Tag: rpg

Complicated and Boring: Baldur’s Gate 3

JulianLeave a comment

I like accessible games. “A minute to learn” isn’t necessary, but it helps. A well-written rulebook is sufficient. During COVID, I read the whole of the Gloomhaven rulebook — all ~95 pages. Beautifully written, well-structured, clear and clean. Loved it. I liked the rulebook more than the game.

I like elegant mechanics. Does the game test my skills, causing me to grow? Does the challenge progressively meet my level?

I spent four hours trying the alleged best RPG of all time. Released in 2023, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a computer-based license of Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition.

I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons around five times. Loved it every time. This game had everything I dislike about D&D, and nothing I like.

I like D&D’s innovation. Inventiveness. Possibility. What do you want to do? Do it! See what happens! Every action you take can be turned into a set of probabilities based on your skills and the outcome of those probabilities determine your success. When I say every action, I mean *every* action. This dame walks into your office searching for her disappeared husband, and you want to punch her in the nose? Be my guest! You smash her nose. She calls the police. Now that’s your story.

A good dungeon master (game leader) will accept everything thrown at them. They will guide you to where they need you without you feeling overly led. (They didn’t build this miniature map of the crime scene for nothing!) They will take you on a journey of mutual exploration and creation, giving you a mental experience that is at once novel and personal, but also timeless and compelling.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has dice. It has quests. It has storylines. It offers a mirage of the freedom that I enjoy. But when I get bored of the relatively-linear optionality and tried to steal from the merchant, it showed me a cutscene with a line of dialogue that I shouldn’t — and worse, can’t! — do that. When I pushed one of the townsfolk off of a high ledge, only half of that area rally around to attack me, and when I killed them I couldn’t even loot their bodies! How are the other half just watching, waiting to have the exact same normal-scripted dialogue conversations with me after I’ve massacred their village? I’m willing to accept the consequences — could I please have a little realism? If not, just cop out the way other games do, and don’t let me kill the people. But you can’t have it both ways: you can’t offer freedom without providing reasonable responses.

Creativity comes from constraints. The constraints of Baldur’s Gate 3 are at once too vast (the list of spells on your early-game characters number like 20, each with its own hyper-specific details), and too narrow (I can kill this townsfolk but I can loot their body).

I’ve never understood why people like D&D combat. It’s always been my least-favorite part of the game. Puzzle-solving and situation-navigating prompts creativity. It requires thinking and strategizing. Compared to that open set of possibilities, the combat feels like a funnel. Quite possibly I’ve never played with a dungeon master of sufficient skill to craft a fight that pushes at the edge of my ability, but I think it’s even more likely I just don’t get any joy from imagining chopping off a goblin’s head with a sword. I’m as much a fan of violence as anyone (if you’ve never shot a gun, you should really visit a shooting rage!), but imagined conceptual violence doesn’t do it for me. I don’t feel grand from the mental image of a theoretical-me stabbing someone. It doesn’t require enough skill to be satisfying.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is neither accessible nor elegant. I wonder if the people who love it are those who have already steeped themselves in D&D, and therefore this language is familiar to them. After four hours, I’m just not impressed. The storytelling, combat, and strategy: none excite me. None feels like it’s at the edge of my knowledge, expanding my understanding. It’s closer to a series of empty hours.

I felt this way after 45 minutes playing, when I completed the intro tutorial. I pushed through, since the game is so allegedly excellent. I am now giving up. I don’t think I’m missing anything.

I do have a number of long plane rides ahead of me. I might open it back up to see if it clicks. I wonder what stops me from enjoying this game that has a 96/100 on metacritic, designating it a “must-play” with “universal acclaim”. If you have any guesses, let me know.

The Game Is Over Our Head

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To win, position. To position, OODA: Observe → Orient → Decide → Act.

Despite what my enemies tell you, I am not the enemy.

Between 3:52 and 6:15 pm today, I played 2 games of Catan with friends I met a couple of weeks ago. One guy clearly saw me as a threat, so he tried to stifle me. He missed the importance of rallying others (i.e. an embargo against the leading player), so he failed.

He observed correctly, but he failed to orient. (To orient is to figure out what your observation actually means. He saw I was a threat: Observing. He missed that the answer was rallying others against me: poor Orienting.)

Almost all skillful game behavior is about positioning. Positioning means observe and orient, then repeat (and repeat…) before you decide and act.

Chess: Literally “Proving It”

Most high-level chess matches end in resignation, not checkmate. In these situations, chess is not played to win, but played to superior position.

At the highest levels, a player sometimes resigns before your average (ie 1500-rated) chess player even understands why. It’s not even “Player A is now ahead by a knight.” It’s “Player A would be ahead by either a knight or two pawns in 4 moves and they both know it.”

High-level positional chess games are almost incomprehensible to your average observer, just as a fighter pilot saying “Is the humidity 45% or 46%?” wouldn’t mean anything to me. I don’t even know if humidity is relevant to a fighter pilot! That’s the point.

Even better for me and my point and the puns in this post: in chess, they literally call the process of someone playing an advantage to its victorious end “proving it.” The positioning is the game; the proof is execution. 

OODA? Ooh! Duh!

Speaking of fighter pilots (“What a segue! This guy can really write!”), in the early 1970s, US Air Force Colonel John Boyd established the OODA loop as a decision-making framework for his pilots.

In an OODA loop, one Observes, Orients, Decides, then Acts.

Four moves. Three are about positioning.

Pair the OODA loop with my favorite fighter pilot quote (“How many fighter pilots does this guy know?”): 

  • “A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.”

The process becomes:

  1. Get good enough at the skills, so
  2. you understand how the skills work, and therefore
  3. don’t have to use the skills anymore, because
  4. you’re dodging the danger.

(Can you imagine how much of a fighter pilot’s practice is Observing and Orienting? Reminds me of my brother-in-law!)

The Games Behind the Pokerface

In The Count of Monte Cristo (my current tome; spoilers incoming), our hero escapes from prison and is picked up by a nearby boat. The prison fires off a cannon shot. Immediately, the boat’s captain asks, “What does that cannon mean?”

Our Hero calmly states, “A prisoner has escaped from the Chateau d’If [prison], and they are firing the alarm gun.” 

Our Hero’s nonchalance convinces the captain that Our Hero isn’t the escapee. Your average person might feign ignorance. But Our Hero – by his claimed background – would know what the cannon means. This move may appear more dangerous, but it’s much safer.

Our Hero’s OODA loop is beautifully speedy: not only does he observe and orient quickly, but he also decides and acts speedily, all while not appearing to be doing so.

This approach is also true for game experts. Many poker players win games in ways you don’t even realize they’re playing:

  • Getting invited to the softest games
  • Table selection
  • Position at a table relative to both good and bad players
  • Talking with fellow players before any cards are dealt to learn their psychology and therefore their leaks.

Stop Acting

(Note to self: find some subtle way to mention to the reader that this section title has a double meaning.)

I am quite skilled at a particular tactic my mother describes as “Baffle them with bullshit.” It’s all Acting, and no OOD. I recognize the pattern → Act. It lacks… a certain elegance.

Relaxing and contemplating (Observe and Orient) have historically been my weaknesses.

To be fair, it’s live Observe and Orient that’s my weakness. I’ve stored plenty through years of preparation, which is why those around me say I’m skilled at games. But Pattern-Match → Act is just stored OO at hyperspeed. In known scenarios, this works. Live execution in novel territory is a different animal.

My poker game has won thousands of dollars despite my complete lack of poker face.

I wish I could install an old turntable in my brain. It would Observe, then Orient, then Observe again… until sufficiently positioned, then Decide and Act. The beauty of the turntable: it’s stuck in the OO grooves (“Ooooooooooo”). I’d have to thunk it on the side to shake it into DA.

As my new Catan group improves at the game, each player will develop our own approach. My Catan-enemy will either improve at his orientation or continue being shot down.

It’s like that key rule everyone knows in the game of real estate: Position, Position, Position.

Playing with “Play” 

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You win the game by playing appropriately. You play appropriately by recognizing and mastering different kinds of “play”. 

We interact with games through play. If you are a participant in a game, we say you “play”. This is true regardless of the intensity of investment. What about a mandatory game (all students of Ms. Jones’ 3rd grade class will now play tag) during which you participate minimally — sit in the corner of the yard, picking grass? Are you still playing? Does it matter whether anyone ever tags you, or is the mere fact that you could be tagged enough to call you a player? Do you even need to react within the constraints of the rules (make an effort to tag another player once you’ve been tagged)?

We generally relate to games through play. When we are unsure of the verb, if the noun is a game, we use the verb play. Fencers fight, but they also play (“playfight”). Politicians manipulate, but they also play (“play politics”).

One can interact with a game without playing it. One can voyeur, heckle, or kibitz. All of these participate, more or less. A well-timed heckle may even throw off the pitcher, changing the outcome of the game. Still, none are “playing”.

Play has two meanings. One is the childlike lightness of being amid interaction. The other is interaction with a game. Some games are serious: politics, finance, war. Yet still we call participation in them play.

Here’s why this matters: 

  • We diminish what we call play, which is why we mis-strategize in serious games we’ve labeled as play.
  • The two meanings of play allow people to dismiss game-thinking as childish, when in fact game-thinking is the most rigorous frame for serious activity.
  • People who seemingly aren’t playing — voyeurs, hecklers, kibitzers — affect the game without taking responsibility for it. 

We hear political games and our guard goes down because games are for children. We hear “playing the market” and we forget the player who loses actual ability to purchase food. We hear war games and sleep better at night because games are contained things, voluntary, with rules everyone agreed to.

We’re making serious games sound trivial. You know: wordplay. 

The fix isn’t to stop calling it play. The fix is to remember which meaning is in use. When you’re “playing the political game,” you’re interacting within a structured competition with real stakes. You’re not doing what kindergarteners do. Except for the name-calling. 

Clown School Weekend 2.2: What’s in a Game?

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That which we call Our Hero, by any other game, would play as sweet.

What is a game?

A game isn’t one thing, but a cluster of traits that, in sufficient combination, make us recognize something as a game. None of these are necessary, but enough of them is sufficient to make something a game. Some of those traits are:

  • Competition and/or cooperation
  • Ability to win and/or lose
  • Use of toys, equipment, and/or pieces
  • Play
  • Fun and/or pleasure
  • Turns
  • Rules
  • A self-contained world, protected from life’s other elements
  • Practicing skills useful elsewhere

The trouble of defining game is the trouble of defining any abstract concept: when we say “X is a game,” we mean it has enough of the qualities we associate with games for our brains to light up in recognition. Hence our endless debates, like whether a hot dog is a sandwich.

Games vary across cultures because the pleasures of play vary too. At clown school, we seek a joy that’s light and friendly; in sport, the joy can be vicious, even cruel. Have you ever watched a professional tennis final? They’re clearly playing a game — but not playing games.

Defining abstractions always circles back to the Supreme Court’s test for pornography: we know it when we see it. Still, shared language demands some definitioning (now a word). And that task grows harder as meanings and technologies evolve: even “simultaneous” doesn’t mean what it once did.

I like games. Always have. And by that I mean: I like whatever fires my neurons to say that’s a game. I like them better than mere activities; give me competition or a timer, and I’m in.

So:

  1. Games are hard to define.
  2. Games share recognizable traits.
  3. I like games.

I recently stumbled upon a definition for game by the philosopher Bernard Suits: “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Elegant, but too narrow. It fits golf or chess, not politics or dating, where the obstacles aren’t unnecessary, just chosen. I don’t think “dating is a game” is metaphorical; I think it’s a real diagnostic description of how people behave in the world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that definitional meanings work by family resemblance rather than rigid borders. I’ve always respected the man; nice company to stumble into.

Maybe that’s why I love games: they’re how we practice living within constraints — voluntary or not — and still find joy.

Life, after all, is the longest game we play.

Game on.