“Is it possible I can’t get into creating Worlds because, really, I want to discover them through play?”
This was the question that niggled its way into my consciousness while I was exploring (yet again) the reasons why I can’t seem to motivate myself to create material for the games I am running, nor play any kind of sustained game solo.
Nudged back towards considering the Eight Engagements (well, technically, the “Aesthetics”) pointed out by The Angry GM as his “Eight Types of Fun”, I have been appraising what I actually find engaging versus stuff I think I enjoy but probably don’t.
For the neophyte, the Eight Aesthetics from MDA Theory are:
- Sensation
Game as sense-pleasure - Fantasy
Game as make-believe - Narrative
Game as drama - Challenge
Game as obstacle course - Fellowship
Game as social framework - Discovery
Game as uncharted territory - Expression
Game as self-discovery - Submission
Game as pastime
The big thought here is realising that while I almost certainly appreciate (to some degree) all of these aesthetics in my roleplaying games, I seem to find it pretty hard to enjoy the Expression one… especially as a GM. What is stronger is my desire for Discovery.
Consider these words from The Angry GM on ‘Expression’:
This is what I would call the “trending aesthetic.” It is the thing everyone is talking about in the RPG community (at least, online, where I can hear it) and people are starting to view it as the be-all and end-all of role-playing games…
Expression is the pleasure you get from expressing yourself creatively. This is the desire to create something that is unique to you, to say something about who you are and what you believe, or simply to impose your creative will on the world around you. And to some people, this is the primary reason to play role-playing games…
But expression can get us into trouble. Just like every other aesthetic, it is not something everyone is after in equal measure. It is not even something that satisfies everyone. The act of creation is not easy and it also involves a component of bravery. Creating something that expresses an idea unique to you opens you to judgment and criticism. It is scary. It is risky. And not everyone wants it.
In certain areas of the game, expression can also squash other aesthetics.
theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/
Discovery is the aesthetic that I’d much rather be focused on. It’s also one of those engagements that gets squished by Expression. After all, if you’ve already created the thing then there’s little more to discover.
Given that my stronger drivers are Discovery, Fellowship, Fantasy, and Sensation, it’s reasonable to conclude that these are the aesthetics I should spend more time trying to create at my table (whether alone or in groups).
This realisation answers some questions:
- Why can’t I ever sit down to build that Megadungeon map?
- Why does the idea of stocking a Hex Map fill me with dread?
- Why do I lose interest 10 minutes after rolling up a Traveller subsector?
- Why do I enjoy random character generation instead of points-build?
- Why can’t I bring myself to read an entire module and then run it?
Short answer to all of them: once you design the whole thing, stock all the details, or read all about it then there’s not much left to discover. Finding out through play engages me far, far more than expressing my own ideas.
Thus begins my quest: what methods can I employ to run games in a manner that allows me to keep the Fantasy strong but also engage Discovery without having to create everything up front? What frameworks can I create which allow space for the play to fill in the gaps?
Immediate thoughts: use more generative tools; co-opt a GM Emulator; focus on piecemeal creativity; allow the play to fill in the gaps.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
“Short answer to all of them: once you design the whole thing, stock all the details, or read all about it then there’s not much left to discover.”
I have a slight disagreement with this statement. The disagreement I have is that I find there are always implications to the thing I create that I didn’t consider. Players will often find those elements during play. We’ll discover that when they combine two or three or five elements of the game world and system we discover a emergent property that I didn’t anticipate.
This is something that video game designers who’ve been doing sandbox (open world) kinds of games have been talking about for some time.
When I include a lot of simple elements into a big framework, I can’t see how all those things are going to interact with each other. Often this is simply because I don’t have the time to think about how every possible blend of elements will produce an outcome. A player sitting at the table will think through a problem they face and come with a solution I didn’t think of and we discover something new about the situation I created.
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Sure. The players bring solutions to whatever problems face them in the environment you create. This creates unexpected outcomes. But you may have missed the point of the post: when I’ve created all the details, I am done; the game will never make it to the players because I will lose interest. I need to leave more spaces in the design so that my curiosity stays alive long enough to bring the World to the table.
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Would it be unreasonable to suggest that if the world is a living open campaign it is simply impossible to detail everything, even all the important things?
The way I think about this is that players come to the table having experiences, knowledge, beliefs, fears, values that I don’t have and never will have because we are different people. The injection of those elements into the play means there are things I haven’t detailed or even considered as possibilities. Personally, my assumption is that I’ve missed something. That assumption turns out to be correct 99.9% of the time.
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Sure. My past problem has been that creating material has involved making up all the stuff that I am interested in, which is a huge pile of stuff that on the one hand I feel is too much effort, and on the other hand I feel is necessary to answer player questions. Over the past year or more, I have been creating less and improvising more; this has led to more curiosity and Discovery at the table on my part, but forced me to accept inconsistencies that undermine the Fantasy aesthetic that I also crave. It’s seemingly an impossible tension that undermines my desire to prep and play. The big realisation has been that I don’t much enjoy the Expression aesthetic on a grand scale; instead, I find it more realistic and doable to create in small pieces and let the play fill in the gaps.
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Absolutely agree! Every dungeon I’ve tried to design ahead of time has been boring and oddly… small? Meagre? Flat? It’s hard to describe the sensation but it was very demoralising.
Discovering the world along with my players, whether that’s by random rolls or whatever my brain spits out in the moment, makes it feel so much more real. In turn, that inspires me to add details and little twists that give it depth 🙂
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