Re: (TFT) Pitching game to newbies

[Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>]

Improv and Roleplaying Games - Greg Costikyan

Tabletop roleplaying games began as an outgrowth of military miniature
wargaming, and the earliest RPGs, like Dungeons & Dragons were typic-
ally played as a sort of boardgame without the board, with careful calcu-
lations and dierolls determining outcomes and players working primar-
ily to maximize their experience point gain. As they moved to digital me-
dia, RPGs continued more or less along the same path, since computers
are good at performing careful calculations and generating random
numbers.
In the world of tabletop and live action roleplaying, however, the
trend has been in a different direction. In a roleplaying game, by nature,
each player controls a single character, and even though the rules of
early RPGs did not reward or provide systems to support actual role-
play, that is, improvisational acting in character, the mere fact of having
individual characters, and their existence within an imaginary world,
encouraged players to explore the improvisational aspects of the milieu.
Over time, a number of independent movements have arisen among
roleplaying gamers and designers to push roleplaying games more in the
direction of theater; and indeed, in some cases the sorts of games these
movements create are hard to distinguish from “acting games,�� the im-
provisational exercises some acting schools use to develop actors’ 
skills.
One such movement is the indie RPG movement, whose enthusiasts
often participate in the forums at The Forge (http://www.indie-rp-
gs.com/). In principle, any tabletop roleplaying game that is self-pub-
lished or distributed in ways other than the conventional hobby market
is considered “indie,” but the practitioners of these games
 generally
move in a “narrativist” directon. The term “narrati
vist” derives from
Ron Edwards’s “gamist-narrativist-simulationist theory�� (GNS theory),
which characterizes roleplaying games by their tendencies along each of
these three dimensions. Edwards is himself the designer of one of the
best known indie RPGs, Sorceror, a game in which each player is literally
demon-haunted and may perform powerful magic – but only at the ex-
pense of losing an element of his or her humanity.
The focus of narrativist RPGs is on story-telling rather than improvisa-
tion per se; but their systems are often quite different from those of con-
ventional tabletop RPGs. In a conventional RPG, game systems are
primarily concerned with determining the success or failure of specific
actions taken by the player characters. In a narrativist RPG, quite often
the game system is used to determine whether a scene or confrontation is
194“successful” or not from a player’s perspective,
 but with players having
great freedom to narrate the events of the scene, without additional die
rolls or the like to determine whether or not specific actions succeed.
E.g., in a conventional game, the outcome of a fight would involve many
dierolls to determine whether a character hits and then how much dam-
age he does; in a narrativist game, a dieroll might be used to determine
whether a characters wins or loses the fight, with the players then de-
scribing how this happens freely.
Narrativist RPG designers are primarily interested in shaping the arc
of a story, rather than in improvisation and roleplaying; but this inher-
ently produces improvisation and roleplaying by the players.
Story games (see http://www.story-games.com/forums/) are subtly
different from indie RPGs. A story game is a framework for shared story
creation; quite often story games entirely dispense with the idea of a
“gamemaster” entirely, instead providing a set of rules for
 determining
who “controls” the narrative at any given time. The rules t
end to tend to
be more robust than those of “acting games;” indeed, the ru
les of acting
games are rarely described as “rules,” but instead in terms
 of instruc-
tions from a director or teacher. Because story game creators emerged
from the tabletop tradition, they think in terms of using rules to shape an
experience, and of modifying those rules over time to improve the out-
come. Perhaps the main difference from “acting games,” howe
ver, is that
players roleplay and improvise while sitting around a table rather than
while standing and moving as their characters would; story games still
transpire in the imagination, not on a stage, and the characters played
may look nothing like the players who take their roles. The improvisa-
tion, in other words, is primarily verbal, not in terms of action and
stance.
Live action roleplaying games (LARPs), by contrast, make a virtue of
physical performance as well as character improvisation. There are,
however, many different kinds of LARP. One common form is the
“bopper LARP,” a game, generally in a fantasy setting, in w
hich physical
combat, often with padded weapons, is the main focus of the game. Even
in such games, however, costuming and adopting a persona, remaining
in character, are considered important.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Dogma 99 larp
(http://fate.laiv.org/dogme99/en/index.htm) , a larp designed in ac-
cordance with a manifesto promulgated in 1999 by a group of Scand-
inavian larpers. (In the Scandinavian larp community, “larp�� is con-
sidered a word in itself rather than an acronym, and is rendered in all
195lower case letters). One of the rules of the manifesto is that “
there
are no
rules,” which seems paradoxical, but by which they mean that such l
arps
are not to have any game-y systems to handle things such as combat; all
action must be live and real, and the larp should be structured to avoid
situations, such as combat, that cannot be readily handled in a pure role-
playing context. Another rule is that all players must remain in character
for the duration of the larp, except in specifically designated “co
ol
down” areas, and that suspension of disbelief must be sustained to 
the
highest degree possible.
An equally interesting larp type is the “jeepform,” a style
 pioneered by
the Swedish group Vi åker jeep (http://jeepen.org/). A jeepform is in-
tended for play by a handful of players in a short period of time, along
with one or more gamemasters, who often have roles to play within the
jeepform itself. Jeepforms are shaped toward the creation of story rather
than ‘roleplaying for show,’ and are often designed so that
 characters
emerge over time through play – and often so that the player of a c
harac-
ter has only partial input into the nature of his or her character, with
both the gamemasters and the other players able to establish things
about the character. As a result, they tend to foster wild and rapid im-
provisational roleplay.
LARPs are sometimes highly structured, with characters designed in
advance and with the game operators shaping a pre-determined story
arc; others are far more freeform (and indeed, the
“freeform” is a kind of LARP, characterized by a minimal ru
les set and
no predetermined outcome). Even in the most structured LARP,
however, all conversations are improvised by the players; and in less
constrained LARPs, the experiences of the players are highly improvised
as well, within the context of a pre-established setting and tone.
The nature of digital games, with their predesigned art assets and pre-
coded capabilities, make anything beyond the merest conversational im-
provisation impossible (and that only in online games). The nature of
boardgames, with their tradition of formal and complete rules, also mit-
igate against improvisational play. But in roleplaying games, particularly
in their more experimental forms, the techniques of improv have been
enthusiastically adopted and extended to create games that are artistic-
ally exciting mergers between theater and “the game.”



