Against Abstraction, Or, Tags Are A Mind Virus

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Here is a link: Against Abstraction, Or, Tags Are A Mind Virus | The National Centre for Tabletop Games

Written by: https://rat-bastard-games.itch.io/

So, someone shared this blog post on Bluesky. I read it, and it stuck to my mind all day.

To me, the blogpost tackles two aspects:

  • The artistic value of prose, and why dry mechanical abstractions lack this value
  • Why the author considers that tags and other abstractions are a bad idea, or at the very least, what we lose by relying on them

I really like this blogpost. I especially like the first part. I’m not the biggest poetry reader, but I do agree that some of the poets (and authors) that I enjoy are very efficient in their minimalism. How to express a lot with fewer words. I think the example selected is phenomenal.

Some of my favorite works in TTRPG lean hard in the prose, the ambiguity of natural language and letting the gap of perspective between the author and the reader create something.

The second part of the blogpost, I also agree with, but I feel that it is missing a point. The author highlights that tags (as an example) are dry, they exist as an interface between the diegetic world and the mechanics of the game and that there’s value in just writing how things are, and that there’s value in negotiating the shared fiction.

My issue with this stand is that this “problem” that tags create, as actually a feature, it’s exactly why people use tags. And it’s no surprise that they’re more common the thicker the rulebook.

I enjoy negotiating the shared fiction at the table; but negotiating “are they out of range of my revolver” or “I feel like I could use this sword with one-hand” are not the things I want to negotiate over. I’ve always seen tags, or explicit abstractions as a way to get done with some necessary mechanical agreement, and then move on to something that matters. There’s much more interesting elements in the fiction to negotiate and build together.

My personal taste leads me to leaner ruleset that don’t feel the need of such abstractions as much, and thus have more space (both cognitive and layout wise) to use prose or to be a bit more evocative about it.

If you ask me to play a Pathfinder 2E game though, there’s no way I’m replacing these tags with natural language.

I’m still hurting at the thought of past arguments about whether a magic missile or other spell can light fabric on fire.

What do you all think?

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I think it does a good job showing the merits of going tagless. Obviously it won’t work for every game. Different games have different goals. A game like Pathfinder would want to mechanize and abstract its fiction as much as possible for its gameplay, and tags are a good way to do that while still giving players a taste of diegesis, even if it’s calorie-free.

This is my second time reading the post. The first time I was a little more frustrated about it, even though I like the same games. The title and tone is really effective at framing everyone, even the choir it’s preaching to, as misguided.

It’s a good post. But “mind virus” is almost too algorithm-ready even for me.

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I had fun thinking about this, thanks!

The whole post definitely feels too overstated to me. Words themselves are abstractions, when Pound uses the word “crowd” in that poem, it’s an abstraction. We don’t know how many people are being described, etc. Maybe the literary movement was more about moving in the direction of more direct explanations.

The word “crossbow” is an abstraction, as is the word “wood”, which is presumably used to make parts the crossbow. There is definitely a level at which negotiation of terms becomes boring, at different levels for different people.

I see tags more like jargon. When a biologist uses the word “fruit”, they have something very specific in mind, even if the rest of the population has a slightly different (and more vague) definition. In the context of biology, it’s nice to be more precise about what you mean by “fruit”. When I’m playing a game, I think it’s nice to say that a crossbow has “long reach”. It doesn’t break me out of the immersion, it just lets me know what bucket of things this object can do. To some extent, at least for me, this actually hides the rules, because I can think in terms of the “long reach” instead of figuring out how this one parabolic trajectory should map onto a dice roll (which is itself inevitably described as yet another abstraction in the game rules).

The fewer tags you have, the more contrived it’s going to feel. The more tags you have, the cumbersome they will be to use, but the more natural it will feel. I suspect that what JD really wants is more tags :slight_smile:

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Tags are agreed upon short-hand; and you don’t want too many tags or else it becomes challenging to remember which ones you’re using. I don’t mind tagging the mundane but when it gets to something magical, I’d rather not. I’d rather the magical be prose or poetry. That is give space for the magic to be an alchemy of the group’s adjudication.

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The National Centre for Tabletop Games has an academic cheekiness that I like, hopefully that tone gets across to the audience. I know sometimes this vibe is hard to communicate, (something I struggle with myself); “silly” reading as “pretentious”.

i just happen to like to play and design the same types of games as this guy, so I am inclined to agree with the author. overall, I also want to promote TTRPG games away from VIDEO GAME and towards something more parlor game, openly creative, and founded in literary works. words that expand into imagination in a social setting. having kids, playing ttrpgs with kids, has helped steer me in that direction. adults want more framework to feel safer in imaginative play, they seek structure.

“here is a sentence, lets all imagine together what it means” is… not a strong structure.

anyway, in terms of the OP, I agree that tags CAN be just one word poems and work. I think the blog author’s critique is when you just have limited tags that point to definitive mechanics, and then that steers the design to box the game into those limited tags choices, as opposed to expanding to fill an entire world. ON THE OTHER HAND, how do you deal with a crossbow. it SHOULD take some time to reload, that feels in-world… authentic. so having a ‘slow’ tag doesn’t take me out of it. its a shortcut, some scaffolding, lets you move on to the more interesting stuff instead of bogging the game down in the shared imagination of reloading a weapon. damn, reading the OP post again, I just restated their point. anyway, so, AGREED.

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oh interesting, the academic cheekiness went totally over my head.

having kids, playing ttrpgs with kids, has definitely opened my eyes to exactly what you said, adults wanting more of a framework to latch onto. back when my kids were in elementary school, when we would go on family walks, they would play these seemingly elaborate games that they told me were RPGs. no dice, no paper, just conversation. one was a GM and a player, the other just a player. it was a sight to behold. alas, as they grew older, they eventually stopped playing.