A Tale that Grows in the Telling

So, that first draft of the game rules I promised? It's progressing nicely. A little too nicely. What I intended to be a barebones mechanics document is quickly turning into the first draft of the complete rules. I just can't stop writing!
So, new ETA for the first draft is May 1st (T minus 5 days).

Excitement!

Exciting News!

That last game project that I mentioned, with the reading list? I've been scribbling away notes on the rules, and I'm ready to begin typing up the very rough, totally beta, untested at all draft. I would prefer to do some personal playtesting before releasing it into the wilds of the internet, but I'm not going to be in a position to do that for awhile, so I will post it for review and solicit recommendations once it's typed.

I'm taking this bad boy to publication, but it might take a while to get it all the way where it needs to be. Tentatively, I expect it to be ready for 'real' playtesting  by other people by January, and hopefully it'll be done and ready to publish by this time next year, at the latest.

I'll post a teaser soon, and the rules after that.

A New Direction for Now

I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from my starter RPG project for two main reasons. First off, I've found a wealth of games I'd really enjoy to run, some of which I think would make good introductions to what roleplaying is for adult, non-gamer type people. But secondly, I still take the starter RPG notion seriously, but I realized that paradoxically, an RPG designed for beginning players should not be my first full-fledged RPG design. I should maybe know what I'm doing before I tackle that.

Also.

I had an idea for another game that is now consuming every ounce of my game design juices (okay, a few ounces are spared for stray thoughts). I am channeling the bad shit, here. I've filled out a whole notebook, and I take it's replacement everywhere I go. I wake up in the middle of the night with ideas. Talking about it at this point would probably solidify some things that are still better off nebulous as I work them together, though. That being said, as a "sneak preview", here's a recommended reading list for the setting/color:

(In roughly descending order of relevance)

  • Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

  • Beowulf

  • The Poetic and Prose Eddas

  • The Mabinogion

  • The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer

  • A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin

  • The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

  • Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

  • The Volsunga Saga trans. by J.R.R. Tolkien

  • The Lord of the Rings

  • Various Irish Myths and Legends


Hopefully that gives you a pretty good idea of the 'flavor' I'm going for, but I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised by what I come up with for rules.

What has Come Before

So, I've been a bit quiet this past week, but not because I haven't been thinking about game design. Actually rather the opposite. Instead, as I linked in a past post, I've been checking out the design theory over at The Forge, specifically the articles (still trying to wade into the forum, which is daunting) and at anyway.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this shit has blown my mind. Seriously, though, some theory that I originally met with skepticism, on full read through has totally altered how I think about RPGs, what my design goals are, and how to achieve them. I look back at what I've posted over the last couple months, and I'm slightly embarrassed, as it seems to be hopelessly amateurish dilettante work at its worst, trying to address issues from what I now see as a constricted and unaware viewpoint.

That being said, I am currently at an awkward place. This new theory has made me look at what I was talking about and go "yuck" because it's ground that has already been covered better and in more detail by people who've thought harder about it than me. On the other hand, I am not yet comfortable enough with said new theory to really address it as someone who "gets it". I am still learning.

But, as I said, it has so fundamentally altered my perception of RPG theory and the notion of design that to try to continue without incorporating it would be stultifying and frustrating.

So, as a warning to anyone who's been following along so far: from this point forward, I will be discussing RPG design theory using terms from "The Big Model" as presented in the essays by Ron Edwards on the Forge website (see especially, "GNS and other matters of RPG Theory", Simulationism: The Right to Dream, Gamism: Step on Up, and Narrativism: Story Now. I'd recommend reading as many of the 'articles' on that website as possible, but those four are what I consider the most essential, with the first as practically required reading).

I will be happy to clarify any terms I use or what have you, but please understand that it will be as someone still learning - this stuff isn't mine, I just found it thoroughly convincing. Also, if you want to debate the conclusions drawn, that's cool too, but bear in mind that gobs of people have done so to death on the Forge, like, 5 or 6 years ago. So, what you're looking at when you read those articles is something that was pretty heartily discussed, challenged, and refined, and from what I can tell, has continued to be largely useful to designers since then.

At first it may seem like annoying intellectualism or elitism or whatever, but it's already doing wonders for my creative process, and I look forward to what the tools and methods of thought presented will help me come up with, and I hope everyone enjoys the ride.

