Ludanta Reto

LJ-Friendly Update

2006-01-10T20:07:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, Adam Dray was nice enough to set up an LJ Feed for this blog, and did so without being asked (thanks, Adam).

I've set up a LiveJournal syndicated feed thingy for the new site, if anybody wants to update and hear all the new bullshit I've been flinging.

Alternately, you might be all the sudden going, "Oh, I barely noticed that ludisto guy shut up. It was kind of pleasant. How do I remove him from my friendslist to keep it that way?"

Moving Day

2005-12-26T18:30:00.000-08:00

Ludanta Reto is moving to choicer digs at kallistipress.com.

WordPress, parenthetically, is knocking my socks off. Among other things, it was able to import my entire blogger database via RSS so all of the posts and comments from this site are now safely ensconced over there. I'll be turning off comments to posts here -- kindly post to the new, 'real' blog at kallistipress.com.

Peace out, my brothers!

FLFS: Long vs Short

2005-12-24T14:55:00.000-08:00

I have a Google Alert for Full Light, Full Steam that I set up, like, years ago, when there weren't any mentions and I shortly forgot that it even existed. Then it started sending me notifications that my game is being talked about (which is, by the way, really fucking weird), the most recent of which was Qien Es Mas Macho at the 20x20 Room. Generally I don't read 20x20 because (a) it's D&D-centric and I've played exactly one session of D&D in my life, but more puissantly, (b) the discussions are like what I imagine the European Parliament are like -- everybody speaking a slightly different language, and barely communicating with each other. This thread is a prime example, with folks defending at least three different iterations of Forge theory as if they were all the same, and a lot of non-Forgies criticizing what gets put out there as "What the Forge Says".

Anyway, somebody mentioned Full Light, Full Steam pretty tangentially as a short-term game with little replay value. As I really don't want to tangent that discussion any more than it already is, I thought I'd throw up a short post here.

You can totally play Full Light, Full Steam as a short-ass one-shot game, going through one Situation and then playing, I dunno, Mountain Witch on the next Game Nite. The game will work; there are little sidebars that give tips on how to shift a few things around so that the one-shot works better. I hadn't thought of it in such terms, but I suppose this would help out Con games, too.

You can also play FLFS as a medium or long term game, putting your characters through three, ten, twenty different Situations over the course of howeverlong you want to play. Each Situation should play out in a session or two to create rather episodic play, but you can, a la Buffy, play through lots and lots of those situations. The character advancement system is scalable (I stole from Clinton even before I read Shadow of Yesterday, apparently) so your power-creep can be managed. The longer-ranged games are also probably a little more interesting if you enable the Troupe Play rules so that everybody is playing a handful of people, but that's probably my bias showing through.

Now mind, personally I prefer the mid-range in terms of campaign length. I just don't get why you'd want to stick with the same characters and story for years on end. I also have no idea how people are able to arrange such long-standing commitments with their social calendars. I doubt the Next Game will have the same kind of support for long-ass games as FLFS does, because I won't be working off the same "standard assumptions" about how an RPG is supposed to be constituted. For the nonce, however, FLFS should be able to support both.

Wheee!

2005-12-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

Preliminary playtest reports say that the Engineering the Situation procedure is on the right track. Rawk!

Thanks so much, Brand!

Vacation Writing

2005-12-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

So I went through the Playing the Game half of Full Light, Full Steam and styled it so now it's all consistent and ten thousand times easier for someone who is not me to read and understand. Then I beat the shit out of the old Storymapping chapter, diced it up and cut off all the useful parts, then shuffled them into the order needed for the new Engineering the Situation chapter. Wrote a few transitions, stringing the bits together into some semblance of sense. (Isn't it nice when you realize that you don't actually have to write as much as you thought you might?)

Segments Left to Write:

Remainder of Engineering the Situation (~1000 words)

Attention, Brave Young Boys! (~1000 words)

Organization of a Solar Steamer Crew (~1000 words)

Aphrodite and Ishtar, British Venus (~2000 words)

Kanykeys, Dutch Venus (~500 words)

Deimos, Japanese port (~500 words)

Various Lunar Ports (rethinking this section entirely)

Sollardam, Dutch Mercury (~1500 words)

Vulcan (~2000 words)

Asteroid Belt: Overview (~250 words)

Mechanical Engineering (although I may skip this one in the final analysis)

Then I do the big copy-paste of the Setting half of the book, apply styles, do a line-by-line copy edit, and holy shit I have a playtest edition!

Goals in Gaming

2005-12-21T00:11:00.000-08:00

Nathan's asking the question What Are My Goals over on Hamster Prophecy, and since I'm off on vacation starting today, I figured I'd kill some time in a similar fashion.

1. I am sure as fuck not making a living off this shit.
By this I do not mean "this doesn't pay well enough to feed my kids," I mean there's no way in hell I'm going to hitch my personal finances and the quality of my life to something as thrice-fucked as the gaming market. I'll keep my day job. This is a goal because I want to keep a nice, stable foundation outside the gaming market. To those of you who support yourselves on gaming, I salute your bravery and worry for your future. I'll be over here. Not evicted.

2. Game design is my avocation -- somewhere between hobby and career.
While for reasons I outline in Goal #1 I am not making gaming my career, it's at the same time not on the level of 'mere hobby'. Designing and playing games is what I live for -- it's the activity that I work my day job to support. In a very real way, gaming is more important to me than my career; it's just that my career is not the most important thing in my life (just an utterly necessary one). I'll be all pretentious and compare myself to Robert Herrick, who was a clergyman in England who also wrote poetry. As most of his poetry is about various women's breasts, I think we can all agree on how central to his life his job as a clergyman was. Replace 'clergyman' with 'textbook editor' and 'poetry about boobs' with 'games' and that's where I want to be.

3. I want to write and publish a game that lasts.
As with Herrick, who is remembered for his poetry and not his sermons, I'd prefer that my notable works be games, although somewhat different from Bob, I am interested in my audience and reaching a wider audience. I want to be able to reach out and touch other people through games, to participate in a dialogue of merit through games, and to contribute to the vast noosphere of human culture through games. I don't care if my medium of choice is not something profound like the Great American Novel; in the end, it doesn't matter any more than Dickens was pissing his time away writing serials that would never stand the test of time (let's pray to all that is holy that they won't). I play games, you play games, lots of people play games. Let's connect about that. Let's raise our kids to play games. That would rock.

4. I want to publish a game that is relevant to people's lives and compels them to question.
I was an English major in college, and I know this much about good literature: good literature engages you where you are, and good literature makes you look at where you are in a new way. I know with far more familiarity that that is pretty much the exact mechanism of any worthwhile roleplaying experience. Roleplaying is a natural medium for questioning the self, questioning society, and questioning culture. It puts you in different roles and contexts and goads you to make choices. Gee, you think that might make you consider your real situation in a new light? There's no reason why roleplaying cannot serve the same purpose as good literature, excepting that it can do it better, more accurately, and more precisely.

5. I want to publish a game that doesn't look and read like crap.
This is a purely elitist aesthete goal, but it's nonetheless important to me. As a bookbuilder, the physical composition, layout, and content of a book are irrevocably tied together, and no part can be of excellent quality unless all parts support each other. The book should be as engaging as a physical object as the act of reading it, which should be as engaging as actually playing the game. My standards of what is and is not acceptable have earned me the disdain of quite a few folks who think I'm an elitist ass. I'd be sorry except that I'm not. A good book has a good binding and is printed on good paper through a good process depicting a good layout presenting good text. That's how it fucking works. Unfortunately, that costs money, which brings me to:

6. I want my avocation to pay for itself or at least defray its own costs.
Truthfully, I'm fine spending money on games that I'll never see back. It doesn't bother me, because I see it as turning pretty boring money into an entertaining, engaging, and fulfilling experience. It sure beats spending money on going to the movies recently. But it would be quite nice if my tinkering was subsidized by sales. So while I wouldn't say my goal is sales -- because if your goal is sales, you make your decisions based on those sales -- my plans certainly include sales. Sales are just a culturally-acceptable means of getting your product into other people's hands. A free pdf goes nowhere and doesn't get played. If somebody spends their hard-earned for a book, they're going to at least try to play it. And that is what makes me happy.

ENWorld on the Forge

2005-12-20T14:01:00.001-08:00

God, I love reading people outside the Forge community talk about the Forge.

Here's a gem:
1. Some Forgites are arrogant jargon-spewers.
2. Some Forgites have worthwhile things to say about gaming.
3. Some Forgites are both.

Oh, even better, when eyebeams encapsulates the foundation of Forge thought in his "Gamers are bad at gaming" and definition of "fun" specifically as something that he, as a "commercial RPG writer," knows and the Forge does not.

NerdSoCal -- shit.

2005-12-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

I didn't go looking at the NerdNYC page for the longest time because I pretty much knew this would happen: I'd want to replicate it here.

NerdSoCal -- would it work? We aren't as concentrated as NYC (I'm thinking LA + OC), we don't have convenient subway access, but we do have lots of nearby colleges, lots of young, well, nerds with time+income+desire to socialize/movie-go/game...

Whereas NerdNYC's Gotham Gaming Guild rents unused studio space to game in, we've got a climate that will let us just use parks, or maybe use community center rooms.

There's a couple Forgies out here on the Left Coast: Jesse Burneko, Jay Silmenume, myself. Ian Noble isn't a Forgie, but he's an RPGnet kiddie, and he's out here. Hell, Wick and Jared are based out of Santa Monica.

So tempting... so potentially time-sucky... so tempting...

Addendum: I would so be using Vanilla instead of phpbb. Drool.

Game A Day

2005-12-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Nathan Paoletta is starting an interesting experiment, a Game A Day Project where he'll post a snippet of gameness every day. He describes the project at his main blog.

Go, Nathan, Go!

kallistipress.com

2005-12-12T23:42:00.000-08:00

We be online, my brothers!

kallistipress.com is currently a little on the empty and transitional side, but it's up. I'll be installing WordPress and phpbb next week. And then won't we have fun -- css alone nearly killed me!

Games, The Standard, and Spoons

2005-12-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

Originally this was going to be a thread called "The Problem with Game Designers" and posted into Indie RPG Design, but most of what I'm saying has already been said in a couple other posts there. I don't want to retread old ground, but I do want to look at it for a moment, if only because those other things weren't put together like I've got them put together in my head. I also get borderline pissy and certainly ranty, and I try to keep that sort of thing off the Forge So.

The problem with game designers is that they don't ask questions about their game designs. This is originally inspired by the posts to Indie RPG Design where people copy-paste a segment of their game from their word processor into the forum, and then append a line something like "Whaddaya think, guys?" Some of them want a round of applause, which is pretty much not at all what the Forge is for, but I don't think it's really that many of these posters.

I think that most of them are looking for validation, yes, but most of them are looking for validation of a very specific kind. They chose this section to make into a forum post; why? There's something about it that bothers them, or (more rarely) they're going out on a limb and want to make sure they're not crazy. But they don't say, "Hey, this bothers me" or "Is this crazy?" They don't ask the question that they really want to ask.

In parallel, there are the guys who post asking what the proper way to do something is. How do I write my setting? How many skills "should" I have? Or the real gems like, How much XP should it take to level? To these posters, there is some inviolate, universal standard of how RPGs are supposed to be designed, and they want to hear the hallowed voices of the Forge compare their efforts with the standard. Certainly, the experienced, published designers of the Forge know the standard better than these new guys do, so they ask.

Of course, there is no standard. The requirements of any piece of art is idiosyncratic to the artwork itself. The experienced, published designers of the Forge at least know that. An RPG does not need levels, skills, XP, or even settings, but it is hard communicating to the poster that the thing that they've been so worried about is, well, not necessary. This applies to the "How many skills?" guys as well as the "Whaddaya think?" guys -- their participation at the Forge is predicated on an assumption about game design that says that there's a right way to make games and there's a wrong way.

Which is, in a word, bupkiss.

The new guys post to the Forge without asking questions because they think the questions are self-evident -- or they hope they're self-evident to the experienced designers who should know these things. The guys posting and asking the "should" questions just go a step further into the confusion by assuming that there is the standard that their design will be stacked up against. They're comparing themselves to something that doesn't exist; I can't think of a surer plan for failure. What both these guys need -- and very occasionally get -- is a "There is no spoon" moment.

We tend to ask the "Big Three" questions: "What's your game about? What do the characters do? What do the players do?" The answers from pre-spoon-moment posters are invariably, "Having fun. Save the world. Have fun." Because when you are laboring under universal standard of RPG quality, the answer to the Big Three is always the same, and large parts of it can go unsaid because they're part and parcel of the standard. We don't need to say "the players each take one character and portray their actions, constrained by the abilities and knowledge that that character has" because that's how roleplaying games work, isn't it?

Again, bupkiss.

Oh wait, you thought I meant the fictional universal standard was bupkiss, there, didn't you? No, I meant the Big Three questions are bupkiss, because they're not doing what they should be doing. They are not providing the No Spoon Moment; they are assuming that these posters have already had it when it's patently obvious that they have not. This is asking someone questions that they do not have the context to answer correctly; it borders on intellectual dishonesty. It is toying with them.

Alternately, a common response to pre-spoon-moment designers is "Go play these games.Go play Sorcerer. Go play Dogs. Go play Universalis." Which would probably work, excepting of course that it isn't going to happen. (It also makes the Forge look like all it does is pimp its own games.) Most of the time, we don't even say, "You are making a lot of assumptions. Go play X." First-posters who have not been reading the Forge for months and years are not going to arrange to get their friends together to play a game just to see the brave new world that nobody is telling them is there to be found. "Go Play X" is just as much bupkiss as asking pre-no-spooners the Big Three questions. It doesn't work.

I'm looking forward to the Intro to Big Model forum/article/whatever, because I'm hoping there will be a thread there specifically designed to provide the No Spoon Moment. If there isn't, I'll start one. I don't know exactly what shape it will or should be; I know that one way would be to list common assumptions ("each player plays one character"), point out its fallacies, and provide examples of alternatives. But even that would be a dull tool to use -- it'd get long, pedantic, not incredibly entertaining to read, and worst of all, it would dilute the single point that needs to get across: "Roleplaying is people collaboratively imagining events. Everything else is optional. No really, everything else. Designing a game is directing that activity towards a specific purpose. You, as the designer, choose that purpose. Everything else that you add needs to serve that purpose." Would that provide a No Spoon Moment? Maybe. Would examples help? Maybe. But it would sure as hell be more likely to work than the Big Three or telling them to go play Sorcerer.

Re-Outline

2005-12-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

Silly, silly Joshua. The reason why you couldn't figure out how to write that chapter on Britain's rivals is because it shouldn't be a chapter, just a section within the chapter describing Britain. It should describe the rivals, not just as Britain sees them, but as the characters are likely to interact with them. Just move that bit over there, and oh look, everything makes sense, now!

Also, I seem to have misplaced the longhand manuscript of a segment I rather liked. This makes me sad.

Bug Stompin'

2005-12-08T20:18:00.000-08:00

So I spent the day home sick. Sick enough not to go to work, not quite sick enough that I uselessly lolled about in bed all day. So in addition to some laundry, I went through the Playing the Game half of Full Light, Full Steam. There were little bits and pieces that needed to be written, better transitions to be made, word choices amended to reflect rules changes. There were like fifty of them on my To Do list. I did Forty-nine of them.

With the exception of the Situation-Engineering segment, Playing the Game is done. We have reached, ladies and gentlemen, First Draft.

Now I gotta go stomp on the bugs and holes in the Setting half of the book.

Abstract of the Olympic Solar Steamer Classification

2005-12-08T13:16:00.000-08:00

It is my pleasure to present to you, kind sirs of the Navy Committee, the design of the most modern solar steamer yet conceived. The details of this, the Olympic classification, follow in attached documents, but with your permission I should like to briefly summarize its innovations and advantages over prior designs currently in use by the Royal Astronomical Navy.

With a containment of just under seven hundred thousand cubic yards of air, the Olympic will be the largest solar steamer in the skies outside of the Russian fleet. Unlike the ponderous tubs of the Russians, however, the Olympic's two sets of dual Faraday drives, rated at four thousand volts each, will propel the craft at an enviable estimated acceleration of up to fifteen knots per second. While this speed is indeed less than prior classifications such as the Triumph and Puncher, the Olympic's firepower will not rely on past designs' speed.

As the mixed-poundage batteries have seen reduced utility in recent engagements of the Bayleaf and Chiddinfold classifications, the Olympic adopts a main gun philosophy in the form of four turrets, each bearing two hundred-watt etheric snap cannons. These cannons' greater capacity and precise focus allow them a drastically increased range over prior batteries, precluding the need for costly and dangerous pursuits. The ship-versus-ship power of the cannons is supplemented by an array of shock bomb torpedo tubes for use against port and asteroidal targets.

The recommended crew complement for the Olympic is six-hundred and thirty-two able-bodied hands, including forty-eight officers. Quarters are adequately comfortable for our fighting men, with enlistedmen in eight-man quarters outfitted with suspended and secured hammocks, junior officers in paired quarters, and senior officers in single-occupancy quarters suitable for both living arrangements and private interviews. The core of the ship contains a twenty-five thousand cubic yard garden and solarium to refresh ship air, supplement the larders, and process human waste. The primary light shaft runs the length of the solarium, connecting the fore and aft engine rooms and equipped with automatic shutters for full light, full steam operations.

Both fore and aft engine rooms are equipped with their own steam engines to provide redundancy, powering dual Faraday drives mounted in heavy gyroscopes rated to bear thousands of foot-pounds of torque. Spring rooms sit adjacent to each engine room, the spring batteries together capable of storing enough energy for ninety minutes of cannon fire and operations in shadow. An apiary large enough to host the most modern of analytical engines rests a floor above the fore engine room. Above the aft engine room are the fighter bays, presently designed to host two braces of three Rollicker classification fighters and a pair of Roebuck classification escorts. Immediate access to the spring batteries one deck down provides fast and efficient charging of the ships' onboard batteries. The bay doors are wide enough to admit any modern escort design, allowing for the ship's complement to be modified as convenient for fleet command.

Prodigious cargo holds on the order of fifty thousand cubic yards sit forward of the ship bays, with access to the top deck through reinforced bay doors. The cargo may be pressurized or left in vaccum, depending on the needs of the cargo. The cargo is flanked, in turm, by the sail-armature stations, partitioned against catastrophic decompression to afford the most sailors the most protection and ensuring continued performance in battle. The armatures's movement is supplemented by steam pistons, allowing one man to do the work of six, with a cunning mechanism allowing the armature and light sail to be manipulated manually in the case of pressure loss. We will have no incidents as happened to the Scylla befalling the Olympic.

The fore and aft prows hold the optics and collection centers, with undiverted access to both the light funnels and the primary light shaft. The battery of telescopes and mirrors designed to be installed in the optics compartments are the same as presently used in the Blue Rover and Diligence designs, capable of spotting the sunward side of a battleship and resolving its identifying details at a gross range of thirty-five astronomical miles. These images may be forwarded to the apiary for daguerreotyping or directly to the bridge for command decisions.

The bridge's position above the main hull allows for opened portholes to provide natural visual range in the unlikely loss of optics, although normal battle operations will see the bridge crew safely behind heavily armored plating. The bridge affords eight crew stations, including dedicated stations for pilot and copilot, bridge optics, voice transmission, and fire control. Command stands or sits on a configurable raised dias allowing our often idiosyncratic captains to install tables, boards, and chairs as they see fit. Here at the operational center of the Olympic our captains will be in command of the most powerful, durable, and efficient solar steamer ever to defend Britain's interests, able to take all requisite actions to protect and promote the righs and privileges of ever British citizen throughout the solar system.

I, along with the rest of the Empire, await your considered response to these designs.

Yours,
Augustus Nessington, Shipwright

Minorer Note: TSOY Weapons & Armor

2005-12-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

Brilliant and stolen!

Minor Note: Art and Artists

2005-12-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

So I'm looking for artists for Full Light, Full Steam. I'm picky. I'm very specifically looking for folks who can handle scenes and portray situations rather than draw a badass chick with a gun. Cause while those splat-pages in every single White Wolf book ever printed are pretty and all, they're pretty useless when it comes to describing actually playing the game. In any case, I am quickly discovering that this distinction separates the sheep and the goats. Lots of folks can draw people. I suspect that an art school emphasis on character studies make these a common topic of illustrations. The artists that can block out a scene and illustrate it without having people tilted at odd angles, without some people's hands obscuring others' faces, and without making gobblygook out of the spatial relations... yeah, not so many of those.

Go Read Victor

2005-12-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Go read What is Fictional on Victor's Gaming Philosopher. Good stuff.

Community Reformat

2005-12-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

There is much talk by such luminaries as Clinton and Vincent and apparently Matt Snyder's blog which I haven't found yet, and the talk revolves around reformating the means of discussion about gaming.

There's repeated dissatisfaction with the pleblian forum software, of answering the same questions over and over, dealing with the same misunderstandings, and people not paying proper respect to things that other people have already agreed on. All this gives rise to suggestions that either limit who can contribute or to assign some sort of vote-based quality standard. I'd just like to chime in briefly to say that the latter sounds great, and the former alternately chills and disgusts me.

I am all about a community-enforced quality standard that rates posters for expertise and credibility. That sort of thing already happens informally: Clinton, Ron, Vincent, Ralph, and a few others say something and people listen; folks like me say something and people give me half and ear and wait for me to publish. That's fine; that's community norms and standards being expressed and enforced and it is, on the whole, a good thing.

Creating a sandbox where the luminaries pontificate at each other and everybody watches as a mute audience or a short-comment peanut gallery, however, does not foster a community, it fosters an elite, and it fosters a fan base. Nobody, and I mean nobody, needs that shit. I'm pretty certain that the luminaries who would make the theoretical cut have strong enough self-images that they do not require the ego-stroke -- these guys are better than that. And us great unwashed masses don't need pedagogues -- we're better than that, too.

Chris Lehrich has proposed something of a middle-of-the-road approach similar to an academic journal, where anyone can submit but there is a strong editorial team that determine what gets in and what doesn't. While I think that'd be nifty, I also think the human time commitment for reviewing, discussing, and approving articles before releasing them for public discussion is a bit unweildy and in the end unnecessary. Quality ratings by user votes could fulfill a similar (though not identical) function for a greatly reduced overhead commitment.

I don't have the technical skills to set such a beast up, but I'd be a very willing participant if it ever did see the light of day.

Plotus -- A Book as Unweildy as its Name

2005-12-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

For just $120, your 672-page copy of Monte Cook's Ptolus can be yours. Order soon, and you can get a nice 32-page Player's Handbook -- five copies of it in fact -- so your players will not be killed by this monstrosity of a book.

What the fuck? Who in their right mind would shell out over one hundred bucks for six hundred pages of a setting? Oh, but it's cross-referenced! It's got color illustrations! Yes, and it can kill babies.

But wait, there's more. This book? This tome? This monstrosity of an abomination of game design? It includes no rules. This works with D&D 3.5, folks. It requires the GM and Player's Guides (which are what, $35 a piece or something?). So yes, this complete game can be yours for the low-low price of two hundred dollars. And then you have to read nearly a thousand pages of material in order to play it.

Here's what boggles my mind: if the entire thing can be condensed into a 32-page Player's Handbook, why isn't that the product?

Fill in the Blank!

2005-12-03T14:35:00.000-08:00

Exercise: find a word that will work when you put it in every blank in the paragraphs below:

_____ is something people do because it's fun. _____ is best with other people, preferably people you know, love, and trust. Because such powerful issues as identity, emotion, and self-worth are involved, _____ can be liberating, terrifying, abusive, and glorious, depending on how you do it. However, if _____ isn't fun, you're probably doing something wrong.

_____ is primarily a creative endeavor, but some people have been doing it the same exact way for their entire lives.

Some people like to do _____ one way, while other people like to do it in other ways. Some sad people think that there is only one way to do _____ and that any other way is wrong. They will defend their version of _____ and attack others' versions for long periods of time.

Similarly, the things that one person likes about _____ may not be the same things that another person likes about _____. It's a good idea to talk about _____ before starting to do it with that person to prevent embarassing and discouraging failures to enjoy yourselves.

Keeping these simple facts in mind will help you make _____ a powerful and worthwhile part of your life!

Thank you, Chris Chinn

I Guess Theory Goes Here, Now.

2005-12-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

So the Forge closed down the Theory and GNS forums, as Ron has been gearing up to do for, fuck, over a year, now. So it's not like it's a surprise. It is kind of sad, though. RPG Theory was the board that I posted the most to, where I was the most comfortable, where my interests lay. 226 of my 460 posts have been there. I understand that Ron wants to talk theory in context of Actual Play and Actual Design -- I'm just not in a place right now where I can do much of either, so I doubt I'll be able to participate there as much as I was on the Theory board. A good chunk of the Forge closed down for me today by raising the bar higher than I can go. Which is fine; they are trying to raise the level of discourse, and the level of discourse is something that I've always appreciated there. My voice just won't be as large a part of that discourse any more.

So I suppose I'll shift more of my theory maunderings over here; expect more abstracted conceptions of how games operate in the months to come. I am looking forward to elaborating the interaction model with articles like Focusing the Scope, and then incorporating them back into later versions of the bigger model. I'm very eager to see if this keeps generating insights for me.

And on occasion, when I manage to pry an hour out of my life to write FLFS, I'll throw something up over on the Forge. Maybe I'll even get some actual play in someday, and report on that. And then we can all go skating at Lucifer's Ninth Circle rink. Yay!

Architecture!

2005-11-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

Three teams of architects bid for the contract to build a new community center. Teams are drawn from the community, and presumably would be using the community center once it's built.

Team N creates a proposal where the entire building enables the community to create art, providing a lavish stage area and many rooms for props, costumes, and make-up; art studios; basement rooms for pottery wheels and kilns; and dance rooms.

Team G creates a proposal where the building provides the community with an olympic pool, basketball courts, raquetball courts, and expansive fields for baseball and soccer.

Team S creates a proposal where the building itself is a beautiful work of art that the community can experience and appreciate.

The three teams present their plans, and while they can certainly see the appeal of each others' plans, and may even go so far as to complement each other on their plans, for some reason they don't collaborate to create a beautiful community center where their competition is a work of art.

Retail: Who Needs It?

2005-11-23T10:11:00.000-08:00

Sean Fannon is shining a thousand-watt smile over at the Forge talking about his great new idea of indie press games getting to consumers via the all-important step of retail outlets. And I'm thinking to myself, "When is the last time I went to a local game store?" and I seriously can't remember. The second question, "When was the last time I actually bought something from the local game store?" is even deeper back in my murky memory. Blue Rose, I think? Like, over a year ago?

(I occasionally go to Borders and flip through the new World of Darkness stuff, because it amuses my curiousity to see how exactly they're butchering their own games and selling them again as new product, but as I've no interest in buying or playing any of it, I don't count this as the same activity as really going to the game store. It's more like watching the monkeys at the zoo.)

Admittedly, I'm not playing as much as I'd like, but that's due to factors other than the proximity of a game store (I think -- maybe I'm deficient in my exposure to FLGS rays). I've only rarely met gamers at a store that I later played with (although for a year or so in Santa Barbara there was a disturbing trend of finding people I already knew at the game store). So maybe I'm not the best person to be saying this, but I'm wondering whether the retail outlet is really that important to the larger gamer culture any more.

