Back in the day

[Gordon C. Landis]

So I'm going to go way back to the mid-late 70's - long enough ago that I'm not sure how much to trust my memories, but not so long as to be a complete haze.  I had a group of junior high school buddies that played wargames (Afrika Corps and the like), and we ordered this Dungeons and Dragons game out of the back of one of the magazines.

It was, and wasn't, a wargame.  It was like, and unlike, the amazing Tolkien books we'd read.  We really had very little idea what to do with it, and there wasn't that much advice out there.  So we made stuff up.  "GM-full" play?  Well, we did always have one official "Dungeon Master" (the books told us to do that), but since nobody really know what they were doing . . . everyone chipped in.  Somebody's got a cool idea about what to do while passing through the forest on our way to the dungeon?  He just speaks up, the DM gives it an "official" nod, and it's in the game.  Directorial power?  Of course, everyone had directorial power - otherwise we'd never get anywhere.  The military buff added details when we joined the army, the guy whose parents owned horses let us know what a stableboy needed to do, and everyone added bits from whatever myth/fiction they'd picked up on.  Lloyd Alexander, Evangeline Walton, Alan Garner and Susan Cooper were added to Tolkien as our influences.

Somewhere along the line (maybe right in one of those original 3 books), we were advised to use the map from Avalon Hill's "Outdoor Survival" game as the "world" for our adventures.  So we did, three of us sharing responsibility for that creation, another 2-3 just along for the ride.  When the supplement with all the artifacts in it came out (Eldritch Wizardry?), we thought they were cool, but there was no place for 'em in the world we'd built - so we added a new continent, based on Greg Costikyian's "Sword and Sorcery" board game.  We came up with excuses (almost Premise-like) for characters to go to this other continent, and bring back artifacts.  And have the characters be changed by the experience.  And they in turn would change the places they returned to.  It was important that each character be established as someone who "mattered", that every player shared in this creation.  Almost protagonistic concerns . . .

My point?  If my memory is to be trusted at all, these early experiences were kinda-sorta close to what we're calling here at the Forge "Narrativist" - or at least, it seems like we were using "advanced" techniques.  Now, we were also, what? 13, 14, 15?  So in terms of story, we're not talking very sophisticated.  And if the techniques were advanced, that doesn't mean our use of 'em always was - directorial power as a social bludgeon ain't exactly "functional", but we didn't do any worse with it than we did with any other interpersonal issues at that age.

So . . . anyone else?  One purpose of this thread is to check in with others about early Actual Play - am I the only one who remembers things this way?  I'm also interested in *why* it happened - maybe, before some critical mass of supplements and modules of particular types was reached, there was more "room" for the styles and techniques that, today, we fight so hard to support and understand?  All thoughts welcome,

Gordon

[Demonspahn]

My first experience with RPG's:

I was 11 years old and started hanging out with a 12 year old kid who had been left back.  He told me a bit about D&D and one day when we were walking home from school he tried to teach me how to play.  He said I was a fighter with a sword and shield and leather armor and I was walking through a forest and I saw a goblin (he had to describe one to me) and then he asked "what do you do?".  I had no clue how to proceed.  I think I tried to talk the goblin and it attacked me and I killed it.  Then he said I saw some gold coins fall out of its pouch, which I took.  By the time we got to his house I was hooked.  

He broke out some strange looking dice, two red books with a red dragon on the cover and I rolled up a character---an elf named Hunter (of course in those days, elf meant "elven fighter/magic-user").  Each adventure, I would start at the entrance to a new dungeon and not stop until I had cleaned it out.  Then I would go back to some obscure "town", level up if I could, buy new weapons and armor, and then play around with my new magic items.  Gamism at its finest, and I loved it!  

