sharks + planes as formerly seen on Twitter

There is a periodic discovery-and-shitstorm kerfluffle that goes around the tabletop RPG space every so often, with a recurrence period of between 6 and 18 months normally, though I have seen several intervals of 3 months or fewer, which I'm not certain whether to count as a prolonged single incident or an abnormal incidence. OK, actually there are a lot of them, with similar recurrence periods, but this one in particular is a thorn in my side because it attacks perceptions on a variety of levels and it gets people VERY mad when the underlying statement is in fact, very close to being value-neutral, but has a tendency to trigger peoples' "you're doing it WRONG" fight-or-flight reflex erroneously, and when triggered, people never choose flight, and are very likely to choose fight, with a growing instance of fawn (over someone else perceived to be doing the fighting).

This particular dagger in my spleen is the question of "But... IS [Game] a combat game...?"
The game in question is usually Dungeons and Dragons, though I think I've actually seen it be a World of Darkness property, Exalted, or one time actually Blades in the Dark (that was a very strange cycle).

I hate this question, because it is boring.

It is boring and it is inflammatory, because it gets people defensive and then aggressive in different amounts and it flares out into shitkicking and mud-throwing before it ever grows into something useful. It polarizes people over morals that do not exist, judgments that are not being passed. It is a figmentary nothing of a bullshit baby basic introductory masturbatory exercise, because it only exists until the endless devouring worm of "combat game... BAD?" or "nuh-uh, it NOT combatgame!" lays the ashes to rest until the next cycle of discovery unearths the sacred texts (which I do not hold in high regard, but that is a different essay) and the wildfire bursts again and the cycle of reaping happens and WE ARE ALL LEFT FUCKING POORER FOR IT because social media only encourages driving marginalized people you disagree with further and further into trauma and isolation.

So I'm going to engage once with the core question, and then I'm going to show how it could become interesting. And before you ask yes, this post is entirely self-indulgent, this is for me, because I am tired. I am TIRED. Of this bullshit. I encountered this fucking question for the first time in the year of our lady Jesus Christ's Fanged Vampire (From Birth) Older Twin Sister Carmilla NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY NINE and it HAS. NOT. CHANGED. since then. The battlefield has changed and NO ONE. NO ONE listens or learns and it is always, ALWAYS the same words.

So I am posting a razor for use in analysis.

AMARANTH M'S GAME FOCUS RAZOR

If I cannot build a character for this game which does not engage with specific activity-focus language, I am going to believe that this game is about that focus.

Alternate phrasing:

If every character I build must always have specific interaction points useful only in a given game-focus style, the more of those interaction points exist, the more likely the game is to be "about" that focus. If I cannot build a character that doesn't intentionally¹ interact with a particular activity or focus, that focus is likely to be what the game² is about.

Explanation of Amaranth M's Game Focus Razor

Words have meanings.

Before you get defensive, this was not a transphobic dogwhistle - but it often is! I chose those three words to demonstrate the statement and illustrate the concept in as few words as possible, before getting into the theory behind it.

Obviously, words have meanings. That's why we use them. That meaning rarely stops at the dictionary definition, though, or even the immediate context of the phrase or sentence. Words accrue symbolic weight through a lot of factors, and through that weight, take on further meanings.

This principle is illustrated in the moral and value judgments imparted to "is it a combat game", but also present in the game text itself. I'm not going to go so far as to say "if a game has a thorough combat system and/or chapter, it's a game about combat" like some people I've seen in the discussion, but the more presence an idea, a principle, an activity has in the game's text, the more heavily weighted that idea becomes, the more likely the game is to be perceived as "about" that activity. Let's look at combat in dungeons and dragons.

In second edition advanced Dungeons and Dragons, every class had a THAC0 value. You could not build a character without knowing, on some level, how likely a character was to land an attack against any given armor class. It did not always advance, but every class had it. On this axis, it was possible to build a character that wasn't "about" combat. You had to engage with it on some level, but you could select a class that was "bad" at it and never got "better" at it. This extends further out: obviously classes exist that don't engage in fisticuffs or close combat or archery or or or or, but DO specialize in destructive magics or other "combat" maneuvers, and so you can't judge things purely by the Number Required To Hit Armor Class Zero, but it's a good benchmark. You also can't get away from hit points, saves, and other things which mark it as "A Game Where Characters Go Adventuring In Dangerous Places And/Or Do Dangerous Things".

In third edition Dungeons and Dragons, every class had a Base Attack Bonus progression. Every class gets better at hitting things with intent to wound. You now cannot get away from base physical combat. Unless you alter the underlying mechanics of the game, you have an increasing base attack bonus. You will eventually get a second (or third) (or fourth) melee attack if you go all-out, even if you are bad at it. If you do alter the underlying mechanics of the game, you are indicating that you, personally, would rather the game NOT be all about combat as a basic language by rejecting that frame and that intent.

In fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons, and then again in fifth, every class has the same Base Attack Bonus progression. In fourth edition, everyone got a flat bonus of "half your level" and added any proficiency bonus, in fifth edition the flat bonus was removed, but the proficiency bonus was retained. In a way, fifth edition was almost a step back, but every character class is still granted proficiency with a set of combat weapons.

