Writing Things in Networks is Unreasonably Effective

Recently, writing things in networks has been a big topic in the blogosphere. Examples include thinking of characters in terms of the network of relationships they represent , writing encounters as ecological networks (even pretty realistic food webs ), and writing rooms in pairs (pairs are just small networks after all).

It seems that writing all kinds of things for RPGs profits from doing so in the form of networks. I think that this is because building networks is the primary activity in any RPG.

Whereas most board or video games present you with a pre-existing set of nodes (entities) and edges (relationships between them) that you can then shape, the act of playing an RPG can be viewed as adding completely new kinds of nodes and edges to a set and then using this set to build wildly different kinds of networks. So the unique characteristic of RPGs is that the networks they present the players with are very dynamic compared to the more static ones in other kinds of games and media, and always in the process of becoming. RPGs are network builders, not shapers.

They can do this because what happens during an RPG session is negotiated between the players during play to a larger degree. Humans are very good at determining if a network of relations is plausible – this is in large part what we have evolved to do. So no designer has to determine in advance if a specific kind of node or edge makes sense in relation to all others. This can be done ad-hoc at the table.

A node in this case can be anything. PCs, NPCs, locations, items, weapons, monsters, events. You describe what something is, and then you link it to the existing network in some way by describing how it relates to other nodes. The meaning something has during play is determined by the number and quality of these links.

As play goes on, new links between entities can and will be established and existing ones changed. This is largely what play is.

And this is why writing rooms, encounters, and characters in networks is so unreasonably effective: they seed small networks with more material for play. Instead of adding single nodes to the network of the game, which then have to be integrated in a sometimes cumbersome process, you add whole new sub-networks at once, building a kind network of networks – an internet.

In this sense, preparing an encounter as a network can almost be seen as "skipping sessions" during which the group would've done mostly the same thing, only slower.

Encounters as Transformations

When viewed this way, (random) encounters can also be seen as transformations you apply to the existing network, adding or erasing nodes and edges. The perceived quality of an encounter is thus determined by the strength of the links it introduces and the magnitude of the transformation it applies.

If an encounter is simply a non-agentic thing that shows up and the party decides to ignore it, (almost) no transformation has taken place.

But make the transformation too radical, or pretty radical transformations too frequent, and coherence and plausibility will suffer, severing too many existing relations at once, and leading to a more or less random game.

This implies the existence of a "band of transformation complexity" an encounter should fall into to be perceived as "good". This band might actually shift depending on the properties of the existing network. A game that has been going for quite some time, and thus has built up a dense graph, can withstand bigger transformations. So even in games without character levels and tiers, encounters can become more severe over time.

Networked Cultures of Play

Depending on the system you play, you will introduce certain kinds of links more frequently than others. In a story game, they might mostly describe social relations . While in others, they might be more "logical" in nature, describing naturalistic relations of cause and effect.

In this sense, it's no surprise that in OSR kind of games – a genre of games that is more about solving problems than telling classically-structured stories – NPCs are often modeled as problems to be solved . This turns what would otherwise be social relations into logical ones, bringing the nature of these NPC nodes and their links more into line with the rest of the network.

Party Relationships

The act of establishing character backgrounds and (intra-party) relationships prior to play is another case of pre-shaping the network this way. These things establish a certain "density-potential" from the start, that would otherwise have to be arduously achieved during often rather long stretches of play.

Such dense linking improves the quality of a seed network. Links "lie dormant" at the start of a game and can then be "activated" during play, bringing with them the potential to trigger transfomations and add further nodes to the network.

... so when viewed like this, maybe what we're talking about here is actually more like State Charts than classical networks?

Cover image: Crazy Quilt by Unknown