Yudhishthira’s Dice

Warning, this is not a theory article so much as a rant.

The reason that RPGs have been languishing in the geek ghetto is not just because they are geeky, it is because they are cowardly. Malcolm Sheppard once said something to the effect of “Writers deal with Nazis because they want to say something about fascism and the human condition, RPGers do it because they want to put swastikas on mecha.” I’ll extend that even farther, and say “they want to put swastikas on mecha so that they can avoid actually saying anything about themselves or the world they live in.”

We all know that fantasy, mega-tech, and super powers can be used to increase the tension of a story. Good comic books do this all the time. They draw elements of real world concerns out and magnify them to the level of gigantism – but never forget the things that are being addressed. Take, for example, the way that the Punisher comics originally came out of the New York of Serpico, where people were facing real issues of corruption in city hall, the police, and a growing feeling of anger, helplessness, and alienation from their government. From this mix of rage and helplessness comes the murdering vigilante who deals out vengeance in a hail of bullets. Ditto Superman and the world of North American cities in the 30’s, moving through helplessness towards a sense of nation based around a very mixed up ideal combining the superman/noble and the democratic ideation of the common man. If you want a close up of the way this works in a fictional account, read “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.”

We also all know about how badly these things can go wrong when the powers become the point, when the story becomes a trope. The Punisher movie of the 2000’s being a good example, pushing buttons that no longer have cultural emphasis and then cringing away from its own message in mid stride because it’s become an excuse rather than a reason. The Superman that turns into a geranium when confronted with aquamarine kryptonite has become his own joke, moved so far away from the North American reaction to Nietzsche and the shadows of the great wars that he no longer has any more weight than a balloon.

Unfortunately it seems that a lot of RPG design focuses around the trope, around the power, as the purpose and meaning. In Kavalier and Clay the protagonists came to the stunning realization of “It doesn’t matter what the hero can do, what matters is the why.” But RPGs are often bound and determined to do just the opposite. We have books of superheroes and villains with massively detailed powers that have all the personality of Styrofoam peanuts. That alone is annoying enough, showing a fixation on adolescent power fantasy that is going to put any number of people off, but it gets even worse when people don’t just not deal with the why, but actively discourage doing so.

How many games can you think of in which the heroes are able to mow through hordes of faceless mooks, and yet do not ever stop to look at what that actually says about the characters or the world? How many actively discourage it in the name of “fun?” In a recent thread on RPG.net someone came on and asked if it would be social-contract breaking to have an Exalted game in which it was revealed to the PCs that the mooks they had slain were real people with real lives that were crushed because of the PCs actions. It gave me a minor moment of hope that most people thought that doing so was a good idea, which was soon crushed when there was oft added a variation on “just so long as it doesn’t happen all the time.” And just the fact that the question got asked shows something about the mindset of a lot of RPGs and RPGers.

When confronted with the fact that they are condoning murder, fascism, or whatever other nasty is dwelling in the refusal to engage with the why of the swastika on the mecha, one of the inevitable responses is “well that’s the genre.” It isn’t my fault that I killed an entire town of peasants who were just trying to keep their children from starving to death, because that’s the genre. I don’t need to think about the consequences of using violence to solve problems, because that’s the genre.

Well, I hate to be the one to break this, but it isn’t the genre. It’s the part of the genre that is shit. Even most genre books and movies have some awareness of what they are doing. It is only the most cowardly shit that abdicates responsibility in the name of blowing up more cars. Why must we go for that part of the genre? Why chose geranium Superman rather than anti-Nietzsche Superman?

When you get an answer to that question, I think you’ll start to get an answer to the question of why more adults don’t play RPGs, and why they don’t spread beyond the genre ghetto when movies like Spiderman 2 and Lord of the Rings have made it obvious that “geek” interests can spread. It’s because we’re not aiming at Spiderman 2, we’re trying really desperately hard to be Batman 3.