Greg Costikyan
Greg Costikyan has designed more than 30 commercially published
board, roleplaying, computer, online, social, and mobile games, includ-
ing five Origins Awards winners (ludography at www.costik.com/ludo-
graf.html); is an inductee into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame; and
the recipient of the Maverick Award for his tireless promotion of inde-
pendent games. At present he is a Senior Designer at Playdom, a social
game developer, and also runs Play This Thing!, a review site for indie
games. He is also the author of four published science fiction novels.
URLS: www.costik.com - personal website
playthisthing.com - a review each day of an indie game




On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 2:52 AM, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah I see I'm My usual clear as mud there. I am most certainly
> speculating from My remembered experience and what's stuck in My head as
> what I recall from the more successful claims in that vein and what I've
> done Myself which has gone through stages of narrative driven story and
> winging it and in the final analysis it boils down to having an enjoyable
> play session which is job one of game
>  which is why so many "educational", promotional, and similar ride the
> back of game games fall flat. They let educational (etc.) get in front of
> game as entertainment. I'll admit to pretensions to provide something tha
t
> can be edjumacational as I try to use objective reference material in pla
ce
> of rules for everything which save Me a shite ton of writing and ughhhhhh
> the designing ughhhh  Niiiiice not many places in My own head I balk at
> broaching but I'll be Mr G You've done pointed Me at one. I'm leaving tha
t
> door closed thank You very much. Could You Imagine Heinlein doing Middle
> Earth? What would a 100+ lb pull longbow arrow flight look like? The
> archers paradox in low g trace atmosphere? Hummmm ... Anyway its a shared
> imaginative experience I'm trying to get to and THAT kind of wheel redeux
> and do and do is NOT the most direct path to such an approach... seems mo
re
> like vying for longest, most difficult, something on that end of the
> spectrum. I'm lazy and so I invoke a path of least resistance approach
> which the Universe smiled upon or maybe it was a subconscious thing idk b
ut
> I answered stats as in what does 1 point of ? mean in terms of real world
> force and time in the phase system breakdown from Champions which scales 
to
> Movement (f/mps) and so onto Map (stride length @ pace into distance
> covered gives the steps or foot placement and blah blah real world info
> anamal tracking, Authur Murry dance charts, batting stances of players
> starting and after swing, running backs and wideout routes, robotics, tha
t
> big piano in Big.... OH YEAH.... Fencing. Stuff like that. Not too mentio
n
> the more objective generally the better for communication for that
> imagination sharing to work which is also steeped in a ton of stuff that'
s
> beyond the ability of a mere objective ruleset to deliver. You won't get
> group chemistry through the system used to play but the rules can "get ou
t
> of the way" by being an asset to the group in getting the head adjustment
s
> tuned into a similar picture of what's where, when, its dimensions, and i
f
> experienced with the type more detailed information like reach etc. the
> idea being the Player who's Character's Figure is choosing their Action i
s
> imagining at least the broad strokes of the same thing everybody else is
> working with. This is assisted by other components and computerized it go
es
> great in basics in a voxel type setup using Lego as a primary tool
> personally but top of the layout scaling for terrain and train model pret
ty
> presentation people to fit their stuff into and have it play at any table
> using same or Google Earth at given altitudes as Earth is the example use
d
> again for as much objectivity as possible as opposed to the problems like
> the arrow flight on Mars or the Foundation books and idk call it a six pa
ge
> door to tag it totally off the top of My head the point is it's a ton of
> exposition to tweak much less invent something very new... Dr McCoy's
> instruments were salt shakers if I recall dug up by props as just that
> futuristic salt shakers but Mr R decided the audience wouldn't recognize
> them as such so got a shaker from the commissary and re-purposed the futu
re
> ones as McCoy's flux capacitor plot advance magic box which was almost
> imagined then Flash Gorden'd into "Ie ca'n giv ya no mor pur C'ptn She'il
l
> ter ersel appart" Jay Joyce I ain't. GM? I might better resemble that
> remark... then again these days I might not. The intranets have done a
> number on what's expected uniformly via youtube and etc and evolved meani
ng
> for some terms added terms from mediums like fps shooters and mmorpg's an
d
> of course D&D does the time to buy a new library edition release and new
> titles are dropped and I'm behind the curve on a lot of it... There's oth
er
> knocks on Me as analyst of generally postured as designer and whatnot whi
ch
> is salting down speculation on the improv GMing here.
> I note that the whole wing it approach shares some traits with "hacking",
