After my last post about GNS, a few people piped up about other forms of play and structures, so I did the research, my opinion just got stronger, I just didn't get the idea of GM-less games, I didn't get the idea of narrative only, I still don't get the idea of pretending that a board game is roleplay. I have to say, I'm still of the opinion, that a roleplay game is the centre of different extremes.
Roleplaying is four types of games, equally balanced creating a marriage(original definition) of parts
I'll start by pointing out the four types of parts that I'm talking about, then look at how each of them contribute to what roleplay is, to bring it all together at the end.
During my research of roleplay games, I came across a pdf called push, which the first article talked about gamesmasterless systems. I could not fathom it (as a roleplay game) A group of friends, come together, sit around and make stuff up. They each, add their own creativity to the story, they have some kind of rules that help them define the way they can interract with each other, cause plot points, story arcs, and at first I thought.. whats the point in that?
Then I thought, . oh, Maybe this is how the rest of the world sees roleplay? This feeling I'm having, is how outsiders see my group of freinds, coming together and interracting with the roleplay world.. they don't get it, they look at it and say. oh my gawd, why would anyone think this is fun?
So I sat back and said.. ok.. I don;t get it, but they do.. so there has to be something to it. and something missing, that I don't understand..Once I can identify the missing component, then I'll understand why I don't get it.
So I looked into a few youtube plays of such games, and thought that this seemed to be a game for psudeo-gamesmasters to play together. They have some of the skills to be GM, but not enough, they want to have more control over the world, but they don't want full control, and they don't want to give up their role as player. Each 'player' was concentrating on being a GM and a Hero and a counter NPC to the other players.
So I downloaded a few of the PDFs about their rules, and as I read it I had two thoughts: It felt like a game of munchkin, not really roleplaying, more adversarial structured conversation. I play my "hero" (turn) in this "situation" (kick in the door) and I choose a "plot" (can get a treasure or a trap or a monster) and the players around the table ask themselves, do I want him to progress the story like that, or do I want to throw in a challenge, (monster boosters or other traps, to stop him getting to 10th level).
The second thought was that it reminded me of an episode of 'behind the scenes of doctor who' where the writers sat down and discussed the plot of their next show. The Head writer had an idea, and put it to the group, and the other writers fleshed out the plot and wrote notes, and by the end, they had a doctor who episode. Ahh, I thought, so GM-less systems are a story-boarding exercise for writer types, but there is no script at the end.
The Big problem I had was, I couldn't see the players having any vested interest in providing a proper challenge, because they are supposed to be working together. If as a GM, I devote 100% of my time to structuring the reality of a cave, and include tuckers kobolds, I will have a very decent chance of creating a TPK event. but as a player, I want to survive. So in a GM -less/-full game, how can I play both sides to 100%. at some point, one of my desires has to kick in, down-play the kobolds so the players win, or downplay my hero so the kobolds win. (narrative games don't generally have solid rule sets on which is better, it seems more often its about players choice.
This draw my memory back to forum roleplaying of the mid 90s. No GM, just a bunch of people doing creative writing, ignoring the plebs and their crazy self delusions, and plodding along in a plotless conversation telling people what you do, and how you want to interract with one another.
"Hey Guys," says a booming voice, as a large hulking half bear walks into a tavern, " Can I have a drink?" the half-bear walks over to the bar and grabs a drink from the bar tender, and winks at the elven maiden on the left.
Sometimes players would 'go off on an adventure' making stuff up as they went. people called it roleplay, but it wasn't a roleplay game, it was just roleplay.
In English Lessons for foreigners, they go through roleplays, they pretend they are in an airport and are at customs, answering questions, or at a shop, trying to get some shampoo. The purpose is to learn the words of the language so they can perform these tasks easier in the future.
Roleplay by itself, well I guess its fun. Fun like a discussion between friends, like when I hear a discussion about how to structure an arrow head to pop a portable hole into a bag of holding kind of fun. "What if"
But is it a roleplay game? no.. there is no game element.Structuring the roleplay doesn't make it a game.
