The Forge Archives

Hey everyone,

I was sitting last night reading Hardball, by Chris Matthews, and had an awareness that the fiction and nonfiction I read, and the movies and television programs I watch are utterly pervaded by three specific narrative situations that in contrast are almost entirely absent from roleplaying games: politics, law, and medicine. I used to watch ER obsessively, until it got sucky, and like a dork I bought and read The Medicine of ER to better understand the terminology and treatments, and the drama and reversals in the conditions of the patients. I've read The Making of a Surgeon, Scott Turow's One-L, about his first year at Harvard Law School, F. Lee Bailey's To Be a Trial Lawyer, and Roy Black's Black's Law. I used to watch L.A. Law, and The Practice. I watch The West Wing. TV shows and movies are full to overflowing with lawyers and doctors and politicians: A Few Good Men, JFK, Extreme Measures, Thirteen Days, Presumed Innocent, and a zillion more. We're fascinated by them as a culture. Yet I've never seen a roleplaying game or scenario that featured a player character group of politicians, doctors, or lawyers. Why do you think that is? I know I've personally never tackled it. Is there some unconscious hurdle? Games have mechanics to simulate firearms combat, why not the practice of law, medicine, or politics? I haven't seen GURPS Lawyers, GURPS Doctors, or GURPS Elected Office on the SJG publishing plan. What do you think?

Paul

[ This Message was edited by: Paul Czege on 2001-11-26 12:18 ]

Hello Paul,

It's funny you should bring this up because I was thinking about this very thing just a day or two ago.  It seems to me that this is related to my "Roleplaying The Ordinary" thread but with a different emphasis.  You're right.  Why don't we see, "Legal Thriller: The RPG"

The quick snap answer is: Too much technical information.  

But that doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

Back in High School I did Mock Trial.  Now that I think about it, that really just boiled down to a Gamist LARP.  In this case you really do need as much real technical information as humanly possible because that's the whole point of play.  The idea was to see how close to a real trial you could get and if you could win.  There's a level of Gamist abstraction in the form of a time limit and deliberately ambiguous set of facts designed to level the playing field.

However, speaking from a Narrativist point of view the technical information and detail isn't really what shows like The Practice are about.  Sure, they try to be as acurate as possible and a lot of suspense and drama comes from some of the nail biting technicalites regarding the rules of evidence BUT the real story weight comes from the effects of those trials on the participants.  In the case of a show like The Practice, it's the lawyer's themselves.

It's issues like: What do you do when you have to defend a man you know is guilty?  What do you do when you have to defend a man who is paid to plead guilty and you know he's innocent?  What comes first, The Client, The Law, Morality, or your Career?  These are the things that actually make these kinds of stories compelling and I think these questions are fair game for an RPG.

So yeah, I think a kind of Legal Handbook for RPG players would be cool.  It would present the technicalities in a sort of a watered down digest form so that players can get a feel for the various hoops lawyers have to jump through to be used as the player's feel fit.  Given this I don't see why an abstract resolution method such a Story Engine wouldn't do the trick.  You could use the sourcebook to tell you exactly what's decided at an arraignment vs. a hearing vs. an actual trial vs. different kinds of settlement meetings and then just use a story engine scene resolution roll to determine the outcomes of those different kinds of legal conflicts.

All this of course applies to Medical and Political situations as well.  Basically you need to identify the Premise behind these kinds of stories, you need access to some kind of Jargon and Procedures for Dummies to get a feel for the technicality without needing a degree and then some kind of a abstract resolution system to resolve those various points of conflict.

Jesse

I don't buy it, Jesse.

When I play a wizard I don't actually know squat about magic. I just announce my intent and all I have to know is what dice to roll. Any drama that may occur has nothing to do with my technical knowledge of magic and everything to do with playing a person in a situation. The Premise of Sorcerer is not "how to summon demons in Ron's world". In fact you won't find any details on how to summon a demon in Sorcerer. Just how many dice to roll, and a suggestion that you make the description make sense to what you're character is attempting.

In a Lawyers game, I think that most players can get by with what they know from watching Law & Order. For a medical game ER. And, heck, there's hardly anything technical to politics at all. West Wing viewing would make you a good player, I'd guess. Just as my Tolkien will get me through Fantasy.

I think that what makes these sorts of games rare is a few simple things. First, is the wargaming heritage thing. Not enough killin' in these sorts of games. You'd think that after a quarter century we'd have everything, but we just haven't gotten through it all yet (though isn't somebody doing an ER RPG?). Another reason was mentioned recently, and that is that these genre's are not as escapist as others. Which is what many are looking for in RPG's. Doctors, well, maybe, but how many fantasize about being a Lawyer or Politician? Just doesn't have the glitz of Space Marine.

And it's already been done, actually. Sorta. Sure no specific game has been written for these things (that I'm aware of,tho it wouldn't surprise me to find one somewhere), but most generic games would suffice, and probably do for those GMs who want to work up such a one shot. Or even for a campaign, though I'd think that even more rare. I find that the idea of tailored games, for games that resemble our world, strikes me as odd. Not that it couldn't be done. But I'll probably grab GURPS and go from there. I'm sure the players will catch on.

Another problem that I see is that these sorts of games would have to be all about mystery. Doctors diagnose. Lawyers dig for evidence. With politicians it's constant determining strategy. This is fine, except that, like all mystery stuff, there ends up a lot of GM leading, usually (Gives me an idea...). As Ron says, this doesn't always make for the best Nar play. Yet it seems like Nar territory for some reason. Conflict there.

The last reason that it hasn't been done is because you haven't done it yet. Let us know when you have it all worked out. :wink:

Mike

P.S. I had a good friend who is a lawyer and wrote a RPGish boardgame called Big City Shysters. Loads of fun as a satire. The object of the game was, of course, money. Justice, when it occured, was a byproduct.

Hello Again,

With all due respect I think you may have missed the point of my thread.  I said that I think the reason it hasn't been done is that there is this perception that there is too much technical information.  The post then went on to explain how the real "meat" behind a legal thriller is the moral issues that don't really need technical details to be explored.  I said with a BASIC technical reference, i.e. something that basically summarizes what we can glean from watching a show like The Practice we can add a semi-believable foundation for which an abastract conflict resolution system can be used.

So, in essance.  We agree.

And I think you hit the two bigger nails on the head anyway.  Wargamming roots, and Escapism.

I also don't think the clue centric mystery would be counter to the narrativist "feel" that you're getting.  I think the idea is where the priorities lie.  If you've agreed to defend a client and then while building your case you discover concrete proof that he's guilty then what do you do?  The Narrativist simply puts more game weight on that question than on the actual clue hunt itself.

Jesse


[ This Message was edited by: jburneko on 2001-11-26 14:41 ]

Hey,

Jesse's on it, to my way of thinking.

I'd like to add Romance to the mix, both in positive terms of "will Mr.-Obviously-Right and Ms.-Obviously-Right get together" and in negative terms of "I can't believe that cheating skunk is doing it again." Pure soap opera, without any parody.

We are discussing human conflicts: obligations, lying, love (and not), and conflicts of interests. Without these, no stories. With these, stories can be made using otherwise utterly fantastic elements.

I could go into my patented rant now about how science fiction of merit is NOT speculative in any way, or about how fantasy fiction of merit is NOT escapist.

