Min/maxing our dorki/secksi: Part 1

I was going to title this post "D&D, Video Games and the Economy of Choice", but I didn't want to put you to sleep before you finished reading the headline. That said, I promise this won't be as boring as that sounds even though that really is the topic I'll be covering. 

We are cooking along in our campaign, and I'm feeling pretty good about things. We're all learning, and like so many processes, there are tipping points in the learning curve that lead to material changes in game play.

I play video games too, and I love them. Generally speaking, video games teach a different skillset than tabletop RPGs. Video games train players to be numerically analytical, excellent at puzzle solving, and great at troubleshooting mechanical impediments. This is true even with MMORPGs, even though there is some overlap with the skillset needed for tabletop RPGs. And it's not like that's a bad thing - they're just different skillsets.

So when avid computer gamers show up at a tabletop RPG session without any role play experience, there is a learning curve, and maybe even some untraining to do. For many computer RPGs, the current story is essential, but backstory is not. But when you are playing with other flesh and blood people around a table telling a collaborative story, your character's motives are based on your character's persona, and your character's persona is based on your character's personal history. Because there is conversation going on between a group of other flesh-and-blood people that determine the very nature of the world the characters inhabit, there are checks and balances imposed by this to force a form of internal social consistency that is often dispensed with in video games.

I'm not saying there's not great character development in computer games (The Last Story comes to mind for solo play, and of course MMORPGs have a social component), but I am saying there is not much free-will in computer game story development. In a single player RPG, only your own character has any agency, and that is limited by the choices given to you in the game. In a MMORPG, your choices are still limited by the game your character inhabits - in the quests they choose to fulfill, in the way those quests and other tasks completed play out. D&D is far more open-ended, and you have at least a handful of other players and the game master sitting around the same table with you, each enjoying the same extreme degrees of freedom. Even though it is "just a game" it has much more in common with real life in terms of player agency than any computer game that is currently in market.

Choice is limited in computer games in part because choice is expensive. Assets like graphics and sound engineering cost money to develop. Systems that allow for a larger degree of choices that don't burden processor and internet speeds cost a great deal of person-hours to develop. When you play role playing video games, this is the basis for the economy. When you make more coins in game, you can buy more types of items (i.e. choices). When you get more experience points in game, you can do more elaborate or powerful actions, often in combat (i.e. choices), and potentially gain access to more areas for higher levels (i.e. choices in where you spend your time). There's a little of this in D&D, but it's not the core of the game. The core of the game is, what do you want to do today? If you want to wear a purple shirt and red boots, you don't need to get to level 3 to do that. If you want to go to Neverwinter, you don't have to level up or slay a certain monster in a specific dungeon. Choice is simply not a rare commodity in D&D.

What is the rare commodity in D&D, then? I'd vote for synergy. The truly great moments around a gaming table - the ones you remember for years after - are built from thoughtful preparation, insightful collaboration, generosity with ideas, creativity and luck. The first three on that list can be free flowing all day long, but the last two on the list... they're lightning strikes. You can't do anything about luck - it comes and goes when it pleases... and the creative element, that is also a bit of a lightning strike, but it is much more likely to strike in an environment that is full of trust and generosity. So the first items on the list foster the "lightning strike" items. The only way to increase your incidence of the rare commodity in D&D is to lay the groundwork by thinking, collaborating and giving. That's a very different economy than one based on doling out limited choices.

How does this difference in resource availability affect the game? If you think you need to fight tooth and nail against everyone else in the game in order to get supplies that grant you more choices, you are never on deck to provide the insightful collaboration, generosity of ideas and creativity that the game needs for the big payoffs. When you play with a “hardscrabble every-man-for-himself” mentality without vetting it first with other players, you shut down the collaboration and generosity that is part of the groundwork needed for creative thinking. When you feel the need to dominate those around you, you may gain the attention you desire at the expense of a gestalt that would be rewarding in an entirely different way, paying out with humor, poignancy, big ideas, or tidy solutions, in lieu of personal attention/leaderboarding.

Let's take a real-life example... when you go to a department store to buy a shirt, most people don't think to themselves, "What is the best shirt I can buy here? What shirt will give me the greatest advantages with the least amount of debuffs? I need to min/max my dorki/secksi." Shoppers just see a color they like, a cut they find interesting, they grab it to try on. Sure, plenty of people will try to min/max "unflattering/flattering", but there are so many other aspects that go into the choosing of a shirt that just boil down to personal preference, comfort, personal expression and style.

Because computer games give players the most freedom around stats and what to do with them, players understandably focus on what to do with those stats and how to use them. Players are rewarded for this in most computer games - those players who are best able to massage the stats in the direction of successful campaigns get more coins/experience which allows them to have... greater choices or a higher spot on a leaderboard. This is not particularly true of D&D. Yes coins and XP give you choices, but you have an unlimited amount of choices without those things, too. And you can't really leaderboard in D&D. What works well in one type of combat doesn't always play well in another, not to mention non-combat situations requiring perception, stealth, deception or general personal skills.

This is not a videogames = bad, D&D = good post. There’s nothing wrong with how video game economies work. The point I’m trying to make is that the economies are different. If you use video game economic thinking in D&D you’re missing out on some aspects of the game. And if you bring D&D ideals to a video game as a player, you’re not likely to get the maximum enjoyment out of what you’re playing. This is a matter of accepting the differences and acting accordingly.