1. Why Do A Thing?

I’ve lived most of my life with depression. For those who lack a first person experience of depression I would describe my experience with it as a deep and abiding certainty of the pointlessness of all things. As a result, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to understand how it is that a person comes to care about something. After all, it stands to reason that before you do a thing you should have some reason that you want it to be done.

Assume for a moment that all value is relative. Each person determines how important a thing is to them based on a tangled and ever-changing web of abstract relationships. A cheeseburger may have wildly different value to a person throughout the course of a single day. That value could be dramatically effected by hunger, exhaustion, location, time of day, weather, personal beliefs, and any number of other factors. The point being, the amount a person cares about a given thing is mutable and dependent.

If you’re not hungry then there’s probably no reason to eat a cheeseburger. If you can’t exchange money for goods and services then there’s not much reason to collect it. If nothing you do interests you or brings you happiness, then there’s not much reason to do things.

Over the years I found a fascinating loophole. One of the fundamental aspects of a game is that it requires a temporary and voluntary assignment of value to things that might otherwise be meaningless. Anyone who has ever felt like flipping a table during a game of Risk can attest to that. In order to properly play any game a player must first accept as a given that the abstract and artificial rules of the game have value within the context of that game. In Chess, the players agree that they will move their pieces according to the established rules. Even more so, the players tacitly agree to assign some degree of subjective value to the act of achieving the established win condition. Individual moves can be given value relative to whether they move you closer to the win condition. If a player is incapable of or unwilling to assign some amount of value to the rules of play, the actions performed, and/or the outcomes achieved then it could be argued that they are not actually playing a game. Or, at the very least, one can wonder why they bothered.

Regardless of the type, when you play a game you are assigning temporary value to a conceptual framework that does not exist outside the confines of the game. You are choosing to care about ideas, if for no other reason than because it is a requirement of the game. So, if you can choose to care about an idea for the purposes of a game, it follows that you should be able to choose to care about things in your day-to-day life. This is the part that still gives me trouble.

Over the years I’ve played a wide variety of games and I’ve done some paltry research into how they are designed. Perhaps the most fascinating game to discuss from a perspective of subjective value is Dungeons and Dragons. In truth I am referring to all multiplayer cooperative tabletop roleplaying games, but I use Dungeons and Dragons here because it remains the most common touchstone for cooperative roleplaying.

The vast majority of games have fairly stable structures. Any game of Monopoly that is played according to the standard rules is going to look fairly similar to every other. The structure of a game of Monopoly is fairly rigid. The player has a very limited set of choices. At their discretion the players could choose to play by altered rules, but in so doing they have effectively created a new game. Or a new variant at the least. In contrast, a game of Dungeons and Dragons has a much much wider potential range. A lot of D&D campaigns end up looking fairly similar on a structural level, but baked into the core mechanisms of the game is the option for the players to edit the established process as they see fit. And this, quite frankly, is amazing.

Dungeons and Dragons requires multiple participants to cooperate in the creation and maintenance of a shared fictional reality. One person imagines a thing and the other players choose to treat this idea as extant within the confines of the game. Each player effectively creates their own separate mental version of the game reality built out of the ideas generated by the other players. This all leads me to wonder why it is the case that I am able to care deeply about whether or not Grognak the half-orc paladin will abandon her oath in order to seek vengeance against the necromancer who took her foot, while I find it very difficult to care about the day-to-day realities of my own life.

Every D&D character is a fiction invented by a player as an avatar to interact with the fictional game world. In many cases the character reflects some aspect of the player’s personality. At the very least, the character takes on traits or makes choices that the player finds interesting, compelling, or funny. But all motivations held by the character are the result of choices made by the player. To put it another way, if Quimbus the human fighter cares about acquiring gold it is because the player has made the decision to care about Quimbus the human fighter caring about acquiring gold. To continue that theme, if Almira the cleric cares about Quimbus the human fighter caring about acquiring gold, it is because Almira’s player has made the decision to care about the decision that Quimbus’ player made to care about Quimbus caring about acquiring gold. Abstractions of abstractions of abstractions.