Social Contract

Today I want to talk about something I touched upon in my review of the rules of "In a Wicked Age", the "social contract" of roleplaying games. This is an idea that has come up a lot in my recent reading at anyway and the articles at The Forge. This is a topic that is so obvious that it is usually ignored or taken for granted, like the sky or the ground. Basically, what I mean by "social contract" is the understanding, usually implicit, that everyone participating in an RPG has regarding what it is they're getting together to do. The trouble with it staying implicit and taken for granted is that different people may interpret it in very different ways, and that can lead to real-life conflict and hurt feelings and the dissolution of a game group. So, I thought I'd talk about the social contract in very vague terms, and then address some specific issues. As a side note, a lot of what I'm producing here may be going over ground others have covered, or amateurish, or what have you. I'm in the process of reading up on the field of RPG design, but I'm still stuck in the late 90's/early 00's in terms of what I've been covering recently (having decided to start with the start at the afore mentioned sites, so that I'm not lost when I get to the current stuff). So, basically, be aware that I may change my mind on stuff I post up here or look back at it and be embarrassed or such, and hopefully I'll keep the same awareness and continue to improve.

So, this social contract business, what is it? It is something that exists regardless of the rules system you use, but can involve the rules system directly or indirectly. For example, if everyone you know who roleplays just loves (D&D/Call of Cthulhu/Fuzion/Whatevs), then it might be explicit that y'all are getting together to play that particular game. Or it could be more subtle, like you're playing D&D, but everybody involves just kind of knows that D&D as is doesn't address what they want out of a game, so they are okay with the game master changing rules or they suggest changes and so forth. But it's relationship to the rules system is probably not it's most significant feature. Like I said, a lot of time the social contract is entirely implicit, and everybody ends up with slightly different ideas of what it entails in their heads, and when this happens, problems can arise.

Let's cut to an analogy for a moment, because I'm fond of analogies. In searching my imagination for an adequate analogy to the social contract of roleplaying, I realized that there's no direct correspondence, which makes sense, I suppose, for such a specialized form of entertainment. But, being social in nature, and being associated with the use of rules, it does share similarities with some other, better known social situations. I think that roleplaying, socially speaking, is somewhere between a dance (as in, the event, like a prom, or a ball, or a hoe down, or whatever) and a sporting event. I actually think that the social contract of most RPGs differs quite markedly from board games or strategy games, despite the overlapping interest and sometimes overlapping methods. For one, most board games and strategy games of all sorts have much better defined rules that restrict what choices players can make, and everybody knows what they are going into the game. Usually, there's very little notion that those rules can or should be bent to serve other ends, and also usually, the rules presented adequately address whatever can come up in such a game. So, let's get back to my analogy. Like a sporting event (and like those board games and wargames mentioned), there is in fact a set of rules used to decide what can and can't happen, and how to play and so forth. Unlike sporting events, however, it is usually less well defined what actions (by people, not characters. Remember, this whole essay is about the actual physical players participating in a game) explicitly violate what you all came there to do. In a soccer game, picking up the ball and running around knocking people over is very clearly not what everyone came there to do. That one guy may enjoy the attention, or being wild, or whatever, but everyone else will be pretty pissed off that he is preventing them from doing the activity they came together to do. In roleplaying games, there are definitely things people can do that have similar effects, but unfortunately, they're usually less obvious, and a lot of times people put up with it thinking it's the only way they can continue to roleplay. So if everyone is really digging on rescuing a princess from a dragon, but one dude says he hauls off and stabs the king  and runs around the court with his head knocking people over, that player, by deciding his character will do that, has made it impossible for the other players to do what they came there to do, forcing them to react to his actions or bicker about whether that 'could' happen or not, or stop playing. The trouble is, kingslayer there may not have realized that he was pissing in their porridge when he did that. He might have thought that going in an unexpected direction, or staying true to his wild, unpredictable character was what he was there to do, and assumed that everybody else felt like that was what he was there for too.

I think that hockey provides an interesting example of this gray area in sporting events. FIghting technically isn't allowed in the rules, but it's an accepted part of the game. Everyone participating in a professional hockey game expects some fighting and has some idea what amount will be allowed by the refs, what penalties it's okay to take for doing it, and how to use it within the context of the game. The reason I stress this is to show that in other forms of social leisure activity, there is also a distinction between the 'official rules' and the socially understood guidelines for what the event will be. Now, I said that I didn't think that sports were a perfect metaphor for roleplaying, and that's because in sports, the relationship between what is socially agreed upon when you get together to play, and what is printed in the official rules, is usually very close. The baseline assumption for most sports is 'we will show up and follow these exact rules. Not following them is cheating and will get you penalized.' So, I want to bring the other half of my analogy, a dance. Like roleplaying, dances are social events with varying levels of formality, and even at the most formal of balls, there is usually a distinct difference between the 'official' purpose and guidelines for behavior and the socially understood aims and allowable behavior. Also like roleplaying games, there can be a wide range of variations in the stated aims of a dance, and different people will show up with different expectations of what's socially acceptable (though, being more mainstream, the social contract of these events, though implicit, tends to be better understood by everyone involved). So, a prom is going to have different 'rules' than a military ball, just as a hoe down will have different rules from a cotillion event.