Instead, I will restrain myself merely to pointing out that when an allegedly "story-type" RPG premise has strayed from steak (the above conflicts) to sizzle (eight centuries of detailed pseudo-history, whether past or present), then I'm gone.

(Just so no one feels especially picked on, I consider 20+ pages of critical hit tables to be sizzle too.)

Best,
Ron

As a former trial attorney, I would fervently agree that only a basic knowledge of legal process would be necessary to run a good story centered on human conflicts and dramatic moral dilemmas.

Story Engine?  Yeah.  That'd be a good pick if I were running a trial.  Set each scene to correspond with the parts of the trial you wanted to cover, and it doesn't get too technical.  Basically, you'd skip voir dire (the most important part of the trial IMO) unless you absolutely wanted to deal with specific jurors to weight the drama a bit further.  You'd probably want to drop opening arguments also, since opening argument does nothing more than outline what you're going to talk about -- you're not allowed to openly advocate anything at that point.  Then move to key witness testimony and focus on the absolute meat of that examination.  You wouldn't want to go through any of the tedious foundation setting, document introduction, etc.  Keep objections to a minimum, since many get extremely technical and interrupt the flow of the trial (sometimes a good reason to make one, even if you know it'll be overruled), then move to examination of THE key witness, which is where most TV and movie trials get their big bang.  Finally, go to closing arguments, which are dramatic and lay out the two sides in clear, though often polarizing, language.

Traits could be general: Technical Knowledge and Persuasion, or you could break it down to a more granular set of Examination, Argument, Evidence, [subject] Knowledge (e.g., Criminal Law, Appellate Procedure, etc.), Ethics, and the like.  Alternatively, you could take a Hero Wars approach and have skills like Flimflam Jury, Good Ol' Country Lawyering, Dramatic Pause, Accuse, Badger, Poker Face, Pettifoggery (with a nod to Pelgrane Press), Make Lame Argument Sound Plausible, Gregory Peck Impression, Make Nice with Cops, False Sincerity, Generate Paperwork, and Plausible Denial.

Don't worry about legal accuracy; most TV and movie trials drive me nuts.  I sit there muttering, "Object-object-object!" or "WTF? Mistrial!"  (For what it's worth, The Practice seems to be the exception.  For a great example of abysmal legal ethics, watch Ally McBeal.) Focus on the core moral dilemma at stake.  Sometimes it's the lawyer's choice to make, sometimes it's the client's.

Practically speaking, you can go out right now and grab a writer's book on medical thrillers or legal mysteries or police procedure.  There are a ton of great genre-specific sourcebooks in that market.

Best,

Blake

[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-11-26 15:21 ]

Heh.

Just for the record, Ward 13 is a medical drama game using the InSpectres rules.  I'm not saying it's a great one, but it was inspired by ER (and The Kingdom).  The supernatural stuff is fluff; the game really is about trying to do your job and save people, despite all sorts of obstacles.

Paul, someone out there feels the same way you do.  :smile:

- Scott

The reason we don't see Lawyer/Doctor/Politician RPGs?

Because they can't kick down the door, kill the ork and take his stuff.

I'm not joking.

Take care,
John

Hey,

If I'm reading John's post right, what we're talking about is access to imaginary power, of the abusive variety.

I certainly agree that a vast amount of role-playing is exerted in order to accomplish this. The question is whether role-playing, in and of itself, is composed of Nothing But.

I would disagree (using "would," since no one has actually proposed this) that role-playing is composed of Nothing But access to imaginary, abusive power. Mean-spirited as Violence is, and to a lesser extent Power Kill, these essays criticize that approach. SOME degree of faith exists out there that role-playing, that is, the actual act, can be based on something else.

Could a role-playing game based on something else be written and marketed? I think it can be. I think John has himself authored a game or two that fits this bill.

Can such a game be a rock-em, blow-out, total Hit that brings young gamers streaming into stores? Well, probably not. Could such a game ... IF stores were very different from the way they are now .. IF certain other details of Ye Olde Industry were changed ... could such a game actually attract the interest of potential role-players?

Maaaaaybe.

Best,
Ron

John,

That'd be the Criminal Defendant RPG.  You've just described some of my former clients, only without mentioning the copious amounts of crank and Olde English 800 involved.

Best,

Blake

I love this thread, because as much as I love the sizzle of secret histories & weird cabals & mad science & strange magic & whatnot, I would love to see more "non-genre" (for lack of a much better term) RPGs. Police dramas, legal dramas, medical dramas (or comedies--a Barney Miller RPG anyone?), or Jared's high school RPG for example.

Ron, I think, is right. The lack of slam-bang "kick down the door & kill the orcs" action wouldn't bring in loads of new, young players anymore than Love & Rockets or Strangers in Paradise brings in lots of readers, especially when they're on the same rack as Chastity & manga adaptations of Star Wars. They certainly wouldn't bring in more 13-year-old boys. But I think they would bring in different roleplayers, people who maybe didn't think they'd be into the activity, precisely because they thought it was all about "Dude! My ranger just went to 7th level because we killed that lich mage!" Obviously, RPGs aren't solely about that.

Business aspects aside, I agree that law is not the main issue of a TV show about lawyers (as Blake said, watch 5 minutes of Ally McBeal--even a non-lawyer like me squirms at the absolute travesty of law in that show), it, like pretty much most stories, is about human relationships. What's Buffy the Vampire Slayer about? Kicking demon ass & casting cool spells? Nope. It's about love.

So, on one hand I'd say you want an RPG about cops? Or doctors? Or lawyers? Run Sorcerer & have the players make all the PCs be cops (no, not like Demon Cops--more like Homicide), or lawyers, or doctors. Or do the same with Mage or Changeling or Witchcraft. On the other hand, remove all the kewl whistles & bells--have the game be solely about cops or lawyers or doctors (or go with Ron's idea & run a straight, no-parody-intended romance, which I think would be really cool). As has already been suggested, Story Engine be good for that. Hell, you could use GURPS or Hero if you wanted to (yeah, Paul, there are no GURPS supplements for that, but how hard would it be to write up your own stuff for it?).

I personally don't know anyone who only reads SF, fantasy, & horror, only watches genre TV & movies--so why limit ourselves to "fantastical" RPGs? (I also agree with Ron--the best fantasy is absolutely not about escapism.)

[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2001-11-26 17:44 ]

QuoteRon Edwards wrote:

Could a role-playing game based on something else be written and marketed? I think it can be.

I just want to chime in quick.  I agree with Ron, but....

The difference between abstracting magic and abstracting law into game mechanics is that with law, someone at the table could potentially throw a wrench into the works by citing real world experience or expertise.  The same is not true with fantasy magic.

It would be difficult enough to create a palatable abstraction that lacking actual law knowledge would not encumber.  To do that without having the same abstraction divorce the game from its genre (forgive me for evoking that argument Ron) would be harder.  Making it so that it does both and that it does not lose its main selling point is one of the most difficult things.

The same is true for medical action stories like 'olde ER.'  Take out too much of the medicine and it turns into a soap opera set in a hospital.  Put too much in and it gets to be 'too technical.'  Finding a salable balance frustratingly difficult.

Politics also makes a good case.  Why can one run a game with all the political intrigues of a vampire version of the Doge's courts in Venice from around the time of the crusades, and yet not a current American presidential election?  It is the proximity to real experience that makes it so difficult to create.  Who could have predicted Florida?  Would anyone have accepted it as possible, before the fact?  This is what I mean; sure it made good narrative, but before it happened it would have strained credibility beyond much of the market's tastes, I believe.

