The Game of Design

[Trevis Martin]

So my group has been playing the new Vampire:TR game.  Our conclusion so far: setting is better, rules still suck.  I had gotten some intense desire back when everyone expressed interest in playing the game to play the new rules as written.  I suspect myself of not GMing the system very well because of my subconcious dislike of the rules.  (I frikkin HATE extended rolls.  What is the point?  It works in Heroquest because of the trade, but accumulating successes?  Blech.)   Anyway it's drifted some.  Still there have been some great moments in the game, entirely from the players and their creative material.  The system doesn't support us in this much.  (If I was Vincent, I'd draw the little seperating system animation, to illustrate how our fun has gone with this one.)

But this post is actually about our most recent meeting in which the above game was interrupted because of a player who, due to understandable reasons, ended up not coming.  So me and two of the players had ourselves a little talk and experimentation session.

The people involved.  Me, 32, usually the GM and host of the games.  Sam, early 20's,  co-worker, cool imagination, really into video games.  Mike, 35, also a co-worker, very thoughtful and probably, aside from me, the one most interested in games in general.  Mike is a gamer from back in the day.  The way he's been playing I'd say he has had strong Nar tendencies his whole life, but was never really facilitated up to recently.  Sam is a newbie, and doesn't have the baggage us two older salts do.

A few weeks ago, when discussing our next game we settled on playing Castle Falkenstein.  So I've been thinking about how to run this for a couple of weeks.  First I was tempted to run it as written.  Then I read the rules again.  I was amazed to discover how little the book actually tells you how to play.  I've been getting used to Sorcerer, PTA and Dogs which all tell you a lot about how you actually play, and I didn't realize how much I'd come to depend on that.   Anyway, I began to consider alternate rulesets.  The biggest thing about Falkenstein is the setting anyway.  The rules on my shortlist included Heroquest (haven't played it yet), FATE, The Puddle (Pool Variant), Story Engine (again, waiting to play that one) and possibly TSOY.

I discussed all these ideas, and the original system with my two players.  We played around a little with how they all worked.  They agreed with me that the Falkenstein system was a little clunky.  (A lot of damn numbers.)  When I presented the alternatives I was talking about how Falkenstein was cool in using the cards but It didn't really use them as cards.  In talking about it I mentioned how I was working on this Whist based mechanic for my own 19th century game, Regency Park.  When I described it Mike said, "I'd be interested in using that!" 

I told him it wasn't really worked out yet, just the most basic part of the idea.  He said, lets play around with it a while.  So we did.  They mades some simple characters and we played through a simple situation, an English aristocrat and an explorer trekking through the Amazon in search of a rare orchid.  It wasn't really roleplaying or rather we spent a lot of time exploring this system rather than anything else.  Exploring what it did, what it might do, what other games had done that we liked and didn't like.

I think what was really amazing to me about this goofing around was how much it brought out about what games we had played, how we thought about them, and how they affected us.  Today Mike told me how much he enjoyed that session and I realized that I really had to.

Maybe it seemed so pleasurable in light of my hostility to the rules of the Vampire game.  Maybe it just put me in mind of how you sometimes just doodle and fool around with art materials, doing nothing but taking pleasure in the medium itself and exploring it.  There was an utter lack of struggle to make a good game, but I haven't felt so much intensity of interest around the table in a while.

I'd be interested if anyone else had a similar or related experience to share.

best

Trevis