Dialogues on Expressionist Games
This week Jay Dragon dropped yet another thought bomb on the RPG internet with her Expressionist Games Manifesto. If you haven't read it, you really should, in my opinion it already belongs in the canon of games design masterworks (whatever the fuck that means). Also, if you haven't read it this post probably won't have any meaning for you.
My reaction
Initially I found the post annoying, as I often find Jay's polemics tracts^1. It's not an easy read, for me at least. I'm not an academic, I don't have a foundation of art criticism. Theater is not an artistic medium I particularly enjoy so I didn't even know there was such a thing as "American Expressionist Theater". I once had an exchange with Jay about a thought she had about the similarity between poetry and games where I told her I didn't have much interest in poetry and her response was ["If you're not curious I can't help you"]. I didn't find this insulting, she was right, and plainly spoke to why it wasn't a valuable discussion to have. Jay doesn't have any time to waste, even if I do.
I haven't been on Bluesky as much lately, and I don't know if I follow the right people to find "the discourse", but unsurprisingly it seems that some people were angry, condescending, and (intentionally?) obtuse in their responses to the post.
I think points 1 and 2 are actually more closely tied than I initially realized because one of the status quos that Jay often demolishes is my supposed mastery of the form. I've been playing and running RPGs for 2/3rds of my life. While I'm always striving to improve my craft, and I strongly believe that assumptions undermine growth I can't be aware of all the assumptions I'm making. I've been building an edifice block by block, higher and higher. Jay is like a river that's eroding the ground it's built upon.
Dialogues
Serket of Fluorite Guillotine kicked off a discussion of the manifest on discord. Her preferred style of play tends toward trad/neo-trad or probably some newer play culture that has yet to be defined, taxonomy's a bitch. Like me Serket was grappling with what the fuck Expressionist Gaming even meant, and how/if it could be applied to her preferred style of play. I've found the discussion very helpful for my understanding of the paradigm, so I'm going to reproduce some of the discussion here, with some commentary.
Serket: My understanding of expressionism is the game causes enough friction that to achieve your goals you must stop playing the game as written \
Dwiz: I mean, I think it's a flexible idea. That's certainly one thing you could do with it that would be very interesting. But it's got room for other ways of implementing the basic principles. Jay did describe it as a new direction for design and play, after all
Like, a lot of rules are about simulating the game's world and its internal logic and contents, right? But also, to me at least, the goal that you're playing towards counts as a "rule" of play.
"In AD&D, you hunt for treasure."
"In World Wide Wrestling, you put on the best wrestling show you can while advancing your own career within the promotion."
"In Paranoia, you follow Friend Computer's orders to hunt down dissidents."
At some point, you might choose to abandon the game's goal, thereby breaking one of its central rules. But that doesn't mean the separate rules governing the simulation must also be broken. "Oh shit okay, so you're disobeying an order from Friend Computer? Well, based on how Friend Computer treats the NPC dissidents... I think they're about to order someone else to hunt you down now."
By my estimation this means that Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues may actually be an Expressionist adventure, and Paranoia itself is probably an ur-Expressionist game. In order to survive in Alpha-Complex the troubleshooters (here to shoot trouble) have to subvert and undermine the rules of the setting. In fact its a game where knowing the rules of the game itself is sometimes punished, and cheating them is at least tonally encouraged.
Eventually Zedeck Siew joined the discussion with this thought:
Zedeck: I think it may be more precise to say that the Expressionist mode is concerned with authority and where it flows from. From what quarters do the rules of the world come? Who does the establish order of the world benefit?
This sparked a bit of understanding for me. RPGs are often described as conversations. I believe it's been said that an RPG is a conversation between the players, the GM, and the rules (and the dice). One of the most important advancements in roleplay is the idea that non-GM players could be given more narrative control over the game e.g. not just whether or not they swing their sword, but what the consequences of that action are. One of the core tenets of OSR play (not exclusively) is that the rules do not have sole mechanical authority, often referred to as "rulings over rules". If I understand correctly part of what makes an Expressionist game is an antagonistic relationship between the players and the rules, and eventually a rejection of the rules authority over the game by the players. A refusal to cede mechanical authority to the rules.
Dadstep/Agreeable Chatter and Elmcat arrived at a similar conclusion
Dadstep: [...]
In the trad RPG space there is a strain of adversarial play culture wherein players feel that they are playing against the GM as opposing sides
I think you are identifying adversity here in expressionism that is still collaborative between all players of the game, the game itself is simulating an adversity that can be challenged and dismantled and thrown off, and even if the GM is running the engine that imposes the adversity, that dismantling is part of their role to facilitate maybe
Elmcat: Authority in games is really something that I find interesting. I often come to the conclusion that it's usually about control. You are called the Dungeon Master you are the authority of the game. But really it's how far are you willing to let the rules decide outcomes for you. People are seeking comfort or confidence in deciding things and a lot of explicit rules give the illusion of structure and control.
Prismatic Wasteland: JOIN THREAD
More wisdom from Zedeck:
Zedeck: Hm? By this definition, Jay's own Seven Part Pact isn't an Expressionist Game, since the bulk of its ruleset intentionally upholds a patriarchal order, an order that can be played into (I did, in the playtest game I was part of)
I think that, crucially, Expressionist games allow for a great deal of group and interior questionings of power, regardless of whether players act on these conflicts or no. Whether you resist the rules that govern you, and to what degree, is the question that this mode makes interesting. It doesn't sanction resisting. \
I enter the discussion:
Nael: Thoughts on games that don't have enough rules to struggle against? FKR specifically?
