Cervantes wrote:As I see it, you can't really do this on a systematic top-down level with TTRPGs. The variance between human actors is just too big, let alone the variance between groups of human actors.
I mean, shit, we're in the hopelessly complex here. Game-systems lead to specific game-instantiation states in that a bad rule is going to come up, baffle a table, and then get ignored or houseruled or whatever - that's a shitty rule. But the more subtle stuff, the overall interaction between systems, settings, presentation of said systems and settings, and players that lead to instantiations, is not really in the realm of systemization. "Ideal play states" is, what - people having fun? I dunno, let people figure that out for themselves and give them something that doesn't get in the way of that.
We can divide our critique into "system, setting, presentation" and feel okay with that. Of course it all boils down to how they lead to instantiations because that's our ultimate goal but we're going at it bottom-up instead of top-down here.
While I agree with you that there are great variances between different human actors and playgroups; I would challenge the idea that it presents an insurmountable challenge for Tabletop RPGs, and that the best approach to achieving an ideal play state is to "let people figure that out for themselves".
Most games - boardgames and computer games in particular - in fact don't let "people figure that out for themselves", because they understand that players
don't necessarily know how to have fun to begin with.
More specifically, it is very rare for a player to start playing a game "knowing" the fun they will experience unless they've played it before. Indeed, such loaded expectations are more likely to cause "hype backlash" - where a player ends up disappointed because it failed to deliver an expected experience.
A game must therefore be prepared to
guide a playgroup towards the ideal play experience; and indeed much of the design work in many games is the elimination of mechanics and "side quests" that lead players astray from this core experience.
That's why Dark Souls for instance has few mechanics that allow players to shortcut the learning process of defeating monsters - because the core "fun" gameplay experience of that game is the
feeling of earned achievement: Killing that giant after 20 tries
feels good because
you slowly figured out how to do it.
And what's important to realize here is that the core gameplay question is paramount regardless if you employ a top-down or bottom-up design paradigm; because otherwise you don't know if you're actually successful with your design.
For my part, my feeling is that tabletop roleplaying games must define its core gameplay experience as "cooperative story-telling". It should guide players into realizing that creating a shared story is
fun. The focus should thus not be centered around specific mechanics about combat or skill checks, but about
how the group each contributes to the story in a meaningful way.
Indeed, there are already these kinds of story-telling games - "When I Dream" being the best-known one, albeit they are often still saddled with arbitrary objectives (that are often forgotten in favor of focusing on the created story).
In short, an RPG should be a game where
creating the story for the player's enjoyment
is the objective. And the system should be judged on its ability to
enable its players to create said stories.