About the way you "design" game!

[M. J. Young]

I think there is a degree to which you have to design at least the core mechanics of the game system from the perspective of how do I run this game? You might as well ask this: if you're writing the rules of baseball, do you write them for the player or the umpire? Certainly in that case the player needs to know them; but it is in essence the umpire for whom they are written. He has to be able to recognize when something is illegal; he has to be able to identify foul and fair balls, balls and strikes, force and non-force plays, and whatever else the game requires. When it comes to a moment in which the players are not certain of the outcome, the umpire--the referee in that game world--steps in and gives his ruling based on the rules as written.

The players in that case would do well to learn the rules, because they have to play by them; but the umpires have to know them far better than the players, so in that sense the rules have to be written with the umpire in mind.

It is even more pronounced in role playing games. As a player, I don't really need to know my precise chance of success at doing anything in the game. If I've got a rough idea that some things are easier and others more difficult, when it comes down to the moment in which I have to roll I can rely on the referee to make that determination. But the rules have to provide the referee with whatever level of guidelines are required for that game, whether it's a chart or a set of clear modifiers or a way to derive a target number. Thus in that sense the rules must be written more for the referee than for the players.

It has been my experience that this is how most people approach most games, to a lesser degree. When we learn to play a new board or trivia or similar game, one of us reads the rules and then tells everyone else how to play. If there's a question or problem during play regarding how we're supposed to resolve something, the person who read the rules either gives the answer as he understands it or goes back and finds it in the rules. In that case the "referee" is a much less distinct position than in role playing games (and it is more common in those cases for someone else to look at the rules and give their opinion of what they mean). But it is rare that we will all read the rules to a game, or that anyone will read them aloud for all to hear. Much easier to have one person familiarize himself with the game and explain it to everyone else, and then be responsible for overseeing how it goes at least while everyone else learns it.

At the same time, I think that if you are writing rules "from the perspective of the referee", you need to be asking the right questions. Those aren't really "how do I make a game that I can run more easily", but rather "how can I design rules which will facilitate the kind of play my players will enjoy?" Given this priority, there is a sense in which the referee's perspective is the players' perspective: you are attempting to explain to the referee how to give the players what they want.

I design games and game materials and I write articles and books; that's pretty much what I do at present. I designed board games before I knew anything about role playing games, and I also design card games. There aren't a lot of kinds of games I don't play and enjoy (although I really really hate Canasta, largely because I keep getting creamed by my wife and her friends who are horribly cutthroat and brilliant players). But I could certainly design a game I wouldn't particularly want to play. I might do it because I'm trying to provide something for an audience that excludes me, such as a game for children which I would not find interesting or challenging but they would find quite enjoyable. Similarly, I've become involved in designing a wrestling-based game world although I don't care at all for professional entertainment wrestling, because someone I know needs help making it work (he's not a game designer, but has some good ideas for how to make this one fly). I'm told that Toon was designed merely to prove that it could be done, and I can relate to that idea--designing a game purely to test one's own ability to do it, even if it's not something I would play. It is a lot harder to evaluate the merits of such a game (because right off it's something you don't like, so how can you tell whether anyone would like it?), but there are reasons for doing it.

The idea that writing the game for both players and referee is interesting; there is some merit to the idea. How often does that happen? Does anyone really know, personally, situations in which someone has come with a game and said, "I was looking at this, and I'd like you to run it?" I've come close twice that I recall. Once was that I was given the AD&D2E Viking Handbook and asked by a player if he could bring a Trollborn Runecaster into my OAD&D campaign (I agreed). The other was from someone running a 3E game who wanted me to learn to run 3E so I could run some adventures for his players (I have not come up with a good reason to waste my time learning that system yet, but that wasn't it). In neither case was this a matter of a player finding a game he liked and asking me to run it; and I haven't seen it elsewhere. I have seen roleplaying games as gifts, but again these either 1) are the games requested by the person who is going to run them or 2) are a surprise which may or may not ever see the light of day as a game in play.

Multiverser expressly states that the rules are for the referee. We have often thought of creating a player's edition, but there would be nothing in it that doesn't also belong in the referee's book (how could there be rules the referee didn't need to know? It's a bit redundant), and there isn't really that much a player needs to know or even should know before play begins but what he already knows. Even though the rules are for the referee, their function is to facilitate play for the players, by giving the referee the tools needed to accomplish that.

