The Right Tool for the Job

I wanted to cut my hair, but I'm terribly lazy about scheduling something with my hairdresser. And since I'm keeping my hair short, it seemed like an easy thing to start doing myself.

Before. Let's do this thing.

So I took my trusty beard trimmer (it works just like hair clippers, yeah?) and had at it. 30 minutes later, the battery died and I was about 1/3 of the way through. Luckily I managed to get the front fairly even.

I may be a bit liberal on my assessment of "fairly even".

Divided Multi-Axis Fate Rolls

I'll spend this post chasing down a few stray thoughts spinning off from the multi-axial Fate Dice discussion in Rob Donoghue's Tally Dice post. You've been warned.

Rob indicated he has more to go in fleshing out uses for Tally Dice. Stay tuned to his blog The Walking Mind to read more as it comes out.

If you don't have a set yet,
go buy Fate Dice at Amazon
or directly from Evil Hat.

Also this multi-axis dice hack needs a better short name. Or notation. Maybe #Q and #q? QT and QF? Hrm. Ideas welcome.

Intro to Tally Dice
Rolling 4 Fate/Fudge dice (4dF) gives you a range from +4 (++++) to -4 (----) with a curve that peaks at 0 (+00-, for example). Tally dice (4dT) changes the way you read each die (into 1d3-1) by counting lines. 0 is still 0, but - is 1 and + is 2. It gives a range of 0 to 8. It's fundamentally the same as 4dF+4, or XdF+X.

NOTE: I'm basing all the numbers in this article on 4 dice, but you could certainly change the pool size if needed.

On Finite and Limited Resources

Ever since the Oil Crisis in the '70s (I was a young lad, but I dimly remember the ridiculous lines for gas stations back then), we've heard that we're running out of oil. Between clear-cutting forests, overfishing once-fertile waters, and strip mining, humanity has done an excellent job of depleting the planet's resources over the centuries.

What if we bring this idea into a fantasy RPG? What resources could you limit or make finite that would directly impact your party of PCs? How would the PCs deal with it? How could the PCs alleviate the problem?

Natural resources could work, but they tend to impact the overall story more than the actual day-to-day play. Sure, prices might go up and a once-mighty mining city may lose half its population, but parties can always fall back on magic and superhuman skills to fill the gap and keep them afloat.

What if we go one step further and strip the PCs of their favorite tools?

Now in hardcover.

My favorite example of this idea in AD&D comes in module A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords. The PCs have been captured, stripped of their equipment, and dumped into a dungeon. They have no light, no armor, a dagger, and a scroll with a few spells to keep the magic-user from committing seppuku on the spot. Sure, the fighter can almost always hit, but a rock has crappy base damage. It challenged the players to overcome the limitations of their situation and emerge triumphant to challenge the slave lords.

What if we went further?

What if magic had limits?

What if the Aether dried up? What if the infinite planes started running out of creatures to summon? What if the god of magic died and the infinite fountain of arcane power started sputtering as mages tried to cast spells?

Do your spells fizzle?
Try this tiny blue pill!

I've seen this done most easily through the premise of a missing or captured god. In AD&D parlance, nobody had access to divine spells over 4th level, since the power granting those spells couldn't reach the faithful cleric praying for spells. Scrolls became highly desirable and expensive as high-level clerics needed to fill the magical power vacuum. But once the scrolls ran out, chaos reigned.

What if we went even further, into the rules and the nature of randomness?

What if the players had a limited pool of die rolls to choose from?

What if they could choose their die rolls, but they needed to use every d20 result once before they could use a number again? Or what if they were cursed by Lady Luck who only let them have a limited number of die rolls in an adventure before every die roll comes up 1? Would they spend their limited die rolls on combat hits or saving throws?

Welcome to the Gedankenexperiment. If you have experience with any of these ideas, or if you introduced limited resources into your game, please let me know how it worked for you in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

[Writing Tips] What Is Writing?

Welcome to a Wombat's Writing Tips article. Check out the main page for more.

We talk about writing, but how often do we sit back and think about what writing actually is?

Buy it.
Read it.
Good stuff.

My favorite definition of writing comes from Stephen King at the start of the "What Writing Is" section in his excellent book On Writing:

"Telepathy, of course."

I hadn't thought of writing that way before I read On Writing, but the idea clicked into place and now I can't think of it any other way. An author's mind forms an idea. The author chooses words and records them with the intent of recreating the same idea in the mind of the reader. The reader reads the author's work, and the idea - fundamentally the same idea - blooms in a different mind.

Ideas? Easy. Telepathy? Hard.
Every amateur writer asks the same question of an established author, "Where do you get your ideas?" Ideas are the easy part. Expressing them effectively challenges every writer. The work of creation lies in turning an idea into a work of art. Why do we call them works of art? Because they require work: intent, focus, and monumental effort. Also blood, sweat, and tears.

What, you think telepathy just comes naturally? Think again, and then get to work learning how to pack your thoughts into words. I'll get into choosing words without thesaurus shock in a future article, so stay tuned.

Increase this complexity
by an order of magnitude.
That's writing for you.

The Biological Metaphor
Writing acts as a symbolic representation of an idea's DNA. Letters and punctuation are our atoms pulled together into words akin to amino acids. We string words together into sentences, roughly like chromosomes. When the work is finished, we all see the entire strand of your idea's DNA ready for transmission. Ideas are viruses in a symbiotic relationship with our minds - ideas can't replicate or change without us, and our minds grow richer and more fertile with each new idea.

Just like with DNA, mutations occur. I mean this both in a physical sense where subsequent versions of a book get edited and updated, and in an idealogical sense where the idea transmitted by a particular piece of writing changes depending on the reader. In the latter case, the author has very little control over how the reader will receive the idea. You can say how you intended an idea to come across, but you can't dictate how an idea is actually perceived by the reader.

Here's the thing about ideas: MUTATIONS ARE SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. How do we get new ideas? By learning about and combining other ideas. In the RPG world, nothing exemplifies this mutation process more than rules hacking and homebrew campaigns. The OSR movement reinterprets classic rules and changes them slightly to achieve different effects. Fate was originally a hack of Fudge. Taking an idea and extending or remixing it fuels creativity. Eventually you'll mutate far enough away from your pool of existing ideas that you create something seen as totally original.

