Thinking About Formal Incentive
Thinking about a certain line about formal incentives in role-playing games, first articulated by Luke Gearing. To be clear, I really like Gearing and respect his work a lot. This is more riffing off of discourse (which I think has, generally, spun off and away from Gearing's original point) and some inside-baseball discussions with friends.
Sorry this comes across as vague-posting. It's just all like secondhand discourse.
- Aren't you still playing regular ass D&D anyway, the same treasure-hunting game as always?
- Isn't it obvious that experience points incentivize behavior to anyone who plays using them?
- Are your character's actions less over-determined when you aren't formally rewarded for them?
- Why is it more problematic to formally incentivize behavior to act the same without that incentive?
- Or, to reify the same effect as experience points but within the game-world's own fiction?
- Isn't it more effective to analyze the actions themselves and their (so-to-speak) literary significance, not just that the game is apparently forcing you do do them?
Speaking more as a player than as a referee or designer or whatever, I don't care very much about whether a game has experience points. They tend to reflect what we're doing anyway, so it doesn't make a difference to me. It's not uncommon either that, as players, we disregard them to do other things; Zedeck Siew has talked about this. My own preference in long-term casual games is probably milestone experience, since I don't care much for thieving or killing but I think it's fun for my characters to get more buttons to press over time.
But I think it's irritating that "Experience points incentivize behavior" is being treated not just as an insightful point, but a basis to criticize experience points in themselves for apparently mind-controlling players. I just think it's kind of an inane point that regards players as idiots, and avoids criticizing the actual activity of player-characters. For example, isn't D&D (speaking broadly) a petit bourgeois adventurist race war fantasy, as reflected in rules and setting? Does it make a difference whether or not there's experience points when players act the same either way because they are playing D&D?
I remember my high school English teacher getting onto students for constructing sentences like, "Such-and-such Author uses diction to [...]" because they didn't actually say anything. I think saying experience points incentivize behavior is sort of the same thing. Well, what are they incentivizing? What's the point? That's not saying anything by itself; at most, it's evidence for another argument not made.
In the linked post, I thought that Gearing's main target was all mechanics that 'incentivise' players to engage with the fiction in a particular way. The criticism was unclear to me, but it seemed to include the ideas that the players are able to make their own choices about what kind of fiction to make, that what they choose is interesting (or that their freedom to choose is intrinsically valuable), and that mechanical incentives are both patronising and irrelevant. Or perhaps the critique was just a more sophisticated version of the argument that mechanical incentives punish the players for not going along with the designers preconceived ideas regarding the fiction. Experience points were simply an example of a game mechanical incentive, rather than the main target of the criticism. Without leaving the field of early D&D, the acquisition of magic items, or even the application of to hit roll adjustments for tactical positioning, might be criticised in the same vein.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is very interesting to consider what kinds of fiction the mechanical incentives promote and it can shed light on the world views and situations of its authors, interpreters and audiences.
It's interesting to me that both of these perspectives tend to overlook or devalue the attraction of engaging with incentive structures (dismissed in Gearing's post as 'Number Go Up') for some participants.
If we regard the human participants as agents susceptible to incentives, games naturally include many tacit incentives and rewards, including those embedded in mechanical elements (e.g. dice rolling, character generation) and others that are strictly social (e.g. the time together and semi-structured social interactions involved). So critical analysis of incentives restricted to certain kinds of explicit constructs is highly selective, and at risk of failing to account for the participant's situation.
On the other hand, if we do not regard the participants as susceptible to incentives, then the entire critique becomes moot.
hi kenco!! i think those are all good points :) i do think that one can talk about mechanics incentivizing behavior regardless if the players are susceptible or conscious of it, since i don't think they function to trick players into doing certain things---they just indicate the game's formal goal if one exists! makes it valuable for analysis and critique, though i think not as the endpoint thereof and certainly not in a weird moralistic sense.
DeleteI agree that most of the attributes in your list - and especially as it developed through AD&D - can be found in D&D (although I am not sure what 'adventurist' means).
DeleteI've always thought it questionable whether D&D has formal goals analogous to those of a board game like e.g. Monopoly. It is possible to interpret the system of experience and levels as an incentive scheme. But it is entirely optional. You can play a single session. You can play - as it sounds like you might do - without paying much attention to 'achieving' mechanical advancement. You can play - as I have done - long, low level campaigns without levelling up at all.
Levelling up is a sort of progression, but where does it lead? You can't 'win' a game of D&D except in terms you define for yourself, and you can play the game without defining a 'win'.
It is interesting that the experience mechanic is what it is. It is interesting that there is an experience mechanic of ANY kind. The game would - and does - function perfectly well without one, as a great many RPGs - starting as early as Traveller - do, or very nearly do.
So am I correct to understand that it's not OK for games to have scoring? At its core, BX D&D is still a game. That's what I enjoy about it. Without a specified goal for which players get points, it's no longer a game. Basketball incentivizes being athletic, and therefore it's not the game for me. Incentivizing acquisition of gold doesn't specify HOW you get gold or WHO you get it from or WHY your character wants it.
ReplyDeletei'm complaining *about* people who moralize scoring (i.e., criticize it from a moral POV), so i'm not saying that at all; experience points are value-neutral for me.
Deletethat being said: it's really, really not uncommon at all to play games without formal scoring. like playing soccer or football at the park? i don't play in long enough campaigns for scoring experience to matter, so when i play it's not like i'm aiming to maximize my score. i play to hang out with my friends.
Excuse my suburban Gonçalense English with the help of Google Translate.
ReplyDeleteLast month I focused on the theme of experience for the construction of the game I'm creating, BALA (Bonegagem Aventuresca Lúdica Adaptável, something like Adaptable Ludic Adventuresc Dollage in your language). I addressed some games in the matter, including the 1st national OSR, the OLd Dragon. Here's the link. https://ociolevaaovicio.blogspot.com/2023/08/aforismos-sispro-7-pontos-de.html
ReplyDeleteIf I've read Gearing's post correctly I think he's saying incentivise tools like XP are not good because a) they limit player's decision space - it becomes the case that there are "correct" objectives and "correct" outcomes and "correct" methods and b) the carrot of advancement is itself limiting; players should have other avenues of growth or avenues of enjoyment not tethered to character growth.
For me I think that just boils down to a reminder that there are other ways of doing RPGs and the default of gain XP to unlock character advancement should be a conscious design choice or a conscious Session Zero discussion. If it's an unexamined default you risk limiting yourself by accident
Incentive mechanisms can have a roll as a tool to keep an RPG campaign within the boundaries that the players have agreed.
If a group of players have agreed that it would be fun or artistically satisfying to set about playing an RPG in a particular way, with particular outcomes in mind then the incentive structure can act as a strategic bargaining commitment. If we agree that we are going to do X, in Y way in order to achieve Z then by agreeing to incentivise X, and dis-incentivise not-X, with game mechanics we signal our personal committent to honour our agreement.
If your group of players didn't want to play a muder-hobo campaign then the GM can set up a structure of Actions Have Consequences escalations every time the PCs murder-hobo, or you can design your incentive scheme to award zero XP for murdering defenceless townsfolk. If you want to play a campaign where characters act in accordance with the player-declared characteristics then you can use curated milestone or advancement bingo card system to consciously incentivise on-going player behaviour.