It is true, such a game could be written.  Considering the attention to detail versus overburdening with the same, considering the difficulty abstracting a game mechanic that at once captures the essence of the realm (politics, medicine, or law) without opening the play up to endless kibitzing, considering how few role-players are interested in things in the lesser ends of the fantastic, I think it would be a very hard thing to write and have it gain any following.  Worse, consider how hard it would be to fail at it a few times.  Many writers would say, "Why bother?"

Fang Langford

p. s. These days, with all my female players, running 'romance novel' structured games is my stock and trade.  Imagine how hard that makes writing a general system on the side (without it getting all 'soapy').

p. p. s. Before anyone objects, let me point out that the romance novel is the oldest still-practiced literary tradition in English and usually almost five out of the top ten NY Times best sellers are from that genre, so there is a market for it.

[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2001-11-26 18:52 ]

(Even more interesting, Fang & I were writing our responses at the same time and we both made the same point.  He stated it better, but I offer a possible solution, such as it is.)

Interesting.  I've been thinking along these same lines myself.  Partially because I've been a long time ER fan, mostly because I've been a Crichton fan, partially because lately I've been watching movies based on John Grisham novels.

I'm not up on politics for RPG potential, but that's just me.  In either case, I'll offer my thoughts.

The problem with lawyer, doctor, politician or even Iron Chef RPGs is that it's tough to figure out how to make it work w/o sending the players to law school or medical school or what-have-you.

This is a bigger problem to circumnavigate than one might think.  The comparason to magic made earlier in this thread is not as helpful since unlike magic, the law and medicine are real.  With magic you can make up any old thing or research deeply into occult or wiccan or Qabals or whatever to make it "real."  However, lawyering and doctoring have very real proceedures and elements that cannot be boiled down to such euphuisms as "I cast my Fireball spell, that cost me 8 magic points."

Some people are stickers for accuracy and will notice when a game glosses over elements of the practice, or worse, gets them wrong.

I agree that the real drive behind these stories are the human relationships, but a system is hardly needed for that.  At least I don't see the point.  Personally, we could simply have the characters interact with each other and be done with it w/o any system to back it up.  Besides, such a system could wide up being as confining as we pretend alignments are.

This is why I personally believe that the place for the system is the nuts & bolts of the game world/setting/whatever.  That's the part that specificly needs a system, I think.

A primer for the practice can be helpful, but it's just a step toward putting the players through eight years of schooling before they really have a handle on the practice.  I'm more in favor in a system that somehow allows the characters to be experts in their chosen field while the player remain as blisfully ignorant as they've always been.

This is sort of what I attempted in my game with the Crisis Situation mechanic.  I came up with it while trying to dope out how to do an ER RPG.  Essentially, the players are dealt cards and they play them in turn similar to Uno or Crazy Eights (but w/o the Draw or Wild cards) by following suit or number.  The suits tell you how the situation is going.  A simple version is black = bad  red = good.  The means that when it is going bad, it will more likely continue to go bad since it's easier to follow suit than number, but it can still change at any minute.

The beautiful part of the Crisis Situation is when you play a card, you may say anything that reflects the situation *Including something accurate.*  I could see an ER-like trauma being played out and a Lavage (sp?) kit is called for even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with the case at hand and is not a proceedure to use.

I could see this being altered to fit lawyer arguing a case in court or pretty much any situation.  I'll bet there are different way to do this, too.

As to Mr. Wick's comment.  Well, if you keep selling RPGs to D&D player, yeah!  You've got to somehow get people not interesting in D&D to find out about and play your game.  If you spend enough time on an RPG forum, newsgroup, chatroom, etc. eventually someone will say something about bringing new people into the hobby, how it needs new blood.  This is true, but usually such statements go along with some home brewed game they've cobbled up, which is usually a D&D clone (or at least a GURPS clone)

How the hell will you bring new people into the RPG hobby with the same old thing?  We need new bait.  That's what The Forge is for, right?

[ This Message was edited by: pblock on 2001-11-26 19:12 ]

If I remember right, a long time ago I read a non-Dune Frank Herbert novel called "The Dosdai Experiement" in which the main character has to deal with an alien legal system.  That's one solution to the problem of real-world knowledge - shift the context.  You don't have to go the whole way and invent a new culture/system if that's not the direction/feel you want in the game.  Just make it somehow clear (alternate history?  social-contract suspension of the right to say "that's not how it really works"?) that what the game is about is the issues that arise in a (e.g.) legal context, and the details may NOT match the "real world".  As others have said, audiences make that kind of mental bargain all the time when watching legal-derived drama.  RPG participants should be capable of the same.

Gordon

I agree, shift the context.  I'm a big fan of the ide of historically inspired RPG's - not necessarily the Secret History approach either.  Rather than trial lawyers the RPG, I think the roman senate might make a better situation.

On the role of violence, I have come to think this is a necessary part of the kind of tension we require to motivate emotional investment by the players.  I would not be too firm about that, because I think its possible to create other kinds of tension, but whether they have enough bite to sustain interest over time is something else.  I will be addressing this in terms of the dynamic role of the antithesis in my dialectics essay, if it ever gets finished.

Quote
What's Buffy the Vampire Slayer about? Kicking demon ass & casting cool spells? Nope. It's about love.

Which is why its unwatchable garbage, IMO.  All it really is is Yet Another Soap Opera - dull and shallow.

Something that has been hinted at but never said here:

Physical action is the lowest common denominator.

Even people who have never been in a fight know what physical exertion feels like.  Most people know running and climbing, and most people have been in enough schoolyard scrapes to be able to imagine that they know what combat would be like.  The fact that they are wrong is beside the point, they can confidantly imagine that they know what they're about.

Magic or high tech in games often boils down to modifiers of or substitutes for physical action.  This is, I think, why so many fantasy games have dozens of different spells for frying critturs, but few (if any) for blessing marriages or healing goats with the mange.

An aside: anybody who wants to hear my rant on the "magic isn't real, so we can ignore realism with it" argument can ask me about it, as I know it's not really on topic here.

This leads into the techincal information argument: for the purposes of most RPGs, watching ER or Law & Order are adequate training for medical or law RPGs, since this represents the lowest common denominator of such knowledge.

Lon

Quote
On 2001-11-27 12:56, Uncle Dark wrote:
Something that has been hinted at but never said here:

Physical action is the lowest common denominator.

(snip)

This leads into the techincal information argument: for the purposes of most RPGs, watching ER or Law & Order are adequate training for medical or law RPGs, since this represents the lowest common denominator of such knowledge.

I argee with the lowest common denominator factor.  While many gamers may enjoy learning something from gaming material, I suspect few enjoy it being required to learn from the material.  I suppose that's a bizzare facett of human behavior that is beyond the scope of this thread.

However the knowledge given in ER, Law & Order and other tv, movies and books is generally so much gobbledygook.  You can usually replace all of the technical lines with "bullshit" and achieve the same effect.

Well, that's not entirely accurate.  These shows have advisors to try to make the scripts accurate.  They don't to get accuracy on screen, but it's better than I've just said.

That said it's still not always accurate and most of the time, it tends to go right over the average viewer's head.