Leaps vs. Steps

So many tiny steps, one giant leap.

We place such a premium on breakthrough paradigm shifts that we neglect the tweaks and tiny innovations in the groundwork that made the new paradigm possible. Once you let an idea into the wild, it will change whether you want it to or not. You can fight the change, quashing creativity and upholding the integrity of your original work through legal action and threats, or you can embrace the community and welcome the flood of inspiration that you spawned. I know which path I'd choose.

Don't be afraid to read comments on your work. The nasty ones will hurt, but I think the risk of pain is worth finding the people who groove on your ideas. Once you find the groovy people and encourage them to create, and collaborate to make the next great thing.

Thanks for reading!

Randomness and Trends

Trends first, randomness throughout.

The Editing Gig
...is going swimmingly. I'm focusing on smaller projects, which fits better with the scraps of time I have available and coincidentally works out to a higher pay rate. I also find myself having more fun in tackling a wider diversity of content.

Bicycling in the ionosphere.
Yeah, it's kinda like that for me.

The numbers: I edited 7 projects last year, 2 of which were quite sizable. By March 1st of this year I'll have 5 projects done. For the list of projects I've worked on, head over to my editing CV. Yes, I'll update that project list in the next week or two as the products become publicly available. I may need to split off an archive page to keep load times reasonable.

The trend? This year will be busy, but so far it's been a great ride. I like the quicker turnaround, but the downside of smaller projects is the endless quest to fill the pipeline. As of now, I have only vague promises of more projects after March 1. If you've got a project you need a second set of eyes on, it's a great time to give me a shout.

Random Disasters: The Parsonage
I became the chair (chairdude? chairperson?) of my church's Buildings & Grounds committee (B&G) as of 2 weeks ago. We have a new senior minister that started work this past Monday. 2 weeks prior to that, the parsonage (maintained as living quarters for the senior minister) was cleaned out by a team of volunteers and ready for move-in day. Two days after the cleaning was done, the previous head of B&G went over to install fresh batteries in the smoke detector and discovered water damage down two stories worth of interior walls.

Needless to say, our minister is currently couch surfing, and we're scrambling to get the damage repaired as quickly as possible.

Fraggles and tuneage. Rawk.

Y'know when you roll a random event in your game that will totally screw the players and you look over the screen weighing the impact of making it happen, and your players see the look in your eye and say, "Don't you dare do whatever you're about to do to us! We just fixed all this crap and just barely survived!" and you feel bad? Fuck it. Do it anyway. Trust your dice and your random tables and let the chips fall where they may. Give your players too much to do. Grant them a break occasionally, but make those breaks sweeter for the random real-world crap that falls out of the sky and totally hoses them.

There's a real-world precedent for it, and it keeps life interesting in your game.

Tool.

The Right Tool for the Job
This morning was the first time this year my car door latch stuck open when leaving home on my commute. Normally it takes 5-10 minutes of blasting the heater before it lets go and allows my door to stay shut on its own. This morning I broke out the can of ice melt that I've been carrying around in my backpack for the past few months and I was off within 30 seconds.

Reward planning ahead, no matter how obscure or inconvenient.

PAX East Is Coming
We've got 2 panels to run and we're waiting for the final schedule before publicizing our faces off. I've got a few prizes to give away lined up personally, in addition to the other swag we'll dig up. I'm psyched. And it's 29 days away now. I'll be busy between now and then. I have games to gather and an idea that I'm not sure I can prep in time...

Games I'll Have With Me

Now to print Stinger vehicle sheets
and fit an arena map in the box.

I bought a first edition pocket box version of Car Wars. I'll also have Car Wars the Card Game. Zombie Dice should be on my person, and probably Cosmic Wimpout if anyone wants a slightly longer classic dice game. I'll be prepping an intro adventure for Classic Traveller, which shouldn't take terribly long as I'm revamping the adventure I ran years ago in college. I'm on the fence about bringing Nuclear War, or anything else in a box larger than the Traveller LBB box set. We'll see what else I can fit into my kit.

The D&D Edition Wars Gauntlet
Here's my crazy idea. Prep a simple encounter in an ogre's cave, then run variations of it back-to-back in OD&D, Moldvay Basic, AD&D, 2e, 3.5e, and 4e. It'll probably be a 4-hour run to play the full Gauntlet, and all the pre-gens and pertinent rules will fit on index cards for quick start-up. Just add players and dice, and you can taste 6 editions of D&D in one sitting to get a sense of the evolution of the game.

Just play the damn game.

I don't have any 2e books, so I may skip that version for the initial run. I'm weak in 4e development, and I haven't looked at AD&D in years. Time will be a factor here, but I'll do my best to make it happen.

What do you think about the Gauntlet? Good idea? Is running the Gauntlet an interesting experiment or a waste of time? I'm interesting in hearing your feedback, especially if you're interested in playing.

Thanks for reading!

Schrödinger's Gun GMing: The GM Paradigm

Welcome to the GM Paradigm article in the Schrödinger's Gun GMing series!
Disclaimer: It's dangerous when I get a little time to think.

I covered assumptions and adjustments back in Emptying Your Hypothetical Box, but we'll be diving a little deeper into Adjustment #2 here. I was thinking in the car at far-too-early AM this morning when the GM Paradigm for Schrödinger's Gun hit me.

It's all about the Ooze.

Typically in RPGs, the GM is tasked with controlling the game world. The GM takes a player's actions and provides feedback which prompts another player action, et cetera ad infinitum. Sure, GM fiat allows you to dip into the Primordial Ooze, pulling in new elements and plots and making things happen, but generally you're tied to the world.

What if you frame the GM's role using a larger scope? Try this:

A GM's job isn't about controlling the game world. It's about controlling the Primordial Ooze during play, that pile of raw creative stuff from which the game world is formed.