Imagine, if you will, someone who thought that all dances were proms. He would show up to a hoe down in a tux, expect to hear a mix of nostalgic music and modern dance music, and would want to focus on dancing alone with his date. When he encountered jeans and cowboy hats, country music and fiddle playing, and complicated group dances, he would think they were doing it wrong, not have a good time, and most likely spoil it for other people there. The shame of it is that he would have a great time at a prom, he would do it right, and everyone there would enjoy, or at least tolerate, his presence.

So, what in the hell does all this talk of hockey and hoe downs have to do with roleplaying? I think that since the idea of the social expectations of a roleplaying game are so rarely discussed or thought of explicitly, you end up with the equivalent of people showing up expecting one kind of dance and getting another. But it's usually so subtle, and even worse, a lot of times, despite a game claiming to be one kind of dance, it might actually be another, that nobody realizes that's the source of the dissatisfaction and bad feeling. Further, if you go to the prom and your best friend took the girl you wanted to bring, you and everybody else knows that's why there's tension between you two at the prom. But at a roleplaying game, the focus is so much on the rules and the imaginary world of the game, that people like to convince themselves that real-life interpersonal tensions don't enter into it. So, when the two best friends go to play their weekly RPG a few days after that same prom, people might not realize, or at least not acknowledge, that the game is going poorly because there is still tension between them over a real-life social issue.

What do I make of all this? I think that it is a healthy and useful step for a roleplaying group to all explicitly lay out, before play, what they're doing and what they want to accomplish. And I think this needs to go a little deeper than "we're here to play D&D, and our goal is to have fun". I think even the densest of socially challenged folks is going to get that you're there to play the advertised game and the overall goal is to have fun. But what makes a game fun varies from group to group and person to person, and I think an enhanced awareness of what that is will help out a lot. I'm riffing pretty hard here off of things I've been reading in those Forge articles. In those articles, they go into different approaches to rpgs and what sort of abstract things different people pursue and enjoy in a game, but I'm not going to go into that here. But in general terms, I think the group should make a few things clear (as in, actually talk these things out and hear everyone out on them, then come to a decision. Maybe even write it down for reference later) before they start gaming, and here are some suggestions of mine:

How active does each player want to be in making deciding what dramatic things happen to their characters?
How much detail do you want to explore of the game's setting?
How comfortable is each player with in-character conflict?
Are there any topics or issues that you are uncomfortable addressing in play?
How concerned are you with your character's success as measured in some objective way (missions completed, xp earned, et cetera)?

If you're playing with people new to roleplaying, they might not know the answers to some of these things, and I think a good solution is for the GM, or whoever is organizing the game (presumably with more gaming experience) to put forward as honestly and in as much detail as possible what his goals are and how he intends to address the game. So, if you are the GM, and you want your players to have a good deal of active narrative control, tell them! If you have a finely crafted world with lots of detail, and you are expecting them to want to explore it and work within it's fictional parameters, be clear about that. If you think it'd be fun to have the players compete for who can kill the most kobolds, or gain the most levels the fastest, or survive the longest without going insane, let them know. But be prepared to listen to their reactions to these things. If everyone in your group says "whoah, I don't care about levels and stuff, man, I want to do whatever would bring my character into the most dramatic situations for an exciting story", then pay attention. If everyone has a different idea of what would be fun, or nobody much is interested in what you're pushing, you might need to find a new game or a new group. Finally, an important point stressed in the essays I've been reading about different play styles and what different people want out of their games, is that no one way is "better" or "more fun" objectively. It's largely a matter of personal taste. Some people will have the most fun ever cleverly avoiding traps and slaughtering monsters to steal their treasure with no real concern for dramatic tension or addressing ethical or moral issues. Other people will really get into accurately working within a detailed feudal system and maneuvering in a complex social network of lords and families and churches. But still others might have the most fun playing characters who do nothing but come up against agonizing conflict and make decisions to set up the next agonizing conflict. All of these approaches, and more, are great and can be fun. But they're not necessarily all compatible in the same game. So, do your best to figure out what everyone is showing up for, and try to stick with it, and your games will be a lot more fun and more likely to work well.

