Planet Story Games

BLADE RUNNER revisited >3.6 gigapixels from françois vautier on Vimeo.

It was about Wednesday morning when I realized this is PAX week! I'm only going for Friday, but I still have a lot to do to get prepped.

Sage LaTorra (of Dungeon World fame) has corralled some indie RPG fans to run stuff at PAX. We'll all be hanging out in room 304. If you come by and ask, I'll give you a microdungeon. I'm bringing Apocalypse D&D/Dungeon World and Apocalypse World. I may also bring a giant pad of paper in case anyone wants to play supersize How to Host a Dungeon. Apocalypse World, How to Host a Dungeon, and a bunch of other awesome RPGs will also be available at the Dreaming Booth, #1440.

See you at PAX!

Ok, I touched upon this yesterday in the footnotes, but I want to call it out here. This is an incredibly useful trick, and it's one that every GM should keep in hand if they want to make adventures or introduce game elements that are really going to resonate with the players and their characters, even if they give you only one or two things to work with.

Most characters have hooks, interesting elements about them which carry some emotional or behavioral load. They hate orcs. They drink a lot. They have sworn an oath to avenge their father. Whatever. To a GM, these things are pure gold, because they represent a laundry list of cool things that make a game go. The problem is that the list often seems kind of short. If every character has only one or two such hooks, that may end up seeming like a pretty anemic list once it's spread out over the length of a campaign.

Not so fast. With the right approach, even one or two hooks can be turned into an absolute smorgasbord of elements n a game that directly engage the characters without simply repeating the same handful of plots. The trick, to put it simply, is this:

Don't tie things to the character, tie them to the things tied to the character.

Ok, that may not make much sense without context, but give me a minute here. Let's take a sample character, Anna, who has only two hooks - she's a terrible skirt (pants?) chaser, and she wants to be the king's Master at Arms someday. If you were to only use those things, then you'd have exactly two plots: The guy she's sleeping with, and the mission for the king that will get her the position. Sure, you could stretch them out into chains - there might be a series of lovers, or it might be a sequence of missions before the title is rewarded, but that's pretty much. This is all you have to work with.
But what if, instead, you never touch the obvious things? What if, instead, you presume those things to be givens, and instead focus on other things that connect it into it. Thus, even if we never focus on an individual lover, we might well run into:

• The jilted, vengeful other lover looking for revenge
• The wife of your last conquest
• The partner who gets too enamored and asks his family for permission to marry you. They are not amused
• The partner who signed her name on his debts. His bad debts.
• The pimp, who feels you misunderstood the situation.

Similarly, the route to the Master of Arms office is almost certainly dotted with:

• Other potential contenders for the position about to improve their standing
• People who would be happy to have the future master at arms owe them a favor
• People who might have the king's ear who want things.
• Alternative (and very sweet) job offers

Even with just this off the cuff list, you now have enough seeds to keep the character engaged for dozens of sessions. And that's with some very shallow hooks - your players have likely been much more creative.
The trick[1] is to find the thing important to the character, then find the things that resonate with that. Not only do you multiply the number of play opportunities for a single hook, you keep that hook from feeling overused, even if it comes up constantly. Where a string of lovers in trouble might get repetitious, the people connected to those lovers are vastly more varied.

Anyway, it's a small trick, but when I'm stumped, I find it's a very useful one[2].


1 - And like all good tricks, it's utterly obvious once you see it.

2- A similar technique makes for a fast and dirty way to make memorable NPCs. Take an element from one of the players and reflect it in an obvious fashion. If one player was a soldier, make him a soldier on the other side. If one player likes to drink, make him a drunk. Something that seems like an entirely obvious GM trick to elicit sympathy.

Then reflect it again. Discard the first value and use this new one. Instead of being a soldier, he had a brother in the war. He used to drink but is better now. Whatever. Suddenly it's a lot less contrived, but there's that root of commonality to give their interaction some resonance.

I’ve got a 3 1/2-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son here at home, and my free time has been sharply curtailed since they came into my life. Gaming-wise, this means that I have seldom GM’d games, instead mostly sitting back and being a player. This has given me some great gaming experiences, but it’s left my GM’ing skills very rusty and impaired my confidence that I know what I’m doing on that side of the gaming table. That’s despite the fact that I’ve often been a primary GM in many of my previous groups over the years. I guess it’s a “use it or lose it” kind of thing.