Used to be (they tell me) that the local game store served as a sort of nexus of gamers. They ran demos, they had a corkboard with current games, you met people browsing the racks, right? Gamers met gamers at game stores. Game stores were also the primary distribution point of new games for the gamer market. They had the catalog from Alliance, they knew what was coming out, and most importantly, they had the books to sell. They had the whole line (sometimes) so you could see how much 'support' the game had. (Tangent -- we defined support for a game by the number of books we could buy to tell us how to play the game. Funny in retrospect, huh?) Now, I worked at and ran a game store for about a year, back in the day, and I took my role as Guy Who Tells Customers About Games very seriously. That was the whole raison d'etre of the game store, right? Except now the local game store is being superceded at all those functions.

If I want to know about upcoming games from publishers I'm aware of, I go to their website. If I want to know about upcoming games from publishers I'm not aware of, the Forge and RPGnet (and a dozen other sites) will tell me about them, too, after which I can follow up with my own research. I can see how much real support a game has, not in terms of products, but in terms of forum communities and the accessibility of the game's designer. Not only is the internet taking over those informative functions, but it does it with far more utility -- the web is right here (at home and work), not across town, the web is not dirty and smells funny, there are no crazy gamers that I have to deal with (we still have our crazies, they're just easier to ignore online), and there is a blessed plurality of voices instead of the game store worker's single biased viewpoint.

If I want to buy a new title, I do the same thing -- I buy from the website (or Con). I am not subjected to the proclivities of orders, shipments, or a game store's inability to maintain credit with distributors. If the title I want is PoD, there isn't even the possibility of 'out of stock' issues hampering my will. Maybe I don't get to hold the product in my hand, but I don't really need to, given the glut of information available online. Chances are I can find two or three physical descriptions of the product from relatively neutral sources, so production values do not need to be seen to be known.

Not that I ever found pick-up groups at game stores, but if I wanted to get a pick up group going, I wouldn't do it there, these days. Clinton's FindPlay is not the first project of its kind, but it is the best I've seen so far. There are also various Meet Up groups and the like, and here's the thing: they're getting better and better, more sophisticated and more accurate. I know a fully detailed, precision-based service that can attract a pool of registered users is still a bit out of our grasp right now (the effort necessary would require commercial support, in terms of subscriptions or advertising), but how long until something that cool can be created, like FindPlay, in an afternoon?

Just me, or are our hallowed Favorite Local Game Stores of increasing insignificance?

Now, this is just the tip of the iceberg for a lot of other stuff in my head right now, the first step down a path regarding thinking about our entire gamer culture differently. If game stores aren't our foundation anymore, aren't the central node for how we interact with the hobby, how does that shake out the shape of the hobby as a whole? Combine that with shifting social structures in games (especially in the player-GM relationship), and I'm increasingly wondering how much the shape of roleplaying is changing.

Quickie dirty poll: when was the last time you visited your FLGS? Did you buy your last game product from a retail outlet, or direct?

I Don't Get Immersion

2005-11-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

So there's lots of talk about Immersion both on Sin Aesthetics and at Eliot Wilen's Journal. Normally, I like to think of myself as this nice, open-minded gamer who enjoys just about any facet of the hobby, not tied down to any particular CA or technique or what-have-you, but I simply can't wrap my head around the appeal of Immersion.

Now, I think I "get" Immersion -- being in your character's head, thinking as your character, declaring actions as your character would make them, and generally enjoying the experience of being in that headspace. (Good so far?) Not reaching outside of the character to affect the character, staying in Actor Stance (Still good?). Taking in what the other players at the table give you, responding and reacting to it, and spitting out that reaction (Leaping off track yet?).

Now, I can understand the sort of be-someone-else sort of feel to that, but it seems to me that pursuing that feeling necessarily abandons the possibility of taking fuller control of what happens to the character (as opposed to what the character does). No Author or Director Stance for you. No Scene Framing. No supplying yourself with the beyond-your-character "Ammo" to get what you want out of play. No strategizing on a narrative level, just on an experiential level. To me it seems like deciding that you really like potatoes, and not eating the rest of Christmas dinner.

I'm assuming that I've totally screwed up my characterization by this point -- what have I missed? Or are all those extra-character techniques and powers either not necessary or not desirable? If those extra-character techniques and powers aren't desirable, are you relying on another player (probably a GM) to supply you with pokes, prods, resources, and bangs? Is Immersion a specifically reactive stance?

Immersion is enjoyed by intelligent, creative people that I respect, so I'm sure I've got something wrong, here. Can someone tell me what I'm missing?

Brief Design Ranting

2005-11-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Doing the Storymapping chapter. It's ~~annoying me~~ outlined and theoretically functional.

Cross-Model Note

2005-11-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

As IM is a "horizontal" cross-section of gaming as opposed to Big Model's "vertical" top-down view, sometimes they can express each other's bits and pieces from a different point of view. Here's a quick one:

Under IM, you frame scenes so that they will address the current situation. The situation is, in turn, focused (imbuing interaction) from player Goals. If players are pursuing a Creative Agenda, it will reside here, and it will influence their focusing interactions -- specifically, if they are playing Narrativist, they will focus the situation to present moral dilemmas; if they are playing Gamist, they will focus the situation to present challenges; if they are playing Simulationist, they'll focus the situation to highlight a portion of the source material that they want to celebrate (or whatever it is the Sim play does). Once they've done that, scenes will proceed to address the moral dilemma, address the challenge, or address the content, fulfilling the CA. It's another one of those reach-around complements: focusing (imbuing) complemented by steering and framing (articulation).

Focus: Scope, Premise, Frame

2005-11-14T15:40:00.000-08:00

So as a side note in the previous article, I suggested that it would be worthwhile to split 'Scope' into three terms since it applies to three different levels of the Imagined in subtly different ways. The primary reason that I didn't was that I couldn't figure a decent name for the Scope of Situation. The problem, I'm thinking, was that the term was already there: the "set of all significance" is what the Forge has already been calling the Premise -- the 'problematic aspect' that the players then create the theme out of. Vincent calls it "issues".

Now, while I've never really liked the term 'premise' as it's used at the Forge (it's used exactly how 'theme' is used in literary criticism), I can adopt it here because 'focusing the premise' works better than 'focusing the theme'.

So. We have six sets of elements (non-exclusive) of the Imagined:

Setting - the "set of all potential." All of the imagined content that may or may not exist in the world. Everything from gods and planets down to people and microorganisms.

Scope - the set of rules that describe the boundaries of the setting, what is and is not acceptable. Important: this is different from the imagined content itself. The Scope includes rules like "Island chains on a water world". It does not include "The island Hikawawa, where the ladies do the hula."

Situation - the "set of all significance." Elements of the Setting which have been juxtaposed in a way that generates action (hopefully action that the PCs can involve themselves in).

Premise - the set of rules that describe the boundaries of the situation, what is and is not acceptable for consideration. "Questions about religion" is a rule; "The Faithful's stance on polygamy and the degradation of women" could be in a Premise.

Scene - a sequential set of events involving a set of imagined elements that addresses (attempts to change or comment on) the Situation.

Frame - the set of rules that describe the boundaries of the scene, what is and is not present (physically or thematically). "Things found on a normal street corner" is a rule; "A bus, a fire hydrant, and a crying baby" could be in the scene.

And we have four articulation interactions:

Focusing the Scope - changing the rules of the Scope

Focusing the Premise - changing the rules of the Premise

Focusing the Frame - changing the rules of the Frame. This is not the same as Framing the Scene (below).

Framing the Scene - populating the Scene with elements according to the Scene's Frame.

That make sense to folks? I'll ~~edit~~ rewrite the prior post to reflect the change when I'm free.

Focusing the Scope - an Interaction Model Study

2005-11-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

Subtitled, Scope, Setting, Situation, Scene: Some S-Terms for Imagined Elements

Okay, so the following is a close look at a piece of the much larger Interaction Model. If you haven't seen the Interaction Model, you'll want to follow the link of the same name on the navigation bar to the right before delving into this.

The Imagined is one of the three aspects of roleplaying, itself composed of many different elements, most of them imagined content. The Imagined was first conceived as having the weakest gatekeepers of any of the three aspects, if it had any at all. I think I've found one. One of those gatekeepers, controlling the input of articulation and imbuing interactions, is scope.

Scope is not, strictly speaking, composed of imagined content, but of rules regarding that content. Alternately, scope can be viewed as imaginary facts about the setting and genre of the game. Functionally, scope is a set of rules that determine what things can be added to the Imagined. Some of the rules that may be included are things like "Vampires are real!" or "You can only acheive warp speed if you have a dilithium crystal." As such, any articulation affecting the Imagined must pass the scope's "consistency check" before it can be ratified and accepted. Talking about vampires requires the "Vampires are real!" rule in order to work. Traying to make your dilithium-less shuttlepod jump to warp speed will fail if the dilithium crystal rule is in place.

Scope applies to interactions that target at least three levels of the Imagined: the overall setting, thematic situations, and individual scenes. Scope's affect on setting and scenes are the easiest to see, as they apply to the very public articulation interactions. Scope is relatively weak in regards to imbuing interactions that change the composition of the situation, and is harder to observe.

(Side Note: it may be worthwhile to split the "three scopes" into three separate but related terms. Something like scope for setting, frame for scenes, and ... something else for situation.)

Applied to setting, scope determines what is possible. It is the set-of-all-potential. When an articulation attempts to add information to the setting in general, either background details or foundational elements that support details immediate to the characters in the moment, it is checked against the scope. The vampire example above can govern the scope of Setting. If I wanted to explain that my character's parents were killed by vampires, that would pass the "Vampires are real!" rule, but would not pass a "No supernatural" rule of another game.

However, when scope affects the game's situation, it is playing gatekeeper to imbuing interactions inbound from player Goals. Here, scope determines what is signficant, and is the set-of-all-signficance. Scope is a very weak gatekeeper on this side of the Imagined, and in fact functions more like a receptionist rather than a customs officer -- taking notes rather than stopping movement. If I grow attached to a given character, imbuing them with significance, the scope usually expands itself to accomodate. It is only in massive breaches, such as falling in love with my hated arch-nemesis or attaching significance to content that does not exist (ie, stuff not included in the Imagined), that the scope prevents the interaction from occuring.

Applied to scenes, scope determines what is immediate. It is the set-of-all-immediate. When an articulation attempts to add information to the immediate scene of what is happening in the moment, it is checked against the scope. The dilithium example can govern the scope of a scene. If the badguys are flying away by going to warp speed but they've stolen all my dilithium, I can't narrate that we jump to warp speed to pursue them. Such an articulation would fail to pass that check.

I can, however, attempt a different articulation interaction to change the scope and thereby allow my character to pursue at warp speed -- heck, it's Star Trek, right? Insert technobabble justification here! Scope is not something that is set before play begins and never changes afterwards. Certainly a game needs some scope to begin with, but once play begins, this scope can change. I'm going to label the process of changing the scope as focus.

Focus is itself an articulation interaction, sponsored by the System and affecting the Imagined. As a System-sponsored interaction, access to focus is often subject to some heavy restrictions. Indeed, in most games only the GM has any access to focus -- only the GM determines what exists in the world, only the GM decides what is important enough to get screen time, and only the GM decides what turns up and what happens in any given scene. Newer games have liberated the focus interaction and allowed players some access to it. Universalis, for instance, has some powerful focus interaction mechanics, allowing all players to spend currency not only to introduce new material to the Imagined but also to reinforce its significance to the game as a whole.

Focus is one of the first interactions to be performed in any game. This is the initial interaction that begins to build the world of the game -- not only does it introduce the base material of continents, kingdoms, and (inevitably) weapons, but it also establishes genre conventions and may even begin to shape up potential situations of consequence. Focus can introduce material directly from player input (such as in a game of PTA or Universalis) or it can take material inspired by published works (such as in a game of Changeling or Forgotten Realms). Either way, it is the players which decide which materials get "in" and which materials are left out. Players gaming "by the book" may adopt a wide focus and ratify everything in the book into their game; other players may eschew elements of the book that they dislike. In this way, the players construct the scope of the game, creating the rules that form the shape of the arena that they will game in (that was a long-winded way to get here, wasn't it?).

Now, knowing that the Imagined, as an aspect, is not identically shared among all players, the scope is also not identically shared among all players, either. No doubt most players have experienced this -- where one player thinks rayguns fit right into the setting while another player thinks the first player has been smoking something. When such a situation occurs, one of two things happen. In traditional games, the GM is the one introducing the new element and the GM has sole authority over the focus interaction -- the players smile and take it (or mount a quiet defense through informal cajoling or criticism). In games where the GM is not the sole arbiter of focus or when a non-GM player attempts to introduce an element that conflicts with another player's scope, play pauses for a moment, the players discuss the validity of the addition, thereby focusing the scope, and then proceed either with or without the contested element. Whether the GM dictates or the play group discusses, the public focusing interaction functions to bring the players' private scopes into closer alignment.

I'd like to see more explicit procedures for focus. As the foundation for a great deal of our shared imaginings, this process bears further investigation and experimentation, and may yield some provocative game designs. We've already seen the first steps in this direction with Dogs' out-of-character negotiation, PTA's "pitch meeting", and especially in Universalis' currency mechanics. Where do we go from here? Handing to the players the keys to the kingdom -- and the instructions on how to pop open the locks.

Solar Steamers FTW!

2005-11-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

At lunch I wrote the segment on Solar Steamers.

How the hell have I gotten this far without having written anything about Solar Steamers?!?

Full Light, Full Steam -- Complete!

2005-11-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

Yeah, you thought I was done writing. I fucking wish. This is about Vincent's definition of a complete game and how FLFS shapes up.

1) Mechanical rules for opposition, situation, IIEE, resolution and outcome. They should include both a reward mechanism and a positioning mechanism.

Opposition - die checks*
Situation - Storymapping
IIEE - Direction rules
Resolution - die checks
Outcome - Direction
Reward - Thematic Batteries and Spoils
Positioning - Thematic Batteries

*unless Vincent means something other than what I think he means.

2) Mechanical rules establishing each player's starting position wrt resolution and reward for sure, and the others as appropriate.

Character stats are a very solid predicter of character abilities to resolve conflicts.
Thematic Batteries are a clear and flexible means to gain effectiveness-rewards.
Others' TBs are a clear means to gain experience-rewards.

3) Rules or guidelines providing each player with an answer, at every moment, to "what should I be doing right now?"

You're either narrating, listening, interjecting, or interrupting. The Direction rules, if followed, will be the cleanest and least-noticed part that fundamentally changes the way the players game.

4) Enough material to kick the players without any further work on their part into agreement about at least two of: characters, situation, setting and color. Characters and setting is the easiest, but not-at-all easy to get right; characters and situation is the easiest to get right.

Color and Setting. It's a big, bold, gloriously and disgustingly lurid world. Whabang!

5) Rules or guidelines for coming to agreement about the other two.

Characters - First Session discussions on Power Level and communal cgen
Situation - Generated by Thematic Batteries

6) Violence, sex, children, money, God, or art.

Violence (navy), money (imperialism and colonialism, pirate-hunting), some God (proselytizing to aliens), some sex (womens in the navy, oh my!)

...now I just have to write it, rather than write about it.

Regarding IM2.0

2005-11-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

This is the third freaking time I've tried to make this post. Fucking Blogger.

Hey, the article before this one? Not much new in it. It's just the definitive collection of different articles that appeared after the Version the First post. There's a new section on MJ Young's four "referee styles" so read that. Otherwise, there's just fixed typos, better transitions, and random clarifications.

Notice the link on the right. I'll change its target when I compose Interactions III: Return of the Wheel of Doom. If Blogger will let me fucking post.

Interaction Model 2.0

2005-11-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

Abstract

Ninety-nine percent of the people who read this will be familiar with the "Bang Bang! You're Dead! No I'm Not!" argument of game design -- that is, that the rules of roleplaying games are necessary to arbitrate differences of opinion on what we imagine in the game. Usually this is used as a sort of apology to gloss over the downer of having to follow rules. I'm going to use it as a starting point, however, to try and explain the entire phenomenon we call roleplaying.

Roleplaying is something that a lot of people do, and even do together, without really being able to explain what it is very well. We say it's grown-up make-believe, it's collaborative storytelling, it's improvizational theater -- but in the end it's not really any of these things. Most of our descriptors are accurate without being precise, broadly correct but clumsy terms that do not effectively communicate what we are doing -- even to each other.

A great deal of work on this very problem has been done at the Forge, and this essay is fundamentally indebted to the good work of people like Ron Edwards, Clinton Nixon, Vincent Baker, Victor Gijsbers, and many others. The bulk of the work at the Forge is based off of the seminal question "Why do we do what we do?" The inquiries and conclusions that arose from that question recognized that the reasons that we play are not always the same, and that the player's goals in playing were instrumental to the ensuing roleplay. This is the important third ingredient to roleplaying -- the goal of the participants.

Third ingredient? What were the first two? Back to "Bang Bang! You're Dead!" -- the rules arbitrate what we imagine -- therefore there are rules, and there is imagined content. Adding player goals, we have the trinity of roleplaying, or what I will be calling the aspects of roleplaying: the System, the Imagined, and the Goal.

None of these aspects have any substantial reality -- that is, they are all mental constructs existing only in the minds of the players. Even the System, which we like to think is pure and objective, written down and published, is really only what the players remember and use from the published material, supplemented by the copious idiosyncratic rituals and habits that are not written down anywhere. Now, the specifics and details of each aspect are not identical in every player's mind. Any five players will experience the game in five inescapably different ways. The pictures we imagine are similar, but not identical; there's always the one guy who memorizes all the rules; and of course, the players' goals may be vastly divergent. This is a simple fact of how people work -- outside of telepathy, there is no way to make other people think exactly what you're thinking. Yet somehow, when we roleplay, we share an imaginary experience. How does that work?

Back again to our "Bang Bang! You're Dead" kids -- the rules exist to arbitrate differences, which is another way of saying that the rules help reconcile the individual players' imagined content. The rules make my mental pictures look more like your mental pictures, and vice-versa. This applies, however, to all three aspects continually reconciling the others. The Goals inform what choices we make in adding or changing elements of the Imagined; the Imagined gives us meat for our Goals to chew on; the System provides tools to manipulate the Imagined and to develop our Goals. Based on this understanding, the basic function of roleplaying is to create a similar Imagined, System, and Goal in each player's mind and thereafter reconcile inconsistencies as all three aspects develop in complexity. This reconcile-and-develop process is accomplished through interactions between the aspects; together, the three aspects function as a self-correcting gestalt.

That's the abstract. Now for the nitty-gritty.

Aspects

Here's a breakdown of the three Aspects, first with a facile (and incomplete) definition, and then at length.

Imagined - What we imagine.
This is the easiest aspect to understand the basics of and the most difficult to understand in totality. This is the 'stuff' that we imagine as we roleplay -- the characters, the setting, the situation, relative positions of characters, the props and inevitably the weapons in hand, and whether Galstaff, Sorcerer of Light, has grey eyes or blue eyes. History, both in terms of setting and in terms of the characters -- a full transcript of game events (as remembered by the player) -- also resides in the Imagined. Beyond these more concrete elements, however, the Imagined also incorporates genre conventions and the range of options available to characters. The Imagined in a superheroes game is fundamentally different than the Imagined in a gritty historical fantasy game, and not just because one has tights and the other has chainmail. Saving the world by punching one guy in the face is not only feasible, but the preferred method of operation in the superheroes game; a mounted knight in full plate in the gritty historical fantasy game, however, is going to laugh at such tactics, and taking him down isn't going to save the world, anyway. Needless to say, the Imagined is a hugely complex mental construct, and one that requires powerful tools to reconcile with other players' imaginations.

System - The rules of the game.
Actually bearing only passing resemblance to the rules as published in game supplements, the System is inspired by published rules content in exactly the same way as the Imagined is inspired by published setting content. It is composed of what interpretations of the published rules material are given credence by the players, as well as rituals idiosyncratic to the players ("house rules" are explicit rituals; implicit rituals include things like niche protection), and any other procedures (bluebooking) that determine what happens both in the Imagined and in the real world of players, dice, and character sheets. The core of the System is the Lumpley Principle: the means by which the players agree on what happens. It determines who has credibility (who has access to the System's interactions), calculates binary success/fail or "fuzzy" degrees of success/fail, dictates how new content is added, and allows existing content to be manipulated.
It's important to note, too, that the System is just as unshared as the Imagined and the Goal. Not all players are really playing by the same set of rules; hopefully these rules are very similar or perhaps even indistinguishable, but this is only after the operation of the roleplaying process -- it's difficult to imagine a new group of players with a new game immediately 'clicking' without even the mildest speedbumps.

Goal - What's important to the players.
A player's Goal is the reason that player is even roleplaying to begin with. It is the seat of player initiative and personal significance, and as such, is the most ineffable of the three aspects. Functionally, a player's Goal emphasizes some parts of the play experience over others according to standards in the player's head. Goal does not deal directly with content; goal is why some elements of the Imagined content are included when retelling war stories at Con. Goal cannot be reduced to a word or phrase -- 'Story' only begins to scratch the surface; what kind of story is the player after, entailing what specifics? -- and, like Imagined and System, will not only reconcile with the other players' Goals, but will also change and develop over time.

Note: Creative Agendas may be seen as handful of broadly-defined and tightly-focused categories of goals, but the terms 'Creative Agenda' and 'Goal' are no more synonymous than 'Mammal' and 'Animal' are.

The relative size and complexity of each aspect, and whether there are other aspects-of-significant-importance within the roleplaying activity, is pretty much an open question at this point. We know about these three. Maybe there are others. I don't know how they interact with these three yet, mostly because I don't know what they are.

Interactions

Roleplaying is the process of reconciling and developing the three aspects in the players' minds. This continual process of development and reconciliation is realized through the interactions of the Imagined, the System, and the Goal. Interactions are the things that players do at the table -- some are external (actions, speaking, rolling dice) and some are internal (consideration, imagining, planning). By doing these things, the players share with each other the characteristics of their mental conceptions of the Imagined, System, and Goal.

Access to some Interactions is frequently privileged, out of reach of most players. Most commonly, this access is invested in the Game Master, but other games may divvy up access to the Interactions in more complex fashion (See: Polaris). This differentiation of access privileges has profound impact on how a game is run thereafter.

Between the three aspects there are six types of interactions, as displayed on the following chart. A relatively short description of each type of interaction is listed below, along with the access privileges which are usually associated with that interaction and a handful of examples.

Fuel Interaction - The Imagined Fuels the System. The Imagined provides the System with the elements which the System uses to determine what happens. This "Fuel" can be characters, environmental elements, situations, or any other material that the System uses as input for its deliberations. Fuel includes not only items with game effects (Dagger with +9 against Ogres) but also opens up possibilities based on its presence (stairs allow a character to reach the next level; the presence of a badguy allows the protagonists to duel with her).
Because the Fuel Interaction connects to the System, the System arbitrates what "gets in" -- any player can want something to have game effect; the System decides if it does (through dictate, through privileging some players over others, or even simply by charging game currency to empower an element to be included in a given way).
Example: The character sheet itself is not Fuel; players selecting numbers representative of the Imagined character and feeding these numbers into the System is. The character sheet is just a handy tool, a reminder of what numbers we've assigned to our characters. In the statement, "My guy swings his sword" both the guy and the sword are Fuel.

Articulation Interaction - System Articulates the Imagined. The concrete output of the System -- that is, "what happens" -- articulates the Imagined, providing development, action, and revision. Articulation can both establish elements within the Imagined as well as manipulate them later. This is the corollary to Fuel -- the finished goods from the raw materials.
Because Articulation is derived from the System, the System determines who gets to do the articulation as well as providing some guidelines (dice results, usually). In a given game, not everyone can always perform the Articulation -- it is often limited to just the GM.
Examples: The most facile example of Articulation is interpreting what a die roll means for the elements within the Imagined, but this is not the only example. Activities such as "Creating the Adventure," "Rolling Up Characters," and "Framing the Scene" are also Articulation. Task Resolution is primarily Articulation; Conflict Resolution is patently both Articulation and Validation.

Contextualization Interaction - The Imagined Contextualizes the Goal. Any story needs characters, a setting, and events in order to express itself; so too does any competition, social statement, or other conceivable product of roleplaying. The elements of the Imagined are utilized in Contextualization to put the Goal in a context of supporting, conflicting, and qualifying details, all of which enrich the Goal. This interaction provides the specifics of the Imagined to express generalized Goals -- and it is important to note that the same specific details may be used concurrently in more than one Contextualization interaction to inform more than one Goal.
As an interaction between the Imagined and the Goal, Contextualization is up for grabs, performed by everyone at the table in an unconstrained fashion, based on the material provided by the Imagined (which is not up for grabs in an unconstrained fashion).
Example: Relating the hopes and dreams of one's character with the stated goals of a faction of NPCs is a simple example; a more complex example might relate the raison d'etre of the Knight, the Pacifist, the King, and the Infidel when they all come face-to-face in the middle of a battlefield.

Imbuing Interaction - The Goal Imbues the Imagined. Imbuing makes the elements from the Imagined content mean something. Ten character names and abilities, a map, and a horde of orcs is just a laundry list of information until some items on the list are made heroes, some are made victims, and some are made villains. This is the corollary to Contextualization; whereas Contextualization positions meaning within a collection of elements, Imbuing assigns individual meanings to individual elements.
Like Contextualization, Imbuing is unconstrained, and any player can imbue any element of the Imagined with any meaning they like. Divergent significance attached to elements can often lead to problems in play -- such as when one player casually kills off a character that another player was not finished with.
Example: Assigning a thematic meaning to a character, setting, or prop in the Imagined -- "my guy embodies the ethos of nobility" or simply, "my guy is badass."

Side Note: Contextualization and Imbuing can be 'wild card' interactions that seriously diverge the Imagined and Goals of different players. This is why these interactions are expressed by the interactions' complements (see below).

Steering Interaction - The Goal Steers the System. The Goal determines what actions and additions will be proposed, attempted, and/or declared -- this potential material is fed into the System, which will determine what happens. Steering interactions are always created "Out of Character," based on criteria in the minds of the players, not the characters. "In Character" decisions are in fact simulations of decisions that the player believes the character would reasonably make. The four Stances (Pawn, Actor, Author, and Director) are all ways to perform Steering interactions.
Because the Steering Interaction connects to the System, it, like the Fuel Interaction, is subject to the System's gatekeeper processes. Steering interactions can be delimited by the abilities and point of view of the player's character or supercede these limitations; Scene Requests may be privileged to just the GM; new characters may only be created by spending game currency.
Example: Simplistically, the impulse behind "my guy tries to hit that guy"; complexly, "I would like to play a scene in which that guy wants to seduce that guy."

Validation Interaction - The System Validates the Goal. While the concrete output of the System feeds into Articulation, the abstract output of the System feeds into Validation. Whatever "happens" in the Imagined may have thematic implications for the Goal. This may plainly validate the Goal, or it may complicate that validity with qualifications and exceptions. This is the corrolary to Steering; it is the game's response to player propositions.
This is another interaction based from the System, and therefore often privileged. The System often determines who is allowed to interpret the significance of the System's output, and may also provide some guidelines for that interpretation.
Example: Joey fails to win the race. Does this mean he did not try enough? Would he have won if he trained more? Is he now a failure, or will it give him the resolve to try again, thus justifying his self-confidence?

Every single thing that the players do in the game can be understood as one or more interactions. When the roleplaying process is functional -- that is, it reconciles and develops the aspects in the players' heads -- every die roll, every interpretation, every proposed action, contributes to the self-correcting and development process.