--M. J. Young

[Le Joueur]

Does anyone really know, personally, situations in which someone has come with a game and said, "I was looking at this, and I'd like you to run it?"

I can't remember the last time this didn't happen.  Frequently, I find myself on the defensive going, "Could we use Scattershot with that setting?"  They give me settings, I run them.  They give me movies, I run them.  They give me television shows, I run them.  It comes from our work on playing 'systemless' and bad habits formed there.  Internally, I often work with things I've come up with as Emergent Techniques for Scattershot, but ultimately they come to me and say 'can you run this?'

I miss the old days when I could select a game I was interested in and then seduce them into playing that.  I mean 'preparation time?'  What's that?  I whip up a Genre Expectation, set on a Dynamic Status Quo, choose a Mystique or three, ask for a Precipitating Event, and off we go.  (It's all Scattershot terminology, I'm too tired to link it all up; just wander down to the Scattershot forum and feast.)  The one I miss the most was the descendant of my second fantasy campaign (the one that occurred to me when I got Steve Jackson Games' Man to Man).

As should be obvious, I don't have anyone I can 'compare notes with.'  I challenge anyone else who lets their players choose the game to pipe in; I'm getting kinda lonely.

Fang Langford

[Patrick Boutin]

In other words, I think that writing a game text so that it can be understood and enjoyed by anyone, regardless of GM or player, will increase the chances of actually playing the game.

I agree with you Ron but what I had in mind is something else. I'm not talking about the "writing" of the game but about the "minding" behind the game. I know that it's not a good way to write a game only for GM, you have to put some meals for the players too but my minding behind game design is more one of a GM than a player.

For that matter, why does an RPG with a GM need rules?

Good question Mike. Maybe because it's what that make the difference between RPG and just storytelling with a person who runs the "main" story. It's what that keep the "game" to RPG. Anybody else have comments on that one?

Now. If a player is a participant, would not that make the GM a player as well? Now if master is a controller, would that not make a player a master (to a lesser degree) as well? So, now you can say that I'm not using definitions in the context of the genre. Well, true BUT... You must look at how these words can be linked whithin the context of the question because gamemaster has been the controller in traditional roles and the player the participator. From whose perspective do you make a game? The controller or the participater? Rule documentation is seconded by the application of the rules themselves

The GM is a player too. Not in terms of playing a character but in terms of participating in the game. When I'm making a game I'm using the two perspective: ruler for the most part and probably only player when it's time to think about what kind of characters I would like to play.

Here's an alternative. Two players get together and want to play a wargame. They decide on a general setting "Let's have a World War 2 wargame set on the Eastern Front!"; the agreed rules "WRG's 1950 - 2000 OK with you? OK!"; the amount of forces on each side "Say, 2,000 points? I'd like about 2,500? OK!"; and the type of forces "I've got German and Russian miniatures? I've only got Russian stuff. OK, I'm German and you're Russian."; and a time/place, "next weekend at 1:00PM at my house? OK!". Next weekend, the players get together, setting up and playing their game. They refer to the WRG rules and resolve disputes according to the rules in the WRG rules book, along with any agreed upon house rules. The game finishes, with a winner and a looser or a draw each. In the wargame, was there a need for a referee or GM?

Now consider a skirmish game, where each player is in charge of one or several miniatures, and the players are using a good skirmish wargame rule set. Does the skirmish wargame require a referee or GM?

Now consider a RPG ruleset for a gamist RPG like AD&D and suddenly we need a GM? Doesn't this imply that there could be something a little odd about the rules? :)

I don't think that we can comparate wargame or skirmish game with rpg. For me a wargame is a "finished" state game. The game doesn't evoluate in itself. The goal here is really to win, to win the game but that not necessarily true for a rpg.  In a wargame all the players are "players" and "rulers". Everybody can tell, along the rules, what the infantry or the tanks can do but it does not apply for a character in a rpg.

Why AD&D has to be gamist? I don't want to start nothing here, it's juste a loose opinion on the subject, but I think that it is the group in itself that make a game gamist, simulationist or narrativist not necessarily the "game" by itself.