What about discussion? is it a roleplay game?
So, Last time I said I didn't get the whole "gamist" part of GNS, now I think I have a better understanding.
A Game, is a set of rules, some mechanics, and often as not a theme or concept to explain what the peices are and the motivations to win the game.
More so, a game is a set of rules that remain unchanged between different players. House rules are added by players who do not understand the reasoning behind the original design, and deem their own rule to be superior to the original, In a perfect world, everyone would understand the intention, and the original designer would not have made any mistakes in logic.
Most board games have to dumb down the motivations, the movements, the system, to be playable. Their target audience is a group of friends who have 1-2 hours to sit down and have some fun. Descent is a classic example of a fantasy RPG style board game.
So why isn't Descent a real roleplay game? You have a character, he has a name, a quest, you enter a dungeon or a mapped location, move around the board, roll dice, kill creatures, gain treasure and win..
oh wait.. there it was, win.
Like life, roleplay games don't have a win situation, you play out the person for a structured period of time, and when you stop, either the whole world, story, etc stops. Or it goes on, and your character retires from adventuring, (or died) and other new heroes take their place in the cycle of life.
There seems to be an element of meta game in roleplay, You play a scenario and you win the goal, which awards you with tokens, be they levels, experience, buy-in points, something that represents the progression of thecharacter, so you can return the following week and continue the plot.
Alot of this is gamification. The creation of a tokenized (extrinsic) and personal (intrinsic) award system, that brings you back to the game table, time and time again.
The Personal reward is the good feeling you get when you solve a puzzle, save the prince, defeat the bad guy, destroy the evil, become the hero and then get drunk at the bar afterwards. Players are doing things that they wish (to some extent) they could do in real life, to experience the feeling of doing things they can't, won't or shouldn't do in real life.
To get that feeling, we need a sense of immersion. Like all the above points, everyone has their own opinion about how much they need, and if the game world or system gives them too much or not enough, they wont feel 'part of it' and that breaks their immersion.
As a child, When we are in a movie, and we have no real sense of anything, other than concepts and ideas, anything the movie throws at us is plausible, is real, we believe it. We don't know any better, and so we enjoy it.
Eventually in life, we learn the reality of things, so we go to the movies and see something that breaks the suspension of disbelief, its too wild, too far outside the plausible, Or worse, it breaks its own code of conduct. The movie creates a rule in its own world, and later forgets what that rule. There are hundreds of youtube videos about how movies do this, and do it badly, and as often as not, the reviews, even the ones that don't realise their doing it, review these 'rulebreaking' movies poorly. While movies that stick to their rules, do better.
When we join roleplay games, as teenagers, we don't (usually) care about the suspension of disbelief, because its funny to do dumb crazy stuff, and if it seems too far outside of plausibility we get two results, the GM rules it to be fair, or they all change it to be more real.
As adults, we come to new systems or games and we say, I'm not a person from the 12th century, I don't have any experience with this, so I can't say that his is real or not.. Or, we have history buffs, and lit majors who say, Oh no, wait a second, this is supposed to be set in the 12th century right? then you can't include the dual horse drawn cart with the spring mounted suspension, it wasn't invented til 1460 for the Hungarian king.
Now, ok, I get that for the former person, (and the GM) this can be rather annoying, you have a plot and a concept and you want to proceed, and this person who happens to have read up on these things, breaks the flow and you just want them to shut up. but what you've done is put out the historian. So either he historian is upset at the game or the former person is, and when someone is upset, they will usually become the annoying player who just wants to break everything.
Subnote: in 2020:
Roleplay.. as a .. Story Writing.. ?
Roleplaying is four types of games, equally balanced creating a marriage(original definition) of parts
I'll start by pointing out the four types of parts that I'm talking about, then look at how each of them contribute to what roleplay is, to bring it all together at the end.
During my research of roleplay games, I came across a pdf called push, which the first article talked about gamesmasterless systems. I could not fathom it (as a roleplay game) A group of friends, come together, sit around and make stuff up. They each, add their own creativity to the story, they have some kind of rules that help them define the way they can interract with each other, cause plot points, story arcs, and at first I thought.. whats the point in that?
