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EccentricCircle
2013-12-18, 06:11 AM
So having enjoyed reading the kind of tangental discussion about this in one of the other threads lets open it to the floor.

How should we classify RPGs? In terms of play style, Gamist vs Narrativist? In terms of character creation options, Class Based vs Skill based? In terms of Setting, Sci-Fi vs Fantasy, Horror vs Gritty action?

Which games are related to each other, and which inspired which? What are the essential games in each school of RPG design?

One thing that interests me particularly is the distinction between traditional and Indie gameing. The more i've seen of Indy games the more i've begun to realise just how different they are not just in terms of mechanics, but also in terms of goal and objective, and in the kind of experience they are trying to generate.

So to what extent are traditional games and Indie-style Story games the same thing? At what point does something cease to be a Roleplaying game? Or do different people have different ideas about what a Roleplaying game is and can be?

Discuss...

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-18, 07:02 AM
I suggest two different methods, both of which should be used to categorize a game system.

Genre. (Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc..)

Quality of the associated setting. (How well-developed or under-developed it is.)

Obviously, some games are mostly setting-free, but setting is also implied by the tools the books give you. So in cases like D&D, the setting is implied by what the books give. There's tons of magic spells given and it's a medieval to renaissance setting, gods are active (or some divine force is), etc...

For example, if you wanted to change D&D quite a bit, you could replace all the spells given to you with spells, and it would change the setting.

Tengu_temp
2013-12-18, 07:57 AM
Classifications based on gameplay style are pointless, because the group is much more important than the game here. And two different indie games can be completely different from each other, so there's no point making a broad, sweeping comparison between indie and traditional RPGs. Besides, how will you define those terms?

Lorsa
2013-12-18, 08:15 AM
Personally I think games should be classified by most of the things you said.

While it is true that the group decides the playstyle, various games have mechanics to help facilitate certain styles over others (and I believe you missed the purely simulationist approach). The GNS-distinction might not be good for actual game classification though, but something along those lines should be present.

Mentioning genre is always good, and whether or not it's written for and with a specific setting or if it's just general rules.

Making a distinction between publishing method seems a bit unnecessary to me however. It is true that some indie games are very different but that could be described by your other classifications.

veti
2013-12-18, 09:47 AM
That's a bit like asking "how shall we compare people? In terms of running speed, height, age, wealth, charisma, education...?"

Fairly obviously, the answer is: any of those might be appropriate, it depends entirely on why you're comparing them.

AMFV
2013-12-18, 09:50 AM
That's a bit like asking "how shall we compare people? In terms of running speed, height, age, wealth, charisma, education...?"

Fairly obviously, the answer is: any of those might be appropriate, it depends entirely on why you're comparing them.

Running speed, Wealth, and Education are the only acceptable options.

Beleriphon
2013-12-18, 09:59 AM
Running speed, Wealth, and Education are the only acceptable options.

To billionaires with the equivalent of multiple doctorates that can run a two minute mile are best? I see we both agree Batman is awesome.

AMFV
2013-12-18, 10:02 AM
To billionaires with the equivalent of multiple doctorates that can run a two minute mile are best? I see we both agree Batman is awesome.

He is the best, objectively as I've just shown, he is the best human being.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-12-18, 10:54 AM
Echoing prior posters: classifying games in a specific way does nothing more than filtering your data in a particular way. There's no one best classification. They're all tools in a toolbox, some of which are less useful than others, many of which are useful for different reasons.

"Traditional" vs. "Indie": This usually tends to boil down to "games related to big companies" vs. "games coming from small-press companies". Just like the "indie vs. Hollywood" distinction of movies, this classification tends to coincide with "innovative vs. standard mechanics". Because indie games are focused on finding a specific niche of gamers (as opposed to a game like D&D, which targets a broad swath of gamers), they can afford to be more unorthodox in their mechanics.

Experimental vs. Derivative: I wish I had a better word than "derivative", because it so frequently has negative connotations. What I mean by it, however, is a game whose rules are evolved and developed mostly from a prior game's rules. e.g., if a game has the Big Six Stats and its core resolution is "when you take an action, use the appropriate stat and roll against a difficulty value", it's a derivative--a large number of games on the market are like this, since it's a simpler thing to take a derivative ruleset and make it more robust. Experimental games might completely redefine many of the assumptions that underly derivative games. While they're technically derivative (because they have their roots in prior games), they don't always borrow heavily. Dread is a great example: it uses a Jenga tower as the source of difficulty in the game. The more actions and risks players take, the riskier it is to take action.