Patrick

[Shreyas Sampat]

"gamist RPG like ad&d"...

This simply means that the game's rules make it easier to run and play in a Gamist manner rather then in one of the other modes.  You're entirely right that the players bring their own priorities to the game, but it's also valid to say that a game can be designed with priorities in mind.

[Mike Holmes]

For that matter, why does an RPG with a GM need rules?

Good question Mike. Maybe because it's what that make the difference between RPG and just storytelling with a person who runs the "main" story. It's what that keep the "game" to RPG. Anybody else have comments on that one?

Most people here feel that "freeform" or mechanic-less play with a GM is an RPG. But again, who cares about the definitions. You aren't saying that if it's not an RPG, it's not worth doing, are you? Then by this definition that game they play that you described would not be worth doing.

No, the answer to the question is that structure has it's own value (and problems, admittedly). As such, some people desire it. And as such, you can play a game that's like an RPG with rules, and with no GM. I (and Ralph Mazza) have published such a game, so I'm pretty sure it's true.

Mike

[Patrick Boutin]

Most people here feel that "freeform" or mechanic-less play with a GM is an RPG. But again, who cares about the definitions. You aren't saying that if it's not an RPG, it's not worth doing, are you? Then by this definition that game they play that you described would not be worth doing.

No, the answer to the question is that structure has it's own value (and problems, admittedly). As such, some people desire it. And as such, you can play a game that's like an RPG with rules, and with no GM. I (and Ralph Mazza) have published such a game, so I'm pretty sure it's true.

No that's not what I'm saying. Everything's worth doing. You're right: who cares about definitions? That's maybe my problem, sticking with this old model. It's really may be the problem: definitions. It's so large, it may be interpreted so differently by so many different people. If anybody can come with something different then go for it. I would like to be this person.. oh yes I would like it. :o)

Again I have to go with a question:if it's like an rpg is it an rpg? De facto, what is an rpg? Different people... different views I suppose! What's the name of the game that you have published? Where can I find it? I really would like to read it to see with what you've come with. Maybe it can help me see something different and help me stop thinking by the old model.

Patrick

[Mike Holmes]

Again I have to go with a question:if it's like an rpg is it an rpg? De facto, what is an rpg? Different people... different views I suppose! What's the name of the game that you have published? Where can I find it? I really would like to read it to see with what you've come with. Maybe it can help me see something different and help me stop thinking by the old model.

See the Universalis forum on the Independent Games Forum page here.

As to what an RPG is, that's a huge debate that belongs in other threads. Do a search on the subject here (or if really bold look for it on RPG.Net).

Mike

[M. J. Young]

Does anyone really know, personally, situations in which someone has come with a game and said, "I was looking at this, and I'd like you to run it?"

I can't remember the last time this didn't happen....They give me settings, I run them.  They give me movies, I run them.  They give me television shows, I run them.  It comes from our work on playing 'systemless' and bad habits formed there.  Internally, I often work with things I've come up with as Emergent Techniques for Scattershot, but ultimately they come to me and say 'can you run this?'

Sorry, Fang; that's not exactly what I meant. I get that all the time, too--"could you run The Postman, I'd like to drop into a World of Darkness setting, it would be cool to be a ninja". What has never happened to me is no one has ever brought me a game system and asked if I could run it. They bring me supplements for games I do run, setting material that I can use, all that kind of stuff. I have seen people get games they wanted as gifts, because they said they wanted them. I have seen people get unexpected games as gifts, but not from people who expected to play with them (e.g., artist Jim Denaxas gave one of my sons an autographed copy of Little Fears). I've never seen someone ask me to run a particular game, only a particular setting. It's not the same thing.

Now, maybe you do get a lot of requests to run games. I'm surprised I don't get them--Multiverser is designed with that game interface aspect that would mean I could easily bring a new game into the existing one (I've done it with several games with which I was already familiar). But it doesn't happen. If you do--if people bring games to you to run because they think the game looks cool and want to play that game (not just "a setting like this")--then I guess Ron is right about writing games that will catch player interest.

On the other hand, that seems a bit like trying to include your promotional materials in the text. Wouldn't it be better to write good advertising copy that would make players want to play a game, and not include it in the game book itself?

