Gaming theory books
One of the good aspects of 2020 was that there was plenty of indoors time and when not panicing, working or worrying there was time to read and to have quality reading time too.
Boardgaming and computer games have a much stronger theoretical basis than roleplaying. The money involved in the latter means that it can be lucrative to unlock the secret of “the good game”. My first two books of the year primarily talk about computer games but do so with a sweep across game design generally. I took a punt on Procedural Storytelling in Game Design after reading a tweet near the start of the first lockdown by one of the book’s editors. After I finished it I quickly picked up it’s companion Procedural Generation in Game Design. Both are fascinating collections of essays about experiences in designing systems for producing content and are most helpful about the constraints that are needed to actually create coherent content.
It helped me understand why the OSR obsession with random generation tables works sometimes and produces the thrilling narrative and situations that its advocates love but also why it often fails to produce anything of interest and forces a human to work really hard to salvage anything of interest from the end of its result.
As a purer critical book I loved Ideology and the Virtual City for both being an excellent critique but also ties its criticism into a wider polemic about neoliberalism using the games as metaphor for the logical endpoints of neoliberal ideology. I haven’t played all the games covered but the analysis of GTA V is spot on from the hatefulness of the city inhabitants (which is so necessary if you are to treat them with such lethal disregard) to the unsatisfactory resolution of the game’s story missions.
Dungeons and Dragons and Philiosophy (review) is similar to these other books but infinitely lighter for the most part. A collection of essays that look at various aspects of the game world of Dungeons and Dragons, taking the implied cosmology and metaphysics literally. Is it moral to summon a monster to fight and die on your behalf? Can dark elves create a perfectly unjust society? Is it possible to truly behave inline with the requirements of evil?
One of the things I love about roleplaying is that it can allow you to explore situations and ideas safely. What if gods were real? What if you knew that parts of your world really could be illusions? What if you knew the afterlife was real? The essays here try the same thing, in a world different to our own then what does philosophy have to say, particularly in terms of principles that are regarded as universal and therefore must apply to all possible worlds.
The book also doesn’t short-sell the philosophy side of things. After reading one essay I ordered a copy of John Rawl’s A theory of justice because the application of it in the essay was so fascinating (you can read a synopsis online).
The final book was the eye-watering expensive Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012. While presented as an overall analysis of communication of the Forge it feels like a selection of more or less independent chapters. Two of which are histories of the Forge message board and the Forge booth at GenCon (and do a disappointing lesser extend the Games on Demand sessions that spun out of it).
The book is super readable and I wish someone would produce a readable but thorough history of the OSR movement which I understand a lot less well than the games and designers discussed here. The academic analysis fell flat for me and didn’t really reveal any new insight.
This book would be an ideal gift for someone interested in the development of narrative game design but you’d need to be living in lockdown to get value for money out of it in its current format if you bought for yourself.
