Real-Time RPGs

[Damballa]

Hey, what do you guys think of the real-time strategy genre as it applies to roleplaying?

I'm taking my lead here from Hakim Bey's tangential suggestion of a 'Quilting Bee' in his manifesto: http://www.left-bank.org/bey/immediat.htm

Think about the rise of the real-time strategy genre (outside of computer/console games) - Games would begin to more closely resemble reality: Time was limited, and if you wasted yours, your opponents would probably be taking advantage of theirs.

I've been tinkering with designing a roleplaying game based on contemporary warfare or the G8 summit.  The usual accumulation of tokens/chits/pieces; Threat Matrix – Best case scenarios, worst case scenarios; 'You are The President' kinda thing.

Here's some tentative notes towards such an enterprise:

Simulationist Explanation:
The Players, at the start of the game, chose to be one of the following:
The President
The CEO
The Cell Leader
The Media
The Diplomat
The Junta

Players all sit around a table, face to face.  

In front of them on the table is an abstracted map of an entire planet surface - Use the Geographic or cartographic projection you like the best as a 'game board'.

There are big piles of Lego bricks, in as many colours as there are players.  Each pile is divided into each colour and each player takes a sizable pile.  They then start building abstract shapes as fast as they can; altering the construction and reinforcing the structure of their shape in their own Real Time.

'Female' receptors on the Lego pieces can be offered to other 'friendly' player's shapes; the outward 'Male' receptors represent antagonistic relationships.  Any pieces that snap off, chicken wish-bone style are yours.  Try to dominate the table first with your shape.  All in Real Time.  

Think Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I); or C4-RSTA- that's recon, surveillance, and target acquisition.

"Harvest, build, destroy"

This is like a variant of Texas Hold'em poker x MahJong – Chinese warfare = the Fluid and moving Ch'i/Cheng of Sun Tzu.

An experimental war that prepares public opinion for other terrors of greater magnitude.  A war game will reveal more about a conflict than the Press.

Source material:
~ That video game in "Never Say Never Again"
~ 'World Domination' variations of playing "Risk"
~ "Diplomacy"
~ "Command & Conquer"
~ African politics.

"The Dirty War in Real Time".
Billions of AK-47s
Billions of RPG-7s
Billions of Machetes
Lots of manpower
Hypertech lateral thinking.

Simple - Cheap – Plastic – Disposable - One-shot – Recyclable - Mass Production Patterns (Lots creating chaos).

Narrativist Explanation:
Threat Matrix – Best case scenarios, worst case scenarios.
In other word, Recuperation.
This allows various types of Real Time game to be played with these tokens/chits/pieces:

- Political narratives
- Force narratives
- Computing narratives
- Economic narratives
- Terror narratives
- Faith narratives
- Hearts & Minds narratives
- Peace narratives
- Engineering narratives

"A dark illimitable ocean without bound, an eternal anarchy, amidst a noise of endless wars, where unordered atoms struggle with each other.
A pattern in personal and public events indicating Divine control – the hidden pattern of history in the context of a moral universe under God's direction" - John Milton.

Gamist Explanation:
Accumulation of tokens/chits/pieces. Reduction of enemy's tokens/chits/pieces. Physical changes on the board. Swapping/exchanging of tokens/chits/pieces.

RESOURCE WARS
(of the tokens/chits/pieces)

The various Lego Pieces become symbolic of:
A. + Combat Aircraft
B. + Combat Tanks
C. + Combat Helicopters
D. + Combat Boats & Ships
E. + Combat Submarines
F. + Combat Space Shuttles
G. + Missiles

A. + Nuclear Reactors
B. + Pylons & Electrical generators
C. + Oil Mega-Tankers
D. + Petrochemical refineries
E. + Solar panels
F. + Wind farms
G. + Hydro-electrical dams

A. + Economic tools
B. + Bonds
C. + Derivatives
D. + Options
E. + Capital investment
F. + Exotic Financial Instruments
G. + Currency Reserves

A. + Switchers
B. + Firewalls
C. + Routers
D. + Data packets
E. + Networks
F. + Terminals
G. + Servers

A. + Sanctions
B. + Alliances
C. + NGOs
D. + Treaties
E. + UN Groups/Security Council
F. + Aid packages
G. + G8

(etc, etc.)

