anyway.

I'm all with you. Good that other people think of this too. I've started an article series on G+ that is called "Designing a session". Sure, roleplaying games are games but you shouldn't design for a game, but for a session.

To see it from this perspective will help you think how the participants should communicate and what tools to help communication. But it's more than that. In a session, you also need a certain uncertainty (not only dice rolls) to make things interesting, you need reintroduction to make the story of the session feel solid, you need tools to free every ones' minds and tools to build a positive group dynamic where all people pick up and build on each others' ideas.

When it comes to goals, agendas, objects, or whatever you want to call it, it's important to only give directions. To create something to strive for. The game should give the players an (or several) overall direction(s), but each scene should also be framed with a direction in mind. A drama book of mine told me that each scene should have a decision, a revelation or an escalation of a conflict. Note, escalation. Most indie games out there both creates and solves a conflict in each scene.

I can't press enough on directions. A direction can change during the coarse of the session. A direction doesn't have to include planning, and planning is one part that often kills the dynamic communication between the participants. If person A already planned something, and person B steps in with an idea, it will either ruin A's plan or make A block B in an attempt to save the plan. That will ruin the group's dynamic.

I really like your list of objects. It's important to notice that the player's and the character's object doesn't have to be the same and the all characters can have different objects. Good stuff! The only thing I would like to add is that the objects should be known by every one, so each person can build on that. Another thing that helps create a positive group dynamic. In the example above, person B could either adopt the A's plan to avoid clashing, or create situations to force A's character to defend the plan.

I have a public thread on G+ about this too, and as always the conversation there is off to a faster start. Follow both if you like!

"1+2. In an RPG, 1 and 2 come into contact"
Hmm.  Anything more to say about the nature of this contact?  I mean, I start to think about both the wonderful opportunities and the significant complications that result from choosing NOT to stay all or mostly within 1 or 2, but perhaps that's a tangent.  Or perhaps not.

Oh, sure.

The tools of the game include the order and matter of the conversation. In Super Mario Brothers, there's usually no conversation. Discussing movies with a friend, there's usually no game. Playing an RPG, there are both.

Further developments on G+ here.

Vincent, you said, "the tools you have make it possible for you to achieve your object, but not easy or certain. This is a key idea, the distance or tension between the object of the game and the tools it provides."

Could you unpack that? My initial take is that you mean that the rules of a game create, uhh, let's say artificial constraints. And a certain challenge is created because you have to achieve the object(ive) while working within the artificial constraints.

Timfire: Well, the whole thing's artificial. In chess, is it an "artificial constraint" that you can only move your bishops on the diagonal, not on the square?

If so, then yeah, I guess so. But I'd say instead that in Chess, the ways that your pieces are allowed to move plus the object of the game are what create the game.

In The Mountain Witch, if I recall, the object of the game is to climb the mountain and kill the witch. If I could just say "I climb the mountain and kill the witch," there'd be no game. The game comes from the particular, specific relationship between the object of the game and the tools I have at my disposal.

So, I mentioned this somewhere over on G+, but I'm not sure I did so in the right context (disclaimer: I'm feeling particularly lost right now about etiqutte on the interwebs, what to say where, the right way to stay focused on what the host seems to want to be focused on, and, well, all that).  So let me try here:

The character/player/designer goals you mention in the "In an RPG" section of 1.  Am I reading correctly that these are explicitly NOT the object of the game, built in by the designer?  I mean, I'm not saying I think you're claiming they're unimportant.  But defintely distinct from the object?

If so, I'd love to read a bit more about how they interact with the object, with design, and with play in general.  But would it be fair to say that part of the value here is in seperating them out from the object?  That we become able to talk about the object without talking about those things. I mean, still acknowledge that those things matter, just not include them directly in the discussion of objects and tools?

I'm a bit concerned that the effects of those things (esp. "player goals") are so strong that trying to push 'em out of the basic-level discussion is a bad idea, but I'm also excited by the idea of mitigating the headaches that happen when you do include 'em so fundamentally.

(Yes, this ties into the "this vs. GNS" issues, but I guess I'm trying to avoid what I suspect is a totally unneccessary rats-nest of discussion.  For the record: GNS rocks! Vincent rocks!  Neither are sparkling-rainbow perfection - nor, in my experience, does either pretend to be.)

I'm still at loss with the goals part. At times it seems very easy, like when you use Mario Bros and Chess as examples, but they are not very informative examples because the goals are very easy to see. Could you provide some more unobvious examples with your own games? What is the goal of Apocalypse World? Kill Puppies for Satan? In a Wicked Age? Poison'd? And perhaps some other RPGs you like to play yourself?

-J Sure. There are a couple of important things to make clear first.

Games can have cooperative goals. Examples include The Lord of the Rings Boardgame and Red November. In these games, the group of players takes a united side against the game design.

Games can have goals that don't include winning and losing. Examples include Eat Poop You Cat and (some ways of playing) Minecraft. In these games, the object of the game is quite legitimately to see what will happen, given the constraints of the rules.

Most RPGs' objects are cooperative and don't include winning/losing, including all of mine before Murderous Ghosts.

The object of Apocalypse World is very explicit in the text. It's to find out what these characters will make of the world they're in. It's a cooperative goal, without winning and losing. The tension in gameplay nevertheless comes, as always, from the uncertainty built into gameplay.

I haven't looked back at my older games for their stated objects of play (except, by chance, Dogs in the Vineyard). I'd expect them to be less explicit.

But I did pull a stack of games off my shelf and look for stated objects of play in them. Surprisingly many had them. I'll write about it soon. Meanwhile, especially given this idea of cooperative and non-victory-oriented goals, I think if you look you'll find the same.

Gordon: You're reading me right that they aren't.

When we design a board game or video game, we don't worry about players' goals that are incompatible with the object of the game. We don't have to worry about them in RPGs either.

When we've talked about RPGs, we've historically confused players' goals, design goals, character goals, and the object of the game, all in a mess. (Just think how true this was in conversations about GNS.)

("preview" seems to choke on anything big, so I'll take that as an invitation to drastically shorten my post.)

Vincent: Thanks.  Yes, in so many ways, but I'm not sure it's true we don't worry about player goals vs. object of the game AT ALL in board/video games, and I'm even more skeptical it's wise to ignore with RPGs.

GNS, I'll say, did show how to move beyond the confusion ("synechdoce"), but - I do like the focus on the OBJECT of the GAME, and look forward to where you go/what you build from here.

This seems perfectly reasonable!

As an accompanyment, just as games are an interlocking set of goals, hopefully put in harmony with just the right amount of tension by the tools, conversations are an interlocking series of matters put into partial harmony by the way we pace and focus/emphasise and bound conversation.

Putting goals in harmony with each other via shaping their means is an old heart-feel of mine, and perhaps the analogy with conversation makes that clearer.

Next, here's a twist: Although thinking in terms of matter and objects and structure is in itself coherent, and leads to a basis on which analysis can be done, there is a whole nebulous airey way of looking at games which is incompatible with this view.

If the object of the game includes not to explicitly not have an object, then to think of it in those terms is helpful, but must be forgotten during play.

This is the same as skilfully addressing a certain conversation topic indirectly without having to go into it in too much detail, you want the conversation to be about it without being explicitly about it, especially if it's your issue.

Or conversely, setting up a situation to put people at their ease who are otherwise very task focused; you want to set things up so that people can do whatever, but don't feel pressured to do anything in particular.

Opening up a space for play.