I joined this kid's scout troop and met a few other people who played at camp (although the scout masters broke the game up pretty quick---boy those were dark days for Dungeons and Dragons/Satanism).  :)

I eventually learned of our FLGS---Campaign Headquarters in Norfolk, VA.  It was a classic gaming store, small and dingy (in a good way) with open playing tables, painted and unpainted miniatures for sale, faux weapons hanging on the wall (oh how I wanted a sword back then!) a plethora of dice and shelf upon dusty shelf full of roleplaying and wargames.  
I started hanging out at that magical and wonderful place (which I still return to when I visit VA, even if only to buy some dice), met new people and learned how to play games other than D&D---games like AD&D (the game for more advanced gamers).  :)

Twenty years later, I can't stomach running or playing an AD&D game and I really can't figure out why.  Perhaps it's as you (Gordon) said and things like D&D were simpler and more new back then.  We didn't have much guidance or many other games to choose from so we all developed our own playing styles and enjoyed playing that way without any thoughts of changing.  

I wish I could cue in some sad, nostalgic music here.  :)

Pete

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Gordon,

I've said this before, but I suspect it's been buried so deeply in threads that I'll never find it.

You're right. Narrativism is not new. I have always said that all three modes of play have been involved in role-playing since the beginning. I can even trace the relationship between overt story creation and role-playing back into the early 60s, long before D&D was a twinkle in Dave Arneson's eye.

I don't know who first started saying "early role-playing was Gamist, 80s role-playing was Simulationist, and we are the Narrativist revolution." I am contemptuous of that sentiment's inaccuracy, and I despise its arrogance. Again, to whomever might need to see this: all three GNS modes have been present in role-playing even prior to its formalization as a hobby. (Formalization and formation are not the same things.)

Overt RPG design is a different story. I summarized that very briefly in my article, and a more complete treatment is in draft form. I'm convinced that, historically, a great deal of Narrativist play was transformed, mechanically, into non-Narrativist and largely incoherent forms when it became "rules text" in published games.

Best,
Ron

[joshua neff]

Gordon, I think you're right. When I started gaming (sounds like it was a bit after you, at the tail end of the '70s), there wasn't this calcified idea of how you were "supposed" to run a game. "Modules" (who calls them that anymore?) were pretty freeflowing, with a location & a bunch of monsters & odd characters to encounter, in no particular order. (Which is why some people recently commented here that they now get mileage out of those old adventures--there's little to no railroading in them.) We created our own settings, because there weren't that many settings available, & most games didn't come with a prepackaged setting.

It was the late '80s & the '90s that really set in stone a lot of the "standards" that most people take for granted these days--railroaded scenarios, Players getting as much "in character" as they can, massive amounts of prepackaged setting that overshadow the play group, & so on.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Gordon, Ron and Josh,

Excellent points.  My early AD&D games were simply Narrativism, with me working quietly to hide as much gamist mechanics under the rug as possible. For example, in a year and a half of play the hobbit thief got to 4th level -- the highest level attained by anyone in the group.  I had looked at the magic spell list and all the uber-weapons they could own and saw where that road led.  My focus was on a bunch of farm kids who wanted to go out in the world and become important.  And when they saved the local city from the temple after encountering death, moral ambiguity and rising against their own fears, the "campaign" closed shop.  (I was the only one who bothered to read the books -- nobody knew any better.)

When went to work in the "industry" my playing style changed immensely -- because I was trying to catch up how "modules" and such were written and published. I realized only years later I hated the style of material being written in the late 80's... It was written to confound and make players dependent on more and more material.  That is, instead of making RPG material designed to liberate and encourage people to create their own gaming environment and sessions (like early D&D, like Sorcerer), the basic assumption was: "You can't do this without us, and we'll show you why."

When I refer to Narrativism as "new" -- as I just did on a thread last night, it's because I think in some ways it's "new again" -- if you will.  Since many RPG consumers fault a game book for not providing enough source material these days, or only want games that will be supported with a new splatbook/adventure/meta-plot background book every month for two years, I think it's safe to say certain, more innocent, habits have been bred out of gamers.

This is why, in the same post, I suggest Narrativism is easier than how the publishers taught people to play.  Narrativism, I think, is up front, obvious and, again, innocent.  It play to people's basic instincts about storytelling.

