Project Proposal: An Even DEEPER Dive into D&D

Posted on by
1

Overview

For my final project, I would like to write a research paper that will investigate and explore the ways that Dungeons & Dragons has historically intersected with the fields of fantasy and political ideologies through its multiple editions. More specifically, I would like to analyze Dungeons & Dragons through the lens of critical race, queerness, and imperialism and how all the game has evolved through its 50-year history. This would be an extension of my class presentation in which I take a deeper dive through the game.

Throughout my study of these games, I want to take a much deeper look at the ways that Dungeons & Dragons has worked to perpetuate and exemplify ideologies of Western imperialism and contrast it with the attempts to address those ideas and evolve into more modern viewpoints. One of the first ways that I will do this is exploring the game’s relationship to wargaming and how the practice is both upheld and subverted by Dungeons and dragons. Afterwards, I seek to engage with how D&D presents ideas surrounding race, gender, and queerness within its character creation and the acts of mimicry that are essential to playing the game. Finally, I want to explore the ways that Dungeons and Dragons has intertwined with popular culture throughout history, moving from a game for “Satan-worship” to a much more mainstream format and what factors contributed to it.

 

Methodology

Dungeons and Dragons, first published in 1974, has had multiple editions in the last 50 years. To help keep my research paper more organized, I’ve decided to focus on the main editions of the game and exclude most other expansions. This means that I will be investigating the following sources:

 

  • Dungeons & Dragons – Original Edition (1974)
  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – 1st Edition (1977)
  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – 2nd Edition (1989)
  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – Revised 2nd Edition (1995)
  • Dungeons & Dragons – 3rd Edition (2000)
  • Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 – Revised 3rd Edition (2003)
  • Dungeons & Dragons – 4th Edition (2008)
  • Dungeons & Dragons – 5th Edition (2014)
  • One Dungeons & Dragons (2024)

 

While looking at all these games, I will examine the mechanics and character creation processes for each edition and the thought process behind changing each of them with every edition. I also plan to read articles concerning how each of these editions were made and the purpose behind changing aspects of the game. Through this, I hope to gain a better understanding of the game through the lens of capital and culture.

 

As for sources to help me with my analysis, I found the following to help guide my studies with the intention of finding more.

 

  • Michaud, Jon (November 2, 2015). “The Tangled Cultural Roots of Dungeons & Dragons”. The New Yorker. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  • “Foreign War Games”. Selected Professional Papers Translated from European Military Publications. Translated by H. O. S. Heistand. Washington D.C.: US Government Printing Office. 1898. pp. 233–289.
  • Reagan Yessler & Bethany Craig (31 May 2024): Dungeons and Dragons: Gender, Race, and Power in the Fantasy and Storytelling Space, GeoHumanities, DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2024.2352528
  • Atherton, Gray, et al. “A Critical Hit: Dungeons and Dragons as a Buff for Autistic People.” Autism : The International Journal of Research and Practice, 2024, pp. 13623613241275260-, https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241275260.

Final Project Proposal: Death Planning and Your Own Personal Psychopomp Game

Posted on by
1

As the saying goes, there are only two givens in this life: death and taxes. Yet, according to a 2017 study, only one in three people in the United States has an advanced directive – a document(s) including health care proxy form (deciding who will make end-of-life decisions for you), a living will (a document that states what sort of medical decisions you would like for end-of-life medical care), and DNR form (Do Not Resuscitate) – in place to prepare for it. In 2015, the Funeral and Memorial Information Council (FAMIC) found that though most Americans were interested in preplanning for a funeral, only 17% of adults had made the arrangements. This past year, after the unexpected death of my uncle, I witnessed the difficulty that avoiding these decisions can have. My mother, having volunteered to settle his affairs, had to figure out funeral arrangements, burial of his cremains, and the settlement of his estate before she could process what had happened.  

As a proud member of the Death Positive movement, I was inspired by Caitlin Doughty’s introduction of the process of end-of-life planning in her video “Protecting Trans Bodies in Death.”  The process appealed to me, but the idea of finding paperwork according to my state’s law and researching every detail was daunting. Seeing my mother’s experience with planning my uncle’s funeral, I wanted to create a resource to help streamline and destress starting the death planning process. What better way to encourage exploration, learning, and engagement than a game? Instead of sifting through paperwork and extensive Google searching, I figured that creating a dedicated game for the topic could help users begin to consider these questions and begin to make these decisions at their own pace. 

The premise of the game is that you are designing your own death aide – inspired by the idea of the psychopomp, the angel of death, and the character Death from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The player guides the psychopomp through their training on how to best serve the player, learning various skills, attitudes, and customs as they continue their journey to becoming a full-fledged personal psychopomp.  

