10 by 10 room

I seem to have produced a manifesto, or credo even. It’s 5:55pm on a Friday, and I think I believe this. We’ll see how I feel post-beers. Have a good weekend!

I like to play with impatient transhumanist rules!

Prior to getting immersed into these various internet forums, here’s some of the conventional wisdom that I’d gotten.

• The work of the GM to a game is a highly skilled, and very critical to the game. Without the GM, the game can’t happen.
  • The GM is always over-worked and under-appreciated; this is the way of the GM.
• There is an inherent talent to playing/GMing RPGs; some people just start out more or less good than others, and without enough talent you’re not going to the best time.
  • Experience, over several years, can sometimes increase your talent.
  • It can take a while for a game to catch it’s rhythm and start getting really good.

No, I’m not talking about Broken Wheels – I’m talking about brilliant friends, games that worked damn well, and facts that were true. Given how storygames had worked, the GM had a magnificent task ahead for them, and it really was a matter of experience to get to the point of good gameplay. And all of the above is plainly true, in some fundamental ways:

• For any organized, complex social activity to happen, someone has to say “I’m making this happen”, and social facilitation like that takes a lot of skill. (Hence the GM comments.)
• Anything worth doing requires both skill and inherent talent, and I assert that putting together stories in a collaborative environment is an inherently hard thing. (Hence the skill comments.)
• Hard-won experience can make a skill better.

I’m saying that all the above is true and reasonable, but the Impatient Transhumanist Gaming Credo isn’t down with that. It says:

• Social collaboration can be challenging, and creative narratives can be challenging. Mixing both of those into one task has to be nearly impossible! But, it is a great thing when you collaborate a story together, especially if that emergent story is better than the one you could have done alone. It’s like you’re transcending who you were, in terms of being a story-creating individual. You’re more story than you were before. This is a beautiful thing – when you look at your friends around you, and while 10 seconds ago you look like a bunch of people playing with dice and paper, suddenly you’re staring into this fiction that didn’t exist before. And you did it. Sounds like a good time to me.
• its impatient because we don’t need to wait to make things work, because they can ultimately work right now
• its transhumanist because I believe in all this about a game-systems augmenting what we, ourselves do at the table
• a game = a set of rules / mechanics / social mechanism / social systems / a black box that outputs story
• It’s not good enough that only some people are good enough to GM – we can find games to augment play so that anyone can do it.
• It’s not good enough that only some people are good enough to play – we can find games to augment play so that anyone can do it.
• It’s not good enough that we have to wait on that hard-won experience – we can find games that even newer players can find themselves entering into a positive experience.
• If a game doesn’t fulfill above, it’s probably a fun time, but it’s also not good enough. We’ll try again later.
• It’ll never be good enough, but it’s worth trying.

This looks like wacky game designer talk, but it’s also applicable to any game you’re playing right now. For example, if I’m playing a normal game of “Mage: the Ascension” right now, I should be giving every player what they need (in terms of rules, social support, help) so that they can play as good as anyone else; our differences in skill, if they exist shouldn’t be a barrier to what we contribute.

From Malcolm Shepherd’s new “Shooting Dice” blog: Getting Real About RPGs and Mainstream Culture. A lot of intersting points, including a skewering the two most common modes of rpgs:

RPG design usually picks one of two routes. We either get well-defined complexity or vague simplicity. Neither of these fly with people who aren’t going to get fannish over it.

Here’s the originating RPGnet thread: RPGs need their Neil Gaiman…

The idea is that he managed to make comics more acceptable to the mainstream, albeit by rebranding them as “graphic novels”. So there’s a wish by some (which Malcolm, above, feels is misguided) to upscale/intellectualize RPGs to make them more acceptable as art. Rebecca Bergstrom was mentioned as a possible analogue; “Forge games in general” was also suggested.

I’m not looking to make things more highbrow myself, but I have seen inadvertently occur. I have a friend who didn’t really “get” the RPG thing, and was even turned off by Nobilis (!) or at least from overhearing a geekish discussion of Domains, Powers, etc.

However: when I described Primetime Adventures to her, she very clear change in understanding, saying “Wow, so these are more like improvisational storytelling than roleplaying games…” I found that a very interesting reaction.

