RPG Errata: Manyfold, and What You Like

What is “fun?”

Remember when I asked that question? Oh what fun we had!

Now I’d like to talk about a kind of answer to that question. I’ve talked about Levi Kornelsen’s Manyfold theory several times through both this long-form treatise and its errata, but I suspect that some of you haven’t taken the extra step to actually go read the PDF. That’s fine, we’re all busy with something or another these days. Nevertheless, I still think its important, information, worthy of discussion.

At the same time, I can’t just reprint the whole thing here; that’s borderline plagerism, and taking attention away from an interesting piece of work.

So rather than plagerize, I will “join the conversation.”

Manyfold is a 14-page booklet devoted to constructing a glossary devoted to describing four separate subjects:

1. Describing what you like.
2. Describing how you play.
3. Defining supportive rules and practices.
4. Defining different playstyles and clusters.

It’s a noble effort, well worth taking a look at for every RPGer. I’m going to go forward assuming you’ve read the whole thing, so if you haven’t, prepare to be talked-past. Also, Levi describes the book as “Comparable in size to a really long blog post.” Naturally, as is the case with such matters, my joining the conversation involves providing a really long blog post in response to each of his four subjects, so be prepared to read more of my garglemesh than his. You have been warned.

Describing what you like:

This section is not, in fact, Levi’s creation.¹ It is a compilation of words provided both by Roger Caillois’ Man, Play, and Games (1958), and “a great many videogame and boardgame thinkers.” I presume that means a lot of forum and blog posts, but even so; 1958 is some old theory. I think this section is due for a sweeping.

The goal of this section is to “…[provide] a good enough glossary that players can reliably talk about what they like using these terms.” I should hope by now that I don’t need to repeat how much I support this; the whole RPG Medium treatise started with a parable about playing different kinds of card games because no one could actually explain what kind of game they wanted to play.

So how would you tell someone what kind of game do you wanted to play? The least useful — after just saying “an RPG” — would be to offer a generic system, like GURPS or FATE. Yes, knowing what kind of system you are familiar with is useful, but hardly the most important piece of information. Second worst might be system with only a slightly stronger ludo-narrative. Saying you want to play D&D is not that much different than saying you want to play GURPS; there are a lot of different kinds of D&D games. Call Of Cthulhu is better — the game-narrative is pretty baked-in to the system — but naming a system becomes sub-optimal surprisingly quickly.

We could go the “style” route, and say “I like narrative games,” or “I prefer OSR,” but those are those-terms, and mean different things to different people. F.O.R.G.E., Cairn, and DCC are all “OSR” games, and their ethos’s and styles are completely different. This isn’t to say someone can’t love all three, but we can go deeper, and Manyfold has.

That said, reading through this section, I…had thoughts. Quite a few of these terms were incredibly useful, touching on things I’d noticed before and providing new insight into things I hadn’t. Others were confusing, or perhaps confused, and a few I outright disagreed with. Let’s do a quick play-by-play and go through them together.

Levi’s List

AGON

This is the “thrill of winning against another person at the table,” the joy from beating someone at cards or coming in first at Ticket to Ride. My first thought was that this is hardly a type of fun supported by RPGs, but then I realized I’d bought into my own hype about the GM being “just another player.” There is a style of play — a fairly OSR style — that sees the GM as a kind of adversary, who has created traps and monsters specifically to challenge and thwart the other players. Surviving a dungeon crawl or overcoming a particularly nasty trap is akin to “defeating the GM,” but after reading the entire glossary, I feel this fits better as a combination of agon and fiero, described later.

ALEA

“The fun of taking a big risk, the tension that comes with it, win or lose.” Any RPG with dice or cards has some alea, the question is how much and what are the stakes. I’ve talked about Goblin Dice, player death, and GM Fiat, which all interact with alea. This is, in fact, a type of fun supported by any RPG system that isn’t deterministic. At the same time, people who love alea can have different favored stakes: some might delight in the idea that taking extreme risks can result in permanent death or a failed gambit, while others might feel more comfortable with player-guided consequences or playing-to-find-out, both of which can give alea while reducing the feeling that the game is stalling out or time is being wasted.

CATHARSIS

“A feeling of release that follows an intense or overwhelming experience.” This specifically calls out the idea that it’s the intensity or overwhelming emotion of the experience that is fun. High drama and tension is the goal here, so cozy or casual experiences don’t apply. Again, I don’t disagree with including this as a kind of fun, but there are several other words that kinda cover the same bases coming up.

CLOSURE

Feeling something is finished. I don’t really agree with this inclusion. The implication is that what you enjoy about an RPG is that it’s over? I understand the release that comes from finishing something or the falling action of a story…but I have a hard time accepting that this is a distinct form of enjoyment independent from the others. At the same time, I recognize that some people don’t like the story ending of “guess they’re off to a new adventure that we don’t get to see,” and dangling plot-threads can be annoying, but that feels to me like something that can be addressed independently of “things you find fun in RPGs.” This isn’t to say that “closure” isn’t a valid form of enjoyment for RPGs, just that it’s not an enjoyment that can or should be independently aimed for; kind of like how “killing orcs” or “thwarting assassinations” aren’t on this list either.

