De-geeking role-playing games

[benlehman]

This comes up, maybe, every month or so in the online conversations I follow. "role-playing games need to be less geeky!"

I just wanted to record here that I think that the entire idea is ridiculous for the following reasons:

1) Perceptions of role-playing games by our culture at large are generally positive: that they are fun, but very time-consuming and potentially obsession forming. Which is about accurate.

2) Since, oh, 1996, geeky things have been hella cool. Hello gamers? I know that you live under a rock, unexposed to the culture at large. But srsly.

I'm posting here because I don't want to have to write this same post, like, 80 times only to have it fall (again) on totally deaf ears.

Comments

Re: I agree with you, of course

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Oh, you have one other stat:

I am famous to this many people:

It starts at 1. It can get as high as 12

The first one is your mother.

The game has two parts. Luges and Ordinary Life

Luges:
You don't actually play a race. You just play the aftermath of a race, where you all review what happened over cheap beer at a guy's house. The guy, like, puts up with you for some reason, but isn't terribly happy that you're there.

Who won? Everyone draw a card. Highest card won. That person gets one prestige! About which more later. If more than one person has highest, it was a photo finish and you're arguing about it. No one gets the prestige.

So, each person gets to ask each other person a question. Which is basically about how they dealt with some tricky obstacle of the course, or about how they wiped out some time, or whatever. Basically about something that they did on the course. This requires then to use one of their attributes to answer. So you're like "oh, it totally reminded me of the time when ..." that's history. Etc. Each questioner determines what attribute you use to answer, but you can choose to force an answer with another attribute, in which case you take a penalty.

Then you see how your answer is received. If you used the questioner's suggested attribute, draw a card. If you used your own, draw two cards and take the highest.

Compare the card to your attribute. If it is equal or lower, you gain one prestige. If it is a joker, you screw up your thing and lose a prestige if you had one to lose.

Shoot the shit until everyone has asked someone else one question.

Then you try to convert your prestige into fame. Draw cards, one at a time, for each point of prestige. Is it higher than your present fame? If so, add one to fame. If not, discard it. When you've finished this your prestige goes to zero.

Then you have to deal with daily life. You have three things you want. These can be things like:
1) Get into community college.
2) Ask the hot girl at the club on a date.
3) Move out of my mom's basement.

etc.

Have a scene where you try to do one of your things. Draw three cards and compare to an appropriate attribute. If all of them are lower, you succeed!

If you are the most famous street luger, you may use your fame instead of an attribute. If there's a tie, no one can.

If you accomplish all three of your things, you win! You're happy.

You can also decide to drop out of street luging. In this case, you don't get to hang out with the guys anymore. Each time you miss a race, your fame drops by one. However, when you do other things, you only draw one card to compare to your attribute, rather than three.