Category: Gaming

There’s a hefty little thread over on the Forge about ad lib GMing. (Well, it starts out as a thread about player fulfillment and winds up as a big discussion about “No Myth” roleplaying, but you know, it’s still rock and roll to me. Ad lib GMing, with player acceptance. OK.)

The early advice from Le Joueur is very solid and can be turned to slightly less extreme ends. My experience is that many players need the possibility of failure in a way that his Complication theory doesn’t really address. To put it differently: ends must be mutable in play. And… hm. Ah.

OK, so this comes back to one of my personal roleplaying theories, which can be summarized thus: “Roleplaying is the intersection of storytelling and prophecy.” By this, I mean that randomness is a necessary and important element of roleplaying. While there will certainly always be people who enjoy non-random roleplay (including myself), I think that non-random roleplay satisfies somewhat different needs than more traditional roleplay. (Similarly, pure diced roleplay — certain D&D campaigns come to mind — also satisfy different needs.)

This is a distinction I draw not to criticize Amber or Nobilis or Theatrix, but rather to express the opinion that one shouldn’t apply theories of roleplay to all three aspects of roleplay. Generally, intellectual roleplayers don’t try to extend their theories to cover the wargamish nature of hack-and-slash D&D; I think they should also recognize the important distinctions and differences between non-random games and random games.

The perceptual experience of a story which is completely in the hands of the people creating it is essentially different than the perceptual experience of a story which contains random elements. We know this instinctually — it’s the reason why improv comedy troupes take topics from the (random) audience, and it’s the reason why the Flying Karamazov Brothers take objects from the audience to juggle. Because of that difference, theory that applies to one may simply not apply to the other.

OK. So, back to the Forge posting. I read Le Joueur’s advice on Complications as non-obstacles as removing the randomness — removing the oracle — from plot twists. There must be something at stake, because nobody consults the oracle when nothing is at stake. When “failure” becomes a measure of difficulty and/or complication rather than true failure, the stakes are lowered. I am not sure how one maintains high stakes in this model. Character emotional pain is one way to do this, but it requires a level of immersive play which cannot be assumed to be desirable by all one’s players.

Thoughts to chew on. Don’t let them get in the way of reading the excellent GMing advice Le Joueur and others provide.

Patricia Hearst, post-sentencing.

(Thumbnail: follow the link for a full-sized picture.)

WISH 44 is all about picking games.

How do you choose games to join or to run? What factors influence you: timing, people, system, genre, etc.? Do you weigh different factors for different kinds of games, e.g., online vs. tabletop vs. LARP? Is it a group decision or a decision you make on your own?

Well, the easy answer is “yes.”

I’m attracted to games based on genre and people. For a new group, the genre needs to be interesting and the people need to seem suitable. I’ve never been particularly interested in random D&D games, and I’m careful about getting into games with people I don’t know.

Once I know people, though, I’ll try almost anything. If Carl wanted to run Senzar, I’d give it a try, because I’d know the people would be fun and in the worst case we could while away the hours mocking death jesters. In fact, I once joined a Lords of Creation game, fully aware of what I was getting into, because I trusted the GM.

For the past half a decade or so, my gaming group was pretty stable at the core: the aforementioned Carl (usually GMing), along with me, Brad, and Gretchen. Add a variable number of people from the greater gaming pool. This shouldn’t be taken to imply that we were the center of the gaming group, just that when I was gaming I tended to play with those three. This made decisions pretty simple. Moving out to Boston threw a wrench into this simplicity, but I’m pretty darned happy with the group I seem to have found.

All that said, the time factor is a limiter on what I can do. No matter how much I might want to play in four or five games, I just don’t have that kind of time to burn. I won’t join a game just cause I have time to do so, but lack of time can keep me from joining games I want to play.

Regarding mediums: I don’t LARP much, which is to say at all. I almost got into a cool UA LARP back in California, but knowing I’d have to move soon took some of the fun out of it and I’m probably too much of an introvert to LARP heavily. My online play has tailed off a lot; when I did RP online, it was mostly on one specific MUSH. A couple of people have been able to drag me into other MUSHes but that’s really a case of making a gaming choice based on people.

If I was gonna run a Buffy game, which I’m not, it would be something like this. It would be set in Los Angeles, in 1976. Warren Zevon would have just released his eponymous album. Vampires would snort cocaine alongside adult film stars, and they’d both pay the price in their own ways.

Daddy, don’t you ask her when she’s coming in
And when she’s home don’t ask her where she’s been

The Slayer would be an LA child, lanky and beautiful and terribly young for such a burden; she’d wear scarves and maybe dream of a time when she thought she could be a singer. Her smile would be sad and wise and generous, and her eyes would be the color of the ocean at sunset, when you can forget all about how polluted it is.

Dry your eyes my little friend
Let me take you by the hand
Freddie get ready Rock steady
When Johnny strikes up the band

She’d have friends: musicians, grifters, dreamers, thieves. Down on Venice Beach, there’d be a Watcher who’d given up the straight life and taken to reading the future in the tattoos of the street performers. He’d read an old ratty Tarot deck for a living. Not all her friends would like one another, but the desperate need to stay together to survive.

He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
Excitable boy, they all said
And he bit the usherette’s leg in the dark
Excitable boy, they all said
Well, he’s just an excitable boy

She’d have enemies: high gloss vampires and angry radical werewolves. There’s a demon down on the Sunset Strip who specializes in messing over drunk tourists; they wake up the next day never realizing anything happened, but when they get home they find an envelope of pictures addressed to their wives. And they say, in whispers, that there’s a sect of Hollywood stars who drink blood to keep their youth.