The current models of scenario design we've inheritted is the publisher's model, and that built on the (vital) assumption that the character don't matter to the "plot" -- since there's no bleeding way any publisher knows anything about the character in your group.  In my early D&D days, all I had to go on were the characters of the players before me.  I never played one module.  Ever.  I never picked up a source book until I was getting paid to write them.  The fun was spinning the material ourselves from the basic tools.

And so, while Narrativism isn't new, it's being reintroduced -- and in some ways needs to be formalized -- as Ron is doing with the Sorcerer Library, to make sure people who started playing with VtM and other games designed to make players publisher-dependent know there are in fact other (and in my view, more joyful and simpler), ways of playing.

I'd offer too, that a recent thought I had -- that many game books not only are better reads than game aids, but that they also activtively discourage actual play.  I truly think the publishing habits mentioned above have done terrible things to the fun of role-playing -- but retained, at least, the pleasure of reading.

Take care,
Christopher

[Gordon C. Landis]

Ron -

For what it's worth, I agree - you have said it (that all three modes have always been around) before.  This thread wasn't meant to challenge/question that, though I suppose it's always good to be reminded that "there is no new thing under the sun."

I think the de facto play vs. overt design thing is what was gnawing at me, and caused me to post.  So many things that are discussed here at the Forge, I have this "yeah, I've done that" feeling, but then I wonder how that's possible, since all those years ago we had none of the "tools".  Actual Play vs. rules text, Coherency . . . a few more pieces slide into place.

Pete, Joshua, Christopher,

Thanks.  It's interesting how many angles there are at this - publishing concerns, weight of setting, RPGs as reading . . .  I'll add a phrase Ron's used before, and say that the "tournament culture" that seemed to take over the actual play of D&D in the early-mid 80's just about drove me out of the hobby.  I *think* I participated in the first ever RPGA-endorsed tournament (at GenCon East?), and it was so weird, so different from what I was used to, that I almost didn't recognize it as the same game.

Anyone else?

Gordon

[Mike Holmes]

I'll add a phrase Ron's used before, and say that the "tournament culture" that seemed to take over the actual play of D&D in the early-mid 80's just about drove me out of the hobby.  I *think* I participated in the first ever RPGA-endorsed tournament (at GenCon East?), and it was so weird, so different from what I was used to, that I almost didn't recognize it as the same game.

Yep. And the RPGA events were the good ones. Relatively. Ever play in the Open? Hoo-boy. +1 point for checking the door for traps, -1 point if it is opened incautiously. I got to the point that I would come into the event and address the group before the DM arrived. I would ask ask how the group wanted to play, to have fun or to win? I often would get them to play "for fun", which sometimes actually bewildered the DMs. Other times the players would insist on trying to win. Which I usually played along with. Other times, when I was in a mood, I'd role-play so hard it was disruptive to the efforts of the other players to win. A little My Guy dysfunction on my part. Though if I were entertaining enough I'd often be forgiven.

I think this was how I recognized Gamism vs. Non-Gamist play first (of course, well before there were terms). Stark dichotomy there.

In more modern RPGA events teams don't advance, only the best player does (by whatever criteria the players chose). A much better method. Ever get to see a Cthulhu Masters game? Now that's some role-playing. Not saying it's the best format for play, but much improved over the scoring methods.

Mike

[Clay]

The whole "narrativism" thing is new for me in the last few years.  I started playing RPGs in junior high, and we were very much in the dungeon crawl frame of mind.  We had exactly one game in high school which wasn't just a dungeon crawl--it was wonderful, we played every night for something like a month, and when that game was over the magic went away.

It took me years to come back to the hobby, first with D&D sessions that were just an excuse to drink beer with friends. Our games were more than a little linear, and our characters were not quite as protagonistic as our beers. Then we played a Traveller adventure that I wrote. I'd never heard word one about narrativism.  I just knew that I liked detective novels, and I structured it like a detective novel, with all of the action based on the relationships that characters established with NPCs. Until a recent 7th Sea campaign by a first-rate game master (who used identical design techniques), that Traveller session of four years ago was the highlight of our gaming group.

