The Verbs of Play

The following is in response to Seraphim Seraphina's excellent post "What do we mean when we say a game “supports” play?". I want to engage with the question of a thousand arguments: Does Dungeons & Dragons support cozy coffee-shop play?

Seraphim argues that we should keep an open mind to the ways in which different RPG systems support different types of play, ending with this addendum: "In conversation about the post, I've realized there is a question I very much prefer over "Does X support Y?", which is "What structure does X have that shapes Y?""

I want to add on to this a bit, taking a shot at taxonomizing the ways that RPG books shape play. I'm hoping that by naming these, it'll make it easier in the future for me to see these at work in the designs of myself and others.

The Universal Roleplaying Engine

Note that above I specifically says "the ways RPG books shape play". Many of these arguments on the ways systems matter get derailed by a conflation of system (the process by which contributions to the fiction get made) and books (collections of words you buy from a store or download). Here, I want to look at how the books (specifically rulebooks) we use to shape play influence the sessions we run, but to be able to do that I need to draw a distinction between the rulebook itself and the act of play that it's being attached to.

The vast majority of RPGs come with an incredibly powerful but often ignored set of baseline procedures: the players all imagine a situation together and take turns making contributions to the fiction, which the group then accepts, rejects, or modifies. This fundamental conversation-procedure underlies nearly all RPGs, and in my opinion is responsible for lion's share of the fun of this hobby--the specific books you use might add value on top of the basic conversation, but this is where the real magic happens.

This basic procedure, by itself, facilitates a tremendous range of play. Any playstyle that boils down to "imagine a situation and propose what happens next" is supported by default. Freeform storytelling, common-sense problem solving, conversations between characters, and so on basically all come for free with any roleplaying system. On some level, the question of "does D&D support cozy coffee-shop roleplay" is obvious: of course it does, it's a roleplaying game.

However, this isn't to say that all RPG rulesets are equivalent and that system is utterly meaningless, just that RPG rulesets are less horse and more reins--the power is coming from the basic procedure of roleplaying--from the creativity and imagination and experiences of the players--and the books you add on to it are just trying to tame and direct that power towards more controlled aims.

Okay, so does system matter? Yeah. Does book matter? Sure, it exerts an influence. But how do RPG books exert influence on play? The following is a list of verbs, each describing one of the methods RPG books shape play. Many overlap to varying degrees, but I think there's value in the distinctions I'm making here.

The Verbs

Inspire

Books inspire play. For play to even occur, the player need to desire it. RPG books solicit players to roleplay--they create desires where none existed before and enflame existing desires.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. RPGs are entertainment--they only exist so long as people desire to play them. No matter how good a book might be at any of these other verbs, if it fails to spark the imagination gameplay simply will not occur.

The pitch of "do you want to be a member of a secret government taskforce that fights against unfathomable Lovecraftian horrors?" makes me go 'Oh hey, that sounds fun. I should play that.'

The art of a cool elf swinging a sword at a goblin makes me go 'Oh hey, that looks fun. I want to be that elf.'

The fancy bespoke tarot card-driven resolution mechanic at the heart of the system makes me go 'Oh hey, that looks clever. I should play the game so I can see how it works.'

The brand recognition that triggers when I see 'Dungeons & Dragons' on the book's cover makes me think that this is something I should try out.

Align

Books align play. Once a group of players have decided to play a RPG, their expectations for what the game is going to look like need to match up enough that conflicts don't crop up. A rulebook can act as a north-star, orienting expectations for the table as a whole.

Players need to be able to more or less predict how their contributions will be handled--if a certain action their character takes is setting-appropriate, or what type of roll using what stats will occur from an action, or if a certain element of the setting is 'theirs' to control. A rulebook can smooth over expectations between players, reducing the likelihood of disagreements.

The art style on the cover of Mork Borg makes me assume I should prep a scenario involving more grit and violence and less sentimentality and coziness.

The rules tell me that I can control my PC's actions but not those of NPCs.

The book says I get XP for winning combats, so I assume I will be getting into lots of fights and don't make my character be a pacifist.

The fact that 'Lockpicking' is written as a skill on my character sheet makes me assume lockpicking will feature into this play.

The skill system and the fact that I have a +10 to Lockpicking make me expect that when I try to pick a lock in the fiction I will roll dice to determine the outcome and be relatively likely to succeed.

I know that you take 1d6 damage per 10' you fall, so I know that failing to jump between these ledges will result in me taking no more or less than 3d6 damage.

Incentivize

Books incentivize play. This is really just a hybrid of 'inspire' and 'align', but it feels worth making its own entry since it looms so large in most designer's minds. As soon as a rulebook has rules progression, it exerts a strong incentive for the players to do whatever it takes to mechanically progress.

It's a fairly common attitude for RPG designers to think of the system they write primarily as a network of incentives that lead players towards interesting choices. You get XP for combat, which leads the players to fight things, which leads them to use the finely tuned combat minigame.

