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Thinker
2019-05-22, 09:56 AM
I have been thinking a lot about what makes for a good RPG from a design perspective. This led me to developing a layer-model for roleplaying games that attempts to address the primary ways that they work from a design perspective. Before moving on to the meat of my post, I want to point out that a model is just that - a model and will not include every scenario that someone can come up with. It is also descriptive about what can be observed in RPGs and not prescriptive about what must be included in RPGs. And, while someone could use it as a how-to guide for development milestones, it is not intended to serve as such.

Why is this useful?
There are many reasons to want to model RPG design and to apply the model to RPGs.



Understanding the game – By reading a game’s rules with an eye toward the layers in the model, it becomes easier to comprehend what the game is attempting to accomplish and how the rules promote those goals. This can also lead to identifying where the game falls short of its goals.
Making judgements while playing the game – By filtering a rule, action, or scenario into the appropriate layer, it becomes easier to make a judgement about that event. Naturally, the game should follow the game’s concept. If it does that, make sure that it matches with expected game actions. Once that is taken care of, check if there are any subsystems that it might interact with or with any insights that the GM or the Players already have in-game.
Troubleshooting a system – Some games don’t work properly to accomplish what they promise. Sometimes, most of a game works well, but there is a component that fails to meet expectations or is difficult to work with. By understanding the game’s layers, it becomes possible to fix those flaws and understand the impact that the solution will have throughout the rest of the game.
Customization – As a gaming group understands the game better, they may want to customize the rules to fit their group better. This becomes easier when the effect of those changes can be seen and visualized across layers.
Building on to a framework – Some other game developers or playing groups may decide that they like a game, but they want to expand on some of its details. This might be by adding new subsystems, adding new actions, or expanding on those subsystems and actions. This becomes easier to accomplish when the designers can see where their changes fit into the game.
Setting tailoring – A system that is applied to a different setting than was originally intended must undergo some tailoring to fit that setting. Generic systems are typically easier to tailor than others.
Creating a game system – While models are not intended to be prescriptive and do not expect to fit all games, they can be useful as a measuring stick for developing a roleplaying game from scratch. Understanding how an in-development game matches up with a model can help to identify weaknesses and how to resolve them.


Alright, get on with it
The CASIP Model is used to understand the layers of a roleplaying game as a method to understand how the game works. Here, layers refer to a progression of ideas that one could follow from the most basic concepts of the game to how it works in-play. The layers are:


Concept – What the game is about
Action – How to resolve actions in the game
Subsystems – The process to resolve actions related to an overarching theme such as tactical combat, thievery, downtime, etc.
Insight – The collective information about the game as the gaming group understands it
Play – How everything works together in actual-play with GMs and Players responding to Knowledge


That's it?
For a more in-depth look at CASIP, please see the table in the spoilers below.



Layer

Description


Concept


The Concept is why the game was made, who it was made for, and what it is attempting to emulate (if anything). At this layer, we can observe a game’s genre and tone – is this game about spy thrillers, heroic adventurers, dystopic struggles, or is it generic? It can also be used to understand how much the gameplay is influenced by storytelling elements and how much it attempts to simulate specific actions.
This is also where game components are decided upon – how rules-heavy the game is intended to be, the roles of the participants (GMs, players, referees, etc.), or whether the game is intended to be cooperative or competitive or both at different times. Some games even eschew the role of GM or referee altogether.
The Concept Layer lays out setting information that will be relevant to gameplay. If the game is applied to other settings, every layer of the game may be impacted. It includes what roles the player’s characters will take on during play.
Every other layer typically ties back to the concept in some way. Components of the game that do not tie in to the concept can feel out of place.




Action


The Action layer determines what the participants do to resolve success for a task. This layer also describes what normal thresholds for success are and may define more granular successes like full successes, partial successes, partial failures, total failures, advantage, etc.
At the Action Layer, the game also determines what Statistics (ability modifiers, BAB, etc.) are required for each character, meta-currencies (like Action Points or XP), and basic character options are available to all characters (like Skills).
Some games may allow for different Action options between Players, the GM, and/or NPCs. In some cases, the GM is given unlimited options while in others, there is a specific menu that must be selected from.
Action should support what the game is about, or at least not contradict it.