Since House of Cards, the cinematic heist game I’m currently designing, has a GM, this is a less than ideal state to be in. So I’ve recently made it a priority to get back on that horse and GM (or at least strongly facilitate) some games. I’ve recently begun gaming on Mondays at a local comic and games store, and this new group has given me the chance to polish up my GM’ing.

Right now I’m running a multi-session 3:16 campaign. I chose to offer a 3:16 game since it’s accessible, low prep,  and mechanically uncomplicated. Playing multiple sessions has given me the chance to develop the setting, establish some NPCs, tie the planets together with shipboard scenes, push and pull on the relationships between the characters, etc. In other words, do the things a GM is supposed to do.

Doing prep and then springing things on the players has been great fun. Flexing my story muscles in a different way has left me feeling more confident and rediscovering old things I used to do in running games. It’s got me itching to run more games on my shelf and do more playtesting with House of Cards to better develop best practices for the GM role in the game.

I didn’t tell the guys that this was my first stab at GM’ing in a long while (I didn’t want to jinx it), but it seems like the game is fun and hopefully serving as a means to bind this new group together. So that’s what I’ve been up to – getting back to using my GM skills and hopefully making them a central part of my gaming toolbox again.

By day, I’m mild-mannered game and graphic designer Joshua A.C. Newman. But by night… by night I don a disguise as reasonable as Superman’s and I become…

@JoshuaACNewman!

I post there when a comment doesn’t warrant a blog post.

Not that this warranted a blog post.

Today I discovered a map I had never seen before which deserves the title of one of the most spectacular fantasy city maps ever made: Patrick Durand-Peyroles's map of Laelith. Odhanan presents the map, with a good high-quality scan of the entire map, in an Enworld thread Map of Laelith, the Holy City.



What do I love about this map? First of all it's hand-drawn to a very high bar of quality. Hand-drawn isn't everyone's bag, but you've got to respect the attention to detail. For example, note the white calligraphy title, the artistry on the water details, and the hand-hatched contour shading. There are tons of city detail too, calling out for adventure. Notice the torturous winding path down the lower left-hand side of the map leading to a lonely structure, then off the map.

But what I love most of all is the architectural palimpsest effect where the new city is obviously laid over top of an even more ancient (and, one suspects, more spectacular) city. There's the ancient temple on the left, bisected by a steep ravine, hinting at some past disaster. The upper half of the city is divided by what is apparently the remnant of an ancient grand avenue, not transformed into a maze of ad-hoc streets. It reminds me intently of Rome, where the streets and squares still have the shapes of vanished monumental buildings.

So, it seems that one advantage of doing a two parter is that I get some very prescient comments about what the next pat will do. If you haven't. You absolutely should take a look at the comments on yesterday's post. Some good stuff there.

The trick of the tableau is that you don't want a tableau at all, you want a call to action. That's a very grand sounding term that really means you want to provide your players a compelling reason to act. Easy to say, but you don't want to force them to do it - that's as bad as using heroic logic tol ead them by the nose. No, instead you want to create an opportunity that is resonant and urgent. Something that makes them want to act, and act now.

Such as situation is composed of three parts: an opportunity, a reason, and a consequence.
The opportunity to act seems like the easiest of the three. After all, players can always act, right? All they need to do is say they want to do something, right?

Well, yes, that's technically true, but it's not necessarily useful. You don't want the players to take any action, you want them to take an action in response to the situation.[1] That demands that there be something specific for them to react to, usually some sort of action. A little girl standing around looking lost is not much of an invitation. The same little girl getting kidnapped is another story.

This leapfrogs onto the third point: Urgency. An important part of the call to action is that there is a clear consequence to inaction. The consequence need not be to the characters, it simply must be a change that will happen if they do not act. Ideally it's a change they don't want to have happen, but that depends a lot on how you sell it to them. In the previous example, there might be some long term consequence to the girl being lost and alone, but there's an _immediate_ consequence to her being grabbed. The window to act opens, but it does not stay open indefinitely.

