Mike Holmes wrote: First, a lot of these games are very close to the line between RPG and something else - something like a boardgame. That is, sure one can narrate events for the results indicated, but one can do that in monopoly as well. I think that structure is a fine thing, but it can be taken to the point where the primary act of roleplaying - selecting actions from amongst all those potentially viable for a character - is made moot, or eliminated as an option. This is potentially very problematic in some ways. I think a lot can be blamed on the success of My Life With Master, which might seem to some to be so rigidly structured, but which in play actually leads to a lot of "role-playing."

In other ways, I think we have here just a whole new category of games. Semi-RPGs? I mean, some of these games are going to be a lot of fun to play for what they are.

the primary act of roleplaying - selecting actions from amongst all those potentially viable for a character

I think the key words are 'potentially viable'. For example, in Dynasty Warriors (the computer game) I can hit stuff, I can jump, I can ride horses - but I can't set up a rope trap, demand my opponents surrender, or simply run away from battle despite the fact all three are potentially viable options for a warrior such as the one depicted in the game. Wheras in any normal RPG all these options, and many more, would be open to me.

But are they really? I know lots of RPGs that have no mechanics for rope traps or surrendering.

The biggest difference is the fact that any kind of action can be added at the GMs discretion, even if they aren't in the rulebook. That's what makes full-RPGs so much fun - you aren't completely limited to game mechanics.

I think what Mike is referring to is the difference between selecting actions from an essentially infinite set of options constrained only by plausibility, which is characteristic of RPG play, versus selecting actions from a finite set of options. The latter is characteristic of board games and CRPGs.

We must also consider that in this context, "option" has to mean more than "exactly what you narrate your character doing," it has to have a meaning closer to "ways your character's action can change the game state." The hypothetical ability to narrate, from an open-ended range of possibilities, the exact reason your "character" is sent to Jail or the luxurious features of your newly-built hotel in a Monopoly game doesn't make Monoopoly any less a game of finite options, because such narration has no effect on the possibilities open in subsequent play.

Further clarification: the game state includes all significant facts about the world and about the characters. For example, in My Life With Master, the number of different results a a player's action can have on the character state in game mechanical terms is finite (gain SL, gain Love, etc.) is finite, but actions also have an open-ended range of effect on the shared imagined space (such as, alter an NPCs physical well-being in ways that will have to be taken into account in any future imagining of events involving that NPC). Yet further clarification: "significant" means "affecting the system-legality or the plausibility of future potential player actions."

I assume that Arabian Nights On Ice, my Iron Game Chef entry, is one of those Mike is referring to, because designing a (by that definition) "near RPG" was and is exactly my goal. I prefer the term "finite rpg" -- keeping in mind that just as with computer rpgs, it's irrelevant to me whether people want to regard finite rpgs as "real rpgs" or not.

This concept arose for me out of three posts from last fall about 1st edition AD&D as a de facto finite game, for some players and for some short-lived span of time. See: Post #1, Post #2, and Post #3. What I've decided I want to do is design a game that's as complex but as finite as early D&D (when it was still close to its "wargaming roots" so that there was a sense that the rules enumerate everything a character can do). But instead of the "roots" being wargames based on figures moving on maps, it will be based on card games in which the card tableau in front of a player displays the player's current progress, problems, and resources. This might bring to mind CCGs, but what I'm really thinking is Mille Bournes.

The Arabian Nights On Ice Iron Game Chef game isn't there yet. I wouldn't even call it a first draft. It's half of the mechanics, the half that covers the external handling of the Conflict cards (which helps combine disparate Conflict elements into the semblance of a coherent plot), but it omits the mechanics I'm planning for within the Conflict card content. I replaced those with some freeform narration rules, both to patch over the omission and to make it superficially more rpg-like. In the Iron Game Chef version the Conflict cards look like Once Upon A Time cards, with only a sentence or two of text, but Conflict cards in the real game will look more like pages torn out of role playing adventure modules. Each "card" will delineate multiple character options and the situational rules needed to resolve their outcomes.

(And yeah, the On Ice part was tacked on for the contest. But even so, it actually did help me work out some focus issues.)

- Walt

Walt Freitag wrote: I prefer the term "finite rpg" -- keeping in mind that just as with computer rpgs, it's irrelevant to me whether people want to regard finite rpgs as "real rpgs" or not.