It's also different for the different genres as well.  A half of law is arguing you case and the other half is finding legal precident, previous arguements and rulings that will help your case (There's a good one in The Rainmaker involving stolen evidence).  The arguement can be fairly easy to accomplish but how the heck do you translate legal precident into a game?  Medicine and other such games have similar problems.  Hence my own solution to the problem which allows it to remain "bullshit" while still workable.

I belive that fantasy (in all its forms) touches on human emotion in a way that reality-based art forms often cannot.

Say you've never roleplayed. I say "OK, would you rather be a wizard, a cop, or a lawyer?". I'm just guessing here based on personal experience and preference, but most people are going to go for either the wizard or the cop. Why? Maybe because these types of characters are closer to psychological archetypes.

The wizard has overtones of wisdom, power, knowledge. He's the archetypical magician as seen in the Tarot. The cop is a warrior. He fights evil. He's got some baggage with him due to reality, so he's not the perfect choice, but he's better than the lawyer. What does a lawyer do?

You could say that the lawyer is basically a warrior--if he fights against the bad guys. But there is a level of removal involved that makes it harder to see the warrior archetype coming through.

A doctor is clear example of a "magician" archetype. The wizard. But because we have all been in doctor's offices, there's a lot of baggage that comes with playing that role. Being a wizard cuts straight to the meat of the matter.

So what I think I'm getting at is that reason violent and/or fantastic rpgs are so dominant is that they provide quick, easy access to these basic human archetypes. In some modern psychology, they are Warrior, Magician, Lover, and King. These are based on a book by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillete, if I'm not mistaken. But these archetypes are much older and much deeper than any one person's vision.

In many art forms, rpgs in particular, the negative side of these archetypes often gets reinforced. Violence, savagery, power, deception. But at their root, these are things we all respond to.

Anyhow, that's my take on it. I think by questioning why we don't see games like that we are expanding, exploring, and understanding--all good things. So this is not meant to indicate that I don't think such games are worth doing. I think any kind of game is worth doing. I'm just pondering out loud why we like to kick in the door and take the ork's stuff.

I hope I've made a little bit of sense :smile:. I fear I've been long winded and unclear.

Later

James V. West

hi, James

I would argue that fantasy, super science, paranormal, etc. tend to readily capture the imagination.  This is probably because they are products of the imagination, but that's getting away from the point.

As for your examples:

Quote
"OK, would you rather be a wizard, a cop, or a lawyer?"

There's a problem here in that lawyers don't have very good image.  "What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?  How can you tell if a lawyer is lying?"

There's a stigma of lawyers being money-hungry, shiftless, blood-sucking leeches.  Who'd want to play a blood-sucking leech? (vampires?!?)  

A better comparison would be doctor in place of lawyer.  Doctors probably fall into one of those archtypes you're talking about.

This is the problem with mass-marketing such a thing, unless it's sold like Pantheon, with multiple games in one book or like GURPS: main rules, splatbooks.

I would argue the "fantasy captures the imagination" point. Sure, it conjures the imagination for people who like fantasy. But for those people who don't go for fantasy or SF, it doesn't do anything of the sort. In fact, for a lot of people, one of the main reasons to avoid RPGs is because of the prevalence of SF/fantasy/horror. But a hell of a lot of people watch soap operas, & I bet at least some of them would enjoy RPGs if they gave them a try.


[ This Message was edited by: joshua neff on 2001-11-28 21:04 ]

Hey James,

I started off the thread with all the titles of movies and TV shows because I think we are fascinated by doctors and lawyers and politicians. Are you suggesting that isn't true? My question was, since we are fascinated by them, why do we never run scenarios where the players are doctors, lawyers, or politicians? What's the hidden factor that deters us? It's hard for me to think it's the lack of killing. Are Call of Cthulhu scenarios about killing? My instincts coincide with Fang's suggestion that the hurdle is providing the players and GM with the right tools:

...to create a palatable abstraction....without having the same abstraction divorce the game from its genre....so that it does...not lose its main selling point...

Which is why I was stunned by how easily Blake abstracted a criminal trial.

It could be a cool series of indie RPG books, with titles like, "Put a Criminal Trial in your RPG" and "Put an Emergency Room Trauma in your RPG." Not modeled on GURPS supplements, with their emphasis on coverage, the books would be abstractions that structure their topic the way Blake structured a criminal trial, with guidance on what to ignore and what to emphasize, the focus of intent being on making the event work for the narrative, and sidebars of details that could be used to "color" the sequence.

Hmh...

Paul

I remember a very effective sequence in a short-lived SF (using Mekton rules) game I was in a while back.  I was playing essentially the ships' doctor.  "Warp" travel here involved a kind of psionic link between the pilot and the engines, and our pilot was an especially powerful esper.  So she tried to bend the normal rules that govern this "warp" travel, failed her roll, and ended up in some sort of coma.  My doctor had to diagnose the problem, determine how much of her condition was physical vs. psi-shock, consider several treatment options, dope himself up on stims to monitor her through the really rough spots . . . and it wasn't enough.  He finally had to slap her into stasis (a somewhat risky procedure) and tell the captain to limp to the nearest location with a substantial medical center.

So . . . this was much easier to do in a SF environement than it would have been in an "ER"-style RPG, as no one was too worried about getting the details of warp-pilot psi-shock wrong.  On the other hand, playing out the diagnosis and treatment was pretty much improvised between myself and the GM, me calling out skills and rolls for what I was attempting, he giving me some relevant information, lather, rinse, repeat.  it would have been nice to have a little more "rule structure" to how this all played out.  In similar situations in that same game such improvistations didn't go that well.

Gordon

I'm kinda surprised that we are still, even on the Forge, producing "RPG's" that are really just resolution mechanics.  Although I'm a mechanics wonk, essentiually they are just tools not the meat of the game; the meat is the who and the where.  I'd much rather see well realised discussion of the ER environment *for RPG purposes* than a set of mechanical rules for controlling bleeding, frex.  I really like the idea of such How To... books - detailing things like procedures and techniques, specialist skills and technology etc.  Hmm, that sounds too much like a bog-standard supplement; I mean something more like those books of Worst Case Scenarios.

This would outline the kind of situation you might find yourself in, what skills people employ, what concersn these people need to worry about, extended discussions of skills and the like.  The idea here is not to construct a set of game mechanics so much as to give players and GM's enough detail to fill in the blanks of their own mechanical system.  Instead of just "roll first aid" a properly designed aid could give the players the ability to discuss more details, based on sound knowledge, thus add depth to their narrative descriptions of actions and decisions.

Som FRPG ideas:
How To... Run An Imperial Bureacracy
How To... Fight An Open Field Battle
How To... Build & Run A Castle
How To... Run A Monotheism
How To... Run An Agricultural Village

Quote
On 2001-11-29 04:46, contracycle wrote:
How To... Run An Imperial Bureacracy
How To... Build & Run A Castle
How To... Run An Agricultural Village

I'd say that "Sailing to Byzantium," (in Pyramid a few weeks back) covers the first, "Lordly Domains" (for Pendragon) addresses a lot of the second, and "Fief" (from Cumberland, S. John Ross's venture) covers the third.

So I think there's a good amount of this kind of stuff ... but again, all from a medieval/ancient/fantasy perspective. On the other hand, don't I hear that GURPS Cops is coming out?

Hey James,

..."Sailing to Byzantium,"..."Lordly Domains"..."Fief"....GURPS Cops...