It took me a long time to realize that what I wanted was games where the characters really could make a difference. System has something to do with it: D&D and its system descendents make that difficult at lower levels; White Wolf games are tied to their setting, and modifying that setting is awkward.  

Traveller and Call of Cthulhu provided my release.  There is no setting to be tied to, and even in Cthulhu, where there are some specific NPCs (GOOs), there's no prohibition against killing them, just the warning that it isn't a permanent condition with them. It took me until I picked up Sorcerer to realize that the important difference was less about the game system and more about how the game master structured the game.  Recently that has dawned on my gaming group as well.  

This has been long and rambling; I'll stop since nobody is reading by this point anyway. There is at least the bright spot that both I and my group know a lot more about what makes a good game. Now we just have to put that knowledge into play.

[hyphz]

My early experience of this was completely bizarre.  Basically, in the latter years of primary school I had vaguely heard of some kind of game "that was a bit like playing an Infocom game except you did it by talking instead of typing on a computer".  And one day, I suggested to a friend that we play one.  Just like that.  There was no preparation, because at the time I had no clue that you were supposed to prepare.  After that, we both enjoyed it so much we did it regularly, swapping who was "pretending to be the computer" and who was "doing the commands".

Effectively, we were playing diceless with no stats, with one 'GM' and one 'player'.  The 'player' just described their actions - the 'GM' didn't ask them to suggest consequences, but did use their actions as a basis for spinning things off.  One thing did help, though - we invariably set the 'adventures' in real world locations we know, such as our school and the surrounding area, which gave both of us a basis to work things into, as well as a coherent background (since we could pull people we knew in as well).  (The 'secret in the school' plot was popular in kidvid shows at the time, so we both recognised that too.)

Strangely enough, I don't think I've managed to GM a game quite as well since then - nor been in a game which was GMed so well when I was playing.  But that's probably just rose coloured nostalgia.

[Walt Freitag]

Hyphz, that is really cool. I wonder what happens if you assume that those recollections are not just rose-colored nostalgia. What lessons would you take away?

In fact, let me generalize that question and throw it out to everyone who posted here. Is there yet more we have to "unlearn" in order to recpature more of the strengths of those early experiences? Or is that a vain hope?

- Walt

[Christopher Kubasik]

Walt,

I'm going to go with "unlearning" -- and have been for the last year now.

I'd say that when I had mastered the information to build a career as a freelance game designer is exactly when my severe writer's block kicked in.  One of the reasons I'm hunkering down with Sorcerer so deeply is to peel back what I intuitively knew about storytelling before I learned out to make disfunctional narrative for the publishing end of things.

And hyphz,

Remember, feelings of pleasure are pleasure.  Let's not trick ourselves, as we often do, that "sophistication" or "complication" is better or more the "real thing."  I personally think people are wired for stories -- so maybe we actually did do it better before we learned habits out of the publishers that made our storytelling dependent on third parties with no personal interest in our particular group of players.

RPG sessions, at their best, are of value in the sense of craft (which, until the last couple of centuries, also meant art).  By this I simply mean hand made, not made for mass production, and of value because the craftsman (the players) and the consumer (again, the players), say it's of value -- not 'cause everyone else on the block has one.

Take care,
Christopher

[Ragnar Deerslayer]

In fifth grade, I saw a boxed set for Dungeons and Dragons in the local bookstore.  My mother wouldn't buy it for me, and I didn't have an allowance, so I invented my own rules.  I understood that it had dice, but not that they were an action-resolution mechanic.  In my game, you rolled 1d6 to determine your class (knight, wizard, archer, . . . uh, I think "knight" might have been 1-4).  Then you rolled 1d6 to determine what magic item you started out with.  (Most of them I took from items in Atari 2600 video games, like Riddle of the Sphinx and Swordquest).  Then you rolled 1d6 to determine what your animal companion was.  I talked my parents and sister into playing a game with me -- every action was resolved by "GM's fiat."  It was not a tremendous hit -- my parents gave it a lukewarm reception, my (8th grade) sister hated it, but I was captured by the *idea*.  

