I had a really good game tonight, but so unexpected!

We have a friend staying with us tonight, lovely woman, completely non-geek, non-roleplaying. My wife was in bed, A was looking at her emails, and I was reading through my file of free RPGs. My eyes lingered over the tar-brown print of Nicotine Girls, and when A sat down next to me for a smoke, I showed it to her.

The usual questions: what do you do? how long does it take? can you play any  time?

Could we play now? Would it take long to get started?

Carpe diem, right? 'I'll get you a piece of paper. Er, you sure you want to do this?' Affirmative. Blimey.

A's son C drops in to hang out before work, and gets recruited by his mother. She's rolling a joint and I'm writing down her character; they both have amused, slightly incredulous, but receptive looks on their faces. We get the characters done in ten minutes (oh boy do I remember the time I got newbies to make up characters for Pendragon), and we get into it.

Forget everything you know I think  to myself. They want to be from Bulgaria...maybe London instead since they used to live there. You are the barrier to their dreams. So I throw some conflict their way. We get to the dice and I really have to think hard on the spot about just how to explain rolling to see how it all goes. A really gets the Hope and Fear angle, she digs the whole idea more and more. Massive disappointments--none of the conflicts go the Girls' way. The newbies' narrations are  great. 'What a horrible game,' says A, laughing ruefully. C stakes it all on a Hope roll and fails, his girl Cindy ends up on smack, her dreams of a career in country music dead.

We sat around and talked about it. A made many astute comments on where roleplaying could take you and how it reflected one's life. She had never met another soul who had an interest in roleplaying apart from the long-ago freaks who played D&D for 48 hours at a stretch. Now she wants to introduce me to a friend who organises extra-curricular activities for schools. She believes that roleplaying could be immensely valuable to teenagers and is absolutely urging me to do it. Blimey.

A said she didn't know if she'd do it again, but in the same breath she said 'Though it'd be fun to have a proper game...but I'd be a bit scared of sinking all my energy into it.'

Very surprising night, comrades.

A couple of extra thoughts.

The single thing that has exercised my brain most (with regard to roleplaying) over the last few years has been how to get people to play with me. That's because I moved cities a few years ago and left behind a solid group who were all friends in and out of the rp context. And most people I meet and like are just not roleplayers.

I've tried several times in this period to run games for non-roleplayers, and it's never been more than a qualified success. Each time has been a learning experience for me, but learning this way is tricky, because if you don't get it right you don't get another shot. Roleplaying is not easy for people who don't do it habitually: it takes effort that most people I know don't care to spend, and if it doesn't pay off for them the first time they don't feel inclined to try again. At least, that's what I've found.

This time it worked, and despite (or maybe because of) handicaps--barely any prep time, a game without clear procedures of play. I couldn't have done it without the experiences I've had and the thought I've put in. Not to mention reading other peoples' experiences. Just for an example, a few days ago I read through Brand Robins' account of playing HeroQuest with his mother-in-law. I've been reading Vincent's and Meg's and Emily's thoughts on danger and safety.

I recently read Ron's post concerning the Ronnies and the purpose of the Forge. Let me put this up front: I'm not a game designer. I can't, at this moment, design a game. Maybe this will change over time, but for the time being it's just not something I can do. But I believe in roleplaying. I think there's something valuable in it that lots of people can gain from. The game I had the other night was the single greatest encouragement I've had in years. Even if A never does play again, she's seen something in the activity that she will talk to others about. That's one vector countering the stereotypes of geek activity; the idea that gamers are born, not made; the idea that all roleplayers are doing is playing cops and robbers.

Sometimes, here, I feel like I'm an annoying kid hanging round the door and asking cheeky questions to the guys banging out the horseshoes. But other times I feel like I'm trying to be some sort of ambassador to the world outside. Nicotine Girls is a fringe game within the 'gamer' community, but to people who aren't habitual gamers, it has a lot more going for it than, say, HeroQuest (much as I like that game). We need more games like this. My friend A talked about how Nicotine Girls could get teenagers to think about choices in life and give them a safe way to experiment while still becoming, at some level, emotionally engaged. How the die rolls demonstrated that even though you might gamble your heart and soul on something, life might still slap you in the face. And other stuff like that.

So a free, underdeveloped, three-page game that the vast majority of 'gamers' treat as a joke produced a very fine experience, and I think it was because of the subject matter (also because of some really hard thinking on many people's part about conflict and its place in stories). I just wanted to share that.

Hiya,

Remember, the design and publication of really good role-playing games can't happen unless there exists, as a foundation, a community of really good play. Good game designers are not special; they are a side effect of such a community's existence.

As the Infamous Five threads demonstrated, "really good play" is generally not a feature of gamer culture. We have no name for the kind of play you're talking about, and which many of us enjoy. Perhaps one day it'll evolve a new name, I don't know.

But what you're doing is it. Without you, no game design worthy of the name, even if you're not one of the designers.

Best,
Ron

Thanks, Ron.

droog wrote:
A said she didn't know if she'd do it again, but in the same breath she said 'Though it'd be fun to have a proper game...but I'd be a bit scared of sinking all my energy into it.'