I can hear some of you saying, "But isn't that the game designer's job?" And you're absolutely right to a point. The game designer shapes the Primordial Ooze into the tools with which the GM and the players make the story of their game. But a toolkit doesn't contain a story, it contains the potential for many stories, each one scooped out of the Ooze and shaped by the GM and players using the provided tools. Even prepared settings only provide the backdrop for the story that the players around your table tell.

It makes no difference if the game designer produces thousands of task-specific tools, or a few flexible multitaskers, gamers can build stories using nearly anything. Personal preference colors opinions about which toolkit works better, but that discussion has no place here since we're talking about methods of GMing and not system specificity.

With this idea in mind, you can use the Ooze to make a game world for your players to explore and discover what you've created as is usually done by GMs in traditional systems. Alternately, you can decide to delegate some of your control and let your players get their hands all Oozy creating things, even during the course of play. This approach frees up options for you as GM, and it lets you spend more time on readying yourself to effectively react to whatever the players throw at you. As a GM using this paradigm, you become a producer making sure the whole story gets born far more than a director who focuses on moving characters around and the smaller details of the current scene.

Just add water.
Or better yet, creative intent.

It's the difference between the players reacting to the stimulus that the GM provides and the players taking charge of the game and having the GM make up reactions to their initiative. How this approach will work certainly depends on your group, but when you have a pile of creative types at your table, it's been my experience that they want to create more than just react.

For more on this idea of reactive vs. proactive players, check out Rob Donoghue's exploration back in August: Moving Pieces over at Some Space To Think. It's a great read and a great framework for thinking about play style. And for the record, when I think about Schrödinger's Gun GMing, I'm thinking about a system to more easily tackle play in the upper right corner of the chart, though I hope some techniques work in other quadrants as well.

Have you given your players any Primordial Ooze to shape in their character's image? Did you give them creative control over a group? A town? A country? An entire race? How did it work at your table?

Thanks for reading!

Go to the Schrödinger's Gun GMing Cover Page.

Schrödinger's Gun GMing: The Power of Perception

Welcome to another article in the Schrödinger's Gun GMing series!

Note: This article was started in August 2012. I got inspired and finished it on the train this morning. Yay, persistence!

For clarity, no, the title doesn't mean I'll be writing about how cool the Perception skill is. A while ago I watched this TED talk given by Rory Sutherland in Athens. It's over 18 minutes on marketing and advertising, so come back later if you like.



If the embedded video is blocked, you can see it on the TED site. This ties in with some much earlier thoughts I scribbled down about The Rules vs. The World vs. The Game and the idea from the more recent Schrödinger's Gun GMing series that nothing is real in a game unless the PCs observe it somehow. For this article, I'll focus on perception and observation.

Perception Is Reality.

Any charlatan or con man will tell you this, but let's go a little beyond that here. To tie it to Quantum Theory, I quote the words of Pascual Jordan, "Observations not only disturb what is to be measured, they produce it." Starting in the quantum world, we take a few liberties with language and produce a new 3-word phrase:

Observation Creates Reality.

Note to self: Gather brains, clean carefully, and then reinsert into skull. Order is key.

The Delayed Choice Experiment
We can see this phenomenon illustrated in the Delayed Choice Experiment. For those of you who don't know it, here's a stripped-down layman's version.

Did someone say "Duality"?
Found at ThinkGeek.

Light acts as both a particle and a wave, something called duality. We have ways of detecting which way light acts at the moment. For simplicity, let's say we have a Particle Detector and a Wave Detector. If we release a single photon into a controlled environment with both detectors running, only one of them will ping, telling us that this bit of light is acting as a wave or particle. With me so far?

Now here's the funky part. If we release a photon into a controlled environment (so we assume it's already acting as either a wave or particle) and later decide which detector to power on, whichever detector we use will ping. If we power on the Wave Detector, the photon will act like a wave. In other words, the photon changes the way it acts depending on how we detect it. In this experiment, the way we look at light determines the way it acts.

Some say this breaks causality since a later observation seems to dictate the way the particle was created in the past, and there are other factors to consider, but I'll leave that for the more theoretically-minded to puzzle out. At the moment I'm focusing on the idea that looking for something causes that same something to exist.

What Does This Mean for RPGs?
Whenever a player asks for information, that question shapes the reality of the game world. For example, "What color is the man's socks?" This innocuous question forces several things into game reality that weren't there before the question was asked. 1) The man is wearing socks. 2) The socks are colored. 3) The man must have put these socks on earlier when he got dressed. 4) Someone made these socks. 5) If the man didn't make these socks, someone sold them to him. 6) Those are cool! Where can I buy my own socks?

It's usually not quite this dramatic.

It's up to someone else (usually the GM) to validate the existence of the socks and respond with what color they are, and then scramble to fit a sock shoppe in town when the party goes looking for one.

Here's the thing. Sock shoppes didn't exist in the game world until the player asked about the man's socks. In the game world, observation created reality, or more precisely, asking questions created reality.

Sure, socks make a flimsy example, but I think you can see the power of this concept. And yes, the GM could cut prevent the creation of that reality by responding with something like, "The man is wearing sandals and no socks." But I'll operate on the assumption that the GM responds with "Yes, and..." in this case. *POOF* Instantly sock shoppes exist.

Meanwhile, on a Psychological Level...
Beyond that, the player asks questions to find meaning in their character's surroundings. The player spends time finding patterns, creating tools, discovering hidden information, or doing something that will help the character overcome game world obstacles on the way to a goal. So every time a player asks a question or responds to a game-world stimulus, that action reveals what the player is interested in exploring through the lens of the character, and it gives clues to the GM on how to more fully engage that player. Aside from creating details about the world, questions can lead to a more engaged and deeper experience of play.

Yes, there's plenty to unpack here, and I'm not going down that road at the moment. If anyone wants to follow up on some of these ideas as a dissertation, you're welcome. *grin*

Final Example: A Short Film
Our life and our reality comes from what we experience, and we experience only what we pay attention to. For further illustration of this idea, take a look at this short SF film "Blind Spot".

 

Thanks for reading!

Go to the Schrödinger's Gun GMing Cover Page.

Schrödinger's Gun GMing: The MacGyver Theory

Welcome to another article in the Schrödinger's Gun GMing series!

