G is for Game

When I started this alphabetical series of posts, my intent was to parallel (at a slower pace) JB's series of posts describing his campaign. While JB's series has so far stuck pretty tightly to his intent of describing his campaign setting, my own series has veered off into the game itself more than the campaign setting. I'm pleased with that choice, because for me the function of the game is more important than the fiction around it and unlike JB, I haven't already written my thoughts on that.

I'll start with defining a game. I've already ranted about why some expressions of D&D are not a game. Defining "game" has been difficult enough a proposition that philosophers, sociologists, and game designers have attempted to define it often contracting one another. Having read his book The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, I'm in Bernard Suits' camp regarding this definition. Suits goes beyond defining "game," in a serious yet entertaining way, to assert that game-playing is the ultimate human good, since under ideal, Utopian conditions it would be everyone's main pursuit.

Suits' definition in this book is a little more cumbersome, containing his own, invented words, than the definition he wrote in the journal Philosophy of Science, Volume 34, Number 2 June, 1967:

To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.

The characteristics of a game, according to this definition then are:

1. Actively playing it: To play a game is to engage in activity
   
   
2. Having a goal: directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs
   
   
3. Following the rules even when they oppose the goal: using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules
   
   
4. For its own sake: and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.

"Actively playing" a game distinguishes playing a game from reading a book, listening to a story, watching a movie, and so on, because in these activities, the participant plays a passive, rather than an active role. When a group "plays D&D" following a packaged module, unless the referee is merely using it as a starting point from which the game could go anywhere, the players' activity is limited to at least the passivity of staying "on the map," and very possibly hitting "plot points" defined in the module which turn the activity away from being a game and into either acting in a play or listening to a story. Even without a full script of dialog and blocking, a "scene" in a module is still just acting, not game-playing. I will concede that the players are doing something, and so arguably are actively playing a game, but in the context of the rest of the definition, the activity needs to be directed at achieving a specific state of affairs, a goal. What that goals is then, matters for understanding what is meant by actively playing.

"Having a goal," bringing about a specific state of affairs, cannot be simply, as so many expressions of the game put it, "to have fun." No, "having fun" is not a state of affairs. Anyway, I have a million ways to have fun, and most of them provide far more efficient means of achieving mere "fun" than this complex set of rules. We may have fun playing the game, and if we didn't, we wouldn't play it, but that's not goal we're specifically trying to achieve. The rules of AD&D are quite clear that the goal for the players is to accumulate XP and advance their characters. All of the game's mechanics, man-to-man combat, spell casting, and so on improve for the character who advances and do not for the character that doesn't advance. In order to be actively playing, players must be working toward acquiring XP for their characters, and the only two ways the rules of first edition AD&D provide for getting XP is by recovering treasure and defeating opponents. Those are the only rules for XP acquisition in any version of this game.

"The rules" part is where for every edition of D&D, first edition included, the ground becomes a little shakier. This is the most common point of failure for an activity to fail being a game in my experience. It's the point on which every edition of the game besides first edition AD&D explicitly fails, in writing, in the core rule books. I'll start with a focus on XP, because that's the only game goal defined by the rules. There are other ways to break the rules in acquiring those XP, but the later editions break the activity as a game right here. Second edition introduced "story goals" as a means for players to acquire XP for their characters, but failed to provide rules for these, instead leaving it entirely to the referee's judgement to decide how many XP the goals are worth and what is required to acquire them. Worse, the guidelines provided for the referee's judgement suggest considering what rate of advancement will satisfy the players without making advancement seem too easy. I hope it's clear that's not a rule. If it's not clear, perhaps I need to dedicate "R" to that topic, but my short answer is a chess analogy. Consider that the goal of chess is to place one's opponent in checkmate. There are rules for how the chess pieces may and may not be moved which both define what checkmate means and restrict the means by which it could be achieved. In analog, the rules of AD&D define both how XP are acquired and what it means when they are. If one of the players, or anyone else for matter, is permitted to arrange the chess pieces on the board by judgement, rather than by the rules, in order to produce the checkmate state of affairs, then the third part of the definition of a game has not been followed. So if the DM / referee is permitted to assign XP to characters, ignoring the "means permitted by the rules" which are necessarily "more limited in scope" than in the absence of those rules, we have violated the third part of the definition of a game. If a participant is permitted to assign a character's level without following the requisite "moves" to gain those XP, we have also violated the third part of the definition, and we are not playing a game. Although 3rd edition made these "story goals" optional, every version of D&D after the first has included such so-called rules for "story goals." Yet they are not rules.

More insidious than arbitrary XP assignment when it comes to failing to have rules, is the concept of "rule zero" in which the rules are really just "rules suggestions." It's possible to interpret this as understanding that when one reads the core rule books what one is getting is a toolkit for making a game rather than an actual game. Certainly that is how many participants, myself included, have understood the rules to have been written. That does not mean that one can play the game without rules, only that one may take the rules provided as suggested rules for a game which is then defined by one's own rules based upon the guidance of those provided. An embarrassment of communication media portrays "rule zero" as no rules, labeled as "rulings over rules," "the rule of cool," and other such dismissals of rules as laws which must be followed in order to still be playing the game. Without rules, there is no game. A competitive game without rules simply devolves to total war, and a cooperative game, as so many people take D&D to be, though it is not, devolves to playing make-believe.

Suits' argument about the game being played for its own sake means to distinguish it from a survival activity, rather than to restrict the possibility of ulterior motives. One can play a game principally because one is interested in the social aspects involved in playing a game with friend, for example, and still be playing a game. In contrast, if one is compelled to participate in an activity that otherwise conforms to the characteristics of a game in order to survive, then he is not playing a game. It's difficult to imagine a plausible situation in which one would be engaged in any expression of D&D for the purpose of survival, so this last part of the definition isn't particularly relevant to the discussion here, except as reinforcement of the rigor of the definition which I am defending.

Much of this I could have said better, and I suspect I'll be revisiting the topic repeatedly in the alphabet. I invite your comments and counter arguments.