Yudhishthira’s Dice

Over on Ben’s This Is My Blog I commented, in a tangent as random as usual:

“Honestly, I think there is a degree to which any good RPG story should suck, or seem odd, twisted, or wrong to those who were not there. If it’s something that any group anywhere could have played, rather than something that came out of the idiosyncrasies of the stuff in the player’s heads, what’s the point?”

Let me expand on this for a moment. When I was taking, briefly, grad level narrative writing classes my teacher used to say something that I found both infuriating and interesting: “If someone else could have written this book, there is no reason for you to write it. Writing is about getting down to the place where your own idiosyncratic sense language meets with the spark of something that hurts you and using that explosion as your fuel.” “Hurts” in this context doesn’t necessarily mean pain, though many take it to be so. It means, in this case, something that you care about so deeply that you cannot help but have a reaction to it. This can be as blissful as religious ecstasy or as confused as orgasm, but it has to be something that rocks you.

I used to argue with that sentiment, but I don’t anymore. And much as I think it is true about writing, I think it is more true about RPGs. Consider the number of options, choices, and possibility for color you have in an RPG session. If someone else could have made all the same choices, with their fellow players making all the same choices your fellow players did, then what are you actually choosing, what are you actually doing that’s worth my time? Isn’t playing an RPG, in just about any mode other than participationism, supposed to be about making some kind of choice? And in good RPGs a choice where there isn’t an obvious right answer?

That is where it starts, but it isn’t where it stops. Those choices show things about the players and the characters, but so does the very way the game is setup, the nature and detail of the setting. Does your game have talking horses that fly and are good friends to the popular and good nobles of the just real? Does it have busty barmaids who moan and beg for what the sword swinging PCs have? Why not? Because you don’t like it? Because your players don’t like it? Or because you do, but you’d be embarrassed to admit you liked it?

Things that we care about, things that get to us at a gut level, make games better. They make games that can touch us. In order to get those games we have to bring out the things we really care about, the things that get to us, and put them into the story. Ben talks about this a bit on his blog with his Bricolage and Play post, and I talk about it in my reply to the post but I’ll expand again. We all have filters in our brains that sift through the things we do and see in life. Some things get caught in that filter, they fascinate us and grip us, and because we all have our own filters the things that get caught there are different from person to person.

In all the best games I’ve ever played things in the player’s filters got brought into the game, things that hit them in the gut, things they found sexy and cool and dangerous. It could be sexy bugs that you can fuck, or Mormon gunslingers who kill in the name of God, or hermaphrodites with flower-shaped genitalia, but it is always something that is rather particular, if not peculiar, to the people at the table. The other characteristic of these issues is that they aren’t safe. They are things that push at buttons, that get at the players.

So once you start combining the things that people care about, especially the things that are not “normal,” with the actual ability to chose, there should be something that pushes beyond what you find on the shelf at the airport bookstore or on the screen at the Cineplex. Anytime you tell the story of what happened in game to a group of people who don’t know you and your players well and do not get a raised eyebrow, a confused look, a “what the fuck?”, an uncomfortable chuckle, or a surprised and shock “awesome!” you’re probably playing to safe.

(Did I ever tell you about the time my wife was playing a shapeshifter character who wanted to have a marsupial form so she could cut the child of another PC out of its mother’s womb and raise it herself?)

Now when it comes to game design, the question is how to get this level of sparking off the idiosyncratic in game through the rules. This is a question I have few answers to. Playing with people you can trust and growing a set of brass balls (or iron ovaries) is always a good start, but that’s something that people have to do for themselves and not a design goal.

Kicker and Bang based play, as seen in Sorcerer, can do a good job of getting at this type of play. It makes the focus intense and encourages a feedback cycle where the things that get at people come up over and over, and it moves past the irrelevant points to get to the stuff that’s going to hit the idiosyncratic points. However, I often hear of Sorcerer games that don’t get the fear on, and have seen (at my own table none-the-less) kickers used to avoid issues that matter and set up “safe” paths. So while it’s a good start, it isn’t a good finish.

Some of the issues that Vincent talks about in his post about supporting immersive play through the rules (anyway, 6-6-05) must apply here. Rules that let you affirm your vision and act with passion should, almost by default, free you to make non standard choices that get towards where the spark is. There is probably something about immersive play that can be helpful to this type of play as well, as thinking in the character (or focusing heavily on the character) may have an advantage of keeping the player from worrying as much about what others will think about them as a player for making the choice they want to make. Or, it could do just the opposite – I have many times seen immersive players become far to concerned OOCly with their character being “right” and acceptable.

In the arena of choosing things to design games about, however, I think there can be a bit easier movement. Designing games about things we care about, things that get at our guts, is going to make it easier to make a game that others will care about. Don’t make games that have already been made by Fantasy Games Unlimited. There is use in making a better screwdriver for people that use screwdrivers all the time, but you won’t change the face of carpentry with a Red Robbie.

Much as I’ve been going on about idiosyncrasy and individualism, we are not unique snowflakes. If you find something deeply fascinating, I can guarantee there are at least several thousand other people who do as well. Look at Vincent, he made a game about Mormon gunslingers who have to work the judgment of God. Who is going to care about that crap? Well me. And, judging from how it’s selling, way more people than you’d think at first. Sure, there are a lot of people who get turned off by it – but that’s just a sign that it’s good. If everyone likes your game, if no one thinks its odd or weird, then chances are it wasn’t worth writing.

Next Up: How Geek tropes make us losers.