You can actually get by with just clear opportunity and consequence in most situations. As long as the consequences are undesirable, that can be enough to spur action. But it's really the absolute minimum, and it's thin enough that it's a poor thing to rely on. As such, if you really want to close the deal, you need some reason why the characters (or players) actually care about what's going on. There are several ways you can do this, so let's look at a few of the more reliable ones.

Most powerfully, you can make the events personal. Tying things directly to the characters gives them immediate stakes. As an example, why put a stranger's child in the center of things when it can be someone the characters recognize, if only through business done with their family?
You can also make things indirectly personal. Well constructed characters have any number of buttons and issues that were put in explicitly to be drawn into situations like this. Do they have an enemy they hate? That's who's grabbing the girl. Do they have some idea they're attached to? Tie the kid to it through dress or action. You know how to do this if you stop and think about it, so do it![2]

A somewhat more shameless trick, one that is directed at the players, is to let them see someone getting away with something, ideally something which they would get in trouble for if they tried. This won't work for every group, but if you've had to do things to keep them in check, I assure you that nothing will drive them to violent indignation faster than someone getting away with something.

Another trick, and again, this one speaks to the players, is to make things anomalous. Look at the scene you have in mind and try to spot your assumptions. When you think about the cute little girl in braids in trouble, the image is almost certainly human, to tweak that. What if she's a dwarf. Or A Goliath. Or a Warforged? Challenging assumptions are more likely to give the players pause and make them think about the situation.[3]

In all of these cases, the trick is to get the players to _want_ one outcome over another. If they want something, and there's a clear opportunity for action in front of them, everything else takes care of itself.


1 - There is a temptation to want them to take a _specific_ action, and to funnel things down that path so its the only valid option. However well intentioned, this is a bad plan. It's railroading, and no one benefits from it. Concentrate on trying to get them to respond, but leave the manner of that response up to them.

2 - Of course, the reason you won't is that you're afraid it will appear contrived, forced, or like you're overusing those hooks. You're not. Not any of that.
It is a rare game that overuses the character's hooks. If you hit them more than one every session they MIGHT start wearing thin, but the reality is this is what the player _wants_, and using them is validation, not a challenge to credulity. And heck, if you've used them enough times to be worried, then you should have a whole backlog of past uses you can draw on to make things a little different.
Consider, for example, if you use a character's interest in the ladies quite often. You could keep throwing in new damsels, but if you're worried it's wearing thing, then why not bring back one of the previous ladies. Or perhaps her very angry sibling? Or her kid. It creates a personal tie _through_ that important character element without triggering it directly.

3 - Don't rely too much on this one though. It can easily turn into another variant of heroic logic.

UNRELATED PLUG: So, I said something on twitter the other day. Daniel Solis turned it into something lovely. So I have done the only reasonable thing, and opened a Cafe Press store for it.

Hooking players into an encounter is a little bit of an art, and I had an interesting discussion about just that today on Twitter. The idea that started it was an image: A little girl in tight braids and well-kept but not fancy clothes calling out for her mommy and daddy in a crowded marketplace. Described well, it's a heartbreaking little tableau, the kind to tug at the heartstrings ofan audience and quickly draw the players in.

Unfortunately, it doesn't actually work that way.

The rub of a tableau like that is that it's equally likely to invite snarky comments, especially from players who either are playing their characters a certain way or are, to be frank, the kind of players who are inclined to be a little snarky. Given that this describes much of the gaming populace falls under this description, what's going to happen when they come upon this tableau?

Unless your players are feeling difficult, then they'll eventually engage the little girl because heroic logic dictates that they must. Heroic logic is, of course, the player's awareness that the GM is shining a light on this particular character, and clearly that is where they must go to get the ball rolling. It is not quite a glowing exclamation mark over the character's head, but it's close.

But the problem is, GMs are not always aware that they're doing this. When they craft very descriptive tableaus, it's very easy to get attached to their own prose and think that the players are responding to the quality of the writing and the emotional engagement of the situation. The reality is, they probably aren't. They're responding to the direction you're pointing.

