UncleBear Media

This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 20, 2006.

What about the rules? Do rules make it a game? Rules exist, in my mind, to serve three purposes: to resolve conflicts, to introduce random factors, and to support the flavor of the setting.

The first is most important. Without a conflict resolution system, we’d be playing cowboys and indians yelling “Bang! You’re dead!” “No I’m not! You missed!” “I didn’t miss! I never miss! Fall down!” Success, failure and, where applicable, degree of success. That is all.

Random factors serve to inspire the imagination and keep things moving along. I have built entire campaigns (a wargaming holdover term; I prefer “series”, as in a television series, a series of novels, or a series of connected game sessions) from the shambles of plots where die rolls have gone horribly, horribly awry and having to incorporate the outcome of those events, especially players’ reactions, into the big picture. Were I just sitting at the laptop writing the story, it would have gone much, much differently.

As for flavor, there are whole schools of thought devoted to the connection between rules and setting. All rules influence setting. Pick a movie or TV show. Use it as a game setting using five different sets of rules, and you’ll have five different experiences. Why? Everything from skill lists to special abilities available to how task resolution works to what type of damage weapons do will influence the world. Rules are the physics of the world. You can use any generic system to run any setting, it’s absolutely true, but you will need to tweak, and some rules are better suited to particular settings than others.

Rules are only rules if you follow them. Even most core rules published in the past 20 years have some verbiage in them encouraging you to chuck out anything that doesn’t work for you, demoting them to mere suggestions. The proliferation of house rules and D20 flavors supports this idea. Nothing is inflexible; use rules that support the story you’re trying to tell. Like a writer writing a story, if you need something to happen, it does; if something doesn’t fit, call a do-over or ignore it.

So what do you call a roleplaying game, Uncle Bear, if it’s not a game?
You just call it roleplaying, silly. You might need to utter an extra sentance to clarify to non-roleplayers that you’re not talking about a therapeutic technique or a method of teaching critical thinking and problem solving, but it shouldn’t be so hard.

So what are all these books sitting on my shelf, professing to be games?
Some of them are systems: a way or method of doing things. Here are the laundry lists of things your character can potentially do. Here is the method of task resolution. Some of them are theories: this is how we, the authors, feel roleplaying should work, or at least how it should work in this genre or setting. When you’re roleplaying using that system, you’re testing, validating, and building upon that set of assumptions and, ultimately, accepting them, adding to them, or scrapping them in favor of a more workable theory.

To the first squirt that says I’m making this way more complicated than it needs to be, I ask: have you picked up a D20 core rulebook lately?

continue reading…

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on February 26, 2006.

In the book No Plot? No Problem, author Chris Baty talks about creating “Magna Cartas” before sitting down and writing a novel. The first Magna Carta is a list of things you enjoy in a novel. The second is a list of things that bore or depress you. When you start writing, try to include things from the first and avoid things from the second. If you write what you enjoy reading, you’ll be happier with the finished product and have a lot more fun along the way.

While writing a novel is in many ways a different animal than designing roleplaying rules, worldbuilding, or creating an adventure scenario, the concept of beginning with a Magna Carta is a useful one. The work will be easier because you’ve got a clear vision of what you’re trying to do. If you’re recruiting for a game group or campaign, it will help like-minded players identify you as someone with similar interests, and make the group run smoother. It can be wordsmithed into an introduction to a book, or placed on a web page describing the work, in effect doing some marketing and advertising for you.

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 17, 2006.
At the start of the week, I thought I was going to be writing a game system. Five days later I’m pleased that it didn’t turn out that way. For years I’ve stated that the best roleplaying resources are things that were never intended to be roleplaying resources, and it continues to be true. What got me where I needed to be were management skills: clearly identifying my goals, then finding the tools and technology needed to accomplish it.

Using FATE as the game system is no more of a cop-out than using Blogger or TiddlyWiki. They all do what I need them to, or close enough that either only minor modifications are needed or the missing functionality isn’t mission-critical and can be overlooked. That’s a big step for me. I’m a compulsive re-inventor of the wheel. But why start by crunching a new game system together? It was very easy to make the decision to use Blogger and Tiddly rather than start from scratch with PHP and HTML, so it shouldn’t have been so hard to go looking for another piece of technology — and a roleplaying system is a technology, of a sort — as the baseline for an online campaign.Roleplaying systems are baselines. Just as a blank blog page or an empty wiki, a roleplaying system is a framework to build upon, a structure (or, at least, a sense of one) to pour one’s ideas into. Some structures work better for certain things than for others; again, the right tool for the right job.