Round and Round

As the diagram implies, the interactions feed into each other in self-reinforcing circles. The two obvious circles are the outside, or Widdershins, circle, and the inside, or Sunwise, circle. Note that the processes do not necessarily 'start' at any one aspect as depicted below. I am unfortunately bound by the rules of grammar, which state that sentences must start somewhere.

Widdershins (Outside) Circle - The players' preferences and interests (Goal) color their understanding (Imbue) of the setting and their own characters (Imagined), which prompts them to use selected elements of that setting and their characters (Fuel) in order to determine what happens (System), the answers to which reinforce or complicate (Validate) the things they cared about in the first place (Goal).
Example: I have an interest in the concepts of honor and duty (Goal), and so I apply (Imbue) the principles of bushido onto my modern-day character (Imagined). This constrains my character's options (Fuel) when taking actions (System), thereby expressing (Validating) the elements that I am interested in (Goal).

Sunwise (Inside) Circle - Based on what is important to the players (Goal), they make decisions (Steering) that are adjudicated by various rules and rituals (System). The results are interpreted (Articulation) into "what happens" (Imagined), which juxtaposes elements of characters and setting (Contextualization) to develop the new meaning (Goal).
Example: Because I want to develop my character's relationship with my father (Goal), I decide to spend game-currency (Steering) to begin a new scene (System). I describe the scene (Articulation) as a family barbeque (Imagined). The characters' conversation further informs (Contextualization) their relationship and the father/daughter dynamic (Goal).

Note that it's also patently possible for 'flow' to go in more complex shapes than these two circles. A sequence of interactions could go, for instance, Imbue -> Contextualize -> Imbue -> Fuel -> Articulate -> Contextualize. The key is that each interaction strengthens the aspects that are involved in the interaction, either by developing it, by reconciling differences between players' conceptions, or both. Functional roleplay is the process by which the aspects are continuously reconciled and developed. As long as the 'flow' routes through the players' Goals in meaningful ways, not only will the aspects be reconciled, but they will be developed in interesting -- ie fun -- ways. This is the point of roleplaying.

Complements

Just as the diagram suggests the circular reinforcement, players can also perform interactions in both directions at the same time. This sort of 'reaching around' to the other side of the diagram exposes combinations of interactions which are complementary to each other.

Validation complemented by Articulation and Contextualization - The System's validation or qualification of the Goal is abstract; that Validation is expressed by the System's results Articulating the details of the Imagined in order to re-Contextualize the significance of the Goal.
Example: I have my guy attack the enemy base because I think that's heroic. I get a terrible die roll. That wasn't heroic; that was stupid (Validation). My guy gets shot up and captured (Articulation) putting him at the mercy of the enemy (Contextualization).

Steering complemented by Imbuing and Fuel - The dictates of the Goal not only determine what events I want to happen, but they prioritize elements of the Imagined in order to provide the tools with which to make those events possible.
Example: I'm playing 7th Sea. I want to swash some buckle. So I declare my guy is going to swing from the chandelier, land on some mooks, and cut his initials into the villain's shirt (Steering). That there is a fundamental difference between mooks and villains and that there is a chandelier ripe for swinging on are Imbuing interactions. That I can use that chandelier as a vehicle and the mooks as a landing pad are Fuel interactions.

Imbuing complemented by Steering and Articulation - What is important to me is terribly idiosyncratic but must be communicated to the other players. Imbuing can be ineffible, but I have tools which allow me to Steer the System into Articulating the Imagined in meaningful ways.
Example: I am intrigued by how Doctor Hudson might have been active in my character's amnesiac past (Imbuing). So I have my character interrogate the good Doctor (Steering) in order to make him explain his motivations (Articulation). Note that the answers that the Doctor provides are immatieral; the very fact that my character performed the interrogation expresses my interests as a player.

Contextualization complemented by Fuel and Validation - The Imagined details which qualify and develop the Goal also provide functional effects which the System can use to validate the Goal.
Example: The last remnants of the Revolution are surrounded by hostile Monarchist forces (Contextualization). Those soldiers and cannons (Fuel) will shoot the hell out of anyone who tries to escape (Validation).

Fuel complemented by Contextualization and Steering - Elements of the Imagined which are processed in the System are also elements of the Imagined which bear on the Goal and delimit or open the possibilities of player action.
Example: My guy's sword gives him a +9 against ogres (Fuel). At the same time, his possession of the sword makes him a fantasy hero (Contextualization) which means he is one to fight ogres (Steering).

Articulation complemented by Validation and Imbuing - The development of what happens in the Imagined is mirrored by the System's qualification and validation of Goal emphases, which in turn give meaning to the events happening in the Imagined.
Example: We have succeeded in destroying the third Death Star (Articulation). This bodes well for the Rebellion (Validation) and hereafter the destruction of the Death Star will be a powerful rallying point (Imbuing).

Function

Now that we've got all the pieces on the table and what each piece 'does', we can talk about how the whole thing works together. As stated before, the function of roleplaying is to reconcile and develop the three aspects in the players' heads. The model represents a self-reinforcing gestalt which self-corrects, manipulates, and adds to the aspects through interactions performed by the players.

First off, I should point out the limitations of my glorious illustration. While the illustration does make it look like there is one Imagined, one System, and one Goal, in reality there is one of these for each player. If there are five players at the table, there are five private Imagined, five private Systems, and five private Goals at work. They are not identical, and never will be, but the process of reconcile-and-develop works to make them more and more similar. The interactions are the only elements in the model which can be public. Articulation leads the pack -- usually spoken aloud, this interaction is very common to all the players' experience, and can easily be misidentified as 'being' roleplaying all by itself. On the other end, Imbuing is relatively private, and only rarely and barely made public -- and usually by the other players's deduction rather than being explicitly declared.

Now, the public interactions are what align the private aspects. Not only does the GM's Articulation manipulate his own conception of elements in the Imagined, but it also manipulates the other players' Imagined. When the GM describes the smoky bar, the other players add a smoky bar to their private Imagined. I tried to illustrate this; I failed. It would involve the Articulation arrow leaving the GM's System, splitting up into five arrows, and pointing at the GM's Imagined as well as the other four players' Imagined. Multiply this by six interactions, and then by five players. That's a whole lot of arrows, and the illustration quickly turned into spaghetti. With just two players, there are twenty-four arrows; with five players, there are one hundred and fifty. Guess what? Roleplaying is really complex!

When a player performs an interaction, it may be (mostly) public (such as declaring your action in combat -- steering) or (mostly) private (estimating your character's chances at making a good impression with the local potentate -- contextualization). If it's private, it will only update the player's own aspects; if it's public, it will provide some input for the other players' aspects as well. Of course it's not a one-or-the-other public/private distinction, but a spectrum between 'mostly public' through 'a little public, a little private' and down to 'mostly private.'

Interactions may or may not affect the aspects they connect to due to gatekeeper processes. This is especially the case in Steering and Fuel (into System), less a case in Validation and Contextualization (into Goal), and almost never the case in Articulation and Imbuing (into Imagined). System has the strongest gatekeepers because it is the most regimented in terms of access and input; in many games, for instance, only the GM has access to the steering interaction of changing the scene. Other players may want to change the scene to something else, but they are not allowed to and must wait until the GM decides to. Contrariwise, the game may dictate that only the non-GM players are able to stipulate when their character's merits and flaws manifest (Fuel). A player's Goal may have some weaker gatekeepers in terms of disregarding Validation and Contextualization interactions; the player may decide that "that failure didn't mean anything" or "that imagined detail has no relevance to my story." As far as I can tell, the Imagined has no gatekeeper processes -- what is Articulated is true (at least for the moment) and what is Imbued is significant.

In facile terms, once an interaction passes gatekeeper processes, its content is added to the understanding of the aspect -- someone narrates "Ed falls into the water" and everyone's Imagined adds a wet Ed. However, this is only the case when the interaction's content is new information instead of old data. When a player announces that his dagger does +9 damage to ogres, this is not new information added to the others' System; everybody knows that he's got a dagger and everybody knows it's good for attacking ogres with. No one's understanding of the System is changed. However, if the player announces that he will use an Imagined element in a clever way, such as using his dagger to cut a rope that drops a load of lumber on the ogre, this may be something that the other players had not considered before, and that information (daggers can do more than poke ogres) will be added to the other players' Systems. Over time, the addition of new information common to multiple players brings those players' conceptions of the aspects into closer alignment, since they comprise similar data.

I should make pains at this juncture, however, to underscore that interactions which contain old data instead of new information are not without use. These interactions confirm details in the players' aspects. The more times that a player character's kung-fu overcomes incredible odds (validation), the more the other players believe that said player character is capable in combat. They already knew that the charater had impressive combat stats; in fact, they probably already knew that he would win the fight. Nothing new is added, but existing content is strengthened and underscored. Similarily, if multiple scenes take place in the characters' secret hideout and the hideout is described in any detail each time, that hideout will become more and more real and tangible in the players' minds -- their Imagined aspect is heavily reinforced.

Remember the "Bang Bang! You're Dead!" kids way up top? That example only has the Imagined and the System, no Goal. Lots of roleplaying tries to work this way, heavily emphasizing the Fuel and Articulation interactions and giving short shrift to the rest. Player initiative arises from the Goal, however, and so while this aspect cannot be totally removed, its de-emphasis can result in a pretty lifeless game. Recognizing the importance of player Goals and making the interactions that connect to them more prominent and explicit invigorates the whole game, as has been patently demonstrated by the good work at the Forge. The inclusion and 'equal' standing of the Goal ensures that not only are the aspects convergent, but that said aspects and their development are inextricably bound up in what the players care about. In simple terms, not only is everybody thinking similar things, but they are having fun doing it.

Note: My use of the term "functional" is slightly different than the Forge term, but only at first. The Forge term means "creating play that the players enjoy". My use of the term is a little more intricate, but gets to the same destination -- "reconciling and developing the three aspects of roleplaying" which necessarily entails addressing the players' Goals, therefore creating play that the players enjoy.

Incomplete and Self-Contradictory Aspects

It is (relatively) easy to see the model working between players who have a solid understanding of the game's rules and clear goals for their roleplaying. Especially at the start of a new game, however, players are often shaky on the procedures of the System, have incomplete conceptions of the Imagined setting, and have fuzzy or very skeletal Goals. Roleplaying's reconcile-and-develop function will eventually amend this, allowing the players to synthesize their understandings, enriching everyone's aspects. The players will learn the rules and rituals of the game until they are second nature; they will learn and develop the world in which they roleplay; they will even, over time, come to recognize their own goals and their fellow players' goals, working them together into a conception of 'why we play this game' (as opposed to 'why I play this game').

However (and this is a big 'however'), this will only happen if the gestalt gels together and works. Players working under very sketchy aspects, or even with self-contradictory aspects (often the case in Goals), may perform interactions based on those aspects in erratic ways. It's important to note that there are no 'wrong' ways to perform interactions, but some methods will be more effective in some situations than others. Long-winded narration making frequent allusions to snippets of poetry to set the scene is great when playing by candlelight after dinner with friends; it will be completely lost when playing with thirteen year old new gamers. It's not that the teens are bored, it's that they do not understand the information being presented to them. This articulation 'misses the target' and adds nothing, underscores nothing, in their Imagined aspects.

Alternately, if a player believes that she should get a big effectiveness boost (Fuel) against General Nogoodnik if she uses the Sword of Damocles, she may go to great lengths to ensure that her character has the Sword, that it's sharpened, that the General is out in the middle of the battle, and so on. The player will be very disappointed if it turns out that the others' conceptions of the System affords no special bonuses for special weapons. While all the prior narration may have certainly been interesting, to some extent the player is going to feel as if her efforts were wasted and ineffectual. While the player's conception of System will be closer aligned with the others' after the exchange, this is a disappointing and rather brutal way to go about it.

Roleplaying is a self-correcting process, and players can utilize that function to avoid such problems. It is a simple matter to send out 'test' interactions and watch how they are received and used by the other players. After the first blank-eyed stare from the thirteen-year-olds, the belabored poetic narration can be toned down. The Sword of Damocles can be 'tested out' on the General's lieutenants, displaying how everyone around the table believes it should function in terms of Fuel. Simply watching what characters a certain player gets attached to (imbuing) or how a player responds to system failures (validation) can reveal a great deal. Openly and honestly communicating around the table also circumvents issues. Simply sharing enthusiasm by saying, "I need that Sword! That'll give me a big boost against General Nogoodnik!" can open a conversation about what kind of a boost that sword will give.

Dysfunction

Without making an effort to intentionally and consciously utilize the feedback cycle of roleplaying, things can begin to collapse. Other players belabor things that "aren't important," the GM fudges the rolls when he clearly should never do such things, players "descend" into roll-playing instead of the awesome and wondrous glory that is role-playing... and the like.

Dysfunction occurs when interactions cease to perform the essential reconcile-and-develop function of roleplaying, and the players' aspects begin to diverge significantly. When the players begin having different Imagined content, different Systems, and different Goals, and do not effectively communicate these to the other players, the result is dysfunctional play. This is a somewhat broader definition of function and dysfunction than the Forge uses. Function is not 'create fun', it is 'create shared imaginings which are fun'. Chez Geek creates fun; that doesn't mean it's a functioning roleplaying game.

Because the three aspects are reconciled through the interactions, when they diverge the interactions must be at fault. I submit that most dysfunctions occur when one of two things happen: (a) interactions are missing, or (b) interactions that should complement each other do not. Here's a few dysfunctions and how they 'map' onto the interaction model.

Railroading A dysfunction in which the System (usually a ritual component, sometimes published rules) gives the GM absolute control over all Validation while the players retain supposedly absolute access to Steering their characters' actions. The players make decisions which have no bearing on the reconcile-and-develop process. The lack of feedback creates dysfunction -- the players might be wildly steering left, but the GM keeps heading right, invalidating their interactions.

Prima Donna One player monopolizes Steering interactions and the Steering->Articulation process, in order to insist on their Imbued meaning. Sort of a player-based Railroading.

Deprotagonizing of Characters A dysfunction where a player's Imbuing interaction is not complemented by available Steering and Articulating interactions. Either he is unable to use effective Steering interactions (in a game where the GM frames all scenes, for instance) or the Articulation results are interpreted in protagonism-denying ways (not that you missed, but that you didn't really want to shoot in the first place).

Pervy A not-quite dysfunction, a "pervy" or High Points of Contact game occurs when Articulation, Fuel, Steering, and Validation interactions (ie, those interactions connected to the System) are not fully provided by the mental construct of System, and must be supplied or refreshed from the published material. This can be frustrating, since the Imbuing and Contextualization interactions, which are independent of the System, are often running full tilt while the rulebook is being consulted, tying up their complements. Note that a game with a highly complex System can be functional; it is only when that System is incomplete and unshared among the players, leading to chronic book references, that this is (not quite) dysfunctional.

Impossible Thing Before Breakfast The proposition that the GM has "control" of the Goal via privileged access to interactions derived from the System (which is tilted towards her) and the Imagined (of which she is the supposed arbiter). The GM's privileged access does not interfere with the players' ability to Imbue the Imagined with their own meaning or to Steer the System to do what they want -- the players' efforts just get battered with brutal Validation interactions and often hackneyed Articulation->Contextualization arches by the GM, who procedurally refuses to recognize the players' Goals (ie, what is important to them).

Four (of Many) Ways to Play

MJ Young once proposed four GMing styles, which may be worthwhile looking at briefly through the lens of the Interaction Model. At root, these four distinctions depend on the access privileges of Articulation and Validation interactions, as well as the control of Contextualization. All four of these broad methods are or can be functional.

Illusionism The GM has near-exclusive access to most Articulation and Validation, setting up elements of the Imagined in such a way that they Contextualize the characters and story to delimit viable player options in Steering. The players are unaware that their choices are so limited, and accept the GM's Validation feedback as if it was generated by an objective source. This is enjoyable when the GM is capable of dispensing Validation and Contextualization that addresses the players' Goals, often the case among players who are friends and have some history of gaming together.

Participationism As above,the GM has near-exclusive access to Articulation and Validation interactions, controlling Contextualization to delimit player Steering. However, the players are aware of this dynamic and accept it, understanding that the Validation handed out is necessarily a product created almost exclusively by the GM. As with Illusionism, this can be entertaining if the GM knows his audience, and the "quality" of the game is often assumed to be the product of the GM's skill.

Trailblazing In this situation, the GM does not have exclusive access to Articulation and does not seek to control Contextualization, allowing the players to attempt to Steer the game to produce Articulations and eventually Contextualizations that all the players (including the GM) enjoy. However, the GM still retains exclusive access to a final Validation, and the players may or may not complete the entire Sunwise circle (Steer to Articulate to Contextualize) in the manner expected by the GM. This final Validation -- if they "get it" -- may or may not be important to the players' enjoyment of the game.

Bass Playing Here the GM shares access to Articulation and Validation, expressly making Contextualization interactions open to all players. The GM may continue to utilize the Articulation->Contextualization arc to attempt to challenge the players, but the players are also empowered to do the same -- to each other as well as to the GM.

Beyond the Four While expansive, MJ Young's four styles were never exhaustive, and there are certainly other ways to partition access to different interactions. New GMless and GMful games remove the GM from play entirely, creating styles of play which cannot be described by the GM's control of Articulation and Validation at all.

Emotive Content

Roleplaying can, but doesn't always, engage the players on an emotional level; we care about our characters, we want to see them acheive their goals, we feel their pain, we hate the badguys, we hope for the glorious fall of the Evil Empire. Sometimes we cry; sometimes we get really angry; sometimes we need to cool down. Thing is, that emotion that springs from us players and attaches to 'the game' does so in (at least) three different ways.

As Product, the game creates a story or experience that engages us emotionally. This is nearly identical to the kind of emotional attachment and identification that we experience when reading good books or watching good film. The game here is treated as an artifact (insubstantial, but nonetheless 'real') to which we connect. We engage emotionally with the aspects as we understand them.

As Performance, the game allows the other players to perform for us and dazzle our sensibilities. As participants ourselves, we also demonstrate skills and talents, and can take some satisfaction from that, as well. This is nearly identical to watching ballet, a play, or sports, or participating in the same. The game here is a stage on which we appreciate others' skills as well as our own. We engage emotionally with the interactions as they are performed.

As Process, the game is an activity which the players do together, collaboratively creating the story, world, characters, or what-have-you. This engages us as authoring a book, building a sculpture, or choreographing a dance routine. I'll also reference the "jazz band" metaphor which I think is appropriate here, although my nonexistent musical understanding makes it hard for me to judge. Here the game is a creative social milleu in which we participate. We engage emotionally with the activity as a whole, including the content and the participants.

That there are three ways to engage the emotions of the players makes it difficult to get a good handle on how that happens. One player's spectator appreciation may easily be conflated with another player's enjoyment of the creative process. The Interaction Model demonstrates all three ways, and shows the distinctions between them.

The Circle of Doom is back again, just for reference.

As far as Product goes, the Interaction Model shows how the roleplaying experience creates a shared understanding of System, Imagined, and Goal. That 'end product' can be appreciated artistically, and I suspect this is the most common emotional attachment we remember in retrospect. We say "that was a good story" or "remember when you got that critical success at just the right moment?" The ways in which we appreciate and care about external things is very complex and very outside the scope of my article here. Whatever our aesthetics are, the shared imaginings of roleplaying may fulfill them, and if they do, we grow emotionally attached to them.

There is also an element of our emotional attachment that arises from the aspects' shared nature. Truth be told, most stories told by roleplaying games would not make good books or films, but we treasure them nonetheless. Part of this is, I feel, because they are shared with friends. The elements of the Imagined that were provided to me by my friend Brand based on elements that were given to him by my wife Laura forever after have their fingerprints all over them. That makes them a little more precious, just as an otherwise unremarkable item can be cherished because it was a gift from a loved one.

As a Performance, the game is composed of players doing things; these things are represented by the Model's interactions. When one player does a masterful job of describing a scene (Articulation) and we just sit back and revel in the juicy details, we appreciate it as audience. Similarily, we might appreciate the masterful combination of tactics and advantages to win a critical die roll (Fuel). Of course, this can also go the other direction and we get incredibly frustrated when, say, another player invalidates our Goal. This in-the-moment emotional attachment is rarely lasting, but may become embedded in the memory of the whole experience, transforming into that reaction-to-product above. That said, this is where the adrenaline rush and edge-of-your-seat anticipation of gaming reside, when everything hinges on a die roll or the GM describes the unnamable horror gibbering in the closet. I may go so far as to say that this is the emotional 'bang' that most people game for, both in terms of enjoying your friend's skill and in receiving accolades for displaying your own.

I saved the most complicated for last. As a Process, we form emotional connections to roleplaying as something that we do, that we are hip-deep involved in, as an activity where were are needed and need others; where we create stories and characters that we care about and ask questions and forge answers regarding those same things. In lots of ways, this sort of emotional connection is not a part of the Interaction Model simply because a great deal of this has to do with being a human being interacting with other human beings around the table. Roleplaying can, however, heighten that interplay in a variety of ways.

First off, characters may be, either to large or small extent, avatars of the player, able to do or say things which the player is not. Far more than simple wish-fulfillment, roleplaying gives us the opportunity to experience situations -- especially difficult and dangerous situations -- that we would not otherwise be able to experience. The avatar-character may be able to display competence, which may or may not translate to the player's competence at playing the game, but this is, on the whole, tangential to the real meat, which is being in the situation and addressing it as the player likes. Not only does roleplaying allow us to be strong where we are not in real life, roleplaying allows us to be vulnerable in ways which we don't allow ourselves to be away from the table. Roleplaying is a mental space that allows you to find the love of your life many times over; it allows a boy from the suburbs to stand up for duty and honor even if it means self-sacrifice; it lets adolescents explore lots of "grown up" content, like politics, economics, religion, and sexuality.

In addition to the ability to experience things beyond our real-world abilities, roleplaying also affords us a measure of anonymity, even when facing our fellow players across the table. It's not me who is a fanatical follower of Kali, it's just my Euthanatos character. It's not me exploring feminity, it's just my female character. The veneer of disassociation gives us cover for going into territory that we might not be willing to stand up and say we want to experience in detail.

Despite the advantages of anonymity, roleplaying is still a collaborative endeavor, and one in which the players (ideally) feel needed. The furor that arises over niche protection underscores how strongly players want to protect that sense of being valued by others, but it is also expressed in other ways, as well. The vibe that takes over a table when everyone is on the same page and riffing off of eachother, for instance, is when the players' aspects are harmonized close enough that all interactions are consistently on target. Having your contributions to the game turned around and fed back to you does many things at once: you feel like your input is valued, you feel like you are contributing to something greater than just you, and you feel like your fellow players are providing for you by feeding you good material.

Perhaps most powerful is when it becomes clear that another player or players 'get' what you've been going after with your participation in the game. This can be seen when somebody recognizes and incorporates part of your Goal into theirs, and begins Steering in ways complementary to your desires. This is similar to the shared aspect of the Product brand of appreciation, but a little deeper; the sense that you and the other player are thinking the same thing, and that you are thinking the same thing because you performed those interactions just right, gives you a sense of community and commonality, of being unified with someone else if only for one brief moment. Compare it with the simple joy of communicating with someone else in a foreign language for the first time, or successfully transmitting a message through secret code.

All the above is certainly incomplete, and I've overlook vast swaths of the gaming experience. This is what I've got so far, and I'd love to hear any feedback I can get. This is an important part of roleplaying, certainly; this is why we play in the first place.

Conclusion

The strength of any model is not so much that it accurately describes what it hopes to, but that it can correctly predict operations and effectively correct those operations when they go wrong. If this model is accurate, we should be able to more precisely puzzle out what it is we are doing and to correct our practices when they are not resulting in the all-important reconcile-and-develop function of roleplaying. This model is only worthwhile if it helps us make roleplaying better.

I do believe, however, that this model offers an evocative paradigm from which to talk about roleplaying. The model is not roleplaying -- it's a map depicting roleplaying. Just as there are physical maps, political maps, and demographic maps out there, this is an interaction map: it maps out the interactions between three aspects of roleplaying. It answers -- or at least attempts to answer -- the question of "what do the players do, and how are those actions relevant?" It answers "What is this thing that we do when we say that we're roleplaying?"

We are sharing bits and pieces of our imagination, offering them back and forth, accepting them and challenging them, validating them and qualifying them, trying to create something that is both shared and interesting.

The Campaign Fallacy

2005-11-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

Remember back when we were kids in school, and we played RPGs all the damn time, and we had those campaigns that went forever? The campaigns that hit the twenty, thirty, fifty session mark? The characters that you took from fledgling to badass? The campaigns where you changed the face of the world, or you just kept going through dungeon after dungeon after dungeon, accumulating power and items and renown?

You know what? I don't remember any of that. It never happened.

I remember imagining running or playing in those campaigns. I certainly remember planning them. I remember starting them. Looking back, I can't recall any game that went for more than perhaps eight sessions. I mean come on, I was fourteen. I don't think I could watch an entire season of a television show with any regularity. But the ideal of the decades-spanning epic adventure was always in the forefront of my mind. That was the goal that I was shooting for, wasn't it? That was the point of gaming! But just as all those kids that bought metric tons of Pokemon cards, dreaming of the day they'd win the big national tournament, just as the kids who bought the Air Jordan sneakers so that they can play major league basketball, just as the kids who bought that starter guitar-and-amp set so that they could be rockstars... I think I was duped.

Certainly there are exceptions. Did you have one of those years-long games? Maybe. I don't think the majority of kids who bought the same book did, though. I think the vast majority of gamers and proto-gamers never ran the same game for more than a handful of sessions, if they actually ran the game at all. That magnificent vision of recreating the Lord of the Rings, or for the youngsters, the Wheel of Time (he still hasn't finished that series! It's still going!)... that was never going to happen at your gaming table. But damn did you want it. Christ, I don't say this lightly, but perhaps the games publishers actually employed a functional marketing strategy once in their publishing histories. Of course you'll need to buy the Guide to the Forgotten Backwater of Zeebadoo, because someday your great and magnificent epic game might go there! The reality didn't matter; it was the dream that made you buy.

I'd say that I'm older and wiser now, but I've got an entire bookcase of roleplaying game books that, while they were fun to read and all, I bought with the bright-eyed ambition of someday oneday actually playing them. I bought very nearly the entire 7th Sea line off of eBay once (an episode we like to call "Why Josh doesn't go to eBay anymore") and have played two 7th Sea games, eight sessions total. I'll stand up and make a case for buying the core book with the rules of a game that I may never play, because I can learn from that stuff. But I bought all the fucking kingdom books. I bought the Castille book with Antonio Bandaras and Leonardo DiCaprio on the cover. I never played in Castille... but I planned a campaign that was going to go there and never quite got off the ground.

More recently, as in, today, we were discussing what we wanted to play in our upcoming once-a-month-because-we're-too-damn-busy game day. Someone suggested Nobilis to which I had a pretty immediate reaction, that being: ew, long. It's the same reason why I can't see playing anything resembling a Fantasy Heartbreaker. It's at least related to the reason why MUSHing does not appeal to me any longer. It's an element of what is starting to piss me off about World of Warcraft. I just don't have time for something that only sees full development when played regularly and consistently for months on end. Who has time for that sort of thing?