This is harmless enough on its own, but it can be problematic over time. First and foremost, your players are aware of the use of heroic logic, even if you aren't, and every time they have to use it, their patience frays just a little bit more. This may never really reach a crisis point, but if it does, that's no fun for anyone.

Of more immediate concern is the possibility that the day may come that your player's miss the point. You expect them to engage with something, but they've picked up the cue that they're supposed to be observing. This will be frustrating, but you can deal with it. You just need to pull out the stops, and make the tableau MORE compelling, rich and heartwrenching! And when that doesn't work (because that isn't what they were responding to in the first place) and you redouble your efforts all the more, you're going to get frustrated. There's no way, you will think, that your players could be MISSING this. They're just being a bunch of jerks.

At which point you flip open the Monster Manual to find something disproportionately ugly with which you will wipe the imagines smirks off their faces. And it just goes downhill from there.

Bottom Line: Friends don't let friends depend on tableaus.

But then, if you can't depend on the tableau to spark action, what _can_ you do? Sounds like a job for….Tomorrow![1]


1- Dirty pool, I know, but I'm intentionally experimenting with terser posts. I've tried this before, and it never sticks, but it buys me more time to read the new Dark Sun guide, so it seems like a good cause.

I just got some more Purple Worm art from Seattle painter Darin Shuler. Actually, Darin is formerly of Seattle, now of South Carolina. When I told Darin I was putting together a D&D module he got very excited and contributed an awesome Purple Worm God image for the back cover. It's weird, surrealistic, and spectacular and not what you expect (in a good way). I'm not going to post it now, though. I'm going to make you all wait until the final is done. :) Also, I probably owe you a preview of the interiour art by Ed Heil, whose work I have admired since the days of Trollbabe.

Teasing a thing Paul and I are working on...

When you bond with a fellow soldier, tell them to increase their bond score with you by +1. If this raises the bond to +4, they reset to +1 and mark experience.

When you see a fellow soldier suffer harm past 9:00, roll+bond. On a 10+, you rush to help them right now, no matter what. On a 7-9, you’re badly shaken. If you do anything but rush to their aid, you’re acting under fire. On a miss, you’re in control. If you rush to help them anyway, mark xp.

When you assist another soldier, roll+bond. On a hit, you help them. They take +1 forward. On a 7-9, you also expose yourself to danger, fire, retribution, or cost.

Like I don't have enough stuff simmering around here.

So, the concept of fungibility is also something that's useful in looking at adventure design, though once again it's a useful tool, not an automatic indicator of quality or a lack of quality.

First and foremost, it's an important element when looking at the objective of an adventure. A lot of times the easy hook is a giant sack of cash (in some form or another) , but that can end up raising questions. If the goal is money, is this really the best way to get it? A lot of classic games raised this question, where the rewards of an adventure could easily be overwhelmed by the cost of potions, repairing equipment and so on. If you've got a fungible reward, it invites that sort of comparison thinking, and that's a good way to end up with heros who act more like accountants. Taking a little time to make sure the MacGuffin is non fungible is probably a good investment of time.

That's a small thing, but it does provide a pointer to a bigger one - Heroism is Fungible.

Not the concept of heroism, of course, just heroism as it exists in games. Menace rises, heroes arrive, fighting ensues, heroes win. The problem is that in many cases it does not matter which heroes arrive to save the day, and this is especially problematic in hero-rich environments (like the many published RPG settings). This is a common problem with published adventures because they need to work with whatever group happens to have bought them. By working equally well with all groups, it's unlikely to have any kind of personal tie in to your particular group.

It's hardly news that published adventures are a little generic, but it's useful to frame it in these terms because it gives a concrete yardstick for any changes you make to personalize it. Does the change you're introducing make the adventure one which only your group could handle it or does it just make it more complicated?

Archived from this thread on SG:

So, with Game Chef coming up again, I have to say that I firmly believe that:

1. Everyone can design a game. It’s like how everyone can draw a picture of a flower. You just do it, period. And there it is: a game.