> stage magic, musicianship and similar fields of endeavour where the
> audience etc isn't given the full picture of what's occurring. Hacking I'
m
> thinking omission where You keep lips zipped when speculation as to how Y
ou
> cracked the password gets going as the unknown is far better for the hack
er
> image than the actual happened to see the thing jotted down and made a no
te
> of it lends. Magic is misdirection see this flashbang while the other han
d
> is manipulating. Playing an instrument can be pulled off far from perfect
ly
> by owning ones mistakes and most will never know it wasn't intentional no
te
> for note. So when a GM seems to be improving why would they tell You the
> whole story so to speak? Which brings Me to another point, one generally
> doesn't wing what isn't well understood as a system. You fly by in a syst
em
> You are fluent in which brings not only a grasp of the mechanics but the
> backlog of experience in various peeks and troughs of what worked well an
d
> what did not and that provides a bit of a grab bag of encounter kernels t
o
> tweek a group of random monsters around in order to fit a dynamic the GM 
is
> familiar with executing to good effect. I'm not exactly sure what Your
> seeing on "such a GM is forcing a story anyhow, even when they don't know
> what
> it is?" and don't mean to claim a blanket statement covering all instance
s
> of the concept. Assuming Your confident that the GM is say randomly
> generating encounters or whatever so that it's not just accepting the cla
im
> on a trust Me but clearly driven by some engine out of the direct control
> that's spitting the stuff then I'd say that generally the idea is to let
> story happen which play will do albeit not necessarily a very GOOD story.
> Mr Ward uses "light-touch roleplaying" along what seems similar lines whe
re
> the idea is to take what Players are doing and offer choice informed from
> it allowing a feedback loop to build up that drives play rather than
> "force" narrative that isn't necessary to the style of play.  A string of
> random encounters won't be likely to make compelling reading in recountin
g
> but technically speaking it's story and forcing a narrative connection as
> GM isn't likely to do significantly better than feeding into what Player
> feeds to the GM light-touch roleplaying does. Mentioning that the reading
> quality of that random string depends heavily upon the pen it flows from
> points to the same in RPG's.and there's quite a few who are drawn into th
e
> GM seat that have real talent for preforming and groups with great
> chemistry that can be a very large part of what the participants are
> finding entertainment in. I'm not faulting any of this or making any
> judgements other than I find that I'm not going to get to what I'm strivi
ng
> for down that path. To get to sandbox play that is driven by play and
> generates story I need to be able to set starting conditions up in ways
> that provide potential for possible play direction a simple example being
 a
> war situation in which martial forces in opposition are present in quanti
ty
> and there is one or more targets of some value that offer a focus or foci
> to contest which isn't a given but a reason for the forces to be present
> and if the Players are low ranked soldiers or basically order takers then
> the npc leadership has purpose to start off play which can then develop.
> With elements of constructive play Actions and non-combat focuses to add
> into the destructive play with combat focuses mix some interesting
> environments can be set up and in theory at least the thing can play solo
> much like the micros and to lesser extent Tollenkar's crib can with solo
> play a rather common back in the day feature but I'm still down Google
> Doc's. I've had to recover from having a couple of computers go foomf and
> relegating Me to craptop coblin currently and the plinking I've done has
> convinced Me that an example is in order to reduce verbosity and provide 
a
> hands on which I have fiddled with some video approaches that are just a
> bit much for these machines to munch smoothly and edit. And I can't imagi
ne
> this is very clear at this point as I've got the nods and am taking the
> suggestion and crashin with a tag that there's reference to alot of this
> that believe it or not is pretty direct... may get to it afore the crash
>
>
> On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 3:26 PM, Marc Gacy <marcgacy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not sure what you're getting at here, since "flying by the seat of the
>> pants" usually implies that there really isn't a story or agenda. Are yo
u
>> saying such a GM is forcing a story anyhow, even when they don't know wh
at
>> it is? If you are, then is the GM simply around to present a situation
>> that
>> players determine their characters should encounter?
>>
>> On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 2:41 AM, Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > The more the style
>> > is fly by the seat of the GM's pants the more likely it is they are
>> relyi
>> ng
>> > on a scene A to B to C progression which is the model most viddie's
>> > follow...
>> >
>> >
>> ᐧ
>>
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>>
>

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