How the mighty have fallen- R. Dancey

The old saying about a broken clock being right twice a day finally worked for therpgsite, a forum that normally has very little of interest. But this week produced something of a gem, if by gem one is interested in how someone who once ran the hobby's flagship could go so wrong.

In this thread, Dancey repeats a contention he made some time back after leaving WotC. That RPGs as we know them are dead. MMORPGs are taking over, they have vast growth and are improving constantly. In contrast RPGs are a shrinking market.

At its core, there's nothing new here. Dancey see's sales figures and new technology and much like many before him thinks that grants him insights that never occurred to others. Like those who said TV would replace books... oh wait, books are still around and sell well enough to have made Amazon into a Internet power house. Well, maybe its cars and horses. That one did take a common item and reduce it to a niche (if a niche that people still spend a good amount of money on). But this isn't really the point I want to make.

The point is the rather strange justification he gives for believing this. He takes the WotC study on Gamer Segmentation and tries to mold it into matching his opinion. You see he thinks that two of the five player types are the ones leaving RPGs for MMORPGs because in his mind, it makes sense. He feels the goals of those two groups (Power Gamers and Character Actors) are better met by MMORPGs, and thus this is the major drive for the drop in the RPG market.

He's said this same thing before, but what makes this thread more interesting than before is a slip he makes on post #49.

The MMO was too embryonic for us to study it in 1999. I wish I had the money to repeat the survey today though...

In this one throw away comment Dancey admits something critical. He has no data that actually indicates this true. He's just making it up, much like anyone else online who is gazing into their crystal ball and telling us the future of the hobby.

Except that in so doing, he's asking us to change that hobby into something completely different. One that is based upon GNS and Story-Gaming offerings that don't support the missing player types at all.

In doing this, he runs counter to two very important findings from in the original study. From the link speaking of the Study:

In other words, even the players who enjoy a "Tactical Focus" still want to be challenged to use Strategic Thinking; likewise, even the Combat Focus player wants a Strong Character and Exciting Story.

And

We also found no additional segmentation based on what games people identified as their "favorite"; in other words, there are just as many Power Gamers as there are Storytellers who like Vampire, and just as many Thinkers as Character Acters who like D&D.

Both of these indicate that not only is Dancey acting without data, he's acting against what data he originally collected. Bad business, and worst science.

Why is he doing this? Beats me, I'm not a mind reader. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's more ego driven than anything. D&D is shrinking, MMORPGs are growing- and it would be cool to be the man who explains why and offers a vision for the future. If he's right, he's golden. If he fails, well he's no more forgotten than he is now is he?


But if he's making wild unfounded guesses, I can play the game too. I'd put money that a repeat of the study done today would produce the same results (if fewer gamers).

Why then the drop in the RPG market and the growth in MMORPGs? Here's my wild guess

1. The OGL weakened the primary RPG brand making it one of many.
2. The OGL to a significant extent prevented the original owner from driving new versions or its future (as old versions remain supported)
3. The 4th edition of D&D was poor design
4. Most RPGs are poor design
5. MMORPGs are quick and easy, and quick and easy wins out over a hobby hit by the above four factors
6. There would be a natural migration to MMORPGs from those who previously played RPGs due to common factors. These include the fact that RPG gamers have always consider the overhead high, many have lost their groups, etc. Switching to a MMORPG is just easier than dealing with those issues.
7. Just like more kids watch TV and movies than read books, more kids will be playing MMORPGs than RPGs. This should be expected.

None of this means RPGs will disappear completely, although it's possible that they may reach wargame levels of 'almost disappeared'. Or they may not. We still have books after all.

IMO, it will continue as a smaller hobby even unto the days of holodecks. Sort of like books (even if they're all on a Kindle).



 
So who's right? Me or Dancey?

The only way to tell is for the hobby to go whole hog for Dancey's suggestions. If it dies, then we know he was wrong.

Oh wait, Dancey's accounted for even this. He suggests that by 2020 (only ten years) MMORPGs will reach the point where they able to meet all RPG goals. So in the time it would take for his theory to kill gaming, it will have died anyway. So he can't be proven wrong if his idea is accepted.

In the end he's not offering a new vision or path- just something that can make him a few bucks before the whole things dies. And if it doesn't die, well he'll still make a few bucks on the side if enough people buy into his predictions.

How cute.

An outcome in the Swine Wars?

Zach has a post up about the Forge of all things, something that hasn't really been on the radar for a while. It seems that the site is revamping maybe shutting down. It's rather hard to tell as plain English was never in wide use by Edwards and it certainly isn't making an appearance now.

About all I could tell from Zach's link was that Edwards claims victory in his battle (whatever that was) and... ...some forum reorg ....plus an implied statement that it's not going to be around much longer. But those type of claims should always be taken with a grain of salt and believed only when the site actually disappears or stops updating.