The game – likely to be developed in Ren’Py (a visual novel Python framework) or as a dedicated JavaScript site – is mostly text-based with an avatar of the aide on screen, evolving with the player’s choices. The player’s choices will affect the avatar’s appearance both directly and indirectly – for example, they could choose the avatar’s hairstyle, and choosing cremation for the treatment of their remains would provide the avatar with a fire elemental motif. The death planning questions are asked diagetically as the psychopomp undergoes their training, rather than presenting the player with an arduous questionnaire to fill out. Before answering these questions, the player is provided with context so that they can make informed decisions. For example, before answering whether they would like their next of kin to be their health proxy, the player would be led through how next of kin is defined and what sort of decisions they would be expected to make.  

The player can choose to explore options for funeral planning and answer questions for health care proxy forms, and living wills, though this minimum viable product will focus on these forms for the state of New York. These types of documents will be introduced to the player so they can make the conscious decision to begin exploring these topics. The point of the game is to educate and engage the player at their own pace and comfort.  

The game also allows the player to add wishes such as a funeral in accordance with a particular religion of their specification, refusal of embalming, what music they would like played at their funeral, etcetera. While some options will be explored through the game, more open questions (such as religious affiliation) will be asked in an open-ended manner, allowing the player to accurately represent who they are and what they want.  

When the player has finished taking their psychopomp on their creation journey, the game ends, and the player is presented with a document containing their choices for download, including how their choices correspond to options on advanced directive forms. The choices document is not designed to be legally binding but to give the player a concrete token of the learning and introspection they have undertaken over their playthrough.  

This game takes its cues from McGonagall’s theory of using game development to improve our everyday lives and Flanagan’s idea of activist games, designed to emphasize social issues (in this case right to representation in death), education, and intervention. Through engagement with the game, the player creates a document with their choices that they can then use to establish an advanced directive and make their wishes known to their loved ones and health proxy / death care representative, thus lessening the anxieties and burdens on themselves and their loved ones in the future. In so doing, they gain concrete benefits beyond the entertainment or experiential value of the game.  

Late Blog Post #4: Thoughts on Locative Games, LARPs, Geocaching

Posted on by
1

In Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play: Radical Game Design, she touches on mobile media and locative media as ways to foster collaboration and cultural change – and she gives several organized events that happened in New York City – but oddly her examples are pointedly non-technology based (mapscotch, Cruel 2 B Kind, Samara Smith’s Chain Reaction). I gather this focus is reflected in the chapter’s title, “Artists’ Locative Games,” rather than talking about commercial or popular organized public play games.

After the Pokemon Go augmented reality craze hit America in 2016, Flanagan work was cited in warning about “entertainment colonization” in which “the players unwillingly commoditize unaware bystanders.” This problem seems to have evolved and echoes in later social media stunt videos, like the public outrage livestreams that currently has Johnny Somali in custody in South Korea. I think a venn diagram on this topic would show a lot of overlap among greed, attention/validation, and “public media” technology.

This impulse runs counter to my personal experience with locative games. As a teenager, and briefly in my 20s, I took part in various live-action role-playing games (LARPs). The earliest was a kids’ game called “Assassination” (aka “Mafia”), akin to Cruel 2 B Kind but with “kills” being accomplished by shooting rubber bands at your target. The “Masquerade” LARP had players take on the roles of vampires secretly existing among modern humanity inside real nightclub venues while pursuing byzantine political schemes between rival factions of the undead. In both cases, a feature of each LARP was playing in public WITHOUT drawing attention to what was happening. Players used shared hand signs to indicate character actions, but getting “caught” playing was grounds for elimination from the game. The liminal “magic circle” was more of a social compact rather than a discrete physical space.

I never got into geocaching, the hobby of using GPS devices to find player logs hidden all over the world. I’m curious about WhereIGo.com, a game by the biggest geocaching company, where the GPS-based “treasure hunt” is paired with puzzles and a storytelling narrative. From the marketing info: “Participants following a narrative or series of tasks that unfold as they reach specific GPS locations, known as ‘zones.’ The concept combines elements of outdoor exploration, puzzle-solving, and role-playing, as players follow storylines and complete challenges in real-world settings. Each WhereIGo ‘cartridge’ (a digital game file) offers a unique experience, which can vary widely in theme and objective.”

Has anyone done this sort of locative gaming?

Proposal for final research paper: Digital poetics in the age of AI

Posted on by
1

AI is coming for poets’ jobs — or so researchers at OpenAI, most famously known as the maker of ChatGPT, would like you to think. In a paper published in 2023 examining the “Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models,” 4 researchers (three of whom were employed by the AI company) posited that “Poets, Lyricists and Creative Writers” are among the occupations most highly exposed to being automated by AI models like that underpinning ChatGPT.

While it may be hard to imagine poetry being a prime target for automation, this is already in motion. The Poem Booth, designed by Dutch design studio VOUW, emerges from the notion that yes, writing a poem is work, and yes, in human hands, that work is performed much too slowly. 

The tech object — an actual photo booth that snaps a picture of users, then programmatically writes a few rhyming couples about the portrait in a matter of seconds — uses a fine-tuned version of ChatGPT to wow users with rapidly penned, personalized poems. Thus far, The Poem Booth has been touted as a crowd-pleaser at conferences and conventions, though VOUW also puts it up for rent (in tech parlance, we might say “Poem-as-a-Service”) for the price of EUR 950 for 6 hours.

