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Roleplaying Theory

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    *Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore*

I haven't written the all-encompassing essay yet, which so it goes and
ever shall. Instead, how about a running chronicle?

(I've put them oldest to newest, and foof to blog convention, foof I
say! The newest is Burning Down the Firewall <#10>, 4-22-04.)

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    Doing Away with the GM

You need to have a system by which scenes start and stop. The rawest
solution is to do it by group consensus: anybody moved to can suggest a
scene or suggest that a scene be over, and it's up to the group to act
on the suggestion or not. You don't need a final authority beyond the
players' collective will.

You need to have a system whereby narration becomes in-game truth. That
is, when somebody suggests something to happen or something to be so,
does it or doesn't it? Is it or isn't it? Again the rawest solution is
group consensus, with suggestions made by whoever's moved and then taken
up or let fall according to the group's interest.

You need to have orchestrated conflict, and there's the tricky bit. GMs
are very good at orchestrating conflict, and it's hard to see a rawer
solution. My game Before the Flood <flood.html> handles the first two
needs ably but makes no provision at all for this third. What you get is
listless, aimless, dull play with no sustained conflict and no meaning.

In our co-GMed Ars Magica game, each of us is responsible for
orchestrating conflict for the others, which works but isn't radical wrt
GM doage-away-with. It amounts to when Emily's character's conflicts
climax explosively and set off Meg's character's conflicts, which also
climax explosively, in a great kickin' season finale last autumn, I'm
the GM. GM-swapping, in other words, isn't the same as GM-sharing.

Any solution to this is bound to be innovative. There's not much beaten
path.

*6-5-03*

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    Roleplaying's Fundamental Act

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true
in game, all the participants in the game (players /and/ GMs, if you've
even got such things) have to understand and assent to it. When you're
roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be
true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to
determine whether they're actually true or not.

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine
that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps
out of the underbrush?

1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an
appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly
into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes!
Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high
ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather
or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters
are wearing or thinking.

2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an
orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the
suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this
thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."

3. Sometimes, mechanics. "An orc? Only if you make your
having-an-orc-show-up roll. Throw down!" "Rawk! 57!" "Dude, orc it is!"
The thing to notice here is that the mechanics /serve the exact same
purpose/ as the explanation about this thing about her tribe in point 2,
which is to establish your credibility wrt the orc in question.

4. And sometimes, lots of mechanics and negotiation. Debate the
likelihood of a lone orc in the underbrush way out here, make a
having-an-orc-show-up roll, a having-an-orc-hide-in-the-underbrush roll,
a having-the-orc-jump-out roll, argue about the modifiers for each of
the rolls, get into a philosophical thing about the rules' modeling of
orc-jump-out likelihood... all to establish one little thing. Wave a
stick in a game store and every game you knock of the shelves will have
a combat system that works like this.

(Plenty of suggestions at the game table don't get picked up by the
group, or get revised and modified by the group before being accepted,
all with the same range of time and attention spent negotiating.)

So look, you! Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that's
another topic, but they don't exist to do so. They exist to ease and
constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the
table. That's their sole and crucial function.

*6-9-03*

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    Aside: GNS

So you have some people sitting around and talking. Some of the things
they say are about fictional characters in a fictional world. During the
conversation the characters and their world aren't static: the people
don't simply describe them in increasing detail, they (also) have them
do things and interact. They create situations - dynamic arrangements of
characters and setting elements - and resolve them into new situations.

They may or may not have formal procedures for this part of the
conversation, but the simple fact that it consistently happens reveals
some sort of structure. If they didn't have an effective way to
negotiate the evolution of situation to situation, their conversation
would stall or crash.

Why are they doing this? What do they get out of it? For now, let's
limit ourselves to three possibilities: they want to Say Something (in a
lit 101 sense), they want to Prove Themselves, or they want to Be There.
What they want to say, in what way they want to prove themselves, or
where precisely they want to be varies to the particular person in the
particular moment. Are there other possibilities? Maybe. Certainly these
three cover an enormous variety, especially as their nuanced particulars
combine in an actual group of people in actual play.