Two years later I found a group that actually played AD&D, then I discovered GURPS and convinced our rapidly-enlarging group to play a set of home rules that was the bastard son of the two game systems, called (imaginatively enough) "GURPS-D&D".  It was basically the GURPS rules (with shameless munchkin 2000-pt. characters!), with experience points and levels, and a plot line ripped directly from the recently-released, original "Final Fantasy" game for the NES.

I look back on the old days with nostalgia -- "munchkin" wasn't a swear word (I had a character, created with the GURPS psionics rules, that could levitate faster than the speed of light) -- five of us would actually face *an entire army* at a time, GMs were *expected* to come up with an original system as well as an original gameworld, and the games were modelled as much on console video games as fantasy literature.

What began as an essentially narrativist idea, telling a mutual story around the kitchen table (all dice having been removed after character creation), quickly became gamist (note tell-tale influence of video games) and, as I grew older, simulationist (the GURPS elements got purer and purer, and the power levels toned down to a more reasonable 100-200pts. in high school).

I don't know where I'm going with this, although it may simply be to note how, after an extended hiatus from roleplaying in college (consisting only of an email campaign that lasted three game-days and a year real-time), I entered graduate school and came whole-circle back to rules-light storytelling after discovering Over the Edge.  

Ah, the old days . . .

Ragnar

[Le Joueur]

Ah, yes back in the day...

My first experience with role-playing game design came from the very first "Games 100" from Games magazine.  Down in the 80s or so was a review of 'blue box' Dungeons & Dragons.  (This was the original second edition, when the covers first had color, blue.)  I was totally hooked on the idea, but living out in the sticks, no one carried it.  I spent two summers trying to write a fantasy game where you took on roles of Elf, Wizard, Fighter, or Thief that barely didn't have a 'board.'

Then, quite by accident, I found myself possessed of two paper routes' worth of pay in a hobby store staring at the animal sitting next to the macrame cord and shenelle bumps....  We must have played module B1 forty times, I still remember the pool that turned everything to gold....

So, technically I started designing them before I got to play them too.  (And it was back before any hardbound editions of anything were made.  'Blue box' kept referring to the 'soon to be published' Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

It was written to confound and make players dependent on more and more material.  That is, instead of making RPG material designed to liberate and encourage people to create their own gaming environment and sessions

...I'd offer too, that a recent thought I had -- that many game books not only are better reads than game aids, but that they also actively discourage actual play.

You know, I feel exactly this way about the 'state of the art' (as opposed to the 'cutting edge').  Since one of my design specifications for Scattershot was to make a 'gateway' product to bring people into gaming, I thought that finding a way to 'spell out' and "encourage people to create their own gaming," yet pulling in what got them into the game in the first place, would be the way to go.  So, if I were to write a licensed Buffy: the Vampire Slayer game, it wouldn't be a tired series lifting past plots for present modules, but a 'toolkit' that lays the 'how they write it' stuff bare so that players and gamemasters can create original plots and characters that would look just as though lifted right from the series.

That's what motivates me to work on the Genre Expectations stuff down in the Scattershot Forum.  I want to empower people to play what they like (even if I have to give them all the tools, but not the materials).

Fang Langford

[hyphz]

Hyphz, that is really cool. I wonder what happens if you assume that those recollections are not just rose-colored nostalgia. What lessons would you take away?

Well, I still do *know* about that method of running a game, and I've had others say that it worked well and produced enjoyable sessions (my FLGS owner told me that he ran one of his best Vampire sessions that way).  

But, I really have trouble doing it in more fantastic RPGs with varying settings because I find it so hard to describe stuff.  Back when we were playing "talking adventure games" we never needed to describe areas or people or rooms because they were all people and places we had met in real life.  When RPGing now it seems incredibly awkward to describe something in terms that give enough information to produce a coherent world image but not so much that I wind up driving myself bonkers with the details.  (This especially happens in games where range is important.  I have a horrible time visualising distances.  I still judge a 10ft square by "about as wide as one of the garages walls+door in our car park".)