But are The Poem Booth’s couplets any good? Do they have the capacity to move, to spark action, to speak from one heart to another? That is to say, are they even poetry?

My research paper will investigate the extent to which The Poem Booth and other commercial attempts to automate the poet (see Google’s “Bard” chatbot or Anthropic’s “Haiku” and “Sonnet” AI models) run antithetical to the spirit of poetry as a craft. I will also explore the potentialities of the web as “a space of poiesis” — Loss Pequeño Glazier’s term — in which new forms of poetry can take root. 

Glazier’s words appeared in the early 2000s, when the web looked vastly different, both in its ethos and in its capabilities. I will approach this same space from the vantage point of the mid-2020s, in a post-ChatGPT age. There is now a digital poetics at the margins of the internet that seeks to wake readers up — not only to their own existence, but to their habituated experience of a web that has become too heavily trafficked and commoditized. I will use recently published examples from online journals like the html review, Taper, and Crawlspace in my formulation of a potent, born-digital poetics that rescues language from the maw of large language models.

Play serves as the undertow of this new digital poetics: browsers that play text, code that puts text into play, readers-as-interactors (to use Nick Montfort’s term) that play with and within the text. In an extension of Ian Bogost’s procedural rhetorics, this digital poetics seeks expression through a flash of double-rhetoric — that of computational procedure and written text. In particular, digital poetics’ embrace of kinetic and multimedia structures privilege a simultaneous, integrated act of persuasion.

Brandon Smith – Research Proposal, The Roots of Gamification and Its Relationship with Economic and Political Theory

Posted on by
2

Brandon Smith
Digital, Building, Playing, Thinking
DHUM 7800
11/6

MLA Format

The Roots of Gamification and Its Relationship with Economic and Political Theory

Research Question:
How have early theories of play and gamification, rooted in economics and political conflict, influenced the development of contemporary gamification practices, particularly in economic modeling and political simulations?

Proposal
This proposal seeks to examine the intellectual roots of gamification by tracing its early foundations in economics and political theory. By analyzing seminal works, such as John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944), Clark Abt’s contributions to the “serious games” movement during the Cold War, and H.G. Wells’s Floor Games (1911) as an early example of wargaming, I aim to investigate how these theories of game mechanics intersected with serious fields like economic modeling and political conflict theory. This study will explore how these early applications of game theory contributed to our current understanding of gamification, laying the groundwork for the integration of game elements into non-game contexts.

Background
The notion of applying game-like structures to real-world problems has a long-standing history that predates modern “gamification” as we understand it today. Game theory, a branch of mathematics formulated by von Neumann and Morgenstern, aimed to provide a framework for rational decision-making in economic contexts. Their work was revolutionary, introducing the idea that competitive interactions could be modeled mathematically, thus bridging the gap between economics and strategic decision-making.

During the Cold War, Clark Abt expanded on these principles in a new context, advocating for “serious games” to simulate potential political and military scenarios. His contributions are essential to the gamification discourse, as they illustrate how play could serve as a strategic tool for understanding real-world conflicts and ideological struggles. Abt’s theories laid the groundwork for using simulation as an educational and policy-making tool, encouraging interactive learning and active participation in hypothetical scenarios.

Additionally, H.G. Wells’s Floor Games and later Little Wars (1913) represent early forms of wargaming, which transformed “play” into a structured and rule-governed way of engaging with military strategy. Wells’s work highlighted the potential of games to serve not only as entertainment but also as a vehicle for strategic thought, contributing to an early conceptualization of “gaming” as a valuable intellectual exercise.

My Reasons
This research aims to:

  1. Examine how early game theory by von Neumann and Morgenstern influenced economic and strategic thinking, particularly focusing on decision-making under competitive conditions.
  2. Analyze how Clark Abt’s concept of serious games contributed to the idea of gamification, specifically in political and educational contexts.
  3. Investigate how H.G. Wells’s early wargaming efforts offered insights into play as a tool for understanding military and political strategy.
  4. Synthesize these early theories to understand the philosophical underpinnings of gamification and its applications today.

Methodology and Sources
To address these objectives, the study will involve a close reading of primary texts and an analysis of secondary scholarship:

  • Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern will be used to unpack how competitive strategy was mathematically modeled and how these theories were applied to real-world economic and political scenarios.
  • Clark Abt’s concept of serious games, discussed in Serious Games (1970), will be examined to understand how gamified structures have been used to simulate political conflicts, with emphasis on Cold War military and ideological scenarios.
  • H.G. Wells’s Floor Games and Little Wars provide a historical example of wargaming, where play served as a method for exploring and understanding military strategies in an accessible, simulated form.

These sources, alongside secondary analyses from digital humanities scholars on the influence of games on societal structures, will help contextualize these theories within a broader historical trajectory of gamification.