For a much more Fantasy RPGer-friendly version of this concept, the nominated GM could buy one of those card-board cut out Cathedrals (etc) and the PCs all get play medieval masons, scultptors, artisans and architects living around the construction site (which is actually physically in the middle of the table-of-play).  Everyone gets given/shares scissors, paper glue, paint, modelling clay, craft knives etc and contributes to the construction of the cathedral or castle whilst simultaneous roleplaying.  The game ends once the model is finished.   This site might help such a game - http://www.cardfaq.org/faq/onesies.html

[Vaxalon]

I think you'd get a lot of resistance to this style of gaming from traditional RPG'ers, who don't like to see the player's abilities (things like hand-eye coordination) have a strong impact on success, especially a blatantly win/lose game like this one.

OTOH I think people who aren't ordinarily into RPG's would find the game you describe quite interesting.

[Damballa]

I was hoping that the whole 'hand-eye' thing (which would only be strongest in the Gamist version of this idea in a "Jenga"-like way) would be hopefully negated in the more Narrativist/Simulationist variants - i.e. the individual player's creativity & imagination & characterization come to the fore, not how good at origami they are.

Like Jazz musicians jamming a 'burn' or modern artists collaborating on a conceptual 'happening', what matters in these Narrativist/Simulationist variant games is the Simultaneity of play and mutual Conviviality of the Shared Imaginative Space, not who builds the biggest/best/hardest structures.

[Vaxalon]

If you want to evoke a jazz fluidity, you might want to rethink this part:

Try to dominate the table first with your shape.

Jazz musicans don't try to dominate the music.

[Callan S.]

But you do need some sort of creative limitation to begin with, to help spur creativity within those limitations. When done at the start, this is a foundation rather than domination.

[James Holloway]

I think you'd get a lot of resistance to this style of gaming from traditional RPG'ers, who don't like to see the player's abilities (things like hand-eye coordination) have a strong impact on success, especially a blatantly win/lose game like this one.

OTOH I think people who aren't ordinarily into RPG's would find the game you describe quite interesting.

This is already true of a lot of LARPs, which are pretty much inherently "realtime," at least most of the time. In fact, the "you are the president" thing sounds a lot like the kind of thing a group called Storm Lantern, who were running games at Salute this year and Conjuration back in 2003.

I don't know if the National Security Decision-making Game that runs at GenCon is "real time" like that.

[Vaxalon]

Manipulating blocks in realtime is a creative limitation?  I guess I don't understand what you mean by "creative limitation".

[Damballa]

The 'Manipulating blocks' prop is only a tentative attempt by me to imagine a structure whereby the various players could be all getting on with 'something' whilst interacting with the others around them (all doing a similar, if not equal, activity).

Simultaneity is the key value here; time management .

The Quilting Bee is perhaps closer to what I would want get from a 'RTS' roleplaying game - wherein there are no 'turns' but a process of convivial and creative exchange.  Forget the Lego blocks/21st century Risk outline above if you may - it's just my conceptual device to hit upon something more effective or practicable.

LRPGs do fulfil many of the criteria for RTS outside of computers - is that the solution?  My mind can't seem to make the bridge between those two worlds of roleplay for some reason.  

Even the powerful tools of LRPGs and Live Action seem limited by those ol' 'wait-your-turn' human social codes, like how people talk, sing, sleep and even do their fightin'... "A general melee ensued"

[James Holloway]

LRPGs do fulfil many of the criteria for RTS outside of computers - is that the solution?  My mind can't seem to make the bridge between those two worlds of roleplay for some reason.  

Even the powerful tools of LRPGs and Live Action seem limited by those ol' 'wait-your-turn' human social codes, like how people talk, sing, sleep and even do their fightin'... "A general melee ensued"

I don't understand this last remark -- to me, "realtime" means that actions aren't constrained by a turn order, but occur naturally (whatever that means). So people talk in conversations instead of in a general babble, sure, but how else do people communicate?

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, I think James is right and that you're just talking about LARP here, specifically the now popular format generally known as the Freeform (as opposed to the use of that term meaning mechanic-less RPG or other forms of LARP like Boffer LARP).

Freeforms are generally characterized by each player getting a background sheet with a list of character goals on them, and then being able only to use discussion to get what they want. Very common these days, even the National Security Decison Making events count a Freeform LARPs. Loads of fun.


That's not to say that there aren't other options. I run a "pseudo-real time" RPG every year that I call Zombie Shopper, where players move figures about a mall map in one minute bites for two-hours (120 turns) of in-game play. That is, one turn of real time represents one turn of in-game time, and the system makes it so that you can only do a realistic amount of stuff in that real time in the game (largely based on a central exhaustion mechanic).

Lots of ways to go here.

Mike