Over time, that is, over many many in-game situations, play will either
fulfill the players' creative agendas or fail to fulfill them. Do they
have that discussion? Do they prove themselves or let themselves down?
Are they "there"? As in pretty much any kind of emergent pattern thingy,
whether the game fulfills the players' creative agendas depends on but
isn't predictable from the specific structure they've got for
negotiating situations. No individual situation's evolution or
resolution can reveal a) what the players' creative agendas are or b)
whether they're being fulfilled. Especially, limiting your observation
to the in-game contents of individual situations will certainly blind
you to what the players are actually getting out of the game.

That's GNS in a page.

I don't think I've said anything here that Ron Edwards hasn't been
saying. I do think that I've said it in mostly my own words.

*1-23-04*

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    Conflict Resolution vs. Task Resolution

In task resolution, what's at stake is the task itself. "I crack the
safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at
stake is: do you crack the safe?

In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I
crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?

Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting
the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict
resolution.

Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You
can succeed but lose, fail but win.

In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided
the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe
contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's
possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning
a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a
win anyway.

Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of
in-order papers."

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a
piece of paper in the wastebasket..."

(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break
success=winning, failure=losing.)

That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you
succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict.
The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and
your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are
supposed to even out.

Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged
authorship. Task resolution will undermine your collaboration.

Whether you roll for each flash of the blade or only for the whole fight
is a whole nother issue: scale, not task vs. conflict. This is sometimes
confusing for people; you say "conflict resolution" and they think you
mean "resolve the whole scene with one roll." No, actually you can
conflict-resolve a single blow, or task-resolve the whole fight in one roll:

"I slash at his face, like ha!" "Why?" "To force him off-balance!"
Conflict Resolution: do you force him off-balance?
Roll: Loss!
"He ducks side to side, like fwip fwip! He keeps his feet and grins."

"I fight him!" "Why?" "To get past him to the ship before it sails!"
Task Resolution: do you win the fight (that is, do you fight him
successfully)?
Roll: Success!
"You beat him! You disarm him and kick his butt!"
(Unresolved, left up to the GM: do you get to the ship before it sails?)

(Those examples show small-scale conflict resolution vs. large-scale
task resolution.)

Something I haven't examined: in a conventional rpg, does task
resolution + consequence mechanics = conflict resolution? "Roll to hit"
is task resolution, but is "Roll to hit, roll damage" conflict resolution?

*2-5-04*

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    A Small Thing About Suspense

I have no criticism cred to back this up. Just amatuer observations. So
kick my butt if you gotta.

*Suspense doesn't come from uncertain outcomes.*

I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is
going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we're on
the edge of our seats! What's up with that?

*Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.*

What's up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don't
know /what it will cost/.

Everybody with me still? If you're not, give it a try: watch a movie.
Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between
the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to
buy victory, it's as straightforward as that. That's why the payoff at
the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we're like /ah,
finally/.

What about RPGs?

Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will
succeed or fail. I'm not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do
dispute is that that's the only or best way to get suspense in your
gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order
to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain
outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.

So here's a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.

Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it.
Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs
are going to win. What will it cost them?

My game Chalk Outlines <chalk.html> was a stab at this, and Otherkind
<other.html> was a better stab, but where it's really coming home is in
Dogs in the Vineyard and the Good Knights <goodknights.html>.

*3-22-04*

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    A Small Thing About Character Death plus a mini-manifesto

Along the precise same lines:

When a character dies in a novel or a movie, it's a) to establish what's
at stake, b) to escalate the conflict, or c) to make a final statement.
Or perhaps some combination. It's never by accident or for no good
reason, unlike in real life.

I've been thinking about examples. Obi-wan Kenobi in Star Wars? /This/,
his death says, is worth fighting for. Boromir in the Fellowship of the
Ring? The right death redeems betrayal. Brad and wha'sname at the
beginning of Pulp Fiction? The cop in Reservoir Dogs? All those random
people in Total Recall? Tara in Buffy? To escalate conflict, plain and
easy. Leon and Gary Oldman's character in the Professional? Final
statementville, but Matilda's family? Escalation plus some stakes.

So that seems pretty solid to me.

Before I go on (I'm sure you've already figured out what I'm going to
say anyway) but before I go on, *my mini-manifesto*.

First: if what you get out of roleplaying is a) the accomplishment you
get from rising to the challenge, not letting yourself or your friends
down, learning the rules and just frickin' /owning/ them, or else b) the
satisfaction of peer-appreciated wish-fulfillment, you're off the hook.
None of what I say applies to you, you're happy.