Literature Review and Theoretical Context:
Several scholars have examined the influence of game theory on both economics and politics, such as Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, which contextualizes game mechanics and design within larger social frameworks. Jane McGonigal’s work on the psychological impacts of gamification, particularly in Reality Is Broken, offers insights into how gamified experiences impact individual behavior and decision-making in structured environments. These texts provide a modern interpretation of gamification, which builds upon the foundational theories of von Neumann, Morgenstern, Abt, and Wells.

What I aim to find
This research is expected to reveal how early theories of play, decision-making, and simulation provided intellectual frameworks that have influenced the gamification of non-game environments today. Specifically, by grounding gamification in fields like economics and political theory, we can better understand the ethical and practical implications of applying game mechanics to areas such as business, education, and policy-making.

The findings may also provide insights into potential risks, such as oversimplification in gamified models or ethical concerns when “playing” with real-world scenarios. Ultimately, this research hopes to contribute to the digital humanities field by examining the philosophical underpinnings of gamification and how these early theories continue to shape our understanding of interactive, simulated experiences in both digital and real-world environments.

Conclusion:
Through this study, I intend to deepen our understanding of gamification by exploring its roots in economic and political theory. By situating gamification within this historical context, I hope to accomplish long-lasting efforts to ongoing conversations in the digital humanities about the transformative potential of game mechanics, as well as the ethical considerations that arise when applying these theories to serious fields.

 

Project Proposal: The Play of Radical Acceptance

Posted on by
1

The Preface:
I have spent a lot of time lately reflecting about the ways in which play has always been deeply interconnected to my understanding of personal identity. From the gravitational pull of youth sports on my childhood existence to the policing of my body at play as an effeminate young boy in Hawaii, play occupied a space of tension. Learning and internalizing that the play, interests and curiosities that felt natural to me were acts of disobedience and dishonor to my family, meant a growing weariness in a trust of self or identity; a distrust in intuition and instinct. In this sense, the question of self was not inherent, but introduced.

Without belief in my own sense of self, the craving for systems and rules to understand how to live life “well” became a fixation. The “game” afoot was to learn the unsaid, invisible guidelines for the performance (mimicry) of passing as straight. Growing up in the closet demanded a rigorous archeology of culture and constant governance of the body and self. Finding the rules, embodying the rules and believing the rules meant success; protection is promised in the magic circle.

Needless to say, there are moments in this lifetime that have both inspired self acceptance, and others that have slammed the closet door shut. I didn’t come out as gay until five years ago, and I have been wondering about the inflection points that exist in my memories, and in my journey to the present, that serve as a kaleidoscopic memoir — a winding web of moments of consequence.

I believe that games and play have the ability to serve as a radical tool for self reflection. This final project is an opportunity for me to experiment further with the idea of play through a queer studies, narrative studies and archival studies lens. I hope to build a game — or rather, a system that is anchored to my own experience of sexuality, acceptance and coming out of the closet. I believe that both “playing” the game system and the process of creating the system itself will offer a cathartic experience of self-reflection. Especially right now, in a political environment that endorses a mentality of threatening different identities and peoples, there is an imperative to continue the act of reflection, of finding acceptance outside of the system.

 

The Project Overview:
I plan to develop a game system, inspired by tabletop role-playing games (such as Dungeons & Dragons), but pointed at narrative and reflection. The goal is to employ the mechanics and structure of TTRPG systems, which are most frequently understood as play mechanics for war and violent conquest, towards reflexivity and an exploration of identity and acceptance. This isn’t at all to assert that TTRPGs are unable to deliver an exploration of identity (I actually believe that these kinds of games are inherently good at critiquing society’s belief systems on identity), there is always an argument of identity that’s made in the codifying of a player in terms of measured attributes like strength and intelligence. My hope is to explore how this kind of play experience transforms when the system points at different metrics of identity.

 

The Project Process and Details:
There is a scale and time factor to this project that I’m still in the process of working out completely. I’m excited about this idea so I’ve imagined a huge undertaking with lots of parts (and hopes). But I also know that I’ve got to be realistic given how fast it has already become November, and soon enough the end of the semester. For that reason, I’ve decided to break down my process and what I hope to produce at each phase to introduce a bit more pragmatism into the ambitions of this TTRPG system project.

Phase I: Playing The Memoirist (Reflection) 
The first “act” of this project began with the preface of this project proposal. What does a TTRPG system look like when the metrics of identity (historically measured with categories such as speed or perception) are pointed less at advancement, leveling up and skill development, but at acceptance.

This stage is about reflecting (as well as looking at scholarship in this space, particularly queer studies) on what makes a “player” distinct, and the circumstances, achievements and experiences of life that support or obstruct the pursuit of self acceptance.

 
Phase II: Building The System (Abstraction)
Following the reflection and research of Phase I, the task becomes constructing a new system that supports the revelations, world views and perceptions of identity that arose. The task is abstracting reflection, memory and personal story into a system that is modular — one that is capable of holding and supporting a range of identities and experiences beyond my own.

Beyond the system’s infrastructure, I hope to invent a mechanism for ordering the open-ness of a TTRPG. This is where narrative theory will offer interesting outlooks on ordering principles, looking at non-linear plots as inspiration.