Now there is a movement to get away from this. Guys like Ron Edwards and Mat Snyder have talked about making games in which there are no supernatural elements, no geek tropes at all. I even talked a little about that in this article about a Sorcerer character that wouldn’t work. I think this is one way to go in order to escape the putrid trenches of the genre ghetto, and it is one that holds a lot of interest to me. However, it may also be over-reactionary (or it may just be about damn time).

There is no need to get out of the comic book in order to not be a coward. All that’s needed to do that is a little courage… and a lot of study of how the form actually works and what makes it touch people. I will hold up “With Great Power” as a good developing example of this in regards to superheroes. You know why most non-comic fans I’ve talked to like Spiderman 2? Because Peter had to lose everything in order to be a hero. Until you have been hurt you cannot be great, says the movie, and even then all you might get is more pain. People feel that in their gut way more than they will ever care about how much he can bench press. With Great Power gets onto that track, by giving the import of a character’s powers to how much they have been pushed. There are real game benefits to having a character that gets screwed, and if you want to win the game you have to push your character to the edge, to hurt them and make them care again. That’s some good design right there.

So the question I face as I look at designing my next game is this: what it is about transhumanist stories that makes me shudder, that makes me care? And not just on a technical or speculative level, but on a gut level that forces me to react? (Or, if I go the other way, what is it about the Pullman strike that pulls me back over and over? It isn’t the World’s Fair going up in flames, so what is it?) Unless I know what the things that make the genre work as something other than a cowardly reality dodge, the game will not work. It is possible to make a game with Nazis and mecha that isn’t shit – but only if you know what Nazis and mecha mean, and what the game will say (or what the game will interrogate) about them.

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.

I’m about to break one of my own rules and put up a “nice” post. Of course, being me I will do so in as not-nice a way as possible.

I have heard much caterwauling among indie and wanna-be indie designers about how there are too many generic simulationist or gamist style games, things that are too close to D&D and so just end up doing the same job over and over. Now part of this is true, but there is a negativity associated with the comments that becomes judgmental bullshit in short order. I believe that part of this is because people have mistaken some things that big fish in the little pond have said, and in part because they just don’t see the value in working out fine details.

So now I’m going to talk about screwdrivers. I have a father who is a hobbyist woodworker, an uncle who is a carpenter, and a good friend that is a contractor. Between the three of them I have seen every kind, shape, and size of screwdriver you can imagine: flat heads, Philips heads, Robertsons, mini screwdrivers not more than three inches long, massive ones that could be used as a shortsword, ones with twisted necks, bent tines, electric power supplies, form fitting grips, standard plastic grips, metal grips, and on and on and on.

The question that I once asked, when I was all of 12, was “why the hell do you need so many screwdrivers? Isn’t a screw a screw?” The answer I got was “no, you have to have the right tool for the right job.” You see, if you’ve got a screw in an odd place that you can’t quite reach, you have to be able to get at it – and that often requires a screwdriver with a non-standard configuration. Similarly flat-heads and Philips heads have different strengths and weaknesses that still mystify me, but that most of the carpenters and contractors I know can agree on.

To this day you’ll still see Canadian Tire or Home Depot commercials advertising their newest screwdriver that lets you put in screws backwards, or take them out with one push, or whatever. People buy these screwdrivers because they fill a need in their toolbox. (And because they just want to have the new cool screwdriver, thinking that if they have it they’ll finally fix their house.)

This extended metaphor is now coming to a point: the constant redesign and proliferation of screwdrivers is much like the constant redesign and proliferation of “traditional” RPGs. There are people doing good work to make sure that people get the tool they need for the job they need it for. Certainly CODA and d20 may play quite similarly when judged in the grand scheme of all RPGs (they’re both Philips heads), but the grip, the feel of the interface, on the two is different in a way that makes one or the other more comfortable for some people. That added degree of comfort, of usability, is important. It is a worthy design goal, and it is something that will make a better play experience for a lot of players.

So, to all of the revolutionaries of game design, sneering down your noses at the work traditional designers are doing: fuck off, they’re doing good work. People who really like their screwdriver games do find differences in the games that matter to the way they play in the day to day practical arena.