...

What I've decided I want to do is design a game that's as complex but as finite as early D&D (when it was still close to its "wargaming roots" so that there was a sense that the rules enumerate everything a character can do).

- Walt

Walt's got it right on the head.

To some extent, the division is illusory. That is, all games are "finite" in some ways. They define limited sets of characters to start, and then limited worlds in which they can interact.

Everyone familiar with the concept of larger and smaller infinities (everyone know what a half-space is?) RPGs represent games with small infinities of potential actions, some subset of the actual infinite that the game represents. Non-RPGs could be seen that way. I mean, one could say that each buy of a property was performed at a meeting of the principles of the transaction and that each happened in a different way. Making the potential results infinite. But the problem is that the mechanics don't alter to represent the described events at all. So what actually ends up happening is that the player is informed that his input doesn't matter, and so he focuses on the mechanic itself.

This is Pawn stance. Treating your in-game representation as just that, and not trying to describe it as if it had an objectively real existence in another place. To the extent that, say, early D&D had very limited options, it promoted more pawn stance. If there's an implied entire world outside of the dungeon (which the Tolkien source material would suggest, and the text's nebulous mention of "town" as where you go to rest up between adventures), then why can't the characters interact with that larger world - even if only to use the only extant mechanics to kill it? It's these "artificial" seeming limits that cause a game to become something less than a full RPG.

BTW, all of this theory comes from the threads with Jack Spencer trying to define RPGs. As such, my definitions are far from commonly accepted. But I think that we can all see that the boardgame dungeon, while having more RPG-like elements, is not a RPG. Well, if you design a game that's likely to promote that sort of pawn stance, then I think that what you have is something between RPG and boardgame. It's in the fuzzy zone that I'm calling semi-rpgs.

Obviously it's a spectrum. Note that by this definition, yes, all CRPGs that are not MMORPGS or MUDS or the like, are very much semi-rpgs.

I don't want the name to become something that has a bad connotation. Any more than I'd say that any well designed game that was intentionally made to promote some sort of fun Pawn stance, was a bad game. It's just different, and I think deserving of an apellation. Note that The Dance and the Dawn got second, and showed a lot of these characteristics. The problem with many of the others was that they weren't interesting as strategy games or basic simulations - which sans promoting characterization seems to be all that's left to have fun with in these games.

Note that I think that some of the posters created these by accident, simply by making a very rigid and limited (though potentially very fun) set of choices for the players, and just not realizing that they were making the rules feel as though Pawn stance was the way that it would read to be played. Sure, if you put some of these in front of RPG players, they might see a way to play them as RPGs. But as someone once said, System Does Matter, and I think these games would make most groups move to Pawn stance in their play.

Mike

P.S. the icebreaker actually had less of this than some games, because there were periods where only narration could advance the in-game situation. That is, there's no mechanical set of options that the player must pick from to defeat a monster, he just narrates any of the myriad ways that it could happen. If you'd limited it to Attack or Bold Attack, or somesuch, then this would indicate more pawn stance, because, while one could describe either one in infinite ways, the mechanic again tells the player that the description doesn't matter. That said, the infinity involved in Dragon's Lair is orders of magnitude smaller than most RPGs, so it's, perhaps, a nearly semi-rpg? ::shrug::

As for Walt's game, if he loses the ice and tightens it up, including some more interactivity, I think he'll have an excellent example of what this sort of game can be in terms of entertainment value.

Mike

Thanks Mike for the clarification.

You did add a bit to Walt's definition in that you also mentioned pawn stance. Is pawn stance another criterion for a semi-RPG because it doesn't seem to be necessary for a finite RPG to also have pawn stance. Therefore, I'm guessing that an infinite RPG (or just RPG as commonly defined) with only pawn stance available would also be a semi-RPG. Am I reading you right?

P.S. Thank you again for all the work you put in on the Iron Chef competitions. I thoroughly enjoy your comments on all the games.

That's a very tough question - very chicken or egg. I'd say that either enough impetus towards Pawn stance, or a game finite enough to cause Pawn stance because of that, is a semi-rpg.

Or more to the point, we shouldn't adopt the term as a substitte. Just say that the game is "mostly Pawn stance" or that "it has finite options" or something like that. Each is more specific and potentially more important than some secondary label.