Then I thought, . oh, Maybe this is how the rest of the world sees roleplay? This feeling I'm having, is how outsiders see my group of freinds, coming together and interracting with the roleplay world.. they don't get it, they look at it and say. oh my gawd, why would anyone think this is fun?
So I sat back and said.. ok.. I don;t get it, but they do.. so there has to be something to it. and something missing, that I don't understand..Once I can identify the missing component, then I'll understand why I don't get it.
So I looked into a few youtube plays of such games, and thought that this seemed to be a game for psudeo-gamesmasters to play together. They have some of the skills to be GM, but not enough, they want to have more control over the world, but they don't want full control, and they don't want to give up their role as player. Each 'player' was concentrating on being a GM and a Hero and a counter NPC to the other players.
So I downloaded a few of the PDFs about their rules, and as I read it I had two thoughts: It felt like a game of munchkin, not really roleplaying, more adversarial structured conversation. I play my "hero" (turn) in this "situation" (kick in the door) and I choose a "plot" (can get a treasure or a trap or a monster) and the players around the table ask themselves, do I want him to progress the story like that, or do I want to throw in a challenge, (monster boosters or other traps, to stop him getting to 10th level).
The second thought was that it reminded me of an episode of 'behind the scenes of doctor who' where the writers sat down and discussed the plot of their next show. The Head writer had an idea, and put it to the group, and the other writers fleshed out the plot and wrote notes, and by the end, they had a doctor who episode. Ahh, I thought, so GM-less systems are a story-boarding exercise for writer types, but there is no script at the end.
This draw my memory back to forum roleplaying of the mid 90s. No GM, just a bunch of people doing creative writing, ignoring the plebs and their crazy self delusions, and plodding along in a plotless conversation telling people what you do, and how you want to interract with one another.
"Hey Guys," says a booming voice, as a large hulking half bear walks into a tavern, " Can I have a drink?" the half-bear walks over to the bar and grabs a drink from the bar tender, and winks at the elven maiden on the left.
Sometimes players would 'go off on an adventure' making stuff up as they went. people called it roleplay, but it wasn't a roleplay game, it was just roleplay.
Roleplaying as a structure of conversation?
In English Lessons for foreigners, they go through roleplays, they pretend they are in an airport and are at customs, answering questions, or at a shop, trying to get some shampoo. The purpose is to learn the words of the language so they can perform these tasks easier in the future.
Roleplay by itself, well I guess its fun. Fun like a discussion between friends, like when I hear a discussion about how to structure an arrow head to pop a portable hole into a bag of holding kind of fun. "What if"
But is it a roleplay game? no.. there is no game element.Structuring the roleplay doesn't make it a game.
What about discussion? is it a roleplay game?
So, Last time I said I didn't get the whole "gamist" part of GNS, now I think I have a better understanding.
Roleplaying as a Game?
A Game, is a set of rules, some mechanics, and often as not a theme or concept to explain what the peices are and the motivations to win the game.
More so, a game is a set of rules that remain unchanged between different players. House rules are added by players who do not understand the reasoning behind the original design, and deem their own rule to be superior to the original, In a perfect world, everyone would understand the intention, and the original designer would not have made any mistakes in logic.
Most board games have to dumb down the motivations, the movements, the system, to be playable. Their target audience is a group of friends who have 1-2 hours to sit down and have some fun. Descent is a classic example of a fantasy RPG style board game.
So why isn't Descent a real roleplay game? You have a character, he has a name, a quest, you enter a dungeon or a mapped location, move around the board, roll dice, kill creatures, gain treasure and win..
oh wait.. there it was, win.
Roleplay as a reward system?
Like life, roleplay games don't have a win situation, you play out the person for a structured period of time, and when you stop, either the whole world, story, etc stops. Or it goes on, and your character retires from adventuring, (or died) and other new heroes take their place in the cycle of life.
