Giving them what they want

Roleplaying games have a unique property that no other media shares- it can become the game that you want, as you’re playing it. This unique factor actually has been a Big Fucking Deal for rpgs, though few folks have really sat down and thought about how it gets handled in play.

Traditional games have left this task solely in the hands of the GM, usually without explicit guidelines or rules to help them figure this out. The GM usually has to try to guess or elicit or read the players’ desires, utilize the power of setting up scenes, controlling the spotlight, and creating interactions with characters and challenges to meet the players’ and adapt to their desires. In recent years, this has become easier (though, really, still not easy) through things like Flag mechanics or explicit understanding of Scene Framing and other techniques.

More innovative games have played around with stuff like giving camera control or narration rights to the players. I had been thinking about this for over a year unable to articulate exactly what it was about narration trading I found so fascinating, and it’s this: it’s a simple and efficient way for the players to directly input into the game and change the game into what they want. Though it’s somewhat of a clubbing tool for this, it’s important because it’s far more effective than what we’ve BEEN doing for the last 30 years in the traditional realm. More subtle games play with the ability to change elements or load the odds or other things that aren’t as hamfisted to adapting play to meet the players.

This self-guiding/correcting element is often what makes some games resilient in their fun factor: like I’m surprised EVERY time I play Inspectres how much fun I have with it. And that’s because it adapts to meet the players quickly and easily.

Supplemental Model and Inherent Fragility

It struck me today that the supplemental business model is inherently a fragile design decision.

So if we take the traditional expectation that games are supposed to be long term campaigns, and then look at the fact that supplemental releases are usually at least twice a year (if not more often) AND that you have to test the new rules against the current (growing) body of rules AND that if we’re talking a large company like WOTC, we probably have 2 or 3 rulesets in development simultaneously and not enough time to compare -between them-…

It’s not hard to see why 3E gave us Pun Pun the Infinite Kobold or Magic the Gathering is on what, it’s 10th Edition?

Rpgs have had the saving grace of a GM as a buffer generally. For some things like monsters or magic items, a savvy GM could make sure the players never saw these things if they happened to be a broken set. Other things, like player options are harder, since they often are the most popular rules, players want to use them, and of course, if the designers and playtesters didn’t see the broken combo, what makes you think the average GM is going to see it until it hits the table and causes problems?

Games which were a standalone, static set of rules have more leeway for bad design. If it’s a well designed game, the rules are closed and it’s stable. If there’s broken pieces, the group can identify, change or excise them and then play for years without having to readjust to a constant influx of new rules which could render their changes unnecessary or worse for the balance overall.

(This might also tie in a bit with the retro movement right now- traditional games which were open rulesets are now effectively closed as no new rules are being published for them. Plus they’ve had years of playtesting in the field and most of their design issues are well known at this point.)

This also explains why the whole issue of “dead games” or “unsupported games” which is such a big thing in the tabletop community is a non-issue for say, LARPS, or boardgames. Instead of concerning with a new influx of rules as signs of a game that is alive and strong, you instead look to play and play networks.

It may also be a doorway tabletop games keep narrow- having to stay up on a changing ruleset is a hardcore feature that makes it less accessible and less friendly as an activity to pretty much everyone else.

In the long term, I don’t think the supplemental model for rpgs is going to last as the primary form of our hobby. It’s a lot of work and investment, inconsistent in terms of results for play, and raises the bar for entry and retention. If we do see a roleplaying renaissance, it’s probably going to be in the form of a simple, stable set of rules that hits the combination of fun play, accessible subject matter, and a large enough base to form lasting play networks (an actual license? Unlikely unless it’s an outgrowth of an ARG).

The majority of what makes up tabletop roleplaying right now is analogous to old school wargaming- scattered groups of folks playing, with their own sets of rules to learn, and a relatively high barrier to entry into the social network. Compare that, to say, playing Settlers of Catan at a boardgame night - simple, consistent rules and play experience, and easy low-commitment entry to play.

4E: Structure to Play With

Just finished listening to the Mike Mearls interview on Critical Hits and it seems to me that the most dramatic shift in the game is the expectation of how the group interfaces with the rules themselves, above and beyond any rules or setting changes.

That is, 4E seems to have grabbed a specific style of play from older D&D - it’s not Rule Zero, it’s also not Mother May I, it’s that the rules work as a foundation upon which to work with the Fictional Positioning in play. (Edit: with further reflection- Tunnels & Trolls probably exemplifies this in the old school play tradition)

Because it’s not the binary of “Use ONLY exactly what the text says/Ignore the rules”, but rather, “Use the rules and use the template of the rules for things beyond what exactly the rules say”, gamerdom is probably going to flail about this for years to come unless they lay out some really clear advice in a DMG 2 or something. The myth of “role vs. roll playing” has poisoned the well deep.

On the other hand, it sounds like my guess that there was bad mixup somewhere about skill challenges is on point. My theory is that there was a couple of competing skill setups and there was different design philosophies that got slammed in at the last second because it hadn’t been finally hashed out:

- Classic Fixed DCs (you see this in the skill descriptions)
- Scaling DCs (you see this in the chart in the DMG)
- Arbitrary DCs (Mike’s suggestion in the interview)
- Player Assigned (The option to choose between easy, moderate, hard skill rolls during a skill challenge, as reported from earlier demos)

I bet we see full, functional versions of these offered as “optional skill rules” either in Dragon online or as DMG2 material later down the line. It makes me a little sad, because none of this is really that innovative or complicated, which indicates to me that the issue wasn’t a matter of design, but that of competing design philosophies amongst the team. Instead of having any one setup fully there, it feels like we have a bunch partially there, stumbling over each other, which is especially dangerous given that they’re trying trying to sell the idea that rules are a foundation for the fiction to a group with years of habits and play otherwise.

Oh well. I suppose it wouldn’t be D&D if you didn’t have to kludge something together.

Oh Licenses…

One of my favorite American manga series, Bizenghast, now has it’s own rpg.

Unfortunately, the description makes me think that this is probably going to be just another “rules light license game” that really doesn’t do much to support the setting/genre (see also: Lord of the Rings, Buffy, Hellboy, Battlestar Galactica, Dragonball Z, Lain, etc.) This feeling isn’t helped by the “feature” that the cosmology of the setting will be explained- I want rules that help me make creepy shit I don’t understand, not the full understanding of it to rob it of it’s mystery.

Until I actually get to flip through a copy, I’ll reserve my full judgement, though it’s sort of a thing you pick up after you’ve seen enough heartbreakers. The general gamer mentality that rules don’t matter, just include enough setting and let them fix the rest has pretty much poisoned most license design.

I’m hoping Luke’s Mouse Guard will open some eyes to applying better design to license games, but we’ll see.

Gamasutra on 4E

The D&D designers did a good job of taking ideas from video games that help their game work better without overly diluting the unique feel of their game. Hopefully we can prove as competent at returning those influences as they were.

Though the design analysis is good, I’m wondering if the author has actually played yet.