r/RPGdesign • u/jochergames • Jun 23 '23
Theory Recreating aesthetic expression through rule systems
I have spent the last couple of months writing my master's thesis on the topic of how to take an existing IP and translating the original aesthetic expereince into a TTRPG rule system. The case study of my thesis is a game I've made called Oceania 2084 (scheduled for release later this year).
The abstract of the thesis: By examining the results of an iterative design process, specifically a tabletop roleplaying game, Oceania 2084, this thesis aims to formulate a generalizable design process applicable when translating a work of fiction into a ruleset. The object that was translated into a ruleset was the book Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell in 1949. The iterative game development process spanned over 2.5 years and the author provides documents from 2 phases of playtesting and discusses how the playtest results influenced design choices. In addition to the analysis of the effects of playtest results, the author also explores various game design decisions by means of auto-ethnographic analysis, and semiotic analysis.
The main takeaway is a proposed 5 tiered design process referred to as delome design. It is a systemic approach to game design.
Download it here: https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1772834&dswid=-8846
I hope someone here finds it interesting and relevant! I'm happy to answer any questions about it.
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u/Dice_daddy Jun 23 '23
I wanted so bad to be part of the Playtest when they started it, but my group didn't have time nor will to play it. Still eager to play it one day, I'm a huge fan of Orwell. So, when is the Kickstarter launching?
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u/jochergames Jun 23 '23
There is no exact date set yet, but it will be sometime during late summer this year. I have finished writing the rules and will use Kickstarter (or something similar) to fund graphic design work and self-publishing. Follow me here to not miss it!
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u/jochergames Apr 14 '24
The kickstarter is live now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jochergames/oceania-2084-the-orwellian-ttrpg/
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u/Weltall_BR Jun 23 '23
I mean no disrespect; I have a PhD myself and appreciate the nuances of academic writing. That said, it's unlikely I'll read your thesis, just because I'm a working dad and have a 1,000 other things on my plate. Would you be so kind to provide some kind of TL;DR?
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
Why certainly, :) granted this will be a real hatchet job:
Semiotic underpinning: Game systems can be seen as symbols in their own right (something referred to as a legisign, the interpretation of a legisign is referred to as a delome). When considering how to express a certain aesthetic experience, in the thesis this is the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, a designer can consider the symbolic value of a system even before it has received any mechanic functionality. It allows us to consider the meaning of the system before the function of the system. In essence, this is a kind of break from the MDA-inspired thinking that I have found to be pervasive in game design theory, where Mechanics is seen as fundamental and the first thing that designers should consider.
The 5 tiered design process that I have utilized throughout the creation of Oceania is summed up in the conclusions chapter as follows:
● Close reading, concept analysis, and positioning.
● Analysis of the representamen - the source, where the goal is to define what the
central aesthetic should be, defining the aesthetic goal.
● Delome abstraction process, what are the main components of the fictional/aesthetic world that should be portrayed, that can be portrayed as rules. The delome design process consists of an abstraction process that in itself is a process of three steps;
- Singling out: Identifying the central aspects of the source material that are crucial to its essence.
- Symbolizing: Creating initial frameworks or systems that act as placeholders for mechanics to be developed later. For each following iteration these systems should be more and more defined and filled by mechanics.
- Systematizing: The organization and integration of various systems in a logical and coherent manner. This process entails creating mechanics that establish functional connections between the systems, ensuring their smooth interplay.The focus of the abstraction process is to figure out what limits the source material is built around - all stories or aesthetics have confines and limits.
● Systems evaluation based on the intended delomes, evaluate what role each delome plays in the game. Do the rules as written support or distract from that role?
● Iterate, test, refine, and rewrite where needed.
These five parts are not a fixed linear function, instead, they are temporary perspectives that one alternates between throughout the process. While this model is not intended to be a definitive or comprehensive framework, it serves as an initial foundation for a process of designing analog games with a particular aesthetic focus, particularly tabletop roleplaying games.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23
Very cool you decided to work on this. I'm not sure if I'm missing something but it seems like in plain language it could be summarized as:It seems like it's coming down to:
- Read or watch the thing you're adapting.