There's been some blogging wasted on this non-event (including this post of course). For example this one, that says RPGPundit immediately claimed victory for himself. I swear, one of those two just has to be a sock puppet for the other or maybe they're twins split at birth.

But it does raise a briefly interesting question- who did win in Pundit's "Swine Wars"? In a small completely unimportant way, that can be answered no matter if the Forge is shutting down or not.

RPGPundit was the self-declared defender of traditional gaming, which for most of his rant time online meant D20, Ryan Dancey, and WotC. For him to win, those elements would have to be standing tall and Forge ideas must remain unnoticed. Let's see how that went shall we:

• WotC replaced D20 with 4th Edition D&D
• WotC replaced Dancey
• 4th Edition D&D was penned by Mearls
• Mearls openly stated that he agreed with at least some of the GNS Model
• 4th Edition D&D seems to show that GNS influenced design
• Dancey publically declared traditional gaming dead, and called GNS influenced 'story-gaming' the future of rpgs.

It doesn't look like RPGPundit's side did all that well did it? His game of choice corrupted, his industry hero flipping to the other side. Indeed, that Pundit's side looks more like Vichy France in 1942 than the US in 1945 to me.

If this be victory, defeat must be a real bitch.

Edward's crowing is a little better founded- but far from roses. Sure he can point to the above points, but he gets no real credit for it. Mearls isn't exactly singing his praises and didn't use anything like the full model. Meanwhile Dancey is no longer even a player in the table-top rpg world. Various people took parts of his ideas and ran with them- but the parts they took were only those he stole from rec.game.frp.advocacy in the first place. Now even most of those who praise parts (and only parts) of GNS, mock the man who wanted to own RPG Theory.

Finally burning out (which is everyone's right, indeed- everyone's future) , and basicially forgotten- Edwards is ready to slowly phase out his last connection to the rpg world. Like the UK after WWII, his empire is gone and his time as a overshadowing presence even on his own board a thing of the past.

If this be victory, defeat must be a real bitch.



It's almost difficult for me to decide which of the two which I pity more. Almost difficult because I'm not going to waste the effort- neither is worth the time. They are what they made themselves to be, which is smaller than they could have been.

In the end, they are nothing more than something to waste a blog entry on. For God only knows, it's difficult some days to come up with a subject.

Review- Synapse: Part III, Controlling the Player

Continuing the review of Synapse (Part I and II), the next section of rules I want to talk about is what I consider the most interesting.

There are found in Chapters 3 (Culture), 4 (Life Experience), and 5 (Personality) that in total create the values for the character's Motivations. There are 22 Motivations, each in the end to be rated from 1 to 10. These include things like Revenge- a person who wants paid back for wrongs done him, to Nurturance (I don't think that's a real word)- the drive to take care of others.

How are these used? Let's quote an example from the rules on page 111.

For example, lets assume the Hero whose motivations are listed below has come across one of her long-time rivals, who is hanging off the edge of a cliff on a rope. A quick glance at the major motivations of this character reveals two motivations that are strong and would apply to this situation; Nurturance and Revenge. Abasement and Achievement are strong motivations for this character, but it does not relate to the actual situation so they are ignored here. The motivational setup for this Hero indicates that she would want to help them (Nurturance) more than she would want to punish them for past misdeeds (Revenge). Therefore, all things being equal, the character should want to help her rival get back up to safety.

What we have here is a another in a long list of mechanics called Personality Mechanics, i.e. mechanics that determine the decision making of characters instead of players. D&D alignment is a version of this, although the form was greatly expanded in games like Pendragon.

The most common reasons for systems like this are:

1. The designer and/or GM thinks that the players are playing their characters wrong- and they turn to mechanics to 'improve' role-play or to enforce conventions of the genre. Judging from a number of posts on the designer's game blog, this is a major goal for him.
2. The players who are so boring that they can't role-play an interesting character on their own- so they need a crutch. Something to remind them that- hey, there's suppose to be a person here...

Both are rather sad reasons. And in the end both are doomed to failure except at the most shallow level. But those reaching for systems like this tend to only think in shallow terms, so it fits and in its own way even works. For the designer/GM they enforce 'correct' play, and for the player it removes the burden of role-play which was something they likely didn't want to do in the first place.


With that in mind, the method in Synapse isn't bad at all, given what such rules are attempting to do. Here the complex creation system that so dragged down the skill system (take culture, life experience, plus extra points and get your totals for each Motivation) is almost welcomed. After all, if you can't role-play your character you may at least have some detail to determining what he's going to be.

