Economics is the study of resource allocation and management; behavioral economics is the study of how theoretical economics meets practical, human reality. The split between theory and practice is an entire subfield of economics, and arguably other disciplines benefit from the same thing. The broader study of the alignment of human decision making is called decision science, and it takes the P-Q charts of economics and amplifies them with psychology and game theory.

Tabletop roleplaying games are no strangers to decision science, both within and outside the context of playing the game itself. This week I was inspired to look back at one of the most influential recent schools of RPG theory thanks to the Taskerland review of Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012 by William J. White. The review starts with a reread of Ron Edwards’ essay System Does Matter in the context of the book, and restates the thesis of the essay more clearly than most commentators do nowadays: While good games come from good GMs and good players, better games come when those two are aligned with the right game mechanics and systems. This dovetails with notions of GNS and accusations of gameplay ‘incoherence’, but the issue, as the Taskerland review points out, is less with Edwards’ description than his prescription: Aim to play more narrowly aligned games with players who share your priorities.

And this is how we get to Satisficing. Coined by Herbert Simon in the 1950s, Satisficing is a term for decision-making where a decision is made by finding the first acceptable decision, as opposed to the completely optimal one. This idea was first introduced as Simon was studying decision-making within firms, work that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize. What made Simon’s work so consequential was that he was able to present a schema that could reflect real-world decision making, something economic models at a simplistic level cannot do. It’s with that consideration that I take the concept to a much ‘less’ heady field of study: How does satisficing reflect choices in the TTRPG hobby about how games are designed and what games are played?

As pointed out in the Taskerland review, if we start by considering games like Vampire: the Masquerade which were accused of being ‘incoherent’, we need to consider what we mean by that and what the consequences are. What often ends up being discussed is having a range of mechanics that all seem to allow for or even encourage different playstyles, playstyles which would often be difficult to manage simultaneously. A game like Call of Cthulhu may be a better example, as the mechanics are incredibly broad for a game that aims itself squarely at a fairly specific sort of storyline. Beyond that, there have been other games intending to be Lovecraftian, some of which even went for the narrower approach, and even if that’s done well, Call of Cthulhu itself is still the preferred, most popular choice.

As also pointed out, what Edwards was suggesting, while it implied changes to game design, had more striking impacts on group composition. If your group is made up of individuals with conflicting playstyles, the best thing to do according to Edwards is to sort that out so that the resultant group is all on board with the same desired experience. As the popularity of TTRPGs has exploded, and as the internet made it easier and easier to find other gamers, this seemed more and more possible. Hang out in the fan spaces of your favorite designers, find likeminded people, and enjoy playing games tailored to how you want to play. It certainly worked in certain corners of the hobby; indie Discords, OSR Discords, and the entire fandom of Burning Wheel are able to come together and play specific games without the risk that they either can’t find players or would alienate their friends with a playstyle incompatibility.

Where my own thoughts really diverge with this is the implication that we’ve really seen a wholesale structural change in the hobby regarding how expansive games are and how groups come together. Thanks to online social networks there is certainly more focused play going on, more people who are looking for something specific and finding it. The mainstream, though, seems to rely on expansive games as much as ever, and the social environments that designers exist in have changed the composition of games more than the composition of play groups. What happens when there are fewer expansive games? Well, the old ones stay relevant. Once again we’re talking about D&D.

I don’t think there’s a better example of the demand for an expansive, satisficed game system than the story of D&D from 2000 to 2014. The third edition of D&D became the most popular through a combination of accessibility, marketing, and play variety, not to mention the success of the OGL and d20 broadly. Fourth Edition, though, was a step backwards at least from a sales perspective, and some of that lies with the mechanics. The game focused more on grid-based play, character and class balance, and skirmish game strategy, with non-combat elements diminished and delineated. None of these things on their own are bad, mind you, but they framed D&D as a much more specific game. It also meant that 4e was no longer a satisficing solution for many play groups; the grid emphasis gave less flexibility to tone down or minimize combat mechanics when compared to 3e (how much of this was perception as opposed to reality is unclear, but also irrelevant). In 2014, when Wizards of the Coast released 5e, it was back to a satisficing game again. Mechanics were toned down or removed, many of the more aggravating balance issues (i.e. magic items) were sidelined, and the game generally looked more amorphous. Amorphous is the point, of course; it’s less important for ‘The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game’ to be something specific than it is for it to look like it could be something for everyone.