The title for this series, “Common Sense: The Roleplaying Game” began as an allusion to allowing players to do what made sense in the context of the setting and what felt “in character” to the character itself. What it’s come to mean, to me at least, is to do what makes sense in terms of the whole campaign, including preparation, planning and worldbuilding. It was going to be a manifesto that narrativism needs structure, but narrativism’s needs trump artificial boundaries when those boundaries feel too constricting. Those boundaries, I’ve discovered, extend beyond system, and onto our perceptions of what roleplaying is and how it should be done.

Until next time, take care of yourself, and each other.

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 15, 2006.

I will be using Blogger because it’s there, it’s stable, players can use the same login for multiple campaigns, and I can publish to a subdirectory of this site. I don’t have to administer it or set up templates for it.

I’ve set up a file directory for downloads, and will use either TenFootWiki (so I, as gamemaster, have sole control over content), MyWiki, which is a server-side adaption of TiddlyWiki (which TenFootWiki is based on), or some other implementation of TiddlyWiki to record worldbuilding data. That’s also going to serve as the database for collecting info on what does and doesn’t work in this grand experiment.

One bit of literature that I want to re-read and incorporate, especially since I’m going to be running things narrative-based and diceless with people significantly separated from me geographically , is Robin’s Law of Good Game Mastering. I need to really be in tune with the players’ wants and needs (and communicate mine to the players), and between Mr. Laws’ most excellent book and creating a Magna Carta everyone involved should be on the same page. Those MMO things work because the world and your character options are spoon-fed to you; this is going to require team effort. The more we’re in agreement up front the easier things will flow, I hope.

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 15, 2006.

With some time on my hands at last and some criteria established around what my perceived needs will be, I did a little bit of research on diceless systems. I was amused that what I came up with on my own in the last two posts is pretty much how most diceless systems seem to function. I’m actually happy that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

If you’re still not sure about this diceless stuff, there’s a trio of articles that make for interesting reading. Dice and Diceless: One Designer’s Radical Opinion by Erick Wujcik (creator of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game) is probably the best introduction. Causality and Choice in RPGs, Part 1: Getting rid of the {TECH} by Neel Krishnaswami and Roll the Bones by Pieter van Hiel give additional perspective on why diceless can be a good thing, even though it’s kind weird for a lot of folks who weren’t raised that way, andwhere many of the pitfalls lie. Going diceless is seriously like changing religions for people who’ve chucked handfulls of polyhedrons for their whole tenure in the hobby. As van Hiel states, however, “diceless” does not necessarily mean “dickless”. It doesn’t necessarily mean freeform, where characters eat paste and run with scissors. Some structure and fair methods of task resolution are required.

The best place to start looking for free diceless systems is the Diceless Roleplaying Games Listing. It’s a good directory of free and low-cost stuff available on the web, and there’s likely to be something there for every taste. I’ve pretty much settled on using FATE, with a few ideas ganked from the diceless plug-in Destiny – Hand Of Fate seem to fit my bill. I will likely incorporate some ideas from RISUS and Diceless Risus, not so much to create a FrankenSystem homebrew as for clarity; the diceless hacks work almost identically, and the explanation of similar rules is clearer in one place than the other. I’ll likely generate a brief character creation and rules summary, which I do for just about everything I’ve ever run anyway, as a quick reference for both myself and players. I’m also going to create a list of suggested Aspects (skills, careers, etc.) for each game just to give players a hand.The one bit of required reading I’m going to assign to players is Formless Collaborative Roleplaying by Politically Incorrect Games. It requires registration, but it’s a free download. It’s not a game system, but an “ideology” and a framework for collaborative roleplaying. At 18 pages it’s chock full of good advice and not only do I think it’s going to be as essential to an online game as the rules and setting information, I think I’m going to make it required reading for any tabletop games I run in the future as well. I may even bring it to the table in games where I’m just the player, to let people know this is how I (figuratively) roll.

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 14, 2006.

At some point I’m going to write up an example of play, but until then let’s examine the Challenge system in a little more depth, and give some examples of common scenarios.

If a player says he picks the lock, he does, unless someone issues a Challenge. This can come from the gamemaster or another player. The gamemaster will do it to keep things from becoming too easy or boring; other players may do it for the same reasons, or because they don’t think it makes sense for that character, or because they don’t like how that affects the flow of the story. “I pick the lock”, the player writes. “No so fast,” replies the gamemaster. “Challenge. 1 token”. The player can either back down and fail to pick the lock, back up and say he didn’t try to pick it but did something else instead, or press the issue and Raise to get it picked. It comes down to how badly the player wants to do it versus how badly the gamemaster or other player doesn’t want you to do it.