I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was staring in my empty coffee cup
I was thinking that the gypsy wasn’t lyin’
All the salty margaritas in Los Angeles
I’m gonna drink ‘em up

And there’s a bar, where the Slayer and her pals come together after something’s happened. (Rarely, they have the chance to come together before; but times are troubled and the chances to act rather than react are seldom.) Nobody lives in one place for very long, and none of the places they live are very large: so they meet at the bar, and they drink whatever the bartender is pushing that night, and they celebrate survival until the sun comes up over the hills. Not to celebrate would be to give in to despair, and despair — in LA — is the beginning of the end.

Speaking of indie RPGs, there are eight interesting games here. They were all written in 24 hours flat. Some of ‘em work, some of ‘em don’t, I think they’re all interesting experiments. We really need to schedule a regular indie gaming night, maybe monthly.

The first public draft of Into The Sunset (120K PDF) is now available. What’s that, you ask? It’s my little ten page roleplaying game of romantic comedies. Take a look if you like that sort of thing, and comment if the spirit moves you.

It’s cool to link to it, but please don’t stick it up anywhere else. Right now it’s under copyright; when I decide what I want to do with it I’ll most likely release it under a Creative Commons license. At that point it may well turn into an HTML document as well.

What I’m thinking is this: a vast, ancient elven empire, called simply the Empire, that dominates the western half of the continent. The elves are neutral, shading towards a kind of practical lawful evil, but only a little way. Just a dark grey. The only exception to the elven domination in this part of the continent is a northwestern peninsula, which is populated by a resolute kingdom of mountain dwarves. Underneath the peninsula, there’s a kingdom of drow which survives with assistance from the Empire. The drow kingdom is a cult of personality, worshipping the Living Presence of their goddess. The Living Presence tells lies about his kingdom’s power, and his people believe him. The mountain dwarves would like to reclaim the tunnels and caverns, and they could probably manage the drow on their own, but the Empire? No way.

Off the coast, there’s a small string of islands, very advanced culturally, populated by a race of island dwarves. I’d have to write up the subrace, but think of otters. They are not particularly friendly with their mountain cousins and they really don’t like the Empire.

There’s also a single island which was settled a long time ago by a subrace of wood elves who rejected the militaristic ways of the mainlanders. This is a subject of much friction. Fortunately, this island (and the two dwarven kingdoms) have a mutual defense treaty with the humans who live across the sea. It’s believed that the humans have mastered enough sorcery to do huge amounts of damage to the Empire in a conflict; nobody wants to find out what the cost of such a conflict would really be.

The most important city of the campaign is a settlement on the coast of the Empire, which was deeded to the humans a hundred years ago. It’s a key city, because it’s the best place for humans, dwarves, and elves to mix freely. The drow don’t go there. Everyone else does. It’s corrupt, vital, and very much alive. There’s another human settlement a little bit south, administered by a different human nation: it tends distinctly towards the evil. I suspect the humans there are necromantic.

(The correspondences are not intended to be exact.)

WISH 42: Reusing Characters…

Do you ever reuse characters from game to game? When you reuse characters, what do you bring from game to game: a name and a personality, stats, or more? What kinds of characters do you reuse and why? If you GM, do you like to have players bring in existing characters? Why?

I don’t ever reuse characters… wait, that’s not true. I’ve used Mange (half-orc barbarian) more than once, but that’s because I intentionally use him as a test character for 3e games. Any time I don’t want to burn a “real” character concept on a game before I know if I’ll like it, I’ll trot him out. He served as my NWN character as well.

Hm, and you could say I’ve reused Constantine as well, if you again count computer games. But there’s not much roleplay per se in those. Still, OK: I’ll say I reuse characters for the purpose of coming up with computer game avatars. And now that I think about it, those two games are the only computer games I’ve played for extended periods of time. Maybe there’s a reason for that; I’ll have to experiment.

In pen and paper games, however, I don’t generally reuse characters. I do reuse concepts; I went through half a dozen iterations of the bright young noble before I went on to something else. In some ways, my travelling backwoods feng shui master from Rob’s UA game is very similar to my cleric of Mercury in Carl’s 3e game. I reuse (and remix) concepts, but not characters.

I am slow as molasses in January, but here’s my thoughts on WISH 40: Preferred Style. The question:

What style of game do you prefer to play in? Style here does not mean genre, although certain styles work better under some genres than others. Style is more about the elements that predominate in a game: combat, politics, mysteries/puzzles, romance/interpersonal relations, etc. What three adjectives best describe your favorite game style? Does this style lend itself to particular genres or games?

I like games with lots of mysteries in them. When I’m GMing, I find I always think in terms of mysteries, which is one reason I don’t consider myself a great GM — lots of people want more straightforward stuff, and focusing on the mystery/puzzle can shortchange the roleplay. But I really like figuring things out, particularly within the context of a particular PC’s mindset. You can see this in my Unknown USA character Reese Beulay, who has a pretty odd take on the occult.

I like horror. Is that a genre? From experience, I don’t think so. I’ve probably never run a game without some horror creeping in — squicky stuff, tension, that kind of thing. It’s my favored means of achieving immersion. I find that the horrific tends to focus people marvelously.

I like roleplayed interaction. I’d rather do a scene where I don’t get information out of a well-realized NPC than a scene where I get information out of an NPC who might as well be named “Information Dispenser.” Story is less of a concern for me than roleplay and a fully realized world; I’m of the camp that believes that story arises inevitably from the right setting.

So, three adjectives? Horrific, immersive, and personality-driven.