Who's the king of improvised solutions? I give you the fictional character whose name has become a widely-recognized verb: Angus MacGyver, hands down. MacGyver uses the same ideas I'm shooting for in Schrödinger's Gun GMing to improvise solutions to real-world problems on a physical level. Yes, there's the engineered convenience caused by the writing staff of a late-'80s television show to blame for his success, but bear with me here.

Consider that an ordinary bathroom or closet has all the elements needed to create something story-changing for someone clever enough to pay attention and combine the elements correctly. And why is he so clever? Because he assumes there's a solution hiding in plain sight, very much like using Schrödinger's Gun GMing assumes that what happens next in the story follows from what the characters decide to do next.

I can't seem to find the one quote that sticks with me from the show, so I'll work from memory. When asked about how he learned to cobble together the MacGyverism of the week, he talked about his mentor. I'm probably butchering the quote here, but he said, "He taught me that any problem can be solved with whatever is in the room at the time."

How Big a Room Do You Need?
You've got an entire campaign world to draw from, filled with NPCs and groups and Carrots and Sticks. Expand your room as much as you need when you need to find a solution to whatever problem you face. Use your world's gods if you must, though too much Deus Ex Machina tends to make players believe that their actions don't matter.

It seems very Zen - your players are part of the problem when they decide to do something completely unexpected, but even when they go off the rails they hand you the seeds that grow into a logical reason for their decisions. And the other characters that populate your world will react in a way that makes sense to them. All of those decisions are contained within the room of your game. All those decisions flow from the players' experience of the story through their characters.

MacGyvering Your Story
How does this help us run a game using Schrödinger's Gun GMing? By adopting a MacGyveresque outlook and attitude. In my mind it boils down to three ideas to keep in mind at the table.

1. Pay Attention. The players will let you know how you're doing and what they will tolerate. Also pay attention to your Plot Stack and how to draw in hooks from a PC's background. These sources will let you add in twists where your players will least expect them. Also pay attention to when something has stopped working so you can move on to something else as soon as possible.
2. Be Flexible. This mantra should be inscribed at the top of every scrap of paper a GM touches in the course of game prep and runtime. Don't get too wrapped up in your story plans or you'll bore your players to death. If something happens, never be afraid to go off script and run with the cooler idea.
3. Try Something. In almost every show, one of the supporting cast asked MacGyver if he was sure that something he came up with would work. He invariably answered, "Nope." He tried it anyway. If you don't go out on a limb and try something crazy every once in a while, you're editing out awesome opportunities.

Maybe this was where Schrödinger's Gun GMing originally came from - an unflappable hero improvising his way through unexpected events with whatever comes to hand. Macgyver works in the physical realm, but we GMs do the same thing with the story we create at the table.

As Susan, my drama professor from College, always said when advising someone on making a decision, "Use your intelligence guided by experience." Sage advice. I'll leave you with another MacGyver quote to mull over:

"You know, when something's broken, the easiest thing to do is just throw it away, go on, and forget about it... But if you just step back and take a look at what you've got, sometimes you find a totally different way of making it work."

Allow yourself to see a totally different way of making it work and chances are you'll make an amazing game.

Thanks for reading!

Like this article? Consider voting in the SOTY Contest!

Go to the Schrödinger's Gun GMing Cover Page.

On Keeping Time

Apparently there's an actual
Trainhenge under consideration
at Stockton-on-Tees. Who knew?

It's a beautiful morning as I write this, riding the train into work. Trainhenge tells me that the sun rises by the time I reach Ashland, so it's only a matter of time before I emerge from the ranks of the mole people and see some sun on both ends of my commute again. Trainhenge also tells me that spring arrives sometime soon.

Since I'm a worldbuilding GM, I got to thinking about ways of telling time without using a mankind-mandated artificial device. How would a farmer track his day? Would the concept of an hour have any meaning for him, or does "It'll be a while before sundown" do the trick? And what happens on cloudy days? Some people can maintain internal clocks or listen to their circadian rhythm or train their bodies to be hungry on a schedule, but do these methods maintain their accuracy through shifting seasons with variable sunlight?

Does accuracy even matter? For farmers, accuracy of days matters from a seasonal perspective, or they'd never know when to plant. But do hours and minutes make any sense at all to a farmer? If a merchant has a busy schedule with several meetings a day then I'd want some way to delineate smaller time segments, but does the populace at large need that accuracy? If you're a tavern owner in a village, wouldn't you just kick people out when you got tired instead of slavishly sticking to an 11PM closing time?

Without magic, coordinated attacks are nearly impossible. Sure, you can use other communication methods, but those rely on the enemy not understanding what they mean before it's too late. If you're coordinating a stealth raid on more than one front, poor timing can get you killed and compromise the entire operation. Our modern minds have become so reliant on watches and radio communications and smart phones that we can't conceive of working accurately without them. But how did our rural ancestors function without them as little as 100 years ago?

I love the idea of Trainhenge.
Check it out.

They trusted themselves. They relied on themselves more than on external devices. They invented systems to keep themselves organized and on time. And those systems worked.

For example, take one of my favorite movies: Hudson Hawk. Yes, it's cheesy and requires not only suspending your disbelief but leaving it entirely outside the theater on the way to your seat. But the idea that resonated with me (pun intended) was using songs to measure time. I sing, and once I know a song in my bones it stays there, timing and all. Once you can feel the music rather than hear it, the song becomes one thing instead of a collection of smaller notes and passages. Having something that you can reproduce at will to mark a 4 minute chunk of time lets you insert some divisions between sunup and sundown. If two people have that talent, then you can coordinate actions down to the second without using any pesky timepieces.

What other time-based mnemonic devices do you use in your games? Or do you stick to some sort of magical timekeeping device?

Alternate Tech Trees

Yesterday I commented on this G+ thread, where we were thinking about durability. Should a mature spacefaring culture build for permanence or recyclability? Both? Would they leave permanent artifacts on planets they've visited or would they follow the Prime Directive and make sure anything they use would decay quickly to keep from influencing indigenous life?