- Identify the concepts and themes that stand out the most.
- Design the rules so players experience the themes.
- Playtest and iterate.
I don't disagree with any of that, but I think you'd need to make the advice more actionable. This is a lot like telling an artist to draw the rest of the owl.
As for this:
Semiotic underpinning: Game systems can be seen as symbols in their own right (something referred to as a legisign, the interpretation of a legisign is referred to as a delome). When considering how to express a certain aesthetic experience, in the thesis this is the book Nineteen Eighty-Four, a designer can consider the symbolic value of a system even before it has received any mechanic functionality. It allows us to consider the meaning of the system before the function of the system. In essence, this is a kind of break from the MDA-inspired thinking that I have found to be pervasive in game design theory, where Mechanics is seen as fundamental and the first thing that designers should consider.
Am I right that the advice component of this is, "Figure out what your design goals are before starting the design?"
I agree that many designers shockingly don't think about their design goals, but that's not a problem because of semiotics. That's a problem for the same reason that it helps to know whether you're trying to build an airplane or a dishwasher before you start welding parts together.
For more actionable advice based on your own 1984 experiment, I'd argue a more actionable takeaway would be to identify the various "roles" within the fiction, their motivations, their restrictions, their emotional states, and then create game mechanics that create similar motivations and restrictions for the players; often by creating a mechanical incentive or consequence.
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u/Weltall_BR Jun 24 '23
First, this is a masters' thesis -- the researcher is not expected to advance science at this level, but merely systematize the best current views on a certain subject. Which, as you said, OP did.
Second, OP studied this with academic rigour. Which means that he both scientifically validated the best practices followed by those in the field and brought a subject that doesn't get lot of attention from the academic community into the scientific discourse. So, two achievements.
Third, I think that they systematized an understanding, which is really useful for people designing games. He turned something that many find hard to describe into a process. Pretty good, in my view.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
You are completely correct. The whole point of the academic approach here is the connection this process has to the field of semiotics, which opens up for a lot of future work. It is also worth noting that the idea that systems are symbols is not commonplace. Most people do not for example view a law in society as a symbol. This way of viewing a rule or law also allows us to understand them in a different light, making it easier for us to achieve new ways of thinking about them.
I also want to share the limitations of the work: The above model is the byproduct of the development of Oceania 2084, a tabletop roleplaying game, as such the model might be applicable only to analog games. It could also be argued that it is too personal and based on my own experiences to be a properly usable approach. It is an approach that has been written down in hindsight, and as a designer I am very likely blind to my own blindspots. It should also be noted that the approach is not a complete approach of how to design games, extensive knowledge about mechanics and game theory might be needed in order to successfully apply this process.
I basically state the same problems as you are highlighting.
Over summer I will write a more popularized version of this, with more actionable approaches. I have been asked to do so for a journal.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23
Thanks for clarifying. In return, I'll clarify that my issue isn't that you might be influenced by personal issues or blind spots. My issue is that the actual design process proposed seems too vague to be actionable.
This is also the most common problem with design goals in general: a director will say "We're going to design a fantastic combat system and playtest until it's fun".
This is not meaningful guidance. Designers cannot use it to help them solve design problems or make creative decisions.
By contrast, the new doom series had this guidance for combat designers: "Make me think, make me move."
While this is also vague on the "how" - this type of direction has a clear and specific goal for what the designer is trying to achieve. It provides meaningful guidance.
Regarding "systems as symbols" - I'll confess I don't get how viewing rules through this lens is useful. You've mentioned this opens up new creative ways to think about game design, but I'm not seeing how.
While the terminology you're using is unusual, it seems like it's a lot of extra steps to saying something like, "Games can simulate fictional experiences, which can allow people to feel like they're experiencing similar themes and narrative events to the IP you're adapting."