The Campaign Fallacy in Gamer Culture
What other activity requires you to invest so much effort over so much time? Hint: marriage and childrearing don't count. And we're talking coordinated effort, here. We're talking about getting four to six people to synchronize their lives to allow them this meaty half-day chunk of time to dedicate to the goal. We're assuming that some hapless schmuck who we call the GM is going to spend additional hours upon hours preparing things for the other people to do so that time and coordination aren't wasted. I still get stirrings of, "But wouldn't that be so awesome?" when I think of it, but the reason that it would be so awesome is because it would be wholly outside the scope of reality. Riding a fucking unicorn to work would be awesome, too, but that doesn't mean that the local Toyota dealer has them available.

Yet the books keep coming, keep getting printed, keep being designed, that assume that the players will create great, sweeping stories that never end, playing that game until they are old and grey. Some of it boils down to economics, certainly: the sole marketing strategy that gaming has ever mastered, that of hookwinking players into thinking they'll need yet another book filled entirely with nothing but color, the publishing equivalent of cotton candy.

I think it's settled deeper into gamer culture now, though, to the point where it keeps happening because of tradition. I know I've seen reviews of books that complained that they could not see a long-term campaign arising out of the presented material. That's a standard of quality, now? I know that I, as a designer, once dreamed of having a row of my books marching along my bookshelf, all with their cute little matching spines and title treatments. It was a standard of success for me, and still is to anyone who bemoans the "death" of a game line when there are no more supplements being printed. Hello? Nothing stopping you from playing the game, and isn't the game being played a better guage of whether it's alive or dead?

The 'default' gaming situation is everybody showing up for "The Greyhawk Campaign" or "The Ninjas versus Pirates Campaign" or whatever else. We define a given gaming group by the game they are currently playing, presumably forever -- "My L5R Group" or "The Thursday Night D&D Group." We even assume that gaming has to happen at regular intervals or else it's not really gaming, it's just a one-shot or one-off. Chris Chin recently wondered about GM burnout; maybe the weight of responsibility for three years of entertainment has something to do with it. Maybe trying to create something that can be sustained indefinately strains the hell out of the thing created, until it's no longer fun, not because this session wasn't fun, but because it's getting hard to see how the game will continue off into the sunset forever. Striving for the impossible is pretty damn stressful; I can see why people "burn out" and give up.

Nitty-Gritty: Actual Products
Of course, I am writing Full Light, Full Steam, which is written with the same Campaign Fallacy, that certainly my game is bright and shiney and cool enough that you will want to play the damn thing forever, right? Man, steam-powered etherships and martians with flippers for hands! How could that ever get old? But Christ, I don't want to play the game forever. In all truth, I'd be happy to play a handful of three-session games and then move the fuck on. There are too many good other games out there that I want to play to content myself with tooling around the same old bathtub forever. And of course all those other games are infected, to varying degrees, with the assumption that I'll play them forever, too.

There's a certain honesty to the How to Host a Murder boxed set series that RPGs have never had, and I don't think have every quite understood. HHM implicitly says, "Inside this box is one night's worth of fun." Gamers turn up their noses at that -- no replay value! But guess which one sells more copies? And really, shelling out $20 for six people's enjoyment -- that beats the movies, that beats nearly any sports event, that beats the amusement parks. Contrast with an RPG line -- sure, the main book is $20 ($30, recently) but then the GM book is another $20-$30, the splatbooks are $12-$15, the setting book is $20 more. We'll always throw another book on top of the stack because we'll play it eventually, but really, we won't. We'll pile up over a hundred dollars for "enough books to play," and then we'll play, what, three sessions before it falls apart? Even if we make it to five sessions, we have only broken even with How to Host a Murder. And the GM had to invest some of their precious time to prepare the adventure, too. We have paid money to do work and we still haven't got more entertaining time out of the experience.

We have some games now that don't fall prey to the Campaign Fallacy. My Life with Master and the Mountain Witch, for instance, are designed to be played for a limited space of time, until Endgame. Bacchanal and Breaking the Ice are designed to be played in one sitting. These are great developments, and in the end, I think these make far better products, with greater appeal to consumers. Buying the core book to Exalted is an investment -- not of your money, but of your time. Once it's bought, you tell yourself, "Now that I have it, I must play it." And when you're fingering the book for the first time, somewhere in the back of your head is the thought, "But if I buy it, will I ever play it? Will I set aside months of my life to pursue this thing?" But pick up Breaking the Ice and you think, "I can totally play this with my girlfriend one night." The book feels lighter in your hand, and it's not just the page count I'm talking about. Buying the book is a lesser commitment than buying into some mammoth encyclopeadic Campbellian monstrosity.

Make It Real
But as I try to pound into the heads of Forgites, writing something in the book does not make it happen at the gaming table. My target is the game -- the people around the table -- not the books. The books are props and tools. The game is the people, and the people are our community. There's a group up in Canada that is practicing what they call Stealth Gaming -- they get together and play games. Sounds familiar, but the change is this: the games change. The people signed up for Stealth Gaming did not sign up for "a wicked-cool Eberron campaign!" but they signed up to play anything. Maybe tonight will be something they like; if it isn't, maybe next time. No one is obliged to show up every night, anyway. The important distinction is that the group is not there to play a game, they are there to play games.

We've had this staring us in the face for years upon years: we call them Cons. This is an event where people from far and wide show up, not to play a game, but to play games. What will you do at the Con? Well, maybe you'll sign up for some specific events and you'll have some idea ahead of time, but the rest is up in the air. Try new things! Meet new people! Stay true to the common thread: play games. We also have the House Con, an event where a smaller group of people all mob somebody's house and do the same exact thing. Perhaps they occur annually, or semi-annually, or even just once.

What happens when we make it happen once a month? Once every two weeks? What if we stop having "the GURPS: Banestorm Campaign" and just have "Game Night"? Sometimes you play Sorcerer, sometimes you play Dogs, sometimes you play fucking Munchkin or some Mario Kart. Sometimes it's Ed, Mary, Sue, and Habib; sometimes it's Ed, Mary, Sue, and George; sometimes it's Mary, George, and Habib. Sometimes everybody piles into one game of D&D; sometimes there's a game of Breaking the Ice going on side-by-side with a game of Paranoia. It doesn't matter, as long as you stay true to the common thread: play games. Make it a private or semi-private affair, and make the thread play games with friends. Open it up, hold it in a public place or even rent an auditorium and make the thread play games with new people.

Previously this kind of set up would have been impossible. You would never acheive that great, epic story that the games told you you wanted. Without someone designated as the GM ahead of time, there would be no prep work done by the time people showed up to play. Disaster! But today's games can be set up in moments -- a Dogs town in ten minutes. Some of today's games make the set up part of the collaborative play -- the pitch session of PTA. And some of today's games require no set up at all -- Breaking the Ice! Capes!

Don't think it can be done? LARPers do it every month. The thing that us Tabletoppers needed were the tools to make it possible -- games that allow us to play immediately, with different people each time, without expectations that one "game" will require session after session of play in order to be worthwhile. We have our first tools, and I suspect that we will be getting more in the months and years to come. Think of the Campaign Fallacy as the cocoon, and the emerging creature -- whatever shape it will eventually blossom into -- the roleplaying game.

Resolution: Task, Conflict, More?

2005-10-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

Okay, so various threads at the Forge (which I'll link if I feel energetic) have got me thinking about resolution systems.

Common thinking revolves around Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution. Both of these systems are set to resolve a different thing, namely tasks and conflicts. Tasks are things that the players want their characters to do. Task Resolution tells us if the character does so. Conflicts are composed of two parts: character desire and obstacles. Conflict Resolution tells us if the obstacles are overcome and the character's desire is fulfilled. If this sounds like it's rather simplistic and you've heard it before, read it again and remember that I use really fucking precise language.

Task resolution does not address anything but the character's chances of doing something. This may or may not be limited to the character's ability to do something -- a basic actor-stance resolution system can be supplemented with plot points, for instance, or you could be playing Feng Shui where you can retroactively state that your character had whatever ability that you want them to use right now. This is important -- task resolution begins with the player and uses the character (and other imagined content) as a mediating factor. In any case, Task Resolution can only be used in scenarios where the players will want their characters to do something. That may sound like any roleplaying scenario out there, but it's not.

Conflict Resolution does not address anything outside of a conflict. That is, in order to even start using Conflict Resolution, you need both character desires and obstacles to those desires. If you don't have one or the other, Conflict Resolution cannot do anything for you. Do you successfully ride your horse down the road to get to the next town? Unless it's important to your character to ride their horse and there's something preventing that, no conflict, no Conflict Resolution. If there is desire and no obstacle, it simply happens; if there is no desire but there is an obstacle, it simply doesn't happen. (I suspect that this is the root of what really wigs out players used to Task Resolution.) Since the character may have no interest in having their desires interfered with by obstacles, Conflict Resolution begins with a player and uses the character (and other imagined content) as an expressive element.

Now a short tangent in regards to the very term Resolution. It sucks. First of all, it sucks because it interferes with the use of the word 'resolution' in narrative terms. I want to talk about resolving danging plot points, but using that word in exactly the way that it is defined by the rest of the world conflicts with how we define it in gaming. Secondly, however, Task Resolution especially does not really resolve anything. In an antagonistic GM vs Players setup, it "resolves" the table argument about whether you crack the safe, but when the GM wants the players to succeed in getting their characters up the sheer cliff and into the cave where the real fun stuff is... what's being resolved? So I'll try and be really clear that Resolution (game term) is different than resolution (narrative term) and in fact not use that incredibly useful narrative term unless there's no other options.

Both Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution are by their very natures limited. Task Resolution requires a character attempting to do something; Conflict Resolution requires both pieces of a conflict. A roleplaying game's procedures determine a whole lot more, though, than whether characters can do something and whether they can overcome challenges and fulfill their desires. Most of these other things get pushed out of the spotlight, and not because they're unimportant or because they're not game procedures. I'm talking about esoteric things like the composition of the immediate situation but also plainly important stuff like character generation.

Now I start blathering on decisions indemic to roleplaying games that can be fiddled with. Without exception, there are already procedures (and many procedures) for making all of these decisions, some of them obvious and some of them not so obvious. Most are implicit. What happens when we take these decisions and start writing explicit rules for how all the players around the table can start fiddling with them? What happens when these are dragged back into the spotlight? What happens when these are made the focus of an entire game?

Creating the Setting While we typically consider this as happening before "play" begins, I submit that this step is an element of play and that this process is continually happening throughout all play as the setting is expanded, focused, contracted, defined, and complicated. Even in instances where the Setting is theoretically "selected" (We're playing Changeling) it must always be refined and customized (...in the Kingdom of Apples). The procedures for this process may be "The GM creates the setting" or they may be as pinned down and exacting as Dogs in the Vineyard's Town Creation Rules. Wondering if this process could be made the focus of play, I wrote Conquer the Horizon, which seems to work. CtH is interesting in that Discoveries form the bulk of play, and are neither Task nor Conflict Resolution. Exploitations, it could be argued, are Conflict Resolution with powerful Director Stance afforded to all players. Is this "Setting Resolution"?

Character Creation and Development Strictly speaking, this should not be considered as a separate issue than "Setting Resolution". Characters are a element of the Setting, after all. However, traditional distribution of authority makes the Setting the GM's and the Characters the players'. The line is fuzzy, allowing players a strong ability to influence the setting by the kinds of characters they create (this power is often obliviated by a "GM Approval" clause to all such decisions) or requiring the GM to strongly delimit player options from the outset (make a Rebel fighter, not an Empire goon). Everything that applies to Setting applies to Characters -- they are under a continual process of creation, not just "before play", and any selection (a Priest!) must be refined and defined (a Priest of Rock!) by the player. Theoretically speaking, a player can at any time declare that their character was raised by wolves and lied about their parents -- either this is allowable, or it's in contravention of a procedure of play. As a less extreme example, did my character's time spent as a guardsman translate into an understanding of street crime? Someone has to decide if the experience is applicable, and there is a procedure (however hidden) that they use to make that determination.

Composing the Situation The topic of a Forge thread of marginal utility, the fact remains that the players decide what the immediate situation is somehow, and the elements included in that situation come from somewhere. Credibility distribution and the root inspiration work in either the same way or in a handful of similar ways each time, so there is one or more procedures at work, here, and yet we have few tools to examine this process directly. How many kobolds can the GM throw at the PCs at once before he's violating those procedures and is "unfair" or "stupid" or simply "not a good GM"? Alternately, if a player wants their character to swing from a chandelier, slide down a bannister, or hijack a nearby car, what procedure determines whether the chandelier, bannister, or car is there to be exploited? What if the player wants their character to get run over by that car? Or have the fleeing badguy get run over? Or or or...? We've talked about Scope and Focusing the Scope, which may serve as useful terms for this process.

Pacing the Story Flow What procedure tells a GM whether or not to spring a character's primary thematic conflict on their player in the first scene? What procedure tells them not to let them resolve it immediately and permanently? PTA and Buffy both outline how to plan out what happens when, and other games such as MLwM or the Roach embed tension-increasing mechanics into the game to pressure play into a predefined shape. But how can these be turned from passive to active? How can I call for a climax scene, or request a day-in-the-life episode? How do I negotiate my preferences with the preferences with those at the table, rather than submitting to the pacing dictated by the GM or Designer? Call this "Pace Resolution."

Now I get really esoteric:

Setting the "Premise," "Goal," and/or "Agenda" While we tend to think of this as something that you should do before play begins, consider the majority of gamers who do not do this at all. Consider the pickup group that learns each other's play styles and preferences and forms a lasting monthly game with functional play. It is possible for these sorts of things to be determined in, during, and through play; unless this process is wholly idiosyncratic for every situation (unlikely), there must be procedures for doing so. Is it possible to imbue significance in a character, or an idea, or a nation, thereby making the player-directed statement, "This is important to me." Is this "Agenda Resolution?"

Adopting, Modifying, and Ignoring Procedures Call it "Meta Resolution." We decide what game to play, we decide which sourcebooks to use, we write house rules, we ignore rules we don't like. While most of this interaction occurs on a purely personal level between players discussing options, consider how many games are now being written with dice systems which are intrinsically tied to their settings/premise. If you have a Soul Drain stat and your character defeats the Evil Lich who causes the Soul Drain, declaring the game over is not the only option. At its extreme, this sort of play and rules-jockeying could result in an RPG equivalent of Nomic.

--

Now, I'll say this before anybody else does: these are all techniques. I'd call them interactions. Whatever. Fact is, techniques and interactions can either be explicit, formal, and manipulable rules or they can be implicit, informal, slippery, and uncontrollable habits. The more light we throw on them, the better we're all able to use them to produce what we want -- whatever it is that we want. Not every game needs a formalized system for players to influence the pacing of the plot -- but some games could. I'm excited by the possibilities that open up when we start tinkering.

Full Light, Full Steam in Tony's Power 19

2005-10-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

Yeah, you saw the short form before, but now here's Full Light, Full Steam as expressed in Tony's extended "Power 19". Pizzow!

1.) What is the game about?
Full Light, Full Steam is about strong characters in a fantastic setting, and how their strident character elements are challenged by and leave imprints on the setting.

2.) What do the characters do?
Characters are naval officers and sailors in the Royal Astronomical Navy, typically the crew running an ethership or port in Her Majesty's service. They fight pirates, quell native uprisings, investigate mysteries both technical and obscure, practice gunboat diplomacy, and try to earn enough money to marry well.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?
First and foremost, the players collaboratively determine the scope and parameters of the game in the First Session. Thereafter, the players narrate the events of the story, interrupting each other with dice checks in attempts to take over direction. Players use the relatively static and predictable Attribute-and-Skill die mechanic to do this, voluntarily hampering their chances to 'charge' their character's thematic batteries, and thereafter claiming advantage by 'discharging' their batteries. NPCs, ships, and ports also have thematic batteries which the players may tap for their advantage.
There is a central GM player to whom direction defaults when the pace idles, and who is responsible for presenting the other players with fodder with which to exercise and express their character. The GM is expressly allowed and encouraged to delegate both narration and game prep to the other players, but she remains the central responsible party for these elements being provided.

4.) How do the various parts your system reinforce what your game is about?
Character is reinforced primarily through the Thematic Battery. Disadvantaging your own character in accordance with your Thematic Battery allows you to advantage (increase game effectiveness) of your character at a later date. Additionally, referencing other players' characters' Thematic Batteries earns you XP (Spoils, but whatever). Winning die checks grants the player narration rights, which allows them to add or elaborate on the fantastic setting with a more or less carte blanche range.

5.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The setting is all broad and heavy strokes with highly archetypal character instilled in not just people but also nationalities, their colonies, navies, and the like. The fantastic is a normal thing; the people of the FLFS world commonly have tea at the base of gigantic alien shrines... because there's a nice bit of shade there. Conflicts with character are front-loaded; lady officers are discriminated against, the noble ideals of justice are inequally distributed, and imperialism's touch is ubiquitous.

6.) How does the Chargen of your game reinforce what your game is about?
The first thing that you pick out is your Thematic Batteries; your Atts and Skills (which provide a sort of baseline to modify with the batteries) flow from there. Furthermore, the Thematic Batteries and character histories are explicitly tapped to generate the conflicts prepared by the GM for roleplay.

7.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
The game rewards collaboration, mutually reinforcing eachother's characters, and disadvantaging your own character (in in-character ways). It rewards with narration rights because this is seen as an end in itself.

8.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
XP for reinforcing or challenging others' characters; game-effectiveness for disadvantaging your own. Narration rights for success, which is more common when increasing game-effectiveness in this way.

9.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
The GM is responsible for details beyond the player characters, but can delegate these details to the other players at will. Narration begins with the GM or her delegate, and then is directed to the winner of die checks. Said winner can direct narration rights to any other player afterwards, until another die check is called for. As any player may call for a die check at any time, any player may make a bid for gaining those rights at any time.

10.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
The spoils scrip is passed hand-to-hand, which gives a nice, tangible punctuation to the intraparty character references. Similarly, the narration and direction rules are built to drag in any player who is left out.

11.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?
Choose an appropriate Atribute and Skill, both ranged 1-4. Roll four dice and put them in ascending order. Take the dice corresponding to the ranks in your Attribute and Skill and add them together (Intellect-1 and Ether-3 means you count the first and third die). Modify with Thematic Battery, either demoting or promoting your ranks in Atts and Skills. Compare to a difficulty factor or opposed roll.

12.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
The basic die check is relatively deterministic; there are few surprises and players will have a good idea of character effectiveness (strong character control). Additionally, players may modify that character effectiveness in accordance with Thematic Batteries. Success allows players to narrate more of the fantastic setting (and failures can just as easily be delegated back to the player, as well).

13.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
Characters advance by spending Spoils (XP) earned by their player making references and addresses to other players' characters.

14.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
You advance your character by characterizing other players.

15.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
Players should feel free to collaborate and feel rewarded for doing so, able to express character in a reliable fashion while exploring some fantastic territory.

16.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color?� Why?
The alien world of Victorian naval culture (partly to address realism, partly to provide for the fantastic nature), the addition of women in the armed services (I feel strongly about good strong female character opportunities), general nation character (to provide the players with guidelines for NPCs), and lots of fantastic setting content (to inspire player narration and options).

17.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
I have to pick one part? I... can't single any of it out. I tossed all the parts I didn't care for.

18.) Where does your game take the players that other games can�t, don�t, or won�t?
The game should lead players to embed their characters in a developing storyline in fundamental ways; it is very difficult for the characters to be unimportant to the course of events.

19.) What are your publishing goals for your game? Who is your target audience?
Print publishing, distribution at cons and through web sales. Target audience is mature players, both experienced gamers and people who have never roleplayed before, with some inkling of history and an interest in active, collaborative creation.

Dogs Character - Rebecca Meyer

2005-10-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Meyer
Slightly confused but absolutely determined Dog from Bridal Falls

Rebecca was brought up by a good, Faithful family in Bridal Falls, horse ranchers who lived a comfortable life supplying travellers moving through the center of the Faith. She had a supportive, loving childhood free of hunger or extreme want, but as she became a woman it became clear to her that something was off. Rebecca was courted but received suitors cooly and without real interest. As the weight of expectations mounted, she began to realize that she was not attracted to men. She turned to the Faith. Doctrine told her that love between women is not virtuous (but is not a sin) while sex between women is a sin. Unmarried women are expected to accept the courtship of men and eventually marry, which is a loveless prospect for Rebecca.

Living in Bridal Falls, Rebecca saw Dogs come in green and untrained and go out into the world sure and steady, and also outside the rules of courtship and the strictures of small communities. She came to see the Order Set Apart as her only escape route, inspiring in her a sort of desperate dedication that, combined with her searches through scripture, was recognized by her Steward as potential to be a Dog. Finally on the path to the only viable option she sees, Rebecca plans to be a Dog the rest of her life, understanding that said life will probably be short.

She comes from a Complicated Community background.

Acuity 4D6
Heart 3D6
Body 3D6
Will 5D6

Pragmatic 2D8
Patient 2D6
Broke Horses With Father 2D6 (I swear I didn't copy that from the book!)
Knows Her Scripture 1D6
Self-Sacrifice 1D6

The Order Set Apart: 2D10
Abigail Tomson (the girl who wanted Rebecca to stay): 3d4
Joseph Meyer (Father): 2D6
Free Dice: 1D4 1D6 2D8

Gun: 1D6+1D4
Coat: 2D6 (patterned strips of blue, grey, and white; across the back are pictured the Four Brides; Abigail did the chestpiece)
Prudence (Horse): 2d8

I am jumping up and fucking down looking forward to playing Dogs on Saturday -- I mean, I'm sitting at work, but I'm jumping on the inside.

I Demand from Brand

2005-10-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

I demand from Brand an "After-Action Report" on his soon-to-be published India supplement that has a funky Indian name I've forgotten. You mentioned in passing the difficulties of game balance so important to d20, and translating Eastern material to what is an often unconsciously Western RPG structure.

I know you've got your back to the wall with other deadlines, so I thought I'd throw another item on the pile. That, and you haven't updated Yuthie's Dice in like, forever.

Conquer the Horizon pdf

2005-10-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, experimenting with microgame publishing, I've put Conquer the Horizon into a tiny (5.5" x 4" profile) format that can probably fit into your back jeans pocket. The registration of the upper and lower pages is still pissing me off, and will be fixed as soon as I get around to it, but that may be weeks. So here's the file now:

Download Conquer the Horizon!
(Some assembly required)

The format is specifically not geared for retail sale, but instead as a give-away advertisement deal. You'll notice my soon-to-be website is plastered on every spread, on the back cover, and in the inside cover. The last spread is blank -- that will be adspace for other products. I figure I will publish a new version for each con I attend / have a booth at, giving a booth number for where I (and my actual retail products) are at, and advertising whatever I or other folks have for sale at the Con. I'll be able to turn out a ton of these for cheap, and make a good effort to saturate the con with little CtH books. They can come to the booth or go home and go to the website -- either way it should increase exposure.

Gasp! Actual marketing!

Sweep of History -- thoughtspace

2005-09-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is exactly what I don't need right now: an idea for another project.

Wouldn't it be neat to make a game in which the 'characters' are countries, social movements, memes, and the people who are loyal to them? You could have generational play, moving the focus from the world-spanning down to the concrete and individual and back again, so at one point the players are different countries vying for dominance, and then they decide to 'zoom in' to a handful of people caught up in that struggle for dominance?

As long as the ruleset was minimal and flexible, you could play anything from cavemen to transhuman space colonists, and in fact you could play the cavemen to the transhuman space colonists. Allow the pace of the game to be scalable per group, so if you wanted to jump a hundred years, you could play out those years in culture-zoom and then zoom back down to people that are the descendants of your original characters.

The game should provide systemic rules for the people influencing the cultures and the cultures influencing the people, changing stats that reflect what's important to the culture and people and what resources are available to them. This would probably be why the focus gets zoomed in and out -- the only way to power up your culture is by playing an individual, and vice-versa.

Ideally there would be more than one 'level' available, instead of just culture/people. Something more like culture/nation/province/city/people (The West / The U.S. / California / Los Angeles / Josh). Best customizable, creating levels as you need them -- and upgrading your culture from city to province is an in-game effort. Perhaps individuals can be apotheosized into social movements (Jesus of Nazareth, anyone?).

Explicit ways in which cultures can merge or sublimate eachother -- so the Thirteen Colonies can federalize into the United States, or one duchy can conquer another one.

Ownership of cultures and the ability to make characters in other people's cultures should have explicit rules, allowing me to subvert your culture (and maybe take control of it) with some well-played people within it. So too would introducing new cultures (and new people) have some procedural rules.

Stats (by which I mean stuff-on-pages-with-game-effect) would be player-created, with an emphasis on the descriptive and evocative. Call them Qualities. Qualities could be inherited (going down from culture to individual, so my Frenchman is lusty) or could be... uh, invested (bad term, but going up from individual to culture, so my Susan B Anthony gives her culture sexual equality).

I'd prefer the 'character sheets' for cultures were somehow a running record, so you could see the imprint of the original culture in the culture that's been developed through play for thousands of in-game years.

Perhaps there could be some sort of record made of the game, so that it could be played indefinately by a continually-changing group of players (see 10,000 Blank Cards) so while there is no end-point, this doesn't assume that your gaming group will play this game and only this game for years on end.

Ideally this would run GMless, which avoids the problem of which players of which cultures play which people. Players jump into individuals to counter the other players, and the like. That would mean that the zoom feature would have to be under player control, as well -- probably as a currency spend sort of thing. There would need to be player currency divorced from the individual characters -- either as an assured "earn 2 points per turn" or you earn them off of the success of your owned cultures and individuals.

Crap, now I'm thinking specific game mechanics. So you start play with a pile of currency and a starter culture. Maybe it's a caveman village, maybe it's a planet in a galactic empire, whatever. It starts off with two or three qualities. You can spend currency to 'spawn' off an individual from your starter culture, and spend more currency so he inherits some of its qualities. As a new spawn, he also gets his own, new, quality of his own. You spend some currency to zoom the camera into individual-scale (or maybe this is covered in the cost of spawning him), and he can do 'stuff' and if he's successful at doing the stuff, he can invest his new quality onto his parent culture, or he can acquire a following, which transforms the individual guy into a social movement, which bumps his parent culture up a level. Other players can spend currency to spawn off some of their own individuals to confront your individual to prevent him from doing either. Something like that, so you're forcing the qualities (and player effectiveness) up and down the tree.

Probably need a mechanic somehow to remove qualities you don't like, or qualities that other players forced into your cultures. Also need a mechanic to downgrade cultures (nation to province, province to city). Hm.

Perhaps every quality that travels is signed by the player who started it, so if their quality becomes dominant in that culture, they gain control of that culture. You might even want to get somebody else's qualities if they're useful -- just not too many of them or else you lose control of your culture. Dunno if that can jive with the thought of other players spawning individuals off of my cultures. Perhaps that rule doesn't apply to individuals -- they're always controlled by their creators, and since they don't last long comparatively, it's not an issue.

I'm not sure I'd want it to be about taking over as much as possible -- I'm encouraing imperialism enough already with FLFS -- so maybe there's a sort of burden or upkeep involved to disencourage that sort of play. On the other hand, I don't know what sort of goal should be attached to the game, either. Of course, it would be difficult to really go imperialistic, since even if you maneuver your culture to subsume other cultures, the other players can infect your imperial culture with their own qualities, and wrest control of it away from you even as you ascend to world-spanning power.

Additionally, I don't yet have any privileges that are associated with ownership -- perhaps a discount on spawning off individuals, but I'm not even sure I like that. Amusingly, a disincentive to control anything might work even better -- if it costs less to spawn off of a culture controlled by someone else, that means that there's even more mish-mash of inputs. Heh. Players might try to foist control of the globe-spanning empire off on one another.