I am unable to build a character in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition without engaging directly in the language of combat. I can request specific exemptions: I can go to my DM and say "Mark, dear friend, I know it's disadvantageous but can I NOT start with any weapon and armor proficiencies" but by negating the frame, I am invoking the frame.

That's before I go into the primary use-case of majority rules in the game, before I go into the signals sent by the phrasing of the rest of the game, the wording of published adventures, the page and text space taken up by "combat encounters" as opposed to "the rest of the game" in adventures. This completely ignores community attitudes as to what "good" magic items and class features are, this is purely looking at the intentions signified by the text, by the word choice, by the presence and absence of emphases, by what the game talks about and how much it weights.

Amaranth M's Game Focus Razor cannot tell you conclusively "Dungeons and Dragons is a game about combat; it is a combat game" but it can slice away confusion to indicate "have you looked at what the game itself tells you it is about, by the signals encoded in the text itself".

The Interesting Part

Do you know what else is absent?

Moral and value judgments.

Look, by acknowledging what the game IS about, you are freed to engage with the game honestly. I am not here³ to tell you that you should not run a Dungeons and Dragons game which is explicitly not about Combat, or which saves Combat for particularly dramatic moments, or or or etc etc etc.

I think it is foolish to choose a game (system and setting) and then avoid or ignore what the game (system and setting) is About in your game (group and session), I would be very upset if someone recruited me to a Lancer game and then judged the success of that game by "we never even get in the robots, it's all roleplaying, isn't it GREAT?" but I am, in fact, not telling you not to do that. I am telling you to be honest with yourself about it.

The energy you spend insisting that D&D is not about combat could instead be saved and channeled into improving your personal game by evaluating your approach to it. Why ARE you playing this game "about" combat in a way that isn't "about" that? Is something gained by this ill-fit? Is it chosen because you're familiar with it? Is the effort of teaching saved worth the friction of unused components? I cannot answer these questions for you! I can answer them for myself, I could probably give insights towards your individual case, but I cannot axiomatically answer them for you because your group is unique in its alchemy, even when it follows predictable patterns.

Analysis is not a value judgment. Descriptors are not themselves a value judgment, unless they are about something which has an attached value⁴ and "is this game about combat" is not a value judgment, I believe. I think the fact that a game so blatantly "about" combat has become the substrate of a huge chunk of the hobby synonymous like Xerox, omnipresent as breathing, a brand so much part of someone's identity that questioning it triggers fight-or-flight response is a bad thing, but that's not the same as saying "combat game bad", it's me questioning "why are you using a game that wants so badly to be a tactical skirmish game to play your regency romance fantasy?"

I want people not to be afraid of critique. I want people not to be terrified of criticism, not to be so tightly wound around their hobby consumption that they'd rather stressfully and clumsily bolt misfit segments onto an increasingly tortured frame than suffer a breath of criticism. I also want people to be notably gentler to the people they're critiquing; if you're not in combat with someone, it's not necessarily worth starting combat over this. Kill the cop in your head, especially when it comes to unneeded violence, and so on and so forth and so many platitudes.

There's so much more that I want to say, but I am so thoroughly out of energy after this rant, who the hell knows if I'll get to them. This is a horrible thesis close, but I wasn't writing a thesis. As said above, this is a scream for my own benefit; maybe you'll enjoy it too, who knows. If you get something out of it, I'm glad.

But I am so, so tired and the irritation got so much from just constantly seeing it pass my eyes that I lost self-control and had to scream about it.

Thank you for your time.

Edit to add a TRULY petty subchost dig that is still in line with the rest of my text, but would not be taken helpfully on the original platform

“Hey just so you know I wrote a D&D adventure where combat was the fail state, getting into combat meant you lost, it was very successful and everyone loved it, the game can be anything you want it to be”

So you’re telling me that you intentionally subverted the expectations of the game in order to generate friction, you deliberately inverted normal assumptions, you added significant challenge by removing primary operating choices from the menu, and you painstakingly set your piece up in opposition to the way things generally work?

Yeah that doesn’t sound like The Game is about combat at all, does it.

It’s not like contrasts illustrate norms or anything. It’s not like exceptions prove rules. It’s not like negating the frame draws increased attention to what’s being negated.

And you’re framing yourself as a beacon.

I’m so tired.

1. I mean the intent of the game, not the intent of the player. It's entirely possible for me to build a Dungeons and Dragons Fighter and deliberately never take a combat action; that is, however, me ignoring the intent made plain in the game's text.

2. "the game" means different things from "YOUR game" (and sometimes different things from "the" game). I'm speaking about game-as-text here, not game-as-group-of-friends or game-as-session or game-as-entertainment or any of the other meanings of game. I might say something about this in the essay proper, I don't know, I'm putting this footnote here knowing that it might or might not be a wasted footprint. If I don't get to it elsewhere, at least it's here! hurrah!

3. in this essay, regardless of what I might otherwise think

4. If I make a bold claim that a game written by a neo-Nazi who has only escalated their views since release from prison is a neo-Nazi game because of the neo-Nazi text contained within its pages, that's probably a value judgment from me, as an example