DRAMATICS

“The desire to perform for others.” Roleplay always has some measure of performance attached to it, but some people really love doing this. They’re the ones who do the voices, wave the air-swords, and make sounds with their mouths when their ship comes in for a landing. I do think, however, that this ties into the idea of “creating a fantasy” together. I’ll touch more on this later, but the imaginary world of the game-narrative is supported by this kind of play, and that’s a major reason for some people to play RPGs.

EXPRESSION

The desire to be creative, and…well, to express one’s self. Not a lot to say about this one. The desire to create art and story through an RPG medium is pretty self-explanatory, especially if you buy into my theory about RPGs being a safe space to explore emotional states.

FIERO

Triumph. Really, this is very similar to argo. Overcoming a difficult challenge is fiero, and I’m not sure the difference between argo and fiero is distinct enough to warrant two different words. Granted, argo doesn’t necessarily require a challenge, while fiero doesn’t require a person to be “better than,” but I think they could be combined into one without losing too much important granularity. This is also true of…

HUMOR

I don’t disagree that there are players who play to laugh, but there are also players who play for terror, romance, grief…Catharsis kinda falls in here too. Singling out Humor while disregarding the others doesn’t sit well with me, so I think this could easily be combined with some other sections into a catch-all “to feel emotions” kind of fun. I don’t think we lose much by not calling out each one as a separate “kind.”

KAIROSIS

The feeling of satisfaction at a complete character arc. This is…a bit too narrow? I definitely understand the joy that comes from character development — of telling a story about a person who grows and achieves narrative closure — but we already have “closure” up there…do we really need two words, one for characters and one for the game itself? Besides, there’s more to characters than just the conclusion of their character arcs, and enjoying this while not enjoying other aspects of your character feels…incomplete. I think we can refine this one a bit.

KENOSIS

“The feeling of being deeply engaged in one of the various stances.” In short, the joy of being “engrossed.” We’ll talk more about stances later, but being engrossed is something I haven’t talked about too much. RPGs can be supported by having a continuous flow; we’ve all felt frustration at having to open the rule-book yet again, when we just want to get to the next story- or game-bit. Constantly breaking game-narrative to address the meta-narrative (table-talk about character intent, discussing possible complications or results of failure, or even discussing rules) can be an annoyance. Players who’d rather see progress through improvising as smoothly as possible are lovers of kenosis.

KINESIS

The joy of rolling dice, or “feelies.” Tactile sensation is important to some people, and supports both the meta- and sometimes ludo-narrative. There are systems that try to keep die-rolling to a minimum, while others involve lots of dice. Some people love the White Wolf or Warhammer 40k “let’s roll twenty dice at once” style of play, and that’s worth paying attention to. There are also other kinds of kinesis, like Mausritter’s token-based equipment management, FATE’s Fate-point mechanics, or simply including physical tickets for a carnival, half-burnt letters, photographs with clues, or even rolled up scrolls with a bit of tea used to make them look old. It helps create an atmosphere.

LUDUS

“For people who take their rules seriously.” Min-maxers and munchkins live here, but also anyone who agrees with my sentiment that rules aren’t what are fun, but playing off the rules is where fun comes in. Trying to kill a dragon within certain systemic parameters is more fun than “I hit it in its weakspot.” Finding delight in cruchy rules or loving to “build characters” is a sign that ludus is in your heart somewhere. It’s for people who want to play a game, more than just tell a story.

NACHES

“The enjoyment of seeing someone that you have taught, or are responsible for, go on to do well with that knowledge.” I understand how this might be a kind of enjoyment, but I’m not sure how impactful or useful it is to include. Perhaps a GM changes systems regularly because they get off on teaching players new rules, but it strikes me as incidental to the RPG Medium as a whole. As a subset of the hobby, sure: being friendly to new players or loving on-boarding newcomers to the hobby, sure, but then we should include players who prefer the fun of playing with veterans, which starts to make naches notable for when it is absent: people who don’t enjoy playing with people who don’t know what they’re doing, because they break up the kenosis. I think this can be taken out.

PAIDIA

“Free-wheeling player fun, where rules are a convenience.” Paidia is Greek for children, and I can easily see why this name was chosen. This is the casual kind of fun that eshews rules for a more calvin-ball take on the game: rules are less important than an organic cooperative environment. If you think the only neccessary rule for RPGs is the Platinum Rule, then you’re probably primarily a paidia player.

SCHADENFREUDE

Same thing as Humor. Why include this and not all the emotions?