2. Whether a game is “good” or not is completely subjective, depending on what you want from it. Maybe it isn’t particularly successful as a game, but tells you a great deal about the author (insight) or, 20 years down the road, becomes a record of what they were thinking about at the time (nostalgia). Everything is potentially valuable and useful and “good” to someone. And the rest doesn’t matter. Why would anyone want to judge all games by the same set of criteria? Why should every game aspire to be D&D or Dogs in the Vineyard? That’s bullshit. You have to know your (subjective) criteria before you decide how to judge a game.

3. Everyone can learn to make games that work better as games (i.e. creating a consistently enjoyable experience for their players, based on whatever subjective criteria you have for play), given practice and a desire to learn from others. Actually, you can learn to make games that are better at whatever subjective criteria you have, if it’s selling more copies, or causing more controversy, or making you more famous amongst your peers or whatever. People are good at learning to do things. All it takes is time and dedication. Of course, people have different capacities for getting better and different learning speeds, especially as we get older, but I believe that everyone can make incremental progress if they put in the time and energy. That’s one of the simple joys and rewards of being alive.

4. Does that mean that everyone can make a game that will be hugely successful at their own subjective criteria? No. You can definitely get closer to your criteria or more successful, but nothing guarantees that you will be successful at anything you want to do. The challenge and uncertainty is also part of life simple pleasures and vexing frustrations.

5. Sometimes this means, in order to be hugely successful by your own (subjective) standards, you have to change the criteria by which you measure yourself and your games. Maybe you just want to write the best 2-player game about zombies ever written. That’s probably possible. Will it sell a billion copies and make you world famous? Probably not. Who cares though? You did it. You met your criteria. Maybe you want to hack an existing game and run a really memorable campaign that your home playgroup will never forget. Badass. Do that.

A lot of this comes out of my own frustrations and personal journey over the past 10 years or so, coming to terms with my own design and publishing goals and ability to execute on them (at least at this stage in my life). So, changing your personal criteria for success is something near and dear to my heart. I do it all the time and feel like it’s probably critical for human beings to stay sane and satisfied.

Dust Devils “Revenged” edition is once again available for sale in PDF format!

You can get it for just $10.

Ha, only took me slightly less than two years to finish all those reviews. My deepest apologies to everyone who waited so long for me, especially the last four who submitted. You probably forgot you ever wrote those games!

Everyone who earned a “baked” review gets a $25 gift certificate to IPR, as per the original rules for picking winners. Those folks are:

– Jackson Tegu
– Mo Turkington
– Nathan Paoletta
– Stephen Bretall
– David Donachie
– Jason Dettman
– Ben Wray
– Marshall Burns
– Josh Roby
– Simon Pettersson
– Jesse Burneko

Wow, folks, that’s 11 out of 36 games. Nice job! Let me know if I missed anyone who got a baked review.

WINNERS: email me (jaywalt at gmail) and I’ll get you set up with your IPR $$$.

Finally, there will be a grand prize winner, as soon as I have time to re-read all the baked reviews, and they will — in addition — get a copy of In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, which will tell you more about corvidae than you would ever want to know. I’ll post the Grand Murderland Champion soon, like tomorrow.

And then we’ll be done with this contest and I’ll move on to wrapping up Game Chef 2009 and starting Game Chef 2010. Woohoo!

Yay for finishing things.

33. Eero Tuovinen – Valravnar for Ásagrimmr

Premise: Players takes on the roles of Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin, and the mortals or other beings they encounter while traveling the World Tree seeking information for the All-Father.

Thoughts: Eero is exploring concepts as exciting as any game on this list, but I have a few concerns that make me hesitant to plop it down on the nearest tabletop. I really like the travel mechanics for the ravens moving between the Nine Worlds and encounter obstacles. They remind me a bit of journey conflicts in Mouse Guard, but are framed by the mortal players for the ravens. Then, when the ravens arrive somewhere, they frame situations for the mortal players to play out. That whole dynamic is genius. However, though Eero tries to place the emphasis — at least according to the text — on the events the ravens observe in the Midgard, the only thing tying these various mortal events together is the ravens. Consequently, I imagine that most play groups would quickly gravitate towards viewing the ravens as the true protagonists. Doing otherwise just seems to go against the grain, like playing Dogs and focusing on the townsfolk. Somebody, I don’t remember who, said there are basically two stories — “a stranger comes to town” and “go on a journey” — and it’s the ravens who are the strangers and/or the journey-makers. So the tension between that and the GM-type role that Eero wants to give Hugin and Munin worries me slightly, especially when — compared to the ravens — the mechanics for mortals doing stuff seem much less interesting.

