Thinking about RPGs

[benlehman]

When I wrote Polaris, in the back of it, in the influences section, there were three games which no one outside of a very small group of people had heard about before, or since: Vidi Aquam, Threshold, and the Great Game.

These were campaigns run in my college gaming group. My college gaming group had a history and a tradition of inventing new systems, from scratch, to run their one game. It also had a bunch of other traditions (metaphysical stripteases, for instance), but those are perhaps beside the point.

These were creations that were intensely aware of their own audience, and did not reach beyond them. They were what they were, which was a means for a GM / designer to express his creative vision and for the players/participants to experience and channel that vision to the audience, which was the rest of the gaming group as a whole.

I've been thinking about this because I've been thinking more about design, and what I'm doing it for, and why, and audience. What Chris is writing about here, to some extent, as well as some other stuff. Story Games has been going through an orgy of design-for-forum-status which, as always, I find aesthetically abominable, but it does make one think about these things.

Also making me think is that I have become isolated from a lot of the previous people I depended on for creative support. I used to have a pretty wide group of people I drew on for support, but many of them (Clinton, TonyLB) have totally disappeared, and others (Emily) have moved on to doing other things which I can't fault them for but are of little interest to me particularly. The deplorable cultus around the more fauxmous people (Ron, Vincent), has gotten extra-deplorable of late, so deplorable that I really have a hard time dealing with it enough to communicate with them. I have many game design friends in Seattle but I have a hard time talking about my problems with them, for some reason.

But I think ultimately it comes down, for me, to a crisis of audience. Polaris was a necessary game, speaking to people like me who needed that game, and its relationship to Amber and Nobilis (and, as it turns out, Ars Magica? Who knew.) It is awesome and great and it has spawned an excellent sub-game. I'm proud of it. Bliss Stage, likewise, knows what it's audience is, and has found it more or less. But I don't really have a pressing sense of audience, a pressing need for the creation to occur, and so basically my design is long and fiddly and doesn't work. The two short games I've written recently (XSl and Clover) are written for specific people, which is a nice trick, but I don't know if the muse-model is sustainable in the long run in terms of role-playing game design, which demands a community (not a "community" in the incredibly crappy way that people talk about the "Forge community" or the "Story Games community" but just a group of people that plays games together.)

Here's another part, also about audience: When I wrote Polaris I could write to gamers as a whole, because I didn't really have a sense of gamers as a whole, and so I could project my own experiences onto that. When I wrote Bliss Stage, I could go "here, here's role-playing! It's fun!" and that was great. Now I feel an intense sense of doubt about that. There's enough problems with gaming as a whole (the racism, particularly, but also the way that, due to the cell-structure of RPGs, this sort of unfounded prejudice is extra-hard to root out) that I feel uncomfortable even introducing people to it, although it is fun, because it has such serious problems. I don't want to say to my non-gaming friends "here's gaming, it's cool!" because while it is, I know I'm inviting them into a socially toxic environment. So that's a strong demotivator as well.

Ultimately, the question here is: "So what?" I can get creative fulfillment out of doing other things as well, like fiction writing or even academic writing. If there's no immediate audience for a game design, then why design a game? A crisis of audience needn't be a crisis of life.

Still bugs me, though.

Comments

[opticalbinary.livejournal.com]

Why not write a game for non-gamers that expressly is designed to create a non-toxic environment?

Think about old ladies who own Nintendo DSes and people who've never played Halo but like playing Wii bowling with their friends/siblings/kids.


Why can't you be Nintendo instead of the dude who makes stuff for Xbox Live?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Because that's *hard*

yrs--
--Ben

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

By which I mean: I would like to do that, but doing it without a serious support network is probably not going to happen.

yrs--
--Ben

[amnesiack.livejournal.com]

You're free to consider me the immediate audience for the Ninja Game, if it helps, because I want it.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I don't suppose you're willing to confront the unsoluable mechanical problems with me at some point?

[redcrosse.livejournal.com]

Wow; I have a hard time imagining Vidi as an inspiration for Polaris; still, cool. I guess I can see a certain purgatorial tone to Polaris, if I squint at it hard enough.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

It's not exactly a direct inspiration. Vidi was like a tone-poem. Before that, I didn't know you could do that sort of thing with an RPG. Polaris occupies the same genre, although the content is different.

[evilmagnus]

It also had a bunch of other traditions (metaphysical stripteases, for instead), but those are perhaps beside the point.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaaa.