--M. J. Young

[RobMuadib]

Patrick

I read through the thread and thought I would address some of your basic assumptions/ideas. My first question is have you read through my, admittedly dense and possibly arcane SGR post? You can find it at

the SGR Model - Adding the 4th dimension to GNS (LONG)


It promulgates many "answers" to questions you bring up in this thread.

First, in that article I propose the following idea.

RPGs must be designed with an explicit understanding of the distrubition of power among the participants, and that explicit understanding must be conveyed to the participants via the games language. Second, the fundamental focus of an RPG is character, and the games language must provide the means for Character to be constructed such that it is primary means to engage in each mode of play.

Now, this is of interest to your point, because you are presupposing that the way this distribution of power must occur is the Players + GM model. I, and many others, as expressed by a number of games, do not.

My main point in writing SGR was to make it clear to myself, at least, that everyone in a RPG is a Player. This goes to Fang's very important mantra of RPG understanding. Play is shared. The GM, unlike the Umpire in Baseball, is not somehow removed from the actual action of the game. He is also a player.

That is an important distinction, at anyone time, everyone taking part in an RPG is both actor and audience. Any such "referee" distinctions are merely a mental contrivance as to how to approach the decision making with regards to a game situation. That is, from my SGR document,when acting in Referee position - you are controlling or directing the game for the other participants in a fair and impartial manner. The important thing being that you are still a participant.

The GM is the particpant that traditionally has the majority of the power reserved to him, along with the majority of the responsibility to manage the game, the story, and present all the other elements outside of a character Role to the players.

That is an awful lot of work, and expectation. That is raising the barrier to play through tradition. If we don't have someone who can do all these effectively, we can't play, umm bullshit.

Play is shared, as such there is no reason, other than tradition, why all the duties and responsibilities of play can't be shared.

So I guess my point is, dude, shift your paradigm, change your view of RPG. As in my model it's a game where everyone shares in SGR.

Long live the new flesh, or something:)

HTH

[Le Joueur]

Does anyone really know, personally, situations in which someone has come with a game and said, "I was looking at this, and I'd like you to run it?"

I can't remember the last time this didn't happen....They give me settings, I run them.  They give me movies; I run them.  They give me television shows; I run them.  It comes from our work on playing 'systemless' and bad habits formed there.  Internally, I often work with things I've come up with as Emergent Techniques for Scattershot, but ultimately they come to me and say 'can you run this?'

Sorry, Fang; that's not exactly what I meant. I get that all the time, too--"Could you run The Postman, I'd like to drop into a World of Darkness setting, it would be cool to be a ninja". What has never happened to me is no one has ever brought me a game system and asked if I could run it.

Unless you discount 'systemless' as not being a system (especially when they cook up how any special abilities work), apparently I am talking about what you want.

They bring me supplements for games I do run,

The more games I know, the more impossible your scenario becomes, right?  Conversely, that means your scenario is exactly how we all started (even if it was the store shelf that brought you that first game).

I was thinking you were asking if people brought me games that I wasn't running at the moment.  They bring up a game before I do anything with the run.  If you are speaking of games that are introduced to me to run before I become familiar with them, then I have to say that, of all the games I've run, only Dungeons & Dragons (first edition), GURPS, and Shadowrun, have I owned or played before I ran them.  Really, gaming at the University of Minnesota goes like that (when you're one of the alpha gamemasters).

I think you discount systemless play too quickly.  How different is your scenario from the following.  I was approached to run a Pokémon game before I had ever used a gameboy and after only seeing a few of the cartoons.  The player brought the whole milieu and together we banged out the details of the huggable, battle proxies on the fly.  How is that not bringing the 'system' to 'my table?'  I count every movie (like the Brandon Lee's starring in The Crow), every television show (like Pokémon), and every book (anything by Amanda Quick) as a system my players have brought me that I wasn't familiar with.

In ways, Scattershot's design is a reaction to this, a reaction to a need for a more concrete basis for play.  (So far, many are the occasions I still cannot get it into Scattershot, but that's changing as the Mechanix are getting nailed down.)

If you do--if people bring games to you to run because they think the game looks cool and want to play that game (not just "a setting like this")--then I guess Ron is right about writing games that will catch player interest.

