What is possible to achieve with game design? (Adult with some vulgarities)

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

So Gen Con was a great experience for me and cleared up a lot of issues I have been having with my game design, and lit a fire under my ass. There's too many people to thank for this, so I'm going to move on. I've been flogging myself over what I've been trying to do with my game creation, and it finally came to me what I have been wanting to accomplish. Quit beating around the bush, right?

I want to make a game that will change my life.

That's a nice thing to say, but what does that mean? Sure... that's a very valid question, but let me lay down some groundwork so you can understand where I'm coming from. All around us people are suffering. We all know that, but we don't understand the part we play in this suffering. I'm not talking about the malicious and bitter things we do but something less obvious that maybe equally harmful. Silence. The silence that our culture forces on people.

So part of the game will be a vehicle for me to come out of the closet. No I'm not gay, but I imagine hiding that is a similar feeling. As a Child I was a victim of molestation and rape. Does that statement make you uncomfortable? I've dealt with the issues and have a good handle on how it's effected my life and dealt mostly with the pain from the incidents. I had to die when I was nineteen to come to that point of challenging the pain, but I have. The problem I face now is the silence. I can't address the issue without people going off on angry rages about murdering people,  incredibly uncomfortable silences, or Mr. or Mrs. Fix-it's constantly worrying about my mental stability. (I'm sure my tattoo's don't help.) So I can't address this as easily as saying I tried to commit suicide when I was younger. Everyones been in or near that state of mind, and there is much less of a cultural imperative to keep that hidden. Silence keeps me in pain. Silence keeps me a victim, and I'm no ones victim.

So that's what I mean by change my life. I don't want to stop there. I want to change other peoples lives too. I want to help explain what this kind of abuse does to someones life. I want to make people cry, in a good way. I want to help people. I want to take my place of escapism and turn it into a weapon to stab these cultural values right in the fucking heart. Oh yeah... and I want that to sometimes be fun. What?

So here's what I want to talk about:

• Is it possible to make a game like this?
• If it is possible, what might it look like?
• Can I go for this goal directly, or do I need to hide my goal some in metaphor, which I explain elsewhere?
• Literature or games to look at.
• Fun, is that possible?

My initial thoughts are that directly isn't doable, and that the game will have to be about secrets. Likely there will be some mechanical advantage in revealing a secret in the game, but the secrets wouldn't have to be the players personal secrets... but they could be.

Here's what I don't want to talk about, via P.M. or here:

• Whether I'm o.k. I'm O.K. I've been thinking about addressing this via a blog for a few years now. This isn't a sudden decision. o.k. well the game part is, but the closet part isn't.
• Your past abuse. I don't have the power at this moment to take this on, and be a single point of contact for people who have unexpressed issues with molestation and rape. Look for a survivors group, a psychologist/psychiatrist, or try looking through some of these pages. Later on I'll be more capable but I need to deal with the changes in my life that this will create first. I'm sorry.

[Meguey]

So here's what I want to talk about:

    * Is it possible to make a game like this?
    * If it is possible, what might it look like?
    * Can I go for this goal directly, or do I need to hide my goal some in metaphor, which I explain elsewhere?
    * Literature or games to look at.
    * Fun, is that possible?


My initial thoughts are that directly isn't doable, and that the game will have to be about secrets. Likely there will be some mechanical advantage in revealing a secret in the game, but the secrets wouldn't have to be the players personal secrets... but they could be.

My first reaction is, yes, you can make this game.
What it might look like, I don't know.
Going for it directly - man, that's an interesting question. I think as players and designers, we are ready to make and play games about serious stuff. It may be that directly isn't doable. I have an idea about a game in which you play an addict, and the question is how far you will go to sustain your addiction - I don't think that's doable directly either.
Games to look at - I'd check out Contenders, because of the pain/hope issues. Also carry.a game about war, because of the hellish situations and choices.
Can this be fun? - hard subject matter != unfun. What I'm looking for in gaming is a wide variety of games, and while THE DROWNING AND FALLING ROLEPLAYING GAME is hilarious, it's not what I always want. There's totally room for this game.