Mike

I guess I need to clarify myself since my post got a little convoluted there. So what we're saying is that an RPG must have infinite character options (as defined above) and not be limited to only pawn stance in order to be considered an RPG. (Of course, for the people who have not read the previous threads, a shared imaginary space is essential.)

That actually helps my design efforts. In order for RPG players to recognize my game as an RPG, it needs to meet both of the above criteria.

Thanks!

quozl wrote: I guess I need to clarify myself since my post got a little convoluted there. So what we're saying is that an RPG must have infinite character options (as defined above) and not be limited to only pawn stance in order to be considered an RPG. (Of course, for the people who have not read the previous threads, a shared imaginary space is essential.)

That actually helps my design efforts. In order for RPG players to recognize my game as an RPG, it needs to meet both of the above criteria.

Hi, Mike -

As a corollary to what you're saying, I think that it was a sense of infinite options in 'early D&D' (reference period '75-'78, say) that gradually led people away from pawn stance. That is, you might have started in pawn stance, but then once you got a DM who would let you use your creativity open-endedly, actor, author, and director stances all start popping up in interesting ways. That was a major cognitive shift for a lot of the other grade-schoolers I was playing with back in those days, anyway.

So maybe there's a kind of mutual reinforcement here, or at least a tendency towards one. That is, limited options push you towards pawn stance even if you might be initially inclined towards some other, and unlimited (functional, not just hypothetical) options push you away from it in certain respects. Or at least they can. Especially if suddenly you undergo a G -> S shift at the same time: to put constraints on the outbreak of raw creativity that infinite options seem to allow, you start focusing on in-game cause to restrain it; which in turn encourages everyone to stop staying in pawn stance and instead try to render their actions plausible using one of the other three stances instead.

Mike Holmes wrote: Let's remember that Pawn stance is, by definition, not bothering to ensure that an action is completely plausible within the definitions of the world.

quozl wrote: I'm a little confused. Are you saying that pawn stance is when the player doesn't care if the characters actions are plausible? And that if a player does care, then it's not pawn stance?

OK, got it. And you're saying that the perceived lack of infinite options in a game causes pawn stance and that if a game causes pawn stance in 99% of the people who play it, then it will not be considered an RPG. Right?

(Thanks to Mike for his major, major review work.)

So plenty of games picked up aspects of the MLwM/finite-options vibe. Mine certainly did, even if it happened subconsciously. The very notion of this pre-structured narrative is just very appealing. Because...

(1) The "finite rpg" ideas are very liberating, in that limits are providing borders, you can "hardcode" the narrative tropes into the story, etc. MLwM endgames end perfectly, properly, because they're supposed to end that way and can only end that way.

(2) Maybe, just maybe, it seems easier to build towards? To some extent, you could try to take story type X, break it into events/stages a-f, and create some unified economy to push it through the stages into a final genre-appropriate ending. Color to taste, and you just might have genre emulation.

(3) More casual play? (GNS + tremendous speculation ahead.) Ron's essays suggest that Nar and Gam play are more "intuitive" to non-gamers than Sim play. Moreover, Nar + Gam designs often push towards Pawn or Author stance, giving the player some distance from his character, whereas the meat of Sim, the Dream, often relies on Actor stance, and getting "into your character" in a way that is often intense. I love the Dream, but I also would understand that, if I was explaining RPGs to a totally vanilla n00b, "we tell the story" and "we kick the ass" is easier to walk into that "we be this alter ego in a virtual world". Poker and Once Upon a Time are easier pickup games than most RPGs, and in this scale I would imagine being a certain RPGs, like NinjaBurger and MLwM, having better pickup (ad hoc) play value than HERO or Sorcerer.

I feel like there are more nuances to #3 that slipped my mind just now, but anyway...

(Now, MAJOR conjecture ahead.) So, I hope we don't have a single design meme get too strong or be a fad, but I was wondering about this spate of potentially short-form RPGs as a good thing. Many of the seemingly finite RPGs that Mike reviewed were described as being "potentially interesting, but lacking replayability".

Is that necessarily bad? Whereas many RPGs want investments of time in preparation or rule familiarity, there could be a parallel track of short-form finite RPGs working on a different economy of time/money. Instead of renting a movie, you pick up someone's latest short-form RPG. Supposing that my semi-RPG about "Robot Greeks Losing Their Humanity" has no replayability, and gameplay is in fact focused on hammering a single Premise ("Are you more Greek or Robot?"), you've still enjoyed a 2 hour game and its narrative, all for free. Or $2. Or your zine subscription.