Concrete vs. Abstract: This pair is the most spectrum-ish of them all, even moreso than Experimental vs. Derivative, because I have yet to run across a game which doesn't have both parts. Concrete games use mechanics which engage with the tangible elements of the fiction, while abstract games use mechanics which engage with the intangibles--characters' feelings, ethics, and also the more "meta" levels of the story situation and the narrative itself. GURPS is concrete: mechanics are geared towards a physical representation of the fiction (although some abstraction, such as hitpoints, still exists). Fiasco is abstract: the only resolution is whether a scene turns out poorly or well for your character, and that's limited because half of the scenes must turn out poorly, half turn out well. (Also, your ultimate end is much more likely to be better if all your scenes turned out similarly for you--all bad or all good.)

Mechanics-Light vs. Mechanics-Heavy: This is simple--what quantity of mechanics are there, and how often do they enter into the game? Unfortunately, it doesn't capture all of the nuances, which is what the next category is for...

Streamlined vs. Detailed: This is usually what people actually mean when they say "light vs. crunchy mechanics". Streamlined mechanics, irregardless of how often the game uses them, are unified, simple, and easy to remember. This doesn't stop them from covering a wide number of situations; Dungeon World is a streamlined game, but players have a massive number of options at higher levels. The trick is, they all work in the exact same manner, being built around a unified core. Detailed mechanics have a large number of moving parts that all come together in some way. There's often subsystems and charts to consult. Burning Wheel is a great example of a detailed game; although its core is simple, the complexity of Burning Wheel comes from the fact that it has a wide variety of different subsystems.

...and I'm just getting started. I would say that you should never use just one axis to compare games on. That gives a poor idea of their character--because every game has character.

I would also say that you can classify games according to gaming style, because a well-designed game always limits your options innately, enabling some gaming styles and hindering others. You'd have to houserule it to support unintended gaming styles. I don't see this as a problem; it's how other games work, after all.

Black Jester
2013-12-18, 12:57 PM
the classification and categorisation of RPGs is a pretty pointless endeavour, because there is such a massive amount of possible variations between "how the game is supposed to be played" and "how the game is actually played". these two are not as dependent on each other as it may seem, and one can make a relatively decent argument that a good game is at least partially defined by its flexibilitiy to adress a vast number of different playstyles and preferences to find a suitable compromise for the more often than not quite heterogeneous groups of players. Tiny niche systems that shoehorn the players in a fixed presumption of tastes are a lot less useful, in my experience.

Besides, most of these categorisations are fluidly applied not to games,but to gamers, and that is the point where this whole idea becomes actively hurtful: You establish artifical boundaries between people who would otherwise enjoy their hobby together and are losing the opportunity to find a good compromise - and even worse, to get involved in a different style than their usual fare by playing with people outside of an optimal match based on a highly artifical category.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-12-18, 04:49 PM
See, I think any sort of labeling is fallible, but that doesn't make it useless. It gives you a vocabulary to talk about otherwise non-quantifiable things, very real things that can't be exactly pinned down. That's the purpose of language in general (the fact that new words keep getting invented is a testament to the gaps in any language), and we haven't given up on obviously-flawed language yet. :smallsmile:

WbtE
2013-12-18, 06:33 PM
I think the most useful classification is the default session. What does the group of characters do when they don't have a big project of their own?

If a game can't be described in this way, it's either directionless (Mage: the Ascension, I'm looking at you) or a composite of sub-games (GURPS, this is your strength not your weakness).

kyoryu
2013-12-18, 06:50 PM
I personally find the most useful classification of games to be around the player 'needs' that they support.

A player who really likes charop, and a player that despises them, will gravitate to very different systems.

AMFV
2013-12-18, 06:57 PM
I personally find the most useful classification of games to be around the player 'needs' that they support.

A player who really likes charop, and a player that despises them, will gravitate to very different systems.

Or very differing implementations of the same system, D&D has more breadth of Charop than almost any system I've seen, and I'm sure that are more similar, it just depends on your game. I think that the players who like system mastery would be comfortable with any complex system, and those that don't, generally look for other factors which may lead them both to the same system.

Oracle_Hunter
2013-12-18, 09:37 PM
The taxonomy of RPGs is an area that has consumed far more effort than it has produced in value.

I agree with CarpeGuitarrem that classification systems are simply a way of filtering things, so the first question is: what do we care about filtering?

IMHO, you can boil this down pretty easily:
(1) Genre
Most RPGs have a genre they operate in and Players like to know what sort of story they'll be playing. Note that "generic" systems (e.g. GURPS) would count as a "generic" genre.