Incentives are weird in TTRPGs, though, because the fiction itself contains infinite possibility for incentives--often ones that are much more memorable and engaging than anything that could come pre-packaged in a book. Wanting to rescue a beloved NPC, take revenge, claim a prize, attain a title, etc are all implicitly supported by the basic procedure of play. However, they require buy-in to the fiction in a way that only really happens through play--a huge advantage of book-incentives is how they can inspire desire to engage even before the game has started.

I get XP for killing, so I want to get into lots of fights.

I need 3 successes and 3 failures on my Foraging skill check to be able to rank it up, so I often try to forage even in difficult situations.

The book says to award 1xp to the player who had the most dramatic scene this session, so I intentionally put myself into messy and dramatic situations I otherwise wouldn't.

Challenge

Books challenge play. The rules to a game add friction to it, prevent the players from attaining their goals in a perfunctory and unsatisfying manner, force them into unexpected directions. They allow the players to strive and pursue their desires, to work their creative and analytic muscles towards a purpose, to keep those desires fed and intoxicating--to let the players spend time existing in a state of pleasurable unfulfillment and exertion.

This is a fun verb to argue about online; analyzing the math on the mechanical side of challenges/player abilities/resolution mechanics is a relatively tidy process--it's not hard to demonstrate that a mechanic doesn't work the way that it was seemingly intended to, or that one overpowered option renders the other options moot, but the concept goes beyond that.

The book says I can't just narrate myself killing the dragon in one strike. I need to engage with the combat system and deal 100 damage in order to slay the dragon and claim its treasure hoard.

The prompt in this journaling RPG says that I need to describe the argument I get into with my betrothed. I wasn't planning on having that happen, so now I need to think more deeply about my character, my vision of them, and who they are when put in unexpected situations.

Elide

Books elide play. To paraphrase the famous article, when the rules say that I can pick a lock by rolling 1d20, adding my Lockpicking skill score to it, and getting a 15+, then I don't need to think too hard about the details of lockpicking--the system just handwaves the details and says "the lock clicks open".

I won't dive into details on this one, since that ground has already been well-tread, except to say that this is one of those verbs can especially impact the suitability of a system for certain types of play.

When I attack the swordman, I don't need to describe what type of swing I do--I simply roll an attack and then damage and the swordman becomes nebulously that much closer to defeat. I can choose to offer that description, but it offers no impact onto the rest of play.

The rules say that when you walk into a room containing clues, roll 1d20 and add your Investigation score to it. The GM immediately tells you all of the clues to be found in this room with a Mystery Score of your result or less, and once you have found 10 clues they will reveal the solution to the mystery to you. This supports gameplay where you describe being a detective, but makes roleplaying as a detective--investigative problem solving using the player's deductive skills--all but impossible.

Limit

Books limit play. They reduce the options that players have to pre-designed lists. This act of shaving possibilities from play has many upsides--limitations are a large part of the context that players need in order to choose what actions to take, limiting possibility to tight lists reduces analysis paralysis, and the reduced possibility space allows for much tighter design. It also, obviously, limits play.

One verb I was debating adding to this list is "Lubricate," but it feels like it might just be a sub-verb to this one. A book can facilitate and ease play by limiting player options or offering them prompts in moments when they might otherwise stall out.

The rulebook says that I need to choose between being a human, elf, or dwarf. This makes the RAW book a bad fit for a campaign about being a unicorn.

When I make a move in Apocalypse World, it gives me a list of results to pick from as the consequences of my roll. This significantly lessens the possibility space and makes it less daunting for me to make creative contributions.

Knowing that this game is set in 1700s Venice means I know I can't pull out a cell phone.

Automate

Books automate play. To a greater or lesser extent, a rule system plays itself. Certain actions within the fiction kick off gameplay procedures that must be resolved at the table before the action can be contributed. Implicitly, the existence of incentives & optimal strategies within a system also results in a game that plays itself, where the task of the players is less to make choices and more to identify the 'correct' choice and then resolve all the resolution mechanics to keep the system moving.

This has positive and negative impacts on play. Those procedures can do good work in pacing out gameplay moments, can create the dynamics that the book designer wants, and even be pleasurable to watch in its own right, but they also push the players out of the process of play for the duration of their resolution. At worst, a game that plays itself relegates the players to the role of audience-bureaucrats, there to bask in the brilliance of the designer's vision and perform the busywork that must be done to keep the system chugging along.

I choose to attack the dragon. Play effectively pauses while I roll to-hit, do some quick math to see if I succeeded, roll damage, and see if the dragon dies from the wound. Because the dragon goes next and can probably one-shot me, everyone at the table feels highly emotionally invested in the outcome of each of these steps.

I have invested so many points into my Eldritch Blast ability that nothing else I can do is nearly as effective. On each of my turns in combat I cast Eldritch Blast.

When I make a character, I always put as many points as possible into my class's core stat, since it directly determines my effectiveness in most combat actions. Doing anything else would be playing sub-optimally.

Because it's the end of round four, I add three Red Tokens to the pile. This triggers the scene where I  flee from the orphanage-that-secretly-trains-assassins that raised me. I am prompted to describe my successful escape and offer a brief monologue on the nature of grief.