Although I haven't actually seen any of these, I'm familiar with Ken Hite's presentation style, and with GURPS supplements. And my lack of enthusiasm for them is that they don't actually make their content work for me. I've read "How to Try a Murder" by Michael Kurland. It gives a great overview of the stages of a criminal trial, the structure of it, the best I've ever seen for a general audience, but it doesn't do what Blake did in his post earlier on this thread. It doesn't tell me what to focus on. It doesn't tell me what to ignore. GURPS supplements emphasize coverage. I don't need that. I need something that shows me how to do it in a way that makes for dramatic game narrative.

Paul

I have Lordly domains and a couple of other products, being heavily into political economics.  Lordly domains was pretty goods but still suffers from encyclopedia-itis; it tends to describe things, not events, processes, econonomic and political relationships.  It's pretty dry managerialism.  Anyway, its not quite the kind of thing I am interested in, but I am having trouble articulating precisely what it should be.

Things like trade and manufacturing, say.  Having a set of mechanical rules for the wealth of the fief is all very well; but that does not help the GM much filling in the detail.  A discussion of horse diseases, frex, might be really useful by contrast, becuase having the royal herd wiped out wmay have major strategic implications.  Stuff like that (he says vaguely).

Quotecontracycle wrote:

Some [Fantasy Role-Playing Game-based] ideas:
How to... Run an Imperial Bureaucracy
How to... Fight an Open Field Battle
How to... Build & Run a Castle [and Keep]
How to... Run a [Monotheistic Religion]
How to... Run an [Early] Agricultural Village

Say aren't there "...for Dummies" books on these?

Shouldn't there be?  (For role-playing game milieus at least?)

Fang Langford

I'm starting to see what I personally think would be a really good idea here. Instead of RPG adventures, or scanarios, supplements that allow you to interject interesting scenes related to a particular field into your current game.

The players suddenly inherit a feifdom? Get out Adventures on the Feif, and select from any of several sorts of situations that could develop on the estate. A player gets incarcerated? Pull out Adventures in the Courtroom, to see how to play it out in the funest way possible.

Don't include an encyclopedic listing of all things related to the field. Just include stuff related to what would frame interesting RPG scenes. If a part of a trial is long and boring, the rules would explain how to get past it with just a die roll, and move on to the dramatic portions. All about how to pace technical things to keep them interesting for a game and not get bogged down in minutia.

Cool idea, guys.

Mike

Paul said:

"I started off the thread with all the titles of movies and TV shows because I think we are fascinated by doctors and lawyers and politicians. Are you suggesting that isn't true?"

No, not at all. I'm not personally fascinated with them, but I know many who are.

Pblock said:

"There's a problem here in that lawyers don't have very good image. There's a stigma of lawyers being money-hungry, shiftless, blood-sucking leeches. A better comparison would be doctor in place of lawyer. Doctors probably fall into one of those archtypes you're talking about."

Yeah, the Doctor is a magician archetype. A wizard. But even so, would you rather play a wizard, a cop, or a doctor? My argument (or rather, my point) is that most people would go for the wizard first because the wizard is the most direct link to the power of that archetype.

My main point was that the reason fantasy is dominant in rpgs is that fantasy is a live wire to the soul. Role-playing is a way of reaching energies within ourselves and playing with them in ways we can't do in mundane life. For many people, fantasy gets them "hotwired" faster and easier. And by fantasy I mean *all* forms of it from cyberpunk to horror.

But I don't want to derail the discussion. What would I think of an ER rpg, or an LA Law rpg? I'd be curious and interested in reading it, but I probably wouldn't play it unless I just happened into it. I need a lot of distancing in my games. If I'm going to play a cop or a doctor, I want to be in the future, the past, or an alternate reality of some sort. I don't want to be a cop in New York investigating a jewelry heist. It doesn't appeal to me on the surface.

Later
James V. West

QuoteMike Holmes wrote:

I'm starting to see what I personally think would be a really good idea here. Instead of RPG adventures, or scenarios, supplements that allow you to interject interesting scenes related to a particular field into your current game.

The players suddenly inherit a fiefdom? Get out Adventures on the Fief, and select from any of several sorts of situations that could develop on the estate. A player gets incarcerated? Pull out Adventures in the Courtroom, to see how to play it out in the funest [sp] way possible.

Way ahead of you Mike.  Except from my experience in retail, these have little chance of selling¹ (for you internet marketeers that means word won't get far and downloads will be few - better make it a labor of love).

Seems there was this little company not so long ago, who thought to do something along this line (maybe a little more on the 'module' side).  They felt that no one would want a product that wasn't geared specifically for gamers and without some kind of mechanical tie-in; so what would make it a gamer product?  Unfortunately, they used a little too much copyrighted terminology from a few too many companies and BANG got sued for copyright infringement.  The rest is history (did I mention they had to release a card game that they hadn't really finished to try and make money for the legal fees?  Or so the mythology goes).

We felt similarly about mechanics-free gaming product.  Who would be the audience?  How would they find it?  What would be the selling point if you only needed it for only one trial?  Better, we thought, to present things along the lines of ER or Law and Order or Gundam Wing as supplements with a few mechanics.  (At least enough to catch a gamer's fancy.)

When we were working out the 'supplements' side of Scattershot, we paid attention to a fact that retailing experience brought back again and again; if you don't bring out new role-playing gaming products regularly, you lose your 'front row' seat to sales (and interest).  But how to do that without succumbing to 'editionitis' (printing second and higher editions of the rules)?  Modules?  (Those are only sold to a smaller and smaller share of the market who are already buyers of the line.)  Updates?  (I don't know about anyone else, but I hate having to scan three or four books to find one rule; that's too much 'handling time.')  What then?

I got an idea from both Palladium's pre-Rifts lines and GURPS' world books.  It should be something light, and very narrow-genre (each one of its own creation, thank you), yet it should contain at least some of the main rules (always a flaw I found in GURPS).  Yet Palladium books cost too much to be light.  What then?

Well, a long time ago, I segregated Scattershot's mechanical complexity into three tiers (to avoid GURPS' innumerable 'optional rules' search-time problem).  We decided that we'd put only the first tier of the mechanics in each of these 'genre books,' as we'd come to calling them (with ample references to a 'core set' of books).  We'd also spend most of our design time on the mechanics in the core books (twelve of them now, with no more in sight) so they'd never need major revision/updating.  This also meant the first tier of mechanics, as it appears in the 'genre books,' would be fairly static (not the presentation, just the mechanics themselves, did I mention that core book twelve is meant to be in comic book format even though it carries roughly the same mechanics as all the others?).

What this means is that anyone right off the street could pick up a 'genre book' and be able to approximate play (with the static, first tier mechanics, this makes for a shorter production schedule, crucial for making a profit at media tie-ins and licensed products - fad chasing).  These books would lead consumers back to the core set of books which cross-reference each other (in as user friendly - not 'where did those rules go' – a way possible, each book offers modular rules + narrow-genre information that can be used to augment any other), inviting the consumer to buying the whole line.  (This is much like the effect the 'Open Gaming License' was supposed to have on Player's Handbook sales.)

Since we'd be treating every little narrow-genre as it came up and these products hung from the 'structure' of the generalized genres presented in the core books, we'd never run out of source material (or fads to chase after).  Production time and costs would be low, so we could catch as many trends as possible (without losing our publisher's shirt), and the price at the counter would likewise be lower for the entry-level consumer (I am still amazed at price tags over thirty dollars).

