Common Sense, Part 5: Creativity and the 'Common Sense' Part

September 26, 2008 No comments

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.