I think you've hit on something really lovely here, as someone who's made entire GM advice YouTube videos and such, and I think there's an additional factor to consider: GM principles and guidance are making their way deeply into the texts of games, but the kind of advice you're giving about how playstyle are not.
PbtA is a great example of a genre where the game is often outlining a deep ethos of GMing -- ("don't prep plots," "re-incorporate players ideas," etc) -- but almost always the player is treated as someone who should ever have a word of two of encouragement or guidance outside of the rules they have to follow. I wonder how this could be different.
An idea: When I started running Mausritter, I had a D&D 5e group, and I wanted to help them get adjusted in their playstyle. So to this day, when I run Mausritter (probably 10-15 times a year) I always read the short list of Player Principles out loud TWICE each session -- it says stuff like "Work together. Devise schemes. Recruit allies." And throwing this stuff in their face REALLY DOES help. They really do consider "let's recruit this guy instead of fighting him" when you tell them that's how the game is meant to be.
It might be the case - as I somewhat snarkily suggested - that there is something like an ‘objective’ set of GM tools that are more or less required to engage in the collective endeavour that is an RPG. But I often find it hard to draw a distinction between what are useful tools for running an RPG per se and what are the basic requirements of agreeable social interaction. Is ‘spotlight conrol’ a ‘GM tip’ or is it just describing the conversational norm of shutting up from time to time and encouraging others to do likewise - or to speak up, as appropriate?
GM advice that is not merely ‘don’t be a dick’ and player-specific advice are, I think, even more difficult to proffer because of the enormously varied and entirely subjective preferences of play styles. The result is that, commonly, player advice, like GM advice, is either basic good manners or it is rendered in the service of specific genre emulation - which is not quite the same thing as a playing style. The first form is trivial and the second is narrowly targeted. Even my own example here is not ‘universal’. Good luck attempting to have a character emerge in a two-dimensional ‘we kick in the dungeon door, kill the monster, steal the gold’ syle of play.
None of this is helped, of course, by the fact that - some very, very niche games aside - most core systems do not set out to generate a particular playing style at all. Genre emulation is much more common and even that tends to break down pretty quckly as a game gets a larger player base. Who now thinks of Call of Cthulhu as an engine for emulating cosmic or even gothic horror? Those days (if they ever existed) are gone, buried under the weight of (entirely legitimate) player demands for other play syles - usually featuring shotguns and dynamite as solutions.
I think I might be tempted to conclude that, beyond some very basic RPG competencies (whether social or technical), I would want to see more written and said about how one goes about fostering a given style of play rather than a genre. Of course, someone will now ask what I mean when I differentiate those two terms and, when I’ve settled that question in my own mind, I might write a post about it.
Ok, this might be its own post of mine here, but based on a conversation I had yesterday...
... I might be on the side of the idea that like, "Play Culture" is only really a thing when we're all, in terms of consensus, playing the same one or two games in a giant variety of ways, and that actually if we're all going to be playing many different games, we can just say that "What we want from 'play culture' should just be right there in the rules and play guidance, in the book, so that you know what kind of game it is."
Because in a world where there's a certain "play culture," but there are lots of games, really "play culture" just describes like, the kinds of games you like, right?
I think, in order to do this conversation justice, I’ll need to spend a little more time developing my views on the difference between genre and playing style. I intuit that they are slightly different things, but until I’ve considered it some more, I’m reluctant to start spitballing at length. Right now, if pressed, I think I’d say that style (or perhaps, ‘the culture of a table’) is more varied than genre if only because I have direct experience of playing the same ostensible genre in very different styles. From this I tentatively conclude that it is an extraordinarily difficult task to codify a style of play or, at least, there is no reason to suppose that any given rules’ set that purports to be of broad application can or should attempt it.
"it is an extraordinarily difficult task to codify a style of play"
So I don't have an answer here, but lots of opinions. The provocation I would offer here would just be: If you're a trad guy who goes to play some PbtA games like me, you might find games like Monster of the Week and Brindlewood Bay, which I have run campaigns of in the past 6 months. This requires a totally different culture of play and style at the table, particularly since BBay AROSE out of a particular community and its play culture.
My question here becomes: Shouldn't these texts communicate what need to know about the intended culture and style of play in the text, much as these texts make strong and often successful attempts at doing? If so, is "play culture" just a shorthand for "all of the stuff we have to socially transmit regarding the game because it HASN'T been sufficiently communicated by the game itself?"
I am not looking for you to answer, but I think it's an interesting question!! Maybe I will write on this.
I find it interesting that you descibe the 'conscientious' approach in terms of 'work' and 'effort'. The very use of those terms does, in a way, prejudge the matter. I find the development of a character before the game to be not only a huge amount of fun and a satisfying exercise, but sometimes I enjoy it even more than the game itself. To find a way to avoid that work and effort is tantamount to finding a way to avoid that fun and satisfaction. Kind of like a band performing only covers to avoid the effort of writing their own material. It's a strange framing, and one with which I don't identify.