Yes. But it was fun.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I would have just liked a little bit more metaphysical nipple, as it were. Too often it was like "fully-clothed, fully-clothed, fully-clothed, TOTALLY NAKED."

Meh.

Three Days Hence

[graypawn.livejournal.com]

Three days before you left i wrote a post for my own LJ that was basically a resignation letter from Gaming and Game Design. I published it, but only for a handful of people. I was basically asking them to tell me to stop. I needed to hear someone say, "No, don't give up."

Because i felt like i was talking to no one. Like any audience i might have had in the past was really just a group of supportive friends, and anyone that might hear me now would not listen for a Game, but would reject my series of theories.

Something is going weird here. I'm not an Indie Gamer. I never had to worry about forums or posting until i moved to Seattle. Now all my game work is done on Wikis and my playtesting is mostly discussions of theory and not actually gaming. I miss the days when i used to Game.

I don't know what to tell you. All i can say is that i feel like the Indie Gaming scene has a strange twisted-ness to it. And i'm still trying to figure it out. I'm a late-comer to this party, though, so keep explaining to me what's up. I'm listening. Confused, but listening.

Re: Three Days Hence

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Play more games. I'd not worry about the internet, were I you.

I'd definitely not worry about being an Indie Gamer

I'd probably not worry about being a Game Designer.

[relevance.livejournal.com]

My NYC group, by the way is about to try a Polaris run. Any suggestions or errata you'd recommend?

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I have better rules for more than four players, now.

Also, an interesting game results if you require that "but only if..." and "and furthermore..." statements must be in some way tied to the original statement (at the judgment of the person making the statement, of course.)

So, like, no "you cut the demon's head off but only if you don't love your wife anymore." Unless the demon has, like, emotion killing blood or something.

You don't have to do that, but having a discipline around these things probably makes for a better game.

yrs--
--Ben

[yurodivuie.livejournal.com]

Audience is tricky; I know what you mean. I can't make stuff in a vacuum. But stop by if you want to talk design; not that I have credibility or experience, just enthusiasm.

That's sort of why I'm working on the stuff I'm working on; personal enthusiasm with myself as the intended audience (that and the fact that many people around me were doing it). I can see how that could be a limited resource for longterm commitment across multiple games.

But I feel like there is definitely a scene of sorts that is a subset of the indie scene that seems to have similar goals as myself (or perhaps share my own limitations?) which is a benefit. There's a feeling that certain people are working in similar veins. But many of them are distant, and most of them are actually successful designers, whereas I am still an aspirant, so there's a bit of a boundary in my discussions since I don't really feel like I can come to the conversation as an equal.

The cult-status thing is a bit odd, but kind of related to what I just said, ha; I don't really have the attention span for forums beyond a week or so, so I'm luckily shielded from its excesses, I guess.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

As for talking in person, I extend my offer to Joe to you.

I'm thinking about what exactly I'm lacking in terms of talking about design.

most of them are actually successful designers, whereas I am still an aspirant, so there's a bit of a boundary in my discussions since I don't really feel like I can come to the conversation as an equal.

This is a problem. Perhaps it's the problem.

[tigerbunny-db.livejournal.com]

I can see that. I kind of went through a similar crisis on the small-scale myself not too long ago related to gaming, of the "the creative activity I want to be doing, I can do, but only with people I don't like as people; OR I can do a closely related but ultimately not as fulfilling kind of play with people I genuinely enjoy spending time with". To be honest, I'd be happier if the social structure around this hobby was more like the one that games like Polaris or Bliss Stage speak to... but it's not, and creating that social structure + combining it with "recreational story-jamming" is some damned heavy lifting.

So of course, I'm now finally sitting down to play one of your games with people I really genuinely like as people... about the time I figured that wouldn't be happening any time soon.

Creativity is personal. Do it for you, not for someone out there that you don't know. Or do it for friends. Or do it as a gift to the world. But don't do it because you think you have some duty to, or for want of something better to do.

Thanks for the games.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I'm not sure if "create a new social structure from scratch" is a good step 1.

[nekoewen.livejournal.com]

Despite their potential usefulness, I'm increasingly finding online forums to inevitably have a certain level of toxicity, usually in proportion to their size, and over the past year or so I've had to swear of several forums and other sites (like Reddit and Digg) because it's far too easy to let myself get stressed out over things that don't matter. I don't think the kind of toxic social environment you speak of is particularly unique to gaming. However, I think when I have talked to my non-gamer friends about RPGs, there's always been a subtext of "If you want to give this a try, do it with us because unlike a lot of people out there we don't suck."