If, on the other hand, what you want out of roleplaying is suspense,
resolution, story, theme, character, meaning - listen up.

Second: conventional RPGs can't give it to you. I'm sorry.

So, third: that stuff you want? You get that by approaching roleplaying
as though it were a form of fiction, a form of literature. All that
stuff is well known to fiction writers and they can tell us how to do
it. Roleplaying isn't like writing, just like singing pub songs in a pub
isn't like composing songs, so the skills themselves are different. But
the same structure underlies both. You can't ignore the structure and
still get consistenly good results.

So that's my mini-manifesto and here's character death in RPGs:

PCs, like protagonists in fiction, don't get to die to show what's at
stake or to escalate conflict. They only get to die to make final
statements.

Character death can never be a possible outcome moment-to-moment. Having
your character's survival be uncertain doesn't contribute to suspense,
as above <#5>, just like we don't actually ever believe that Bruce
Willis' character in Die Hard will die. Instead, character death should
fit into /what it will cost/. This thing, is it worth dying for? Obi-wan
Kenobi and Leon say yes.

Here's a piece of text from Dogs in the Vineyard:

    Also, occasionally, your character will get killed. The conflict
    resolution rules will keep it from being pointless or arbitrary:
    it'll happen only when you've chosen to stake your character's life
    on something. Staking your character's life means risking it, is all.

In fiction, You never die for something you haven't staked your life on.

*3-23-04*

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    Practical Conflict Resolution Advice

My friend anonyfan asks: *"Do you have any ideas on how to effectively
and meaningfully implement 'what's at stake' in a non-narrativist game?"*

I sure do.

You won't have any trouble at all, and in fact your group will wonder
how you got along before, if you find the magic words. I don't know what
your group's magic words are but here are some I've used:
"The danger is that..."
"What's at stake is..."
"What you're risking is..."
"So what you hope to accomplish is..."

Say the magic words every single time, when the dice are in their hands
but before they roll 'em.

At first, you'll need to finish the sentence every time yourself, with a
period, like:
"The danger is that you'll set off the trap instead of disarming it."
"What's at stake is, do you make it to the ferry in time or do you have
to go the long way around?"
"What you're risking is being overheard by the goblins on the rooftop."
"So what you hope to accomplish is to get through the doorway, whether
this ogre lives or dies."

But after you've said it three or four or ten times, you'll be able to
trail off with a question mark when you want their input:
"What you're risking is...?"

And then, once the dice are on the table, always always always make it
like this:
- If they succeed, they win what's at stake. They accomplish their
accomplishment or they avoid the danger.
- If they fail, they lose what's at stake - and you IMMEDIATELY
introduce something new at stake. It might be another chance, it might
be a consequence, but what matters is that it's more serious that the
former.

"The danger is that you'll set off the trap ... and you do! A dart
thocks into your shoulder. The danger now is that you'll succumb to its
poison!"
"You reach the dock as the ferry's pulling away. Do you want to jump for
it?"
"The goblins overhear you and start dropping in through the skylight.
They scramble all over you, biting and screeching. The danger is that
they'll get you off your feet!"
"Not only does the ogre keep you away from the doorway, it's pushing you
back toward the chasm..."

In combat, you'll probably want to have an overall what's at stake for
the fight, and little tactical what's at stakes for each exchange. When
you describe the setup, mention two or three features of the
environment, like hanging tapestries or a swaying bridge or broken
cobblestones, plus an apparent weakness of the foe, like worn armor
straps or a pus-filled left eye, and then when you say what's at stake
for an exchange, incorporate one of those: "the danger is that he'll
push you back onto the broken cobblestones" or "so what you're hoping to
do is to further strain his armor straps." This is on top of hitting and
damage and whatever, just add it straight in.

It's especially effective if you always give a small bonus or penalty
for the exchange before. What's it in D&D now, +2/-2? Give it every
single exchange, linked to whether they won or lost the what's at stake
of the previous exchange. "The broken cobblestones mess up your footing,
so take a -2." "He has to shrug and shift to adjust his sagging armor,
so take a +2."

In Forge terms, you've used a couple of nonmechanical techniques to
build a conflict resolution system around your game's task resolution
rules. Guaranteed plus-fun.

*3-27-04*

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    Arranging the Pieces of a Game

/This is another straight transplant from the Forge. You'll have to
forgive the GNS talk, or not, I mean, it /is/ how I think about things:/

How do you treat Character, Setting, Situation, System and Color in
Narrativist game design vs. Simulationist vs. Gamist, is that what
you're asking?