But more importantly, it's a different economy of time, or rather, it's for a different kind of gametime/experience. Thoughts?

I have to add a big "me too" to Dev's point. I think a lot of the semi (or finite) RPGs in Iron Game Chef were that way for a reason. In my game, I intentionally used MLwM as an inspiration - even though I've yet to actually buy or read that game. I needed limits and structure because I wanted a game that would be over in a few hours. That meant character creation had to be insanely fast, which definitely encourages Pawn stance - it's hard to care about plausibility for a character that you whipped up in 30 seconds.

As an aside, this thread has got me thinking about CCGs and the RPG market. I've heard that RPG sales dropped off severely after Magic became popular, and I know that my friends and I switched from getting together to play AD&D, Vampire or Cyberpunk to hanging out playing Magic. (Not anymore, the push to keep buying more cards to compete got irritating as we got older.) I think this had a lot to do with not wanting to spend the time required to plan and play a largely Sim RPG. It was just too much effort. I think there is a large untapped market for games that support fast, ad hoc planning and play. At least I've usually enjoyed short one-shot games more than long-term campaigns.

Jonathan,

That doesn't make them "not an RPG" it makes them a Semi-RPG. Which, as Miracle Max would say, means that it's only partly not a RPG. :-)

And, again, maybe we should trash the term, because people are already railing against it as pejorative. Note that Dev's game won first runner up, despite being a good example of the game.

My comments in the "complete" sections were just to note that replayability makes "more" of a game product for the person receiving it. There's nothing wrong with one-shot RPGs, and I have been an advocate of them for a long time people may note. For example, I've pointed out in the past how they are similar in scope to the "Host Your Own Murder Mystery" products, which retail for far more.

So, again, there's no "problem" with these games. I did deduct points if the game seemed to be so "semi-" as to hardly be a RPG any longer - case in point Dav's Treasure game which he's told me he made on a lark, and which I think he won't mind me beating up on. Sure, it might be a good game in some other sense (or maybe not), but I have to draw the line somewhere in order that I don't start getting handed boardgames that are completely not RPGs.

But as long as there's at least a little dedicated evidence that the game has moments that promote in-game characterizations and the like in a manner that indicated plausibility, then I have no problem calling a semi-RPG a RPG for purposes of the contest (FWIW). And, even if a game isn't a RPG, hell, I play more boardgames that most of y'all. All I've said here is that the extreme examples of these games might belong in another competition is all (or that maybe the designers might want to think a bit more about the more RPG elements).

Consider that some games are downgraded for not using the ingredients well. That doesn't make them bad games, it just makes them losers in my competition, which uses the ingredients to create constraints. Just because some games didn't win the competition doesn't mean that they aren't really good. I feel that I picked the best game in this case, but I can definitely see a competition where I'd be forced to pick other than the best game, because it stepped outside the boundaries of the competition.

Are we all clear on that? There's nothing wrong with Semi-RPGs or boardgames.

Mike

Face it, there is a negative perception of semi-RPGs among hardcore RPG players. What I was trying to determine was where that line is between accepted RPGs and semi-RPGs. Baron Munchausen is on that line. Soap is on that line. My Life With Master is generally regarded as an RPG but approaches that line for many RPG players. Universalis is regarded by most RPG players as having crossed the line into semi-RPGs.

This thread was meant to explore why there is a line and what determines that line. It seems that having pawn stance is a major criterion but I'm not sure it's the only one. I know the line isn't important if you are trying to market your game to non-RPG players but it is extremely important if marketing to the hardcore RPG player. This isn't an exercise in good/bad labeling. It's defnition-delving so that more effective marketing can be explored.

To be clear, the Semi-RPG label that I came up with was only intended to enumerate the sort of game that we saw in the competition. Universalis crosses a completely different line in becoming a collaborative storytelling game. MLWM, is only vaguely a semi-RPG, as there are rules like the bonus dice where you get bonuses for role-playing in certain manners (in a plausibly in-game fasion, of course). I mean, it's a pretty wide infinity of choices that are involved with being Sincere.