(2) Rules Heavy v. Rules Light
Some people argue this is a scale. I do not. If a game can be taught, in its entirety, over the course of a single adventure it is Rules Light. If the game requires multiple adventures or -- heaven forbid -- pouring over rulebooks in your free time, it is Rules Heavy. Obviously this is important for Players.

(3) Conflict Resolution System
This is more important for Game Designers than Players, per se, but it is certainly helpful to be able to say whether we're dealing with a "dice pool" or "single die" or even "playing card" based system. Of all the terms I'd use, this is the one closest to biological taxonomy -- you can trace the "d20" development from one path of games and "dice pools" from another. Like biological taxonomy, it's mostly of interest to academics and professionals.

(4) Duration
How many adventures does the game support? Is advancement open-ended? Fixed? Is the game suited only for one-shots?

(5) Hook
What is the central fun thing about the game? This is open to much easier classification than you might think: WotC D&D is a "Character Building Game" where adding new features to your character sheet is a major mechanical focus to the game. TSR D&D is a "Dungeon Crawling Game" where most of the fun had to do with risking your characters in dungeons, not the steady accumulation of magic items and abilities.

* * *
I think that's probably a worthwhile place to end. Personally I have some finer terms I use (e.g. is Conflict Resolution Dramatic or Granular?) which are probably not so useful for the public at large.

N.B. I'd like GNS to die in a fire :smallsmile:

EccentricCircle
2013-12-19, 07:01 AM
Besides, most of these categorisations are fluidly applied not to games,but to gamers, and that is the point where this whole idea becomes actively hurtful: You establish artifical boundaries between people who would otherwise enjoy their hobby together and are losing the opportunity to find a good compromise - and even worse, to get involved in a different style than their usual fare by playing with people outside of an optimal match based on a highly artifical category.

Thats actually the antithesis of the purpose I envisoned for this thread. I've been thinking a lot recently that there is such a range and variety of games that it is often difficult to see the wood for the trees. A lot of people designing homebrew RPGs end up baseing them heavily on the assumptions of the systems with which they are familiar. So is there a way to create a broad-strokes classification of what different games do, how they do it and so on. That way people who haven't played a vast range of games have some sort of basis for knowing what is out there, and what might be to their tastes. ( I include myself in this category, I've played a lot of things once or twice, but the number of systems i've played in depth is still quite limited.)

From the discussion so far we seem to have a vocal group who feel that classification is impossible, I agree that no classification system is going to be completely acurate, but that doesn't mean that it cannot be useful as a first pass. Lots of people have suggested different Axes for classification, some of which are binary, but most of which are spectrums. Above and beyond this we have Genre Classifications which are probably the most straightforward, partly because genre has been described and classified quite thoroughly in the context of books, films etc.

I broadly agree that the Idea of the GNS categories isn't a particularly good classification system, but it is a starting point.

Last: Obviously different groups will use different games in different ways. so maybe one important category is flexibility. Can a game be used to play a range of different styles and stories, or is it more focused on one sort of play style.

I think that some games give you a set of tools that allow you to very finely control the world you create, whether thats in optimising characters or simulating the world. This is broadly the kind of game I go for most often when GMing, as I like to use a game to tell a story of my design, which will then be shaped and given life by the interaction of the characters with a world and setting which has been designed in a lot of detail. I like the players to add their own stuff to the world, but this is done in a controlled and directed manner.

Other games i've seen seem to have a much less controlled aproach. They create a set of rules and set them loose, so that a story or world organically evolves out of those starting conditions. I initially found trying to play this sort of game very difficult, as I just didn't have the narrative control I was used to and expected. It was only in retrospect that I realised that the objective of the game was different. That we weren't trying to tell a specific story but rather see what story evolved from the interaction of the elements we'd created.

Lorsa
2013-12-19, 10:14 AM
N.B. I'd like GNS to die in a fire :smallsmile:

Please elaborate (although perhaps in another thread)!

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-12-19, 11:12 AM
Many people's problem with GNS is that it's been very badly used. e.g., "That game's Narrativist, so it won't appeal to Simulationist players." or "The trouble with Game X is that it tried to introduce Gamist elements into a Simulationist context." The three terms have been turned into straitjackets for games, with armchair gaming pundits scrambling to evaluate whether a particular mechanic is Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist.

Generally, it's because GNS has been wielded as a tool for closing gamers' minds, instead of three lenses to view games through. Technically, every game probably has some of all three in it.

Jay R
2013-12-19, 12:01 PM
Experimental vs. Derivative: I wish I had a better word than "derivative", because it so frequently has negative connotations. What I mean by it, however, is a game whose rules are evolved and developed mostly from a prior game's rules.