After setup, what a game's rules do is control how you resolve one
situation into the next. If you're designing a Narrativist game, what
you need are rules that create a) rising conflict b) across a moral line
c) between fit characters d) according to the authorship of the players.
Every new situation should be a step upward in that conflict, toward a
climax and resolution. Your rules need to provoke the players,
collaboratively, into escalating the conflict, until it can't escalate
no more.

Character creation in a Narrativist game might work by creating
characters who, in some key way, have nowhere else to go. Life o' Crime,
the rpg: create a character who owes somebody more money than he can repay.

Setting in a Narrativist game might work by applying pressure to that
key point in the characters. Life o' Crime: there's recession, few jobs,
no way up or out, but worse class difference than ever before anywhere.
You see wealth but no opportunity.

Situation in a Narrativist game works by increasing the pressure. Life
o' Crime: Someone depends on your character to bring home groceries and
pay rent. Someone else has just been evicted and is facing homelessness.
Someone else asks you if you know where to get drugs. Someone else just
got beaten by the authorities. Someone else just got beaten by the guy
you owe money to. Someone else offers to cut you in on a job. Someone
else wants the whole take for himself. Someone else knew you'd never
amount to anything. Someone else can't be trusted. Someone else can be.

System in a Narrativist game works, again, by resolving one situation
into the next. Life o' Crime: what do you do? How does it work out for
you? Does it a) hurt? b) give you breathing room? c) piss someone else
off? d) hurt someone else? and/or e) set you back? How does it increase
the pressure? Remember the moral line defined by your Premise, and
remember that the players are the authors!

And Color permeates a Narrativist game same as any other. Life o' Crime:
is it Thatcher's England? Victoria's England? Shakespeare's England?
Bush's US? Hoover's US? Colonial Massachussetts? Mars? The Kingdom of
Thringbora? The details change, but the core of character situated in
setting - the fit characters locked into conflict defined by a moral
line - doesn't.

I've had fun writing this! I hope it's at all an answer to your
question, and I should probably make clear that it's just how I think
about it, and other people no doubt think about it in whole different ways.

I imagine you could break down Simulationist and Gamist games in a
similar way.

*4-10-04*

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    Pre-play / Play / Post-play

In your game, the game you're actually playing, a) in which stage does
/invention/ happen, and b) in which stage does /meaning/ happen?

Invention - creating setting, character, nifty toys, potent powers -
invention can happen before the game or during the game. (It can't
really happen after the game, can it?)

A game where the invention happens mostly pre-play would be one where
there are maps, characters, factions, technology, societies, interests,
all in place when the game begins. I can't think of a good example of
this in fiction - maybe /Babylon 5/? - but clearly lots of roleplaying
happens this way. Look at all the dang setting books!

A game where the invention happens mostly during play would have the
same list of things, maps characters societies etc., but they'd be
created at need as the game progresses. We have one serious bazillion
examples of this from fiction: Howard wrote /Conan/ this way, their
writers wrote /Farscape/ and /Buffy/ this way, and lots of roleplaying
happens this way too. It's underrepresented in rpg books because it
doesn't call for or produce 'em.

And it occurs to me that, in JRR Tolkein, we have an example in fiction
of post-play creation, where he created a bunch on the fly, and then
extensively rewrote and filled in to build his world. Apparently /the
Hobbit/ changed a lot to match what he'd written for /the Lord of the
Rings/, for instance. Can't really apply to roleplaying though.

Similarly, meaning:

A game where the meaning happens mostly pre-play is one in which
somebody or everybody has something to say and already knows what it is
when the game starts. You can always tell these games: the GM expects
his or her villains and their schemes to be absolutely gripping, but
they aren't; the players keep wanting to play their characters as well
as the characters deserve, but it's not happening. I make my character a
former slave but when it comes up in play it's because I force it to,
and my fellow players dodge eye contact and the GM wants to get on with
the plot.

A game where the meaning happens mostly during play is also easy to
spot: everybody gets it and is engaged. Other players than me are into
my former-slave character, and when she gets passionate about something,
the other players hold their breaths. The GM lets the players pick the
villains through their PCs' judgements, then plays them aggressively and
directed-ly and hard. Every session is hot. Nobody sacrifices the
integrity of his or her character for the sake of staying together as a
party or solving the GM's mystery - the action comes right out of the
characters' passions.