Push on, Clyde. It'll be awesome.

[Meguey]

Here's another bit: Sometimes I teach sex ed to high school kids, and part of that is a big 'about sexual abuse' chunk. Having a game that allows people to examine this sort of story would be cool. Sure, it might be about keeping painful secrets. Or it might be about surviving monsters. Or the process of the death and rebirth of self following trauma/life-changing event, which is the angle that grabs me.

Anyway, the thing about coming out? Cool. Of course I'm uncomfortable with the abuse of a child, 'cause it's messed up. Does that make me uncomfortable with you? Hell no. Does that make me want to ditch out of your design process? WTF type of question is that!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Clyde!

A number of people active at the Forge know exactly what you're talking about, as I'm sure you are aware from attending both Forge Midwest and GenCon. But as you say, that's not the current topic.

I think you can achieve your goals in the game design. I don't know what it might look like, but I think to arrive at that, you should consider this:

Should it be up-front about the social goal? Arguably, it does not have to be. I suggest taking a look at Death's Door, which is indeed about coming to terms with life via recognizing that you, the real person, will die. And in which playing a character who will die is only a vehicle toward one's own real death. Yet the book doesn't outright say this ... it simply allows you and a few others to play a "game" (there is no word for what it really is). It does include some directions about wills and similar stuff, if I recall correctly. James has an amazing story about the game's achievement in this regard, by the way.

I think you can go for the goal/topic directly. That's ultimately a personal call, though.

For this exact question, and a great model to consider, I recommend the novels and essays by Andrew Vachss, a child-advocate lawyer in New York who's published a popular series of novels for about twenty years. His feature character is named Burke, and I prefer the earlier novels, including Flood (the first), Strega, Blue Belle, and Sacrifice. A lot of his short stories are also available in comics adapations from Dark Horse, in which the artists are often committed to punching his points home with well-chosen techniques.

Fun, is that possible?

Absolutely, in the sense that the Burke novels are slam-bang, solid reads, with a wide audience that enjoys their plots and minor points along with their thematic and social goals. Vachss speaks of his novels as a Trojan Horse, in which people bring tough-guy crime novels into their homes and heads, and then the hidden warriors of themes and social impact can strike from within. Check out his website, The Zero, for more details and other stuff.

Best, Ron

[Blankshield]

I want to make a game that will change my life.

[snip the specifics]

So here's what I want to talk about:

• Is it possible to make a game like this?
• If it is possible, what might it look like?
• Can I go for this goal directly, or do I need to hide my goal some in metaphor, which I explain elsewhere?
• Literature or games to look at.
• Fun, is that possible?

My initial thoughts are that directly isn't doable, and that the game will have to be about secrets. Likely there will be some mechanical advantage in revealing a secret in the game, but the secrets wouldn't have to be the players personal secrets... but they could be.

Hi Clyde,

Yes, it is absolutely possible to both make a game that tackles real issues directly and is fun to play.  As Ron said, Death's Door is such a game, and I'm pretty confident in saying that actual play has born up that it is enjoyable to play.

Joshua is someone else you may want to talk with, as Under the Bed is another such game.  It does use a filter to talk about childhood issues, but the filter is so thin as to be nearly transparent.

As to what it might look like, I can't help you, at least at this stage, because the issues you want to communicate are very foreign to my direct experience, and I strongly believe that it is the direct experience that will fuel the real impact of your work.  Once you have a design, I can try to assist, although I'm so not the strongest mechanics guy around here.  The other thing I'll do, if you send me a PM, is give you my contact information, and as best I can, share some of the purely internal hurdles and struggles I had to go through in writing Death's Door.  That stuff is practically impossible to communicate meaningfully on a forum, but it could be valuable to you to see how someone else struggled with writing a game that was so intensely personal for them.

thanks,

James

[billvolk]

I'm hesitant to give advice about a game like this for the same reason that I'd be hesitant to play it: I'm afraid that I'd "get it wrong." I can say that you'd need to overcome this kind of fear in order to connect to most prospective players, especially if the game's going to be fun sometimes. The process of making it may still be helpful, but if other people feel too awkward to play it, it'll really only be a personal exercise.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the support!