Conclusion: Browned, but smells really appetizing.

34. Adam Dray – Crow: Space Scavengers

Premise: This game is basically Firefly + Rogue Trader, written with a kind of “tough luck!” grouchiness that is pretty fun. It’s made to be a really short game, only a few hours, and is more a shared storytelling activity in the vein of Once Upon a Time or Baron Münchhausen than a classic roleplaying game where you advocate primarily through your character.

Thoughts:There’s a lot to like here. The character types and their moves are pretty attractive, though I wish there weren’t so many “play two cards and add ‘em” moves and, instead, each move was totally unique. I like the grouchiness in the text — shut up and like it! — but it masks some of the issues with the game as written. If Jason Morningstar was writing this review, he would criticize it for being “parlor narration,” where the players are spending cards and vying for overall narrative authority rather than backing up specific fictional statements related to their characters actions (like you do with Sees and Raises in Dogs in the Vineyard, for example). I have similar concerns that playing War (the classic card game) for narrative authority is not really a solid basis for roleplaying, though I think that, with a minimum of revision, this could be really fun, especially as an intro RPG activity for folks who like Firefly. At a minimum, that would require rules whereby not every player would have to participate in every conflict and, maybe, the opportunity for players could play multiple cards over the course of the conflict, in reaction to cards played against them (a chance for escalation or trading efforts). And maybe a way for players to play cards to provide antagonism for others, rather than having that be a part of free narration. You could keep the cooperative format, though, maybe by having players draw a number of cards from the deck, representing obstacles that have to be narrated and overcome. But that’s just speculation on my part. I’m not sure what direction — if any — Adam wants to take this in, especially after all this time. P.S. It could make a wicked Apocalypse World hack :)

Conclusion: Browned; it’s definitely playable and sounds fun, but isn’t quite fully cooked.

35. Jackson Tegu – Life Histories of North American Scavenging Birds, Including the Crow

Premise: This is an emotional and provocative little game that shares a lot in common with “American Jeep” games like Penny for My Thoughts and A Flower for Mara. You play a group of people who, every night for about a week, share a dream in which they are crows together, flying, hopping, observing the mortal world. And then every day they gather together and gradually come to remember and verbally discuss their shared dream experiences. There is some built in rising action where the game builds up to the last night in which something — though Jackson never says what — may occur, reaching some kind of catharsis at the end.

Thoughts: This game is amazing just as a text, very evocative and beautifully written; no surprise since it’s by the author of The Smoke Dream. Jackson definitely has a way with conveying ethereal imagery and emotions in his writing. I have some questions in my mind about how exactly I would bring this to the other players at the table, for instance: How should I convey what the players should and shouldn’t do at different stages in the game, like how little control they have over their crow bodies on the first night? Some of that only becomes apparent as you read the entire rules document and notice differences between the instructions for different nights and days. However, the game text is short enough that everyone should be able to read it, and you could even tell everyone to read the text, silently or aloud, before you play out each day or night scene. Also, I think part of the fun and — to be blunt — artistry involved in enacting a text like this is in how the organizer presents it to the players. Just like being a good GM in a traditional rpg, being a good facilitator of a Jeep-like text like this involves a bit of charisma and careful, intentional work at presenting the game and making it happen. And even though I have zero background in Jeep or larp at all, I feel like this game points me down a road which isn’t entirely unfamiliar and encourages me to work through my anxiety and find a way to properly present the game to players. And that’s something that I didn’t expect to find here or realize was even possible. So, awesome.

Conclusion: Baked; this game rocks on toast. Like all these games, it could probably get better and tighter with playtesting, but that’s maybe not the point here. I would worry about losing the original feeling (the voice) of the text through too much revision, so maybe we should just enjoy it for what it is.