 
Phase III: Recording The Gameplay (Transcription)
Once the system is constructed, the obvious next step is to play test. My emphasis here is less so on critiquing the system (which is still important), but is instead, aimed primarily at thinking deeply about the “output” of the play experience. What is the object that best represents, captures and preserves the play experience? How is the evolution of character over time dictated and recorded?

I am eager to dive deeper into archival research and practices at this juncture. The work of recording play, in whatever shape that may be — a text transcript or a twitch stream — might fundamentally shift a play experience towards one that is less ludic. But I plan to explore whether the “transcription” of play has the potential to be playful, considering the weaknesses of productive and/or managerial play.

 
Phase IV: Transforming Play into Story (Narrativization)
I will admit that this phase and the phase that follows are a bit unrelated to the main objective of this project. But in the spirit of thinking about the potential of play, I want to also (while still placing a major focus of this project on building a character system built around acceptance) argue for the potential of narrativizing play.

It’s a bit excessive, but as someone who spends so much of my time in the world of nonfiction for work, I am interested in the concept of taking the system (which is like an autobiography abstracted into game), playing within it, and then “un-abstracting” that story — or rather, building net new fictional narratives upon the play experiences that arise.

 
Phase V: Repeated Play and the Alea of Dice (Serialization) 
In the system that I’m attempting to develop, repeatability is a major consideration. I hope that it has been imbued with enough territory for chance and surprise that there will be value in playing it more than once.

Also in thinking about narrative theorists that I hope to bring into this work, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Robin Warhol offer up critical thinking about endings of narratives (as well as the serial form), and what they represent for queer feminist works of film and literature. It sits outside of what’s possible in this class, but Phase V represents an aspiration to serialize the fictional narratives that emerge from the play as a kind of anthology.

 

The final project will come together as a multimedia presentation that details the process and outcomes of each phase. This could take the shape of a chapbook, zine, or website — or some kind of graphic “packaging up” of the game system for sharing. I’ll likely pair it with a short essay or reflection that unpacks the choices I’ve made as well as the inspirations, references and scholarship that I hope my project is in dialogue with.

Apologies for the length of the proposal, I wanted to make sure I was able to contextualize the project with larger aspirations for continued development this beyond this class.

 

Project Proposal: Text-Based Hexcrawl Game Template

Posted on by
2

RE: https://dh780fall24.commons.gc.cuny.edu/final-project/

PROJECT PROPOSAL: A scratch-built procedural text-based hex crawl game template (that may include kinetic poetry or images), with the ability for other designers to “re-skin” the encounter prompts to fit other stories and genres (for example, fantasy, espionage, or science-fiction adventures). Imagine a cross between “Mad Libs” (fill-in-the-blank details) and “Zork” (text-based adventure crawl).
* DESIGN: Web-based interface using PHP-based scaffolding, returning array-generated modular text prompts with three input/response options per hex/encounter.
* ARGUMENTATION: The flow of the game will be based on a hex crawl, with each hex returning a text prompt with three player response options.
* AUDIENCE: The modular scaffolding (details driven by arrays) will allow other instances to adjust pitch toward different audiences (age range, knowledge level, interests, and values).
* REFLECTIVENESS: The prompt writing guide will allow future instances to explain not just what to say or what the object is but why certain choices could be made in relation to the audience and the adventure’s purpose (persuasion, education, simulation). The player may select a specific goal (affecting change in one inventory item) as a “victory condition” of play.

PLAYER INPUTS: Text prompts will give three options (from possible seven options). Players will earn and lose modifiers to each option based on initial decisions (character creation) and gameplay (consequences of decisions and random task resolutions).
* Fight: Attack with weapons or magic to harm a target.
* Hide: Avoid conflict but remain in the encounter area; bonus to then: Fight or Move but risk discovery/harm.
* Move: Leave the encounter in a new hex encounter (N, NE, SE, S, SW, NW).
* Rest: Do nothing and see what happens or recover from harm.
* Study: Closely examine an object, creature, or area for detailed information.
* Sway: Communicate with a target to persuade its attitude.
* Special: A unique ability fitting the genre (use magic, call in airstrike, reroute auxiliary power).

An alternate input option will be the text prompt: What is the answer to X? (pattern matching to text string – a password, correct name of the guilty suspect, whatever.)

TRACKED INVENTORY VALUABLES
* Health: Harm from encounters creates penalty modifiers on actions.
* Influences: A rating of favor/disfavor among NPC factions (noble houses, rival spy agencies, planetary governments).
* Treasure: Abstract game-world valuable resource (gold, SIGINT and assets, dilithium).
* Information: Clues to answer an endgame/encounter riddle.
* Time: Limited number of moves/days before ending game back at home hex.