Here's a quick synopsis: The opinion is the game can be done but we're not sure what it will look like. Fair enough that should be my struggle anyway I suppose. I should look at Contenders, carry: a game about war, Death's Door and Under the Bed. Amongst the 22 games I bought last weekend, carry and Death's Door were included. I've played Under the Bed, but should own it and will look into Contenders. I need to take at look at Andrew Vachss stuff.

Alrighty, now to add a little more clarity to what I'm trying to do. While I want to make a game that can address issues of Molestation and Rape, it's the silence I really want to focus on. My hope is it might also be useful for Gay folks, the Transgendered, and the Molesters. My belief is that part of the problem is that molesters can't build the support they need to fight their sexual attraction to children, and they have a hard time empathizing because we the victims can't express how devastating the experience is. I may hold this last part off for a second game, and just deal with the victims silence.

Now to address some specific things... if I missed something important you were trying to convey please feel free to express it again.

Meguey: Just to touch on the subject where I ask if that makes you uncomfortable. I wasn't referring to whether folks would help me in the game creation process. I was pointing to part of what helps to engender the silence. Should you feel uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. That's natural. The rest of this may have nothing to do with you. What I was trying to point at was to have people examine that discomfort and realize if they come across such a situation that they should take it easy with that discomfort as the person speaking is likely looking for someone to listen, rather than use methods of shutting down the conversation to avoid their personal discomfort.

I'm also curious about your sex ed education courses. How are these topics dealt with? How are you taught how to address them? Is there literature you had to study before conducting these classes?

Bill: Thanks for the honesty. I've been thinking about ideas, and an idea I was using before for a different game that Nathan Hamsterprophet made better would be essentially a sliding mechanic that would encourage people to go deeper, but how deep would be up to them. Basically it would be something like they would gain certain dice in the game that they would want more of to go deeper. I likely will want to leave the possibility of discomfort though, but we'll see at playtesting.

As far as getting it wrong, I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you saying you would be afraid of hurting someone else through an innocent misunderstanding on your part, or do you mean something else entirely?

[Grand_Commander13]

One idea I've had for another game I'm conceptualizing (one that would, according to my understanding, be a textbook Narritivist game, premise and everything) is the idea of a path where your character can do certain things to basically move from "bad" to "good."  In the movement from bad to good though, he gets weakened (as the convictions making him bad weaken), until he eventually loses the bad convictions and picks up good convictions.  Of course, staying bad and even becoming worse is entirely possible, depending on the choices you make for your character.

I'm saying this because one possibility I see for your game would be a similar slider with the same "it's always darkest before the dawn" concept, where it's most painful before you speak but slowly becomes better after that.

[Meguey]

Meguey: Just to touch on the subject where I ask if that makes you uncomfortable. I wasn't referring to whether folks would help me in the game creation process. I was pointing to part of what helps to engender the silence. Should you feel uncomfortable? Yes, absolutely. That's natural. The rest of this may have nothing to do with you. What I was trying to point at was to have people examine that discomfort and realize if they come across such a situation that they should take it easy with that discomfort as the person speaking is likely looking for someone to listen, rather than use methods of shutting down the conversation to avoid their personal discomfort.

Yep, I totally got that. My intent was to answer in just that way: Yes, this issue sucks, but no, I'm not interested in shutting you (you, Clyde or you, generic person) down.

I'm also curious about your sex ed education courses. How are these topics dealt with? How are you taught how to address them? Is there literature you had to study before conducting these classes?

Yes, there is study and training and literature and curicula and (surprise, surprise) role-playing involved. I teach through the Unitarian Universalist church, which has an excellent sex ed course. Find out more about Our Whole Lives sex ed program, the Safe Congregations support, and the About Sexual Abuse portion of the OWL program. You can also PM me, of course.

[Nathan P.]

