This is a rough sketch I came up with to illustrate how TRPG play occurs. It's easy for me to forget that when I throw a game together it's not necessarily put together in a fashion that the developer or my players intend. Everybody's expectations get modified through actual play as they realize what is working for them, what isn't, and what's different from what they had conceptualized as the game itself.
Also, this isn't necessarily the straight line I depicted here. I might revise this to show where reciprocal shaping occurs; player dynamics during play change the way a GM envisions and executes the game and the player's mediation thereof.
Incidentally, this process of social shaping of a communicative medium is also the way genres get developed.
Time to get academic for a moment. Math becomes a constraint in translating a developer's vision to a written work (using Hayes and Flower's cognitive model of writing). How many games list tasks as "highly difficult" or "nigh-impossible" that become simplicity for PCs? The Alexandrian blog breaks down some of that for both D&D and Numenera in a blog series, titled "Calibrating Your Expectations."
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. In this case, I was actually thinking more about expectations in terms of setting, themes and mood. My anecdotal experience is that there is usually more difficulty in matching those expectations than mechanical ones, at least in terms of the game's consensual entertainment. Mechanical issues (again, anecdotally) are usually simply wrestled into a place that the group wants, but my groups tend to be very open to modifying the rules if they appear to be obviously dumb.
DeleteCough, er, "obviously contrary to expectations". Cough.
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