Add to that that we have a similar type of tie-in planned as a collectible card game and also an electronic console game tie-in in development, means we can be as diversified as needs be.

QuoteDon't include an encyclopedic listing of all things related to the field. Just include stuff related to what would frame interesting RPG scenes. If a part of a trial is long and boring, the rules would explain how to get past it with just a die roll, and move on to the dramatic portions. All about how to pace technical things to keep them interesting for a game and not get bogged down in minutia.

Better yet, how about writing out how the exemplars of the narrow-genres do all that and how (at least for Scattershot) the mechanics are geared to help this advice carry the 'feel' of its narrow-genre?

QuoteCool idea, guys.

Oh you're making me blush.

Fang Langford

p. s. Now if we could only find someone to take our art and our writing and get it onto the shelves.  We're a design think-tank for gosh sakes, we have no interest in publishing, production, owning and running a company, and well...profit really (we're totally against loss, we want to exactly break even).

p. p. s. To James V. West: we felt similarly about the lack of interest in a doctor- or lawyer-only game, that's why everything in Scattershot (from the core books out to the farthest flung 'genre book') is designed to also be used to augment every other product.  Imagine a Sorcerer-style game set in the Law and Order narrow-genre (yes, I know its been mentioned before, I still thought it was a cool idea).

¹ I still have my copy of Cities (Create and Explore Your Own Fantasy Communities) by Abrams & Everson for Chaosium, a great resource for creating medieval cities and trust me, it is totally non-system (even though it uses dice to walk you through the process).  The problem with it was, even though I read at least two glowing reviews for it (and this is before the internet took off), it took me six years to lay my hands on a copy.

[ This Message was edited by: Le Joueur on 2001-11-30 10:08 ]

Quote
My main point was that the reason fantasy is dominant in rpgs is that fantasy is a live wire to the soul. Role-

Hmm, I'm not sure I buy that; most magicians do pretty mundane stuff.  It's usually all very prosaic, really - ability lists and sometimes a certain resource-management component.  There are exceptions, of course, but relatively few I think.

Quote
On 2001-11-30 05:26, contracycle wrote:
Hmm, I'm not sure I buy that; most magicians do pretty mundane stuff.  It's usually all very prosaic, really - ability lists and sometimes a certain resource-management component.  There are exceptions, of course, but relatively few I think.

???

In Xanth they do magic in Mundania they do the mundane. Sure, mechanically they may work the same in a game, but from an imagination POV there's nothing more magical than, well, magic.

At least it works for me; goes straight to my soul. I always play a spellflinger if I can. :smile:

Mike

Yeah, what Mike said. Basically it boils down to what roles have the least amount of reality-baggage. Wizards, warriors, and thieves for example have much less baggage than judges, lawyers, and doctors. College professors have less baggage than lawyers or doctors because we perceive them as less structured and more likely to be eccentric thus we can inject our own fantasies into them a little easier.

You know, I think I'll just start a new thread on this subject since it's only peripherally related to the original topic. Anyone interested in discussing it?

James V. West

OK, to keep this thread on track, let's look at Blake's post since at least one other person thought he did a decent job breaking legal proceedure down and since he used to be a trial attorney, he's probably got more knowledge than most of us ever will.  The quotes are his.

Quote
...Set each scene to correspond with the parts of the trial you wanted to cover, and it doesn't get too technical.  Basically, you'd skip voir dire (the most important part of the trial IMO) unless you absolutely wanted to deal with specific jurors to weight the drama a bit further.  You'd probably want to drop opening arguments also, since opening argument does nothing more than outline what you're going to talk about -- you're not allowed to openly advocate anything at that point.

This depends on how you do it, I suppose.  I know nothing of real trial proceedure and what you can and can't do.  Most of what I've got is based on movies & TV.

Two movies made a point on jury selection (I assume that's what voir dire is based on context clues) A Time To Kill and The Rainmaker made use of that part of the process.  (Unless I'm misreading what voir dire is)

I suppose this would work like combat and how much you abstracted and how much you glossed over.

All RPG combat is an abstraction, no exceptions unless the player fight wearing read armor with real weapons, real wounds and real death.

But the abstraction is such that it mirrors the reality closely but with varying levels of detail.  Not all RPG combat requires miniatures, battle maps, flanking rules, etc.  S o too would various trial RPGs not include all of the elements of a real trial nor will they reflect them accurately, look at the weapons' damage dice in D&D.

So some game might include opening statements and voir dire because a case is built slowly from the ground up and some might find playing this important. Others will not as skip to key witnesses, as suggested.  It varies by the game and the people playing it.

Quote
Traits could be general: Technical Knowledge and Persuasion, or you could break it down to a more granular set of Examination, Argument, Evidence, [subject] Knowledge (e.g., Criminal Law, Appellate Procedure, etc.), Ethics, and the like.  Alternatively, you could take a Hero Wars approach and have skills like Flimflam Jury, Good Ol' Country Lawyering, Dramatic Pause, Accuse, Badger, Poker Face, Pettifoggery (with a nod to Pelgrane Press), Make Lame Argument Sound Plausible, Gregory Peck Impression, Make Nice with Cops, False Sincerity, Generate Paperwork, and Plausible Denial.

I can't help but think that traits will be more usefull outside of the courtroom than in it, but that's just me.

Quote
Don't worry about legal accuracy; most TV and movie trials drive me nuts.  I sit there muttering, "Object-object-object!" or "WTF? Mistrial!"  (For what it's worth, The Practice seems to be the exception.  For a great example of abysmal legal ethics, watch Ally McBeal.)

That and, never having watch Ally McBeal, I got the impression that the fact she works in a law firm is besides the point.  The commercials sold it more as a show about a professional single woman in the 90's with goofy sight gags.


Anyhow, the real problem with a good coutroom drama is that they tend to require (?) a helping of deus ex machina.  The trial is going this way and then suddenly Our Hero realizes exactly how to undermine the opposition's case, does so and wins.

Or such is what I've seen, which includes:

Perry Mason (tv series)
A Time To Kill (film)
The Rainmaker (film)
Reversal of Fortunes (film)
Phildelphia (film)

And a few others (we could pile up a seletion of source materials, if you like.)
Practically speaking, you can go out right now and grab a writer's book on medical thrillers or legal mysteries or police procedure.  There are a ton of great genre-specific sourcebooks in that market.

Best,

Blake

[ This Message was edited by: Blake Hutchins on 2001-11-26 15:21 ]
[/quote]

Hey pblock,

Yes, voir dire is jury selection.  Sorry about the jargon.

A lawyer-based campaign would certainly have to have non-courtroom elements, with actual court appearance forming the core "combat/contest" element, much as an ER surgery would in a medical drama.  You'd have stuff happening outside the legal battle, but when you do step into the courtroom, the group should know how to simulate or selectively dramatize the trial/hearing experience so it advances the story, maintains the players' suspension of disbelief, and doesn't bog down in the minutiae that exist in the real world.  Most trials range from half a day in the most cut-and-dried minor misdemeanor cases to weeks or months in high-profile murder cases.  Another thing you'd have to consider is how much time typically passes prior to trial.  Even in the rural area I practiced in, we commonly had three to six months between the time a trial date was set and the occurrence of the actual trial -- in out of custody cases, at least.  On TV, trials come up awfully fast.  There are ways, I think, to get a law-based game going with verisimilitude without being a lawyer or worrying about wholesale accuracy, but you have to know enough of how the legal system works in real life in order to fuel the illusion.