Bear in mind that I don’t have an investment in actually making a distinction or break between kinds of games or terminology, nor am I selling any particular set games as fancy heralds of fancy intellectualism. Nonetheless, this is still the one time I’ve seen that change actually occur.

(If you’re unfamliar about the larger past discussions of the mainstream and roleplaying, check out the Forge for Mainstream: a revision, and other related threads.)

I think I definitely prefer to play RPGs of a fixed, short term length – like 3-5 sessions. But this is pretty different from most gamers’ experiences. Why do I seem to like it this way?

(And a disclaimer: this is just my own history and reasons for wanting shorter games. I think most people will have different ones, and I’d be curious to hear what those are like.)

Firstly, some background on me. I’m 23, have only been out of college for a year and a half now. I did RPGs a bit in high-school, and picked them up again near the end of college. In truth, there are plenty of games that have been running longer than I’ve ever even been in the hobby. I’m young, both in age and experience.

An interesting fact: I’ve never played a “long-term” game that has lasted more than a year. This includes relatively traditional games such as D&D and World of Darkness. Some of these games have attempted to be long-term affairs, but most, in my experience, have been pitched as fixed-length arcs.

Cultural Preferences

In each phase of my life so far, there has been some great source of inherent social limitations. In high school, simply the lack of full autonomy and social maturity was a problem. In college, a culture of general business and overcommitment. In post-college, a sense of general instability, since I can’t tell you for sure which of my friends will still be here in six months (or, indeed, if I’ll still be in Boston). That’s life: there are always complications, and I didn’t let these get in the way of my friendships or my hobby.

So in my experience, I’ve found that most games have been pitched as fixed, 4-6 sessions arcs, occasionally ranging up to 10 sessions and a rare attempt at a year-long endeavor. However, the effects of social entropy have worked against these. Chris Chinn had said: “Traditional rpgs built on long term campaigns are high commitment and very fragile social structures.” I think this is true in a very limited sense of “fragile”. If any single member of a long-term campaign has a shift in situation or priorities, they will have to reschedule the game or possibly leave it, necessarily changing the dynamics. Certainly, the unexpected loss of a key protagonist is a stumbling block to the extended play of others.

In this climate, I find that more people are willing to make room for the weekly commitment and dedication to a game if there’s cap to the time limit. Making room on every Monday for three months seems about right; making that kind of space indefinitely can scare someone off, especially if they don’t want to risk “spoiling” things for their friends.

A shorter-arc game can also be an easier sell in terms of payoff. If you declare your game to run for about four sessions, you’re are inherently promising that the play will “pay off” at the end of those four sessions. This is a lot more appealing than the worry that a group might dissolve just as the game was getting good.

So, to sum up: I see shorter-length games as a reaction, in a culture such as this, to make sure that a player gets enough satisfaction from what gaming time they have, especially if their time is relatively unstable. Different communities have reacted differently, but my friends seem to be working in this direction.

Personal Preferences

Beyond this, I have my own reasons that I’d prefer shorter-form games. For one thing, I (like most gamers) have more games on my shelf than I have time to play (and this doesn’t even count the various ideas I have written down). A preference for shorter arcs is a reaction to this: I can attempt several more of these games, while always leaving the option for returning to a quality game later.

I also like the idea of an RPG culture that is centered around shorter games. When games have more frequent stop and starts – every few months, for example – that means more opportunities for new people to jump in, and more opportunities to mix up your group of players. (Over the past year, I had a steady group that ran 4 or 5 games over the last year. After our last game we all went on hiatus, letting me game with some different friends of mine.)

And Those Wacky Designers

I see several reasons that many designers (esp. on the Forge) have tended towards short-form games, for other reasons entrirely:

On this post I talked about advice on RPGnet regarding a game of Dogs in the Vineyard. The conclusion seemed to be that he highlighted problems were somewhat more on the social contract rather than mechanical level. But this got me thinking about some occasionally conflicting answers I have regarding this question: where do the rules belong?

