After giving presentation on character-driven game design I was given pointer to idea of conflict webs and flag framing by Bankuei. There are things that corresponds with I have presented in my Character Design Fundamentals for Role-Playing Games.

Especially interesting is a NPC role wants to use PC (in addition to supporting or being against PC), which I have somewhat neglected (although this role has been present implicitly) in my writings.

Esityksen diat

Tutkimuksia roolipeleistä:

• Fine (1983). Shared fantasy: Role-playing games as social worlds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Costikyan (1994). I have no words & I must design. Interactive Fantasy, #2.
• Dogma (1999). Dogma99: A programme for the liberation of LARP.
• Mackay (2001). The fantasy role-playing game. A new performing art. McFarland & Company.
• Novitz (2001). Disputes about art. Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
• Gade, ym. (toim.) (2003). As Larps grow up: Theory and methods in larp.
• Pohjola (2003). The manifesto of the Turku school (3. laitos).
• Hakkarainen & Stenros (2003). The Meilahti School.
• Montola & Stenros (toim.) (2004). Beyond role and play: Tools, toys and theory for harnessing the imagination. Helsinki: Ropecon ry.
• Bocman & Hutchison (toim.) (2005). Dissecting larp: Collected papers for Knutepunkt 2005.
• Brenne (2005). Making and maintaining frames: A study of metacommunication in laiv play. Masters Thesis, University of Oslo.
• Pundel (2005). Creative accounting. Poetics Today.
• Fritzon & Wrigstad (toim.) (2006). Role, play, art: Collected experiences of role-playing.

Web

• Forge
• John H. Kim’s Role-Playing Game Page
• Montola: Reading diary.
• jiituomas’ Journal

Hyödynnettäviä

• Currie & Ravenscroft (2002). Recreative minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Juul (2005). Half-real. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
• Nichols & Stich (2003). Mindreading: An integrated account of pretence, self-awareness, and understanding other minds.
• Walton (1990). Mimesis as make-believe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Lista eivät ole mitenkään kattavia. Satu kommentoinee vielä listaa. Hieman toisenlaisen luettelon löytää Tuomas J. Harviaisen blogista.

• Esityksen diat
• Tracon I workshopin oheismateriaali

(Added Nov 22. 2006.) The presentation was based on my chapter Character design fundamentals for role-playing games in Montola & Stenros (eds.) Beyond Role and Play.

I came across an essay Dice rolling mechanisms in RPGs (pdf, html) by Torben Mogensen at John Kim’s RPG System Design Page. The essay discuss about calculating probabilities and qualities of some method. There are also some discussion about other randomizing methods like cards and an example of how to use probability formulas in game design. The covered stuff is also usable also in computer design.

This reminds me of Adam Carpenter’s piece Applying risk analysis to play-balance RPGs at Gamasutra. The essay is about computer RPGs, but is can be also used with table-top system design. Risk analysis (or other simulation based evaluation method) would probably be good addition to the method described by Mogensen.

I will be speaking about role-playing theory (with Satu Heliö) and character driven role-plying game design at Tracon II, 28th October, Tampere (Tracon is table-top and live-action role-playing game con).

Character driven role-playing game design presentation draws heavily on PhD research. The goal is to present some design aspects in very practical and understandable form.

I got some new books. Game Writing Narrative Skills for Videogames is one of them. I have just browsed it throught, but I desided to comment one thing that I noticed.

In Chapter 1: Introduction to game narrative Richard Dansky writes:

Immersion is arguably the ultimate goal of videogames. Immersion is making players forget that they’re sitting on their couch twiddling joysticks with their thumbs, and instead making them believe they’re mowing down Nazis, leaping from platform to platform over boiling space sludge, or exploring a mansion full of masticating mutants. (p. 16.)

How immersion is the ultimate goal for video games? The argument is missing, and I do not thing that there are very good arguments to back up the claim. To me, it seems that the author(s) is exluding wide variety of possible effects by setting up immediacy as his ultimate goal. Irony or comic effects can be heightened by other non-immersive means as seen, e.g., in Monkey Islands series. Also, Fahrenheit’s split screen technique is not about making players forget that they are sitting on their couch, but creating tension dispate that the game reveals it gameness.

Anyhow, I need to read the whole book. Despite the abobe-mentioned stuff, the book seems really interesting.

Bateman, C. (ed.) (2007). Game writing: Narrative skills for videogames. Boston: Charles River Media.

Some notes on Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child by Vygotsky:

• Defining (child’s) play through pleasure is not correct for two reasons. 1) there are activities that gives much direct experience of pleasure than play, and 2) there are games that do not afford pleasure or that are often accompanied with displeasure.
• Young children tend to satisfy their desires immediately. Without development at preshool years where needs cannot be realized immediately there would be no play. Development of play is connected to intellegtual and affective development.
• Imagination is play without action.
• Play can be discriminated from other types of activities by role of imagination; in play a child creates an imaginary situation.
• Play imply rules.
• “[E]very game with rules contains imaginary situation. For example , what does it mean to play chess? To create imaginary situation. Why? because the knight, the king, the queen, and so forth, can move only in specified ways; because covering and taking pieces are purely chess concepts; and so on.”
• Acting based on imagined situations teaches a child to guide decision-making not only by perception but also by the meaning of a situation.
• In play a child needs to create structures meaning< ->object; meaning determines her behaviour.
• It is inccorrect to thing play as activity without purpose.

Some Vygotsky to read:

Play and its role in the Mental Development of the Child
About games, play, pleasure, rules.

The Psychology of Art
At least Chapter 8 – The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark seems interesting in relation to character playing in RPGs.