36. John Kantor – The Crows: Murderland

Premise: In this gothic and metaphysical game, players take on the roles of “Incarnations” (characters) and the “Avatars” (meta-characters, distinct from the players themselves in an unclear fashion) that are attempting to prevent them from succumbing to despair. The winner of the game is the Avatar who’s associated Incarnation has the least despair and the end of an agreed-upon time limit. I’m not sure what that means, though.

Thoughts: I was confused about the premise, especially who or what exactly the Incarnations and Avatars were, by the second page of the game and am still not certain. As far as I can tell, the Incarnations are normal people and the Avatars are metaphysical spirits charged to protect them that can manifest as crows. The main difficulty this game has is that it not only is based on “parlor narration,” bidding dice in an attempt to create or fight off despair, but the bidding process is completely disconnected from the fictional narration. Each conflict is the equivalent of every other conflict and no difference in narration affects how the bidding dice game is played. While this may work perfectly well in practice, especially in the short term, the disconnect between fiction and mechanics means that what is compelling in the dice game may have a less exciting fiction associated with it and vice versa, which can drag a game down and lead to a sense that the narration doesn’t matter and the dice game isn’t compelling enough to maintain interest by itself. This can lead to a game that is weaker than the sum of its parts because the parts don’t really add up, just coexisting beside each other, if that makes sense. In general, though, the structure of play seems reasonable. I wish there were especially fiendish things to do once your Avatar fails in its mission, loses its Incarnation, and becomes a “Shade.” That sounds ghoulish and potentially fun to be a game-wrecker for other players.

Conclusion: Warm; an interesting concept and a game with some nice layout, but a lot of the components fail to really connect, so it ends up feeling relatively toothless despite all the description that invites emotionally provocative play.

Back in the day, if I had a new game and I wanted to get other people to try it, I might have said something like this: “Let’s play Star*Axe! It’s sci fi, kind of buzzmetal-grunge-future. You play space vikings sacking colony ships and planetoids, killing lots of stuff under the watchful eye of your ancestral [...]

At the risk of stirring shit up just when folks were starting to have productive conversations.

"Play should be personally and socially fulfilling" is the one big thing to come out of the Forge in the last ten years, apparently. I'm like "Yup. Cool." Creative Agenda, as a thing that exists and makes play personally and socially fulfilling is something I can get behind, no problem. Things happen in a game, stuff changes, on your character sheet, in the fiction of the game, and in the social relationships between the players, and you notice and appreciate that change. You see it as "progress" rather than just change, because you've got a creative agenda.

So no problem with that.

But! I'm not sure that the specific formulation of creative agendas as falling into three general categories of "Story Now", "Right to Dream", and "Step on Up" is a useful way of thinking about Creative Agenda. I don't see it helping in design, nor do I see it helping in fixing problems in play. I do see specific understandings about how to design for Story Now play as being useful, but I don't see correlated insights into Step on Up and Right to Dream play. I do see a lot of arguments and explanations and wars over definitions.

So, anyway. Maybe related to that, maybe not, here's a thing I've been thinking about: There are three general things going on in roleplaying games, all of which seem rewarding to players in greater or lesser degree.

Theme

If you looked at the fiction of play as if you were reading a book, what would the book be saying? What's the game "about"? Is it about good triumphing over evil (or failing to do so)? Is it about what difference one person can make in a corrupt society? In the ficton this looks like when you find out that no, your Dog isn't going to shoot that woman in the face, or oh shit yes he is. It's when you discover (to little surprise) that there are no repercussions for killing all those orcs. On character sheets, it's you scratching out that "I will become King" belief, and writing in "I have no use for Kings". It's you checking off that last experience point for killing that dragon, and leveling up your character. Socially, it's having this shared understanding of an issue or an idea not because you've argued about it or maybe even talked about it, but because you've shared a story about it, and maybe you don't quite agree on how to interpret that story but you both see the story itself as true and right.

