “Surely you acknowledge that in your example a chasm described as ‘imposing, gaping, unimaginably vast’ should be more difficult to leap across than one described as ‘narrow and deep, scouring the bottom of the earth’? The fiction carries with it connotations and associations, which can be more or less easily transformed into outcomes.”

To this I say that I agree fully–it’s just that those words and phrases fit within an interpretive and social context. The game meta-rules for interpreting those words are not distinguishable from the game meta-rules for reading text like “Characters carrying less than 20# of equipment can leap chasms up to 15’ wide if they roll higher than 10 on a twenty-sided die.”

To claim that the artifacts of description, and the connotations carried by these, is a separable layer of rules, a “diegetic” layer, simply fails to acknowledge the real rules governing play: the social-interpretive rules. All games are sets of rules in action, and, while some of these are nested sets, all are determined exclusively by two components: text and player interpretation. The imaginary world doesn’t exist in any sense.

We should not focus on fiction. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that imaginary worlds speak back to us. What we should focus on is rules and procedures which are interesting and beautiful in themselves. Focus on the friends who play with you, and their creativity. Pay attention to what we are actually doing at the table, the rules you are actually following.

- Pedantarius Wobble