Commentaries on Dave Arneson's True Genius

Like most 20-somethings who don't buy Apple products, I feel physical pain when I spend money on things. But sometimes I do, and the result is usually a foreign music album, training equipment, or a book. In this case, following Mike Mornard's review of the material, I decided to pick up a copy of Dave Arneson's True Genius.

This post is going to be a commentary on thoughts that I had on the material, more-so than it is a review. It'll be a bit easier to understand if you have a copy with you, since I don't want to put in an incessant amount of quotation, nor draw attention away from getting an official copy. You can do that here. I recommend the Media Mail - the leadtime's going to take longer than the delivery anyways, so you're getting diminishing returns on your investment. Of course, it's not like Adam Smith is going to judge you for wanting a book a day earlier, so go ahead if you want.

Review?

If you want a review of the book, follow that link up above to Mornard's. It'll tell you what you need to know before buying.

The only thing that really bothered me is something that he brings up: DATG is riddled with references to Kuntz's unpublished work. There was certainly room for more elaboration - the book is slim enough the mail lady asked if I was picking up photographs. The book has critical academic value, but it's ultimately three essays, and not a full-length text. On the other hand, it does a good job with making A New Ethos in Game Design out to be interesting. If I were in Kuntz's shoes, I would drop the bizarre stance against digital media and release these essays in PDF/epub format about a month leading up to its release. The worst thing that could happen is free advertising for the lengthier work.

Other than that gripe (which can be rendered less distracting if you save the footnotes until a repeat reading), the material is fairly solid overall, which is why I'm writing a post about it. I'll be re-referencing the material as I write this, so my thoughts are going to be a bit scattered about.

Commentary on Essay #1: From Vision to Vicissitude

This is the densest of the three essays by a large amount, and systems are to blame. Well, actually, Rob Kuntz is to be blamed - see, on pg.54, there's a wonderful model comparing a childhood open play model with a war-game closed model. What this essay needed, to alleviate the concerns about this book being dense/academic, would have been a friendly chart on pg.11 visually showing the the pertinent differences between open and closed systems, and perhaps the feedback provided by Arneson's emergent model. Unfortunately there is little of the sort here.

Complaining about what isn't there isn't going to be as productive as commenting on what is there, which is where the next few glorious pages come in, detailing the strides the Arneson made (and what I am supposing to be the backbone of Kunt'z model). This is where we get the first major takeaway: The origin of role-playing games is closer to make-believe than Monopoly. This has led me to make a few conclusions based on the implication:

• The original division of materials in the game, in which only the GM is aware of anything more than the most bare-bones of rules, was the correct one. That there be transparency in this seems reasonable, if only for the sake of impartial judgment; however, where the rules are laid out as strict guidelines, rather than provided as tools, the creates a barrier on the internal human function we call "creativity", and takes the game further from the origin.
• Once the barriers are stripped down and the origin exposed, the open aspect of the system provides itself. There are a lot of GMs who worry about "getting it right" when it comes to subject material, especially when playing with educated people. The incorrect solution is to close off the system and enter into a state of contingencies, where you have the answer readied for every scenario your own limited mind can think of. Rather, all players at the table are in full awareness to their options being open, the same intuition presented by children in make-believe will lead to an adult using.
• To maintain the opening of the mind, created by this link to the origin, the GM must be able to respond this awakening: Solutions proposed must be acted upon in a fair and impartial manner, and without ulterior method. This creates the most blatant rebuke against even the mildest and most well-intended forms of cheating and fudging: Should the GM act in a manner to "help out" his favorite baddie, or turn down an entirely valid solution simply because it would bypass an obstacle, he is closing off a stream of external input to satisfy his own interests. The game at this point ceases to truly be collaborative.
• This same principle offers a rebuke against the idea of railroading. Viewed under this lens, the railroad is a cast of the GM essentially sealing the game world off from all influences, save for those which are specifically desired. Again, this is not longer a true collaboration, and has strayed from the origin of what makes role-playing games fun.

To give a literary example of creativity in action, when I was still a kid, I was quite struck by the ingenuity of Cyrus Harding in Verne's The Mysterious Island. Remember that experiment in high school Physics where you take a meter-stick and some basic trig to figure out a person's height? Congrats, you can solve for the height of a cliff. Now, how many game-books include rules for finding cliff height? Or trigonometry? Probably not many. On the one hand, this proposes an untapped niche in education market just begging to be exploited. On the other hand, it's a pretty simple example of applying outside knowledge to solve a problem. Of course, in play, the GM might just fiat away the entire inspection and say "it's a 250ft cliff" without further details, but we're not going to get a contract from Pearson if we keep thinking like that.

With regards to principles like fudging and railroad, it's worth mention that there are those who defend these activities, so long as they are restrained. And there's a three-letter word that gets brought up quite a lot when talking about this.

Yep, that three letter word.

Here's a question: Why do some people enjoy being in a game that's railroaded, when the concept as a whole is known to be bad? Cop-out answer: Those people are dumb and can't play right. But what if we apply systems thinking to this? Let's have at it: Imagine a yellow submarine, full of little people that live in it. This yellow submarine is our game world, and the people PCs, NPCs, and monsters. Information flows in and out of the system through a series of access ports.