And it got me to thinking about technology, since you can follow the quick energy, fossil fuel using consumer culture, or a more harmonious culture of constant reuse, or even a more oddball basis like a living biological entity as the basis for technology instead of inert elements dug out of the ground. Changing from one approach to another one causes some interesting conflicts, like Mad Max or a Dystopian Steampunk setting. But what if we change the base assumptions instead?

I love Sid Meier's Civilization, but here's my problem: it assumes we're on the only viable path for technological development. Even the mods to the tech tree in the various hacks don't allow you to stretch beyond the structure of pottery-equivalent tech must come before masonry-equivalent tech. What happens when there's no societal need for building walls? If your entire race can fly, walls don't serve any useful purpose and seem downright silly. I'll digress in a different post about the fallacy of traditional castle design in a world where you can make people fly incredibly cheaply.

Technology is all about solving problems at a societal and personal level. The first issues humanity faced were really big: How can we all survive lean times when we can't get enough food from our environment? Our solutions to that problem were many: granaries to store food from year to year, farming techniques for better resource planning, and domesticated animals to bring food with us as we wandered the earth. But what happens when we change those answers? How do we envision a society whose fundamental technologies are so different that humanity evolves differently and advances through modernity on a completely alien vector?

The one approach I can see is to compile a list of cultural problems and think about different answers. The most basic problems involve getting enough food to free up members of the tribe to do something other than gather food all day. We went down the cultivation and domestication path, but would it be possible to stay hunters and gather enough surplus to allow for a class of scientists and inventors? What if we went a completely different path and someone provided a replicator that created food out of thin air? What would that do to the society? Would everyone focus on pursuits other than food gathering? Would everyone live a Logan's Run-esque life of leisure? Or would people effectively be enslaved by the people controlling the replicators?

Which solution to what societal issue would you like to change? I'm just musing out loud here, but if you've done any thinking in this area I'd welcome your input.

Great Game, But Is It Art?

I just watched this TED Talk by Robert Gupta on how playing and hearing music reaches past insanity to bring a manic depressive musician back to thoughtful humanity through emotional investment in the art of music. And I thought about how I feel when role-playing: a sense of flow, a sharpness of perception, a feeling of being somehow more alive, and the way hours evaporate so I don't notice how late we ran until we wrap up for the night. All of these things happen in art, either in creating a work of art or in the enjoyment of a performance from either side of the proscenium. So now I need to ask the question:

Are Role Playing Games Art?


First off, what the heck is art? According to the World English Dictionary, meaning 4a, art is "the products of man's creative activities". Under this definition, RPGs are art, but I'm looking for something a little deeper and more traditionally meaningful. According to the Wikipedia article What Is Art?, Leo Tolstoy thought, "art must create a specific emotional link between artist and audience, one that 'infects' the viewer". I'll buy that and expand it a bit. In my mind, art changes everyone who interacts with it, either by feeling differently or by thinking in a different way. Yes, in my mind science is a form of art, but that's a subject for a different mental dissection.


Creating RPG rules involves writing and testing and editing, and most people regard writing as art. As consumers, a rulebook makes us think differently by leading us to model different activities in terms of the game's rules. A GM designing encounters, monsters, races, classes, and items also writes something, and this form of art is even more available and accessible to people since it's a derivative product of the full-blown game rules. If you're lucky enough to be a visual artist, RPG enthusiasts from all over the world welcome the visual illustration of cerebral rules, giving them a different and sometimes visceral perception of what the rules mean. So we've got art all over the design side of the gaming equation.

But is running the game itself art?

Is a jam session with fellow musicians considered art? What about a storyteller spinning a tale for an audience? A poetry slam competition? How about a radio drama or fully-staged play? Yes? With that in mind and in looking back on the times I've played in really good games, I'm going to go with "Absolutely" and riff on some illustrative metaphors for a bit.

Consider that each RPG player at the table has a role to play and ideas to inject in the process of creating a story. The GM organizes the set list, and each player uses their PC as an instrument: Leaders lay down a bassline and vocals, Controllers make magic on keyboards, Defenders rock the drumkit, and Strikers wail away on lead guitar. Jamming at the game table gives each player a solo line as needed, and everybody works together to express a single story through their own individual decisions and style of play.

In some cases, play styles don't match - a jazz pianist would have some translation errors when trying to play along with a piano concerto. The jazzman isn't playing wrong, but in this case his playing style doesn't work as effectively as someone who focuses on more classical pieces. And that's OK, it just means that something needs to change to make a better game for everyone at the table.

I can tell when I've been part of a great play performance - none of the actors needs to ask if they did OK because everyone just knows everything clicked. The same thing applies to a game. You can feel the synergy crackling around the table, and everybody trusts their instincts about what needs to happen next. And when the session ends, everyone takes away something transformative from the experience, even something as ephemeral as a smile from the memories of a great scene.

When playing a great RPG session I have absolute certainty of meaning, freedom to act without fear, a perception change from making things happen to letting things happen, a discovery of more than the sum of the story elements, and an emotional involvement in what's happening that leaves me changed and excited to feel that way again. That's my perception of a spectacular game session.

And that, my friends, is art.

What do your great gaming experiences feel like?

On Perspective and Context

Earlier this week, I flew from Boston to Pittsburgh. I don't know why this flight was different, but I couldn't stop staring at the terrain far below, seeing the imposed order of tiny houses and roads cut out of hilly terrain covered with forest. I saw a wind farm dotted across a hill, each turbine spinning in its achingly slow circle. It made me think about how the concept of "neighbors" had a very different meaning when moving from staring out a window in your house to staring out a window in an airplane.

Different ideas are useful in different contexts. Groupings move from people to neighborhoods to towns to counties to states to countries, each with different concerns and needs. Even language adapts based on the breadth of data being considered. "Local" can mean a ten minute walk, or an hour drive, or two hours in a plane, or even the solar system if you're thinking interstellar travel.

I think our perception of language causes miscommunication. We each have different experiences and perspectives, and that colors what we mean when we use a specific word. Different assumptions cause different meanings. "Community" could mean everyone who has ever played a particular game, or all people at a convention, or the usual suspects at a game store, or your gaming group. Each meaning makes sense. We need to be sure that we're talking about the same thing, or we need to invent language that communicates the particular shade of a concept we mean.

