Theorifesto: What I want in RPGs, and why
Background:
I think a whole lot about rpgs and related games, but it's been pretty hard for me to articulate exactly what it is I like. After participating in yet another rowdy, pissy flame-fest thread on RPGnet, I decided to turn over a new leaf and try to put together a post about what I do like.
So why a goofy word like Theorifesto. First and foremost, I've said before that Ron Edwards' well known theory essays were more of a manifesto than theory, and that they're better understood as a complex argument meant to explain his own preferences in gaming _and_ encourage other like minded people to produce games that play to those preferences.
Frankly, I'm about to do the same, and I figure fair is fair, so I'll call this what it is, something neither fish nor foul.
The background thinking ( or theory or pondering or whatever):
Position: The primary draw of roleplaying games is Play-Pretend
Play-pretend is a fundamntally enjoyable activity, and, as social creatures, humans enjoy sharing activities they enjoy with others.
As children, play-pretend is an accepted part of life and is not only considered socially acceptable, but genuinely positive. At minimum, play-pretend is seen as a way for children to creatively practice in roles they will assume in the adult world.
As we grow older, however, such play-pretend activities become less socially acceptable. Other activities, like competition or artistic pursuits, however _are_ still highly valued.
Sadly, the lack of opportunity for adults to play-pretend in a socially acceptable fashion means that adults also lack the chance to try out different roles, or test ideas, or do any of a myriad of activities that simple play-pretend allows children to engage in, and grow by doing so.
Position: Dungeons and Dragons accidently became a way for a huge number of adults and young adults to engage in play-pretend.
The accident here is not in the play-pretend part ( although I don't think the original designers started with that goal, either) but in the huge number of adults and young adults part.
While D&D had firm roots in miniatures wargaming ( certainly a play-pretend activity if one ever existed), it sparked...something more. By the simple opening up of a game to human interpretation, both for the players and the referee/game-master, it kicked open the door to adult play-pretend.
When that activity burst out of the miniatures gaming scene, and into the wider population, the result was an astounding fad success.
What is interesting to me, however, is the draw it had, not just for gamers or game-players, but for an extremely wide audience of people who were deeply fond of speculative activities. Science-fiction and fantasy fans were quite drawn in, but certainly the audience included any number of other peope who also shared that imagineering impulse. Watching Han Solo on the screen was great fun, but pretending to be him ( or Conan, or Grey Mouser, or Michael Corleone, or...)was a greater draw still.
And people grabbed it with both hands.
In fact, the draw was so great, that nearly any activity that seemed close, anything involving older children, young adults, or adults that involved play-pretend ( outside of therapy) got tagged as "Dungeons and Dragons" by the wider society.
Position: The influx of a new "population" into the gaming hobby fundamentally changes the way people approach the activity.
Because the fad success of D&D grabbed a whole new audience, the nature of the hobby changed. That change would not be apparent for a very long time. The early adopters ( and designers and writers) still often had a solid footing in the wargaming community, and its practices. Early RPGs still very much had trappings of those wargames, throughout the 80s and even into the present time.
The way newer entrants, however, approached the activity was different. A struggle (of sorts) ensued between those more comfortable with the modelling of cause and effect, and those who favored a more consensus based, group imagination activity. The differences appear early on,and for the folks more interested in the second approach, ideas like " We only rolled the dice once the whole time!!!" become a badge of success.
Even older, earlier adopters get in on this. As the 80s and early 90s come to a close, rules are becoming less restrictive and more malleable. Modelling of cause and effect, if not gone, is starting to take a solid punch to the jaw in favor of more loose, interpretive approaches. First this comes as advice, but later we see some attempts to officialize these practices.
Position: Vampire the Masquerade is a solid, identifiable step in the direction of the interpretive approach to roleplaying activity.
VtM cannot be said to be the first game to take this approach. Rather, it stands out as perhaps the greatest success that incorporated those ideas already in circulation, and put them back out into the hands of a population desiring some authoritative voice sanctioning those practices.