As for the final point about the benefits of emergent character creation, I see that quite differently too. Just because you have identified certain high-level priorities and personality traits doesn't mean that you have a predicatble algorithm for how the character will deal with a specific low-level situation. Just as a chess player always has in mind a gamut of high level strategic principles, the concrete requirements of a specific position may mean that one or more of those principles need to be overidden, resulting in an effective move that appears to go against chess wisdom. Similarly, for a real person - their responses to a situation are unlikely to be completely random, but a consequence of oft times conflicting priorities and practised responses coming to bear upon a specific situation in a way that can lead to surprising decisions. I suppose I agree wholeheartedly with the very last sentence, but disagree that a response that bears no relation to a character's personalitlity traits and lived experiences works better than one that does.
I think my use of the terms ‘work’ and ‘effort’ were selected simply as synonyms for ‘activity’ and perhaps that would have been a less loaded word to use. But I employed those terms in the context of and in contrast to my own self-description as ‘lazy’ which, equally, was a term of art used to describe a preference rather than to imply any particular negative association. As always, the post could perhaps have benefitted from some more liberal use of the words “I think” or other qualifying phrase to make explicit the subjective nature of the discussion. On the question of ‘granularity’, I agree; just because some top level details are established about a character does not necessarily provide any method for discerning responses to particular circumstances and especially not situations that are novel or extreme. But I don’t see how that is different for a more diligent player, given the impossibility of covering all bases that might arise in play and especially not at the point of character creation. Whether one comes to the table with a three-dimensional character or a cartoon, this issue remains the same. I would argue that the solution is also the same in both instances - you select a character’s action, reaction or response based not on ‘random choice’ but on some notion of consistency with previous events and in-game experiences. One could make the case that a rounded character has a better grounding for those choices at an earlier stage in the game, before in-play experiences have shaped them, but part of the fun of playing an emergent character for me is the pressure of making those choices on the fly and then using them as the basis for further decisions. The risk, of course, is that one constructs an unstable Jenga tower of character choices piled one atop the other in reaction to events in-game. However, I think I’d suggest that what I try to do is build a ‘Jenga pyramid’ because earlier actions narrow the range of options that can plausibly be selected in the future.
I think you've hit on something really lovely here, as someone who's made entire GM advice YouTube videos and such, and I think there's an additional factor to consider: GM principles and guidance are making their way deeply into the texts of games, but the kind of advice you're giving about how playstyle are not.
PbtA is a great example of a genre where the game is often outlining a deep ethos of GMing -- ("don't prep plots," "re-incorporate players ideas," etc) -- but almost always the player is treated as someone who should ever have a word of two of encouragement or guidance outside of the rules they have to follow. I wonder how this could be different.
An idea: When I started running Mausritter, I had a D&D 5e group, and I wanted to help them get adjusted in their playstyle. So to this day, when I run Mausritter (probably 10-15 times a year) I always read the short list of Player Principles out loud TWICE each session -- it says stuff like "Work together. Devise schemes. Recruit allies." And throwing this stuff in their face REALLY DOES help. They really do consider "let's recruit this guy instead of fighting him" when you tell them that's how the game is meant to be.
It might be the case - as I somewhat snarkily suggested - that there is something like an ‘objective’ set of GM tools that are more or less required to engage in the collective endeavour that is an RPG. But I often find it hard to draw a distinction between what are useful tools for running an RPG per se and what are the basic requirements of agreeable social interaction. Is ‘spotlight conrol’ a ‘GM tip’ or is it just describing the conversational norm of shutting up from time to time and encouraging others to do likewise - or to speak up, as appropriate?
GM advice that is not merely ‘don’t be a dick’ and player-specific advice are, I think, even more difficult to proffer because of the enormously varied and entirely subjective preferences of play styles. The result is that, commonly, player advice, like GM advice, is either basic good manners or it is rendered in the service of specific genre emulation - which is not quite the same thing as a playing style. The first form is trivial and the second is narrowly targeted. Even my own example here is not ‘universal’. Good luck attempting to have a character emerge in a two-dimensional ‘we kick in the dungeon door, kill the monster, steal the gold’ syle of play.
None of this is helped, of course, by the fact that - some very, very niche games aside - most core systems do not set out to generate a particular playing style at all. Genre emulation is much more common and even that tends to break down pretty quckly as a game gets a larger player base. Who now thinks of Call of Cthulhu as an engine for emulating cosmic or even gothic horror? Those days (if they ever existed) are gone, buried under the weight of (entirely legitimate) player demands for other play syles - usually featuring shotguns and dynamite as solutions.