We all start from our own perspective, but where we go from there depends entirely on us. Do we want to close out the world and exist in a bubble all our own? Do we steal concepts from the anonymous well of the Internet and fear the retribution given to Prometheus? Do we dive into online conversations, brash and self-assured, coming to loggerheads with anyone with a differing opinion? Do we listen politely and try to encourage others to do the same? Do we try to understand other points of view and incorporate that perspective into our games and lives?

Can we really afford to fabricate edition-based holy wars for our own amusement? Are we really that bored?

I challenge you to think in a perspective that is not your own, and see what happens. Orcs do not understand power in the same way as humans who aspire to join the aristocracy. Elves and Kobolds have different understandings of "a long time". Dwarves and Merfolk both know exactly what "deep" means. A cleric and a rogue will have very different meanings for "good deeds". A con man and a God of Trickery have very different timeframes for their long cons. And we as gamers have vastly differing perspectives on what "normal" means.

And every last one of those perceptions is absolutely correct.

A D&D Pipe Dream

Reading @SarahDarkmagic's latest post, named Recently Initiated Loud Mouth, made me think of the pipe dream I had after Unearthed Arcana came out for D&D 3.5e. So instead of rambling on in a comment over there, I'll clutter up my own corner of the 'Net with it. Yes, it will require some work. Yes, it will be a different approach to D&D, and it may well be unpopular. But I'll tell you anyway because I like you.

Personalized Rulesets.

Centralize and digitize the rules, then let GMs pick the rules they want to include in their games. No elves? No problem! Uncheck the box and they're gone. Want inherent bonuses to avoid the magic item glut? Click and done. Alternate hit point and healing rules? You've got 3 options, go crazy. After the GM is done selecting rules, an email goes out to the players with a link to the character builder pre-loaded with campaign-specific options and ready to print or save as a file to use on other campaign-planning sites. Also, the GM can download a PDF of the hyperlink-riddled Rules Handbook for that particular campaign, complete with simple personalization like the campaign name in the header of each page.

As new rules come out, add them to the list of options, but they won't change any existing Rules Handbooks. You could offer "pre-set" rule choices so if you wanted a bare-bones Starter Box game or a Dark Sun game, one click would get you the rules as written which you could then customize. You could even extend this idea to allow sections of user-generated house rules inserted into specific locations within the PDF. If the author wishes to share his house rules with specific fellow GMs or even with the whole community, that's as easy as clicking a button.

For the publisher, this gives incredible insight into what rules and settings are popular, and so what products would be well received. For an enthusiastic fan base who create House Rules, the community can "vote up" a particular house rule by using it in their campaign. The publisher would have access to the house rule usage stats and provide a convenient stable of new rules and content authors. The publisher could approach the author of the house rule to develop the rule further to make it an official rules option through the rules site or develop it as a full-blown adventure or setting supplement.

Truth be told, I'm a systems guy. I love tinkering with how the world operates and then turning the players loose to figure out how the world works. I view rulesets as toolboxes, as ways to express the stories and scenes I have in my head. This approach would be the ultimate toolbox. You could cover the gamut from extremely rules-light Blue Book D&D to really crunchy settings like Birthright or Dark Sun with a click and a printout.

Further, it moves the rules from static book form to a digital format from the ground up. Integration with tablets and smartphones would be easy with a smart enough API. Granted, no core rulebooks other than the Rules Handbooks the GM prints means no aftermarket for used core products, which makes me a little sad. But I think the freedom granted to GMs more than makes up for it.

What do you think about this approach? Too radical? Too practical? Like it? Hate it? Do you want your five minutes back?

Teaching GM Skills: The Roughest of Outlines

Thursday afternoon in the At-Will Webchat, @gamefiend asked the question, "What skills would you need to be a great GM?" The room talked and debated, focusing on what skills we can teach in some sort of "How to GM" educational course. The discussion fed into my pipe dream of some sort of GM Academy or at least a certification, but that's a topic for a different day.

Some of us focused on scope, and yes, there is a big difference between GMing a one-shot at a con with newbie players and an extended campaign at home with friends. Some focused on finding the simplest core of GMing: debatably rules arbiter, master of surprise (story or dice), and pacing/spotlight director. Some spun off into a discussion about psychoanalysis and escapism. It was glorious. The thoughts swirling around the room made it hard to keep up on my tiny phone screen, but the effort was well worth it.

Since then, I've been stewing on it and trying to come up with the skills I'd teach. Not all skills are applicable in all situations, but I'd rather err on the side of overfilling the GM's toolbox rather than risking neglecting a technique that will save a GM's bacon in a specific circumstance. I was hoping to write up a little on each, but then the outline kept expanding.

So I'll leave it in your capable hands. Here's the outline that I threw together. What's missing? What topics would you like to see explored in-depth? What topics do you already have resources for and would you be willing to share them in the comments?

The Outline-In-Progress
The Big Picture
- Overall Goals. How do I GM? What's the point? What core ideas do I take into a game? How do I know if I'm doing well? Separating design-time from run-time.
- Which came first, the game or the social relationship? Shared language and depth of trust at the gaming table. Start talking about Social Contract, since it's important enough to cover twice.
- What does GMing mean? Thinking on different levels (Campaign, Adventure, getting in NPC's heads, tactical adventure decisions). Allowing different levels of player control.

- Scope: One-shots vs. ongoing campaigns. Different skills needed for each scope.

The Rules
- Intro: Player-level learning. Easiest skillset to master. WILL NOT cover looking at actual rulesets. What rules do you need to learn? PLAY THE SYSTEM, or at least mock up something to run through yourself so you can see how the system works.
- Styles of rules: Simulationist vs. Narrativist vs. Gameist. Different expectations and emphasis on play.
- Styles of mechanics: Narrativist "roll for scene resolution" vs. Sim "Roll each hit in combat". Maybe a little deeper, like dice pools vs. d20-style to-hit and damage rolls?
- Figuring the point of play. What player actions receive rewards under the rules?
- Two types of rules: Conflict (X vs. Y: who wins?), and spotlight control (building scenes and creating stuff in-world). Go for the awesome and only roll when it forwards the story.
- Extend discussion to how to improv within the rules. Where's the wiggle room? Where can you tweak, and do you need to?
- Extend discussion to world design - How do rules and abilities impact social standards? If everyone can cast magic missile at will, what changes vs. Vancian magic?