Subsystems


Subsystems flow from the game’s Concept in that they reinforce what the game is about. They describe how a character in the game is supposed to achieve aspects of the fiction presented in the Concept. Subsystems typically add rules to the Action to make it fit the subsystem’s goals and might add stats, meta-currencies, or options as well. Subsystems may also alter the Action mechanics to better-fit the rest of the mechanics of the subsystem. In many games, only a few subsystems are well-defined based on the game’s Concept, while others attempt to present a wide-range of fleshed-out Subsystems. Some subsystems interact with others, but this is not a requirement. Examples:

Downtime – describes how characters can make use of non-adventure time or what happens between adventures. Includes things like recovery (physical and mental), fencing stolen goods, recruiting followers, paying homage to a god, etc.
Factions – describes what actions factions take and how they progress their goals, and how they interact with the player characters.
Supplication – describes how a character could gain power or effects from deals with more powerful beings
Thievery – describes how characters might attempt to lie, cheat, con, steal, extort, burgle, or use other underhanded methods to achieve their objectives


Subsystems also include all statistics and character options that are required to interact with them. For example, a Spellcasting Subsystem may add dozens of Spells for a player to choose from.
One of the pitfalls common to Subsystems is that one Subsystem may take on all aspects of another to the point where the other Subsystem is obsolete or requires more resources to engage in. Another common failing is inconsistency between subsystems, where one subsystem allows one outcome, but another subsystem provides a better one while dealing with similar topics. The more subsystems a game adds, the more complex it becomes, and leaves itself open to unintended consequences or abuse.




Insight


The Insight Layer deals with all details, facts, lies, and rumors that are involved in the game. Within this layer are two main types of information: Public Insight and Private Insight.
Public Insight is concerned with everything that is free for anyone to find out about the world or the characters. Private Insight is made up of the things that not everyone knows – GM notes, the layout of a dungeon, a character’s secret past, etc. Some Private Knowledge may be shared between only some of the players or the GM and a player. Often, things that are Private Insight will become Public Insight at some point.
Some games also attempt to divide Player Insight from Character Insight, penalizing players for taking actions that their characters wouldn’t normally know about.
The game develops situations as a result of the Insights changing. Situations can escalate as tensions rise or deescalate as they fall.
Insight is updated to reflect the outcome of the various Subsystems. Normally, this is the result of the GM and players interpreting the outcome to develop a new situation. Knowledge is then used to feed into the Actions that the game participants can take.




Play
Play describes what actually happens while engaging the game. The players make their actions based on the actions and descriptions of the GM. Mechanics as described in the rules often diverge from what players do in the moment.





So, what do you folks think? Is this useful to you? Agree? Disagree?

DanDare2050
2019-05-24, 02:18 AM
Thanks, that is a useful framework.

In the RPG world, rather than subsystems I more often see the term game structures.

In general game structures determine what types of actions players care about and do something about. For example a game with encumbrance rules will tend to increase player attention to their capacity to carry things and haul large amounts of stuff about. Without any such structure such concerns tend to be dismissed and do not appear as a focus.

1of3
2019-05-25, 01:09 PM
I like the idea of having a kind of hierarchy of traits an RPG might have. Your attempt is already quite specific, so that it will only cover a subset of RPGs. Assumptions that you make:

- There is a GM as opposed to players.
- There are numbers.
- There are character actions to resolve.

I'm also missing some words on forms of expression involved as well as props and tooling.

GrayDeath
2019-05-26, 02:40 PM
Like This:

http://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/1913/1913722-bigthumbnail.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/RPG-7_detached.jpg

Quertus
2019-05-26, 06:08 PM
So, you say that it can be used to help debug an RPG that is not working correctly? Can you, as an example, explain how it would have been of use in understanding and diagnosing the failures in 4e D&D?