The mechanism by which players earn currency is what will cinch it. If you, say, earn currency for every culture that you control when your turn begins, then the game is all about gaining control of as many as possible. If you earn a flat rate of currency per turn, I suspect the game goes flat -- it becomes a rattling machine but it doesn't go anywhere. Perhaps currency can be earned via in-game resources (coal, lumber, industry, colleges, etc) expressed in qualities on the culture's "character sheet". So you'll work to found universities and build factories. That could work. It would also encourage the building of infrastructures, if my Interstate Highway quality helps me build Factories.

Need some way to avoid death-spiral resource-hogging, where one player controls as many resources in order to have the most currency in order to have control of the zoom, spawn, and inheritance/investment. Or do I? Is that perhaps what the game is about? Perhaps if there is no distinction between resources and non-resource qualities (so sexual equality gives you currency just like factories do), the game is about creating and moving around those qualities, and that seems a lot closer to target.

Maybe -- you earn currency for each quality you own on cultures you own, but must pay upkeep for each level of culture you have. So your starter village with cavemen and two qualities earns you one currency per turn, but your level-7 empire with only six qualities actually costs you currency every turn. You have to ensure that your empires are strong enough (and 'yours' enough) to be empires before you promote them there. Simultaneously, other players can either destroy your qualities or even force-promote your cultures so they become liabilities.

I need lunch.

Reward System at Last!

2005-09-19T15:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to reading two-year-old Forge posts, I've finally figured out the seed of a reward system that I like. I wrote up a sketch of it and posted it for input at the Forge in the thread Reward System at Last!. This is the last big chunk of ruleset; once this is hammered into place, I'll feel real damn good about the game's chances of seeing completion.

Three Questions for Full Light, Full Steam

2005-09-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

I realized that I've never written out responses to the famed three questions often asked at the Forge, so as an exercise I figured I'd give it a whack.

What is the game about?
Full Light, Full Steam is about strong characters in a fantastic setting, and how their strident character elements are challenged by and leave imprints on the setting.

What do the characters do?
Characters are naval officers and sailors in the Royal Astronomical Navy, typically the crew running an ethership or port in Her Majesty's service. They fight pirates, quell native uprisings, investigate mysteries both technical and obscure, practice gunboat diplomacy, and try to earn enough money to marry well.

What do the players do?
First and foremost, the players collaboratively determine the scope and parameters of the game in the First Session. Thereafter, the players narrate the events of the story, interrupting each other with dice checks in attempts to take over direction. Players use the relatively static and predictable Attribute-and-Skill die mechanic to do this, voluntarily hampering their chances to 'charge' their character's thematic batteries, and thereafter claiming advantage by 'discharging' their batteries. NPCs, ships, and ports also have thematic batteries which the players may tap for their advantage.
There is a central GM player to whom direction defaults when the pace idles, and who is responsible for presenting the other players with fodder with which to exercise and express their character. The GM is expressly allowed and encouraged to delegate both narration and game prep to the other players, but she remains the central responsible party for these elements being provided.

...that was way easier than I thought it would be.

Effing Reward System

2005-09-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

So, the game mechanics of Full Light, Full Steam are pretty much finalized. I have stats, a die mechanic, thematic batteries, resolution that can handle Task or Conflict granularity, cooperative rolling rules, "health" and "damage", naval warfare (simplified enough so it doesn't drive me crazy), point-based character creation, integrated history/kicker/portrait/bluebooking... and it all works together. I think.

Except I don't have XP. I don't have an overarching reward system. I have an in-the-moment reward system in the form of thematic batteries -- these little guys reward the player for playing character frailties with opportunities for later chances to shine. What I don't have is Character Development.

The first question, of course, is "Do you need XP?" and I think I do. I at least need the option available. Character Development in terms of stats is an important part of the game as designed -- characters are dynamic and proactive and growing. That needs to be reflected on the character sheet.

I am currently enamored with out-of-character reward systems like Story Tokens out of Capes. As much as I want to add some of that in, I have to keep reminding myself that there's already enough player input and player control via thematic batteries and narration rights earned in die checks. I do not need to add a new mechanic on top of that, especially since doing so would require rebuilding the entire game.

The reward system needs to reinforce the design goals of the game. It's testimony to how frustrating this aspect has been to me that I'm now questioning whether I have design goals to reinforce. Thinking clearly, the design goals are to encourge collaborative creativity among the players, to facilitate characterization, and to be as mechanically simple as possible. I also want the thing to be scalable -- supporting both a five-session game as well as a months-long game.

At some point, I wanted all players to award XP instead of just the GM; I haven't figured out how to make this not a traumatic popularity contest.

One other possibility is to hitch character development to the thematic batteries. These things are the core of the character (gentleman, rake, loyal, competitive, cockney) and are player-designed. I can just have 'every time you discharge a thematic battery, add a tick in your XP box'. This would very much encourage characterization, but would utterly miss the collaborative and scalable goals -- it doesn't involve other players and it's totally static. To make it scalable, I could have the playgroup decide on an exchange rate for XP translating to character points -- so slow development has a high exchange rate (5xp for one CP) and quick development a low rate (1xp is worth 3CP). I try, however, to avoid multiplication and especially division in game design -- adding and subtracting in the 1-10 range is safe; anything else gets problematic. All that said, though, I don't know if doing this would overburden the thematic batteries and degenerate the game to charging and discharging these at the expense of collaborative creation.

I like in-game XP rewards, rather than end-of-game rewards -- in-game rewards celebrate player contributions while end-of-game rewards tend to judge player contributions, and that ain't happy. I'd be inclined towards a "you did something cool, here's an XP" thing awarded by fellow players, but that seems to add more variables (how many times can you award eachother, how much XP is it worth?) and props (how do you keep track of how many awards you've given and received?). The game is already shading into more complex than I want, in terms of moving parts and fiddly-bits. But this option does hit the collaborative creativity goal, it can hit the characterization goal... it's just not very simple. It's one more thing to keep track of, and in my experience, these systems always fall on their faces in implementation because players "unfortunately" get so wrapped up in playing that they forget to reward eachother with game effects (praise and smiles are a little more automatic).

Which of course begs the question, "Can I do both?" Can I tap thematic battery use and player commendations, giving players two streams of xp? At that point, I'm hitting collaborative creativity and I'm hitting characterization -- I'm just sacrificing mechanical simplicity as a burnt offering to the gods of game design. That's also a ton of details to keep track of at the most engaging parts of play -- potentially even distracting from those moments. That's "I discharge my Fever Genius battery for a 4-rank promotion; that's four ticks on my sheet. Rolling dice, I get a 12! In a shower of sparks, Merriweather engages the etherdrive and the asteroid streaks out of orbit into the Russian dreadnought!" Other players cheer and throw commendations at the player. Is that too much?

It's times like these when I see why GM Fiat gets used so often -- from a design perspective, it's easy to shove these very complex decisions onto the GM and hope she gets it right. I mean, while I'd certainly like whatever feedback I can get from you guys reading this, I feel like I've only scratched the surface, and I really need to explain the entire game, top to bottom, in order to give anybody enough context to respond. All this for one relatively minor aspect of the game. Fooey.

Emotive Content under the Interaction Model

2005-09-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Brand asked how emotional content gets integrated in the Interaction Model. I'm going to address that in a separate essay right now, and perhaps take the results of that and thread it into the longer piece later.

First off, we have to understand what we're talking about and the context in which we're talking about it. Roleplaying can, but doesn't always, engage the players on an emotional level; we care about our characters, we want to see them acheive their goals, we feel their pain, we hate the badguys, we hope for the glorious fall of the Evil Empire. Sometimes we cry; sometimes we get really angry; sometimes we need to cool down. Thing is, that emotion that springs from us players and attaches to 'the game' does so in (at least) three different ways.

As Product, the game creates a story or experience that engages us emotionally. This is nearly identical to the kind of emotional attachment and identification that we experience when reading good books or watching good film. The game here is treated as an artifact (insubstantial, but nonetheless 'real') to which we connect.

As Performance, the game allows the other players to perform for us and dazzle our sensibilities. This is nearly identical to watching ballet, a play, or sports. The game here is a stage on which we appreciate others' skills.

As Process, the game is an activity which the players do together, collaboratively creating the story, world, characters, or what-have-you. This engages us as authoring a book, building a sculpture, or choreographing a dance routine. I'll also reference the "jazz band" metaphor which I think is appropriate here, although my nonexistent musical understanding makes it hard for me to judge. Here the game is a creative social milleu in which we participate.

That there are three ways to engage the emotions of the players makes it difficult to get a good handle on how that happens. One player's spectator appreciation may easily be conflated with another player's enjoyment of the creative process. Because the Interaction Model is primarily procedural, it best addresses the game's emotive content as a Process, but it gives at least a rough sketch of the other two as well.

The Circle of Doom is back again, just for reference.

As far as Product goes, the Interaction Model shows how the roleplaying experience creates a shared understanding of System, Imagined, and Goal. That 'end product' can be appreciated artistically, and I suspect this is the most common emotional attachment we remember in retrospect. We say "that was a good story" or "remember when you got that critical success at just the right moment?" The ways in which we appreciate and care about external things is very complex and very outside the scope of my article here. Whatever our aesthetics are, the shared imaginings of roleplaying may fulfill them, and if they do, we grow emotionally attached to them.

There is also an element of our emotional attachment that arises from the aspects' shared nature. Truth be told, most stories told by roleplaying games would not make good books or films, but we treasure them nonetheless. Part of this is, I feel, because they are shared with friends. The elements of the Imagined that were provided to me by my friend Brand based on elements that were given to him by my wife Laura forever after have their fingerprints all over them. That makes them a little more precious, just as an otherwise unremarkable item can be cherished because it was a gift from a loved one.

As a Performance, the game is composed of players doing things; these things are represented by the Model's interactions. When one player does a masterful job of describing a scene (articulation) and we just sit back and revel in the juicy details, we appreciate it as audience. Similarily, we might appreciate the masterful combination of tactics and advantages to win a critical die roll (fuel). Of course, this can also go the other direction and we get incredibly frustrated when, say, another player invalidates our Goal. This in-the-moment emotional attachment is rarely lasting, but may become embedded in the memory of the whole experience, transforming into that reaction-to-product above. That said, this is where the adrenaline rush and edge-of-your-seat anticipation of gaming reside, when everything hinges on a die roll or the GM describes the unnamable horror gibbering in the closet. I may go so far as to say that this is the emotional 'bang' that most people game for, both in terms of enjoying your friend's skill and in receiving accolades for displaying your own.

I saved the most complicated for last. As a Process, we form emotional connections to roleplaying as something that we do, that we are hip-deep involved in, as an activity where were are needed and need others; where we create stories and characters that we care about and ask questions and forge answers regarding those same things. In lots of ways, this sort of emotional connection is not a part of the Interaction Model simply because a great deal of this has to do with being a human being interacting with other human beings around the table. Roleplaying can, however, heighten that interplay in a variety of ways.

First off, characters may be, either to large or small extent, avatars of the player, able to do or say things which the player is not. Far more than simple wish-fulfillment, roleplaying gives us the opportunity to experience situations -- especially difficult and dangerous situations -- that we would not otherwise be able to experience. The avatar-character may be able to display competence, which may or may not translate to the player's competence at playing the game, but this is, on the whole, tangential to the real meat, which is being in the situation and addressing it as the player likes. Not only does roleplaying allow us to be strong where we are not in real life, roleplaying allows us to be vulnerable in ways which we don't allow ourselves to be away from the table. Roleplaying is a mental space that allows you to find the love of your life many times over; it allows a boy from the suburbs to stand up for duty and honor even if it means self-sacrifice; it lets adolescents explore lots of "grown up" content, like politics, economics, religion, and sexuality.

In addition to the ability to experience things beyond our real-world abilities, roleplaying also affords us a measure of anonymity, even when facing our fellow players across the table. It's not me who is a fanatical follower of Kali, it's just my Euthanatos character. It's not me exploring feminity, it's just my female character. The veneer of disassociation gives us cover for going into territory that we might not be willing to stand up and say we want to experience in detail.

Despite the advantages of anonymity, roleplaying is still a collaborative endeavor, and one in which the players (ideally) feel needed. The furor that arises over niche protection underscores how strongly players want to protect that sense of being valued by others, but it is also expressed in other ways, as well. The vibe that takes over a table when everyone is on the same page and riffing off of eachother, for instance, is when the players' aspects are harmonized close enough that all interactions are consistently on target. Having your contributions to the game turned around and fed back to you does many things at once: you feel like your input is valued, you feel like you are contributing to something greater than just you, and you feel like your fellow players are providing for you by feeding you good material.

Perhaps most powerful is when it becomes clear that another player or players 'get' what you've been going after with your participation in the game. This can be seen when somebody recognizes and incorporates part of your Goal into theirs, and begins Steering in ways complementary to your desires. This is similar to the shared aspect of the Product brand of appreciation, but a little deeper; the sense that you and the other player are thinking the same thing, and that you are thinking the same thing because you performed those interactions just right, gives you a sense of community and commonality, of being unified with someone else if only for one brief moment. Compare it with the simple joy of communicating with someone else in a foreign language for the first time, or successfully transmitting a message through secret code.

All the above is certainly incomplete, and I've overlook vast swaths of the gaming experience. This is what I've got so far, and I'd love to hear any feedback I can get. This is an important part of roleplaying, certainly; this is why we play in the first place.

Brain Hurty.

2005-09-03T00:08:00.000-07:00

God. Heavy edit to FLFS's Gameplay chapter. Added Stakes, Risk. Allowed players to demand Checks for NPCs. Things are clearer... I think. Or maybe worse. Head is not clearer, though. Guh. So much like Dynasty, this really -- I swear -- started as a simple idea. Part Three: Playing the Game is now 27,000 words long, and it's still missing segments. If only the people at the Forge would shut up and stop giving me ideas on what needs to be added to the system!

Function in the Interaction Model

2005-09-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

The following section goes after 'Complements' and before 'Dysfunction' in the Interaction Model. If you haven't read the longer essay yet, go read it here. I'll add this to the longer article once it's been hashed out.

Function

Now that we've got all the pieces on the table and what each piece 'does', we can talk about how the whole thing works together. As stated before, the function of roleplaying is to reconcile and develop the three aspects in the players' heads. The model represents a self-reinforcing gestalt which self-corrects, manipulates, and adds to the aspects through interactions performed by the players.

First off, I should point out the limitations of my glorious illustration. While the illustration does make it look like there is one Imagined, one System, and one Goal, in reality there is one of these for each player. If there are five players at the table, there are five private Imagined, five private Systems, and five private Goals at work. They are not identical, and never will be, but the process of reconcile-and-develop works to make them more similar. The interactions are the only elements in the model which can be public. Articulation leads the pack -- usually spoken aloud, this interaction is very common to all the players' experience, and can easily be misidentified as 'being' roleplaying all by itself. On the other end, Imbuing is relatively private, and only rarely and barely made public -- and usually by the other players's deduction rather than being explicitly declared.

Now, the public interactions are what align the private aspects. Not only does the GM's Articulation manipulate his own conception of elements in the Imagined, but it also manipulates the other players' Imagined. When the GM describes the smoky bar, the other players add a smoky bar to their private Imagined. I tried to illustrate this; I failed. It would involve the Articulation arrow leaving the GM's System, splitting up into five arrows, and pointing at the GM's Imagined as well as the other four players' Imagined. Multiply this by six interactions, and then by five players. That's a whole lot of arrows, and the illustration quickly turned into spaghetti. With just two players, there are twenty-four arrows; with five players, there are one hundred and fifty. Guess what? Roleplaying is really complex!

When a player performs an interaction, it may be (mostly) public (such as declaring your action in combat -- steering) or (mostly) private (estimating your character's chances at making a good impression with the local potentate -- contextualization). If it's private, it will only update the player's own aspects; if it's public, it will provide some input for the other players' aspects as well. Of course it's not a one-or-the-other public/private distinction, but a spectrum between 'mostly public' through 'a little public, a little private' and down to 'mostly private.'

Interactions may or may not affect the aspects they connect to due to gatekeeper processes. This is especially the case in Steering and Fuel (into System), less a case in Validation and Contextualization (into Goal), and almost never the case in Articulation and Imbuing (into Imagined). System has the strongest gatekeepers because it is the most regimented in terms of access and input; in many games, for instance, only the GM has access to the steering interaction of changing the scene. Other players may want to change the scene to something else, but they are not allowed to and must wait until the GM decides to. Contrariwise, the game may dictate that only the non-GM players are able to stipulate when their character's merits and flaws manifest (Fuel). A player's Goal may have some weaker gatekeepers in terms of disregarding Validation and Contextualization interactions; the player may decide that "that failure didn't mean anything" or "that imagined detail has no relevance to my story." As far as I can tell, the Imagined has no gatekeeper processes -- what is Articulated is true (at least for the moment) and what is Imbued is significant.

In facile terms, once an interaction passes gatekeeper processes, its content is added to the understanding of the aspect -- someone narrates "Ed falls into the water" and everyone's Imagined adds a wet Ed. However, this is only the case when the interaction's content is new information instead of old data. When a player announces that his dagger does +9 damage to ogres, this is not new information added to the others' System; everybody knows that he's got a dagger and everybody knows it's good for attacking ogres with. No one's understanding of the System is changed. However, if the player announces that he will use an Imagined element in a clever way, such as using his dagger to cut a rope that drops a load of lumber on the ogre, this may be something that the other players had not considered before, and that information (daggers can do more than poke ogres) will be added to the other players' Systems. Over time, the addition of new information common to multiple players brings those players' conceptions of the aspects into closer alignment, since they comprise similar data.

I should make pains at this juncture, however, to underscore that interactions which contain old data instead of new information are not without use. These interactions confirm details in the players' aspects. The more times that a player character's kung-fu overcomes incredible odds (validation), the more the other players believe that said player character is capable in combat. They already knew that the charater had impressive combat stats; in fact, they probably already knew that he would win the fight. Nothing new is added, but existing content is strengthened and underscored. Similarily, if multiple scenes take place in the characters' secret hideout and the hideout is described in any detail each time, that hideout will become more and more real and tangible in the players' minds -- their Imagined aspect is heavily reinforced.

Remember the "Bang Bang! You're Dead!" kids way up top? That example only has the Imagined and the System, no Goal. Lots of roleplaying tries to work this way, heavily emphasizing the Fuel and Articulation interactions and giving short shrift to the rest. Player initiative arises from the Goal, however, and so while this aspect cannot be totally removed, its de-emphasis can result in a pretty lifeless game. Recognizing the importance of player Goals and making the interactions that connect to them more prominent and explicit invigorates the whole game, as has been patently demonstrated by the good work at the Forge. The inclusion and 'equal' standing of the Goal ensures that not only are the aspects convergent, but that said aspects and their development are inextricably bound up in what the players care about. In simple terms, not only is everybody thinking similar things, but they are having fun doing it.

Incomplete and Self-Contradictory Aspects

Extension beyond the Gaming Table

2005-08-31T11:51:00.000-07:00

In teaching, we like to talk a lot about 'extending learning beyond the classroom' by which we mean... well, homework. Stuff that the students take from the classroom and process on their own, then bring back to the classroom. This can be a worksheet, it can be a research project, it can be getting extra credit for going to the museum. Point being: as long as the classroom delimits the learning experience, the learning experience will be cut off from real life and have little to no real meaning to the student. It will be an exercise instead of an experience.

Today while copyediting Full Light, Full Steam (yes, I am working on it occasionally) it occured to me that roleplaying can do the same thing, and in fact used to do the same thing -- for one player, the Game Master. The 'real' play happened around the table, but the GM put in hours of work/play preparing the adventure and making plans. Most of the time, the GM liked that sort of thing -- but most of the time, the other players might have enjoyed that, too, but were not able to participate in that off-table play.

Sometimes we'd make characters on our own (which leads to problems -- much like making the adventure in a vaccum leads to problems), and I remember spending hours making vehicles we never actually used under the GURPS: Vehicles rules. My own game group has flirted with bluebooking a few times. But that's about the sum total of the non-GM game experience I've done outside of the 'actual game'. But given how much time I spend thinking and writing and obsessing about games all day long, and assuming that I'm not the only one like this, I think there's certainly an opportunity here for a style of play that includes 'off-table' play.

I just don't know how to implement it. Everybody arrives at the game session with an NPC to add to the masquerade ball? You can write out 'interstitals' of what happens between adventures, and get in-game currency for doing so the following session? But who says who writes what? Who says what is acceptable articulation/validation and what is not? I've heard of folks taking turns GMing adventures, which isn't exactly what I'm getting at. I want to distribute the GM-prep task among the players, to the point where it's no longer 'GM-prep' but simply world development. Does any such collaborative development require a group dictator, or can rules be written to make assignments and divvy up credibility in approving and stitching things together?

How can we extend the play experience beyond the table? And for that matter, do we want to? Is that an add-on to existing gaming practice, or would it entail rewriting the game experience from the bottom up, creating, in effect, a new game? Would that game be publishable?

Interaction Model - Version the First

2005-08-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Abstract

Ninety-nine percent of the people who read this will be familiar with the "Bang Bang! You're Dead! No I'm Not!" argument of game design -- that is, that the rules of roleplaying games are necessary to arbitrate differences of opinion on what we imagine in the game. Usually this is used as a sort of apology to gloss over the downer of having to follow rules. I'm going to use it as a starting point, however, to try and explain the entire phenomenon we call roleplaying.

Roleplaying is something that a lot of people do, and even do together, without really being able to explain what it is very well. We say it's grown-up make-believe, it's collaborative storytelling, it's improvizational theater -- but in the end it's not really any of these things. Most of our descriptors are accurate without being precise, broadly correct but clumsy terms that do not effectively communicate what we are doing -- even to each other.

A great deal of work on this very problem has been done at the Forge, and this essay is fundamentally indebted to the good work of people like Ron Edwards, Clinton Nixon, Vincent Baker, Victor Gijsbers, and many others. The bulk of the work at the Forge is based off of the seminal question "Why do we do what we do?" The inquiries and conclusions that arose from that question recognized that the reasons that we play are not always the same, and that the player's goals in playing were instrumental to the ensuing roleplay. This is the important third ingredient to roleplaying -- the goal of the participants.

Third ingredient? What were the first two? Back to "Bang Bang! You're Dead!" -- the rules arbitrate what we imagine -- therefore there are rules, and there is imagined content. Adding player goals, we have the trinity of roleplaying, or what I will be calling the aspects of roleplaying: the System, the Imagined, and the Goal.

None of these aspects have any substantial reality -- that is, they are all mental constructs existing only in the minds of the players. Even the System, which we like to think is pure and objective, written down and published, is really only what the players remember and use from the published material, supplemented by the copious idiosyncratic rituals and habits that are not written down anywhere. Now, the specifics and details of each aspect are not identical in every player's mind. Any five players will experience the game in five inescapably different ways. The pictures we imagine are similar, but not identical; there's always the one guy who memorizes all the rules; and as Ron Edwards pointed out, the players' goals may be vastly divergent. This is a simple fact of how people work -- outside of telepathy, there is no way to make other people think exactly what you're thinking. Yet somehow, when we roleplay, we share an imaginary experience. How does that work?

Back again to our "Bang Bang! You're Dead" kids -- the rules exist to arbitrate differences, which is another way of saying that the rules help reconcile the individual players' imagined content. The rules make my mental pictures look more like your mental pictures, and vice-versa. This applies, however, to all three aspects continually reconciling the others. The Goals inform what choices we make in adding or changing elements of the Imagined; the Imagined gives us meat for our Goals to chew on; the System provides tools to manipulate the Imagined and to develop our Goals. Based on this understanding, the basic function of roleplaying is to create a similar Imagined, System, and Goal in each player's mind and thereafter reconcile inconsistencies as all three aspects develop in complexity. This reconcile-and-develop process is accomplished through interactions between the aspects; together, the three aspects function as a self-correcting gestalt.

That's the abstract. Now for the nitty-gritty.

Aspects

Interactions

Roleplaying is the process of reconciling and developing the three aspects in the players' minds. This continual process of development and reconciliation is realized through the interactions of the Imagined, the System, and the Goal. Interactions are the things that players do at the table -- some are external (actions, speaking, rolling dice) and some are internal (consideration, imagining, planning). By doing these things, the players share with each other the characteristics of their mental conceptions of the Imagined, System, and Goal.

Access to some Interactions is frequently privileged, out of reach of most players. Most commonly, this access is invested in the Game Master, but other games may divvy up the Interactions in more complex fashion (See: Polaris). This differentiation of access privileges has profound impact on how a game is run thereafter.

Between the three aspects there are six types of interactions, as displayed on the following chart. A relatively short description of each type of interaction is listed below, along with the access privileges which are usually associated with that interaction and a handful of examples.

Fuel Interaction - The Imagined Fuels the System. The Imagined provides the System with the elements which the System uses to determine what happens. This "Fuel" can be characters, environmental elements, situations, or any other material that the System uses as input for its deliberations. Fuel includes not only items with game effects (Dagger with +9 against Ogres) but also opens up possibilities based on its presence (stairs allow a character to reach the next level; the presence of a badguy allows the protagonists to duel with her).
Because the Fuel Interaction connects to the System, the System arbitrates what "gets in" -- any player can want something to have game effect; the System decides if it does (through dictate, through privileging some players over others, or even simply by charging game currency to empower an element to be included in a given way).
Example: The character sheet itself is not Fuel; players selecting numbers representative of the Imagined character and feeding these numbers into the System is. The character sheet is just a handy tool, a reminder of what numbers we've assigned to our characters. In the statement, "My guy swings his sword" both the guy and the sword are Fuel.

Articulation Interaction - System Articulates the Imagined. The concrete output of the System -- that is, "what happens" -- articulates the Imagined, providing development, action, and revision. Articulation can both establish elements within the Imagined as well as manipulate them later. This is the corollary to Fuel -- the finished goods from the raw materials.
Because Articulation is derived from the System, the System determines who gets to do the articulation as well as providing some guidelines (dice results, usually). In a given game, not everyone can always perform the Articulation -- it is often limited to just the GM.
Examples: The most facile example of Articulation is interpreting what a die roll means for the elements within the Imagined, but this is not the only example. Activities such as "Creating the Adventure," "Rolling Up Characters," and "Framing the Scene" are also Articulation. Task Resolution is primarily Articulation; Conflict Resolution is patently both Articulation and Validation.

Contextualization Interaction - The Imagined Contextualizes the Goal. Any story needs characters, a setting, and events in order to express itself; so too does any competition, social statement, or other conceivable product of roleplaying. The elements of the Imagined are utilized in Contextualization to put the Goal in a context of supporting, conflicting, and qualifying details, all of which enrich the Goal. This interaction provides the specifics of the Imagined to express generalized Goals -- and it is important to note that the same specific details may be used concurrently in more than one Contextualization interaction to inform more than one Goal.
As an interaction between the Imagined and the Goal, Contextualization is up for grabs, performed by everyone at the table in an unconstrained fashion, based on the material provided by the Imagined (which is not up for grabs in an unconstrained fashion).
Example: Relating the hopes and dreams of one's character with the stated goals of a faction of NPCs is a simple example; a more complex example might relate the raison d'etre of the Knight, the Pacifist, the King, and the Infidel when they all come face-to-face in the middle of a battlefield.