On the other hand, that seems a bit like trying to include your promotional materials in the text. Wouldn't it be better to write good advertising copy that would make players want to play a game, and not include it in the game book itself?

I'm not sure what you mean with this last comment.  It does look like how I've been trying to convince my players to 'convert to Scattershot' before bringing things to me, chiefly to avoid having to 'learn a new system' all the time.  (Really, converting a book, movie, or show into systemless gaming is every bit as taxing as it was to run Vampire: the Masquerade without first having cracked the book.)

Fang Langford

p. s. Pokémon wound up being like no role-playing game I'd played, hits were almost always automatic, damage varied based on a wild Janken game theory.  Some powers worked more like trumps than anything else, just wild.  It really stretched my thinking.

Late edit (since I don't believe I have anything to add to this digression):

p. p. s. I learned Marvel Superheroes, DC Heroes, Vampire: the Masquerade, and all the World of Darkness series now that I think about it; be being asked to run them for the University groups.  Lately, I'm asked to run non-system games, but it started in the way unfamiliar to you.

[M. J. Young]

O.K., let me see if I can put context to this.

I believe it was Ron who suggested that game rules books ought to be written to grab the attention of players, that they might get the game and take it to a referee to run. That, to my mind, means that someone might pick up Sorcerer, or Multiverser, or Little Fears, on the shelf of a book store or game store, page through it a bit, and say, "I'd really like to play it, I'm going to buy it and get Fang to run it for me."

Now, that's foreign to my experience. I have been running games since 1980, and can probably count on my fingers the number of different game systems I have actually run. In every case, I decided I wanted to run the game, I went out and found the game, and I ran it. In one case, I chose to run it because I'd read about it in an article that was not about playing games at all, but about using role playing games in psych therapy. In most cases, I had played the game at some time, and decided I liked it and wanted to run it. There is one game in my house that no one has ever run; it was a gift from someone who doesn't play with us because he doesn't live close enough, and who chose the game because he was involved in its production, not because he had ever played it (I don't know whether he has or not). I might run it some time; but that's not the same thing as a player bringing a game to me and asking me to run it.

All of your examples seem to be about someone bringing you setting material and asking you to do a game with it. I don't care to argue whether Multiverser or Scattershot is a better tool for this, or whether I could as easily create a game for a particular setting. The point of Ron's statement was that a game system book should be written in such a way that a person would buy it who intended to play but not run it, to be given to someone else. The idea that someone wants to play a movie setting or a cartoon or video game setting or a book is not relevant to this (and I do that all the time). Ron's point was (if I grasped it) that there was a sense in which we would sell more copies of Multiverser and Scattershot if the rule books themselves were written so that players would pick them up, find they were written to appeal to players, and buy them to give to their referees to run the game. My response was that this doesn't happen to me, at least, and I don't know anyone to whom it does happen.

But then, I was out of college before role playing games rose to my attention (quite remarkable, really, since we were avid gamers, buying Avalon Hill stuff and subscribing to Games Magazine) so I don't really know too much about what high school and college role playing groups are like. (I ran games for a very large mostly high school group in my home; but they never asked me to run anything but D&D and later Multiverser, and those because they knew I knew them.)

As for the last comment about writing good advertising copy, that too was addressed to the issue Ron raised, in this sense: if I read something on the web, or in a game magazine, or another magazine, that itself should make me want to play the game and ask my referee if he would run it. If I'm not getting people to make that buy decision until they happen to pick up the book in the store, I'm really putting my promotional efforts in the wrong place if I try to sell them in the text. They should already know they want to buy my game before they get there. That's not to say it's a bad idea to write a game book that is interesting to people who happen to pick it up; it just doesn't seem to me that the best place to promote the book is in the book.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi M.J.,

I think you've mis-read me a little, or maybe I wasn't clear enough.

1) I don't think hardly anyone "picks up" a game and then their interest is or isn't sparked. I agree that the interest has to be there first. However, I do think that the decision to try to play comes upon interacting with the text (positing that we're talking about someone and a book, not other means of learning about a game like chit-chat).

2) I'm not sure where you're getting the idea of "giving it to the GM," which you repeat a couple of times. That's kind of a highly formalized now-do-this interpretation of what I'm trying, probably badly, to say.

