I want to give you some GM advice that no one teaches except for the Angry GM. Go read his article(s) on his website on this subject if you think I suck at it. The subject is MDA Framework and how you can use it to make your game appeal to different players.
You every hear that condescending "having fun wrong" comment on the internet? Sure you have. Usually in internet conversation where someone tells someone else that "all fun is valid". Ugh. Look man, I'm sure some people have fun punching puppies or kicking kittens. That's an extreme example, but I'm not going to work out an intelligent example right now, I'm trying to sell you on an idea. You might understand what you have fun doing, and you might understand why it's fun for you, but can you say you understand how other people have fun or why that stuff is fun to them?
Let me introduce you to a concept called MDA Framework. MDA means Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics, and it's a concept that tries to explain how video game players have fun. Here's the simplest break down. The Mechanics of a game are what the designers see, but the player doesn't perceive the mechanics, they perceive the Aesthetics (or sensations). In D&D 5e for a very specific example, the game designers have worked out the math so that the players succeed about 65% of the time at things their character is good at. Those are the mechanics. The player doesn't recognize this though because the mechanics are not explained like that in the official books; instead, what the players recognize is that they succeed an amount of time that feels just right. Not too much so that the game isn't too easy, but not too little that the game is too hard. It's an aesthetic; a sensation or a feeling.
What about the Dynamic in MDA? Shut up. That's a stupid question. Ahem.
What is the value of the MDA Framework? Because the people who invented the MDA Framework came up with a list of different ways that players have fun. This is a pretty clever idea. There's a list of eight different ways (or sensations) that people have fun, with other ways being less common but also identified.
One aesthetic is called challenge. That's a pretty easy to recognize concept. Fun comes from challenge when people derive pleasure by succeeding based on choices they made when failure was a possibility. That's easy to understand, right? Now, how about the aesthetic of fellowship. Fellowship is a type of fun that is derived from a sense of belonging. To simplify this, there are people who like to play multiplayers because they like being included in a group or team. Belonging is more valuable to them than the activity.
So, go look up the list of eight MDA aesthetics because it's worth having an understanding of the different ways there are to have fun. Different people have fun in different ways and being able to identify those ways are going to make you better at social forms of play or producing a product intended to entertain an audience.
Then there's also GNS Theory. GNS stands for Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism. I think these words are pretty self-explanatory. GNS Theory is simpler than MDA and a bit less useful. One difference is that GNS theory uses Simulationism to describe a person who wants an experience that they can be immersed in. Something that disrupts immersion, like a game mechanic that feels arbitrary for the sake of using a game mechanic and that does not adequately simulate the make-believe world, spoils immersion. That's a fine and dandy concept! But MDA describes fantasy as an aesthetic of wanting a make-believe world, expression as wanting to create a character to express yourself and narrative as an aesthetic of a satisfying story, and MDA presents these as distinct where as GNS's Simulationism might lump these kinds of fun but not adequately describe them as separate.
MDA is more complicated than D&D's attempt to explain different kinds of players: Problem Solvers, Hack-n-Slashers, and Actors. D&D will cause you to overlook sensations, like fellowship. How many of you have seen GMs asking for help engaging certain players in their games? Some players are engaged even though they don't look it. They're having fun just being included. Where D&D says actor, MDA says expression, narrative, and fantasy, which are not the same, and may cause you to fail to engage certain players by misidentifying the ways they have fun.
So let's look at a real example of how all of this knowledge could help me to provide a more satisfying experience as a Game Master.
I think one of the ways I like to have fun is discovery. Discovery is the satisfaction of finding something that was hidden based on choices I made. This can be a secret door, a secret fortress in the woods, or learning a about the castle's steward secret arrangement of selling the lord's wine to the thieves' guild. One thing that discourages this kind of play is a game mechanic! Let's say that I as a player describe examining a bookshelf in a dusty old room. I say I slowly, thoroughly read all the titles on the spines, and if a book doesn't have anything written on its spine, I pull it out and read the front cover or on the inside pages for a title. I say I'm looking for a book about magic, the occult, or the arcane, or something mystic and weird. Because I'm a magic-user, duh. You as the GM could say that I find a book called "The Interstice: The Space Between Spaces". I think that sound interesting and I would like to take that book. Cool, done! But if you instead make me roll dice to see if I spot that book, that feels arbitrary and failure discourages me from engaging in that kind of play again. Why do you think that there needs to be a mechanic to see if I spot this book?
Rolling dice to find something in plain sight also ruins the aesthetic of submission (or immersion) because it makes no sense that I could miss something that I think should be obvious and have no chance of failure! This also spoils the sensation of narrative because my character is not stupid, but you've made me doubt the competency of my own character. I should not have a chance to fail at discovery for something that's in plain sight if I take my time, but you introduced random chance where it shouldn't factor. For some situations, you use the logic of the narrative, not the game mechanics!
So, learn these ideas. Teach them to others. This will help you to communicate your needs to others, and it will help you to help others to communicate their needs to you. This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the letter Q. All hail Q, the most useless letter of the English alphabet. We could literally replace you with K and no one would miss you. I hope you die in a fire you lame ass letter.
No comments:
Post a Comment