Jakinbandw
2019-05-27, 02:26 PM
So, you say that it can be used to help debug an RPG that is not working correctly? Can you, as an example, explain how it would have been of use in understanding and diagnosing the failures in 4e D&D?

From my understanding, 4e worked just fine, and was a really good game. It 'failed' because people wanted more 3.5e, even though 3.5e was a broken mess.

JNAProductions
2019-05-27, 02:36 PM
From my understanding, 4e worked just fine, and was a really good game. It 'failed' because people wanted more 3.5e, even though 3.5e was a broken mess.

I'll second that. As a system, it's good.

As D&D, it fails. But D&D ain't the end-all be-all.

Lord Raziere
2019-05-27, 05:52 PM
I'll second that. As a system, it's good.

As D&D, it fails. But D&D ain't the end-all be-all.

yeah, judging by the model here:

Dnd 4e
Concept: Great, the designers knew exactly what they were aiming for
Action: also Great, the intention was executed well
Subsystems: these were also good, supporting the main system well
Insight: its this part where it fails, ultimately while the designers did know what they're aiming to make, they didn't know the people they were making it for and thus misfired, and people perceived what it was trying to do through a 3.5 lens
Play: that said, it functions in play.

4e is pretty much the best game system to ever be slapped onto the wrong name. Its pretty telling when pretty much every stage of this matches up except for Insight. the only thing I'd change about 4e is the name so that people wouldn't have compared it with 3.5.

Quertus
2019-05-27, 10:25 PM
From my understanding, 4e worked just fine, and was a really good game. It 'failed' because people wanted more 3.5e, even though 3.5e was a broken mess.


I'll second that. As a system, it's good.

As D&D, it fails. But D&D ain't the end-all be-all.


yeah, judging by the model here:

Dnd 4e
Concept: Great, the designers knew exactly what they were aiming for
Action: also Great, the intention was executed well
Subsystems: these were also good, supporting the main system well
Insight: its this part where it fails, ultimately while the designers did know what they're aiming to make, they didn't know the people they were making it for and thus misfired, and people perceived what it was trying to do through a 3.5 lens
Play: that said, it functions in play.

4e is pretty much the best game system to ever be slapped onto the wrong name. Its pretty telling when pretty much every stage of this matches up except for Insight. the only thing I'd change about 4e is the name so that people wouldn't have compared it with 3.5.

Sigh. OK, this may just be my senility speaking, but I thought 4e had *at least* the following problems with the game-layer itself / independent of foolishly calling itself "D&D" or an RPG: the math doesn't work the math doesn't "just work", as promised people who pointed out that the math didn't work got banned from 4e forums skill challenges never worked right, and, in at least one (the final?) iteration, get harder the more people who participate (which was the opposite of the stated intent?)

Of course, from the responses so far, I'd have to conclude that the proposed system obfuscates and otherwise makes more difficult conversation about what went wrong since, thus far, people have been denying that things were wrong with 4e. :smallconfused:

Lord Raziere
2019-05-27, 11:37 PM
what math didn't work? all the simple addition?

is this some "in-depth" encounters by day calculation where you magically prove that by RAW that if people did this or that they would never have enough x or y to do what something says or something implying about the wider world of 4e that I'll never care about? because I guarantee you that no one ever truly follows any rulebook to the letter. not even the most stringent person is perfect at that sort of thing, and most GMs regard rules as imperfect things that they fill in the gaps with their own fluff and methods rather than something they follow to the letter. its kind of the assumed default of all rpgs actually.

