Context, Stew, and What Works

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Much rpg blogosphere chat on Vincent Baker's 'blog, anyway mostly amicable, often tense, occasionally crossing over into potential flame has gone more or less like this:

New Idea
Yuck!
Cool!
Period of Fast and Thick Comments,
Reformulation of Cool Idea
Cool! (from previous Yuck-sayers)

A lot depends on the context of the idea. So, one of the ideas under consideration is "You don't own your character. Game designers should play with this."

For me, this was problematic until I found contexts I was comfortable with that already used this idea. One is the Letter Game that I am playing with mnemex and batyatoon, and another is the Ars Magica idea of grogs.

Vincent pointed out that when he's got his Game Designer Hat on, he's going to talk differently than when he does in a finished work, where the dangerous game design ideas are put in the appropriate context for Joe Gamer, who is then looking at a complete game, not a concept in a vaccuum. Among the conclusions one might draw from this is: RPG design is like stew. You might not want to look too closely at the preparation, or, if you do, You Have Been Warned.

All well and good, and already old news. Man, that 'blogosphere moves fast. And many of Vincent's -- and other people's -- points seem so bleeping obvious when one stops and thinks.

But, there's that context question. Much of the time, the first context we're in is React to Dangerous New Idea context. And, a lot of the time, there's a hidden context. If you are commenting on a 'blog, are you doing this from home, with plenty of rest and relaxtion? Are you doing this in the breaks between your day job? How are you doing outside of the 'blogosphere? Stressed? Happy? Cranky that you just can't keep up with the bleeping 'blogosphere? This colors your posts.

This is, I think, a 'blog version of Vincent's Lumpley Principle, which, if I understand it correctly, is simply that rpgs are games played by real people, and the social dynamics of this group of real people are an important factor in the game. 'Blogs and responses are written by real people (one presumes), and the social dynamics of this group of real people are an important factor in the dialogue.

There is another factor that I think is making me leery of some of the new ideas that are actually not so new. I don't have a catchy name for it.

The idea that one does not have sole ownership of one's character is not, as Vincent pointed out, actually new. Ars Magica, as I said, starts to play with this idea. Okay, there is a clear distinction between shared grog characters and more-owned non-grog characters. Nevertheless, there is this now Respected and Traditional rpg providing a safe context for the new and dangerous idea. Does this prove that, if one remembers context, the difference between talk about design and an actual game, and how to stay civil in an online discussion, that all is well?

Not necessarily, although remembering all of these items is certainly a good thing. Ars Magica works as a game, provided you want the sort of game it provides. I have not been having the same experience with a lot of the indie games, and I want to.

That is, Ars Magica, OTE, and other pre-indie explosion games work for me. I have a game. It is a complete game. I can play it, and I have played secure in my belief that I understand that what is supposed to happen is what is happening.

This is still too rare in my experience with indie games. Fr'ex, I like Primetime Adventures. I really like it. But, it took several rounds of discussion on the Forge forums before my group figured it understood all the nuances of this not very complicated game. Note that I am picking on PTA because it is, IMO, one of the best of this crop of games, and one that I have actually gotten my group to play, more than once, and one that I am actually ready, willing, and eager to play again.

I am finding that, for many indie games, a demo is essential if we are to have a prayer of being able to play it. I think this is a problem.

I am finding that there is significantly more to some of the indie games than I had thought. This is a problem, if an odd one. At GenCon Indy, I purchased Under the Bed and Bacchanal. I enjoyed reading both games, but found them light and fluffy, and mentally consigned them to the category of "party games" as opposed to "games I really want to play".

And there they would have stayed if I had not read various posts on the Forge forums and in other places. This is a problem: The game has not sold itself well enough for me to play it. More, without the information on the Forge, if I had tried to play either game, I would, at best, have gotten the light and fluffy results I would have expected. Now, I've met the authors of both games, and, while I am sure they are delighted by the simple fact of making a sale, I am also sure that they want their games played and understood.

All a gamer should need is the game itself.

Aside: I am ignoring the games-that-need-x-books-to-be-playable. One of the many things I like about the indie games is the philosophy that a game should be complete in one book, and a relatively small book at that.

You shouldn't need to have the game designer packaged with the game. You shouldn't need to consult forum post after forum post or to hunt for hours through the 'blogosphere in order to play the game. You shouldn't need a demo to be able to play the game. You should be able to play the game after reading the game.

OTOH, this isn't exactly a new complaint either, is it? It's just in a different context, because the indie games are pushing the boundaries of what we're used to and because the indie game designers are trying to raise the bar.

Comments

[mylescorcoran]

I agree with you that many indie games seem to require a demo to get one's head around. This is not a good thing, as original game designers are scarce in these parts.

That said, I think there's also a lot of hidden assumptions on the part of both designer and players, deeply rooted in previous experiences of play and everyone's particular history with role-playing. I've found it difficult in my group to firstly articulate and secondly put into practice neat, useful ideas like stakes setting and scene framing, that I've learned from the Forge and various indie games.

"All a gamer should need is the game itself." Hmm, not exactly. I think that a gamer needs other gamers, and a sense of what those other gamers want. The core of the Forge experience is that you can't just throw gamers together willy-nilly and expect them to produce an enjoyable gaming experience. Communication of desires, boundaries, preferences, dislikes, and methods is essential, be it by a formal mechanism or an ad-hoc process.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Sure. Gaming is a social activity, and you need enough commonality among the players. Granted, the game itself can't provide that.

It can and should provide more explicit statements about the author's base assumptions, and perhaps reasons for some of the rules. This is perhaps more true of indie games, as these are trying to stretch the boundaries of what an rpg can be. One pitfall I find I keep encountering with Sorcerer is that there are a lot of underwritten rules and assumptions. I think I'm up on most of them, but this is due to following Forge threads and asking Ron Edwards a lot of questions. He's not interested in doing a second edition of the game, but I find myself awfully tempted to annotate my copy with stuff like "This is Really Important!" or "This should be a prepared list, not something winged on the spot."

One thing I like about Michael Miller's With Great Power is that in the section of optional rules, he explains why each one is not a core rule.

So, yes, I accept the modification, but I don't think it contradicts what I'm trying to say. I'm not quite sure how to rephrase. "All a gaming group should need, apart from good communication and a good group gestalt, is the game itself" perhaps?

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, I see your point. I think however that the Lumpley Principle applies (if you don't mind me wielding it here) and the game is not the whole of the system.

I've mentioned this in A&E and I haven't got any really good solutions, but I do think that a gaming text has to serve two roles. Firstly and perhaps more importantly as a teaching text and secondly as a reference work for use during play. For sufficiently straightforward and simple rules the second role may be unimportant.

So for any game, and particularly for games with complex rules or ones that take a new approach or deliberately depart from the traditional methods, the rulebooks need to be clear and laden with examples. Without that we can't see what the rules are trying to achieve or incorporate those rules into the social systems that exist in the gaming group to make the overall system.

[mylescorcoran]

That was me. Sorry.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely, the rules must be laden with examples. agrumer noted that many game designers fall down here because they don't quite know enough about how other people use their game, and this includes the physical book, as we flip through the pages looking for clarification.

In Primetime Adventures, for example, agrumer noted the dearth of examples about using connections in play. The one extended example was actually an odd case -- two characters were going after the same romantic interest, and one had the romantic interest as a connection.