The same applies to combat. I say I hit that orc and wounded him across the chest. Or, I say I just ran him through and killed him instantly. Hey, if it makes sense in context that I killed the orc in one blow, it probably happens. Someone’s likely going to Challenge me if I said I walked up to Darth Vader and killed him instantly, because it’s not really likely to happen if I’m some farm boy who just learned to use a weapon and it doesn’t feel right for the story. At the right time, in the right place, if I give a long description of the epic battle with the bad guy that’s just pissed everyone off that ends with me cutting off his head, then no one’s going to Challenge because it’ll feel right in terms of story.

This is not a game for munchkins, in other works. It requires cooperation, a sense of the rhythms and beats of good storytelling, and a desire to do more than kill things and take their stuff.

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This is a rerun. It was originally posted on March 13, 2006.

My life of late hasn’t been conducive to sitting down at a table with friends to do some roleplaying. I also have some friends that live far, far away that I’d love to roleplay with, but distance prohibits that from happening. To rectify this, I’ve started thinking about doing a play-by-post game, either through email, a forum, or on a blog. Then everyone can participate in whatever free time they have, regardless of time of day or time zone.

When I started thinking about the logistics of doing this, I wasn’t near a computer. I couldn’t do any research on what systems and tools other people use, so I started weighing my perceived needs and working up a system of my own. The one play-by-email I’d participated in previously, as a player, informed my design choices. Here’s a rough, un-playtested draft of what I came up with.

continue reading…

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What the subject line says. I’ll be out of touch and not updating for at least a few days. No email, text, tweets, etc.

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As a followup to yesterday’s Worldbuilding 101 piece, I want to take a look at how mechanics can jump the shark. As with the previous post, I’d originally planned to cite some specific examples, but have chosen to avoid inevitable flame wars and try to turn this into constructive advice. Whether you’re designing a new edition, a retro-clone, or house rules for a home game, the following are things you should consider if you want to avoid jumping the dire shark.

Examples
As with yesterday’s post, I’ll use an entirely fictitious game system for purposes of illustration. To keep it in line with yesterday, let’s call it the OZ Engine.

Changing the Core Mechanic
Not tweaking the core mechanic to make it work a little cleaner. Not refining the core mechanic to facilitate quicker game play. I’m talking about tossing out the established core mechanic and using something considerably different. So while the hypothetical OZ Engine started as rolling 2d12, subtracting a modifier, and trying to score a total below a target number, the second edition core mechanic has players rolling 7d4, adding the birth date of the player to the right, and determining degree of success based on matching the final number against a table. The system jumped the shark, because it’s a different system.

Altering the Crunch Level
I tend to rate game systems on the Risus/Rolemaster scale. I’m sure there are games simpler than Risus and more byzantine than Rolemaster, but they’re references people get. Adding some crunch to a lighter game can be considered a refinement, especially if the mechanics support the setting and the tropes you’re shooting for. Streamlining a super-crunchy game is a good thing, too, if it makes life easier for the gamemaster and players. But if one edition of the rules looks like Risus, and the next edition looks more like Rolemaster (or vice-versa) you’ve seriously jumped the shark.

Mix-Match Crunch
This occurs mostly in supplements and house rules. Again, referring to the Risus/Rolemaster scale, if everything in the game is super-crunchy except new rule X, which is freeform, you’re chum. If the game is freeform except for the system to accomplish Y, which requires 16 pages of tables, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Not Aligning with the Setting
If the game system is designed to be generic, and it’s applied to a specific setting, you’re okay. If you’re designing rules for a specific setting and you add stuff that doesn’t fit into the setting, shark alert. Why does a game designed to run The Wizard of Oz need rules for psionics and cyberware? It doesn’t. Move along.

Adding Trendy Rules
While you’re designing your new system, a new game (or several) come out featuring some interesting new gimmick. It’s cool, and can be retrofitted to a number of games. It doesn’t really work with yours, but it’s trendy, and you don’t want to be square and not jump on the lastest fashion in design. What you’ve jumped is the shark.

Ignoring Feedback
When a large number of people complain — at conventions, in magazines, on forums, on blogs — that Rule X is “broken” (a loaded term that really means “does not meet our expectations of how it should work”), your priority for the next iteration of the rules is fixing Rule X.  It doesn’t matter if Rule X is your pride and joy and you love it. A percieved problem is a problem. If the next edition comes out and you’ve added 97 cool things and fixed Rule Y, Rule Z, and Rule AA but have not addressed Rule X in any way, shape, or form, you have jumped the shark.

Conclusion
As with worldbuilding, rules hacking comes down to having a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve and then doing everything you can to maintain and support that vision. At the same time, you can’t just throw out a huge chunk of the system and start over and call it the same thing. Until next time, be good to yourselves, and each other.

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To kick off Dire Shark Week, let’s have your best geek/shark poetry. Sharks in games, sharks in movies, jumping the shark, if it’s got sharks and it’s marginally related to geekdom, have at it!

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