HEX ENCOUNTER TYPES/FORMATS
* Chase (flee from a threat or catch a fleeing NPC)
* Combat (fight NPC/monster => influence or treasure)
* Discovery (plot clues, source of new resource => information)
* Race (ticking clock, decisions to limited resources first)
* Riddle (code, puzzle, missing formula => information)
* Role-play/Social (dialog/drame, response => relationships/bonds => influence)
* Scandal (secret to protect or expose, ethical/moral dilemma => influence)
* Random (unexpected challenge, villain attack, NPC in need, priority of ideals)

Late Blog Post #3: Formal Rules, Informal Rulings, And Safety Tools in Role-Playing Games

Posted on by
1

As a form of interactive fiction, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) – including Dungeons & Dragons and countless other systems that followed it – require players to collaboratively create an imaginary narrative guided by three types of rules: formal rules found in gameplay rulebooks, informal rulings made between the Game Master and players, and social guidelines that respect the diverse backgrounds, safety, inclusion, and expectations of everyone involved.

I: FORMAL RULES, BY-THE-BOOK RULES AS WRITTEN

These guidelines inform players and the lead storyteller player (the Game Master, called the Dungeon Master in D&D) of the potential odds of success for players to make informed character decisions, a necessity given the unreality of each game’s inherent simulation and often fantastical nature. For example, exactly what level of training, specific spell components, spoken magical words, and arcane gestures are needed to trigger a fireball that smites one’s enemies? There’s a rule for that.

GAME MASTER MARY: “You see five ogres, about 60 feet away and standing outside the castle gate. What do you do?”

PLAYER ALICE: “My wizard has one third-level spell slot left, so I cast Fireball. Fleur Flameholm holds her glowing arcane orb aloft and summons a burst of fiery elemental fury around the ogres gathered by the castle gate. That does eight six-sided dice of damage… (rolls dice) …for 29 points of fire damage.”

GM MARY: “Ouch. What’s the save on that spell?”

PLAYER ALICE: “All targets in a 20-foot radius have to make a Dexterity saving throw against my spellcasting difficulty class of 15 for half damage.”

The parameters for defining “interaction fiction” in Nick Montfort’s Twisty Little Passages were written about electronic text games, but they broadly also fit the genre of tabletop role-playing games (p. 23):

* a text-accepting, text-generating computer program (see note below);
* a potential narrative, that is, a system that produces narrative during interaction;
* a simulation of an environment or world; and
* a structure of rules within which an outcome is sought, also known as a game.

In the case of TTRPGs, a human player (the Game Master/Dungeon Master) replaces the role of a computer program. This structured gameplay in TTRPGs also mirrors the relationship to interactive fiction input and output that Montfort charts in Table 1.1 (p. 28):

* Extradiegetic Input: “I cast Fireball, causing 29 points of fire damage.”
* Extradiegetic Output: “I rolled an 18, with a minus 1 modifier, for a total saving throw of 17.”
* Diegetic Input: “I hold aloft my glowing arcane orb and summon a burst of fiery elemental fury around the ogres gathered by the castle gate.”
* Diegetic Output: “The sudden explosion sends the burned ogres fleeing toward the water of the castle’s moat.”

Most tabletop role-playing games aim to define these extradiegetic input options for player characters clearly. In the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition rules, these inputs are called actions, bonus actions, movements, or reactions; they include verbs like Attack, Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Escape, Grapple, Hide, and so forth. In the Blades in the Dark TTRPG, such actions might have more fanciful names: Attune, Consort, Prowl, Skirmish, or Sway. In Apocalypse World, such inputs are called Moves and named to invoke a sense of story style: Act Under Fire, Go Aggro, Sucker Someone, Seduce or Manipulate, Read a Stich, and so on.

II: INFORMAL RULINGS, THE GAME MASTER MAKES THE CALL

TTRPGs allow players to improvise extradiegetic and diegetic inputs not explicitly anticipated by each game’s rules. Whereas computer-driven interactive fiction would be limited by returning an output such as “I don’t know that” or “You can’t do that here,” adjudicating these situations is much easier for human Game Masters.

Examples of inputs from players requiring informal rulings could include crafting a mechanical trap from scavenged materials, bargaining with the Spirit of Death to gain one more year of life, or citing a flashback to justify preparations for a current situation.

Most TTRPGs also borrow a rule from comedy improv and encourage Game Masters to say “Yes, and…” for unusual situations. They either accept whatever a player offers or counter with the odds of success the player may use to decide if an attempt is worth the risk. In more limited responses, Game Masters may counter with “No, but…” and suggest alternatives that would fit within the capabilities of a specific character’s abilities and situation.

GAME MASTER MARY: “Passing through the castle gate, you are confronted by a dozen suspicious men-at-arms wearing the king’s colors, all standing ready for battle.”

PLAYER DAVE: “My paladin Sir Nedwyrm the Honorable served in this royal guard as a youth, years before taking his sacred oath. Do I recognize any of these men-at-arms?”

GM MARY: “Sure, the big mustached guard at the front is your old captain, Sir Blotus.”

PLAYER DAVE: “Good Sir Blotus, do you not know me? ‘Tis I, Nedwyrm, returning to the king’s court at the hour of his majesty’s greatest need.”

