Limitations That Make You Better
[ roleplaying games ][ authority | rpgs | rules ]
[ March 16th, 2009 ]
[ by: Alvan ]
I apologize to all three of my readers (myself and Spikey included) that I haven’t written anything in a week, but I’ve been busy with all the things that happen after you’ve been in bed rest for over a month and finally feel well enough to go out. Things like “go meet your boss for the first time this year”, “enroll to classes” and “play some RPGs with friends”. So when I’ve had time to pause between these things, I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity, fun, rules and the related concepts. And one of the big dilemmas for me when it comes to role-playing games – where do I stand in the eternal struggle between the game and the play.
Don’t know about you lot, but when I’m presented with a situation where there are strict rules in place, but a lot of freedom to what can be done with those rules, my first gut reaction is to start searching for ways to use the rules to create something that wasn’t planned for them. And I know I’m not the first one – most of the planets in Spore are filled with various monsters that resemble human genitalia and people use Little Big Planet to create mechanical calculators and other oddities.
When it comes to RPGs, this is one of the key reasons I like systems that have very detailed and strict rule set. They allow the player to get really creative with the limited material that is available. While the systems that allow a player to formulate things about their character more freely encourage the players to do exactly what they want to do, systems that rely on preset variables tend to inspire me a lot more with a “ooh, I could totally try this one out!” or “I wonder how I could make a character like this using this system?”
The other great thing about detailed rule sets is the fact that they also serve as a great wall of defense when someone else (usually the person who is running the game) tries to pull something off that limits my control over the options available to my character. I must admit, I become a bit of a rules lawyer the moment a game master tries to start railroading the game to only please his need to narrate his story to the players without having the players have any say in what’s happening. I’m one of those assholes who find it so much more fun when they are actually allowed to participate and change the outcome of events if they get stuck in an interactive environment. So, when there is a description of how the enemy bogeyman, who the characters have been after, runs to the portal to safety, I will be the one asking to get a dice roll to prevent that from happening because the rules say I should able to do that.
Now, I do have my dirty hippie side buried somewhere underneath that this. So I should probably say something to support the touchy-feely side of RPGs, where we have less rules and more just plain fun. When you’re playing a free-form game, where the rules are more set by the social contract (of not being an ass) than some rulebook, things can work out really great. The biggest plus side to this sort of games is the fact that there is nothing that even remotely points to “winning” – everyone is just having fun and enjoying the moment. And that’s something that roleplaying games should be about. We’ve all played like this as kids, and usually things went really well (until you got too tired and cranky and had to go take a nap), so why not do it as adults as well. Adding rules also adds to the need to compete.
Now, when I’m talking about rules, I don’t mean that the game should be a strategy/tactical simulation of medieval warfare (been there, done that, we shall never speak of it again), but more a situation where, when conflict arises, the judgment of what happens next is not left fully on the shoulders of the game master. He should and could be able to rely on a strong set of rules that start with the basic rule of “say yes or roll the dice”. But I must say I’d like to expand on that.
The game master is often a self-proclaimed king of the game. He’s above the rules – what he says holds true. And he’s an artist extraordinaire, he can paint any picture, climb any mountain. .. and so on. He (read: me, usually) is a pompous artist who doesn’t have to live by the same set of regulations the other players do He lies and cheats and creates his own vision if the one presented by the game isn’t pleasing. He tells the players a little less than they deserve so he can take their characters down another adventure on his terms. He decides if there are 3 trolls behind the corner or 30. That calls for some limitations. That’s where I think most role-playing games need more rules.
As a positive example of what I mean by rules for the game master, I present this: In the game 3:16, the game master is mechanically limited by the game’s system. There is a certain number to the number of enemies he can use on a single planet depending on the number of players in the current game. And during the planet, the creatures the player-characters run into are actually defined by a series of rolls. And the players have an option of actually saying “no, we’re not doing this” in many different ways, from evacuating their characters from the planet, to blowing a tactical nuclear weapon on the planet, destroying the rest of the opposition. And the way the world reacts to the success or the failure of the players’ gaming is determined by simple formulas. This means that the amount of bullshit the GM can pull is controllable. He can’t create enemies that are somehow unbalanced, because the mechanical effects are limited and determined by the rules. And he can’t pull stunts like punish a PC because he feels like the character could use a snap on the wrist. If he wants to do it, he has to do it by the rules. And if he decides to make something so hard that the player characters will not be walking out of it alive, the players can opt-out of the mission and the game master has to accept that he can’t use the same tricks again. A delicate balance of things.
Another one that needs a nod is Bliss Stage, where the game master plays one character, just like the rest of the players. He (and his character) just has some responsibilities that the other players don’t. And it’s perfectly possible for the game master’s character to die, and be succeeded by one of the other players’ charactes, turning that player into a new game master.
Now, to extrapolate from these thoughts to think of a system that I would find most pleasing. On the player side, there would be a lot of crunch. Many moving parts – interlocking bits that create a character that has a lot of different effects he can use. Some combination will be of course be more specialized, some more generic, some quite unexpected, but still working. There would be a mechanical watchdog in place to ensure that all the characters would have the minimum amount of abilities to survive in the game, but have a lot of room to maneuver beyond that. If there is some sort of a balancing system, it will be such that it balances only the things that are somehow relevantly connected – if I want to play a former artist in a game where the player-characters are all assassins, me taking art skills shouldn’t hinder the assassinating of people. But I might have to make decisions if the assassin I play prefers knifes or rifles to do his work. Also, the mechanical system would be transparent enough so that I, as a player, can call, without the game master’s decisions, if the action of my character was successful or not.