Experience

How does it feel when you're playing? Are you feeling what your character is feeling? Are you sweating over tough decisions for your character, or do they come easy? Is it scary? Is it sad? Is it hard to do or is it easy? In play this looks like how it feels when you are playing The Mountain Witch, and you're looking around the table trying to figure out what Dark Fate the other players have drawn. Or in Apocalypse World, your character is pinned down, under fire, and the MC gives you an ugly choice and you can feel that knot in your stomach. Or in Bliss Stage, that kind of weightless, shadow-punching feeling the first time your character goes into the dream, where you don't know how to make it work and you and the anchor play feel it out together. Most noticeably, it's that thing some people get where if their character is sad, they're feeling sad themselves, or angry, or whatever. I don't experience that so much myself, but it totally happens. I don't know what this looks like on character sheets. Maybe it's the feeling of leveling up a character - choosing different options and thinking about their consequences. Socially, it's that thing where, hey, our characters slept together and we both know that it's just a game and doesn't mean anything, but at the same time it totally does mean something and you flush a little when you think about it.

Performance

What skills are you showing off when you play? Acting skills? Like, you're speaking for your character, trying to give a convincing portrayal of emotions, an entertaining performance. Also, it's when you're showing off other skills, like, putting your guy in the right spot in a combat so you improve your chances of winning, or when you think of a smart plan and enact it well. In play it's any time you're speaking for your character, but especially when everyone is watching you speak for your character, the big moments. It's when you spend an hour arguing semi-in-character about the best way for your made-up dudes to attack a made-up fortress. On character sheets, I guess it's choosing the best options to level up your dude, or to demonstrate that you can make a better, more creative, more interesting character. Socially, it's like, when you are around the table, who shines brightest? Who is the best? How well did you do last week, and how well will you do this week. More charitably, it's like, we're all playing at a certain level, and we're all egging each other on, trying to see if we can take it to that next level. How far can we go, as a team? How good can we get?

Originally published at Memento Mori Theatricks. Please leave any comments there.

An inspired take on my most beloved RPG (besides FreeMarket).

So GMing is swimming except I didn’t really learn from a book,  I learned from friends, from seeing which ways of swimming make the table react in positive ways. During these years of swimming, certain muscles became strong. These muscles might have been developed because of the people you gamed with, or your own natural inclinations concerning creativity and stories.

Then a game comes along, maybe Dogs in the Vineyard or Sorcerer or Burning Wheel or Apocalypse World or D&D 4E or whatever. And when you run this game, whatever it is, and you use those techniques from your hardened years of GMing/swimming, it doesn’t quite work. Shit, you might even think that your way of swimming is right and others are wrong. Maybe you saw someone swim the other way once and it nearly drowned your friends. Whatever it is.

You play Dogs and try to hide the town.

You play Burning Wheel and make up an adventure before seeing anyone’s Beliefs or linking those Beliefs to your adventure ideas.

You play D&D 4E looking for a character driven drama.

Everytime I play a FATE game I bump my head against Aspects, trying to treat them like Beliefs and challenging them without ever using the other FATE-given compels to set them off and burn up some fate points.

I spent a while when I first got Dust Devils beating my head against the convention wisdom, as I knew it, about gaming. Even after playing is successfully several times, when I was going to introduce my dad to gaming, I thought he would never be able to deal with the narration rights as written in the game. I wasn’t worrying about my dad; I was worrying about myself. The game took my out of my comfort zone and I was chaffing against that.

Its a familiar story, I reckon. I used to read RPG texts with a mind towards what it was that I wanted to throw away and inevitably, what I threw away were things that did not play to my currently bulked up muscle groups, my GMing comfort zone. Now I read RPG texts with a mind towards how the mechanics are going to help me and my friends have a fun night. I know that the load is on us. I know that if someone acts like a total dick, no text will help me.

If I go outside that zone of comfort, if I am a little bit nervous before the game, that can be a good thing. It can mean we are doing something different, we aren’t re-hashing the same game experience, seeking out some mythical night when everything clicked.

If I have to create something and put out an effort (Dogs’ Town creation, Humanity defining in Sorcerer, Monster Burning in BW, etc.) that is fun and fine but don’t make me stop swimming in order to take out a hammer and knock stones out of the river, don’t make me get the game out of our way in order to play the game. I don’t want to have to put out the effort we used to exert when we played D&D 2E or Ars Magica 3rd and 4th.

I want my game texts to be the water’s flow. I still want to swim and put out an effort, even a hard effort but I want to swim with the game and not have to fight the damned current.

(yes, inspired by this SG thread)