Even in the two partisan camps of the hobby, post-Forge indie and the OSR, satisficing drives which designs actually find mainstream appeal. Apocalypse World led the charge out of the gate for indie with a very strong design and aesthetic, but its success was also predicated on it looking like games that had come before. Nevertheless, it was later steamrolled by its own derivative, Blades in the Dark, which pulled even more traditional game architecture into it and allowed for a more diverse range of potential playstyles. On the other side of the fence, arguably some of the most successful OSR products are those that let groups reach a compromise between the playstyle they’re used to in modern D&D and that proposed through the absolutist rhetoric of OSR blog posts. Dungeon Crawl Classics, Shadowdark, and the Without Number series all allow flexibility and are recognizable to players not necessarily reading through The Glatisant or Rise Up, Comus on a weekly basis.

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So what does this mean, besides that compromising on design makes for a broader game than not? There are some important implications if you believe that the real synergy of a roleplaying game happens at the table as opposed to within the rules text. If ultimately you see the most consequential parts of the game happening at your table, then using a game which everyone is at least partly happy with, satisficing the game choice outcome, is the best way to get to the stage of creating those play experiences. If you still play with friends and kicking someone out who doesn’t match your playstyle isn’t on the table, satisficing your game choice is the best (possibly only) way forward.

Of course game design has changed, but it’s important to acknowledge that though the quality of games has arguably improved since the 70s and 80s (and 90s, and so on), not every change made over the course of the last 50 years or so was necessarily a good one. While old games like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and of course Dungeons and Dragons remain popular because their brands and settings are recognizable, they also retain some of the design sensibilities from their earlier editions which allow for expansive play and playstyle compromises. When I think of the criticisms I’ve made to D&D on a design basis, it’s mostly about letting the previously more expansive rules around exploration, strongholds, and domain management fall by the wayside.

Speaking of D&D, the most successful secondary games in the D&D sphere are all built around finding slightly different points of optimality within the same broad sphere. Pathfinder skews more complex, Daggerheart skews more narrative, but the aim of both is to provide an incrementally better solution to the same underlying question of satisficing and compromise.The fact that these are likely the most successful games in the mainstream hobby besides D&D itself does make me worry about the impact of D&D and marketing, yes, but it also makes me think about what’s actually happening in mainstream gaming these days broadly. What is the newest expansive mainstream RPG property to really break out? If you count licensed properties, it was probably the Cosmere RPG. If you don’t…it’s hard to say. Everything is either decades old or based on another game.

The staying power of games like Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Cyberpunk, and D&D is that, within a typical group of gamers, there’s something to appeal to everyone. Your group may poke and prod and tweak, but these are games designed to bend, not break, from a time when hacking was de rigueur and your experience wasn’t expected to match anyone else’s. That’s still true in the most popular indie games coming out today; there’s still flexibility even if the experience is more targeted. As long as we’re talking about a gaming group (solo games can be as specific as they want to be), there’s an additional layer between the game on the page and the game at the table, one negotiated by the people sitting at that table every time they start a new game. It’s that satisficing, that finding what about a game allows everyone to find it acceptable, which will let a gaming group then create the gaming experience they want. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to go the Ron Edwards route and find a group, online most likely, that preemptively aligns with your chosen playstyles. I do, however, think that playing with a disparate group of your friends and seeing and understanding how they play is going to be the best way to become a better gamer. As always, bringing together different perspectives is the best way to create an altogether new experience. All it’s going to take is a bit of compromise.

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