GM MARY: “Okay, make a Charisma roll here, aiming for a 10 or higher for Blotus to recognize you…”

III: SOCIAL COMPACT RULES AND SAFETY TOOLS

Unlike authored interactive fiction – such as hypertext novels, non-linear films, or single-player video games – collaborative experiences like TTRPGs can, whether intentionally or unintentionally, create scenes and situations that disrupt a comfortable, respectful, and enjoyable experience, potentially leading to unintended distress for players. Much has been written about toxic behavior involving racism, sexism, homophobic language, and personal threats in networked online video games, social media user comments, and other online forums. Shared storytelling can lead to similar problematic moments in role-playing games.

Even when not involving direct harassment or microaggressions, descriptions in TTRPGs may go outside the boundaries of players’ comfort. Depending on the genre of the game or story, certain narrative elements might be expected – hacking away with swords and axes in a fantasy game, seductions and betrayals in an espionage game – but excessive descriptions of violence, gore, sex, and substance abuse may be triggers for some players.

GAME MASTER MARY: “Bob’s new here, so tell us about your character…”

PLAYER BOB: “I’m Finklewit, a court jester-type bard with a dark sense of humor.”

GM MARY: “Neat! Okay, so you all get past the guards without incident and enter the royal court in time to hear the king complaining about-“

PLAYER BOB: “I stab out the king’s eyes!”

GM MARY: “-Wait, what?!?”

PLAYER BOB: “I run around the court holding up the king’s bloody eyes dangling from their optic nerves, shouting at people, ‘I can see you! I can see you!'”

GM MARY: “…”

PLAYER BOB: “What’s the problem?”

GM MARY: “What the hell is wrong with you, Bob?”

PLAYER BOB: “I mean, it’s just what my character would do…”

Some games identify problematic subject matter straight from the beginning. Consider this strong content warning featured in The Silt Verses role-playing game, a horror-themed setting based on the podcast of the same name in which undercover agents track monstrous pagan deities loose in remote areas of a modern world:

“The Silt Verses RPG contains some dark subject matter which may not be suitable for everyone, including intense themes of religious horror, human sacrifice, graphic violence, body horror, cults, implied harm to children and animals, family trauma and mental illness, government oppression and police violence, war, and natural disasters. The section on safety tools will address these issues in more detail.”

Even when such a warning isn’t shared up front, players come to gaming tables with various ideas on what is appropriate to share. Players may not always foresee discomfort with certain themes or events. Several tools have evolved within TTRPGs to promote trust, respect and inclusivity, prevent emotional harm, support safe creative freedom, encourage open communication, and manage unexpected reactions.

To address such issues, safety tool methods I’ve used in my games have included:

The X-Card: Created by John Stavropoulos, this tool uses a physical or digital card that players can tap or hold up to signal discomfort. When the “X” is activated, the group pauses and either rewinds, rephrases, or skips the current content, allowing players to avoid discomfort without needing to explain why. For the creator’s full details on use, see:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SB0jsx34bWHZWbnNIVVuMjhDkrdFGo1_hSC2BWPlI3A/edit?tab=t.0

Consent Checklist: A document or checklist that players fill out individually to outline topics they’re comfortable or uncomfortable with, such as romance, horror elements, or graphic violence. This method can be as simple as passing out index cards ahead of play, letting everyone list their triggers, and collecting them before the game.

Session Zero: A pre-game session where players discuss boundaries, expectations, themes, and character backstories. It sets the stage for the campaign and allows everyone to align on comfort levels and sensitive topics.

Other safety tools popular among TTRPG groups include…

Lines and Veils: Players outline topics they’re uncomfortable with or want limited exposure to. Lines are topics that are entirely off-limits (e.g., explicit violence), while Veils are topics that can exist but should “fade to black” or be lightly referenced without detail.

Script Change: A tool with various “controls” to manage the flow of the game:
* Pause: Temporarily stops the game for discussion or breaks.
* Rewind: Backtracks to redo a scene in a different way.
* Fast Forward: Skips content or “flashes forward” past uncomfortable moments.
* Frame by Frame: Allows a scene to be played slowly to give players time to process and assess comfort levels.
* Open Door Policy: Allows any player to leave the session if they need a break or feel uncomfortable. It emphasizes that players can step away without judgment and rejoin when ready.

Stars and Wishes: Used at the end of a session, Stars are compliments or highlights, while Wishes are requests or hopes for future sessions. This tool gives players space to express what they enjoyed and what they’d like to adjust or explore further.

Lines & Veils Cards (Physical or Digital): Some systems offer cards with common lines and veils topics, which can be arranged in a visible way to remind everyone of group boundaries.

Green/Yellow/Red System: Players can use colors to indicate their comfort level during gameplay:
* Green: Everything is fine, no issues.
* Yellow: Caution, getting close to a boundary.
* Red: Stop or skip the current content.

Aftercare/Decompression Time: A post-session chat to process intense themes, check in on emotional well-being, and address any issues that may have arisen during the game. This is especially helpful after sessions that involve heavy emotional themes.