One of Mike Holmes’s favorite rants at the Forge is basically calling into question: why do you have a combat system? And this really is the start of a lot of good revision of what a good game system is made of. When I first thought about RPGs, I took for granted the reasons to have a full-fleshed combat system, with more detail than the rest. But then I recognized: in many games, this was not the focus, and I could indeed do without the detail there. And then going further: the rules could certainly go the other way, focusing on that which matters.

Where do the rules belong?

From the aforementioned RPGnet thread:

Here’s my opinion—Dogs, like some other narrativist games, foregrounds social contract as a problem-solving mechanism.

In rules-lighter games, a lot of leeway is given to the GM (or the group at large) to make up for clashes within the game, over problems like “is toast a valid weapon type”. Dogs is not “rules-light” in my estimation, with some rules density devoted to the important parts of the game, but nonetheless puts a lot of weight towards this group (or GM-centered) ad hoc negotiation of the rules, and some of this is in the same spots – both Risus and Dogs in the Vineyard will need to group/GM discussion of whether “toast” is a valid reaction to gunplay.

Let me say something that is patently-untrue-yet-possibly-helpful: All games have exactly 42 rules. However, these rules may or may not be written down, and may or may not be implicit rather than explicit. So where are your rules now, and where do they need to go?

Happy New Years, folks!

My first actual play report from a game I wrote! I wrote this over a year ago, and it’s interesting to take another look at it now.

Interestingly, my thoughts on gaming now are different from my thoughts when I first wrote this. The scenario I outline is more than a bit linear / predetermined, with lots of use of the GM fiat to keep things tense. That was a style I don’t do as much now, but seeing the successful play report, I’m reminded of how much fun that style can be, if the GM has the skills to execute and everyone understands the SOP for being in a scenario that’s basically a horror movie. (Which is: bad things will happen, and you’ll probably die.)

Maybe I’ll run this on some Halloween, see what comes of it.

Pitch for a game: Hipster Massacre. The idea is that the players are various trendy of the painfully hip indie subculture. (This allows for various hip and indie protagonists, as well lots of soundtrack music from today’s trendier bands.) That’s the “hipster” part.

The “massacre” part is that there is a SERIAL KILLER on the loose, killing people off from “the scene”, throwing an already backstabbing insular culture into even more of an insular, backstabbing tailspin. As an added bonus: at the end of each season, one of the cast will die.

The protagonists of the series deal with their own sundry issues and personal drama, while trying to figure out what’s killing the scene, literally. And now that I think of it, the series will probably get increasingly more surreal. Maybe the serial killer will ultimately be this weird reflection of scenester-ness killing its own culture, slowly, methodically, as it is wont to do.

Granted, I’m not sure what to do once the scoobies actually catch the guy.

My reaction this post on GM Fiat is to rephrase the same thing in a different way. So when play with GM Fiat works – when you delegate lots of resolution to a GM and everyone is satisfied – then there’s no problem, right? We have Good Stuff. But when it doesn’t work?

When it doesn’t, here’s the problem: the players have to consistently check themselves against the approval of the GM for advancing player content, and this provides lots of opportunities for disappointment and miscommunication. Perhaps I think it’s a great idea to have my pirate try to sweet-talk his way into the arms of a nice pirate grrrl, and I suggest that given our common piratical heritage, I will in fact play up my nature as a hardened sea-bitten rum-swilling seadog to my advantage. However, perhaps my rules do not say clearly if this is or is not okay, and I have to wait for the GM to decide if this is alright, or I will nonetheless automatically fail by virtue of my low Charisma score.

Chris calls this phenomenon mother-may-I. Most don’t play it that badly, and GMs have become quite good at using GM Fiat right. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a buzzkill that the only thing you’re holding off on is permission.

I call the opposite effect, when done, right, a free fire zone. Basically, imagine some cool roleplay material, and the rules are really clear about what you can and cannot bring into it. This means that, within those rules, I can simply put my input in there without waiting for approval. If the D&D rules say I can swing my sword, than nobody is going to stop me from swinging that sword; if I have a certain number of Wire-Fu tokens I can use to add absurd narration to my actions, then no one is going to stop me from backflipping over my enemy before cutting him down with my pirate cutlass.

This isn’t an either/or; rather, it’s about getting the rules to minimize mother-may-I zones and maximize free fire zones.