Imbuing Interaction - The Goal Imbues the Imagined. Imbuing makes the elements from the Imagined content mean something. Ten character names and abilities, a map, and a horde of orcs is just a laundry list of information until some items on the list are made heroes, some are made victims, and some are made villains. This is the corollary to Contextualization; whereas Contextualization positions meaning within a collection of elements, Imbuing assigns individual meanings to individual elements.
Like Contextualization, Imbuing is unconstrained, and any player can imbue any element of the Imagined with any meaning they like. Divergent significance attached to elements can often lead to problems in play -- such as when one player casually kills off a character another player was not finished with.
Example: Assigning a thematic meaning to a character, setting, or prop in the Imagined -- "my guy embodies the ethos of nobility" or simply, "my guy is badass."

Side Note: Contextualization and Imbuing can be 'wild card' interactions that seriously diverge the Imagined and Goals of different players. This is why these interactions are expressed by the interactions' complements (see below).

Steering Interaction - The Goal Steers the System. The Goal determines what actions and additions will be proposed, attempted, and/or declared -- this potential material is fed into the System, which will determine what happens. Steering interactions are always created "Out of Character," based on criteria in the minds of the players, not the characters. "In Character" decisions are in fact simulations of decisions that the player believes the character would reasonably make. The four Stances (Pawn, Actor, Author, and Director) are all ways to perform Steering interactions.
Because the Steering Interaction connects to the System, it, like the Fuel Interaction, is subject to the System's gatekeeper processes. Steering interactions can be delimited by the abilities and point of view of the player's character or supercede these limitations; Scene Requests may be privileged to just the GM; new characters may only be created by spending game currency.
Example: Simplistically, the impulse behind "my guy tries to hit that guy"; complexly, "I would like to play a scene in which that guy wants to seduce that guy."

Validation Interaction - The System Validates the Goal. While the concrete output of the System feeds into Articulation, the abstract output of the System feeds into Validation. Whatever "happens" in the Imagined may have thematic implications for the Goal. This may plainly validate the Goal, or it may complicate that validity with qualifications and exceptions. This is the corrolary to Steering; it is the game's response to player propositions.
This is another interaction based from the System, and therefore often privileged. The System often determines who is allowed to interpret the significance of the System's output, and may also provide some guidelines for that interpretation.
Example: Joey fails to win the race. Does this mean he did not try enough? Would he have won if he trained more? Is he now a failure, or will it give him the resolve to try again, thus justifying his self-confidence?

Every single thing that the players do in the game can be understood as one or more interactions. When the roleplaying process is functional -- that is, it reconciles and develops the aspects in the players' heads -- every die roll, every interpretation, every proposed action, contributes to the self-correcting and development process.

Round and Round

Complements

Just as the diagram suggests the circular reinforcement, players can also perform interactions in both directions at the same time. This sort of 'reaching around' to the other side of the diagram exposes combinations of interactions which are complementary to each other.

Validation complemented by Articulation and Contextualization - The System's validation or qualification of the Goal is abstract; that Validation is expressed by the System's results Articulating the details of the Imagined in order to re-Contextualize the significance of the Goal.
Example: I have my guy attack the enemy base because I think that's heroic. I get a terrible die roll. That wasn't heroic; that was stupid (Validation). My guy gets shot up and captured (Articulation) putting him at the mercy of the enemy (Contextualization).

Steering complemented by Imbuing and Fuel - The dictates of the Goal not only determine what events I want to happen, but they prioritize elements of the Imagined in order to provide the tools with which to make those events possible.
Example: I'm playing 7th Sea. I want to swash some buckle. So I declare my guy is going to swing from the chandelier, land on some mooks, and cut his initials into the villain's shirt (Steering). That there is a fundamental difference between mooks and villains and that there is a chandelier ripe for swinging on are Imbuing interactions. That I can use that chandelier as a vehicle and the mooks as a landing pad are Fuel interactions.

Imbue complemented by Steering and Articulation - What is important to me is terribly idiosyncratic but must be communicated to the other players. Imbuing can be ineffible, but I have tools which allow me to Steer the System into Articulating the Imagined in meaningful ways.
Example: I am intrigued by how Doctor Hudson might have been active in my character's amnesiac past (Imbuing). So I have my character interrogate the good Doctor (Steering) in order to make him explain his motivations (Articulation).

Contextualization complemented by Fuel and Validation - The Imagined details which qualify and develop the Goal also provide functional effects which the System can use to validate the Goal.
Example: The last remnants of the Revolution are surrounded by hostile Monarchist forces (Contextualization). Those soldiers and cannons (Fuel) will shoot the hell out of anyone who tries to escape (Validation).

Fuel complemented by Contextualization and Steering - Elements of the Imagined which are processed in the System are also elements of the Imagined which bear on the Goal and delimit or open the possibilities of player action.
Example: My guy's sword gives him a +9 against ogres (Fuel). At the same time, his possession of the sword makes him a fantasy hero (Contextualization) which means he is one to fight ogres (Steering).

Articulation complemented by Validation and Imbuing - The development of what happens in the Imagined is mirrored by the System's qualification and validation of Goal emphases, which in turn give meaning to the events happening in the Imagined.
Example: We have succeeded in destroying the third Death Star (Articulation). This bodes well for the Rebellion (Validation) and hereafter the destruction of the Death Star will be a powerful rallying point (Imbuing).

Dysfunction

Now, all of these are 'perfect world' examples, where the interactions available to the players harmonize well, and both develop and reconcile the Imagined, System, and Goal. We all well know, however, that real gaming often goes awry.

Dysfunction occurs when interactions cease to perform the essential reconcile-and-develop function of roleplaying, and the players' aspects begin to diverge significantly. When the players begin having different Imagined content, different Systems, and different Stories, and do not effectively communicate these to the other players, the result is dysfunctional play. This is a somewhat broader definition of function and dysfunction than the Forge uses. Function is not 'create fun', it is 'create shared imaginings which are fun'. Chez Geek creates fun; that doesn't mean it's a functioning roleplaying game.

Because the three aspects are reconciled through the interactions, when they diverge the interactions must be at fault. I submit that most dysfunctions occur when one of two things happen: (a) interactions are missing, or (b) interactions that should complement each other do not. Here's a few dysfunctions and how they 'map' onto the interaction model.

Railroading A dysfunction in which the System (usually a ritual component, sometimes published rules) gives the GM absolute control over all Validation while the players retain access to Steering. The players make decisions which have no bearing on the reconcile-and-develop process. The lack of feedback creates dysfunction -- the players might be wildly steering left, but the GM keeps heading right, invalidating their interactions.

Prima Donna One player monopolizes Steering interactions and the Steering->Articulation process, in order to insist on their Imbued meaning. Sort of a player-based Railroading.

Illusionism A not-quite dysfunction, as many people enjoy rattling around in a tightly-constrained game, this situation is where the GM has strong control over most Articulation, setting up elements of the Imagined in such a way that they Contextualize the characters and story to delimit viable player options in Steering. Not necessarily unenjoyable, just limited in scope (ice cream shops aren't bad because they only sell ice cream, after all).

Deprotagonizing of Characters A dysfunction where a player's Imbuing interaction is not complemented by available Steering and Articulating interactions. Either he is unable to use appropriate Steering (in a game where the GM frames all scenes, for instance) or the Articulation results are interpreted in protagonism-denying ways (not that you missed, but that you didn't really want to shoot in the first place).

Pervy Another not-quite dysfunction, a "pervy" or High Points of Contact game occurs when Articulation, Fuel, Steering, and Validation interactions (ie, those interactions connected to the System) are not fully provided by the mental construct of System, and must be supplied or refreshed from the published material. This can be frustrating, since the Imbuing and Contextualization interactions, which are independent of the System, are often running full tilt while the rulebook is being consulted, tying up their complements.

Impossible Thing Before Breakfast The proposition that the GM has "control" of the Goal via privileged access to interactions derived from the System (which is tilted towards her) and the Imagined (of which she is the supposed arbiter). The GM's privileged access does not interfere with the players' ability to Imbue the Imagined with their own meaning or to Steer the System to do what they want -- the players' efforts just get battered with brutal Validation interactions and often hackneyed Articulation->Contextualization arches by the GM, who is procedurally refusing to recognize the players' Goal (ie, what is important to them).

Conclusion

Model Application: Conquer the Horizon

2005-08-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

Alright, so somewhat by accident, I wrote up a little mini-RPG called Conquer the Horizon. I say 'somewhat by accident' but the pieces of it were simmering in my brain for weeks, now, along with phrases like "someone should try to design a game that does X to see if Y is true..." It all kind of came together in a critical mass tuesday night -- now, the ensuing explosion may be an explosion of crap, so no guarantees on quality, here. The game is a test dummy.

But now I want to try and hash out how CtH is supposed to work, design-wise, based on the Interaction Model. I'm hoping to play a bit of it tonight, so some thoughts pre-play might be useful to reference later.

In CtE, the players take on roles of explorers from the Old World in the New World; the action of the game is to collaboratively create the New World. This comes from two places: (a) the point of this game is very explicitly to make everyone imagine something very similar, as the Interaction Model suggests is the 'core function' of roleplaying. Also (b) this game is pretty intentionally incoherent in Big Model terms. It's not Narrativist, it's not Gamist. Perhaps it's Simmy -- but the Big Model is having trouble with Simmy at the moment. In any case, this is an attempt to create something that is functional without being coherent/adherent.

So: the Imagined in this game is pretty simply the developing details of the New World. The 'characters' are pretty secondary to the New World, which is in center stage. Players will be imagining this World. The System... check that, the Rules compose a pretty streamlined credibility-dispenser where all players introduce, qualify/complicate, and accept additions to the New World. It's pure Lumpley Principle. It also has some ambiguous edges (what constitutes a 'resource'); how the written rules become the utilized System will be interesting. As for Story, each player has a goal, which may or may not be secondary to the group goal of creating an interesting New World. I'm very interested to see how that hashes out -- I hope it will be something like "let's create a neat New World that I can profitably exploit".

Now the meat of the game: the interactions. Players take turns proposing additions called Discoveries to the game world (steering), which the other players add qualifications to (more steering). Eventually the Discovery wins acceptance (validation) and becomes a part of the New World (articulation), or it fails to win acceptance (validation) and turns out to be a phantasm on the horizon (negative articulation). In addition to some scant details on individual characters, players can also bring in references to prior Discoveries to bolster their chances of making a Discovery or getting their Qualification accepted (fuel).

As for contextualization and imbuing, those go one of two ways (or both) depending on the Story involved. We have Discoveries piling up in the Imagined, creating a world which can either (a) be judged as interesting or not or (b) inform the player's progress towards their win-goal -- that's contextualization. Some of those Discoveries will be particularly appreciated simply as 'neat', while others can provide opportunities to pursue the win-goal -- that's imbuing. Again, if all goes well, players will be trying to contextualize the cool bits of the New World as opportunities to exploit them in interesting ways, and setting their targets on their favorite bits as special because they are both interesting and useful.

Miscellaneous fiddly-bits include a dwindling pool of 'Supplies' which can be used to increase chances of having your input accepted (pure fuel) and which, once exhausted, end the game (fuel again). When the game ends, players tally points based on their characters' goals (validation) and the winner names the New World after their character (the final act of articulation).

Function -- the game should work to reconcile a developing New World that is both interesting and exploitable, a set of permissions and procedures for adding to that New World, and a sense that the game is played to create an interesting, exploitable world.

Ambiguity and Reinforcement

2005-08-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

So I'm catching up on past discussions.

All the players can control the unknown-but-past, like in Univeralis, or just a few or one can, like in Dogs - it depends on what you want out of this game. But only the group's informed agreement can possibly control the unknown-but-future. -- Vincent Baker, on Established and Unknown posted in anyway a long time ago

This is usually true. Well, no, this is partially true. Or rather, it's not true at all. Only the group's informed agreement can control the future course of events -- yes. True. Spot-on. Here's the thing, though: that applies to the past, too. Only the group's informed agreement can control the past, too. As Vincent says earlier in the article, the GM doesn't have secrets about what has 'really' happened -- the GM has plans for what 'really' happened, and those plans can be overturned by the group consensus quite easily.

For instance, in a game of Tribe 8, one of the players in our group decided to create a heretical metaphysical understanding of the world. She kept insisting on it until eventually, it 'came true' and our Tribe 8 game spawned a new Fatima (Goddess). As far as I know, the GM did not set out from the start to 'prove' that PC's beliefs as true -- it developed in play. And the development of that in play had all sorts of repercussions for the setting, and what had happened in the setting beforehand.

This brings me to the Forge discussion on Gijsbers Space in April, where Victor points out that the game does not actually have any direct access to the Shared Imagined Space, and he posits a Shared Text, which someone later dubs the Gijsbers Space, in which the players compile 'statements' that sort of accrue and from which individual players generate their Individual Imagined Space. His conception of three big chunks of mental constructs all interacting looks familiar, doesn't it? He talks about the ambiguity issues involved in one player's Individual Imagined Space not matching another player's Individual Imagined Space, and how there is therefore no Shared Imagined Space.

But here's the thing: just because the input is not coherent does not mean that the content does not construct something. It's just not a exhaustively coherent something. Just like Through the Looking Glass, where they serve the cake and then cut it, just like Slaughterhouse Five where Billy is unstuck in time and/or he's insane, there is a fictional, imagined world. We just don't know with certainty a few of the details within it. This applies to roleplaying quite easily by referencing any game where the specifics of the setting are left as ambiguous, open questions. Look at Tribe 8 again -- was our heretical player character right or wrong when she first started spouting off her strange ideas? Were the Fatimas here to rule or to reincarnate? It's not that the answer is one or the other; it's that the question is irrelevant.

Here I reference my model of two posts ago. There is no Shared Imagined Space. It doesn't exist except as a sort of union or synthesis of what the individual players imagine. What does exist independantly is the individual players' Imagined content, and the product of a functional roleplaying game is to both reconcile and develop those individual Imagined understandings. That means that on the one hand, the 'point' is to make sure everyone is Imagining the same thing, or very close, but on the other hand, the 'point' is to continually change what they are Imagining. The goal is not a solid state agreement between all parties; the goal is a dynamic product that continually intrigues and delights the players, and that can only be accomplished if what they thought was true keeps changing.

The 'Shared Text' that Victor talks about is, in the Interaction Model, composed of all the interactions that connect the three primary aspects. These things do not pile up in a sort of transcript; the function of these interactions is to continually self-correct and move forward the important parts of the experience -- the Imagined, the System, and the Story. This is a process, not a big long list. These are actions, not merely statements.

But now I have to go to lunch.

Concrete Example!

2005-08-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

A GM uses a strong Validation Interaction, derived from a realistic emphasis on the Fuel interaction. Haw!

Towards an Interactive Model

2005-08-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, so first off? This got long. It has a diagram in it that's repeated a few times because it's easier to understand if you can refer to it, and you can only refer to it while it's still on the page. Really, it's not because I'm so proud of my meager Illustrator skills.

In any case, this is my first attempt to start building a paradigm that actually describes the operation of a roleplaying game, not the social structure of the people playing that roleplaying game. I've pulled from a lot of sources, including Ron, Vincent, Chris, and Nathan, and I'm sure their fingerprints will all be quite visible.

Goal: Outline a functioning paradigm describing the operation of roleplaying games.
Assumed Givens: Three important aspects of RPGs are the Imagined, the System, and the Story (definitions to follow). These three aspects were originally identified by Ron Edwards, and the preferences for each aspect underpin his GNS schema and Big Model.
Terminology: Some elements of the Forge lexicon will be used, either illustratively or fundamentally. I have tried to avoid reusing or repurposing terminology to minimize confusion; if there are divergences, I will note them when first using the term.

We begin with the postulate that RPGs consist of at least three aspects of significant importance. These will be called the Imagined, the System, and the Story. None of these aspects have any substantial reality -- that is, they are all mental (and potentially, hopefully, social) constructs existing only in the minds of the players. The specifics and details of each aspect may not (and probably will not) be identical in every player's mind; the basic function of roleplaying is to create a similar Imagined, System, and Story in each player's mind and thereafter reconcile inconsistencies as all three aspects develop in complexity. This reconcile-and-develop goal is accomplished through the interactions between the aspects.

Aspects

Here's a breakdown of the three Aspects, first with a facile (and incomplete) definition, and then at length.

Imagined - "What we imagine." Incorporating the Shared Imagined Space of Characters, Setting, and Situation, the Imagined also includes an ephemeral body of genre conventions, internal character emotions and motivations, and events. It is important to note that while the Imagined is easiest to consider in one specific moment, this distorts the full significance of this aspect. The Imagined is first of all dynamic, in motion, and includes not only shared imagined elements but also their shared imagined interactions. Secondly, the Imagined includes not only the present state of the Shared Imagined Space, but also a complete transcript of everything that has happened before, both in and out of actual play. Prior roleplaying sessions as well as setting history are as much a part of the Imagined as what a given character is doing right now.

System - "The rules of the game." Actually bearing only passing resemblance to the rules as published in game supplements, the System is inspired by published rules content in exactly the same way as the Imagined is inspired by published setting content. It is composed of what interpretations of the published rules material are given credence by the players, as well as rituals idiosyncratic to the players ("house rules" are explicit rituals; implicit rituals include things like niche protection), and any other procedures (bluebooking) that determine what happens both in the Imagined and in the real world of players, dice, and character sheets. The System is concerned with the Lumpley Principle (who has credibility / who has access to the System's interactions), with binary success/fail or "fuzzy" degrees of success/fail, with the addition of new content and the manipulation of existing content.

Story - "What's important to the players." While Story is most commonly framed as a narrative, this may not be necessarily the case. Story determines what elements in the Imagined have significance worth paying attention to, and makes such decisions based on the standards of the players in the real world (not the characters in the Imagined -- important!). Story categorically involves a theme, although the theme need not be bombastic -- "a day in the life" is a perfectly functional theme, and the basis of what is often identified as "Simulationist" or "Storyless" roleplay.
Note: Story is not a subset of Transcript as in the Provisional Glossary. Transcript -- a running account of all events in the Imagined -- is the recursive function of the Imagined. Story is why some elements of the transcript will be more important than others when retelling war stories at Con.

Each aspect is necessary for ensuring the consistency of the other two, and each aspect is dependant on the other two for its continuing, coherent existence as a shared construct. In other words, the Story and System require the Imagined to provide a baseline imaginary "reality" from which to base decisions; the Imagined and System require the Story to give them consistent direction and emphasis; the Imagined and the Story require the System to neutrally arbitrate change and development. I'm skeptical whether any one or two of these could exist as a shared mental construct without the other parts -- I think they're a gestalt.

Interactions

This continual process of development and reconciliation is realized through the interactions of the Imagined, the System, and the Story. Interactions are tasks performed by the players. Some Interactions are commonly privileged and only performed by the Game Master, who for the purposes of this model is a player with additional interactions available to her. Nevertheless, interactions are the things that players do at the table -- some are external (actions, speaking, rolling dice) and some are internal (consideration, imagining, planning). By doing these things, the players share with eachother the characteristics of their mental conceptions of the Imagined, Story, and System.

Between the three aspects there are six types of interactions, as displayed on the following chart. A relatively short description of each type of interaction is listed below, with good examples where possible and with poor examples where my brain fails me.

Fuel Interaction - The Imagined Fuels the System. The Imagined provides the System with the elements which the System uses to determine what happens. This "fuel" can be characters, environmental elements, situations, or any other material that the System uses as input for its deliberations. I may rename this to "Feeding" Interaction -- depending on whether a mechanistic or organic metaphor is most apt. Jury still out.
Because the Fuel Interaction connects to the System, the System arbitrates what "gets in" -- any player can want something to have game effect; the System decides if it does (through dictate, through privileging some players over others, or even simply by charging game currency to empower an element with game effect).
Example: The character sheet itself is not a Fuel Interaction; players selecting numbers representative of the Imagined character and feeding these numbers into the System is. The character sheet is just a handy tool, a reminder of what numbers we've assigned to our characters. In the statement, "My guy swings his sword" both the guy and the sword are Fuel Interactions.

Articulation Interaction - System Articulates the Imagined. The concrete output of the System -- that is, "what happens" -- articulates the Imagined, providing development, action, and revision. Articulation interactions can both establish elements within the Imagined as well as manipulate them later. This is the corrolary to fuel interactions -- the finished goods from the raw materials.
Because the Articulation Interaction is derived from the System, the System determines who gets to do the articulation as well as providing some guidelines (dice results, usually). In a given game, not everyone can always do the articulation -- it is often limited to just the GM.
Examples: The most facile example of an Articulation Interaction is interpreting what a die roll means for the elements within the Imagined, but this is not the only example. Activities such as "Creating the Adventure," "Rolling Up Characters," and "Framing the Scene" are also Articulation Interactions. Both Task Resolution is an Articulation Interactions; Conflict Resolution is both an Articulation and a Validation Interaction.

Contextualization Interaction - The Imagined Contextualizes the Story. Any story needs characters, a setting, and events in order to express itself; the elements of the Imagined are utilized to put the Story in a context of supporting, conflicting, and qualifying details, all of which enrich the Story.
As an interaction between the Imagined and the Story, the Contextualization Interaction is up for grabs, performed by everyone at the table in an unconstrained fashion, based on the material provided by the Imagined (which is not up for grabs in an unconstrained fashion).
Example: Relating one's character's hopes and dreams with the stated goals of a faction of NPCs is a simple example; a more complex example might relate the raison d'etre of the Knight, the Pacifist, the King, and the Infidel when they all come face-to-face in the middle of a battlefield.

Imbuing Interaction - The Story Imbues the Imagined. Imbuing makes the elements of the story mean something. Ten character names and abilities, a map, and a horde of orcs is just a laundry list of information until some items on the list are made heroes, some are made victims, and some are made villains. This is the corrolary to contextualization; whereas contextualization positions meaning within a collection of elements, imbuing assigns individual meanings to individual elements.
Like contextualization, the Imbuing Interaction is unconstrained, and any player can imbue any element of the Imagined with any meaning they like -- based on, of course, what is included in the constrained Imagined and the constrained Story.
Example: Assigning a thematic meaning to a character, setting, or prop in the Imagined -- "my guy embodies the ethos of nobility" or simply, "my guy is badass."

Side Note: Contextualization and Imbuing can be 'wild card' interactions that seriously diverge the Imagined and Story of different players. This is why these interactions are expressed by the interactions' complements (see below).

Steering Interaction - The Story Steers the System. The Story determines what actions will be proposed, attempted, and/or declared (given the specifics of the System) -- these potential actions are fed into the System, which will determine what happens. Steering interactions can be delimited by the abilities and point of view of the player's character or supercede these limitations. Steering interactions are always created "Out of Character," based on criteria in the minds of the players, not the characters. "In Character" decisions are in fact simulations of decisions that the player believes the character would reasonably make. The four Stances (Pawn, Actor, Author, and Director) are all Steering Interactions.
Because the Steering Interaction connects to the System, it, like the Fuel Interaction, is subject to the System's gatekeeper processes -- some Stances may be verboten under a given System, for instance, or Scene Requests may be privileged to just the GM.
Example: Simplistically, the impulse behind "my guy tries to hit that guy"; complexly, "I would like to play a scene in which that guy wants to seduce that guy."

Validation Interaction - The System Validates the Story. While the concrete output of the System feeds into the articulation interaction, the abstract output of the System feeds into the validation interaction. Whatever "happens" in the Imagined may have thematic implications for the Story. This may plainly validate the Story, or it may complicate that validity with qualifications and exceptions. This is the corrolary to Steering; it is the game's response to player propositions.
Another interaction based from the System, and therefore often privileged -- the Lumpley Principle applies here as it does for the articulation interaction. The System will determine who is allowed to interpret the significance of the System's output, and may also provide some guidelines for that interpretation.
Example: Joey fails to win the race. Does this mean he did not try enough? Would he have won if he trained more? Is he now a failure, or will it give him the resolve to try again, thus justifying his self-confidence?

I am going to suggest that every single thing that the players do around the table is one or more interactions. Obviously, that sort of blanket statement requires some extensive thought and testing, but at the moment, I'm pretty sure: this is what players do. When things are going good, the things the players do reinforce all three aspects.

Round and Round

As the diagram implies, the interactions feed into eachother into self-reinforcing circles. The two obvious circles are the outside, or Widdershins, circle, and the inside, or Sunwise, circle. Note that the processes do not necessarily 'start' at any one aspect as depicted below. I am unfortunately bound by the rules of grammar, which state that sentences must start somewhere.

Widdershins (Outside) Circle - The players' preferences and interests (Story) color their understanding (Imbue) of the setting and their own characters (Imagined), which prompts them to use selected elements of that setting and their characters (Fuel) in order to determine what happens (System), the answers to which reinforce or complicate (Validate) the things they cared about in the first place (Story).
Example: I have an interest in the concepts of honor and duty (Story), and so I apply (Imbue) the principles of bushido onto my modern-day character (Imagined). This constrains my character's options (Fuel) when taking actions (System), thereby expressing (Validating) the elements that I am interested in (Story).

Sunwise (Inside) Circle - Based on what is important to the players (Story), they make decisions (Steering) that are adjudicated by various rules and rituals (System). The results are interpreted (Articulation) into "what happens" (Imagined), which juxtaposes elements of characters and setting (Contextualization) to develop the new meaning (Story).
Example: Because I want to develop my character's relationship with my father (Story), I decide to spend game-currency (Steering) to begin a new scene (System). I describe the scene (Articulation) as a family barbeque (Imagined). The characters' conversation further informs (Contextualization) their relationship and the father/daughter dynamic (Story).

Note that it's also patently possible for 'flow' to go in more complex shapes than these two circles. A sequence of interactions could go, for instance, Imbue -> Contextualize -> Imbue -> Fuel -> Articulate -> Contextualize. The key is that each interaction strengthens the aspects that are involved in the interaction, either by developing it, by reconciling differences between players' conceptions, or both.

Complements

Just as the diagram suggests the circular reinforcement, players can also perform interactions in both directions at the same time. This sort of 'reaching around' to the other side of the diagram exposes combinations of interactions which are complementary to eachother.

Validation Interaction complemented by Articulation and Contextualization Interactions - The System's validation or qualification of the Story is abstract; that validation is expressed by the System's results articulating the details of the Imagined in order to recontextualize the significance of the Story.
Example: I have my guy attack the enemy base because I think that's heroic. I get a terrible die roll. That wasn't heroic; that was stupid (Validation Interaction). My guy gets shot up and captured (Articulation) putting him at the mercy of the enemy (Contextualization).

Steering Interaction complemented by Imbuing and Fuel Interactions - The dictates of the Story not only determine what events I want to happen, but they prioritize elements of the Imagined in order to provide the tools with which to make those events possible.
Example: I'm playing 7th Sea. I want to swash some buckle. So I declare my guy is going to swing from the chandelier, land on some mooks, and cut his initials into the villain's shirt (Steering). That there is a fundamental difference between mooks and villains and that there is a chandelier ripe for swinging on are Imbuing Interactions. That I can use that chandelier as a vehicle and the mooks as a landing pad are Fuel Interactions.

Imbue Interaction complemented by Steering and Articulation Interactions - What is important to me is terribly idiosyncratic, and must be communicated to the other players. Imbuing can be ineffible, but I have tools which allow me to steer the System into articulating the Imagined in meaningful ways.
Example: I am intrigued by how Doctor Hudson might have been active in my character's amnesiac past (Imbuing). So I have my character interrogate the good Doctor (Steering) in order to make him explain his motivations (Articulation).