Hey Clyde,

Basically, I agree with what's been said so far. And I think this project sounds amazing. It sounds like you have a clear idea of your goals. Now, design a game.

I say that because I don't want you to fall into the trap of thinking about the purpose of the game so much that you don't actually write it! Do your research, do a Big 3, a Power 19, work on resources and rewards, escalation, all the design stuff.

If you have any questions stemming from your read or play of carry, drop me a line and I'll be more than happy to talk about it. Also, some upcoming designs aim for the same level of seriousness - Grey Ranks, Jason Morningstar's game about teenaged polish resistance fighters in the Warsaw uprising, and Matthijs Holter is working on a game about the Holocaust. So there's some more resources for you.

I hope some of that helps.

[Sydney Freedberg]

First:
Go for it. The world needs this one.

Second:
A relatively secondary point about focusing your game:

While I want to make a game that can address issues of Molestation and Rape, it's the silence I really want to focus on. My hope is it might also be useful for Gay folks, the Transgendered, and the Molesters....

I'm a heterosexual who's never been molested myself, so I am not speaking from personal experience, but I think the experience of being a closeted gay is fundamentally unlike that of being a closeted victim of sexual abuse: Closeted homosexuals are unhappy because they can't be open about something they want to do that gives them pleasure and joy; closeted abuse victims are unhappy because they can't be open about something they didn't want done to them which gave them pain and sorrow. The two groups have "silence about sexual issues" in common but otherwise are pointing in opposite directions. The closeted gay person is much less like the closeted victim than like someone with a passionate but socially unusual hobby interest, e.g. model trains or roleplaying games (the gamer comparison's very common); the closeted victim is much less like the closeted gay that like someone who's survived some kind of not-openly-discussed but non-sexual trauma, e.g. combat veterans.

Third:
There are two very different game-procedural approaches you can take that will make a critical difference to how this plays. Ron Edwards talks about them in terms of "superfamilies":

On the left-hand side, one superfamily is rooted in stuff like Over the Edge and Cyberpunk and goes on through the "door" of Sorcerer, branching apart from there. It includes Dogs in the Vineyard.

On the right-hand side, the other superfamily is rooted in stuff like Story Engine and Soap, and it goes on through the "door" of Universalis, branching apart rather drastically from there. It includes (via MLWM) Polaris.

All you people who are crazed with anticipation, just settle down. All that matters now is one single point, and you don't really need the diagram for it. Except to see Dogs 'way over on one side and Polaris 'way over on another, like critters in vastly different sectors of a phylogeny.

On the side which includes Dogs, single participants have overriding, brutal, arbitrary authority over the "II" of IIEE. In other words, what their characters want to do and start to do cannot be overriden or even mechanically modified by anyone else at the table. If you state, "He kisses her," and the group goes into the Conflict Resolution system, it's established, the kiss is both intended and initiated.

On the side which includes Polaris, the entire IIEE of any character's actions/etc is subject to vetting of some kind, whether it's negation, modification, or letting it lie, and whether it's full-group or by a designated person. All actions are subject to drastic reinterpretations of the outcomes of Conflict Resolution. Including the first "I," intent, of IIEE. If you state, "He kisses her," then eventually, the way the scene works out, it's at least possible that he never even thought about or tried to kiss her.

Bald, painful fact: the left-hand side is socially more dangerous, and the right-hand side is socially safer. And it strikes me very firmly, after discussing this game with a number of people who were involved, that at least a couple people were approaching playing Dogs as if it were in the other "superfamily." They assumed that if they were uncomfortable with what a given PC was about to be doing, that they had a say in vetting that stated action. Whereas, bluntly, the game is set up for exactly the opposite.

Meguey Baker, coming from a different but complementary angle, talks about "Nobody Gets Hurt" vs. "I Will Not Abandon You":

In IWNAY, the social agreements are:
I as a player expect to get my buttons pushed, and I will not abandon you, my fellow players, when that happens. I will remain present and engaged and play through the issue.
I as a player expect to push buttons, and I will not abandon you, my fellow players, when you react. I will remain present and engaged as you play through the issue

In NGH, the social agreement is that we know where each other's lines are, and we agree not to cross them.

