Ecological TTRPGs

A document circulated in the online left called Politigram and the Post-left, chronicles various tendencies of political memes on Instagram in the late 2010's. In particular, it focused on the post-left, which is a political position arrived at by anarchists after being disillusioned by Trump's first election (round 2 here we come!). Overall, the document serves as a leftist critique of anarchism, depicting it as nihilistic and ineffective. The book chronicles the political journey of some prominent influencers from a vanilla anarchism to more advanced versions, which celebrate a motley crew including Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber, egoist nihilist Max Stirner, and AI overlord worshipping accelerationist Nick Land. To be clear, these things represent a bad turn for anarchism, but they do not, as the author of Politigram and the Post-left would have you believe, represent the ultimate conclusion of anarchism. There is a prescient critique of these tendencies made by the eco-socialist anarchist Murray Bookchin, which predates Instagram by many years, centered around what are called first and second nature. I'm going to make the argument that designers and influencers in the TTRPG space follow the same thought process as the post-left on Instagram, and that the critique can be meaningful for us game nerds just as they are in the political sphere. 

Bookchin's critique looks at a trend in ecology calling itself deep ecology. Deep ecologists come to the conclusion that society is antagonistic to nature, and the only way for humans to come to an ecological balance with nature is for us to reject technological society. They reject one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity itself, which is the ability to understand the world and develop tools that serve as extensions of our will as much as tooth and claw serve other species. They argue that technology can only exist in one mode, and that is as an artificial force that exploits and devastates the natural world. This same argument for primitivism is made by Kaczynski. The same perspective of technology's only possible mode of existence is shared by Land, although he nihilistically embraces it rather than rejecting it. In a totally uncontroversial comparison, I am saying that many in the TTRPG world similarly depict the technology of TTRPGs as monolithically bad, and hold that rejecting game mechanics is virtuous and liberatory.

Bookchin says that our relationship with nature reflects the relationships in our own society. Capital allows the ruling class to exploit the working class, and in the same way, it allows them to exploit nature itself, extracting value from it without giving anything back. Capital here takes the form of the technology of consumerist mass production. Rather than rejecting human capacity for tool making, he proposes an alternative, ecological approach. First nature is the natural world itself. It is the inorganic world and the flora and fauna that has sprung forth from it and depends on it. Human society is not part of first nature, but it can be reimagined to coexist with it according to ecological principles. This ecologically harmonious society is second nature, which is continuous, yet discontinuous with first nature.

So, if we reject system nihilism and accept that humans have the capacity to create tools that act as extensions of our own human nature, what does that look like? Ecology is the research and theory of the dynamic relationship between organisms and their environment, and that relationships evolution over time. The major theories of ecology look at species abundance, niche, population dynamics, interactions between species, geographical distribution and connections between individual behavior and population phenomena. From here, I'll describe some of these concepts, and then try to draw parallels to TTRPGs, or propose ways to express them in TTRPGs. 

Ecosystem

The word ecosystem describes the complex relationships between many interacting species and the inorganic environment they depend on. Originally, ecologists tried to scientifically isolate flora and fauna from the environment to study them, but this separation was artificial and unhelpful. Instead, they came to see things as a single interacting whole. In this totalizing idea of the ecosystem, the line between organisms and their environment is unclear. Dead and decaying life forms are a critical part of the activities of species, but it is not so easy to call them strictly biological or not. 

Influential TTRPG forum of the 2000's, the Forge, created a Big Model that looked at the big picture of TTRPGs, from the players to the society they come from, down to the game being played and the dice and character sheets they have. However, the Forge held game mechanics as their primary focus. An ecosystem perspective rejects this hierarchy, and instead looks at all the related factors as contributing equally to the picture. The players are just as important as the game being played, and the medium of play, be it using physical dice, a deck of cards, pen and paper, or be it a virtual tabletop, all are just as important to the experience. Game mechanics will change and operate differently depending on all these factors. The line between the biological and non-biological components of play is not clear. People design rules, fill out character sheets, and write scenarios and lore. The line where game texts end and where players' creations begin is not clear cut. They are all part of the ecosystem of play. Not System Matters, but Ecosystem Matters. 

Niche

Niche is the position within the food web that a species occupies. It is its habits, habitat, and evolutionary traits that allow it to gather resources in a way that is different from other species. In an ecological community, diversity is a key factor, with each species occupying its own niche, contributing to the economy of the ecosystem in its own way. The principle of competitive exclusion describes the occupation of a niche by only one species, with competing species inevitably being forced out. 

In TTRPGs, niche could mean a few different things. It could mean that character classes available to players are distinct, and engage with different economies from each other. A good example of this would be the classes in Ava Islam's Errant. The Violent has their Damage Dice, the Deviant has their Jettons, The Occult has their Sorceries, and The Zealot has their Relics. These characters almost seem like they belong in different games and engage in different game currencies.

Another example of niche could be the division of GM roles in Avery Alder's Belonging Outside Belonging system into Setting Elements. In this GMless system players each get a character, and also control some aspect of the setting traditionally held by the GM, like Varied Scarcities, Psychic Maelstrom, Society Intact, Digital Realm, Outlying Gangs, and Earth Itself.

Succession

In ecology, succession refers to the change in a community over long periods of time. The flora and fauna in a location can change over time (or over distance), in a process that can be related to evolution. While partly in competition with each other, organisms are also related in a stable and harmonious web of niches. Ecologist Henry Cowles' described succession as a never-ending dynamic process in which all life is interconnected through a vast and complex symbiotic relationship.

We can see succession in the games played by a table and in the popular games within the greater hobby. The individual table and the scene are connected to and influence each other. A single table might go through several games, fleshing out their preferences and gravitating more and more towards a type or types of games. A single table might also play one system for may years, making incremental rules changes through rulings and hacks, slowly drifting and evolving their system and style of play. Fads seem to come and go quickly in the TTRPG hobby. Some games fade away, and some have longevity because of various material causes, mostly related to things that happen at individual tables. Games appeal to players in terms of system, theme, writing, lore or a steady supply of supplements, and they can replace games that don't appeal to players in the same ways.

Interactions between species

I had a specific idea relating to predator-prey relationships for this last topic. Organisms lower on the food chain are typically more specialized in the way they receive nutrients, while predators higher up have less discrete consumption. This allows for the collapsing of the food chain in times of scarcity, with predators feeding on other predators. 

Conventional D&D play is frequently compared to westward expansion in the American west. Rugged individuals strike out into the wilderness and take resources from the native inhabitants in a lawless zone outside of civilized society. So player characters act like predators in this situation, in search of prey to take resources from. A comparison that is not frequently made about D&D as the wild west, but not far removed from it, is to the gold rush. Instead of adventurers being similar to pioneers who are rare in the wilds, adventurers would be similar to prospectors who are much more common. In this form of D&D, adventurers outnumber dungeons by a vast number, and have to compete with each other for them, short circuiting the food chain and forcing predators (adventurers) to feed on other predators. 

Disclaimer

Before I end I should say that Bookchin never went this far in looking at the actual principles of ecology beyond praising complexity and fecundity. Also, ecology itself is opposed to applying its principles to humans, instead favoring the pristine natural conditions of the world without humans. So what I am doing here is not really advocated by either. I would also accept that the comparison between game mechanics and tools that I base this blog post on is unfair, and that informal procedures and modules can be considered tools too (they're part of the ecosystem). Play is the zone of experimentation where we can try out ideas and that's the best way to treat these propositions. They are meant to be fun thought experiments, not a prescription or final judgement.