Contextualization Interaction complemented by Fuel and Validation Interactions - The Imagined details which qualify and develop the Story also provide functional effects which the System can use to validate the Story.
Example: The last remnants of the Revolution are surrounded by hostile Monarchist forces (Contextualization). Those soldiers and cannons (Fuel) will shoot the hell out of anyone who tries to escape (Validation).

Fuel Interaction complemented by Contextualization and Steering Interactions - Elements of the Imagined which have a "game effect" in the System are also elements of the Imagined which bear on the Story and delimit or open the possibilities of player action.
Example: My guy's sword gives him a +9 against ogres (Fuel). At the same time, his possession of the sword makes him a fantasy hero (Contextualization) which means he is one to fight ogres (Steering).

Articulation Interaction complemented by Validation and Imbuing Interactions - The development of what happens in the Imagined is mirrored by the System's validation of Story emphases, which in turn imbue the events happening in the Imagined.
Example: We have suceeded in destroying the third Death Star (Articulation). This bodes well for the Rebellion (Validation) and hereafter the destruction of the Death Star will be a powerful rallying point (Imbuing).

Dysfunction

Now, all of these are 'perfect world' examples, where the interactions available to the players harmonize well, and both develop and reconcile the Imagined, System, and Story. We all well know, however, that real gaming often goes awry.

Dysfunction occurs when one or more of the three aspects go 'out of alignment' between players. When the players begin having different Imagined content, different Systems, and different Stories, and do not effectively communicate these to the other players, the result is dysfunctional play. This is a somewhat broader definition of function and dysfunction than the Forge uses. Function is not 'create fun', it is 'create shared imaginings which are fun'. Munchkin creates fun; that doesn't mean it's a functioning roleplaying game.

Because the three aspects are reconciled through the interactions, when they diverge the interactions must be at fault. I submit that (most?) dysfunctions occur when one of two things happen: (a) interactions are missing, or (b) interactions that should complement eachother do not. Here's a few dysfunctions and how they 'map' onto aspects and interactions.

Railroading A dysfunction in which the System (usually a ritual component, sometimes published rules) gives the GM absolute control over all Validation interactions while the Story still allows all players access to Steering. The players make decisions which have no bearing on the reconcile-and-develop process. The lack of feedback creates dysfunction -- the players might be wildly steering left, but the GM keeps heading right, invalidating their interactions.

Prima Donna One player monopolizes Steering interactions and the Steering->Articulation process, in order to insist on their Imbued meaning. Sort of a player-based Railroading.

Illusionism A not-quite dysfunction, as many people enjoy rattling around in a tightly-constrained game, this situation is where the GM has strong control over most articulation interactions, setting up elements of the Imagined in such a way that they contextualize the characters and story to delimit viable player options in steering interactions. Not necessarily unenjoyable, just limited in scope (ice cream shops aren't bad because they only sell ice cream, after all).

Deprotagonizing of Characters A dysfunction where a player's Imbuing interaction is not complemented by available Steering and Articulating interactions. Either he is prevented from using appropriate Steering interactions (in a game where the GM frames all scenes, for instance) or the articulation System results are interpreted in protagonism-denying ways (not that you missed, but that you didn't really want to shoot in the first place).

Pervy Another not-quite dysfunction, a "pervy" or High Points of Contact game occurs when Articulation and Validation interactions (ie, those interactions derived from the System) are not fully provided by the mental construct of System, and must be supplied or refreshed from the published material. This can be frustrating, since the Imbuing and Contextualization interactions, which are independent of the System, are often running full tilt while the rulebook is being consulted, tying up their complements.

Impossible Thing Before Breakfast The proposition that the GM has "control" of the Story via privileged access to interactions derived from the System (which is tilted towards her) and the Imagined (of which she is the supposed arbiter). The GM's privileged access does not interfere with the players' ability to Imbue the Imagined with their own meaning or to Steer the System to do what they want -- the players' efforts just get battered with brutal Validation interactions and often hackneyed Articulation->Contextualization arches by the GM, who is procedurally refusing to recognize the players' Story (ie, what is important to them).

Parenthetical Open Questions

Conclusions?

Needless to say, this is a work in progress. Right now I'd like to keep it here on my blog, so while I appreciate comments and feedback, please don't quote it elsewhere while it's still in its infant stages. Content is continually changing.

The strength of any model is not so much that it accurately describes what it hopes to, but that it can correctly predict operations and effectively correct those operations when they go wrong. Assuming that this model is accurate, we should be able to more precisely puzzle out what it is we are doing and to correct our practices when they are not resulting in the all-important reconcile-and-develop function of roleplaying. This model is only worthwhile if it helps us make roleplaying better.

I do believe, however, that this model offers an evocative paradigm from which to talk about roleplaying. The model is not roleplaying -- it's a map depicting roleplaying. Just as there are physical, political, and demographic maps out there, this is an interactive map: it maps out the interactions between three aspects of roleplaying. It answers -- or at least attempts to answer -- the question of "what do the players do, and how are those actions relevant?" It answers "What is this thing that we do when we say that we're roleplaying?"

We are sharing bits and pieces of our imagination, offering them back and forth, accepting them and challenging them, validating them and qualifying them, trying to create something that is both shared and interesting.

Leaving the Big Model and GNS

2005-08-16T21:55:00.000-07:00

Recently I've become rather disenchanted with Ron Edwards' Big Model. Specifically, I started getting annoyed at the fetishization that the Big Model seems to inspire at the Forge -- all roleplaying games must explicitly and profoundly support one of the approved (or, excuse me, recognized) Creative Agendas or else it's broken! This led me to start delving into the specifics of the Big Model, at which point I discovered that it only purports to describe "Coherent Roleplay," defined as roleplay that fulfills a Creative Agenda.

Creative Agendas, in turn, are something of a sociological snapshot, three different ways that roleplayers have been observed to consistently enjoy themselves. Not exactly the most solid foundation to base value judgments on -- "Coherent" roleplay includes only roleplay that fulfills one of three desires that have previously been observed. Whether or not there are any other gamer-desires that exist out in the world, or even other gamer-desires that could be fulfilled through roleplaying, is patently overlooked. There is only three "coherent" ways to play, and if you're not coherent, what the hell is wrong with you?

Now, I should take a moment to step back and make clear that I'm reacting to what I've seen in general in most of the posts on the Forge. Ron himself has always been very careful to hold open the possibility of other Creative Agendas and to state that inCoherent roleplay is not necessarily dysfunctional (ie bad) roleplay. So he's by no means claiming that if you don't follow his model you're wrong -- it's just the default assumption of a lot of posters at the Forge. Ironically, they've shifted the meaning of Coherence to fit something more like Adherence; the original term meant "make sure you produce what you want to produce" but now it means -- functionally -- "make sure you produce one of the three approved flavors."

In any case, my story goes further and the current state of the Forge is only tangentially related. It's still, for reference, a great place full of good people and a whole ton of resources. I'll still be reading and posting -- I'll just be reading and posting with a thick dogma filter on.

So it turns out the Big Model is definitionally constrained to only deal with a certain segment of the vast sea of roleplaying. I reflected how much I preferred the old-school GNS Model, with the GNS triangle that attempted to describe all roleplay everywhere on the basis of to what extent the players were interested in Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist modes. Back then, you could play more than one mode at a time. The intent of the GNS essay and subsequent discussions were also broader and more ambitious -- the goal was to start talking about roleplaying in precise terms, to explore how it really worked, and to develop better games based on that understanding. The subsequent lexicon that was developed did a great deal for roleplaying game design, and is still kicking out great innovations.

But here's the thing: ye olde GNS Model is based on the same foundation that the Big Model is. Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism are all observed tropes of behavior and stated desires. The entire model that is supposed to describe roleplaying games is based on the finite results of a survey of the people who play them. After a lot of thrashing it out in my head, I have to conclude that neither model is about roleplaying games at all -- they're about the people who play them. While gaming is a social activity and therefore the players are an important piece, they are not the entire thing. It's the difference between Siskel & Ebert, who talked about the movies they reviewed, and Entertainment Tonight, which talks about the actors and actresses and their celebrity lives. Siskel & Ebert was about movies -- Entertainment Tonight is not.

I don't want to abandon everything, though -- there have demonstrably been insights and improvements, and we have seen great developments. I just think we're working on a ladder that's missing a number of rungs and won't get us to the top floor. Presently I'm working under the theory that Ron did observe something worthwhile in his GNS distinction, but misidentified it, or made too simple of an identification. That some people are interested in Story, some in the Game, and some in the Simulation, might signify that the Story, the Game, and the Simulation are three large aspects of the thing known as roleplaying. Just as everybody has their favorite Spice Girl, most gamers have their favorite aspect of roleplaying. But we can use that picking of favorites as a signpost that those 'aspects' exist. The next step, I figure, is to consider these three aspects, how they relate to eachother, and whether there are any other pieces that go into it. Then I'll try and identify such aspects in as many different kinds of roleplay as I can. Or, you know, I'll lose interest in it tomorrow.

Such is life.

Art

2005-08-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Someone somewhere in the game-design-o-sphere said that they got the most impetus to finish their book by buying art; once real money was involved, they wanted to get the book printed so that money didn't 'go to waste'. I put together an Art Guidelines package and sent it off to a couple artists, one of whom is in turn sending it off to others he knows.

Package contains:
- Art Specs (what I want, what I don't want, parameters of content)
- Reference Photos of period naval uniforms
- Sample text (a flavor piece destined for the Introduction)
- A short movie of a rough 3-D rendering of a Solar Steamer

We'll see. (Eager!)

FLFS Part 3: Playing the Game

2005-08-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

As Chris has put out his ideal outline for Making Round Wheels, I thought I'd post the outline of Full Light, Full Steam's Part 3: Playing the Game.

(Parts 1 and 2 comprise the first five chapters of the book, so this outline starts at Chapter 6.)

The First Session
1. Social Contract (Discussion)
  1. Roles Around the Table
  2. Power Around the Table
  3. Comfort Zones
  4. Expectations (Goals and Input)
2. Game Structure (Discussion)
  1. Troupe Play
  2. Solo Play
  3. Multiple GMs
  4. Online Play
  5. One-Shots
3. Character Creation (done concurrently)
  1. Power Level (Allocating Currency)
  2. Concept & Niche
  3. Thematic Batteries (Ammo Selection)
  4. Attributes and Skills (Spending Currency)
4. Setting Creation (done collaboratively)
  1. Ship or Port Creation
  2. Superior Officer Creation
Storymapping
1. Conflict (Ammo Inclusion)
  1. ...from Player Expectations
  2. ...from Thematic Batteries
  3. ...from Character Histories
  4. ...from Setting
2. Story Elements
  1. NPCs
  2. Challenges
  3. Obstacles
  4. Sets
  5. Props
3. Developing the Storymap
4. Resolution
Roleplay (Procedures for Actual Play)
1. Narration (Talking at the Table)
2. Direction (Shifting credibility around the Table)
  1. General Rules
  2. Interruption (Shifting via Dice)
  3. Delegation (GM disbursing GM tasks)
3. Checks
  1. Static Checks
  2. Dynamic Checks
  3. Cooperative Checks
  4. Using Thematic Batteries (Ammo Being Used)
  5. Condition Batteries (Health, Grace, &Will)
Between Sessions
1. Feedback
2. Character Development (XP)
3. Bluebooking

There are lots of similarities -- we've been thinking along parallel lines -- and some departures.

While it may appear that what Chris calls "Ammo" is not given much emphasis, this is more-or-less embedded in the game mechanics as Thematic Batteries. Much like stunting in Exalted, they have relatively little real estate on the page, but (should) become the focus once they start working in Actual Play. I wish the most important things took up more pages than the less important things, but this simply isn't the case -- thirty Skill descriptions will be longer than any (functional) description of how to shift credibility around the table.

Also, Chapter 9: Between Sessions provides what I think is a pretty essential piece that Chris missed: Feedback and Reinforcement. Any good system, whether it's a machine, an organism, or a social structure, needs to constantly evaluate its performance, keep doing what's going right and stop doing what's going wrong. Explicitly setting aside time at the end of each session for the players to discuss what they liked and what they didn't like should do this. I have players reinforcing behavior they liked by giving eachother XP, and identifying problems with "Feedback" discussions. This also allows for some scene-request goodness and helping to shape the future direction of the ongoing game.

Discovery, Suspense, and Illusionism

2005-08-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

When I play World of Warcraft, my favorite aspect is the continual discovery of new content -- I love exploring new areas and delving into new quests and dungeons and instances. Now, because of the way that WoW is structured with an Alliance and a Horde game running side-by-side, my favorite characters are the two 'in the lead' on both sides: my highest-level Horde character and my highest-level Alliance character. My other characters in the game, which are following after the 'leaders,' are better constructed, with intentional design goals in mind, get more focused RP, are members of guilds, and so forth. In almost every metric, they are 'better' characters. But my original guys, the ones who will discover something new and interesting over the next hill, are the ones that still appeal to me the most.

It occured to me today as I was reading some hate-thread about Illusionism that that sense of discovery that I like so much in WoW is perhaps the thing that so many gamers are constantly trying to replicate. They remember those heady first days of gaming where they didn't know the system back and forth, didn't know how many hit points that dragon had, but they ran in and fought the dragon without knowing what was going to happen and hey, they slew the dragon and took all his gold! They were scared and excited and curious and vindicated. That sort of play experience is difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to acheive again once you understand the inner workings of the system and setting. You can't have that measure of suspense and uncertainty when the game you are playing is a universe of certainties.

I am beginning to think that Illusionism is the best bet (or at least the most common attempt) to recapture that heady heart-in-throat sensation. Part of suspense is not being in control, and a large part of Illusionism is giving up control to the GM. Take a look at WoW, which provides that sense of suspense and discovery using Illusionist techniques. While your hero can ostensibly "go wherever you like", there are two pretty strong forces that prevent you from running willy-nilly across the landscape: the first are mountains that you can't climb over, and the second are large and deadly monsters that will kill you if you venture in "too high" of an area at too low of a level. The game controls discovery (which is accomplished by moving around) by limiting movement, but it does so in Illusionist ways -- the mountains and the monsters are both plausible in-setting elements that nonetheless are there to control player initiative.

Most of the arguments that rail against Illusionism decry the lack of player power, the fact that you are "trapped" in the GM's story, that players do not create, only respond. While all of those are exactly spot-on, those are not necessarily bad things. There are -- as has been proven by many sales and the continuation of the hobby -- a whole hell of a lot of people who really like that kind of play. Not everybody wants to be in charge, or be partly in charge, or be responsible for creating things. It's terribly unamerican to say, but some people (most people) really want someone else to be in charge and want to be given tight guidelines of what they can do. Some people want to experience a story that somebody else is writing. And that is a perfectly acceptable desire. It's not wrong for people to want that -- it's just problematic when that is forced on people that don't want it. And hence the hate that Illusionism seems to attract.

If discovery and suspense are what many gamers are after, and Illusionism is one of the best ways to provide that, then why do we hate Illusionism so? Can't we recognize that there is a very big difference between "creating a world collaboratively so that we can experience it" and "experiencing a world of the GM's creation"? It's almost as wide a gulf as exists between the three recognized Creative Agendas. It's not that Illusionism is "broken" or "square-wheeled" -- it's that it's attempting to provide a different experience than games that encourage more creative participation -- because not everybody wants the onus of that creative participation, even if most us game designers do.

A Short Note on Iterative Rolls and Probabilities

2005-08-02T09:04:00.000-07:00

When a game's combat system calls for a lot of rolls to resolve one combat (which in Forgish is called Task Resolution), this reinforces the probability curve of success and failure. On one roll there's always the chance of something going terribly wrong or incredibly right (critical failures and critical successes in many games). If the one roll stands in for the entirety of the attempt, then the entirery of the attempt is assumed to be a critical result. In a series of those same rolls, the chances that one critical will happen are increased while the chances that every single roll will be a critical are drastically decreased. In short, the multiple-roll combat is (a) more predictable but (b) more likely to include critical results. It also helps to reduce character death, since game mechanic probabilities are usually very slightly skewed towards the PCs or at least the defender.

Full Light, Full Steam uses one-roll combat (and all other conflict resolution), but the "dangers" of unpredictably deadly results are mitigated by a couple factors. First off, the die mechanic is very predictable itself, with your typical results varying only one or two points along a ten point scale. There are few surprises (until you add in Thematic Batteries, which are totally under player control anyway, so there's variance, it's just player-controlled rather than dice-fiat). Secondly, and I think rather importantly, while the one-roll combat will tell you if you won or lost the fight, it rather explicitly does not kill the loser. I could rant at length on the topic of disengaging 'loss' with 'death' but I won't here. The point of the matter is, the dangers of one-roll conflict resolution are, in this example, mitigated, and the process (hopefully) will provide quick resolution while still allowing the players the chance to elaborate and experience all the turnabouts that they are used to enjoying.

Games, Instructions, and the Lack Thereof (Constructive)

2005-08-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

So after going on at the mouth about the subject, and flying off into the heady heights of abstraction, I thought I might come back down to the ground with some concrete examples. My current project, Full Light, Full Steam, offers some rules for the disposition of power around the table, and gives direction (Lumpley calls it credibility) to different players through its game mechanics. It says that players are responsible for their characters, and the Game Master is responsible for everything else -- responsible, but able to delegate tasks to other players. It does not have rules on who says what, it does not have rules on who is in charge, it does not have rules on how a specific instance of play works. It's up to the players* around the table to decide that, and the power to make those decisions is explicitly put in the players' hands.

While FLFS does not offer rules, it does direct the players to sit down and discuss what they want out of the game before anybody makes characters and before the GM prepares the adventure. It offers some talking points about what people expect from the game; it does advise talking about comfort zones. It outlines a few variants of play including troupe play, multiple GMs, solo play, online play, bluebooking, and the like. There are no rules about how this discussion happens -- players don't take turns adding one statement to the list of game expectations or suchlike -- cause call me idealistic, but I assume my players are able to hold a civil conversation with each other. I also assume that players can and will enjoy the "First Session" as the chapter is called. I believe that the First Session, even if no player ever acts in character, is still part of the roleplaying experience -- just as the pitch, script-writing, and casting call are as much parts of the moviemaking experience as the filming and acting.

What I've got isn't the same old traditional set-up, but it's not revolutionary, either. Take another look at your GURPS book sometime and you'll notice sections on the Antagonist, who is sort of a GM-player hybrid that runs the opposition for the players. You'll find suggestions for troupe play, and for sharing GM tasks. The primary difference between that game and mine is that GURPS is not explicit (as of 3rd Edition) whereas FLFS will be. Otherwise, the design aesthetic is the same: "Hello! Thanks for buying this book and giving my game a try. You can play it however you like; here are some pieces and tools that you can use to build whatever you can imagine. Have fun!"

* By "players" I mean everyone around the table, including the Game Master.

Games, Instructions, and the Lack Thereof (Rant)

2005-08-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

There is much talk elsewhere about roleplaying games, the instructions for them, and what it means when the instructions do not lay out in excruciating detail every facet of play you will ever experience in playing the game. While I agree with the basic idea -- that a game's rules should support the kind of play the game is supposed to deliver -- I find the current argument to be straying into hyperbole.

I played with Legos as a kid. A whole lot. And then when I started gaming, I latched onto GURPS very quickly. The parallels are easy to see -- here are the pieces and the tools, go do what you want with them. The point of playing Legos was not what you did with the airplane that you built; the point of playing Legos was building the airplane and then flying it around. That was fun. So too was it fun to design an airplane with GURPS Vehicles and then "fly it around" in a campaign. Much like Legos, you didn't even really need to fly the airplane around in order to enjoy the experience of building it. That was still fun.

Legos come with instructions. I threw them out. Very occasionally I'd make whatever the instructions laid out, but almost immediately thereafter I would see a "better" way of doing it and rearrange the pieces to my liking. I'd add pieces from other sets; I'd remove pieces that I didn't like. That was fun. When we played GURPS, we very rarely used their published settings. We still bought those books, but we mostly bought them to break them apart and play with the pieces. So while we played in "Tredroy" it looked a whole lot like Cyberpunk. That was fun -- and I don't mean just the Actual Play of knocking about manapunk Tredroy. Making the alternate setting was fun. Sometimes more fun than the Actual Play. And it really didn't matter. It was still fun.

Presently there is a lot of focus on Actual Play, and this is a good thing, because it's been mostly ignored historically, at least in terms of published materials. The rules that govern Actual Play have been a mish-mosh of traditions, habits, and techniques passed from GM to GM to Player to GM through word of mouth. These rules have been idiosyncratic to specific playgroups, and half of the reason why Game A and Game B felt almost identical when played with the same group. The rules of Actual Play never changed even if the setting and game mechanics did. So it's nice that we're looking at Actual Play, now, because it loosens some of that up and allows us to do other things with our roleplaying. But here's the thing:

Actual Play is not Roleplaying.

Actual Play is a part of the entire roleplaying experience. It could even be argued that it usually accounts for the majority of that experience -- but it's not the whole experience. Off the top of my head, here are a few other elements: character generation, campaign set-up, bluebooking, spending XP, fantasizing about your characters while at work, and so on. These are not Actual Play, and yet they are still part of roleplaying. I have a friend who can't really be "in character" until he draws a satisfactory picture of his character. To him, that's part of roleplaying, too. And here's the important part -- those parts are fun.

And then there's folks like me -- and there's a lot of us -- who also enjoy making up and optimizing the rules. We like to experiment with alternative ways to set up power relationships between players around the table. We like to see what happens when we hand off GMing duties back and forth. If you are reading this blog, there's a good chance that you're one of us, because one of the things we like to do is design games. And that, to a rather large extent, is part of roleplaying, too. And that is fun, too.

Now, there certainly are some games -- even a lot of games -- that do not include rules and guidelines for parts of the game that they really should have included. Gee, oversights in publishing in the roleplaying "industry"? Who would have thought? But that lack is not always unintentional, and that lack is not always a flaw. There are some games -- games such as GURPS, Risus, and HeroQuest -- that don't lay out the whole shebang and tell you how to do everything. In such games, figuring things out and making up rules and procedures are part -- even a large part -- of the fun of roleplaying. In Forge-speak, this may fall under "Exploration of System" -- the social structure of rules and procedures that govern the roleplay can be just as complex, fascinating, and labile as the game mechanics. You can play with them, and you can have fun doing so.

A roleplaying game does not need to be some sort of dictator that lays down rules and regulations for everything. All a published product needs to do is offer a playgroup some material to work with. Maybe the material comes with instructions that can be used to make a specific roleplaying experience. That's great. But the lack of those instructions does not make the product "broken", does not mean it's no longer a roleplaying game, does not categorically invalidate the roleplaying game's design goals. There is a very big difference between offering rules that don't create the desired game experience and not offering rules that create the desired game experience. Let me say that again, set off so it's front and center:

There is a very big difference between offering rules that don't create the desired game experience and not offering rules that create the desired game experience.

A game is broken if the rules that it provides are detrimental to the game experience they are supposed to provide; a game is not necessarily broken if it does not offer rules to create the game experience you want to achieve. Roleplaying has always been a DiY hobby -- the fun is your responsibility to create. Sometimes that fun comes from the setup as much as the "Actual Play".

And Now the Frankenstein Procedure

2005-07-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

So for the past couple years I have been writing sections of Full Light, Full Steam -- I've had an outline (well, many versions of outlines) and I've slowly been picking off items from the list and writing them out. It hasn't been very fast or industrious, but this is my hobby, so it needn't be any faster than every-other-weekend-when-I-get-around-to-it.

In any case, I've now got something like 85% of the manuscript drafted, and it's time to start stitching the pieces together. Instead of 200+ files, I've condensed them down to chapters, and the second half of the book I've condensed into one long file. The holes are now obvious and marked with placeholders, and the transitions that stretch between chapters and sections are now made evident. Needless to say, there's still a lot of work to be done.

Part Three, Gameplay, is my current quagmire, as I'm trying to set the entire thing up procedurally instead of as chunks that do not quite work together. I reason that, if the first thing your playgroup should do is sit down and discuss their goals for the game, that should be the first thing in the Gameplay section, before character generation, before how the rules work. If the GM is supposed to prepare the adventure based on the players' expectations and the player characters' themes, that section should go after character generation and before rules. Et cetera. When I'm done, it should be a step-by-step procedure rather than a collection of separate and disparate chunks of rules. Here's hoping.

In the first half of the book, though, the disparate collection of documents forming a collage of information is something that I'm aiming for. I really hope the personality and character of the setting will be expressed through all the voices that I've compiled.

In tangential news, I've decided that I'm just ditching Prussia. They're overshadowed by the other Powers that got to the other planets first, Bismark got hit by a falling meteor, whatever. That, and I've set up everything else in the game for Britain-France-Russia-America-Japan. With Spain and the Dutch in the background. I don't need another freakin faction, and I don't have any place to put them. Additionally, the focus on colonial holdings means that Prussia, who never really got into the colonial game, is a poor fit in any case. Bah. Bah, I say!

Roadmaps and Toolboxes

2005-07-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

So Bankuei of Deep in the Game recently posted about the Roadmap to Play he sees in RPGs. In his terminology, all games are roadmaps to Fun, and some games are good maps that get you there, and other games are not good maps and don't.

I agree with the latter half but not the former half. That is, some games are good maps and take you to Fun, and other games aren't good maps and don't -- but the reason that some games aren't good roadmaps is because they're not roadmaps at all. It's like trying to use a granny smith apple to tell you how to get to Nova Scotia -- and then decrying that the apple is a 'bad map'. Most of the Forge games are roadmap games, because with their eye on making Actual Play hit a Creative Agenda with precision, they are highly didactic, highly focused, and rather explicit. This is great -- it makes really good maps -- but not all games need to be maps.

This ties into what Ben was saying in Brand's blog Yog Shoggoth's Dice, in the Intensity and People You Don't Play With thread. Perhaps we have a little too strong of an emphasis on focus, to the point where the insistence on focus is turning into a predilection for intensity -- and not all games need to be hardcore Agenda X with the volume knob turned to 11. (It occurs to me this is much like my perpetual pet peeve where people conflate precision and accuracy, but that's tangential.)

There is another scheme from which to design a game, not the roadmap but the toolbox. Examples are GURPS, Universalis, HERO, and their ilk. These games basically present the players with long lists of options and lets them do whatever they like with them. There are always house rules and "drift" in these games; in fact it's necessary in order to play them, but this is okay because that's part of playing the game. These games don't tell you what to make with the tools and materials they give you; they let you do whatever you like with them. Play in these games does not begin when the adventure or campaign begins, it begins when the GM and/or players sit down and start making the adventure and characters. In GURPS, with which I have the most familiarity, you can sit down and make vehicles purely for the enjoyment of making vehicles -- who needs to actually roleplay driving around in them?

Toolbox games are more flexible than roadmap games, but also less structured, with fewer guarantees that your actual play will hit your desired agenda. It's much more up to the GM and players to take the tools and build what they want, rather than follow directions to get where they want. Perhaps the game-as-published does not have rules that explicitly support Aspect X that you want to focus on; it's your job to make Aspect X important to your game, either in-game with character decisions and how you narrate, or by making house rules that highlight the things that are important to you. A lot of people dislike toolbox games because they are 'bland' and I think it's this that they are complaining about -- these games do not provide any color (or setting or situation or character), just system.