The Story ("Advanced" - Campaign/adventure design: mostly not applicable for canned one-shots)
- Act and Scene structure - Story Arc and Adventure contexts - overlaps with "pacing" below.
- Surprises and Preparing for sudden turns.
- Making structures to support improvisation - Don't be afraid to go off-script. An adventure ain't sacrosanct. Prepping your GM Toolbox with scenes and side plots.
- Keeping track of Run-Time decisions vs. Design-time plotting. How to manage your campaign.

The Game
- The Social Contract - setting expectations and making sure everyone is rowing in the same direction.

- Sensitivity training - Listening to your players and preventing issues. Study Robin Laws's player types. Make your game awesome by giving your players what they want in a way they don't expect.

- Communication is king! Make sure you back and forth with your players. Exposition sucks.

- Nailing descriptions and characterization. Sometimes less is more.

- Improvisational Techniques. More GM Toolbox topics. How do I keep up when the players go off the rails?
- Controlling the Pace of the game.


I think that's a good starting place for discussion, though I can spin off and add to this list 'til the cows come home. I tried to boil it down to big topics, but there are so many specific and important skills that beg for attention.

What do you think? What did I miss? What did I include that doesn't make sense to you?

There Is No "Them".

Come with me on a gedankenexperiment - let's play "What if...?" We're gamers; playing "What If..." is what we do for fun, right? I first uttered this post's title when I was about 11, so let's see if the idea holds after 30 years. I'm interested to hear about what you think in the comments. Ready? Here we go...

What if we didn't have the concept of a third person plural pronoun?
Yes, it's a radical thought, but I invite you to play along. How would our perceptions and attitudes change if we couldn't use "they" or "them" in our language? I think the world would be quite different just by eliminating those two tiny words.

Take a minute to think about that. Try to see it. Take a walk through a busy city and listen to people talking on the street. Imagine how schools would teach history differently if the political lines between countries become more indistinct or if they never existed in the first place. How would the world change if we thought of every person as part of a global "us" instead of an abstract "them" tied to geography or genetics? Would we be farther along the civilization tech tree or would our development have stagnated with fewer wars to drive innovation?

Gossip still happens; it's human nature. Do you hear less generalization? Do you hear more "He told me..." rather than "I hear they do..."? Do we engage in more direct debate rather than adopting the attitude of "I don't understand this point of view so it doesn't exist in my world view"? Do we leave the world a better place than we found it?

What did you see on your walk? What did you hear? Was it radically different than what's outside your window right now? What did you learn? What was different in that world? Would you want to live in a world like that?

Here's what I see.
I see fewer dividing lines between people. Politics would become friendlier since we default to including newcomers rather than using hazing rituals to make newcomers earn a place in our tribe. We would have one global community and a multitude of tribes formed around different interests. We would still have corruption and crime, but I think it would be much less rampant since we would think of crimes against other people are crimes against Us.

I see fewer dividing lines between people. We would accept how others play and be less inclined to impose our will on others. We would relent more. We would give up less. We would listen more. We would stress less. We would teach more. We would understand and accept the differences between us, but they would never be greater than the sense of We. I am weak, but We are strong.

I see fewer dividing lines between people. We default to openness instead of suspicion. We accept that different people bring different experiences to the table, and the experience can't be wrong because it was earned. We talk about social contracts, about what actions create positive new experiences and what actions cause pain and confusion. We understand how our words and actions can hurt, and we commit ourselves to learn why so we will spread more joy across our planet than sorrow.

I see fewer ways to categorize people because we implicitly assume that everyone belongs to a single category: human.

Yes, this is a pipe dream.
This idealized vision can't happen overnight. I get that. Today these actions appear as rare gems of humanity, shining half-buried beneath piles of "news" about murder, irreconcilable differences, and hate. Today these actions will earn you titles: Hippie Freak, Ultra-Liberal Socialist, or Starry-Eyed Idealist. Today these actions "don't belong" at the gaming table, where rules are king and "fun" still comes at the expense of others.

Bullshit.

When did acting like a human being and treating everyone around you like human beings fall out of vogue? Turn off the TV; civility is still common in the real world. Yes, we are different people. Yes, we have unique experiences. Yes, sometimes I have a hard time understanding why you react the way you do to something I intended as a joke. But is that any reason to dismiss you? Absolutely not. It's an opportunity for me to learn more about you and how the world works beyond my personal experience, and how can I refuse such a precious gift?

What if you started thinking and acting as if there is no "Them"? I doubt we will suddenly change the world by destroying war, erasing bigotry, and ending centuries of dogmatic friction. But you may change your perception which will lead you to live in a different way. Not radically different, but subtly different and hopefully a little more open to other experiences. And if you and I can live differently, maybe we can convince a couple of others to do the same, and maybe they can convince a few others, and eventually We can all change the world together.

Gandhi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." If we're all one big We, I think that's a great start to fixing other problems we've created across the planet. If we can't come together as Humanity, we're not going to survive. I believe it's that simple. If we can't stop alienating each other and dispense with believing that I is bigger than We, we'll turn into crows bickering over a carcass that's rotting beneath us. We'll be arguing over the best seat on the Titanic as she points her nose to the sea floor.

I don't know how the world will change or even if it will change by changing this one attitude in myself, but I for one am willing to try it and see what happens. What about you?

I challenge you to live as if there is no "Them".

Framing Conflict in RPGs

In its most basic form, and RPG requires conflict to exist. If you play a game featuring characters content with their lives and unwilling to risk what they've acquired, everyone at the table will be bored to tears by then end of the first game session. RPGs need action and clashing ideologies to bring them to life, so let's talk about conflict.


