Last month I presented ways the RPGs we play can affect us. One of these ways was the RPG imparting a language, a system of knowledge and communication. These languages can provide insight or at least succinctly describe ideas and situations better. The problem for the RPG designer is how to identify and refine the language within the game.

Beyond Simulation

At its simplest, finding the language in a game is simply a matter of description. Most RPGs act as ways to describe the different aspects of their settings. It is tempting to think that designing a language within a RPG is as simple as making a RPG apply to a context that includes the desired subject of your language. But this is too simplistic. What makes a RPG into a language is not simply that it can describe or simulate the subject, but that the subject is handled in a particularly intuitive manner.

What makes a RPG usable as a language is that it reduces the complexity of communication. A RPG may give you to tools to describe any number of things, but unless the description is simpler than the topics described, it is useless as a language. Just as Armor Class in D&D sums up many different elements succinctly, or Willpower in Storytelling games implies more than just the English word, so to must a language compact its topic with precision. If the game produces intuitive categories or descriptions that contain more complex ideas, especially ideas which are ultimately dynamic, rather than spoken or written then it can bridge intuition and provide new words to communicate those ideas.

Most games will contain a few terms like this. Often the rest of the game are specifications of these concepts or mechanics which do not lend themselves to any intuition beyond simple randomness. Designing a RPG which is useful as a language requires instilling an intuition for the topic throughout. This often means ignoring anything outside of your chosen topic. If you wish to build an intuitive language for combat, everything else should be dealt with distinctly from combat, and possibly ignored. Likewise if you want to impart an intuition for computers and programs then you should focus on that exclusively, and make the mechanics and even setting elements part if that intuition.

Dialect or Whole Cloth

In thinking about building intuitive RPGs, two different approaches spring to mind. The first is to take some of your available tools for game design and apply them to your intuition, modifying system and setting to better fit the topic until you have achieved your goal. For example, you may want to impart the ways in which software bugs remain unnoticed until triggered as a stealth situation, with a comparative bonus to the bug's effect if it remains undiscovered after debugging. In this case you are taking a common mechanic, namely "backstabbing", and molding it to the desired structure.

In essence this approach is producing a dialect of a RPGer language for discussing your chosen topic. Some of these languages have already become fairly widely known, such as various languages for combat and personal improvement. By exploiting these languages it is possible to impart intuitions with a minimum of player investment. However, you risk the tainting of your intuitions with the contexts and connotations of the language you use. A backstabbing bug is assigned a connotations of sneakiness, which may clash with the idea that the bugs derive from the programmer's own mistakes.

On the other hand, you could attempt to design the RPG solely from the intuition, approximating the topic as closely and intuitively as possible, without regard for the accessibility. Unfortunately, this approach risks making the language unlearnable. Indeed the most extreme consequence of this strategy is a game which can only be played if you already know the language. Obviously this does not meet the goals of the language design either.

In practice, the best approach is to skirt both of these, combining focused, intuitive portions with lead-ins to help players learn the language. Which lead-ins are needed is based very much on your audience. It is always important to remember that in designing a RPG to contain a language it must both contain the language and teach it. Just as language manuals in the past have found this dilemma, such a RPG must sacrifice the depth of the language for accessibility, and vice versa.

The Savagery of People

Over the next few articles I will be referring to a game design of mine called Savagery (warning pdf). I designed this game as a 24 hour RPG, and first discussed it here. Savagery is a RPG of social and emotional combat. It ruthlessly focuses on just those types of conflicts, and nearly all the mechanics deal with conducting and surviving emotional conflict with other people. As such, Savagery is a game well suited to acting as a language for social conflicts.

The first manner in which Savagery gives an intuitive language is the use of the five ratings of the psyche:

• Ego
• Empathy
• Ideals
• Libido
• Reason

These are less parts of a psychology and more the dual elements both at risk and as weapons to be wielded during social combat. In fact the underlying nature of each of these ratings doesn't arise until the second major feature of the game is incorporated, maneuvers.

The core of social combat in Savagery are maneuvers, which are broken down by both fighting style and psyche ratings. Entice, for example, lets you draw out an opponent suggesting that you are giving in, only to come back more viciously. Doing this well hinges on your libido, but no one does it better than a practiced Seducer. These dynamics are the intuitions on which the language of social conflict is built.

At the same time, the social combat in Savagery isn't entirely focused on the intuition of social conflict. I expressly designed an interesting and engaging type of combat, which feels more fair than most social conflicts turn out in life. Much of the reason for this is the need to balance the playability with the linguistic depth. After all, Savagery can only teach you a way to understand social conflict if you play it.

Means to an End

As I pointed out earlier, Savagery is more than just a system for social combat. But the language of social combat is vital. Languages exist to facilitate communication, to allow deeper things to be understood with less effort and cost. While the simplest use of a RPGs language is to communicate with other players, it is also a means for a RPG to teach the players about things beyond the subject of the language.

It could facilitate learning about other aspects of the game, about other players, or even one's self. But ultimately a language is only ever a means to an end. If it is not used, it remains a curiosity. Over my next few articles I will be discussing how Savagery's language is used to take other things from playing the game.

Next Month: The Game Speaks