Also, we both either had actually met the people/places or had never done so.  There were no halfways, so there were no 'accuracy arguments' like the kind that can kill WW2 game sessions, and there were no 'coherency arguments' because we already knew the coherency so well that it didn't need to be described.

[Victor Gijsbers]

Here's a very different story, since I'm much younger than most of you. Today, most young people get to know roleplaying through, well, computer RPGs. In fact, a games-forum I frequent has learnt me that many people who play CRPGs dont even know that pen&paper RPGs exist.

Anyway, my first roleplaying games were games like 'Ancients', 'Might and Magic 4' en 'Castle of the Winds'. These games were all highly combat-based, most of them containing very little story. There were no conversations. All you could do was explore a world, kills monsters, get treasures, disarm traps, buy stuff, then go exploring and killing some more. And of course, you could get better and better, increasing your skills, hit points, etcetera. Was it roleplaying? Maybe. Was it fun? Certainly.

A friend of mine in secondary school (I'm not quite sure what corresponds to this in US-terms. It's for children of, say, 12 to 18 years old) told me about AD&D2E. He didn't tell me about the mechanics, he told me the stroies that unfolded in his sessions. It sounded great, and I was hooked by the idea of being able to create a real story, to play real characters with a lot of freedom - to go beyond mere monster-killing. I did not actually play in his group (which was close group of friends of whom I knew only him) so it remained stories - and my imagination created an idea of what this game called 'AD&D' was that was probably better than reality.

More CRPGs entered my life in the meantime, including Might & Magic 6, Diablo and Baldur's Gate. My tastes became clear: purely combat-based games like Diablo couldn't live up to my idea of a roleplaying game, whereas a still combat-heavy, yet more story- and conversation-oriented game like Baldur's Gate could.

By this time, I had copies of the 3 principal AD&D books on my HD, and I had read the Player's Handbook and DM's Guide at least twice. I knew the mechanics (which were also used in Baldur's Gate), and I knew what a pen&paper RPG was. A short while later, I met someone at University who played AD&D, and I joined his group.

It was a lot of fun. The DM always made a quest for us to solve - but our players were rather anarchistic, so most of the time we were doing whatever our characters felt like, including trying to kill each other (which was all very 'in character', and since we didn't want to piss each other off no-one ever quite died). I loved the freedom, and I found that I disliked the slow combat system. I loved the character interaction, and I disliked the way you could only cast a few pre-made spells. I liked the stories we created (the GM's pre-made stories combined with our in-party struggles made some good stuff), at the same time disliking the inconsistencies of AD&D. I started wondering why, if I liked combat least of all, so much of the AD&D-system was about combat.

So here I am - born from the heavily combat-based CRPGs, and the quite heavily combat-based AD&D2E. Did it shape my view of RPGs? Of course. But in subtle ways. For instance, I found it really easy (and more fun) to drop the idea that RPG-ing is about 'winning', or about 'combat'. From the first sessions of pen&paper RPGing I played, I tried to be 'in character' as much as possible, and to talk a lot - thing I always missed in CRPGs. Because that's the point: once, a game like D&D3E would have been a game that took players to games so hack&slash-Gamist never yet seen - but this is no longer the case. The players of today started playing CRPGs, and nothing is more Gamist than a CRPG. (There are a few exceptions, such as the brilliantly Narrativist 'Planescape: Torment'.) Whatever pen&paper RPG people start playing today, it will always be a step away from pure hack&slash Gamism. The step from hack&slash towards more social interaction and storyline is very easy, and will come naturally to all who move from computer to pen & paper.

What will not come so naturally is the basic understanding of an RPG. CRPGs are heavily quest-based. It took me 2 weeks to forget about hack&slash, but it took me 2 years to realize that "one GM who thinks up quests and a number of players who solve them" is not the only way to roleplay. Walt mentioned 'unlearning' the habits created by 80's and 90's RPGs - I think for my generation unlearning the habits created by CRPGs is the real problem.