What Is Conflict?
Conflict is a cool word. It's a noun and a verb, and you can stress either syllable to pronounce it correctly. Versatility aside, the meaning I want to hone in on reads, 

"discord of action, feeling, or effect; antagonism or opposition, as of interests or principles"

Conflict injects chaos into your characters' otherwise-sedate lives. Conflict builds situations for the players to avoid, defuse, or overcome. Conflict lives at the heart of adventure, motivating greatness and inspiring heroes to act. But how can we use conflict more effectively in our games?

As I learned way back in middle school in the early '80s, only four types of literary conflict exist. I've modified the words over the years, but the concepts remain unchanged and very usable in RPGs. Once we understand the types of conflict and where they fit in a game, we can look for less straightforward conflicts and use them to add depth to your game and drive your story to greater heights.

Person vs. Person
With most RPGs, the main conflict covered in the rulebooks ultimately boil down to Person vs. Person. This covers combat and skill contests and comprises the meat of most RPG systems. Person vs. Person conflicts drive traditional scenes: they have the Maguffin and I need it so I'm going to devise a way to steal from them / trick them / beat them to a bloody pulp.

I think interpersonal conflicts at the physical level have been covered many times over in many rulebooks, but the social level opens up some new territory. What if you need to recruit allies for a cause? How do you convince someone to join you? Sure, you can model that in a D&Desque skill challenge, but I think "soft" Person vs. Person challenges like this work better without mechanics. I'd love to hear other opinions about rules for resolving social challenges, but every system I've seen leaves something to be desired.

Person vs. Nature
These conflicts comprise the "other half" of traditional RPG rules. How do I interact with the environment? How easily can I scale this wall? How long can I survive without water in the Sandy Wastes? You find these questions answered in rulebooks.

But what about at a deeper level? What things can my character never change that will drive the story? My easy answer? Time. Something as simple as introducing some sort of timer to a scene will push it into overdrive as the characters see the deadline crawling ever closer.

Person vs. Nature conflicts also come into play for character backgrounds and characterization exercises. many questions point to Nature conflicts. How is my character tied to the land in which he grew up? What challenges has my character faced in the past and how do those experiences alter his actions today? My favorite expression of this is some sort of natural phobia or curse. Maybe it's never explored in the game, but something bad had to happen to make this brave warrior go fetal when placed in a boat.

Person vs. Society
Another traditional trope, this conflict typically plays itself out through the story rather than the rules. At some point the PCs do something that flies in society's face, and they pay the price. Getting in trouble with the town guard happens more often than you might think, but the fact that the PCs can beat a pile of guards to a bloody pulp while drunk tends to limit the effectiveness of that implementation of Person vs. Society.

Status, renown, and reputation make great motivators for Society conflicts. Social Rank is a stat in Traveller, but I'm not sure we need to create a status score to use status effectively in our stories. Status can feed impossible choices, since doing a favor for one power group often earns you the enmity of a different group. You can't please the entire world, but you'd better be sure to earn some favors with someone who can cover you through bad times.

Person vs. Self
Self-conflict provides hours of roleplaying gold. Setting up some sort of internal conflict expressed through an impossible external choice will hook your players into your game like nothing else. Which prince has the better claim to the throne? Which is more important to me, an innocent child or the stability of a nation? These questions give you insight into the character's mind and soul, exposing them for who they truly are under the trappings of societal roles.

I can't overstate the importance of fostering self-conflict in your game to provide a deeper gaming experience. Phobias [1] and post traumatic stress both fit into this category. Even a quick self-doubt description like, "You don't know if you can beat the champion in the arena" works wonders for giving a scene depth. Once your players latch on to how their characters think and behave, you can dig in and overturn some rocks. If a player comes up with a hangup or something that will bring up unreasonable intense feelings when exposed to a trigger, that's awesome.

One word of caution: talk with your players before springing something intensely personal on them. We're treading into touchy territory, and someone who's not ready for the intensity can have an unexpected reaction and may leave your game entirely. We don't want this, so always take the time to give your players a little metagame heads-up when trying to tap into intense Self conflicts.

How Do I Use Conflict Types?
Conflict types provide some structure to develop your plots. Some conflicts are self-evident; deposing a corrupt duke would have Society conflicts in a more central role. I encourage you to embed different levels of conflict within a straightforward plot. For example, what if the leader of the resistance against the corrupt duke were someone who had betrayed a member of the party? There's a Self conflict that needs to be resolved before the main Society conflict can resolve. What if the duke will issue a banishment edict just as soon as the blizzard passes and the roads are clear? Suddenly you have a race against the clock and a Nature conflict to add some complexity to the main plot.

When it makes sense, offer a conflict of each type to to each person at your gaming table. Don't be afraid to ask your players for ideas, especially during character creation. If the player comes up with the idea for their conflict, they'll be more likely to play it and keep exploring the depths of what that conflict means to the character. If that happens, you'll need to keep up your end of the bargain and make sure you reference it during play, but that should be an easy choice given the depth that ongoing conflicts add to your game.

Not every game session will feature each conflict type; that's as it should be. Offer a variety and see what your players respond to, then adapt to what your players want. If they continually go back to Society conflicts, you may want to switch gears to more of a cloak and dagger or Robin Hood approach to your game. If they lean toward Nature conflicts, maybe they should explore the wilderness for a while.

Thinking about conflict types provides a template to enable more communication with your players. The feedback you get about which conflicts your players choose will give you insights into what they're looking for from your game. Some "Top Down" GMs like me need mental constructs to add depth and build a better game. Other GMs can make a very complex game with pure instinct and improvisation.

If you manage to get conflicts at each level to come to a head at the same time, then my hat's off to you. I want to hear about how you set up the situation and how it resolved. If you can use conflict types to add more depth to your game and get your players more engaged, then I've earned my keep for today.

As always, thanks for the eyeball tracks!

[1] We already talked about phobias in the Nature conflict section and here it is again in the Self section. Where it fits depends on how you want to resolve the phobia. If it's a personal hang-up, frame it as a Self conflict that the character may eventually resolve on his own. If there's an external reason for it, maybe it can be resolved as a quest. How will the conflict be most interesting for the player to deal with? There are no hard lines between conflict types, which make them infinitely interesting to think about.