What's the game about?

I'm almost half-way through listening to the game design panel recordings from Gen Con So Cal last month on the Sons of Kryos podcast. The panel consisted of Luke Crane (Burning Wheel), John Wick, and Jared Sorensen (Wicked Dead Brewing Co). Oddly, all three indie game designers aren't big into the Forge. (Lots of potential for links there… but you know how to use Google.)

(This will all come round to issues with the supers game I'm running, so it's not all theoretical.)

So, the first rule of game design put forth was, "What is the game about?" And I get all this… D&D isn't about elves and dwarves and saving the princess, it's about killing things so you can level-up and kill bigger things. That's what the rules are about and what they reward. The thing that I'm chewing over is the assumption that the rules must reward the kind of play that is in alignment with what the game is "about."

That is, if the game is about teamwork versus the individual, then the game should have mechanics that reward the player for agreeing with the premise of the story. If the premise is "it's better to stick with the team than to betray them for your own good," then the mechanics should reward teamwork and penalize betrayal. Wick describes a system (the Fraternitas rules, which you can preview, from Thirty, his game about the Knights Templar) in which the group has a central pool of dice… players get bonus dice, which they may keep for themselves, or put into the pool for anyone to use. When the characters do things that aid the group, the GM gives the player more bonus dice. When characters do selfish things, the GM takes dice out of the central pool.

Oddly, Vincent Baker has said that Dogs in the Vineyard is about faith, and that there is intentionally no faith mechanic (this is the "fruitful void" thing he's talked about). But I'm not seeing where Dogs is about faith. In the common wisdom of the Dogs Forge forum, the player is always right about his character's communication with God and his interpretation of the Good Book. The character may not always be right, but the player is… his character is only wrong if the player says that he's wrong. I think that this makes matters of faith moot in Dogs.

So, the superhero game we're playing. I still haven't figured out "what it's about." Before I read or listened to any of these indie writers talking about this, I already knew that the game (the story told in the game, specifically) was more enjoyable if the story actually had a premise. But when it came to starting a supers game, I knew I wanted to run a supers game, but I didn't know what I wanted it to be about.

I still don't know what it's about. Markus, the powered-armor guy who saw all of his loved ones and co-workers killed by mysterious attackers, has a vendetta thing going… I could take that and make it what the game is about. "How far will Markus go to satisfy his need for revenge?" Then set up things that make his revenge not so simple… when a man has murdered your entire family, can you kill his whole family? Can you even kill just him, knowing that you'll leave his children, whom you have met, fatherless? If you can't kill him, how can your vengeance be satisfied? I could do that, and it'd make a great story… but it would relegate the other protagonists into supporting roles. The story would be about Markus and his companions, not about the superteam as a whole.

The game is suffering for not having a theme or premise… in part, because a premise is my guiding star when creating my side of the story, and I'm a bit lost without it. The game has to be about more than just beating up the bad guy. Or at least it does for me.

Now, the other day, Karen (my wife and Fastlane's player) said that heroism is about sacrifice. Whoo… now there's a premise I could work with. Except that Chris (Magma's player) doesn't seem to want to go for that… he's early enough in his gaming career that beating up the bad guys and looking cool while doing it is all he wants. I'm afraid to thrust sacrifice on him for fear that it will really mess up his enjoyment. He might catch on to it, but it might frustrate him. I had a player in the past that was like that… he specifically said that he roleplayed to blow off steam and he didn't want to deal with real-life problems in the game. 'course, I don't see this as "real-life problems"… I see them as greater-than-life.

Maybe I can make "heroism is about sacrifice" work for the group as a whole. I'll have to think about that.

Then the question is… can I make mechanics that enforce the premise? Not saying I want to, or think that it's necessary… but it would be interesting to see what might be done in that area.