In terms of timing, VtM reached the market almost a decade after the success of D&D as a widespread fad in the greater population. For those players (like myself), who had begun the journey with D&D (but not as a hobbyist gamer), VtM was terribly, terribly adult! Now, playing this, we were doing something artistic! This was not a simple child's game of play-pretend, but something shooting for a result valid, even if upon the fringes, in the adult world. And we were breaking with stodgy (gaming) tradition, too, the bread and butter of the rebellious teen and early twenty-something. Brilliant! as they say in the Guinness advertisements.
Interestingly, the Forge-Indie school of games seems to often take this urge to be very artistic to an even greater degree than VtM and its close kindred. While it is often seen in opposition to the trends consolidated by the White Wolf games, I personally see it as a continuation of those trends, for good or ill.
Position: The reaction to the inversion of value placed on play-pretend by post-D&D-as-fad gamers versus the greater society has lead to an over-envaluation of officialized rules/methods by those gamers, and an emphasis on tying the activity to more socially accepetable activities like artistic pursuits or competition.
Gamer-shame, in other words.
Culturally, linguistically, socially, we simply lack the means of describing the simple joy of play-pretend with the sole purpose of enjoying the activity as itself. I have even engaged in apology in this essay, noting the value of play-pretend as a tool for exploration. In the greater society, we write off the enjoyment of "escapist" activities like films and books, downplay its value as human beings as if it were some shameful thing to be enjoyed anonymously and, most certainly, singly.
Unfortunately, RPGs don't work like that. So, in the pursuit of some sort of societal validation for our simple enjoyment, we stack on and tack on those bits that appear to mitigate against this societal rejection. If a activity results in an artistic product, we may say that we have succeeded. If it results in a solid win or loss based upon our skill and luck and perseverance, we may say we have "won", and point to our struggle to reach that point and all of our efforts to hone our skills to do so.
The patina of respectability is thin and unconvincing. No matter how much validation we find in the challenge or the artistic pursuit from those not directly participating, it pales in comparison to the joy of the moment experienced with our friends and fellow-gamers. Our language is lacking, but the enjoyment, the benefits are real.
The Games I want to see made:
I said earlier that this was a manifesto of sorts, so I'll lay the call to arms out now.
Methods that inspire
The mechanics are secondary. A game-book, product or whatever must grab me and force me to admit that I want to play-pretend, like that, right now! A four-hundred page book doesn't do this, nor does a 36 page book filled with esoteric methods. An art book can. So can ten sheets of easy-to-read info.
Consensus is King
Competition isn't. Play-Pretend is functional with a huge helping of consensus, and methods only need to cover the time when differences occur and are not easily and quickly resolvable. Mechanical models are usually unlikely to provide this resolution, and multiple models or complex ones are especially bad at it. The optimal methods are ones that isolate the different options, then quickly return the activity to the more normative state of consensus.
Challenges and artistry are important flavors, but secondary to Play-pretend
Either of these urges is wonderful, and playing to them may be very satisfying, and provide us with more readily understandable ways to convey our experience to those who didn't have a chance to play with us. But neither are primary, and our rules and methods need not give an over-emphasis to either one.
Real people, real enjoyment
Play-pretend, imaginieering, is easy. Roleplayers are not special snowflakes for their ability to do this. Rather, any specialness or peculiarity is due to the fact that we _do_ do this. For too long, RPGs ( and other forms of adult play-pretend, like wargames) have been limited by the arcane and specialized knowledge needed to enact the activity. Gamer-shame has put up a shield, protective but limiting, and it needs to come down.
Methods should be in place to make play-pretend easy, not hard
Whether to start the activity off or to cover differences in what should happen, the methods should be easy to understand and enact. No particularly specialized knowledge, whether of setting or mathematical probability should be required. Methods and artifacts that ease the engagement with play-pretend are to be encouraged, those that interefere are suspect.
Equal participation, equal authority, equal responsibility
Methods should start participants on a level playing field, limited only by the urge to engage actively. While a division of labor, in the RPG-classic GM/Player divide _can_ produce wonderful results, it can equally easily produce an onerous, unpleasant situation for all of the participants. Better to give all players and equal share of input and responsibility at the beginning, and allow local, group-distinct variations to arise as seems natural to those involved.