Both are reciprocal systems. If one person is pushing buttons and the other is supposed to just take it and not respond, the button pusher is a bully and the relationship is abusive. Notice I'm not talking about the characters, here. This is all about the players at the table. In any game. I bet I could get just as hurt playing White Wolf or GURPS as I could playing Dogs in the Vineyard or Sorcerer.

It sure helps to be clear which kind of social contract is expected: If the players are not all clear, sooner or later you'll run into a NGH player in a IWNAY game, and they will get hurt, sometimes in a big way. If you get a IWNAY player in a NGH game, that player will wind up transgressing other people's boundaries and coming off like a jerk. That player may also feel like everyone else is pulling their punches.

Examples:
NGH play: Jill has a hard line at kids-in-danger; Robin could make the victim a child, but doesn't.

NGH play: Jill has a hard line at kids-in-danger, and Robin makes the victim a child anyway. Robin's obnoxious and Jill may stop playing - Robin has broken NGH.

IWNAY play: Jill has a hard line at kids-in-danger. Robin makes the victim a child, maybe even on purpose to push Jill's buttons. Jill reacts but stays with it, Robin stays engaged, Jill gets to examine something about her issues with kids in danger.

IWNAY play: Jill has a hard line at kids-in-danger. Robin makes the victim a child, maybe even on purpose to push Jill's buttons. Jill bails out - either by actually leaving the game or by disengaging from it. Jill has broken IWNAY.

IWNAY play: Jill has a hard line at kids-in-danger. Robin makes the victim a child, maybe even on purpose to push Jill's buttons. Jill reacts but stays with it, but Robin can't deal with Jill's reaction, so Robin bails out - either by actually leaving the game or by disengaging from it. Robin has broken IWNAY.

There is a design part to this. When a game has solid support for handling highly intense emotional scenes (which are most likely to trigger players, I suspect and in my experience), the tendency for the game to require IWNAY play (in order to be successful) is high. Here I think of DitV, Sorcerer, and to some extent Bacchanal. I mean mechanical support for getting into and out of emotionally charged conflict, and solid writing that lets the players understand the reasons why they might allow themselves to be pushed emotionally. This is where the designer gets to say "This can create heavy stuff. I know that. I'm prepared for that. Here's where I've thought about it and how I reccomend you handle it my game." This is the designer saying I willl not abandon you; I will give you mechanics to help deal with this when it comes up, I'm with you in this.

See how Ron's mechanical stuff and Meguey's social stuff reinforce each other? A game in the Universalis-Polaris "superfamily" game gives players vetoes over game content to enforce "nobody gets hurt"; a game in the Sorcerer-Dogs "superfamily" gives no such veto and instead encourages "I will not abandon you." You have a big choice ahead whether building some kind of safety cut-out into your game hurts or helps your ultimate objective.

[Paul Czege]

Sydney,

A game in the Universalis-Polaris "superfamily" game gives players vetoes over game content to enforce "nobody gets hurt"; a game in the Sorcerer-Dogs "superfamily" gives no such veto and instead encourages "I will not abandon you." You have a big choice ahead whether building some kind of safety cut-out into your game hurts or helps your ultimate objective.

Awesome contribution to this thread.

Paul

[Isbo]

Clyde--

I want to touch on the 'what might it look like' portion of your questions.  I realize this is a more sensitive, more personal point, so let me qualify everything I am about to say.  Ages ago, when I participated in some dream sharing groups, there was a convention that you frame your interpretations with phrases like "if this were my dream, this image might mean X."  In other words, trying to illuminate a space rather than tell you how that space looks.  I mean all of these suggestions in that light ("if I were writing this game, I might use X mechanic"), with all that implies--right down to the point where you look at this and go "interesting, but that isn't how *my* game works."  It isn't me telling you how to design, it's me telling you how I could deal with it.  I hope that distinction makes sense to you, it makes a world of difference to me.  With that said--

If I were designing a game with this core issue (silence, silencing, being silenced), however more or less veiled the question of abuse becomes, I would want some mechanical feature to the game that tells players when they can and cannot speak.  This may sound a little game-y at first, but I think it makes sense--how often is it that someone who is abused *wants* to speak, but cannot for the shame, for the fear of it?  Their desire is walled off by something, sometimes external, sometimes internal.

