Three Modes of Design

1. Campaign-Writing (Author Control)

• GM has predetermined story
• Players discover what was already written
• "I've planned everything, follow the path"
• Traditional software: designer specifies all flows, users learn them
• Role: Storyteller transmitting pre-formed narrative

2. Space-Making (Facilitated Emergence)

• GM prepares situations, responds to players
• Story emerges from interaction between preparation and choice
• "I've created possibilities, let's see what happens"
• Good game design: systems that afford player expression
• Role: Facilitator enabling collaborative creation

3. Grammar-Giving (Pure Emergence)

• Microscope: just rules, no author
• World emerges entirely from player interaction via constraints
• "Here's how we can build together, what shall we make?"
• Linguistic software: primitives that compose without prescription
• Role: Grammar provider enabling collective construction

What Changes Between Them

Campaign-Writing:

• Information: Pre-authored, revealed progressively
• Agency: Low - players navigate designer's intent
• Emergence: Minimal - discovery not creation
• Designer knows: The story, the meaning, the "right" path

Space-Making:

• Information: Designed situations, emergent outcomes
• Agency: Medium - players choose within prepared possibility space
• Emergence: Bounded - improvisation within structure
• Designer knows: The space, not what happens in it

Grammar-Giving:

• Information: Entirely emergent from interactions
• Agency: High - collective authorship
• Emergence: Maximal - creation not navigation
• Designer knows: Only the constraints, not outcomes

Why This Matters Beyond TTRPGs

Architecture:

• Prescribed: "This is a bedroom" (single function)
• Space-making: "This is adaptable space" (multi-use)
• Grammar: "Here are modular walls, utilities, constraints - compose your space"

Music:

• Prescribed: Composed symphony (perform this)
• Space-making: Jazz standards (improvise within form)
• Grammar: Modular synth (patch your own instrument)

Software:

• Prescribed: Microsoft Word (learn our interface)
• Space-making: Notion (flexible blocks you arrange)
• Grammar: Unix pipes (compose primitives into tools)

Film:

• Prescribed: Hollywood movie (watch this story)
• Space-making: Documentary (captured emergence)
• Grammar: Twitch/streaming (collective live creation)

The Deeper Pattern

It's all about the dynamics of human interaction with INFORMATION via GRAMMARS.

Campaign-writing: Information flows one direction (designer → user)
Space-making: Information flows bidirectionally (designer ↔ user)
Grammar-giving: Information flows multidirectionally (users ↔ users, mediated by grammar)

The grammar determines:

• What can be expressed
• How humans coordinate
• What meanings can emerge
• What's thinkable/doable

The designer's job shifts:

• Campaign: Author the content
• Space: Design the systems
• Grammar: Provide the primitives

Why Marketing-Speak "Storytelling" Is Wrong

Marketing says: "We tell compelling stories"
Translation: Campaign-writing - we transmit our narrative

Actual storytelling in this lens:

• Providing grammar for stories to emerge through use
• Creating conditions where users author their own narratives
• Enabling collective meaning-making

It's not:

• Your brand story
• Your product narrative
• Your vision communicated

It's:

• What stories become possible through your grammar
• What narratives emerge from user interaction
• What collective meaning forms

The Orientation Question

Direction ≠ Destination

Campaign-writing: "We're going here" (destination)
Space-making: "We're exploring this area" (bounded direction)
Grammar-giving: "We're building with these tools" (orientation without destination)

You provide ORIENTATION through:

• Which primitives you include (what's expressible)
• Which constraints you impose (what's bounded)
• Which interactions you enable (what's connectable)

But NOT through:

• Predetermined outcomes
• Prescribed paths
• Pre-authored content

For Software: The Practical Question

Which mode should you use?

Depends on what kind of human interaction you're enabling.

Campaign-writing works when:

• The "right answer" is known
• Consistency is critical (safety systems, legal compliance)
• Users want guided experience (learning a specific skill)

Space-making works when:

• Bounded creativity is desired
• Professional tools (design software, DAWs)
• Multiple valid approaches exist

Grammar-giving works when:

• Open-ended creation is the goal
• Collective/social construction
• Emergence is more valuable than consistency

Most software tries to be campaign-writing when it should be space-making or grammar-giving.

The Linguistic Connection

Language itself is pure grammar-giving.

No one "designed" what English would be used for. They provided:

• Phonemes (primitives)
• Grammar rules (constraints)
• Compositional logic (how primitives combine)

Then humans created:

• Poetry, novels, jokes, philosophy, code comments, memes
• Through collective interaction
• With the grammar as medium

This is what humanistic computing means:
Not software that's friendly.
Software that provides linguistic substrate for human meaning-making.

Your Adventurer Game

It's grammar-giving:

• Stats/personality = primitives
• Affordances/actions = composition rules
• Graves/forking = linguistic evolution mechanism
• Emergent strategies = collective dialect formation

You're not authoring:

• The "right" build
• The "intended" strategy
• The "correct" way to play

You're providing:

• Grammar for expressing approaches to survival
• Medium for strategies to evolve
• Substrate for community language to emerge

The game becomes what the community makes it through interaction.

The Design Stance

Campaign-writing: "I know what's good, I'll guide you there"
Space-making: "I've prepared rich possibilities, explore them"
Grammar-giving: "Here's how we can build together, surprise me"

The deeper you go, the more:

• Humility required (you don't know what emerges)
• Trust in users (they'll create meaning)
• Comfort with divergence (each experience differs)
• Focus on primitives over outcomes

Most designers are trained for campaign-writing.
Corporate pressure pushes toward campaign-writing.
Humanistic computing requires grammar-giving.

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The one-line version:
Stop authoring experiences, start providing grammars for collective meaning-making.