And on the game master side, I am provided with a similar set of interlocked rules I am allowed to use to create the adventures. I don’t have to of course tell the players which pieces I’ve used while the game is in progress, but I would have to be able to produce the story in the form of the rules to the players after the players had gone through it, so they could look at it and nod at “yes, that’s what happened, and it was done by the books, very good”. There would also be rules that allowed the GM to pull some crazy stunts – sort of cheating even. But using them would mean that he would have to give the players something in return. It would be a beautiful harmonious system. These rules would of course leave the game master a lot of freedom to fill in the blanks, so the meat around the pre-set bones would be still done by him. And that’s where we come a full circle.
Don’t know about you lot, but when I’m presented with a situation where there are strict rules in place, but a lot of freedom to what can be done with those rules, my first gut reaction is to start searching for ways to use the rules to create something that wasn’t planned for them. That would mean that when I am, as a game master, given only three encounters to introduce the plot elements, and only two of them could feature creatures of any kind, I would have to focus on taking everything out of those available resources. I would have to actually be a bit shrewd to pull of the things I would normally take for granted. It would make me pay attention more to what I’m doing as a game master. And the way I would probably be doing the stories would be quite refreshing to when the sky was the limit.
We excel when we can’t have everything we’ve wanted.
March 29th, 2009 at 04:04
I agree that if a person enjoys this kind of a set up, this could be really amazing. But what to me is important in rpg’s and what I think I read between the lines in this post of yours, is that we can all find our own favorite ways of gaming and make the most of the experience for ourselves. I can see how this vision of yours would work for a person who thinks like you, who would be inspired by having a lot of rules that he could bend and use for his own enjoyment. But I am the type of person who is more about the emotional experience and the immersion. And I don’t mean the story has to be about emotions, just that I want to experience the story by looking out of the characters eyes like I was her. To me this type of gaming you write about would really make it difficult to be creative within the game. It would affect the immersion. I actually enjoy playing with a GM I trust, who knows how to shoulder the responsibility of making things work, while I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. This does not mean that I want to let go of my control, I want to be able to be the character, to actually move and do things inside the story. But to me the off game stuff is just there to give some basic boundaries, the character is alive inside my head and the story is what we as a group make it and what the GM brings to us based on our actions and on the dices, as well as his storytelling. Most of the time I want to forget I even have a character sheet.
March 29th, 2009 at 06:26
Yeah. relationship with rules is a very personal thing and they depend a lot on the game and the group (and even each person in the group).
With a group where, like you said, everyone has a good trust bond with the GM, it can really be a bliss. And honestly, the best games I’ve been in have been the type you describe, where the character sheets are forgotten for most of the time.
As a very loosely related sidenote: I was laughing at the new D&D’s Player’s Handbook just a moment ago. It said something like “D&D is a roleplaying game, but not interpretive theater” – basically implying that a “role” is something that dictates what sort of route the character would take in non-combat situations. Something like “diplomatic” or “brutal” or something like that – it’s not an instruction that you should act or try to “be” the character.
I doubt I could ever play a game for long that distances me from the character that much
March 29th, 2009 at 14:34
The process of thinking and how it varies person to person really enthralls me. I can listen to my linguistic friend explaining to me how she takes some text apart finding interesting things based on the linguistic choices the writer has made. I love mathematicians and how they can absorb so much data and play with it with such talent.
I know you can learn things and use what you learn, but to me it’s pretty clear we all have different talents. If I tried to be a linguistic or a mathematician, I would not enjoy myself at all because I think differently, my thinking mechanics are different. To me that’s amazing, how diverse we are, how differently our minds work. And how we can find our own way of thinking and learn to appreciate our own talents. (I know this is probably a given, but I think it’s JÄNNÄÄ.
)
Diversity makes role playing interesting to me. I think one of the most important things for me to learn was that I can choose a group and a GM and not feel bad if I find that I am not a good fit in some other company. Because I think we should all do what we really enjoy and rpg’s give us a lot of room to find our way. It does not mean we should stick to just one way of gaming. But if someone wants to “find treasure and fight” and someone else wants to “feel what the character feels” and a third person wants to know every detail about their surroundings, and they prioritize the combination of those so differently, that they would rather play in separate groups, that’s fine.
If you are able to combine all of this with playing with the rules, then great. I think we all enjoy finding new things in the rules but doing it in a very inclusive way would be difficult for me. My strength is elsewhere, juggling the rules can be difficult for me, just like math and linguistics
. It’s a good thing we are different and we have room to make choices.
I started role playing from the wrong end of things, in a way. I started with larping, having to literally be the character. I respect larping and understand the point of it, but to me the fun in gaming is stepping into someone else’s shoes as well as their mind. I don’t want to be the worlds shortest amazon if I want to play an amazon warrior. ;D I want to feel 2metres tall.
Now that I am learning about DD, ADD and soon getting introduced to the world of the first rpg, I feel like I am finally becoming part of the tradition for real. So on that regard the off game stuff matters to me, I can appreciate the different styles of gaming and the different sets of rules. I just do not want them to be in a too demanding role during the game, because to me juggling things like that can be stressful. I do however try to keep in mind that the character is different from me, I can’t forget the character sheet an play a conservative brick (my own nature sometimes) if my character is a jolly good chaotic fellow
Oh and wanting to play with the rules and being able to juggle with the boundaries of them in a big way is interesting to me, just like mathematics, even if I am not very good at that myself.
. I rather watch tennis than make Wimbledon the most boring and annoying place by playing myself 