There seems to be an element of meta game in roleplay, You play a scenario and you win the goal, which awards you with tokens, be they levels, experience, buy-in points, something that represents the progression of thecharacter, so you can return the following week and continue the plot.
Alot of this is gamification. The creation of a tokenized (extrinsic) and personal (intrinsic) award system, that brings you back to the game table, time and time again.
The Personal reward is the good feeling you get when you solve a puzzle, save the prince, defeat the bad guy, destroy the evil, become the hero and then get drunk at the bar afterwards. Players are doing things that they wish (to some extent) they could do in real life, to experience the feeling of doing things they can't, won't or shouldn't do in real life.
To get that feeling, we need a sense of immersion. Like all the above points, everyone has their own opinion about how much they need, and if the game world or system gives them too much or not enough, they wont feel 'part of it' and that breaks their immersion.
As a child, When we are in a movie, and we have no real sense of anything, other than concepts and ideas, anything the movie throws at us is plausible, is real, we believe it. We don't know any better, and so we enjoy it.
Eventually in life, we learn the reality of things, so we go to the movies and see something that breaks the suspension of disbelief, its too wild, too far outside the plausible, Or worse, it breaks its own code of conduct. The movie creates a rule in its own world, and later forgets what that rule. There are hundreds of youtube videos about how movies do this, and do it badly, and as often as not, the reviews, even the ones that don't realise their doing it, review these 'rulebreaking' movies poorly. While movies that stick to their rules, do better.
When we join roleplay games, as teenagers, we don't (usually) care about the suspension of disbelief, because its funny to do dumb crazy stuff, and if it seems too far outside of plausibility we get two results, the GM rules it to be fair, or they all change it to be more real.
As adults, we come to new systems or games and we say, I'm not a person from the 12th century, I don't have any experience with this, so I can't say that his is real or not.. Or, we have history buffs, and lit majors who say, Oh no, wait a second, this is supposed to be set in the 12th century right? then you can't include the dual horse drawn cart with the spring mounted suspension, it wasn't invented til 1460 for the Hungarian king.
Now, ok, I get that for the former person, (and the GM) this can be rather annoying, you have a plot and a concept and you want to proceed, and this person who happens to have read up on these things, breaks the flow and you just want them to shut up. but what you've done is put out the historian. So either he historian is upset at the game or the former person is, and when someone is upset, they will usually become the annoying player who just wants to break everything.
So, we come back to Roleplaying as a collaborative.. Something
I see it all the time, Roleplaying is a collaborative story, so who cares about the rules, as long as everyone is having fun, well, as gamesmaster, I'm only having fun, if everyone is following the rules, and if someone is not having fun, its no longer collaborative, its subservience.
But you can see this topic is not going to go away
The Main problem, so far, is that this topic is old, and its discussed at length, by many people, and at the end of all this, discussions, I still can't put my finger on it, except for my own personal distinct understanding which is this:
Roleplay, is the way in which we humans, try to cross the void to another universe, and become different people, in which we can understand ourselves better. In order to do this, the universe we go to has to have a predesigned set of rules, not dissimilar to our own, so our 'experiment to understand the self' is not marred by aspects of an alien existence which would destroy the experiment. Typically the experimental world is simplified in ways to allow the focus of self discovery to take place, without being bogged down by the mundane and complex, but mundane and complex is subjective, so the players need to agree upon, the most common set of mundane and complexity, before they begin.
Roleplay, is the way in which we humans, try to cross the void to another universe, and become different people, in which we can understand ourselves better. In order to do this, the universe we go to has to have a predesigned set of rules, not dissimilar to our own, so our 'experiment to understand the self' is not marred by aspects of an alien existence which would destroy the experiment. Typically the experimental world is simplified in ways to allow the focus of self discovery to take place, without being bogged down by the mundane and complex, but mundane and complex is subjective, so the players need to agree upon, the most common set of mundane and complexity, before they begin.
Subnote: in 2020:
And this is why I have DD12, and DW as the same, but seperate rulesets, so players and the GM can choose, all DD12, all DW or a mix of the two to match out personal preferences.
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