Plus, the characters themselves -- assuming the characters are attorneys -- should have their own lives and stories outside their profession.  A constant string of courtroom confrontations strikes me as tantamount to a dungeon crawl with suits and briefcases and arcane paperwork.

Frankly, the prospect of a real world legal RP doesn't interest me much, as I'm too jaded to want to play what I used to do for a living.  I have too much mundane knowledge for me to enjoy it.  However, a game where the characters are attorneys who represent the supernatural (see the comic Wolff & Byrd for a hilarious example), magistrates in a Bleak House kind of fog-shrouded fantasy world -- maybe with an Inquisition Court complete with legal procedures governing torture -- or legal operatives representing a shady conspiracy in a cyberpunk political thriller... that stuff might get my blood moving.

Best,

Blake

Hey, Blake

Hey, Blake

Quote
from an imagination POV there's nothing more magical than, well, magic.

I think magician-as-mobile-artillery-cum-gadgetboy is much more common; relatively few games give you any magical meet to deal with.  Exceptions I can think of are mage an nobilis, which give you some context to be imaginative about rather than handwaving it as "yeah, its uh magic, yaknow, it just works, like, theres spirits and stuff".

Quote
On 2001-12-03 05:30, contracycle wrote:
I think magician-as-mobile-artillery-cum-gadgetboy is much more common; relatively few games give you any magical meet to deal with.  Exceptions I can think of are mage an nobilis, which give you some context to be imaginative about rather than handwaving it as "yeah, its uh magic, yaknow, it just works, like, theres spirits and stuff".

Well, that's just a question of taste. Which I have none of. I can't do fireballs in RL, therefore they're very magical to me. No matter how poorly defined or described. I fill in the details wth my imagination. Just the idea that I am a mage and that I do some handwaving, and that there's spirits and stuff, is a good enough place to start. For me.

Not to say that some systems don't do a better job than others. My standards are just very low. :smile: Anyhow, as it pertains to the thread, fantasy is to me, and I think many others, an engrossing Premise even when done relatively poorly. Obviously it isn't so much for you.

Got my tickets for Dec 19th already. I'm going because I want to see what it looks like when Gandalf works up a fire spell. Sweet...

Mike

Quote
On 2001-12-03 11:57, Mike Holmes wrote:

Well, that's just a question of taste.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Argueably magic in many RPGs is anything but magical.  I mean, in D&D magical swords no longer have names nor are they special anymore unless they have a high enough "+" which is one of the pitfalls of making a usable system for magic.

Oddly enough, getting back on topic, medicine and the law are somewhat "magical" to the layman since they don't completely understand it.  Perhaps a well-done RPG can take some of the mystery off of this.

Jack, you make the oddest posts.

Quote
On 2001-12-03 18:28, pblock wrote:

Quote
On 2001-12-03 11:57, Mike Holmes wrote:

Well, that's just a question of taste.

Well, maybe, maybe not.

Argueably magic in many RPGs is anything but magical.  I mean, in D&D magical swords no longer have names nor are they special anymore unless they have a high enough "+" which is one of the pitfalls of making a usable system for magic.

Huh?

Sure magic swords are a dime-a-doxen in D&D. I have played the game some. But it's plus one, man. That's sooo cool. I can get under that standard. I can even go lower than that. I remember my first +5 Rolemaster Sword. Not even magical, just made of steel. That was pretty cool to me. Taste is taste, no maybe about it. Arguably.

And how does having plus one swords pertain to making usable magic systems??? Never mind. You'll probably never believe that I (and others I beleieve) actually find that sort of thing engaging. I must be in some sort of denial. Can anyone recommend a therapist?

Quote
Oddly enough, getting back on topic, medicine and the law are somewhat "magical" to the layman since they don't completely understand it.  Perhaps a well-done RPG can take some of the mystery off of this.

You seem to be arguing that magic is a good thing that is destroyed by accounting. Then you find that there is magic in the mundane art of lawyering. And then you want to strip it away. Confused. Rather.

Wait, I got it. Magic is not engaging because it isn't done well. Lawyering is sorta magical. Therefore to make it engaging one should remove the magic.

How could I have missed it?

Mike

you know, I'm not sure what I was getting at either.  Let me try again and heap more dirt on myself (that's not dirt!)

I'm sort of argee with a sentiment John Wick put in one of his GDJ over on GO.  I think they're free to view, but I forget the episode number.

Basically, that magic, real magic, magical magic doesn't work like it does in an RPG.  The +1 swords and memorizing spells and magic points and all of that breaks magic down into a usable format for a game, but it drains it of much of the wonder.

Some games attempt to bring that back, like Everyway which gives the characters a Boon as a reward for completing a quest.  One posibility would be a magic sword, which IMO (when done right) is better than finding a +1 sword in the chest.  more dramatic and more magical.  If you see what I'm talking about.  I guess I was responding to your comment on RPG magic being magical, which is a stupid discussion and it's probably best dropped.

In either case, the "magicalnicity" of RPG magic systems aside, they are usable and practical (some of them) which is important.

The subject of this thread: law, medicine, politics; is as un fathomable to the laymen as magic.  a system much like an RPG magic system to make Law practice, etc. usable and practial is a way to go.

If that doesn't make sense, then I don't know what I was trying to say and am best ignored.

Hello,

I think Jack is dead on the money, that is to say, correct.

Replace "real magic" in his post (which is a potentially confounding term) and simply interject "theme and meaning," and you're all set.

Magic in this sense is a synonym for "especially significant," or "tapped into what matters." Think of what used to be meant by the term "noble," specifically without any good implied one way or another - a person who simply breathes a larger air, was born to more power, and whose actions are simply more significant than others'.

Regardless of any particular reaction I may have to that concept as a 20th-century-born type of modern guy, the FEELING involved is what's going on in most fantasy magic.

(Special important note: The Dying Earth is justly famous for its deconstructive take on this meaning of magic, which is why it arguably was the WORST template imaginable for the foundational magic system for fantasy role-playing. One of those historical little twists of fate, or plagiarism, as the case may be.) (Other note: and in its proper context, Dying Earth magic is a wonderful hoot, so don't read my special important note wrongly, dammit.)

A few role-playing games have tried to get at this approach to magic, but most of them have wavered between a "bazooka" approach and a Drama-driven approach that tends to lack teeth.

On the Sorcerer site, there's a very dense thread in the Archives about magic systems; I'll stop by there and fetch the link back as a correction.
Got'em! Here and continued here.

Now take this to the modern day - doctors and lawyers are among those who seem to wield more power in realms which, to most of us, are mysterious, arbitrary, and significant. I think Jack's insight is very important for those who would consider a role-playing system of the "ordinary."

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-12-04 19:22 ]

A few thoughts about magic.

1. When we designed JAGS our first conclusion was that to make magic both mysterious and useable we'd have to do something ... weird (and all our ideas turned out to be unsatisfactory to us). They were:

a) A system of building your own spells on the fly. It got complex. It got long. It was plenty mysterious (since no one could figure out how it worked). It *did* create a sense of the character weilding great power (or at least varied power).

b) The idea that there would be secret mage rules and only mages would read them, leaving the fighters and thieves (in fantasy) mystified was ... unworkable--but it would put most of the players in the position of not knowing how magic works (like when you watch a lawyer or doctor work and aren't one).