SOCIABILITY

As the book says, sociability is “pretty central.” Or at least, it was back in the late 50s, and even the 80s when RPGing was first taking its shaky steps. Nowadays, solo RPing is starting to be explored, and bespoke solo games are being written. It’s definitely worth an inclusion in the list, and not just as a nod towards “the people who enjoy table-talk.” The de-mystifying of RPGs supports this too, as more and more people are combining RPGs and boardgames as casual-get-together activities for an evening, while more RPGs are embracing that role.

VENTING

Same as schadenfreude, same as humor. Three separate emotive terms, and nothing for people who seek the thrills of a horror game? The vicarious joy of a romance story? The warmth of hygge?

My List

Like I said, most of Levi’s list is great. There’s a lot to think about, and using the list with your players is a great way to help explore what it is you love about RPGs, or games in general. That said, you read my thoughts above, so here’s my list. I combined all the emotion-words into one, got rid of naches and closure, combined a few of the others, and added one or two that I think deserve attention.

Also: I don’t hate Greek as a language, much less the ancient dialect. The old language gave us a lot of words in English, and some of them really roll off the tongue…but this is supposed to be a practical document, designed to facilitate discussion, not show off that you know a lot of fancy words. That said, I did some translating.

ACHIEVEMENT

Really, this is a bit of a combination of agon and fiero in to one term. My version is the enjoyment of overcoming a challenge; whether its finally overthrowing that tyrant-king who has been bothering you the whole game, thwarting the GM’s fiendish traps, or finally killing the dragon in a two-session-long battle, the important thing was that you succeeded. Sometimes this is the enjoyment of overcoming a difficult struggle, while other times it can be a desire to practice and develop a skill: the people who don’t just want to “win” a game, but want to win well. This isn’t just system-focused, as practicing social interaction and performance is just as valid, but it is perhaps easier to quantify when dealing with numbers instead of drama.

CHARACTER

This is the enjoyment of developing an alter ego. This is an expansion of kairosis into something a bit more comprehensive. Just because you don’t like performing for others doesn’t mean your characters aren’t important to you. The lovers of 20-page backstories and rich personal inner-lives delight in this. It’s not just a complete character arc that these players love, it’s developing the whole character.

CREATING

Expression is a kind of nebulous term. Telling a story, writing backstory, drawing maps or portraits…it’s all an attempt to make manifest what lies dormant in the mind. I’ve combined the two terms into this one in an attempt to capture “the GM instinct.” Lovers of creating jump at the chance to be GMs in their games. They love spending FATE points to establish facts in the world, offer setbacks for their own character’s failures, and are eager to fill the world’s whitespace with their own ideas.

DISCOVERY

Those who seek discovery in their games enjoy learning new systems, exploring new worlds, and finding things that they haven’t seen before. If you’ve ever felt bored or annoyed by meeting the same old orcs, elves, dragons, vampires, and the like, you’re probably suffering from a lack of discovery. Lovers of hex-crawls, oracles, and sandboxes appreciate discovery, as well as those who enjoy playing-to-find-out.

EMOTION

this is the enjoyment of feeling emotions in a safe environment. A combination of humor, catharsis, schadenfreude, and venting in Manyfold, plus all the other ignored emotions. These players might have a specific goal, such as humor, or simply appreciate any kind of emotive story.

IMMERSION

The love of being engrossed in either a system or a story. We’ll get to Stances in the next post, but the shorthand is kenosis lovers appreciate focused play and avoiding swinging back and forth between game and story.

IMPROVISATION

The fun of organic and rule-light play.

PERFORMANCE

Embedded in this enjoyment is at least a small measure of spontaneity: most likely the lovers of performance also delight in using improvisation to decide what happens next, rather than discussion and die-rolling, though this isn’t requisite: games like After the War and Fiasco have strong performance aspects while the dice decide “what happens next.”

RISK

Alea is called “the gambler’s thrill” in Levi’s list. This is the enjoyment that comes from high uncertainty in the game’s outcome. Lovers of risk in their games probably appreciate swingy die systems and easy deaths. This is also supportable in the story, but risk lovers appreciate fortune, rather than fiat. Overcoming risk in a story isn’t so much a gamble, more a decision made by the GM.

RULES

The love of exploring and playing off of rules and systems. These players love crunchy rulesets and playing around with mechanics. It’s a kind of discovery too, as they learn what works and what doesn’t, plan builds and strategies, and heavily engage with the “game” aspect of the RPG.

SOCIABILITY

This is one of the central aspects of most RPGs.

TACTILE

The joy of rolling dice and physical interaction.

Did I cut too much? Did I miss the importance of separating agon and fiero? Do my additions really add anything? I urge you to consider and come up with your own conclusions. I personally think this is a good set to work from.

At least, it’s the list I’ll be working from as we continue through Manyfold. Next time, we’ll look at the section titled Stance and Depth.