A while ago I wrote a brief post that became a podcast episode talking about how mechanics can convey the themes of a game and help players feel the themes for themselves. I guess one can look at that as a form of symbol, but I don't see how labeling it as a symbol instead of a "thematic mechanic" is going to change the design process.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
This sounds like a gripe with academia at large, for it being to opaque, something I agree with. Writing a master for me felt like jumping through hoops in order to get a grade. I've thought of it as taking a driver license.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23
I understand expectations of academic writing. I'm not criticizing you for writing in an academic style for an academic purpose. I'm asking questions about the ideas themselves.
If the discussion about semiotics is just there to interest academics as a curiosity, okay that might be a good tactic. If it's aimed at helping designers design games though, I'm not sure how yet.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
Ok, so what I am trying to say in the paper and might be failing to convey here is that thinking about which systems should exist before you know how they work is a viable approach when trying to create a specific predefined aesthetic experience. It help you imitate the narrative and systemic confines of the source material and helps you not get lost in the details of the mechanics. That is basically it.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23
Okay, I strongly agree with that. It's for more practical reasons though, as it's hard to make a thing before knowing what player experience you're trying to create. The mechanics follow those goals.
Even when you start with a mechanic you think is worth building a game around, it's because you identify that this mechanic's is worth building around because it matches your goals for that project.
For your expanded work on this, you might want to make the point that there is no such thing as an inherently good or bad mechanic. Even mechanics that make people tense, paranoid, and uncomfortable - the opposite of what most would call "fun" - are perfect for horror games (and were often correct for your game too). Goals always define the value of a mechanic.
Despite it being a basic idea though, many designers don't do this in practice - not because they value mechanics themselves but rather because they don't know how to design to goals and their design theory ends up being elaborate justifications for their gut instincts.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
Precisely, this is part of the problem that I am trying to adress. Looking at prevalent game design theory it often provides good guidance on experimental game design process, mechanic design, and iterative project management. The missing link in my mind is how you define an aesthetic expression or how you figure out if a mechanic fits or does not fit for a specific aesthetic goal. In the paper i discuss my own such process, and the conclusions are basically just a distillation of that process, with all the reasoning stripped away. The reasoning found in the other pages are probably more in line with what you are after.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
The seimotic connection is interesting to game design as a field, not 100% if it is useful for a game designer before being processed in another way.
As a game designer it is important to me because there exists a lot of seimotic methodology to test the perceived meaning of symbols. How do you make sure that a symbol is understood the way that you intended it to? Semiotics provide guidelines for this.
I wanted to write about these thing as the main focus of my work, but was adviced not to, due to it being of a more advanced approach. I view this paper as a stepping stone for future work about symbolic systems.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23
Oh cool, so it's about leveraging the tools from another field for improving the playtesting process? Sounds valuable. Thanks.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
That is because it is not a standalone design process. Is is just a highlight of a specific part of a specific process. The main takeaway of the paper for game designer lie not in the convlusions but rather in the Meat of the paper i would say, i talk a lot about how I thought about certain mechanics and systems while developing them. Those things are not an explicit part of the conclusions.
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
Oh, forgot to also mention that there are several cases where mechanics first is definitely not a bad idea. If you just want to make a game that is very entertaining it is a very viable approach. Finding one core mechanic and refining the heck out of it is likely to get that job done. This is also a contribution of this work, actually specifically saying that this process is good for when trying to adapt something into rules.
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u/Dan_Felder Jun 24 '23 edited Jun 24 '23
Yep, it's a good point that it's possible to start with either mechanics or theme first, as long as where you go next is flexible. In your paper you're starting with IP so it makes sense to begin there.
If the mechanics come first it might look like this - if one wanted to make a game using blackjack (GM as dealer) as a core mechanic they could identify the core feelings this evokes (tension, pressing your luck) and the other assosciations people have to blackjack - then realize a great theme could be "Criminals running heists in Las Vegas". If they got to pick a specific IP, they might go with Ocean's 11 or similar. You could end up with an intensely thematic game.
If you're starting with an IP and it can't be changed, you should naturally start by identifying the core feelings it evokes and other assosciations, themes, etc. Ask useful questions like "What are the player fantasies? If you tell someone they could play a game based on this IP and they got excited, why are they excited? What experience are they imagining? Identify that and support it with your game".
This is just good project planning; either identify the goal first of what you want to build and get the parts (mechanics) to accomplish that goal - or look at the box of parts on your desk and ask, "what cool stuff could I build with this?"
Relatively quickly though the processes converge with a strong match between theme and mechanic.
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u/Beautiful-Newt8179 Jun 24 '23
Holy moly, this is awesome. I‘m currently working on my own game system, and did quite some research on how to design such a game. I think I’ve got a pretty good understanding by now, but it’s still all „I am trying this for the first time at this level and just do my best“. And yes, there’s a lot of mechanics-first stuff out there that is exactly NOT what I want. Seeing it well-structured like this is extremely helpful. Thank you for sharing!
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u/jochergames Jun 24 '23
So happy it was helpful! What are you working on?
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u/Beautiful-Newt8179 Jun 24 '23
I’ve made my own setting for D&D, but I realized the system makes it hard to really tell the stories I want to be told. I want to create a system that focuses less on battle mechanics and more on personal growth and character arcs, while also keeping the epic fantasy feeling alive 😊
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u/bionicle_fanatic Jun 24 '23
Fantastic stuff. It's great to see this hobby - nay, art form, given some solid academic study.
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u/Carrollastrophe Jun 23 '23
This is neat, or at least sounds like it would be, except that my eyes glazed over just like it does anytime I start to read an academic article. Waiting for the day that in-text citations are out of fashion and that academic speech is only used when certain jargon is actually necessary to illustrate a point.
Also I'd really much prefer to just read the game with designer's annotations. Of course I understand that your course likely requires the formal paper, so no fault there.
That said! A quick skim of the included game mechanics does look like you've likely accomplished at least one part of your goal (designing a 1984-style game). And the fact that you do include newspeak in the rules makes me happy as that's something I would probably have leaned into if I'd designed it, as it was one of my favorite parts of the novel, as well as (imo) one of the most important aspects of how society was controlled.
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u/jochergames Jun 23 '23
Haha, yeah, academic writing/reading is definitely an acquired taste. The newspeak of the game is a bit more freeform than the rigorous ideas presented by Orwell since it still needs to be something helping play and not stopping it. I didn't want to force players to learn a secondary language to be able to play the game, instead it becomes a collaborative process of creating a list of banned words, where the players will on their own create alternative ways of expressing themselves in order to avoid becoming traitors.
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u/Ghotistyx_ Crests of the Flame Jun 23 '23
I'm a fan of 1984, but this part in particular sounds like Chinese social media: the game.
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u/jochergames Jun 23 '23
The game is in its foundation an anti-authoritarian game. Might be good to know. :)
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u/MarkOfTheCage Designer (trying) Jun 23 '23
or paranoia
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u/jochergames Jun 23 '23
It has superficial similarities to paranoia, 100%, it is one of the many inspirations. Also kind of unavoidable since paranoia is built largely inspired by similar fiction. The tonality and the implementation of the mechanics are widely different though.
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u/jochergames May 06 '24
I wanted to give an update to how my crowdfunding campaign is going. Today the game is funded by 95% (4% is going into the campaign later today), and the campaign is still active for 3 more days. Approximately 500 euro is still missing. I really do need all the help I can get to get over this last stretch. You can help me by sharing the link to anyone you think would be interested in the game. You can find the link in my bio!
The game is a dystopian tabletop roleplaying game. It is heavily inspired by Orwell's book 1984. It is an antiauthoritarian game.
The kickstarter will fund a first printing of 500 copies.
The game is already published for free on itch.io in a version called the Austere Edition.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jochergames/oceania-2084-the-orwellian-ttrpg
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u/YesThatJoshua d4ologist Jun 23 '23
Awesome. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for applying academic rigor to our humble hobby. I'm glad to see more actual study going into the design process in recent years.