It seems, too, that I might want different sorts of obstacles to speaking to reflect the complicated nature of the silence, defining where that silence is based on a real threat from the outside ("don't tell or else") and when it is based on something within the character ("I can't tell").  The location of that mechanic could be telling.  Let me try to be a lot more concrete.

Imagine there is a pool of tokens in the middle of the table, a pool that increases and decreases over the course of the game according to the actions of the players.  Actions that make the environment safer for everyone to talk allow players to take tokens from the pool.  Actions that make it less safe, more threatening, add tokens to that pool.  Everytime a player rolls to speak, they must roll *against* the number of tokens in the pool.  This could take many forms--the number of tokens could be a difficulty number, the number of tokens could represent the number of dice an 'abuser' could roll to cancel out successes rolled by the one trying to gain their voice. 

If the goal is to speak, then some complexities could arise from this set-up.  The abuser wants to speak, too, but also wants the control represented by the pool, so that the more they use those tokens, the less able they are to speak.  Perhaps every so often, everyone has to roll against that pool of silence, taking on negative traits when they fail.  Make speaking risky, too, though so that the players are torn between speech and silence, so that it is not a simple choice to speak, nor a simple choice to remain silent. 

That pool represents all the weight outside the player character to keep the silence.

Imagine a place in front of the character where they accumulated tokens, perhaps from failed conflicts with the pool.  These represent internalized walls against speaking.  They should be smaller, more discrete, so that a player can roll against them whenever another player creates the appropriate 'safe' place in which they can begin to talk.  Each victory over the small, internalized silences allows the player to turn those tokens into dice they can roll against the pool.

The exact mechanics of this could be more or less rough, depending on how easily the 'coming out' could be.  The more difficult the game, the more it should be stacked against the players, the more it might make sense for tiny internal piles to get combined every so many turns as the silence becomes a deeper and deeper habit, the more likely it will be that some characters will never be able to speak.  If I were designing this game, I would make it harder for someone to create a safe space if they have too many internalized silences.  At least, I would make it more likely that the safe space could go awry, suddenly becoming dangerous when the safe space creator finds themselves introducing their own habits of silence.

A game in which the player(s) fail to speak could still be productive, painful and poignant, but instructive.  That would be a real option for a game that I might develop, one where the player walk away with an understanding that speaking up, speaking out, is difficult, fragile, and can be lost if you are not attentive to the moments of hope.

I wish you the best in bringing this powerful premise to fruition.

--Ian

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Wow... you guys are amazing.

Grand_Commander13: I think my thoughts are similar but I might be focusing on neutral to bad to maybe good.

Nathan: I'm almost through carry. I'm hoping to play it this weekend along with a game of Mortal Coil where secrets are the magic. I wouldn't worry about the game getting done. This isn't just something I want to write, but something I need to write.

Sydney: Wow. Thanks. You just spared me tons of work and increased my understanding quite a bit. Your position on the difference between the silence Homosexuals face versus Rape and Molestation victims seems pretty solid. I'm be giving that more thought too.

Ian: That's amazing. As soon as I read to where you say silence as core issue, I had all kinds of activity start up in my head. It also makes me wonder about why I enjoyed playing mute characters so much in previous LARP's. I think you may have gifted me with the central mechanic. I need to give it more thought, but wow. I think we need much more than two posts from you here.

[BeUrgaust]

What this sounds like if one were to go with a metaphoric approach, would be the complete antithesis of Paranoia, which might be useful to know how someone incourages secrets in game to try to develope the opposite. That's me for you when asked how to do something I come up with how to do the opposite and then say not to do that. lol.