Proceduralism for the Back of the Class

Have you heard of Proceduralism? All the cool kids are doing it. It took me a few months to figure out what this “Alldea D’generations” guy (if that is your real name) is talking about but it’s really not so complicated. On a serious note, it’s a good writeup and deserves praise and all that. And it deserves a translation of the ending points into plain English. No critique intended here, I wanted to have a tl;dr version of the manifesto.

The Core Tenets of Proceduralism

1. Mechanics aren’t the only rules that exist. The other ones are all procedures. Most procedures are unwritten.

2. Procedures matter. This is the key to understanding.

3. Because procedures matter, we should understand them better, and give designers the benefit of the doubt when they look foolish.

4. Write down procedures that make games better, and include them where they will be useful.

5. There is more than one correct way to play games.

-A Manifesto for Proceduralism (Translated from the original)

I think what got me the first readthrough is that “procedures” are too vague a thing. Everything from the order of operations in a dungeon crawl to X-cards to a gentleman’s agreement to not eat each other’s faces off is a procedure. I don’t think you can build a game design movement out of simply acknowledging they exist. But people have been neglecting most of the rules of their own games, to the general benefit of nobody. That needed to be pointed out, hats off for doing it in an academic fashion.

My take on Proceduralism

Procedures are rules about using rules. Usually the order rules go in. When you play a typical board game, everyone takes turns and can do a limited number of things on their turn. Procedures are also the obvious, unwritten, and otherwise not much considered rules – we play boardgames at a table, we don’t fling poo at each other like baboons, there may be snacks but no drinks or cheetos after recent disasters, and play is preceded by a fight about who gets to be the racecar.

The battleship is underrated

The important procedures are principles of play and orders of operations. Stuff that directly affects gameplay and justifies the game decisions that will be confusing or lost on people moving in from different playstyles (or no playstyle at all). If someone released a version of monopoly that expands the haggling minigame in more and more detail but neglects to mention turn order that’s what it looks like when your game neglects procedures. People get the gist of it handed down from back when the game was Old and Bad but that cargo cult will lose more and more in translation. Gradually the game turns into a nightmare. Maybe out of boredom people will enjoy collaborating in deciding where to place hotels or something and delude themselves into thinking that’s the actual game, I don’t know monopoly sucks anyway.

Now imagine its a game where one player is expected to do far more work than most any mainstream game with a culture of play that demands that player be responsible for everyone’s fun. Or imagine it’s not a sequel, but a new game in a new setting. And there’s no procedure provided, you just expect people to come from the same fork of the cargo cult that you did. You release a game about being an X who has the power to Y and the world is based on Z BUT WHAT DO YOU DO? The post linked above¹ underestimates the absolute state of 5e and how helpless a DM is to make a campaign work with nothing but youtube hot-takes, 300 pages of classes and spells, and the most half-assed guide on worldbuilding you’ll ever see. The guys running playable 5e campaigns, and the players who are pleasant to have, they’re the ones lucky enough to come from a less rotted sect of the D&D cargo cult. Their game didn’t teach them shit, because the included procedures just aren’t enough. Not for OSR, not for storytelling, not for anything.

RPG design needs procedures. Give the people what they need to run the game. Give us an implicit goal that gives rewards that make achieving the implicit goal easier. In D&D, GP becomes XP becomes deeper dungeon expeditions becomes more GP. Give us multiple layers of procedures. In D&D, you might Hexcrawl to a Dungeoncrawl and in that dungeon have a combat, 3 seamlessly nested procedures. You can copy that and get a good game. You can ignore that and get an original game. Where’s the people who are learning something and making games that are good and original at the same time?

Perhaps original and good are too much to ask of an RPG designer. For procedures, we get one page of virtue signaling and/or an explanation on what an RPG is, and a combat system that plays like all the other ones. For mechanics, we get a skill list and a spell list. That’s Darkbad, that’s 5e, that’s Mork Borg and Dragonbane and Cairn. It’s also GURPS, Runequest, and FATAL. There is no such thing as RPG design. The emperor is stark fucking naked. Proceduralism is our chance to make his highness cover himself.

1 – “None of these changes to play style and culture are wrong or bad, and they don’t offer a reason to scorn 5th edition or the “OC” play style. Trad and OC play styles have evolved and like 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons function to deliver the play style and experience that many of thier players desire.”