Yes, this model is a gross oversimplification, but it's enough to make the point. Let's consider a game near its "origin": In this case, the players state what they wish to do. The GM offers up results based on the rules of the game, as well as the "common sense" of the scenario. The railroad is different: The provision of input is the same, but here, the outcome is either predetermined, or else narrowed down. One can compare, in the most basic form, the concept of the quantum ogre.

The "origin" scenario is free flow of information overseen by the invisible neck hand of the GM. Child-like wonder like make-believe, but with responsive structures to accompany it, and give a sense of there being an actual "game" with some sort of stakes. The free flow is important, because it means when one play reads an article on animal husbandry, he might actually propose a use for it in the game world. Quite unlike a game of Catan, where all the farming knowledge in the world won't make you roll that damn 11 any more often.

The railroad by definition invalidates input by predetermining input. If possible inputs are "A" to "Z" but only "A" to "D" are accepted, then if the players suggest "E" to "Z", there will likely be disappointment. But it's a little more complex: Besides "E" to "Z", you also cut off all possibilities which stem from there. Further, when players realize output doesn't match input, their input will change as a result - whether it's "following the story" or "rejecting the railroad".

But what if the railroad the GM created was the optimal solution? What if the input was perfectly in sync? What if this well-prepared GM, having been so meticulous, was actually more responsive? We don't even need to make steps this extreme - even slight cases of "illusion of freedom" can come up here. And the lighter shades of this scenario are where we can drive the truth behind the railroad - as well as why, ultimately, it's still an inferior option.

We can therefore point out the real problem with the railroad:

• At its best, railroading fails to prepare a GM for refereeing unexpected input.
• At its worst, railroading invalidates the choices of all players at the table.
• In all scenarios, railroading is deceptive in its degree of how open the system is.

So yes: It is possible to have a "good" session or campaign was the heavily railroaded. But we can also show in plain terms why it is a sub-optimal option, even then.

We've gone on a pretty long tangent about railroads, so let's go back to the essay. I can't add a lot more commentary to the rest, because it's mostly recollection. I wasn't there, I don't have the full information, I don't have to contribute. The contradictory Gygax quotes are a fairly long-standing joke online, so seeing those laid out nicely is funny in its own way (I think a few forum posts from Gygax in his later years might have served to reinforce the point a bit more, or even a few personal quotes). For the person interested in the history of and/or early drama within the hobby, this section is definitely a juicy one. I remember reading before that Kuntz had a near-perfect memory, and his recollection of things supports that.

Just before the closing of the essay, Kuntz talks a bit about the direction of the hobby. And here I might have a few disagreements. The relevant quotation:

"In due course the design tenets/philosophies of the original game, now ignored, faded against an immense and growing foreground of TSR doing the imagining and creating of pre-determined/pre-structured scenarios for the consumer. The sustained promulgation of this disposable and repeatable model caused all but scattered remains of the original RPG philosophy it was then forming to be lost. This 180 degree reversal abruptly issued in the Formula RPG experience that persists to this very day as a strictly close form expression; and this was (and still is) a direct, and glaring, contradiction to the genius of its original manifestations: First Fantasy Campaign and the commercially successful Classic Dungeons & Dragons." (Kuntz 30)

The reason I "might" have a disagreement, is because of a lack of clarification on what exactly "Formula RPGs" entails. The most narrow definition I conclude, and which I suspect is correct, is a criticism of modules, adventure paths, and other pre-made content. This is an entirely valid criticism, and remains the most consistent with the rest of the text.

But in the context given, I also get the sense that Kuntz is targeting the market for selling new rules-texts, especially with regards to TSR and now WotC. This is an interpretation that doesn't mesh with his praise of individual GMs constructing their own game worlds, and their own rules. Is it okay do so, as long as you don't publish it for money?

I see rules like a coding library: Yes, you could come up with that dirt-simple encumbrance system on your own, but that doesn't mean you should when someone already did. This also holds true at the company level - assuming a game design studio play-tests a bunch of alternate rules everyone thinks would be cool, why not put them out as a bundle? You run the risk of getting something like Unearthed Arcana published, sure, but as long as you're upfront about things being optional - and that the core rules themselves are optional - then it's tools, in the same fashion as new monsters, geomorphs, or other products meant to provide more material.

Of course, all of this is a "might", and I'm fairly sure my initial interpretation is closer to what he was getting at - I don't seen any criticisms levied against Supplement I ~ III, both of which expanded on the core rules; if this was a problem, I think it would have been specifically addressed.

Commentary on Essay #2: Dimensionality in Design

Looking at the back cover blurb, this feels like it should be the most important of the three essays. I can't say I disagree with what's written, and the points made are valid. But having read over it a couple of times, the strongest feeling I have here is: "Yes, and?"

Let me explain: There is a major emphasis on this section (and indeed, it pervades the book in general) on Arneson's ideas as having been quickly bounded by the system of D&D, marketed, and then effectively stunted up to this day. Kuntz argues that there is a Garden of Eden emergence which can be found if we can back-track to Arneson's core idea, and then from there, dig one further step down the line. This as-of-yet unseen Eden could be used to open an entirely new step in the field of game design. I am not convinced, based on the material he provides, that there is a further step down the line - or to be more precise, that it's a step is immediately relevant to game design.