Telok
2019-05-28, 01:35 AM
My experience from playing the first year of 4e was:
1) The base math worked for levels 1 to 10, but by the six month mark (? More or less ?) they had published the math fix feats that added to attacks at/after level 11.
2) During that first year some classes never seemed to get past having crappy utility powers and skill allotments. A couple race/class/feat/stat combos could get a +11 bonus to a couple skills (elf druid wisdom perception was the most memorable) above the party norm, making their passive skill check higher than the rest of the party could roll. Improvised attacks/actions almost invariably used strength and did near or less damage than at will attacks, making them useless for 90% of the characters.
3) The monster math during the first year had issues with brutes and solos having too high hp and defenses but not enough damage. Our game stopped using them after the second fight where everyone was standing around using at will attacks for 45 minutes.
4) The early iterations of skill challenges had mathamatically provable inverse difficulty. Explanation: for the given target numbers versus skill bonuses that provided about a 60% success/check, an 'easy' challenge of 2 successes before 2 failures was less likely to be passed than a 'hard' challenge of somwthing like 7 successes before 5 failures. The skill challenges also had issues with some classes not having applicable skills, some skills being automatic failures, and the common interpretation that everyone in the party needed to participate. And the most common provided examples of the outcome of failed skill challenges being an additional fight, which could potentially provide more xp and loot than succeeding the challenge.
5) Still had problems with trap options and 'too good not to use' options. Bards had powers that used melee weapons, ranged weapons, and implements, which could require lots of equipment juggling or just lock a character out of some of their powers at times. All fighters had 'come and get it' because it was just better than anything else for a long long time.
6) Massive massive lists of powers and feats to slog through. It was like having a 3e style sorc/wiz spell list for every single class. Leveling up a character without the online subscription service was a chore.

A lot of this apparently got cleaned up over the next 3 years or so. But my group never got there, we stopped at level 11 out of frustration with long combats and how chunks of the system didn't work for us trying to do stuff.

DanDare2050
2019-06-15, 03:49 AM
My experience from playing the first year of 4e was:
1) The base math worked for levels 1 to 10, but by the six month mark (? More or less ?) they had published the math fix feats that added to attacks at/after level 11.
2) During that first year some classes never seemed to get past having crappy utility powers and skill allotments. A couple race/class/feat/stat combos could get a +11 bonus to a couple skills (elf druid wisdom perception was the most memorable) above the party norm, making their passive skill check higher than the rest of the party could roll. Improvised attacks/actions almost invariably used strength and did near or less damage than at will attacks, making them useless for 90% of the characters.
3) The monster math during the first year had issues with brutes and solos having too high hp and defenses but not enough damage. Our game stopped using them after the second fight where everyone was standing around using at will attacks for 45 minutes.
4) The early iterations of skill challenges had mathamatically provable inverse difficulty. Explanation: for the given target numbers versus skill bonuses that provided about a 60% success/check, an 'easy' challenge of 2 successes before 2 failures was less likely to be passed than a 'hard' challenge of somwthing like 7 successes before 5 failures. The skill challenges also had issues with some classes not having applicable skills, some skills being automatic failures, and the common interpretation that everyone in the party needed to participate. And the most common provided examples of the outcome of failed skill challenges being an additional fight, which could potentially provide more xp and loot than succeeding the challenge.
5) Still had problems with trap options and 'too good not to use' options. Bards had powers that used melee weapons, ranged weapons, and implements, which could require lots of equipment juggling or just lock a character out of some of their powers at times. All fighters had 'come and get it' because it was just better than anything else for a long long time.
6) Massive massive lists of powers and feats to slog through. It was like having a 3e style sorc/wiz spell list for every single class. Leveling up a character without the online subscription service was a chore.

A lot of this apparently got cleaned up over the next 3 years or so. But my group never got there, we stopped at level 11 out of frustration with long combats and how chunks of the system didn't work for us trying to do stuff.

This, which suggests failures in Action and Sub Systems as well as Play. The amount of dissociated mechanics caused lots of problems with people knowing what a mechanic was actually trying to be. Somehow this is missing from CASIP : the ability for mechanics of actions and sub systems to match the expected thing they purport to emulate. See The Alexandrian discussion on Skill Challenges (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1971/roleplaying-games/playtesting-4th-edition-part-6-skill-challenges) and on Dissociated Mechanics (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer)