Ludonarrative Dissonance: When TTRPG Game Mechanics Don't Match the Story

Transcript:

You're listening to No Plot Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every

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Welcome back to No Plotton Only Lore. This week brought to you by the Victoria College of Art. Do you want a diploma in

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my friend on Wednesdays. Yeah, but like Vancouver's like across the river. Like you could just go there.

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Vancouver, or at least like know my way around the city enough to be able to start dropping portfolios and things

off, but that has not happened. So yeah, Vancouver is not exactly commuter

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fortune. Not necessarily in money, but like just in time. Like if you want to

get to Vancouver, it is a two and a half hour ferry that you have to get to from

Victoria, which is like a 45 minute drive from Victoria to Sydney, right? Then from the ferry in Vancouver, it

takes like another hour by bus to get into Vancouver proper. Mhm. It's that sounds terrible.

That's your whole day. That's your whole day. It's It's like driving

to Edmonton, but you're going to stop in Saskatoon first. That Yeah, that's uh for those of you

who don't know Canadian geography, that is the most counterintuitive way you could ever do that.

Yeah. Uh so last week you hit on an

interesting topic that I kind of wanted to discuss more. I assure you it was by accident.

Well, some sometimes when you are playing a game and this is true I think for all games of every type like the the

place that I am most familiar with this concept is actually from video gaming. Okay. But sometimes when you're playing a game

the mechanics of the game and the narrative of the game do not line up

very well at all. Right. So, you're playing through a game, and I

think the the game that I came into contact with this first, and I think it might have actually been the the game

that started people talking about the the term in the first place, was a game called Spec Ops: The Line.

Oh, yeah. I've I've heard of it. Yeah. Okay. So, for people who have not heard

of Spec Ops: The Line, it is a military simulation game that came out many years

ago where you are playing a person in the American military in a foreign

theater, right? And the only way to solve problems in the

game is with hyperviolence. Like, you have to you have to kill people. you have to

like do a violence or at least it seems that way according to the the way the game is

laid out. Um and then it punishes you for violence in the narrative.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's trying to teach you a lesson. Yeah. It's, you know, a game that's

trying to say something. Um Sure. But like, yeah, you would get into a

loading screen after like killing a dozen people and it would just be

completely covered in blood with the words, "Are you having fun yet?" like in the bottom of the loading corner,

okay? Like it narratively was very antiviolence and

was trying to prove the point of like the violence is unnecessary and we don't actually do that through the medium of

violence, right? And that creates

emotional dissonance, right? The feeling of not harmonizing with this

thing because you're doing the thing that the game is rewarding you for the that the thing is pushing you towards,

but the narrative that you are attached to in that is actively against the win

condition. Right? And so ludon narrative distance is a

thing that I think we've all experienced in even if we didn't know what the name was.

Even if we didn't know what the name was. Probably especially if we didn't know what the name was. Yeah. Uhhuh.

It's h the the philosophical urge to put

a name on everything that is as Latin and confusing as possible.

Right. Uh, have you dealt with this in role playing

game scenarios? Like I I think we did touch on that a little bit in our last episode.

Um, I'm trying to remember what I said. Uh,

I also said for the Yeah, I I don't know if if I've dealt with it specifically in role playing

games. I mean, I've dealt with like so like my my my best example of this just

like in to my mind existing period is like quicktime scenes in video games, right?

Where it's like here's this like intricate delicate thing possibly happening and then my solution is to just mash a button. Um

which like yeah like doesn't feel good or right um at all but it is what it is.

Like that's just how that's the limits of the game, right? I I I think to

I don't know if you've seen that clip where um Oscar and another gentleman on uh one of

the Game Changer episodes, was it Game Changer? Anyways, one of those dropout shows have to try to have a dramatic

intense conversation between Mario and his brother Luigi. And then it cuts to the gameplay and it's literally like

Mario 2 level just bouncing straight up and down useless gameplay, right? Um,

yeah. And that, so yeah, is very much an illustration of the Ludo

narrative dissonance of just like the the cut scene has all of this like big emotional weight to it

and then you move a tiny chibi anime figure one space and hit the A button to

go to the next level. like it it doesn't create a a cohesive

feeling, a harmonious feeling. It's got a very strong disconnect between the two. Uh in role playing games, I think the

place where I see it most often is in fortune in the middle type systems

where you declare your action, then you roll your dice, right?

So you have this idea in your head of what that action is going to be, right? I am a badass monk. I punch and kick for

a living. I am good at these things. I am going to punch kick the dragon 17

times and then everything is going to be great. And then you roll twos and ones

for the entire thing and you're just you're [ __ ] with it. Oh, you mean like how I died?

Not to not to put too like fine a point on it.

Yeah, basically that thing, right? Like, yeah, you have an expectation of your

character's capabilities based on like the narrative history that you have or like a really good example of this as

well is like the the 15-page backstory. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Which just does not matter at all

because you're creating a level one character. Exactly. Right. Like my character is a

war veteran from the last war. He spent the last 12 years fighting against

enemies from without and within. He's grizzled and hard and he's got four hit

points and he has a sword that does 1d6 damage. Oh no, a rat better run.

Yeah. Um so like th those kinds of experiences I

feel are kind of wrapped up in the narrative dissonance idea. And I think

that there are some reasons for that and it kind of comes down to like what you expect

from games. So like we we haven't gotten too heavy into

like the philosophy of aesthetics on the podcast for what I feel are obvious

reasons. Yeah. Um because you will ramble for two hours and I will space out and stare at the

roof like we're doing right now. Yeah. Um,

so what I guess like what do you think

game is just like at its very basic the the the foundation? What is game?

Like all games or just like like the concept of game? The concept of game,

the concept of game at its core is distraction from boredom.

Okay, that is interesting.

What? So like Oh, it's a broader definition than I expected, I think.

Oh, okay. Um because like C Tai Muan has a definition that

involves conflict that I'm not like super keen on.

Um his his whole idea is like game is

striving against imagined obstacles towards a value that doesn't actually

exist outside of that game. Okay. But why? Um,

well that's the thing, right? Like we So like to to my point, kids invent

games all the time that are just doing a thing with an objective. Like they don't

they're not even necessarily like striving against obstacles. It's just like I just want to see a thing happen.

Yeah. Right. Well, and that's and I feel like humanity's been inventing games like that since they

needed to do something when they weren't hunting. Like once once we were able to make meet our basic needs efficiently,

then we started having free time. And games were what we did to fill the free time. And sometimes games turned into

like, you know, acquiring more knowledge of the world around us through the games

we played or acquiring information about each other. Um, but at

the end of the day, we were just filling time.

I feel like the the learning things about the world

thing is probably more core to it than you might think where like what one of

the the definitions of game and I can't remember who it was who said it so I'm not going to start naming philosophers

but like the idea is that games allow you to try on values.

Okay. Right. in a in a circumstance where the

result of an action doesn't actually matter, you get to try on the idea of a

value. So like points really [ __ ] matter.

Okay? Right? The acquiring of points really [ __ ] matters in the game.

Okay? Right? That's the value that you're that you're trying on is that points matter and I am going to accumulate as many of

them as possible. Okay? And then you get to try that on for a while. It's kind of like the same thing as like a horror movie

where like you're in a safe place. You're surrounded by people that you love and appreciate. You are not in

actual danger, but you get to feel some fear anyway. Right. Okay. And so this is kind of that where

you get to try on a idea of value in a safe environment, see

how it feels, play around with it a little bit, and then give it up at the end of the game. Okay.

Right. Um, and then there's a few other definitions that people run with. So like C Newan's

uh thing is like the the striving against imaginary obstacles. um

to a like a to one of those values, right? So like the value exists, you're going to strive against imagined

obstacles to get to it. I don't think you actually need the obstacles. I think you just need to like

do an activity while wearing that value idea. I guess

not just like kickball no hands

is a value in this case, right? Like if you touch ball with hands, hands bad.

I'm trying to I'm trying to cuz like to my mind

some of those things come about through like a secondary application where it's like game plus

physicality or game plus curiosity or game without curiosity. like game plus

curiosity you get um you know like

science but game without curiosity you get like I don't know puzzles like like

things game plus physicality you get sport right like

um like I think I think the the problem with these definitions is that they are

all they're applying themselves to a secondary phase of game and not looking

at the core of game. Well, that's part of the philosophy

experience, right? Like trying to figure out what the core of a thing is is actually really [ __ ] hard sometimes.

Um, both because everybody's experience with it is going to be slightly different and subjective, right? like my

my experience with game is different than your experience with game because I don't physicality like right I'm not a

big fan of kickball game or like sports hand or whatever like none of this

matters to me and so those are values that I don't try on um I'm more in it for the art of the

thing right like the the creation of a shared lived experience

right you you want more like expression more more you know, individual

agency, I guess, like in Yeah. And I think like agency is

definitely the medium of game. Like if we if we assume, and I know that this is not an assume that you like, but if we

assume that game is art, then the medium of game would be

agency, choice, the ability to make decisions in a game towards an end,

right? this um what you are eat I I I

sorry I I disagree with your assertion that I don't like that idea but I think I have a different analysis of games as

art. Um okay I think I think the

player expression is not the art of it like the there are definitely so first of all I don't think all games are art

obviously um I think game itself can be a medium to tell people about your art

so whether that's video games or board games there are people out there who are trying to express themselves

artistically and that is like when art happens and like

the the art isn't in the um the expression of the player in the game.

It's in the player sort of discovering

what the designer was trying to say or trying to present to them. Um

okay. So for you the the art is mostly in the the creator's hands like the the

person who made the game in a lot of cases. Yes, there are other

games that art can happen for the player in the way

that they express themselves. But that's just because the creator of the game has

essentially given them a very large sandbox or a very wide canvas and and

the tools to create art within that medium.

But the the game itself is then just kind of tools really. I mean, anyone

who's like to me, anyone who's made a dick in a video game that other people can see like has made art in a weird

way. Uh, no value judgment on the quality of the

art. No, but they they have expressed themselves to other people using the

medium of torrent corpses in, you know, the foothills of Hills, Brad.

It's you you say that very specifically and I

believe that you may have drawn dicks in World of Warcraft. Oh, I listen

there's our our our listener may be familiar with the there's uh I forgot

the specific name for it, but there's an expression I think it's I think they straight up just call it time to dick.

uh where in any video game production, how soon will people draw dicks in it,

right? Um using whatever resources you give them. Um immediat and immediately.

World of Warcraft gave you an like an inventory you can organize it 100% was dicks.

Like as soon as somebody had enough wolf belts. Yeah. As as soon as as soon as you could

drop something that interacted with the world, you made dicks. Whether it was in Yeah. like uh uh Dark Souls or or or

World of Warcraft or arranging your units in Starcraft like Yeah,

maybe that's the selling feature for Minecraft. Just like time to dick is zero. Time to dick is zero in that game. Um

like the game is built around time to dick being as minimal as possible.

Well, oh is hold on. Is that where we get the phrase [ __ ] around?

Oh, no. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. Uh, no.

[ __ ] around cameo well before time to dig. Yeah. But 100%. Um,

yeah. No, I I can see where that definition comes from. I think for me,

like my personal understanding of art is

a lot broader than that. like the act of creation

that is in some way lasting or observable. Okay. Like art can art exists in the moment

between the artist and the observer and the observer can be self. Like the

All right. I I get that that's like some pretentious [ __ ] but like Well, yeah, you you say that, but your

[ __ ] pretentious art school is dead, so maybe I'm right.

I mean, yeah, maybe. Um, couple of other things is that like games exist as an

agreement. Uhhuh. Um, they everybody has to agree on the

rules or you're just playing Calvin Ball and it doesn't [ __ ] matter. Yeah. Um,

and then the other one that I wanted to touch on is that games are inherently

not passive. They require participants to act, right?

If you do not act in the game, you are not playing the game and thus you are not engaged with that activity. So,

you're not actually doing game. Yeah. Um, and to tie that back to the the ludon

narrative dissonance stuff, um, every definition of game has a reason that

ludon narrative dissonance is a complicating factor for it. Like not

necessarily a bad thing. Like I I I think one of the things that we kind of run into in discussions of luda

narrative dissonance is that like there's an assumption that it's bad. Sure.

But that isn't necessarily true. No, it just requires that whatever it is

that you're making be uncomfortable on purpose. Right.

Right. So, I I think that like spec ops the line and the reason that that got as much um attention on it as it did and

the reason that it like coined the term is because it did use ludon narrative dissonance in an interesting way.

Right. Right. like it it created a a feeling of um despair and hopelessness and

helplessness. There was a choice in the game that I saw in a video essay because

again I haven't played the game but there there was a choice in the game where they put you in a situation where

you could either kill a compatriate to kill them quickly or you could start

killing people to save them from their execution. Mhm.

And the thing that they never told you is that there were other options. Right. Right. Like the the game itself had

other options built into it for how you could approach that. But the story told you these are your options.

Right. There was like let's say six options. The story presented two of them. Yes. And the two that it presented were

the worst options. Every other option had a better outcome.

But those two were the ones that you were given. Yeah. Right. And that is a masterful use of

Luda narrative dissonance. Um because through like subsequent playthroughs, if

you try one of those other things, you're like, "Oh [ __ ] if I shoot the

rope that they're about to hang this guy with, that does something different." Yeah.

And they never suggested that that's an option. They never suggested that's a possibility. I've never shot a rope in

any other situation in this [ __ ] game. Yeah, but

they they didn't tell me where the bullet had to go. Yeah. I I I wonder

I'm just curious how like choice is presented to the

character in general in the game. I've never played it as well. But like

I is one person just in your ear saying you could do this or this while you have full control over your character and the

options to do whatever or like is it more like an AB situation where it's

like do you want to do this, do you want to do that and then you have to like force yourself to break away from what's happening next? Like

my understanding is that you have a team of people around you. Yeah. that are discussing options and

like how to approach things. Yeah. And so like you're you're part of a military unit and they're like, "Look,

we can we can take out our guy and make sure that he dies quick and easy or

Yeah. we can start a fight. Right. Right. And those are the options that

are presented to you by your incredibly uncreative compatriots. And then any creative options that you

have on top of that, those are something for you to come up with. Yeah. Yeah. Fair.

Which is interesting and it is jarring. Yeah.

Right. to realize that there are other options that you could have done something differently is

a difficult feeling to live with sometimes in games like and again I think we see this in role playing games

where you do the big action you have your moment of cool Yeah and then you flub it with a natural two

yeah and I mean I'm trying to think of how many times because I mean I I

what I have found myself more and more frequently wanting to do um is I don't

want to say like do away with skills and skill roles, but really just like change

my parameters for requiring one. Does that make sense? Trail of Cthulhu.

I probably didn't touch it because it said Cthulhu. That's fair. Uh Robin Law put together a

game called the Gumshu System. Yeah. Where if you are skilled in a thing

where chance is not necessarily a factor, you just automatically succeed.

Yeah. Right. Like the the thing that he was trying to get around in that game was

you enter a room, you are an investigator. That is your job. It's what you've been trained to do. But you

rolled so [ __ ] bad that you can't find the obvious clue. Yeah. And the game crawls to a [ __ ] halt.

Yeah. Because if you don't find the clue, you have nothing to go on. Yeah. Unless the DM decides to put the clue in

a different place, in a different way where your role didn't actually matter. In which case, why [ __ ] roll in the first place?

Yeah. Yeah. Like, so to to my mind, it's like, oh well, the reason we brought along this rogue

was their skill at lockpicking. Therefore, you would assume a certain level of I

can always pick like I I'm not a locksmith. I've had a little bit of

training in how to do like lock repair and key mastering and I can pick a lock

if it's a certain type of lock. I I just can't. Yeah. Well, and like I think

that you can make those types of skills more interesting by

having them pass automatically in circumstances where you aren't stressed.

Yeah. Right. Like if you have enough time, if you have the opportunity to like sit down and prepare, you have the tools

that you need, you like have your whole like ritual, whatever it is that you're going to do to pick the [ __ ] lock, then you just pick the lock. It's not a

big deal. Yeah, right. But if you are in the middle of combat and you need to open this lock and there's water rising in the room,

it's a little more [ __ ] difficult and your ability to pick that lock becomes

more in question. I think that's a a good use for a role in that case.

And yeah, I think Robin Laws agrees. And that's part of why like when you're in a gunfight, you just roll all skills.

Yeah. Yeah. That's if you just walked into a [ __ ] room. Investigating is your job. So you

investigate and you find the [ __ ] thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I I can take my time looking around this room. I'm not under any sort of pressure. Unless I am and then maybe

I might fudge it, you know, like Oops. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that that also

creates kind of the opposite of ludon narrative dissonance. Yeah, it's called lud narrative harmony and

it's where the game system promotes a particular type of play that is expected

by the narrative. Right. Right. And we do we do see that in some types of games. So like what one of my

favorite examples of this is actually Mouseguard where failure in mouse guard

is a necessary part of gaining ability and skills.

Mhm. Because the game wants to promote the idea that you learn more from your failure than you do from your successes.

Okay. And that is baked into the [ __ ] rules. Mhm.

So, um, constraints

of the system telling you a thing and the narrative telling you a different

thing causes distress. Yeah.

Mechanics and narrative that are part of a

shared experience, something that you're doing with other people. If those things aren't in harmony, it creates a failure

of aesthetic unity. Yeah. Which can hurt.

Um and then what one of the things that I

think is interesting in our notes here is that like the the note that I have for because games are not passive, they

require you to do a thing. Um if you are asked to do things that are

morally bankrupt, that implicates you in the doing of the

morally bankrupt thing. Yeah. Which is really interesting when you

take the layer off the game, right? Like you put on this value for a while and the value is killing peasants means I

get more mana. Yeah. Yeah. How many peasants do I kill,

right? It's not a question of whether or not I'm going to kill any of them. It's how many am I going to kill?

[Laughter] And without that framework of like a

game where I am trying on a value for a time, I am making a morally abhorrent

choice by not killing like by by killing zero peasants. Any number that is not

zero, right? Um, and so yeah, the the interesting thing

about lud narrative dissonance for me is that it can really open up like how you feel about games. Yeah.

Right. Like how do you incorporate this into your

games? How do you mitigate it in your games when you do? Is it something that you mitigate? Is it something you

actively try to court? Yeah. Well, and and this it's funny that

like we come at it from the the dissonance angle because like I think

the the the flip side of the coin is what I think about a lot more in the board game

space. Like the games that I love are the ones that

are best able to for me like allow me to

feel like I'm actually inhabiting that role. like it's not just like a puzzle to be solved or or you know some some um

randomness to mitigate, but like you know when I'm playing Aran Noa, do I feel like I'm really the director of a

zoo? like uh you know uh finding new uh attractions and and and setting things

up to to uh promote conservation efforts like when you know one one of the reasons I I dislike Katan is because I

don't feel like I'm actually helping a civilization grow, you know,

right? Like I've played a lot of other civilization games

and Katana is not considered a civilization game probably because it doesn't feel like you're actually in

control of the civilization, but like you know comparing the ones that I've played and loved to the ones that just

felt like busy work. I mean there's there's I'm not going to name the game because I will get a flack for it, but

there is a game out there that's like it it was it was number one on Board Game Geek for a while. It's it's a revered

civilization game. I like it less than other ones that I own because those ones I felt more like I was part of the

civilization and not just playing a civilization game, right? Um

well, that's that assumption of value, right? Which I think is really interesting, right? Like you have that opportunity to put on a zookeeper's

values, right? and understand what the constraints of that person's role are

through the mechanical constraints that you've placed on the game. Yeah. And that is a really interesting way for

us to experience other worldviews temporarily and the narrative dissonance can

undermine that in a big way. Well, and and what I would love to get a deeper dive on is there there's a game from

Stonemire Games that just came out recently called Vantage, and I've been playing it and I absolutely love it. I

think it's a brilliant system where what you're doing is play you're you're playing an exploration game. You and

your friends have crashlanded on an alien planet and you've got a vague

objective at the start like I got to collect some crystals or or do some other thing to sort of progress the

narrative to how am I going to you know make contact with the rest of the fleet and get home or what have you. Um, but

you are it's essentially a choose your own adventure through the uh through the

the landscape and every time. So every time you go to a

new location, you can do one action there from eight possible ones. And they

are all serving the purpose of, you know,

learning more about the world around you or interacting with the world in some way. You get a little description of what you see when you get there and you

just kind of choose what to do from the available options. And the mechanics in no way prevent you from doing anything.

you always succeed at doing that thing. It's just a matter of what kind of

resource strain are you going to have to manage. You know, you're essentially just mitigating the the consequences of

the action that you're doing. Um, but something as simple as what in in any

other game would be like an aggressive fight action in this system is called um

I think it's just called like not like conquer, but I I I can't remember the exact word uh off the top of my head,

but it's just I'm just going to like assert my will on this situation.

And the way that they've written, the way that that plays out in every different situation truly does make you

feel like the mechanics allow me to do whatever I want to do. I'm just going to

have to, you know, find out what that thing I wanted to do really means in a bigger context. Um, so yeah, like the

it's interesting for the morality side of it, right? like the the the doing of thing where if you are asserting your

dominance over things, what are the consequences of that and how do you mitigate those consequences in the

future? Like I think overcome or something like that like whe and whether that manifests as you

trying to like fight the thing that's in front of you or you trying to like like literally like turn off a storm,

right? Is so interesting. Yeah, that kind of comes back to like

the the seat tai muan idea of like striving against obstacle

um imaginary obstacle to do and then you just automatically win at strive which

is good. Um what is your

favorite ludon narrative dissonance experience that you've ever had in anything? H I

know like what my most memorable ones are, but um uh punching a wizard on a dragon's back.

Yes. But that but I say that but also at the same time like I didn't fail at what

I was trying to do, right? Like I rolled well enough to stay

on the dragon's back. I obviously succeeded in punching a dead wizard. It's just the consequence of what

happened didn't really reflect my success mechanically,

you know. That is fair. That is and and that is I feel like that is a type of dissonance where it's just like

sorry, this is the the reality of what's going to happen no matter how good you were at it. Um yeah, that that's the aesthetic unity

side of it where like you have succeeded at thing and now you're

being punished for doing thing, right? Um even though your understanding of the

goals and the values that were placed on thing suggested that you were going to

be rewarded instead. Right. Right. Um, but my favorite is probably Fiasco.

Okay. I I have played a bit of Fiasco. And the thing that I love about it is that the

game sets you up early with the idea of you are going to have

big plans. You have really big opportunities that you are

going to capitalize on right away. You just need to be kind of a dick to do it.

Right. And then the entire later half of the game is how all of your striving has

crumbled to [ __ ] around you. Just like the worst pop

the fiasco. Yeah. It is a game that um promotes having very organized,

wellthoughtout, proper goals and then rewards absolute [ __ ] chaos. Right.

Yeah. And that almost perfectly encapsulates the

feeling of a Cohen brothers movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The best laid plans never survived getting

punched in the face or whatever that uh combination of quotes is.

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