I am curious about folks thoughts on Jay Dragon’s Expressionist Games Manifesto. I was intrigued by the focus on players and their characters and how they rub against the rules and world too develop an inner world that informs how they interact with the game world . I think that “inner life” that Jay writes about emerges in OSR play but are their articles or methods that folks use that encourages players to develop their characters outside of the rules?
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An interesting read! I think it’s an admirable goal and an interesting way to frame play that some players will enjoy a lot. I have mixed feelings about execution of these design principles. Taking Jay’s example of Triangle Agency, which sprang to mind before the explicit mention, I have bounced off the game mostly because the thought of tangling with the conflicting messages in the rules’ text sounds exhausting to me. Wrestling with and broadcasting contradictions, coercive power, and social pressure is hard enough without having to interpret rules that exist to be bent. I’m sure I am missing something. Nothing wrong with it, I’m just not the target audience.
I think my method for encouraging these moments is hard translate outside of myself. The best I can say is trust the friction you have felt brushing against societal norms and introduce them in games as they come up. I think it is this loose attitude that makes it hard for me to abide a contradictory manual for running social controls.
As for what I can get into and expand upon from the article, I really like the idea of warping gold for XP. Renown in Errant is a starting point if you squint, but it’s too tied into class advancement. Even so you could express this in game as a character gaining a room to grow, social status, and level of expertise afforded by their social role of errant. An errant could even eschew leveling and for Downtime Actions training skills, stats, and bespoke abilities rather than increasing their Renown through conspicuous consumption. This is an interesting lens and framing to me. I suspect it may work better as a loose guideline slotted into an Oddlike rather than Errant, just because the advancement structure is not about accumulation.
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Oof! I think it’s safe to say that I bounced off that hard. I’m not in the audience for expressionist play and likely not even on the periphery of the audience for Jay Dragon’s writings.
The player experience he describes as expressionist play is definitely something I’d never enjoy at the table and it’s also something I’d never knowingly inflict on my players. If some random player at my table approached play in that fashion, I’d simply remind them that I’ll do absolutely nothing to overtly support it, as it doesn’t enter the Venn diagram of things I want in play.
And when he gets to how expressionist rules “…will insist upon impossible, contradictory, uncomfortable, or confusing rules — leaving players in a position to figure out how to build a game from the materials they’ve been given. …” Um…no. Definitely not for me.
I agree that it is an interesting way to frame play that can be enjoyable. I am interested in creating situations that encourage those moments rather than crafting mechanics that push the game towards that play. I would rather it emerge naturally through adventure design that allows for interaction with NPCs and situations that have depth that allow PCs a greater range of reactions that may be contradictory or conflicting.
I am not familiar with Errant but I will take a look at how they use Renown. Thanks for the suggestion.
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I was intrigued by the first half, particular the first three “Critical Qualities of Expressionist Games”, rest less so, because it is not the type of play I am interested in either in general, but given the right situation I would give it a go.
I think I am interested in creating possibilities for PCs in play “discover hidden depths” and “particular interior perspective” to make decisions and navigate the world outside of the mechanics of advancement.
piling on here to say that I like this style to play to emerge without mechanics.
but also that, as a matter of taste, I prefer this to be more of a big pretty ornament instead of part of the core game loop. these personal, character driven moments are incredibly fun. but holy shit, things get noisy when they are common, or worse, show up in independent streams of play at the same time (two different players having their own unrelated expressionist moments).
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We are very much of a mind on this. It would be interesting to see modules foregrounding the social contradictions factions reinforce and undermine in addition to their usual objectives, alliances, and enemies. But that’s scratching the surface of designing in this way, I think.
You’re welcome! I hope you find Errant as fruitful as I have, or at least, find a few things that get some gears turning.
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I think Mythic Bastionland does basically that. The “Glory” that you accumulate is just a representation of social status that opens up other parts of play (you can now be part of a court of knights, and so on)
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I talked a bit about this manifesto with Jay a bit and while I don’t think I want to write or play Expressionist games I find it interesting and laudable. If we’re using art/painting movements I suppose my approach is more symbolist then expressionist … but it doesn’t matter. What I find interesting in Jay’s approach is that the manifesto is looking mostly at the way the game is experienced by the players - and what the goals of the game are rather then some sort of universal approach to best practices in design.
E.G. one of the most controversial elements in the manifesto is the call for games with “An inability to resolve the tension within the rules of the game, requiring players to break the rules to have any chance to achieve their player goals.” That is an interesting proposal, but it suggests a particular element of this type of design - something perhaps like paranoia where to get desirable results the players must circumvent or trick the rules themselves. This obviously doesn’t need to be universal, but is aimed at creating a specific play experience and perhaps psychological state. I don’t think we talk a lot about designing to do these thing, but a lot of the debate (say about what OSR means) is about this sort of thing.
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Oh boy… I bounced hard off that.
As soon as I saw the word manifesto, I had a feeling it’d be this type of text.
I’ve studied game theory and game design in university. While it was an interesting experience, I absolutely dreaded part of the crowd that just wanted to tie games with other art forms, especially beaux-arts. When we talked about video games, people just had to bring in jargon, movements and characteristics from movies. When we talked about tabletop games, they did so with literature and visual arts.
I read so many texts with similar jargon. So many words that say so little. A fixture on trying to make yourself understood as little as possible by as fewer people as possible. If we want to bask in the beaux-art, then write more like Hemingway, not Faulkner.
I don’t find some of the ideas in the text uninteresting. Especially the part about an inner world that’s off limit to the rules of the games. It reminds me of the way that Disco Elysium expressed the skills you level up. It was refreshing. It’d be interesting to concretely draft some game dynamics and see what mechanics could enable them.
However, I find that many of the concepts explored in the text are in no way incompatible with rulesets that are already existing (including D&D). It reminds me of the argument that 4E just didn’t allow roleplaying… when that’s entirely a matter of perception. There’s no rules for roleplaying in any edition per say.
Also, it was difficult to take the rest of the text seriously after reading this.
The flow state of many videogames mirrors the mental violence of slot machines and Tiktok, slowly extracting money from those who engage with it. People seek games to “turn their brains off” while existing in a society that pushes them to turn their brain off at all times. Games culture at large encourages conflict aversion, author-worship, incentive-chasing, and a stifling of creative capacity.
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its SOOOO bluesky. tone aside, it violates the old “don’t yuk other people’s yum” maxim and is… well… condescending.
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