[...] Here’s your explanation, from my theory-of-fun/game-grammar point of view. [...]

[...] a game grammar point of view, this is a clear example of getting the wrong end of the stick. Recall the distinctions between the “salad” and the “dressing” of a game — the [...]

[...] Koster argues that there are four stratifications in a game: mechanics, statistical variation, metaphor, and narrative. In Galatea, it is easy to see the [...]

[...] Eric Zimmerman, Katie Salen (Rules of Play, Game Design Reader) http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/05/a-bit-on-how-i-think-games-work/ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/41/9 http://www.alanemrich.com/SGI/Week_03/SGI_Week03.htm [...]

[...] A recent post on Raph Koster’s site , A bit on how I think games work, poses an interesting breakdown of game design into four layers; the mechanical, the statistical variation or content, the metaphor, and the narrative layer. [...]

[...] over on raph’s site, he talked about making a healing game. a gentleman over on the cesspit has taken up the flag in argument against it. while his argument reflects some of the same feelings i have, i don’t think he’s conveyed it very well. [...]

[...] I’ve been thinking about a game based around amorphous and locked terrain. After glancing over Abalieno’s and Raph’s (among others) discussion of games, I believe the mechanic is amorphous terrain which can be locked by player action, and the metaphor is settlement of a wild forest by a vigorous and adventuresome people. (Mechanic and metaphor provide vocabulary, a scaffolding which allows me to explore the game.) Metaphor: the world outside is amorphous Not far beyond the golden fields of the village were serried ranks of forboding trees, the beginning of the wild forest. Good villagers didn’t venture very far into the darkness under the gnarled boughs, only much needed firewood and medicinal herbs could persuade one to enter that dim wood. It was rumored that trails shifted and that the way that explorers ventured out was rarely the way that they came back. [...]

Mechanics = verbs.
Stats = adverbs.
Metaphors = nouns.
Narrative = adjectives.

Verbs can become adjectives (participles and gerunds).
Nouns can become adverbs (prepositions) and also adjectives (more prepositions).

And, of course, it’s in the modern tradition for a noun to get verbed.

–GF

For example:

Unlike StGabe, I think that if instead of ten hits it suddenly takes 5 hits to kill my opponent, I’m still playing the same game, only at a lower difficulty level.

See, now you are talking about a game that has difficulty levels which just means that we have added in some extra sorts of rules: if difficulty level == EASY then kobolds die in 5 hits else kobolds die in 10 hits. That’s a perfectly viable sort of rule to add to your game but it’s still a rule.

Now,

Hmm… and here, I am unsure. After all, this is exactly how pen and paper roleplaying games are played. You do in fact get something every different, but everyone still agrees it’s AD&D.

AD&D is a very different game than Chess. Whereas Chess is a very streamlined, your-turn-then-mine, win-loss-draw style game, AD&D is much more complicated. AD&D is a much higher-order process, it’s the sort of game that has rules that take rules as parameters (in a fashion somewhat similar to Nomic games). It’s transitions resist formal definition. But generally it is the same sort of thing. Different players, abiding by certain mechanics, provide statistical variance for the other players. Creating a certain dungeon for players is a much more complicated and less-restricted experience but, formally speaking, it has the same shape as creating a chess opening. And different DM’s, or DM’s over time, will provide very different, varying play experiences just as a different chess opponent or the same opponent over time will provide different playing experiences.

I think that, perhaps, the content-creation mechanics of games have become such an important part of some games that we want to grant them their own category of game-design. I think it makes sense to bring out their importance for some games but I’m not sure that they are indeed that different, formally, from other sorts of mechanics in more simple games. Also, I think it is a mistake to take from the importance of the content-creation mechanics in AD&D or MMORPG’s the feeling that content is somehow a core part of all games and not just a specific mechanic implemented in some games.

Examples of ludeme changes that were in the grammar (which I am going to link to again just to make sure everyone sees it):

• changing the topology of the space — notice, not the shape of the space; more specifically, changing the operational space available to a given asset (changing jump height does this, as does significantly affecting the movement a la Tribes)
• adding or subtracting an atom (for example, changing from one-hit resolution to hit location with head shots, accumulated damage, etc, adds an atom to the diagram)
• changing the loops within the game (which results in a different diagram) — I think the example of chess problems is probably an example of this
• altering the choice of abilities available within the game as a whole

I explicitly leave out stuff like “the shape of probability curves” because, as the presentation states, “mathematical balancing is a data issue, not a systemic issue.” I also state that “content is descriptive characteristics of a given problem,” analogous to adjectives.

So just a different map isn’t a new game.