Distract

Books distract from play. If a ruleset incentivizes a certain set of activities, or if its mechanics spend a lot of time on certain procedures, other activities inherently become deemphasized. Every moment spent staring at character stats and rules, similarly, becomes a moment in which the player is not thinking about the fiction.

Minigames can be a lot of fun in a RPG, especially ones where the state of the fiction can still impact the minigame's flow (combat being a common example). Saying that a game's rules "distract" from play sounds negative, and it definitely can be (I generally prefer systems where I spend more time thinking about the game world and less time thinking about statblocks or mechanics), but there can also be a lot of pleasure in stepping aside from freeform play to act out a little gamified ritual at times. 

The main way to get XP in this game is combat, and each combat takes 2-3 hours to resolve. I don't have a lot of time in an average session to describe my character sitting at the coffee shop and savoring a chai latte.

I spend three green mana to gain an inspiration point, which I use to trigger my limit break. This gives me a point of luck, which I use to get a +2 to my attack roll.

Prepping a full four hours of roleplaying stuff for players to do is too much for the time I have to prep, so I'll seed a few fights in there that'll eat up some session time while still being fun.

Pace

Books pace out play. The rules and procedures you follow take time at the table to resolve, which can be used strategically to emphasize or deemphasize moments of play. Making momentous moments of gameplay intentionally more mechanically involved can allow for those moments to linger longer at the table, holding the players in a pleasurable sense of anticipation. Of course, too much crunch with too little at stake can drain all the momentum out of play.

Combat involves a real possibility of character death. If an entire fight was resolved in a single roll, being killed would feel jarringly anticlimactic.

Spending half an hour each time I level up looking at character build options is a fun little ritual that emphasizes the mechanical progress I'm making.

Opening a treasure chest and having the GM ask you to roll percentile dice to determine what items are within creates a moment of suspense and draws out the anticipation longer than having pre-determined contents prepared.

Derail

Books derail play. Every time a player contributes to the fiction, that contribution is inherently in line with the player's vision of the how the game should go.  Every time dice get rolled, there's a chance that the situation takes a turn in a direction that nobody at the table expected or intended. The book itself becomes a player at the table, making its own set of contributions.

This is one of the biggest qualities that a formal ruleset possesses that freeform roleplaying does not (although the collaborative storytelling will always inherently involve adapting your contributions to match those of others). How does a ruleset surprise its players?

When the goblin crits me and my character dies, it changes the story I was expecting to tell about them.

When I brag 'watch this' and then critically fumble my roll, my character stops being the cool badass I imagined and transforms towards being comic relief.

My character wants to be moral, but you need to consume 1 ration per day or suffer a level of Harm, they're stranded on a lifeboat with three other characters, and everyone's one missed meal from death. I wasn't planning on them starving to death or being a cannibal, but I guess one of those two is how this story goes now.

I usually evade monsters with illusions, but the book says that undead are immune to illusions, so I need to try something else to get past this room full of ghouls.

Contextualize

Books contextualize play. A bunch of facts about the world the game takes place in does not force the player down any one path, but having an existing world to react to has a massive impact on the choices the players choose to make with their future contributions.

Even rules not currently being used have a weight to them, bending people's perceptions of play even if they don't change the play itself. See Jay Dragon's Happy Little Life thought experiment.

The book says that the Forbidden Islands are ruled by someone named King Goblianus. I hate kings, so my goal for this campaign is to kill that guy.

I get XP for looting treasure, so I guess I'll go look for some treasure?

Endnote

This list isn't exhaustive, but I hope is somewhat helpful to anyone thinking about RPG system design as a checklist of alternate ways to think about game books. It can be very tempting to pick one lens of analysis and then trying to optimize solely on that one context, but any RPG book is always going to be performing many different simultaneous tasks in service of structuring play.

One thing to note is that most of the above verbs are not exclusive to the books being used; inspiration can come from an enthusiastic player inviting people to come over for a RPG night; alignment came come from the group discussing their expectations during a session 0; context accrues automatically as play proceeds and the world comes into focus. When you use a book-system to run a RPG, the promise it's making is that it will pitch in on each of these verbs in a way that is more thoughtful and less effortful than you doing them all yourself.

Looking back on this list through the "does D&D support cozy coffee-shop play" lens, I don't have a universal answer, but I do feel like I understand the question slightly better. The question can easily mean different things to different people--do you want a game that ritualizes the process of relaxing, where the game almost does it for you and you just bask in the process? Do you want a system where there are basically no rules and you just handle it all on vibes? Do you want one where the looseness of relaxing is contrasted against a larger context of strife and hardship? Do you want a character creation system that lasts a long time so you can spend time with the character mid-creation, or do you want one where the distracting process of writing down stats and abilities gets out of the way as quickly as possible? Do you want a tight incentive structure that guides players to the actions you want them to take, or do you want the players to be coming up with their own agendas? Are you more worried about getting players excited by dangling a popular brand in front of them, or are you more worried that the system will be distracting from play once it actually begins?