It does suffer from the same 'this impacts you in the way the game says it does'. For example you could take a life experience of Sexual Abuse which drops your Sensuality by 6 points and adds +2 to Rejection. I don't think one would need to think very hard about how such an experience may in fact reverse those types of modifiers. But much the same can be said about any mechanic of this type.

Synapse offers two methods for overriding the mechanic.

One is for the player to present an argument for the decision that the GM agrees with (this is still meeting item #1 above for having these rules in the first place, and so is all to the good in allowing the GM to control the role-playing of his players).

The other is something called a Motivation Boost, which is a die roll against Eccentricity that costs the character mental stress upfront and risks perhaps undesired changes in your Motivations. Oh wait, they would only be undesired if you were actually role-playing instead of just using the mechanics.

All in all, this section of the rules aren't bad for what they are. Better than most in fact.


Lastly for this part of the review let's look briefly at the section on Morality. The pitch for the game says it goes far beyond good and evil, and then it says on page 108 that it's too complex of a subject and that only very general guide lines are going to be offered.

Those guidelines come out some PC book about moral systems that makes the most general comments possible. For example: people react to things as either person, animal or object. There's even a chart for it. Yes, it's a boring as it sounds. Like a freakin' text book by a bad author.


More importantly, why is this section even here? Shouldn't the Motivations handle all this in normal play?

Review- Synapse: Part II, Skills

It's been a bit since the last update. Life is busy and all.

Let's pick up with the part of the review of Synapse. The Part I was about my first impressions and what goals the game appeared to be aiming it. IMO, it failed on both accounts (I wasn't impressed, and the goals seemed both unobtainable and frankly not desirable). But first impressions can be wrong, and sometimes worthwhile things are found even in attempts at the most foolish goals. So let's play around with the mechanics some. Here' we're focus on skills, often the core of any system.

Character generation takes up pages 16 through 172 and is broken into eight sections: Brain Chemistry (I swear, this one section header by itself will cause most people to trashcan the book right there), Biology, Culture, Life Experience, Personality, Connections, Skills and Possessions.

The concept is to... 'naturally' grow your character in a fashion that he is the sum of... all they things modern lay psychology says he's the sum of.

I'm afraid the rules weren't well written with important information all over the place. For example you don't know what effect your Attributes (from the Brain Chemistry section) has until you reach 'Making a Skill Roll' on page 174. Just for reference, here we find that the game becomes Shadowrun 4th Edition and you roll a number of dice equal to the ruling Attribute (1 to 8, 3 is average) plus an extra dice if you have the linked talent then plus 0 to 4 dice for your training. Rolling a 5 or 6 grants a level of success. So a 'average' guy would have an attribute (natural talent as I'd call it) of 3 and if trained to the level of 'trained' +2 dice for a total of 5 dice for the typical skill test.

It's at this point that the wheels of the primary game goal come off depending upon the viewpoint of user. Do you personally think that success in an activity is more governed by natural talent or by training? Does this reflect a better view of how characters exist and interact with the world?

If you think training is more important than natural talent, the core design of the system disagrees. I'm afraid I fall into this camp, believing that natural talent only determines the upper limit of what training can provide. To put this into perspective- my version of this system would say that the attribute governs a skill cap. Thus training would provide all 5 dice if the attribute allowed it.

Another problem, do you believe that there is only a single way of thinking that can get you results in any specific area? For example the game says that Lock-picking is solely based upon Spatial and is modified by the Dexterity talent. Do you agree? I don't. Because I don't think someone excellent at lock picking is automatically as good at unarmed combat. Synapse however says this is the case. Further I think a person could pick locks by using Cognition, i.e. determining by analysis how the lock works and thus how it could be defeated.

The final result of all this is that Synapse suffers from the same simulation problem that all games do. Real life is very complex and game systems must be very simple. By attempting to define things like Brain Chemistry and the resulting building blocks thereof that in the end create skill- Synapse is highlighting that disconnect between reality and games instead of concealing it. The result can be disrupting to anyone who thinks differently on any number of matters than the game designer himself.

Thus by it's very design, Synapse is aiming for a very small target- people who think the mind works like the designer says it does.


One last comment on this part of the rules.


Synapse is designed to give you an end result that is common in RPGS: A Skill Roll. It does this by showing all (according to the game) the building blocks of what makes up a skill.

The typical RPG just gives you a Skill Roll (using any number of methods). And lets the player define what aspects of his character was the building blocks for that result.

Which do you think offers the most diversity in character design? Which method would you like to create characters in?

Review- Synapse: Part I, First Impressions

Greg Christopher has released a free public beta of his game Synapse, something he's been working on for quite some time.