As to negative perception, all you're talking about it preference. I've heard nobody say that Universalis or any of these games was a bad design, just some talk about them not being what they expect out of RPGs. That's just confirmation of the border, and, perhaps, a statement of preference.

I see no bias overall against these games. That The Forge is a site for RPGs, and that these might not be RPGs is a different matter.

Mike

Mike, I agree completely with your last post.

Now, can we examine why there is that perceived border between RPG and semi-RPG in the perception of most RPG players?

quozl wrote: Mike, I agree completely with your last post.

Now, can we examine why there is that perceived border between RPG and semi-RPG in the perception of most RPG players?

A potential role for semi-RPG's is that of sub-RPG, by which I mean a component of a broader system that is itself an RPG. Possibly, several semi/sub-RPG's linked together. I say this becuase it seems increasingly to me that most extant combat systems are themselves only semi-RPG's; that is, the degree of Pawn stance required is so high that it almost becomes boardgame-like. Some RPG's have half gone their with their vehicular combat systems, I suspect.

Dungeoneer, and Thomas Denmarks thread on the forge a little while ago on Finite RPG's might also be wortth considering in this light.

I've always agreed with the notion that specialized combat systems and the like are "semi-RPG-subgames".

This is why I like HQ. In generalizing all conflicts to one system, the only limiter at all is that of conflict whatever you can make that to mean. Which is a far greater infinity than the combat infinity in many systems. Not saying it's better for everyone, just that I like my RPGs to be RPGs, and my boardgames to be boardgames. Since I do both, I don't feel a huge need to mix the two.

But it's definitely doable.

I don't want to sound like I'm making a circular argument, but it's the Pawn stance that bugs most RPG players, Jonathan. When somebody does end up doing something implausible, because they're treating their character as a pawn, that makes many RPG players furious. That basic level of exploration is having it's floor dropped out. We feel that we're no longer exploring another world, but "just" playing a game.

Mike

Re: The line between RPG and semi-RPG, and why RPGamers seem to look down on things like one-shots or other semi-RPGs

Here's a line of thought this thread sparked in my little brain.

I, personally, would feel kind of wierd playing a "one-shot RPG". Why? Because it's been hardwired into my brain by years of "campaigns" and "chronicles" that a RPG is meant to be played for a long time. It's supposed to be an investment that gives me a return, which it does by being long and, in many ways, neverending. In my brain, there is no finite endpoint to a RPG. To me, this is what a RPG is. A boardgame is meant to be played a couple times, a CCG is meant to be a series of shortish games whenever I want, and an RPG is meant to be a long-term time investment.

Now, I'm trying to break out of this mindset. Really hard, especially in my game design. But it's difficult, because I have all this background telling me what a RPG requires in terms of time investment. I feel like this is how a lot of gamers are.

The line, it seems to me, is how much time I expect to invest in playing a game. If it's a longterm thing, its a RPG. If I'm only going to play it a couple times, and if the entire game can be played through in a night, I view it as...something else.

This is kind of how I'm feeling about Mr. Aidleys Great Ork Gods. It looks like a blast, and I'd love to play it some time when I actually have a night free, but I'm not gonna present it to my buddys as I would a game of Adventure!. In fact, I would love to play that with my friends who aren't gamers, both to introduce them to a large part of my life, and just to have some fun.

To me, its a...I dunno. I don't like the "semi-RPG" label either, it just seems awkward, as if the game is somehow incomplete, which it definitely is not. I can't think of a good term that captures the slot I think these kinds of games fit into the RPG spectrum. Anyway...

Point? Things like, for lack of a better phrase, semi-RPGs are better marketed as "icebreakers" to bring people into the hobby, or as something like boardgames-without-the-board, an evenings entertainment, though not necessarity designed as such. I wouldn't expect them to appeal to hardcore gamers, for the most part, because, as Mr. Darby mentioned, gamers are steeped in the D&D paradigm, which includes this time investment thing.

dalek_of_god wrote: I think a lot of the semi (or finite) RPGs in Iron Game Chef were that way for a reason. In my game, I intentionally used MLwM as an inspiration - even though I've yet to actually buy or read that game. I needed limits and structure because I wanted a game that would be over in a few hours. That meant character creation had to be insanely fast, which definitely encourages Pawn stance - it's hard to care about plausibility for a character that you whipped up in 30 seconds.
...
I think there is a large untapped market for games that support fast, ad hoc planning and play. At least I've usually enjoyed short one-shot games more than long-term campaigns.