And a game where the meaning happens mostly post-play - telling it is
better than it was. Sometimes there'll be one person, the GM or the GM's
favorite player, whose needs the game mostly met, and if you talk to
/that/ person the game will sound rockin', but if you talk to the other
players, it'll sound eh. If people talk afterward about how cool this
kind of game was, they'll talk about highlights that happened once every
three, four, five sessions - as though a game with one gripping,
thrilling, passionate moment per twenty hours of play were a successful
game.

My goal as a gamer and a game designer is to push /both/ invention and
meaning as much as possible into actual play.

Problem: the hobby, represented by the books in your game store and the
conventional habits of most gamers, prefers the pre-game over the game.

Seriously. How many times have you created a character who was far
cooler in your head than he or she turned out to be in play? How many
times have you prepped a campaign only to find that, in play, it didn't
go as well as you'd hoped? Have you ever thought that, y'know, reading
game books and imagining play and preparing for a game is almost as much
fun as actually playing? Or even /more/ fun than actually playing?

The hobby doesn't value or teach collaboration. It values and teaches
competing sole-authorship. Pre-game invention sells books but robs
players of their ability to contribute; pre-game meaning is thrilling to
imagine but dull to actually play. This arrangement we've got going is
frickin' broken.

The solution is to design games that're inspiring, but daydreaming about
how much fun the game will be to play seems pointless and lame, and you
can't create extensive histories or backstories because that stuff's
collaborative -

- so you call a friend.

*4-12-04*

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    Burning Down the Firewall

Conventional wisdom: *if your character's not in the scene, you can't
participate.*

Text from Dogs in the Vineyard:

    The game calls for lots of free table talk, with you and your fellow
    players calling out suggestions, kibitzing, and expanding on one
    another's descriptions. Don't shut your mouth just because your
    character's off the stage.

Conventional wisdom: *if your character's not in the scene, you
shouldn't let information from the scene influence your actions.*

Text from Dogs:

    The game works *even better* when you bring your own metagame
    knowledge into your character's actions. If you're choosing between
    two possible, realistic actions for your character to take, don't
    limit your decision-making to your character's point of view. Choose
    the one that *you* prefer!

Conventional wisdom: *when your character's surprised, you should be
surprised.*

I can't beat Ron Edwards' answer to this one. The whole answer's here on
the Forge <http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=114267#114267>, but
here's a quote:

    I'm now going to say something very harsh - traditionally, the focus
    on "must ... surprise ... players!" is trying to solve the basic
    problem that the encounter with, e.g., the goblins, is fundamentally
    a stupid and irrelevant event in the game. Gotta have a fight.
    Goblins. Must make it exciting. Um, well, I guess the only way is to
    "get into character" and "be surprised," so I gotta figure out how.
    OK, tell them to immerse, surprise the characters with GM-rolls-it
    Perception checks, and thus the players will be surprised, right?

    Wrong. The perception check is a big fat meaningless waste - the
    encounter only takes on player-relevance if, in fact, the goblins
    are relevant to the Creative Agenda of this group.

Conventional wisdom: *it's boring when your character's not in the scene.*

Text from Dogs:

    Like every social fun, playing Dogs in the Vineyard depends on
    constant feedback and demonstrated enthusiasm. When somebody says
    something cool, show it. When something's funny, laugh. When you
    have a suggestion, shout out. (I know, I know, duh, right? I only
    mention it because I've played other games where you didn't, y'know,
    do things like that.)

    Also, to really deliver, the game shouldn't be isolated from your
    regular socializing, it should blend in. Chat about the game before
    and after, just like you would a book or TV show or movie. Chat
    about books and movies and catch up with each other, during! You can
    think of it as commercial breaks if you want, but tied to the social
    rhythms of your little group, not on TV's 15-minute cycle. If the
    game's worth playing, it'll draw your attention back in.
    Interspersing some time of just hanging out like friends can be
    pretty effective for maintaining a pace, prolonging suspense, and
    giving payoff moments real punch, so don't worry too much about
    digressions.

    ...

    Your game will have an overall story, made up of the interwoven
    individual stories of your characters. If it's not as fun and
    engaging as the best TV shows, I haven't done my job.

*4-22-04*

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