Picture a group of primitive hunter-gatherers. The chief has a poor opinion of one of the hunters, because he has his enormous mole on the back of his neck that just gets really distracting, and so he keeps making that guy act as the bait when they go hunting. Now, the hunter is quite annoyed, and brings this up in a meeting - why is it almost always him that gets the worst job, when he's a perfectly fine hunter in his own right? The rest of the group supports him (he's brave enough to keep staring down wild animals, after all), the chief gets worried about his own position, and the group decides to put together a "fair" system - pulling sticks to see who gets the crappy spot.

Expand this further, and you have a basic human characteristic: Organizing things. Building structures. Trying to make it all sensible, or at least, somewhat sensible. Why are house-rules needed? Because dammit, people want things to make sense to them - either sense in terms of realism, or sense in terms of ease of play at the table. This is where I believe the core actually lies - the interplay between human imagination, and human structure. In other words, the fundamental action of creating something. What role-playing games create is fictional and fleeting, but it is an act of creation nonetheless - and in this aspect, they have something in common with nearly all human activities, be it writing a novel, building a bird-box, or creating civilization.

Did Arneson create something new? Yes. That's something worth praising. Is there something a bit deeper than that? Yes. Does it have something to do with game design? I don't believe that it does. Kuntz has had a lot longer to think on this, so perhaps he might have done it - found that hidden root, and whatever undiscovered genres of games are buried away. But I don't see a path to that in digging through Arneson - rather, it strikes me as more important to celebrate the fact that a man who had such a strong spark of creativity was able to share it.

Commentary on Essay #3: Debunking the Chainmail/Braunstein Myth

In contrast to the earlier sections, there's not to much to comment on here - the points made so far give way to the final conclusion, that the FFC was an original idea, and not just a derivative of something else. Essay #2 sets up the backbone for this, in its assessment of Arneson as the original creator of the idea; and though I have disagreed with the asserted implications, the core idea is one that seems quite solid. This was something novel, the work of a genius. Following this, we get an appendix of quotations, more previewing of the upcoming book, and a neat afterword. It's worth reading over, but again, there's not much to comment on - or, rather, I'll hold of any further comments until we get the complete work.

Some closing thoughts: Reading through this, I am left wondering what thoughts Kuntz holds in relation to the other styles of role-playing which have emerged. Where does a game like Amber Diceless hold in perspective to this? the assorted one-page RPGs that you can find floating around all over the internet? foreign RPGs born with very different logic and influences?

Let's use Ryuutama as an example here. I'll take the pertinent points about the game, beyond just the basic mechanics, which are either in contrast to OD&D, or in contrast to most story-games. These are almost direct copy-pastes from the official web-site:

• UNLIKE OD&D: The game makes use of the principle of shared world creation. Every player at the table contributes before the campaign begins, and not just after.
• UNLIKE STORY-GAMES: The game makes it entirely possible to fail. The players possess little in the way of mechanics-only methods (fate points, etc.) to escape a bad situation. Your party can get wiped by anything from monsters to the weather. Progression is tangibly tracked based on each action.
• UNLIKE OD&D: There is an emphasis on telling stories. The initial investment into your character is expected to be a lot higher, though the time to create one is still quite short.
• UNLIKE STORY-GAMES: The game actually makes use of traditional functions like caller or mapper as major role.
• UNLIKE EITHER: The GM has a hidden character, with a character sheet, that remains off-screen and makes small adjustments to help out the players. The more games run, the more XP this character gains, and the more that can be done.
• LIKE BOTH: The game has its own rules, but emphasizes the importance of fiat, rather than standardization; each campaign is its own, stand-alone thing, and the GM is encouraged to make adjustments beyond the scope of the rules as needed.

Effectively, you have a game that straddles the boundary between a game of exploration and adventure, and a game for making stories. What sort of appraisal does a game like this deserve? It seems unfair to dismiss simply on account of being lengthier - especially when we consider a game not designed around the idea of supplements, monster books, or any future material other than what the buyer comes up with themselves. Similarly, the most immediately damning feature in reference to ye olden days - references to contemporary video game mechanics and tropes - seems misplaced when considering the original target audience is people who have likely never played a TTRPG (besides perhaps Call of Cthulhu), let alone even heart of a war-game. The kids back then had John Carter, the kids nowadays have Legend of Zelda.

Well, that all said: There's a sentiment from Kuntz that things in the hobby are not doing so well. If we're talking the broadest picture - which is Wizards of the Coast, and their 5th Edition of D&D - then yes, things do seem to have strayed in what is an overall bad direction. But the internet has been a wonderful tool in promoting other ideas, as well as new materials and new takes on older material and older ideas. And of course, there's still people - even younger people - who make use of what once was rather that what is now. So while criticism of the wrongs is appropriate, I see room to be optimistic about where things are going.

That's all the thoughts I've had. If anyone comes passing by that's taken a look, I'd be interested to know what other's thought about it.