wrote: thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16180

Ron wrote:
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quot;Ron]When games like The Great Ork Gods and The Mountain Witch are seen as revolutionary, whereas in fact they merely accord with the bare minimum of social functionality seen in any card game or board game with any legs, that means that the baseline for comparison is literally appalling.

In terms of social functionality, board and card games ask fewer questions. Roleplay games ask many, many, many questions. Add another 'many' there, actually. From 'what does good alignment mean in terms of behaviour' to 'does the player get a circumstance bonus?' and metric shit loads more.

The primary sticking point is the group figuring out which questions the group should and will answer the same way every time,  to keep the game going. And which questions individuals can answer differently, so as to have a beneficial clash of intention with other players.

"Conflict equals unhappy play" is a common association, leading to the idea that everyone should answer the questions the same way. Boring play for the greater good.

But clash of intention is the heart of exciting roleplay. It's just that it takes a canny eye to see what design causes a damaging clash and what design causes a beneficial clash. It takes a game designers eye...an experienced game designers eye. The end users shouldn't keep being left to handle this task themselves (unless they are inclined to do that sort of thing). It's like leaving someone with Ikea furniture to assemble, but no instructions. No, that doesn't make it a great puzzle to work out, it's just a flawed product.

If you want to read the two games mentioned, Great Ork Gods can still be downloaded for free from my website, while the Mountain Witch original game chef version can be found here.

I've had a partial read through of great ork gods (I'm terrible at purely technical reviews). As I thought, It's really straight forward design, with the game world exploration parts neatly pocketed in the rules design rather than sprawling beasts that instead neatly pocket the rules. Thus it asks far fewer questions and the questions it does ask it legitimately asks them, rather than asking them in a 'well, what do you think the game world is like/what happens next...oh, but make sure you don't crash the game with your answer!'. I think the part where it asks players to fairly assign difficulty is where it get's closest to this question. But I also see other bits of the design which stop it from being a 'be fair or the game will die in the arse!' question, to more a 'be fair or it'll spoil the game a little bit' question.

I dunno about the term 'social functionality', not quite the right name IMO. A design like this doesn't need a complex social contract, it actually doesn't need the play group to be socially functional at a high level. 'Socially untaxing', instead? It basically draws on the exact same social contract rules we use in day to day life, rather than requiring a special gamer social contract to be constructed.

PS: Jack, I hope I didn't give the impression I was knocking great ork gods and saying it was flawed. I meant the opposite, I estimated and then read it only to confirm that it had a very solid and socially undemanding design (it doesn't demand a complex social contract just to play).

I think that Mountain Witch is revolutionary in the sense that it is an RPG that has the accessibility of a board game, and it is done very well.

However, I wouldn't call it revolution in the sense of some other games that change how we not only look at mechanics, but at the social structure of roleplaying.  But it still does something accessible and interesting that isn't just a "beer and pretzels" game, so to speak.

Hello,

My call: Nathan needs to read these games before continuing with this conversation.

Best,
Ron