Greg has in the past left me an impression that he is at his core... a game design new ager for the lack of a better term. Someone out to change the hobby with lofty dreams and 'new' ideas. Perhaps the natural result of a culture that wants to define everyone as special and talented- even if they aren't. However that is all first impressions and first impressions can be unfair. Besides, I recall baiting Greg before (I believe the subject was 'designing for women') and he responded calmly- that is worth points and respect. Few on the net are capable of an adult reaction to criticism.

So maybe Synapse is something special. Greg has earned the right in my mind to taken seriously, so let's do exactly that over the next few posts. I'll take Synapse apart and see if it does break any ground, and if it does- was that ground worth breaking?

First up- first impressions. The type of stuff that runs through your mind when you first open a gaming book on the shelf at the store and browse the book. Would I buy it or not?

Synapse is a 281 page PDF, with art that isn't outstanding art but good enough.

It opens with a all too typical section about "What is a RPG?". Nearly everyone that buys an RPG never reads that section. Frankly they're boring for the simple reason that the typical gamer already knows what an RPG is to them, and come hell or high water that's exactly what any game they pick up well be.

But it can be an interesting insight into the mind of the designer and here the 'intro' section takes up pages 4-15. Here's the first sentence:

"A roleplaying game (RPG) is played by a group of typically four to six people, usually around a table. The goal of the game is to tell an interesting, collaborative story and to have fun doing it. To tell the story, you use your imagination. There are no winners or losers because the game is about cooperation."

As is typical for RPG books, it's horrid. For one thing it tells me to use my imagination to reach the goal ( defined as 'collaborative story'), so right off the bat it's telling me I don't need this game- I could succeed without it using my own ability to create. Yes, nitpicking that, but it's there along with defining for ME what MY goal in a RPG MUST be and that part of it put me in a cranky enough mood to do nitpicking.

To be honest, most games screw up this section, so it's nothing new. But still disappointing. Often these sections have nothing to do with the actual rules and are pure boilerplate to increase the page count. So we'll see.

The most interesting section in the intro is on page 12. I always like understanding why the game was made in the first place. There are hundreds of games out there, with nothing really to set them apart other than perhaps setting which is always the least effective influence IME. So having something to tell me what is special about a game is very useful indeed.

What does Synapse have to say here?

"Synapse is a roleplaying game system where your character is conceptualized as a brain, not an entire person.... By contrast, in Synapse, all your attributes are mental. Your physical self is more like equipment than a part of your character."


So... that.. means... well... nothing. You could say the same about any game really. It's all in how you want to look at it. So my first reaction is that this is a way of pointing out a difference that really makes no difference. I sure it makes sense to the author, but I could have used something a bit more descriptive. Nothing that immediately follows makes it more clear- instead it mostly insults gamers and other games.

"The process exists this way because traditional RPG games are, when you examine them carefully, not as much about telling a story as much as they are about killing things and taking their stuff."

Massive turn off. My campaigns have not been *about* killing things and taking their stuff for decades. Nor is Synapse above this sort of thing as back on page 9 we read:

"Maybe your character is breaking up the thieves den because she wants to get her hands on some of the loot."

Hypocrisy, thou name is Synapse. Here the designer makes a mistake I seldom see outside of the likes of the Forge. Belief in the concept that a rpg campaign is defined solely by the rule set. This has never been true, and never will be true. RPG campaigns are defined by the players and how they choose to use the ruleset.

OK, enough with poor definitions and foolish claims. What appears to be the real goal of the design is stated on page 13:


"The character creation process is matched to the actual growth and development of real human beings in the real world."

A bit more reading and it seems clear that beyond the hyperbole, the actual goals of the system are roughly as follows:

1. Define the mental side of characters in more detail using something like the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (it maps poorly to this model and I reference it only in that the concept seems similar).
2. Refine this with a total 'lifepath' concept that generates your character in a method similar to the real world human development.
3. Resolved character changes caused by play in a method similar to real world development.

And that's basically it. As stated Synapse isn't a RPG as much as it's a character development engine. It's gaming for psych majors. Note, there's nothing here on those intro pages that indicate any means towards creating great stories- which is well and good since the author said I'd have to do that myself with my imagination.

So, here are the first impressions:

• The game takes itself too seriously
• It insults gamers, basically saying they are sociopaths who aren't role-playing or creating actual stories.
• It proclaims itself the one true way of.. not creating stories... but of creating brains.
• It's founded on a concept that I consider impossible for a playable game (modeling human development as opposed to a gaming character's development), or even if it were possible it would be undesirable (as nearly all humans are boring in what they develop into).
• It claims an end result for such modeling (great role-playing, great stories, etc) that are both unlikely and even contrary to the other.

Here I would put the game back on the shelf and walk out of the store (unless said store had different, more interesting new products to look at).

Next we'll see if Synapse achieves any of these goals, if it's the game the designer described, and if there's anything useful in it at all.