I'm talking about a group of people who might, in the fullness of time, role-play with one another. The traditional view is that the only one of them who brings a game up as a possibility is the person who is probably going to GM the game. Surely it's not hard to see that the frequency of this event is going to be limited. In many cases, that's the same person every same, in which case the frequency goes down further.

Compare instead a group in which anyone, regardless of whether he or she plans to GM the game, can bring a game book to the group and say, "Hey, check this out, you play like thus-and-such," and be heard with full attention and with the possibility of play just as high as if the GM had brought it.

This is a Social Contract issue as well as a game text issue, of course. But since this thread is about the game text, my point is that I'd like to see more texts written to turn on role-players, with the player-GM distinction being accounted for, rather than one or the other being exclusively catered to.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Mea culpa on the notion of "giving it to the referee"; that was an extrapolation on my part. In my original gaming group, we generally each picked up games we wanted to run for the others to play. If someone brought a new game to the group, it was always "I bought this, I thought you guys might like to play it, so I'm reading up so I can run it." The other major group was more focused on "this guy has run this game before, let's get him to run it for us". The idea of someone bringing a new game to a gaming group outside the context of the expectation that they would run it was what seemed alien to me.

Then again, I'm a lot more utilitarian in my approach to game books. To me, the book is about providing the tools to play (which certain must often include some illustration of what play is like). I'm curious about what sort of text might particularly inspire players to want to play the game; or perhaps more specifically, how does one incorporate such a thing into game text? (This incidentally sounds like a new thread; but rather than start the thread with the question I'll let you consider whether there's an answer.)

I note that Multiverser's first chapter begins with three short paragraphs which describe something of the feeling and concept of the game; this might be the sort of thing you mean. I also note that many games get slammed for large quantities of "game fiction", which would seem in some sense to be exactly the sort of text that is included to attempt to spark player interest (although Wick's OrkWorld has been praised for its use thereof). I recall that you recently commented that you are using such fiction in a forthcoming work, and wonder if that is the sort of thing you mean. What do you have in mind on this?

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hi M.J.,

This must be free-association day at the Forge; a whole bunch of recent posts seem to wander about internally lately. Anyway.

You're bringing up quite a variety of things to talk about, but I'd like to focus on the topic of the thread. People seem to be bringing way way more unspoken assumptions to the discussion than I'd imagined possible.

You wrote,
"In my original gaming group, we generally each picked up games we wanted to run for the others to play. If someone brought a new game to the group, it was always "I bought this, I thought you guys might like to play it, so I'm reading up so I can run it." The other major group was more focused on "this guy has run this game before, let's get him to run it for us". The idea of someone bringing a new game to a gaming group outside the context of the expectation that they would run it was what seemed alien to me."

Right. Exactly. Why should it be alien? Since I essentially re-invented the entire Social Contract of role-playing for myself and anyone I've played with since 1996, concepts like this one have become, to me, like the big-eyed alien going "meep meep." I can't begin to understand why such a thing is taken as a given (any more).

Currently, exactly what you describe happens all the time in my groups. But you'll also see: "Hey, what are we playing next?" "I'm thinking of Game X." "Cool. Did you plan to run it?" "Actually, I always wanted to play it. Can you check it out and see if you want to run it?" NB that player vs. GM is meaningless in this group as a constant thing; all of us have GM'ed with this group at one point or another. In my other main group, it's more centered on me as GM, but that's begun to re-shape itself recently as well (at last).

Or: "Did you ever read Game X?" "No, I just heard about it." "Well, it's totally your type of game. Borrow my copy, see if you want to run it." Add to all of this a constant lending of game texts across the group, with constant discussion about them being part of our conversations before and after play of whatever game we're playing at the moment.

One of the predictable side effects of such a Social Contract/Context for play is that habitual-players get interested in GMing, and habitual-GMs get interested in playing characters.

Best,
Ron

[Palaskar]

Usually, I try to use my Signature RPG metasystem, which seems to generate nice Sim games that I like.

First I ask myself, "What's the setting like? What Traits are required?'

Then I go down the list of parts needed in an RPG. Social Contract? Check. Character generation? Check. GM's section? Check. And so on.

Then I go back through it and run some thought experiments, as well as making sure everything is covered. For example, in Horus I found the Tut-Ankh (patron god, essentially) section was not there.