Does the MDA Framework Apply to Tabletop RPGs? No, it doesn’t. I’d argue it doesn’t even apply to videogames. Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics is a self-professed formalist approach, a“framework,” to games created by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek, three videogame developers; Zubek also teaches game design at Northwestern. Since its publication in 2004, MDA has been quite influential—4220 citations on Google Scholar as an easy statistic, at time of writing. MDA, ...