John Kim wrote:
• If one is going to make a short-term and quick-play RPG, why does it need to have a character creation system at all? You can just have pregenerated characters. This seems like a sacred cow of sorts -- i.e. an RPG has to have character creation as a required step.

• If you're going to design for a one-shot, I think it makes sense to be scenario-based as well as including pregenerated PCs. For example, I think my mystery game can be viewed as a one-shot RPG.

John Kim wrote: I consider it highly questionable to be inspired by a game which one has never played. Design should be informed and guided by actual play.

It looks like we have another criterion of the line between RPGs and semi-RPGs -- "one-shot" RPGs.

Are "one-shots" RPGs that are designed to only play once, like the name implies, or is there another defnition that people are using?

John Kim wrote: I consider it highly questionable to be inspired by a game which one has never played. Design should be informed and guided by actual play.

John Kim wrote: I definitely prefer the term "finite RPGs" to "semi-RPGs", by the way.

This has the potential to be a fad rather than a reasoned pattern of design.

I consider it highly questionable to be inspired by a game which one has never played. Design should be informed and guided by actual play.

If one is going to make a short-term and quick-play RPG, why does it need to have a character creation system at all? You can just have pregenerated characters. This seems like a sacred cow of sorts -- i.e. an RPG has to have character creation as a required step.

Interesting stuff, as usual. I have to talk about this fad thing. While nobody's saying that finite rpgs are necessarily good or bad, there's a bit of concern about it being a fad.

I'm not sure why.

Finite rpgs have hardly been done to death yet, and I suspect there are a lot of interesting games that could come out of a design trend or fad in that direction. Would most of the games fail to take full advantage of the new/different constraints in making a finite game, whatever those are? Yeah, sure, just like most games fail to really pull off what they're trying to do as well. Would something really cool and interesting come out of a trend like this? I suspect it would. Would the trend come to dominate games at the Forge to the point of pushing out other designs? Possible, I guess, but I doubt it.

Take my entry, for example. I was definitely drawing on some of the constraints that are being identified with finite rpgs here, and I was doing it for a variety of reasons, one of which is interest in how MLwM opened up the category, one of which was system does matter, one of which was Hero Quest (yeah, you have to invert how you're looking at it and think of the system as "core rules do it all and apply always," and squint real hard and you might see it), and one of which was speed and the ability to fill in as a pick-up game. And there were probably more. Oh, my current fascination with German board games, especially the really tight ones. And the highly constrained nature of what I was emulating. And whatever other influences I'm missing.

Ok, you get the picture, I was part of the trend. But I have a ton of other game ideas, and most of those would not fit the finite games mold. I suspect the other designs are similar—we got a bunch of them all together at once, but that doesn't mean everyone who made one is going to keep pumping them out. So I don't know whether it's really the kind of trend that will see everybody writing lots of finite games and nothing else. I doubt it. But if so, I'd be interested in seeing what came of it.

Of course, with a fad there's the danger that people are doing it but really, really don't know why they're doing it, or how it's going to affect how the game comes out. So I can see some danger there. But that's easy enough to deal with. The first question you get in Indie Design is always "Why?" I see no greater danger of unreflexive finite rpg design than any unreflexive rpg design. Besides, finite games at least offer us something different to screw up from say a bog-standard sim design or yet another cutting edge narration-trading game that is destined to be forever called narrativist, so I'm interested in seeing people give it a shot ;-) I'd like to see how people would screw this one up, and then of course how they would get it right, and what we can learn from it. I certainly don't think designing a finite rpg is easier than designing an infinte rpg. It has some difficult pitfalls of its own. I agree with Dev that it seems easier to build toward, but I also think it may be harder to come through on successfully. There aren't many models, you're doing something really focused, and if your game doesn't deliver, I think it's a lot more obvious just from looking at it what ways it doesn't deliver. You can't just wave your hand and say "ignore these rules here if they don't work." There aren't enough rules to get away with that.

Also since playtesting came up, I thought I'd mention that I actually did manage to get playtesting in—twice, and with two different groups. The actual play was short each game—about an hour and a half each time, I think, followed by a lot of talk about the game, but it did have a real effect on what I submitted (although a lot also didn't make it in for time reasons—entirely my fault for procrastinating). It's off topic for this thread, but I'll talk about it eventually when I post in Indie Design. I have a lot of other stuff going on right now, so that'll have to just happen eventually. But when it does happen, I'll be using this thread and especially Mike's comments in the judging thread (which I more or less agree with) as a jumping off point.