This sort of game appeals to a certain kind of player, who wants to do things his own way. They don't want to follow a map; they want to build something of their own. GURPSfolk, at least the guys on GURPSnet, are usually highly (and weirdly) creative people who take GURPS off into horizons that other people wouldn't have ever thought of. They play games that have just as much focus on interpersonal relationships or spiritualism as any other game, often creating new game stats and rules to support what they want. That said, the type of player that the toolbox appeals to is not the mainstream player, and this approach does not have the broad-based appeal or instant-gratification that a roadmap game can offer.

A week or so ago I was musing on what gaming offers the player that the player wants, and I think this is one of the things that RPGs can offer, but that RPGs don't necessarily have to offer -- the DIY Fun Offer. This is the sort of game that can advertise 'Imagine Incredible Worlds!' and 'Play Any Character You Like!' on the back cover -- and can do so legitimately. Dogs in the Vinyard and Sorcerer can't (and wouldn't want to) -- they offer something different, something more specific, precise, and focused.

Neither approach is wrong, both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the distinction is, I think, and important one, because the game products offer players different kinds of play experiences. This is not a distinction about Actual Play; this is a distinction about Game Design and the products that a game company or indie developer create. When sitting down to design, this is an important question to ask oneself: are you trying to write up a guided tour, or are you handing the players the keys?

Writing to Serve Five Masters

2005-07-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is endemic to RPG writing, or is idiosyncratic to how I'm writing Full Light, Full Steam, but it struck me as unique to this writing experience. When I write a segment -- especially in the setting half of the book -- I am writing towards a number of different goals, all at once. Say I'm writing, as I was at lunch today, the section for American territory on Mercury. This 500-word section must:

be engaging on its own merits
exemplify the tropes of the genre -- ingenuity, tenacity, and duty
express the setting in general -- steampunk space opera
detail the setting in specific -- Mercury
color the portrayal of a faction of people -- Americans
offer a plot seed that could be expanded into an adventure concept -- rampaging insectoid monsters
attempt to portray prosaically how the game could actually be played mechanically -- die rolls, thematic batteries, handing off narration, et al

Now, I picked up this style of writing RPGs from Tribe 8 (thank you, Hilary, thank you, Brand) and I really really like it, because it squeezes a whole lot of information into very little space. It really packs a punch due to its compressed nature. But god damn is it tough! The only other example I can think of that comes close to this multi-layered writing is mystery and suspense novels where there is a narrative of what appears to be happening and another, hidden narrative of what is actually happening, and there's a couple books actually in the canon that tinker with ambiguity in similar ways (Ulysses, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse 5).

Hopefully, the resulting product won't be too dense to be enjoyable like Ulysses -- I'm hoping for something closer to Catch-22, which is enjoyable to read even if you're not aware of all the elements interacting on first read. I also have this niggling fear that I'm going to exhaust all the potential stories of FLFS in the rulebook -- that latter one isn't very likely, but it haunts the back corners of my mind.

Gaming Firefly

2005-07-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk in the gamer blogosphere about replicating Firefly in a roleplaying game. I loved the show, I'm looking forward to Serenity, but... I'm really skeptical of the allure of playing it. Now, mind, I've only seen half the series (the other half is sitting there on my shelf, but I must play WoW six hours a day), so maybe the entire dynamic of the television show changes or something, but from what I've seen in Jaynestown and Our Dear Mrs Reynolds, the appeal of Firefly is the characters themselves, not the setting.

The setting is... not bland, but it is generic. Archetypal. It is the lovechild of Westerns and Space Opera. It's... not exactly complex. Further, I can't see any instance of play that would game in the same places that the series went. What is there left to do on Hodgson's World (planet in Jaynestown)? Why go back to... whatever planet had the plague in Train Job? The series' primary characters have already been there, done their thing, and left. If the PCs showed up, all they get is sloppy seconds. Any actual play would require the creation of new planets and new settings. Perhaps you keep the Firefly-designation ship, but... that's not much of a setting in and of itself, is it?

It's the characters that make the show shine. It's Mal and his past, it's Inara and her desires and restrictions, it's the Shepherd and his questionable past. Unless you plan on playing the characters themselves, you're not playing Firefly. Playing the characters themselves I will admit is an option, maybe even a viable one, but I don't think that's what people are after.

Of course, I've never seen the point in playing in the Star Wars universe concurrent to the movies, either (KOTOR has shown me the light of playing in other eras). The story that you want to emulate is about the characters -- if you take out the characters, how can you still say you're emulating that story?

The Future Face of Gaming

2005-06-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

Over at Yog Shoggoth's Dice, Brand responded to a challenge from me on how a games company could publish non-Illusionist games and not go bankrupt. The conversation developed from there to begin just touching on the outskirts of marketing issues the likes of which gaming tends to avoid. These are the issues that I had written that post about but Blogger ate.

At present, the 'Generic RPG Marketing Model' goes thusly: Core Book (sometimes Player Book and GM Book) which generates the majority of the revenue, and Supplements which do much worse, but keep the game 'alive' and the Core Book selling. This is as seen in White Wolf, 7th Sea, GURPS, Rifts, et cetera, with a few elaborations (World of Darkness now has two hardcover player books necessary to play). The Generic model tends to assume play will go for years; the supplements are designed to keep the line going for years. Players buy supplements, encourage their friends in the playgroup to buy their own copies of core books, and even replace their original copy of the core book. There is also the 'Indie RPG Marketing Model' which goes thusly: BOOK! The Indie model defaults to play lasting a couple months; these games tend to be more focused and also tend to generate stories that actually end.

The company (or individual) creating the game, if they have any hope to support themselves on the affair (which is another matter entirely; I should post about the RPG Cottage Industry sometime), need people to keep buying books. They don't actually need people to use the books; they don't even need people to play the game (I have a number of games I've never played; you?). They need people buying books now, and more importantly, they need people buying books next quarter, too. They need people to buy the books they have (so they can stop paying warehouse fees) and they need to generate demand for the books that are currently in development. 7th Sea did this by revealing information bit-by-bit, using a bit of legerdemain to suggest that there really was this gigantic vibrant world that was already established, just not in print, as they feverishly created new content to add. Eventually this imploded. Exalted continues offering bigger, badder, and more ludicrous content, stuff that you just have to have / see / kill. It's doubtful that this will implode any time soon. Generally speaking, Indie games don't do any of this, because there is little long-term planning in indie RPG design; even Sorcerer, which has many supplements, is more a succession of chapters that should have been in the original book and are being published separately as afterthoughts.

What is it that game designers (and game companies) offer to customers that will continue to get them to buy those books? It's difficult to get a handle on this, since once you get down to it, the game designer supplies perhaps a fifth of the actual game experience (and I'm being generous). Most supplements are fluff that never actually gets used in the game; the best of these offer color that informs and inspires actual play indirectly, but even then there is very little 'content' being delivered. Good games offer a sort of blueprint for enjoyable social interaction, but this material is almost entirely included in the core book, and once that sells, what more do you have to offer customers? Maybe you have something to offer to that first customer's friend, but that is not the same thing. Oddly, game companies may have more in common with car dealerships and computer salespeople than with people who sell hammers and dry goods.

I'll cogitate on this and post more later; in the mean time, I'll throw it open to whoever happens to be reading: what is it that game designers offer customers that keeps them buying more books? What do they give us that we support them and their families for?

Conflict, FLFS Style

2005-06-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

A more elaborated version of the short notes I posted before; this is (rather obviously) in draft stage.

Conflict

from Full Light, Full Steam, Storymapping Chapter

If all the characters did was sit around the bridge and look at eachother, the game wouldn't be very enjoyable. Something has to happen so that the characters have something to do. That "something" can be external like a pirate attack on a nearby port, or it can be internal, like one of the characters trying to prove her worth as a soldier. It can be provided by the GM or the other players. Whatever its origin and character, this is conflict, and all conflict has two parts. The conflict must engage the characters' desires and there must be a threat or resistence to the fulfillment of those desires.

Pirates attacking a nearby Russian freighter might pique the character's curiousity, but unless one of the characters really likes Russians or really dislikes pirates, it does not immediately engage them and get them to care. Their response may be -- quite legitimately -- "so what?" Making a British freighter, though, appeals to the characters' sense of patriotism and duty; making the ship's captain someone the characters know and respect appeals to their friendship and loyalty; putting the sister of one of the characters on board the attacked ship really gets their attention. The difference is a matter of immediacy: how close to home does the conflict come? Making conflict personal increases character involvement and player enjoyment.

On the other hand, conflict needs teeth. A player interested in playing out the difficulties of serving as a lady officer will be sorely disappointed if her character is surrounded by people who assume she is as competent as any man. If there is no resistence, there is no conflict, and the players' expectation of playing out that situation is not fulfilled. Giving the lady officer a misogynistic rival gives her something to play about whenever she has to deal with him; making her captain paternally patronizing affects what assignments she is given. If the other players portray their characters as often discounting her abilities due to her gender, the conflict is real and no mere window dressing. Conflict is made to be overcome, and so the rival will be bested, the captain's respect will be earned, and the other player characters will come to value the lady officer. If these victories come too easily, though, there is little satisfaction in winning them.

When creating the Storymap, the GM can find conflicts from two sources: from the characters and from the setting.

Conflict from Characters Players give the GM a list of conflicts they'd like to participate in, often without even knowing it. A character's Thematic Batteries can often be plundered for stimuli that will get an enthusiastic reaction. After all, this is what the character is about -- what better way to make conflict so immediate that it strikes at the core of the character? A character with a "Veteran Pirate Hunter" battery will be engaged when conflicts involve pirates -- either hunting them down as he is used to, or being forced to work with them against a greater threat. The character who is a "Mechanical Genius" will sink her teeth into conflicts where she rehabilitates a derelict ship or shuts down a doomsday device.

Whether the players decide on writing one-paragraph or thirty-page character backgrounds, these are often fertile harvesting grounds for conflict. Old enemies, lifelong friends, and family members can make conflicts personal. Unfinished business, long-held ideals, and lingering regrets not only make related conflicts immediate, but escalate the threat, since no one wants to fail again at something they never quite got over. The general tone of a character's background can also inspire conflicts: characters who are rough-and-tumble survivors will take to challenges out in the wilds, and be challenged by social manuevering in cultured salons; xenophile diplomats will enjoy conflicts which put them between their own culture and those they study.

Conflict from the Setting The Solar System is a complex, dynamic, and especially conflicted place. Nationalistic rivalries, imperial ambitions and the struggles of the colonized, the dogma of proselytizing religion, the mysteries of the unknown -- all of these are laid out for you to exploit however you like.

Moreover, playgroups should feel free to deviate from "setting canon" if they can get a better story out of it. The Solar System is presently at peace as described in this book, but a playgroup who wanted to roleplay through a war need only change a few details to get the martial conflicts they desire. Insectile natives of Mercury, bloodthirsty and cruel, can be added if there is any need for them. The only thing to remember is to make sure everyone is aware of the canon changes that will affect their roleplay -- discovering that ant-people rule Mercury and always have can be rather frustrating when you were expecting a friendly port as described in this book!

Running Multiple and Parallel Conflicts Every story needs at least one conflict; most good stories have more than one. The best stories feature conflicts that conflict with eachother! Keeping multiple conflicts current and engaging can be a difficult balancing act, but there are a few techniques to keep things under control and enjoyable. Limit the conflicts being addressed to something manageable, like three or four at a time. Try to find conflicts that appeal to more than one character, even if they may be on opposite sides. You might choose one to be the "primary conflict" and let the others occupy B-plots that flavor the primary focus. Don't be afraid to resolve conflicts; that just lets you introduce a new one to replace it.

The GM is not alone in juggling conflicts. The other players should also be addressing the current conflicts with their characters. This is almost automatic when the conflict is inspired by their characters, which makes conflicts from characters that much more useful. The GM can communicate what other conflicts are being addressed implicitly by focusing attention on pertinent related events, or explicitly by simply declaring them aloud. Good players will play along, and give useful feedback between sessions.

Resolution

2005-06-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

On This is My Blog Ben is going off on Conflict and Task Resolution, which are Forge terms the usefulness of which I am skeptical about. Ben's version of the definitions are "Conflict is what the players care about and Task is what the characters do". He claims they are completely orthogonal and disjointed. There are some major issues with the definitions stated thusly, and to my mind, the fault is in the definitions as they are stated rather than distinctions in actual play.

If "what the players care about" and "what the characters do" aren't intimately connected, what you have is a broken, or at least rather useless, mechanic. This is part of Ben's point, I believe, in that if you want to "save the princess" but all your character sheet and the game's mechanics tell you is if you can swim the moat, slay the dragon, and overcome the sorcerer, but not tell you if you save the princess / resolve the story / win the game, then your system isn't speaking to what you're interested in. One of the flaws in Ben's argument, however, is that his conflict (AKA what the players care about) is more often than not in terms of story, which may or may not be the case.

An illustrative example: recently I recovered my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, and my wife and I play a game called "Beat 'em Up". In this game, we create characters (since that is half the enjoyment of the game) and then fight. There is no story. What we the players care about is, roughly, making a neat (or ridiculous) character and winning the fight. My guerrilla warrior chicken beats her pommeranian mechanic (see what I mean about ridiculous?). Prima facie, Ben would likely say that TMNT:OS (roughly analogous, mechanically, to Palladium FRPG, Robotech, and Rifts) has no Conflict Resolution, only Task Resolution. But when my wife and I only want to make characters and fight, that's all we care about, and so by the above definitions, the (terrible, terrible) combat rules are Conflict Resolution.

As I said in comments on This is my Blog, I don't think the conflict/task resolution distinction is a useless one, but I also don't think it's a universally useful one, either. Nor do I think that any specific resolution system is fundamentally one or the other; we can use the combat system in TMNT:OS for piddly in-character action, or we can make it the focus of the story.

Conflict is great and all, really, and I'm glad that gaming is turning its attention to conflict because it can be a very useful tool for specific kinds of play. Conflict isn't the end-all be-all of all gaming, however. While Ben is correct that conflict appears in nearly all forms of roleplaying, the same holds true for characters, settings, situations, and monty python jokes. One could define conflict very very broadly as "what the characters care about" but... we already have a term for that: creative agenda. Conflict is something smaller, more specific, and more precise.

When I get home I'll excerpt the portion of Full Light, Full Steam that talks about conflict and harnessing it for your game. In the mean time, I'll outline the basic ideas. Conflict consists of two parts: (a) something a character wants, and (b) something that is threatening that outcome from happening. Resolving the conflict(s) of a story is the focus, and in some cases the goal, of a story. To reduce the resolution of conflict into a die roll (however complex) unconnected to the details of the story saps the vital energy out of that story.

Ben gives an example of play where the task resolution is completely unrelated to the conflict resolution; a young knight tries to save the princess and fails repeatedly to do anything towards that goal, but in the end saves the princess, anyway. Were I playing in that game, I would feel dreadfully cheated. Nothing I or my character did affected the outcome at all! If I wanted to experience Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I'd read it. That sort of set up is fine for a story where the reader's perspective is neither authorial nor bound by one character; the revelation of events is enjoyable because that's what I'm after. In a role playing game where I am an active participant in the story, I want to be, well, an active participant in the story. I don't want to play through the GM's short story aspirations.

Perhaps this is the distinction I've been groping for: "what is important to the players" is a concern of creative agenda; every specific instance of actual play will have a different emphasis, if only slightly. The mechanics written out in a game rulebook, on the other hand, are set. Every specific instance of actual play using that system will be using the same exact system. Unless the written rules are only good for one instance of play, the encoded resolution mechanic must be independent of creative agenda, must be tools useful for supporting more than one approach to the game. Any given resolution system is not "task resolution" or "conflict resolution". They are resolution systems that can be applied to tasks or to conflict, depending on how your playgroup uses them.

Now certainly some systems are better geared towards tasks than conflicts, and vice-versa. There is also the important distinction between system-as-printed and system-as-played. In most cases, the system-as-played includes a lot of other mechanisms like player negotiation, power struggles, GM credibility, and so on: social interactions, but mechanical nonetheless. How or whether the conflict gets resolved can be stated explicitly in the encoded rules, or it may arise out of the unwritten rules the game runs by. Rules-as-written may be tossed out if they don't do what the playgroup wants at the moment, or may be amended or shoehorned (get five successes and you catch him). But however it turns out in the end, the rules-as-written are simply tools that are used as the playgroup sees fit; they are no more task or conflict resolution than my old computer is an excellent paperweight.

Yay, Blogger!

2005-06-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

I just lost an entire post on Marketing Roleplaying.

Note to self: Do not hit the 'Recover post' button.

The Freeform Setting

2005-06-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

So to switch tracks, I just put the other project into Playtesting. The other project is a card game by the name of Dynasty, in which the players control a ruling house of nobles and use warfare, scandal, and marriage to build a Dynasty that will someday ascend to the Imperial Throne (and win the game). One of the things that intrigues me about the game is that is generates its own setting, and does so differently in each game. To whit:

There are Noble cards, Land cards, Title cards (and Action cards, which don't really bear on this discussion). Nobles have first names on the card, and you put a family name chip on top to make their full name. So the "Phillipe" card with the "Montego" chip becomes "Phillipe Montego". Nobles typically survive about five turns, which is maybe a quarter of a full game -- you play through generations -- and the deck gets reshuffled, so the Phillipe card may resurface later. He may be in some other player's hand, or in yours, he may get another family chip (this is Phillipe Ettinbourge) or he may not (this is Phillipe Montego II). He is, however, a different guy who has the same first name and the same characteristics as the first iteration (in Phillipe's case, a tendancy to lose his wife). But a different guy.

Your nobles accrue Lands and Titles. The Lands are divided into a couple regions, with a few extra Lands unconnected to any specific region. The Lands have little flavor texts on them, and their game-effects imply some character to the specific area. There are Faithful or Infidel lands, Seaside and Landlocked lands, and so on, but they're all part of the Empire. But there is no map of the Empire. There is no established relationship between the Antilla Highlands and the Biblon Plateau. Are they next to eachother? Are they miles and miles distant? If one Noble holds both Lands, are they part of a consolidated holding or farflung satellites?

While the details of geography aren't written anywhere, in each game a sort of phantom sense of where things are starts to emerge. The Schullen Nobles control most of Carnathia as well as Biblon, so they're all up thereabouts, for instance. Other cards, such as the Biblon Plateau which is only useful if you have lands in other Regions, which it 'connects' via 'the High Road', actively encourage this sort of thing. At least in my mind (and this may be different for someone who isn't the game designer), a continent seems to distill out of hardly anything at all.

The Titles, too, are accrued and passed down through generations, and seem to elaborate on themselves to create a social context within the game, where those sneaky Schullen have had the Count Palatine who is also the Spymaster for generations, and they keep assassinating the Archduke, whoever happens to be holding the title. Again, the details sort of accumulate and stick together creating a semblance of substance.

The character of the Nobles, Lands, and even the Titles are very intentionally archetypal. Phillipe is a rake; the Carnathian Valley is a Versailles wannabe; the Spymaster is... well, the Spymaster. So when these archetypal elements are flung together "randomly" through the game, and in increasing order by intentional play, it's easy for the players to grok: Phillipe the Spymaster in Carnathia Valley is the vice-ridden intriguer in a den of luxury. As more events happen through the course of the game, the details just sort of snowball, so Phillipe's son (the mother Maria left in a huff) is Benjamin the warlord, branded a Bastard (an Action card) by those scheming Ettinbourge, so is off conquering the Infidel lands because he won't be able to inherit anything from his father. And take a step further back and you can start to typify families and Dynasties and the Empire itself: Carnathia is a place that is constantly being fought over, while Antilla is a haven of peace due to the robust line of succession of its rulers. This emporer (an NPC, more or less) was good and just and kept his nobles in check, that emporer lost all his holdings to court politics and is nothing but a figurehead.

It's a quirky little card game that takes an hour or so to play, but each time a new phantom empire is conjured out of hardly anything at all. Even the Families, which have no game effect whatsoever, they're just chips, take on personalities. And it's a different personality every time, for nearly everything. Phillipe is always a rake, sure, but when he's the Captain of the Dauntless he's a very different rake than when he is the Archbishop! Some Empires are august, serene things full of high purpose and honest, muted competition; others are fucking bloodbaths where nobles are assassinated and the Archbishop has legitimized-bastard children who inherit his lands.

I like the card game; I think it's a nice, complete experience all to itself. It's in playtest now to iron out kinks, but it is, in terms of scope and focus and content, 'done'. But I love the phenomenon of the players of the game cooperatively generating a whole world together, complete with geography, social context and even a rudimentary economics. And because I'm a nutbar who can't leave well enough alone, I keep thinking of how this can be applied to a somewhat grander project, a roleplaying game with no set setting, just the tools, parts, and pieces with which to make the setting cooperatively. I know Ron Edwards has made a GM-less fantasy game somewhat like this (but the details bandied about weren't specific enough for the sense I'm going for), and I understand Dogs in the Vineyard has some sort of cooperative town-creation rules (I pre-empt Brand mentioning it) that seem similar to the ship-creation rules I'm putting in Full Light, Full Steam. What I want, however, is a world-generation set of rules that the whole table does together, and then the players pick up individual roles within the world and roleplay that out.

The Next Project is a detail-oriented Fantasy(ish) game that tries to provide crunchy rules for all interactions on a par with how combat is usually provided in the 'typical RPG'. Whether or not a freeform setting would complement or detract from that design goal I'm not sure about. This may need to wait until the Next Next Project, or it may pre-empt the Next Project until later (in all truth, I suspect the Next Project is a phantasm on the horizon that is quite content to stay right there indefinately). As it is, it's just pecking at my brain, prodding at me to take the gestalt-consensus creation of every fictional world and make that process explicit and a focus of the game, rather than an implied and assumed (and unsupported) part of the foundation.

Anyway, lunch hour's over.

The Book and the Game

2005-06-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

So I am writing a Role Playing Game called Full Light, Full Steam in which you play officers in a Steampunk Victorian Space Navy. It's more elaborate than that, but really, that's all the context you need for the ensuing discussion. At present, I have about 80% of the book written, and I am trying to structure the section which describes putting together a game and making characters. I have tried throughout the book to make the entire thing 'safe' to read by all players in the game; there are no GM Secrets or anything to that effect. The problem I am coming up with now is a rather simple, but frustrating question, that being: who is reading the book?

I always read the book of the game that I'm playing. I usually read cover to cover. I find the game mechanics sections as engaging as the setting sections. I enjoy the experience of the entire game developing in my mind's eye. I am, in other words, something of a freak. I know some other people might read like this (I'm looking at you, Brand), but on the whole, I have the distinct impression that most players do not. Some may only want to read the setting; some folks who aren't verbal/linguistic learners want the system to be explained to them by a real person with concrete examples of dice in their hands. Some people just don't read the books but still want to play the game. There's nothing wrong with these approaches; they're how people prefer to approach their games, and I'm not going to tell them that they're enjoying their hobby incorrectly. It does, however, make writing the game a trifle difficult, since I cannot make assumptions about what people have read.

This very well may be the genesis of that hoary old tradition, the split Player's Guide and GM Handbook, the assumption or realization that there are some gamers who want to read all the information they can, and some gamers who just want bits and pieces. The info-gluttons become the GMs and the rest become "players". Which... doesn't really do it for me. Being a self-declared info glutton, I would like to play every once in a while, and I don't want my only option to do so rely on my ability to find a bigger info-glutton than me. Not to mention there are a whole lot of info-gluttons out there who obsess on the info-glut and lose focus on the story and the game (I'm pretty sure Rifts is a good example of this happening to a game designer). Info-gluttons are not necessarily GMs, and moderate readers are not necessarily only "players".

So I said up in the first paragraph that you just needed the broad strokes of my game and I lied. It's also pertinent that I am trying to dissolve the distinction between the GM and the "players". In Full Light, Full Steam, everybody at the table is a player, GM included. The GM does not "create the adventure" nor is the GM "in charge of the story". These things are done together; the GM is responsible for implementing what the group as a whole designs. Consequently, the Character Generation section of the book is within the larger Campaign Generation chapter called The First Session. In the First Session, all the players get together and talk about what they want to play, what they want to see in the game, what their comfort zones are, et cetera. Then they make characters, together. Then they create elements of the setting, together. Then the GM prepares to run the game based on what the whole group has created and talked about.

Here is where I run into my problem, however. The players all sit down for the First Session, right? Envision that in your mind. Take on my role as author of the book that describes the game that they are about to talk about and play. Now ask yourself the question: who among the players has actually read the book? Supposedly they are going to talk about the game, right? Supposedly in order to talk about something you need to have some idea what you are talking about. Assuming that all players have read the entire book is... somewhat ludicrous. And yet they need to have a productive conversation. Herein lies the rub.

Really, this is what you need to know, setting-wise, to create a character and play the game: "It's 1890 or so, Victorian-era humanity has colonized the inner solar system using etherships. There are ancient mystical Martian and primitive Venerian aliens, and the greatest human nations, the Solar Powers, are all rivals for the most profitable colonies. You're going to play British sailors." From there, anyone who has ever gamed can have a profitable conversation about the game they'd like to play in that setting. The only thing is, they'd be dragging in all of their assumptions from prior games, primarily that the GM is going to create some big adventure for them to knock about in. Which just isn't the case. The missing pieces about how Full Light, Full Steam is supposed to play are far more complicated, tied in with the game mechanics and social contract issues and... yeah, complex. The broad strokes of it are possible to lay out, but the devil is in the details and the writer and editor in me screams, "support with details!".

Perhaps the solution is to begin the First Session with a monologue like this, delivered by the GM (who, it is assumed, has read the majority of the book): "I'd like to play this game. It's sort of different than usual roleplaying games, because the GM doesn't hoard all the power and the rest of the players get to do a lot of the things that the GM usually does. Everybody helps put together the setting and develop important NPCs and sometimes they even design or narrate parts of the adventure. It's 1890 or so, Victorian-era humanity has colonized the inner solar system using etherships. There are ancient mystical Martian and primitive Venerian aliens, and the greatest human nations, the Solar Powers, are all rivals for the most profitable colonies. You're going to play British sailors." If the GM stands up and abdicates traditional GM power to start the session off, how does that affect the rest of the First Session? Is saying "everybody helps create the setting" and following it up with a summary of that setting going to encourage or discourage active participation? Will it inspire them to think about it in new ways, or will they immediately think that they're being offered a sham and all the power will remain in the GM's (and book's) hands?

The Book is not the Game. This is something that you have to tell yourself over and over and over as you write the Book that describes the Game. I am creating the Book. I am not creating the Game: that will be done by players, some of whom I will never meet. There will be Games created that I will never experience or even hear about. The Book isn't completely unnecessary -- well it is, technically speaking, but in practical terms it's convenient for players to have as a baseline, reference, and guideline. My influence on the Game is wholly indirect, like operating waldoes to build something on the moon. Or better yet, operating waldoes to direct moon-men via sign-language to build something of their own. The players -- some of them, at least -- will read the Book, follow the directions that they like, and play their Game. Perhaps it's hubris on my part, wanting to control their Game, but I want the Book to be more than a description of a setting and rules for rolling dice. It needs to be a description of a functional social construct which can create an enjoyable evening or two. The only question is how to ensure that that social construct will be created when not everyone is reading the blueprints.

First Bloggitude

2005-06-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

You know why I started this blog?

So I could comment in other people's blogs, because they're not thoughtful enough to post in a LiveJournal where I already have an account.

That's how it spreads, man. It's viral, just like zombies.