D&D Character Maker Example

Posted on by
Reply

Following up on Leonard’s great Dungeons & Dragons presentation from last night: If anyone is curious what a D&D character sheet looks like, check out my site at https://fastcharacter.com (disclaimer: it’s free but I make $$$ off its ads and donors). There you’ll find character maker options for the D&D 5th edition rules Leonard was talking about, the “new” 2024 updated rules, and a throwback version to the “B/X” rules from 1981.

Fast Character screenshot

Blog Post 4: Procedures Please: Lucas Pope + Bogost

Posted on by
1

In 2013, indie developer Lucas Pope released his cult classic game Papers Please, in which the player becomes a citizen of fictional Arisotzka and is chosen by lottery to work in Border Patrol. The player must follow an increasingly complex set of rules to determine whether or not to accept or reject people trying to enter the country and make enough money to pay for rent, heat, food, and other expenses for his family. This simple and rather bleak game to me embodies Bogost’s idea of procedural rhetoric.

The rules the player faces increase in their harshness – at first, only anyone who is an Aristotzkan citizen may enter – simple enough. Then, each day, more complications are added until the player must ensure that the would be entrant has every detail on their passport valid (including gender presentation matching listed sex, appearance matching the photo, accurate country symbol on the front cover, accurate issuing city, accurate date of birth, and accurate expiration date), has a visa with every detail valid, and is not on any wanted list. If a player finds a discrepancy, then they must identify that discrepancy using their rule book and interrogate (or x-ray) the entrant before denying them. Failure to process someone by the  book results in a citation. Citations dock the player’s pay, risking them falling into debt, or their family starving or freezing to death due to lack of funds. Any of these events result in a game over.

The true story of the game happens in response to the player’s input. Each day has its own plot, yes. After the first day, there will be a terrorist attack outside of the player’s control for example. However, the predetermined plot exists more as flavor text to inform the player’s decision than as a leash pulling the player through the story. As Bogost asserts, “The imposition of rules creates expression” (7). The player is highly incentivized, not ultimately forced, to follow the rules. The player can choose to do whatever they want, (likely resulting in a game over at the end of the day), but they can also work within the game’s system to mount their small rebellions. Interestingly, this game gives the player the option to object. The player can choose to break the rules and let some people through provided that they become good enough at the game to compensate for the pay loss. The players then must choose which cases are worth fighting for. Will they help the masked people of EZIC mount their revolution? Will they let in the woman who’s husband let you know lost their passport after months of travel? Will they refuse to demean entrants whose gender expression do not match the listed sex on their passport with an invasive X-ray scan? The player creates their own story and their own moral code that they will follow and break as they see fit. The simulation gap is where the meat of this game resides.

The simplicity of the game also follows Bogost’s observations. The process of comparing documents, rules, appearances, etc. is the crux of the game, so this is the most detailed that it gets. The only other mechanic in the game is choosing whether or not you will pay for heat or food for your family (if you can afford it), which consists of a simple black screen showing the health of your family members, what you earned during your shift minus your rent, how much food and heat cost, and a set of check boxes allowing you to select what you will pay for. Your home life and your family are entirely abstract. You don’t see your character wake up, eat breakfast, play with their kids, walk to work, none of it. Because that’s not what matters. What matters is that you have lives on the line and that the status of their welfare hangs over every decision you make. Whether the player cares about them or not is irrelevant. The player is responsible for this family. If they die, the game is over.

As an aside, the games tight mechanics and constant moral quandaries evoke the vividness of harsh reality in the player. It counters Bogost’s idea that visual fidelity equals authority as the player will feel affected by the pixel graphics of a person telling you to go to hell when you condemn them to return to the torturous life they were trying to escape because their passport expired.

Furthermore, there is something about the abstractness of the fictitious game world. Set in a clearly Soviet-like 1980s nation, the player must decide whether to let people in from various nations. While some of them may seem analogous to real world regions, the symbols on the passport are ultimately arbitrary in meaning. It doesn’t matter if Aristotzka starts a war with Republia, what matters is that the player is strongly incentivized to act according to rules set in response to a particular political landscape, even if they trespass on  what may be considered common decency. This forced adherence to political bureaucracy and attempt to find a loophole in the system transcends the Soviet-like environment of the game, causing the player to hold a mirror up to their own government’s policies and their own complacency.

So, Papers Please derives its story from procedure (rules) rather than a flat literary plot and gains furthers its affect through arbitrary symbols. But, what is its rhetoric aiming to persuade the player to believe? That we are all under the thumb of bureaucracy? That adulting is hard? I think the game is trying to emphasize the power of choice in the moment. Despite all of your efforts on a large level, the system will prevail. It may change hats through revolution, but you will still be working the border. You can however make an impact on the people you meet. Some will let you know the impact of your decisions, some won’t, and some will prove to be tricking you. But ultimately, you must choose what’s important in this life. You must choose what lines you will and won’t cross. And, though small, you can make an impact for better. . . or worse.