Dwiz: Personally, I count level design (setting, scenarios, "content") as a form of rule. It's an element of the game that provides structure to play, and it's often intentionally designed to be struggled against
See, for example, Zedeck's works being cited as expressionist, despite not really being system-focused at all (to my recollection)
In 7PP, nearly all the "mechanics" are grounded in a diegetic context anyway, so the line between system and setting is completely blurred
Some comments divorced from their context.
Dadstep: I do think itâs exciting that we get to see the medium go through this like pressure cooker of working through the classical, baroque, romantic, modern, and postmodern periods in like half of a lifetime, but itâs challenging and weird to engage with because the form is evolving faster than it can be, like, played as a hobby
Which is why I do think that there will naturally be reactionary tendencies - not necessarily reactionary or conservative as in political leanings, but as in âhold on I just got to the OSR from 5e and now weâre doing experimental black box theater where Russian roulette is a resolution mechanic?â
But thatâs where I think tracking the artistic tendencies of the form will be a more interesting lens of analysis than the shitpost thread we had last week or two weeks ago mapping tabletop onto like Christian orthodoxy and reformation
Jay Dragon: re playing an expressionist game non-expressionistically, i think this happens a lot w the few expressionist games that exist
Dwiz: [Regarding Expressionism in Free Kriegspiel] Quite close to this, actually:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobbovia
Zak H.:If Iâm reading correctly, Papers Please is a good example here
When I played the first time I was like - haha, silly designers. They donât realise that if I feed my family one day and heat them the next, nobody will get sick and die
Sure got one over them! \
Eventually the discussion turns to monsters in general, and 5E.
Zedeck: I also think that a useful way to think about Expressionist Games is this: it is not so much a definitional category ("A chicken is a bird, not a mammal") and more an art movement / tradition of creators making works that aspire to similar goals.
With that framing, asking "Is this an Expressionist Game?" is much like asking "Is this a science fiction story?"---a porous definition that has as much to do with the intent of the creator (and because of our form, the players) as much as a work's intrinsic traits
How this is then useful: Consider the D&D5E Monster Manual.
D&D is not an Expressionist Game, by intent. But with the Expressionist lens, you could speculate of the Monster Manual as a diegetic naturalists' notebook
And thereby aspire to make an overtly Expressionist take on the Monster Manual---"what does it mean for the world, the narrative, and play, that Volo (or whoever the fuck) believes & asserts that Orcs have -2 INT?" \
Serket: I think I had started from a definitional standpoint because I wanted to figure out how I could put together an expressionist game. But: at least half of expressionism is reliant on the players execution, which makes it impossible to create a game that is always expressionist.
I have since started applying expressionism as a lens and I do think it's interesting. My opening thoughts in this thread were wrong: I think a lot of the mecha writing I do has expressionist potential if the players want to pursue it. It's been really good to talk my way through this idea. \
Zak H: Say you want to put pressure on Voloâs claim by playing an orc wizard. You say, âhigh INT is a cultural construct rather than a metaphysical truthâ
Itâs hard to put that pressure on while remaining in 5e though. Because the rules reify the metaphysical truth - your spells will just fail that more often, youâre less effective than a human wizard \
Zedeck: Well ... whose truth? What does INT describe or measure, exactly? It is the equivalent of our real-world IQ, which notoriously favours particular forms of intelligence over others? Who does Mystra privilege, that the dominant magical paradigms favour certain cultures and species?
Imagine an adventure where you spend an extended time with an orc or goblin (or otherwise traditionally evil D&D race) community, and experience a social and cultural context that, while never technically contradicting their D&D statblocks, also demonstrates how utterly insufficient a statblock is in describing full personhood. \
Zak H: Ah yep. I had got so far: INT is bullshit.
So I was thinking to get around âorcs make bad wizardsâ you would have to hack 5e (or ignore the offending rules). But what youâre advocating is to go deeper in, remain relentlessly diegetic. Why is Mystra holding magic back from Orcs? Why does God believe in IQ? Is there another path for them to the arcane?
And included because I think it make me look smart, but also was an important extrapolation of how I already looked at magic in 5E and other D&D derived games.
Nael: This isn't quite true. Higher intelligence doesn't give you more spells, it makes your attack spells more likely to hit and do more damage, and it makes your other spells harder to save against.
INT is a measure of how good you are at using magic to kill and impose your will on others. \
Binary: INT being equivalent to IQ actually does track really well: not in the sense that IQ is an indicator of actual intelligence, but that it's a measure of what a very specifically ordered society might want out of someone "intelligent" (knowing very specific facts, situational analysis, and being able to murder people with magic more efficiently) and that not valuing it makes you less societally "intelligent".
Parting Thoughts
I desperately want to play Jay's upcoming game 7 Part Pact although how to manage it logistically is an open question, especially when I haven't been able to make the time/energy to get an in person group going. Beyond that I'm not sure that I'll be looking to play many Expressionist Games. I think that the thesis Jay often returns to, that games can and should be work (the good kind), be tools to change ourselves and further our thinking is a good one. She's right that it's important that we acknowledge the power games have, they don't change us, but they might give us a framework that helps us change ourselves. I'm not sure I want my hobby to be that though, at least not most of the time. I'm very thankful though, because any expansion of my perspective on RPGs makes me better able to enjoy them. New tools that I can pick and choose as I like, new ways of structuring my thinking toward a session. So, thanks for setting my brain on fire I guess.
Note: Jay also posted an example of an Expressionist Game. Her description of it, and a link to where it can be purchased is here: https://bsky.app/profile/jdragsky.bsky.social/post/3lyghryc6fk26
[^1] I mistakenly believed that a polemic could be in support of an idea or an attack on an idea.
Nael Fox-Priebe