The Secret Ingredient

Is love, dammit.

And love I have in spades. Love of games, love of game design, love of theorizing and pontificating. But it in all seriousness, I worry that I lack a no less crucial secret ingredient for my design plans: actual play. I've been reading through the archive at anyway, the blog of D. Vincent Baker, author of "Dogs in the Vineyard" and "In a Wicked Age", and he points out, correctly I think, that without real game play to ground your theories in, it's all too easy to build sand castles of wonderful intricacy but no lasting substance or usefulness. I haven't played in an actual, live on going RPG for ten years now! Ten years! Oof. I'm getting some good online play, and I've played in various one-off games or abortive attempts at starting up a game over the years, not since I moved away from my adolescent gaming group have I played RPGs as often as I'd like. So, what to do about this? I have in mind three potential solutions to not only enjoy my favorite hobby, but also to get the gaming experience I need to solidly frame my designs with things that actually come up in real game play. So here they are:

Technology: Through the power of the vast and multifarious internets, all kinds of communication options exist that never did before. I have maintained friendships over vast distances through frequent communication, and perhaps gaming is another application of this connectivity. I am currently playing in such a game, and it's been going smoothly and enjoyably for a good 6 months or so now. But, at least as played, it is a different creature from roleplaying at the table, and doesn't wholly satisfy my inclinations. For one, being forum based, it takes place somewhat 'in slow motion', with GM and player interaction usually being via private messages, which are then clumped together in 'scenes' posted for everyone to read. The GM is excellent, so it's making for some creative story and character moments, but thus far there's quite limited character/player interaction. That would be easier with scheduled 'live' chats, and perhaps even better would be some sort of audio and/or video live chat. I don't have the capability for that just now, but I will in the near future, and that might bear looking into. That being said, there's something to gathering in one physical place, eating the same snacks, seeing each other's faces, and shooting the breeze before and after that even the most advanced online options lack.

Converts: Here, my idea is to take my friends and bring them into the hobby. Obviously, this is a huge motivation for my whole 'Starter RPG' project. The benefits here are pretty obvious: not only do I get to roleplay in person and increase the number of roleplayers I know, I already know that I like them and get along with them and will want to spend valuable social time with them. Unfortunately, the negatives are almost as obvious: roleplaying is not for everyone, no matter how amazing a group/game/rules/gamemaster/etc you introduce them to, many of my friends that would be interested in trying RPGs are scattered across vast geographical distances (the same issue with my friends that already do game), and even if they do find they like it, it will have to compete with all of their other social plans to become something that happens regularly. They might see it as a fun once in a while thing, but not something you spend a few hours at every week. So, I'm going to pursue this plan, but not count on making any huge strides in my mission work.

The Hobby: Finally, I'm going to discuss what many might consider the most obvious plan, but one that I'm a bit leery of. There is a local game store where I live (better than some, but worse than others) that hosts gaming of all sorts every weekend and is generally a meeting place for hobbyists in the town. So, the plus sides are that these are people who are already invested in roleplaying and may be just as interested in a chance to game more than me, I might meet new, cool people that I otherwise would not, and those people I do find are most likely to be interested in playing regularly and perhaps even in playtesting rules of my design or such like. The down sides are a little more subtle. I'm growing curmudgeonly, and though I've made some great friends in my life through gaming, for some reason, at this point in my life, I'm not enthused about the idea of meeting people via gaming. I'd rather play games with people I already know and like otherwise. But alas, that's not working out satisfactorily so far. The trouble is twofold. For one, despite my firm belief that there is nothing inherently awkward, nerdy, or weird about roleplaying, a lot of roleplayers are in fact, well, awkward, nerdy, or weird. I have a pretty high tolerance for all of these qualities, but it makes it harder to weave new friends into my existing social life and so forth. Secondly, while there are certain personality and character traits that tend to go with people who enjoy roleplaying, the single fact of a strong shared interest does not necessarily make for compatible people. Obviously, this is part of the benefit of having shared interests: it exposes you to people different from yourself and your friends, sometimes to create new friendships, but it can also lead to getting stuck with someone you don't really want to spend time with, but you keep around because without him you won't have a group. And that's not a situation I'm eager to try again. All that as it is, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and start hanging around the game store more and try to find some new gamer buddies.

Does anybody have any recommendations that I've missed out on?