Although I enjoy getting attention online more than I probably should, I've never really been able to even contemplate designing games with some particular audience in mind. Mostly I just make stuff that I think will be fun for me to play with my friends, and then hope for the best. OTOH I'm pretty sure that having more and more experienced and varied people to talk to about my games would help tremendously.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Hey, Ewen? See how fun for me to play with my friends is an audience?

yrs--
--Ben

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

I guess it's kind of interesting to me. I agree with you on all the issues regarding both larger gamerdom and the indie crowd as well, but I guess I have no problem introducing friends to playing or still plugging away at designing stuff.

The first part, because if I don't introduce people I like, then my play crowd option limits down, possibly to the toxic crowd. Also because my social circles are up enough to understand that an activity might be great even if the crowd around it is sucky. (also see: Martial Arts).

The second part, I guess, is more goals and motivations. Since I got away from the indie crowd really, my design goals are clearer: I'm making the games I want to play because no one else has made them yet.

I'm not feeling pressured by the random crowd and their "Get it out now", "No, write more theory for me", "ZOMG! Stop trying to be all PC and politicize my Krystallnacht Harry Potter RPG" etc. I can just focus on what I want to right now.

Is it more that the idea of game design doesn't appeal, or the kind of people/behaviors you're seeing, or something else that's bugging you? (and if you don't know, that's cool too.)

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the more I think about this problem, the more I realize it's about not having a functional community of design, on top of all the audience stuff.

Apparently I'm not good at designing alone. Glad that you are, though (it's good for me if you write games.)

[kiddens.livejournal.com]

I'm going to make a suggestion here that is probably impractical and which doesn't account for differences between our life experiences, but hopefully you can find something in it which you can apply to your own life for the better.

The suggestion basically is to consider kids as a potential audience and to help you get "back to basics" with game design issues.

My personal experience has been that you can teach a lot of the "complex" board games and card games to kids starting at about 10 years of age. I've regularly taught Puerto Rico, Citadels, and similar games to kids at camp. While I can't grab the attention of everyone in the group, if the kids want to play games, they're usually very happy to try new and challenging game designs. This is the age group where Magic and Pokemon have thrived, after all. I generally have found that games are more "dummed down" for adults than for school-aged kids.

It's also a good age group for role playing games. I've less experience with this myself, but I've had several colleagues over the years who have done simple tabletop and live action roleplaying with campers. While this has usually been targeted at 13 years old and up, they've always said the experience was rewarding. It was especially satisfying when the content of the roleplaying allowed the kids to explore concepts relevant to their lives in a safe environment.

While I didn't test any of it on the campers, I generally found that the camp / "working with kids" mindset was excellent last summer for designing the system for my Smokey Harbor game. Despite having responsibilities nearly every hour of the day, I got more game design done there than I did anyplace else.

So, how could you make this work for you? There must be some organization you could get involved with in Seattle which would be happy to have you play games with kids. Maybe for an afternoon a couple times a month. You can play whatever the kids want at first and observe what does and doesn't work for them. In time, you could bring some designs of your own.

It's probably too late for this summer, but if you really want to dive into this idea, my camp sometimes runs specialty sessions where an expert comes in and spends six hours a day teaching something to the a group of 6-10 kids (digital photography, painting, etc.). I suspect that a week-long "game design" session would be a hot-seller and I could hook you up with contacts there if you want.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

This is a pretty interesting idea, actually. I'll put it in the old hat.

[joepub.livejournal.com]

Dear Ben Lehman,

You are cordially invited to talk with me upon these subjects at Go Play NW.
I have non-internet-oriented thoughts for you.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Dear Joe,

You are invited to come to Taipei, at your leisure, and time this summer, and discuss these things with me. I'll pay for food and housing while you're here. Not airfare.

yrs--
--Ben

[chadu.livejournal.com]

Story Games has been going through an orgy of design-for-forum-status which, as always, I find aesthetically abominable

I feel you, mang.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

There we have it.

[foreign-devilry.livejournal.com]

I honestly feel like I've spent the past couple years trying to talk myself out of being an indie game designer and publisher and then convincing myself that's okay. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet, but I'm fairly sure that's where the final destination is: that the design work I'll do will just be hacking stuff together for games and campaigns I'm running or playing in, for an audience of people I know and then a not-much-bigger audience of interested internet people who read my blog.