The D&D player must therefore operate at two distinct levels (at the very least). They must have a concept of what they (the player) want from the game, and they must also have some concept of what motivates their character within the game world. This fascinating split has a tendency to result in different methods of play. There are players who operate their character from the first person perspective. These players attempt to inhabit their character, wearing their character like a costume. Alternately there are players who operate their character from the third person perspective. These players tend to treat their character as a game piece that they can maneuver around the board. Neither style is objectively better or worse. Neither one is right or wrong. And, in truth, the reality is that most players probably move back and forth between the two perspectives as warranted by the game. However, each perspective has a tendency to emphasize a different aspect of the game.

James P. Carse made the argument that “A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.” In that vein I will argue that the way it is often played, Dungeons and Dragons takes the form of multiple finite games nested within an infinite game.

Home campaigns are often structured to be open-ended, often spanning years or even decades. There can be quests, missions, dungeons, and goals that can be completed, rewards that can be acquired, but Dungeons and Dragons as a game has no specified win condition. There is no point at which the rules say that you have won. You play Dungeons and Dragons for as long as you care to play. Which means that you could argue that the principal goal of the player is to have an interesting and enjoyable time playing. But how does a person achieve such a nebulous goal? I will make the bold claim that in order for a player to have an interesting and enjoyable time playing they must find some way to engage with the game. The reason I find this point fascinating is that the simplest way to do this seems to be to imagine a character who cares about the game world. The player cares because the game is fun. The game is fun because the player cares. And the game continues until that is no longer true.

In my experience, to understand player engagement in D&D it is important to understand the nature of the relationship between the infinite game and the finite games nestled therein. A finite game gives a person an excuse to temporarily limit their perspective to a tightly focused set of conditions and objectives. During a game of Risk the player is allowed to let the infinite slip into the background as they concentrate on identifiable, controllable factors and a specified goal. Actions have an identifiable impact on the player’s relationship to the win condition. During a D&D dungeon crawl a player is allowed to concentrate on identifiable, controllable factors and a specified goal. Their actions have an identifiable impact on the success of the dungeon crawl. Once they’ve completed the dungeon they can rest and resupply, but eventually there will be a new quest, a new finite game, different from the last. The completion of these finite games creates the appearance of movement, change, improvement. Within the scope of the infinite game the player cannot move closer or farther away from victory. Within the infinite game the value of an action is related only to the subjective enjoyment of the players. More points does not necessarily equate to more fun. The infinite game only concludes when the players decide that it has reached its conclusion, or when the game can no longer continue.

The creation of a D&D character is itself a form of semi-finite game within the larger D&D game. The player decides what motivates their character. The player chooses what goals their character will pursue. New goals can be added, and old goals can be abandoned ad hoc. At the very least the player will likely pursue the most basic D&D goal of advancing in character levels and pursing new and more difficult in-game challenges. But a goal remains relevant only as long as the player chooses to care about it. A player who has grown tired of dungeons could choose to give their character the goal of retiring to a small farm, or dying in glorious combat. Deciding what the character cares about is a game in its own right.

Let us say that a game is an invitation to care about a fiction. Life itself can be played in this way. If a person can choose to imagine a gnome who wants to conquer a city then a person can choose to want to learn to play the piano. The infinite game of learning to play the piano can be broken into finite games of learning to play a specific songs. A person can choose to play the infinite game of achieving personal success, which can be broken down into thousands of finite games. Regardless of the specifics, the underlying fact remains true. The game is always an invitation to care about a fiction. There is no win condition. The game only concludes when the player decides that it has reached its conclusion, or when the game can no longer continue.

I’ll conclude by arguing that all of this points in the direction of the Taoist notion of wu wei, or perhaps the state of mind that leads there. Understanding the relationship between player and character allows us a useful perspective from which to view the nature of our reality. The character engages with the game world, strives to achieve goals, acquires gold, vanquishes foes, gains levels, completes quests. The player knows that this is all a fiction, but accepts the invitation to care about the immaterial for the sake of engaging with the game. A player wholly subsumed in their character is at the will of the game. They will feel every victory and every loss. A player wholly detached from the game will be unable to accept the invitation to care about the ephemeral and will be unable to enjoy the game. The Sage has the ability to switch back and forth between the two perspectives as is useful. The Sage lives in the finite and in the infinite. They will be able to delight in the wins and the losses because they know that the game is only a brief fiction, but yet they still choose to care.