Of course, the question to myself (and to each designer, when thinking about what they want to do) is: do you want to make a more comfortable, easy, fitting to the hand way to put a screw into wood, or do you want to make a way to weld sheets of steel together. Because screws, much less screwdrivers, suck for that purpose.

The problem we’ve had historically is that everyone looks for screws and screwdrivers, when there is a whole lot more to do in the garage of RPG design. Add to that the fact that a lot of people who are designing a new screwdriver have thought they were doing something revolutionary and new, when they weren’t, and you get a formula for disaster.

All designers need to be clear about what they are designing and why. Once you’ve got that judgementality is stupid and pointless. Chiding someone for making a screwdriver when they want a hammer is fine, but doing it for the simple fact that they’re making a screwdriver is asinine.

The other problem this runs us into is that much of the Indie game community is so focused on innovation they never focus on craft. The quest for the new cool system that does the new cool thing has far eclipsed the work of making a good system better which makes up so much of the strength of paradigm based thought. We’re so busy trying to make a new tool that we aren’t getting the most out of the tools we’ve already made.

When I look at Sorcerer there are times I want to weep. It is a wonderful game, full of massive potential that still hasn’t been fully utilized, is spread willy-nilly across four books, organized like crap, and full of ranting digressions that do not help it spread its gospel. Plus, it has this brilliant currency-based system that has not been developed to its full potential.

When a D&D or Star Wars comes out they get 100000 people trying to jock their style, with the side benefit being that out of all the crap a dozen or so systems that push the boundaries and make the systems more solid will rise. D20 was built not just on AD&D, but on all the AD&D clones that did something better than AD&D did it (and on Ars Magica). The strength of the New World of Darkness is not just the lessons of the OWoD, but of the lessons of dozens of other dice pool based games. And something like Mutants and Masterminds has the strength of all the innovations of both point-buy games and d20 style games over decades.

We don’t get that with Indy games. Clinton used a variant of Sorcerer’s engine in Dunjon, but past that the influence hasn’t stretched as far as it should. No one is really looking at modifying or tweaking or using the engine from Dogs for something non-Dogs. Now I know that part of this is because the rules must fit the purpose and setting of the game, the agendas, and blah blah blah. However, we are lying, bold faced, if we say that there is not as much overlap of intent between nar games as there are between traditional S/G games. There are people making systems right now to facilitate their nar agenda that would be well served in using Sorcerer’s system and pushing it past what Sorcerer does – but they won’t, they’ll reinvent the wheel, because all the focus is on innovation. Innovation is great, but without craft and exploration of what has already been done to follow it, it does not lead to as many sustainable long-term gains.

This is my newest blog, the companion site to Random Encounters. Random Encounters is where I put ideas for actual games that have come to me. This site is where I babble about game-design and game-theory and similar stuff. The other blog has things you can use in game, this blog has things you cannot.

Clear enough?

Now, as for the other part: the title. Yudhishthira was the eldest Pandava, the five brothers about whom the Mahabharata is written. He was a great man and a great king, but he also had a great folly: he loved to gamble and play at dice. This weakness lost him his kingdom and nearly lost him his wife and family as well.

The other name I almost gave the blog was another Hindu term: Lila, which means “play.” However it means more than that as well. Lila is the divine play of Lord Krsna, through which he makes and sustains the universe. It is the games of divinity, the joy of life, the dance of ages, and everything else, all made into play, into fun, into a game. It is joy in life, it is play.

The two together came to me because I intend to write very seriously about game here, a subject many would not take seriously at all. But between kings and gods there has been much gained and lost in games and play, and I believe there is a real way in which we make our world and ourselves more clearly in the things we imagine, the things we play, the gambles we take than at any other time.

One further note. I will not be nice in this journal. I will make judgemental statements and say that things are “good” or “bad” gaming without qualifying them. By this I do mean “good for me and the kinds of games I want to play and design” and not “good for all games.” I don’t believe there is such a thing as good for all games, the very ideas is stupid. I do, however, believe there is a good for me, and that is what I am going to focus on. And except for this paragraph, I will not repeat that statement again.