Rich

I think the problem with fads is that they potentially distract people from going off in other new directions, or from improving old methods. It's like you say, they may not know why they're doing it. It's the same phenomenon as fantasy heartbreakers - the person is designing to a particular spec because they know that spec works, and thus aren't trying to make something new.

Nothing wring with using the form if it's really what you want to design. But I hope that we don't start seeing a slew of these things killing off creativity elsewhere.

This all said, I think that the form, since it lends intself to shorter presentations, was likely to become a favorite for the IGC competitions because they are easy to get relatively high "completeness" scores with. It's easy to know when the game is done in terms of having rules that will get you from A to Z in play. So I think that what we've seen here is an artificial effect - we won't really know if it's an actual fad until we start seeing the majority of Indie Design over-run with such designs (other than the IGC ones).

From another POV, I could see someone making their whole living doing nothing but making games like these. I mean, one-shots especially have the ability to allow you to really expand your line.

Mike

My understanding of the term "One-shot" in common use has always been that it refers to a game that is played in a single session, not to one that might extend to multiple sessions but has no replayability. That is, Puppetland (from what I understand) is a one-shot, because everything from character generation to the conclusion of the story takes place in one session, and the next time you play you start by creating new characters. Host a Murder games are also one-shots, usually, but not because they lack replayability, but because they are designed to be played out in a single night. (Only really serious gamers play games that are held in the middle and continued later, and although when I was a kid we would do that sometimes if we all had to go to bed in the middle of a board game, in the main that's the province of RPGs, Wargames, and those who play games like Chess by correspondence.)

Is my understanding of the word not consistent with common usage? I'm inclined to think that we need a different term for games that lack replayability, because I've heard a lot of people say they "ran a one-shot of Unknown Armies" or something like that.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote:
Is my understanding of the word not consistent with common usage? I'm inclined to think that we need a different term for games that lack replayability, because I've heard a lot of people say they "ran a one-shot of Unknown Armies" or something like that.

Speaking of terms, how do people feel about the word "short-form" alongside some of these RPGs? I often attach those to some RPGs to signify that (a) these are unlike traditional ones, (b) might be artsy/hip, and (c) LOW TIME COMMITMENT! LOW TIME COMMITMENT! WHEE!. Is this another useful unifying phrase for some RPGs? (Different that finite RPGs; you may well have something that's "short-form" without being finite, and even converse!)

Also, it should be reminded: MLwM is not a One-Shot game! (Yes Dev, even if you ran through a con demo start to finish with 8 minions in 2 hours. That was a corner case.) I have *played* it primarily as a one-shot game, but that's largely due to the environment I'm in.

Good points. I think we should skip "one-shot" and move on to other terms that are indicative of the individual phenomena:

Single-session - meaning the game is intended to be played to completion in one session.
Low/High Replayability - whether or not it will be entertaining to play the game again with the same players after having done so once.
Open-ended/Close-ended - a game meant to be played indefinitely vs one that has terms that define it's end.

Thus MLWM is not single-session (though it can be played that way, it's not an expectation of the design), High Replayability (each master alone brings up all sorts of new avenues for dysfuncitonal relationships to be explored), and Close-ended.

Mike

Good terms, Mike; and good that we're not trying to say that "one-shot" means a specific thing when apparently people are going to take issue with that.

Stepping away from design for a moment, it is clear that many games can be played in single sessions which are not necessarily so designed. Is there an appropriate term floating around for "I ran a complete game adventure of X one night"?

--M. J. Young

Again, is a term neccessary? Can't you just say, "I ran an entire campaign of D&D in one session?"

Mike

Our traditional big honking RPG has nearly-infinte options (this is how many presnt RPGs as different from boardgames/wargames to newbies); our finite RPGs are notable for having very focused and limited game choices, but are still very much RPGs because the locus of the "action" is the storytelling.

Do people put much stock in Author/Pawn stances as being more "comfortable"'/less intense than immersive Actor stances?

I'd say that author/pawn stance is what most non-rpg players are used to. Actor stance is somewhat of a stretch for most people. But not horribly so.

Mike