By this definition, the only completely experimental game is Dungeons and Dragons. All others are to some degree based on role-playing games that came earlier - especially those designed to be different from earlier games.


"Traditional" vs. "Indie": This usually tends to boil down to "games related to big companies" vs. "games coming from small-press companies".

Similarly, by this definition, D&D is an indie game. It was produced by a company that was just a few guys in Lake Geneva. The fact that the game became big and so did the company doesn't change the brute fact - D&D was produced by a small, independent no-press company.

So were Champions and GURPS. In fact, have any RPGs been developed by large companies?

And this points out the problem with categorizing games at all. Games evolve. Almost all attempts at categorizing want to contrast some favored new, small, experimental, non-traditional, indie game with D&D - the original new, small, experimental, non-traditional, indie game

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-12-19, 12:49 PM
By this definition, the only completely experimental game is Dungeons and Dragons. All others are to some degree based on role-playing games that came earlier - especially those designed to be different from earlier games.
Like I said, all games are technically derivative. (Even early D&D--Chainmail, after all.) It's a spectrum. You can distinguish between games that are meaningfully derivative and those that are meaningfully experimental. After all, there's a broad difference between Fiasco and d20 Modern, in terms of how much they took from popular games.

Similarly, by this definition, D&D is an indie game. It was produced by a company that was just a few guys in Lake Geneva. The fact that the game became big and so did the company doesn't change the brute fact - D&D was produced by a small, independent no-press company.

So were Champions and GURPS. In fact, have any RPGs been developed by large companies?
On the one hand, you can easily scale the "indie" vs. "traditional" distinction, because there's certainly a difference between TSR's scope and many of these tiny publishers, even if TSR was a small company. Or Steve Jackson games, for that matter.

On the other hand, I would never lump together all of D&D's editions into one game. Early D&D was absolutely an indie game. Once you get to 3rd Edition, it becomes less so, and due to Wizard's acquisition, 4E is definitely not. Each edition is a distinct game.

Oracle_Hunter
2013-12-19, 02:12 PM
Many people's problem with GNS is that it's been very badly used. e.g., "That game's Narrativist, so it won't appeal to Simulationist players." or "The trouble with Game X is that it tried to introduce Gamist elements into a Simulationist context." The three terms have been turned into straitjackets for games, with armchair gaming pundits scrambling to evaluate whether a particular mechanic is Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist.

Generally, it's because GNS has been wielded as a tool for closing gamers' minds, instead of three lenses to view games through. Technically, every game probably has some of all three in it.
^ This is a good place to start with my objections with GNS.

To go further, GNS was a nice first attempt to classify gameplay in 1997 but it's crudity leaves it wholly useless (if not counterproductive) in the world of 2013. It's very much like Aristotelian Physics -- a fine first attempt, but a dead-end that held back the field for years.

erikun
2013-12-19, 05:31 PM
I'd say that as much description as possible is useful, as you don't know why a person would be interested in a particular RPG. Also, much like video games, there could be different aspects that either attract or detract a person from a particular system. Some people don't like point-buy systems, while another may prefer future setting rules. Tying a system on only one specific category would make the distinction potentially worthless to a lot of people.

I will say that I don't care for the GNS distinction, as it doesn't really separate games very well. I also don't care for the mainstream/indie distinction, as not only are there indie games that just mimic mainstream titles, but the unique advantages/faults of indie titles are probably better represented by clearer categories (size, hook, etc.)

Some distinctions I think are imporant include the game's Size, both of the base required material to play and the pool of available optional material to use, and Scale, or what kinds of conflicts does the game normally handle. Others that have already been mentioned, such as Genre, Rules Weight (heavy vs light), Abstraction, and Hook would all be good to know as well.

Lorsa
2013-12-20, 05:22 AM
I thought the basis of the GNS theory was to show that there are different approaches to roleplaying and that some games can be better for certain approaches?

In any case, I think the only really good distinction between roleplaying games is how much fun I will have playing them. Unfortunately I am not sure a new game could tell me that so I am stuck reading the rules and trying them out...

Jay R
2013-12-20, 10:54 AM
In any case, I think the only really good distinction between roleplaying games is how much fun I will have playing them. Unfortunately I am not sure a new game could tell me that so I am stuck reading the rules and trying them out...

And equally important is the realization that what's fun for you won't necessarily be fun for me. So the distinctions between games can't be universal, and defining meaningful categories of games will always lead to the kinds of disagreements found in this thread.