I think I might be tempted to conclude that, beyond some very basic RPG competencies (whether social or technical), I would want to see more written and said about how one goes about fostering a given style of play rather than a genre. Of course, someone will now ask what I mean when I differentiate those two terms and, when I’ve settled that question in my own mind, I might write a post about it.
Ok, this might be its own post of mine here, but based on a conversation I had yesterday...
... I might be on the side of the idea that like, "Play Culture" is only really a thing when we're all, in terms of consensus, playing the same one or two games in a giant variety of ways, and that actually if we're all going to be playing many different games, we can just say that "What we want from 'play culture' should just be right there in the rules and play guidance, in the book, so that you know what kind of game it is."
Because in a world where there's a certain "play culture," but there are lots of games, really "play culture" just describes like, the kinds of games you like, right?
I think, in order to do this conversation justice, I’ll need to spend a little more time developing my views on the difference between genre and playing style. I intuit that they are slightly different things, but until I’ve considered it some more, I’m reluctant to start spitballing at length. Right now, if pressed, I think I’d say that style (or perhaps, ‘the culture of a table’) is more varied than genre if only because I have direct experience of playing the same ostensible genre in very different styles. From this I tentatively conclude that it is an extraordinarily difficult task to codify a style of play or, at least, there is no reason to suppose that any given rules’ set that purports to be of broad application can or should attempt it.
"it is an extraordinarily difficult task to codify a style of play"
So I don't have an answer here, but lots of opinions. The provocation I would offer here would just be: If you're a trad guy who goes to play some PbtA games like me, you might find games like Monster of the Week and Brindlewood Bay, which I have run campaigns of in the past 6 months. This requires a totally different culture of play and style at the table, particularly since BBay AROSE out of a particular community and its play culture.
My question here becomes: Shouldn't these texts communicate what need to know about the intended culture and style of play in the text, much as these texts make strong and often successful attempts at doing? If so, is "play culture" just a shorthand for "all of the stuff we have to socially transmit regarding the game because it HASN'T been sufficiently communicated by the game itself?"
I am not looking for you to answer, but I think it's an interesting question!! Maybe I will write on this.
I tried writing a pithy response. And failed. I’ll pick this up again tomorrow when I have more time.
I find it interesting that you descibe the 'conscientious' approach in terms of 'work' and 'effort'. The very use of those terms does, in a way, prejudge the matter. I find the development of a character before the game to be not only a huge amount of fun and a satisfying exercise, but sometimes I enjoy it even more than the game itself. To find a way to avoid that work and effort is tantamount to finding a way to avoid that fun and satisfaction. Kind of like a band performing only covers to avoid the effort of writing their own material. It's a strange framing, and one with which I don't identify.
As for the final point about the benefits of emergent character creation, I see that quite differently too. Just because you have identified certain high-level priorities and personality traits doesn't mean that you have a predicatble algorithm for how the character will deal with a specific low-level situation. Just as a chess player always has in mind a gamut of high level strategic principles, the concrete requirements of a specific position may mean that one or more of those principles need to be overidden, resulting in an effective move that appears to go against chess wisdom. Similarly, for a real person - their responses to a situation are unlikely to be completely random, but a consequence of oft times conflicting priorities and practised responses coming to bear upon a specific situation in a way that can lead to surprising decisions. I suppose I agree wholeheartedly with the very last sentence, but disagree that a response that bears no relation to a character's personalitlity traits and lived experiences works better than one that does.
I think my use of the terms ‘work’ and ‘effort’ were selected simply as synonyms for ‘activity’ and perhaps that would have been a less loaded word to use. But I employed those terms in the context of and in contrast to my own self-description as ‘lazy’ which, equally, was a term of art used to describe a preference rather than to imply any particular negative association. As always, the post could perhaps have benefitted from some more liberal use of the words “I think” or other qualifying phrase to make explicit the subjective nature of the discussion. On the question of ‘granularity’, I agree; just because some top level details are established about a character does not necessarily provide any method for discerning responses to particular circumstances and especially not situations that are novel or extreme. But I don’t see how that is different for a more diligent player, given the impossibility of covering all bases that might arise in play and especially not at the point of character creation. Whether one comes to the table with a three-dimensional character or a cartoon, this issue remains the same. I would argue that the solution is also the same in both instances - you select a character’s action, reaction or response based not on ‘random choice’ but on some notion of consistency with previous events and in-game experiences. One could make the case that a rounded character has a better grounding for those choices at an earlier stage in the game, before in-play experiences have shaped them, but part of the fun of playing an emergent character for me is the pressure of making those choices on the fly and then using them as the basis for further decisions. The risk, of course, is that one constructs an unstable Jenga tower of character choices piled one atop the other in reaction to events in-game. However, I think I’d suggest that what I try to do is build a ‘Jenga pyramid’ because earlier actions narrow the range of options that can plausibly be selected in the future.