--
We decided what we wanted most for the GENERIC magic system. We built it with High-Fantasy (like from D&D or computer games) in mind:

1. We wanted magic to have the possibility of flash-bang/battlefield grade/wargame-style spells.

2. We wanted mages to play with resource management (one or two 'capital spells' per battle, then falling back to lesser spells). We settled on spell points while.

3. We wanted a good mix of horiffic spells ("Fill Intestines with Scorpions") and basic spells ("Star Bolt"). So we created colleges and some had horiffic spells and some didn't. We didn't interlink colleges like GURPS did (we didn't like GURPS's magic prerequisites much).

4. We made sure to include skills in magic. Our success in that result was not great. Each college has a skill that lets you do certain things (without actual magic spells).

5. For "standard Fantasy" we wanted there to be things for both fighters and mages to do (i.e. magic should not eclipse sword-play). We also made sure that there were counter-measures to magical theivery and that magic didn't make "thief types" unnecessary.

We created about 300 spells. The results were ... okay. For a dungeon-crawling/basic fantasy they're pretty colorful (IMO) and balanced (did some work there) and there are enough to make many varried characters.

We're working on alternate magic systems with more 'wonder.' I think a 'Hisenbergian' principal where the more a mage knows about how his spell is going to work the less powerful it is would be good.

We're looking at some 'conceptual' ideas where the user has 'power' in certain realms ("Life MAgic") and balances it with cosmic-feedback, and the like.

The best definition of 'black magic' vs. 'white magic' I've ever heard is that black magic damages the user in some way (that works for demon driven magic or just bad-karma magic). I'd like to work that in.

-Marco

Quote
On 2001-12-04 19:16, Ron Edwards wrote:
Replace "real magic" in his post (which is a potentially confounding term) and simply interject "theme and meaning," and you're all set.

Thanks Ron, for a second there I thought that magic was a real world phenomenon, and somebody had forgotten to tell me.

I think that I'll take a stab here and guess that Jack really meant "magic the way I like it". Which is to say that he feels that most magic system don't have a feel that he appreciates. To which I say, to each his own.

Quote
Magic in this sense is a synonym for "especially significant," or "tapped into what matters." Think of what used to be meant by the term "noble," specifically without any good implied one way or another - a person who simply breathes a larger air, was born to more power, and whose actions are simply more significant than others'.

Regardless of any particular reaction I may have to that concept as a 20th-century-born type of modern guy, the FEELING involved is what's going on in most fantasy magic.

I'll try one more time. Sure, some systems have a feel that'll appeal more to some than others. But lots of people seem to like D&D. And I think that the fantasy element has a lot to do with it. This is why people moving on to other systems often have a hankering to continue to do fantasy. It's not the system, it's the Premise that's attractive, here. Can it be done better. Of course. D&D magic is relatively terrible. It's just better than no magic at all. At least to some.

I know that doesn't include y'all. You don't like it. OK.

Quote
(Special important note: The Dying Earth is justly famous for its deconstructive take on this meaning of magic, which is why it arguably was the WORST template imaginable for the foundational magic system for fantasy role-playing. One of those historical little twists of fate, or plagiarism, as the case may be.) (Other note: and in its proper context, Dying Earth magic is a wonderful hoot, so don't read my special important note wrongly, dammit.)

If you don't mind me saying so...huh? Is magic a fun part of the DE premise, or not?

Quote
A few role-playing games have tried to get at this approach to magic, but most of them have wavered between a "bazooka" approach and a Drama-driven approach that tends to lack teeth.

So, it can't be done better? Or just never has been?

Quote
Now take this to the modern day - doctors and lawyers are among those who seem to wield more power in realms which, to most of us, are mysterious, arbitrary, and significant. I think Jack's insight is very important for those who would consider a role-playing system of the "ordinary."

Are you arguing that these professions are fun to play because they are "magical"? If so then, magic is a good thing, no? Or is the magic of the abstraction of a lawyers abilities somehow more compelling naturally than than that of a wizards abilities?

I'm very tempted to capitulate in a fit of "I don't get it".

For the record, in case anyone thinks that I'm against the whole Lawyer, Doctor, Politician Premises, see earlier in the thread where I encouraged their creation. I think that they would be engaging to some, certainly.

I just like magic a lot.

Mike

Sorry Mike,

I think the problem is that we're grossly off-topic anyway, and so a lot of foundational standards aren't set for the magic issue, and SO we're all just hitting one another from different angles and perspectives, with no structure for the discussion.

Rather than continue with the answers to your questions and thus drag it all FURTHER off-topic, and probably not be productive ANYWAY, I'll just say, "Hmm, a thread about magic stuff would be cool," and leave it at that.

Again, sorry about that lame answer, but I really think that's the best thing to do.

Best,
Ron

I constantly hit this problem (ie, games about normal people, or about 'mundane' stuff). Take the current 3e game I'm in as an example. It's very good, and I really do like the epic arc that we are on - it's very exciting. But when it comes down to it, I'm not excited about it because of the BIG VISUALS or COOL FIGHTS but because my character is having to make choices along the way about the woman he loves. They are currently on divergent tracks and seem to be getting further apart (still hanging on that redemption will be possible).

Anyway, would all that be interesting if all the typical role-playing stuff did not surround it? I think so, I absorbed by the issue of decisions, consequences and playing those out in a narrativist way.

In a few weeks the campaign will end, the two characters will meet (again, they have a Batman/Catwoman thing going on at the minute - love, but rapidly divergent tracks). I don't care about the epic conclusion to save the world - I just want to see how this drama plays out. I want to try and divert her from her course, I want to secure her future even if it means death for my character.

In short, I'm interested in the romance, the 'mundane'.

I could live with a game that was almost 100% about that.

I could also quite happily run a game about 100% normal people. No funky powers, relatively normal jobs. They just have a kicker into a relatively normal situation and they go for it - revenge on a past transgressor, an attempt to rekindle love with a childhood sweatheart - whatever. Not saying it would be easy, as the characters they interact with will not exist in isolation (what part does the childhood sweatheart play in the relationship map), but they would be normal concerns.

That could work.

Quote
On 2001-12-07 09:17, Ian O'Rourke wrote:
That could work.

Sure it could. Nobody has said otherwise that I'm aware of. Somebody write this RPG to appease these many calls for it.

For me, however, I have this geeky desire to have fangs, a flaming body, spells, or a big blaster at my hip. And I'm not the only one. Are these things necessary? No, not at all. They're just a lot of fun to some people.

And to bring my previous arguments back on topic (never really thought we had strayed), for folks like me, mundane is not as good as fantastic. Such mundane games will certainly have a market, but it will not be the majority of the current gamer market.

Which, as Jared has said, is a great reason for their introduction. We might get new folks into RPGs. Once you guys hook 'em with Mundania the RPG, I can try and siphon them off to Fantasia. And then we'll all be happy.

:smile:

Mike

Mundane RPG, go!

Needs: Setting. That's the game, more or less. A setting (ala a soap opera) with lots of built-in intrigue and interest.

Me? i'd go with a sub-bizarro setting like that GREAT show Key West (imagine a good-natured, good-hearted version of Twin Peaks).

System: Unknown quanity. Heavy on personal description/descriptors. No combat system. That's stupid.

Also...

I have a burning desire to dress up in a superhero costume and go to Denny's with 4-5 like-minded people. Cannot explain. Too much "The Tick," perhaps?