Figuring out my dislike of Narrativist indie games

I've been thinking about indie games lately, somewhat frustrated with the fact that really innovative settings are coming wrapped up with a philosophy of system that I don't care for. Not a terrible deal, because I tend to adapt nearly every setting I use to Fudge anyway.

But my mind was kind of wandering over the subject while I was brushing my teeth this morning, and it occurred to me why I think I don't care for Narrativistic, stakes-based conflict resolution.

Most Narrativistic conflict resolution goes something like this… you decide to engage in conflict, and you decide how you'd like the conflict to end. Then you roll dice / play cards. Generally, the winner narrates how his choice of stakes comes to be.

In most games, winning the conflict is about deciding who gets to narrate. Now, I've said before, I don't want to tell stories about my character, I want to experience the story that my character is a part of. And this is where I think this form of conflict resolution falls down for me…

Lack of input and decision-making. Once you enter into conflict, the choice is made… there's no realizing that things have gone bad and pulling out / fleeing / negotiating a truce. You've decided from the beginning that there are more-or-less two possible outcomes… and only two. Some games do allow at least some way to "give," but that often they don't because the whole conflict is resolved in a single atomic action, a single roll of the dice. (In computing, an "atomic action" is something that essentially happens as an uninterruptable whole. Once an atomic action begins, nothing else can happen until it finishes.)

Sometimes you have a certain amount of choice, but it tends to be very meta-game choice… not character choice, but player choice. Such as deciding whether to play your high card now, or save it for later. Sometimes you might get to make meaningful in-character choices, but those seem rare.

At its most basic, many Narrativistic systems are entirely about which player has narrative control of the scene, and often that control is not really based on anything important about your character. In Primetime Adventures, narrative power is based more on whether it's "your turn to shine" in the game. (Who has the most screen presence for that episode.) There's some influence from "do I have traits which would play into this scene," but the mechanics aren't really about "can the character succeed "as much as they are "whose scene is this, and which player most deserves to have narrative control."

Even before Narrativism came onto the scene, various groups had talked about speeding up combat by boiling minor, or even major, combats down to a single roll, taking into account abilities on both sides, plans, environment, etc. Basically trying to take all the parameters and feed them into a single decision point, instead of lots of little decision points. And many of us had trouble with this back then… that a single decision point just didn't feel right, at least for the important combats. The thing which we played the game for was being skipped over.

And I'm not talking about tactical boardgame decision making… I'm talking about interacting with the world through the conduit of our characters. And I think that, by boiling conflict down to a single resolution point, and creating conflict mechanics for things that have traditionally been managed purely by roleplaying, one removes a great deal of the interaction with the world, and the player's input actually mattering to the outcome.

Long before The Forge, there has been a debate over mechanics for social conflict. Do I roleplay it, or can I just roll my Fasttalk skill? If you're going to make me roleplay it, but it's my Fasttalk skill that matters, why do I need to bother to roleplay it… why can't I just roll? If my roleplaying does matter, am I being penalized for being poor at what my character is supposed to be good? You don't make me get up and swing a sword to see how well my character does. Personally, I give players a bonus for making the effort.

It's gone back and forth for a long time. But I feel like many Narrativistic games have taken that to an extreme… that it just really doesn't matter what I say, or even do, the dice are going to decide what happens, regardless of my input.

There are other reasons I don't like the Narrative style. But I think this is one of the core reasons… that in some games, my input to the story through my character is meaningless to the outcomes. If my character overcame great obstacles and won great rewards, it was because I was given, more or less arbitrarily, the privilege of narrating his story that way. And that's just not my thing.

The pursuit of the perfect note-taking tool

Awhile back, I tried a Moleskine notebook, and the problem I have with them, as beautiful and sexy as they are, is that the pages are fixed. I have to be able to remove and rearrange. I recently pulled my "primary" Moleskine out of my bag ("man purse") and realized that 1) I haven't written in it for over six months, and 2) it's full of notes about the systems from my previous job… but only a tenth of the book is full! It's got all this useless information in it, and I find that very distracting. I don't like having information I want buried in between sheets of information I no longer need. Plus the whole "I ran out of room for this idea, but I'd skipped ahead to start another idea, and now I've got chains of arrows and page numbers" thing bugs me.

I've blogged in the past about using 3x5" index cards for note organization. I've used them for years to keep track of data… I tend to keep a box for a game world I'm developing, etc. But those boxes aren't mobile. Recently, using index cards for more mobile applications is becoming popular… the Hipster PDA and so on, and the manufacturers have responded with tools to carry and organize index cards. So I've been carrying and using index cards in various carrying do-hickeys. None of them work for me. 3x5" index cards are too big to conveniently carry in my pocket, which is where I really want my "idea repository," without either damaging them (I hate cards with bent corners) or being too bulky. And I have this problem with the loose-leaf format… I write notes, but they don't always go into the same carrying device, and I misplace them or whatnot. I'm having an organizational nightmare with index cards, which keeps me from using them as often as I want.

Last night, I took my son to McDonald's to play at the Playplace, and sat down to do some brainstorming for the podcast. And I discovered I'd taken my pack of index cards to Gorilla Con and left them in my gaming backpack. I had a handful of Wichita Roleplayers business cards in my bag, and since I'm wanting to redesign those, I thought I'd just use the backs of those.

And that worked well. Instead of filling one card with ideas, I could organize smaller bits of information, lay them out on the table and move them around, etc. The smaller format keeps me from writing too much, using the cards to represent ideas more than record details.

Now here's the thing… I can carry a business card case in my pocket. There are tons of tools to organize business cards, from three-ring-binder insert pages, to dedicated leatherette binders, to Rolodex punches, etc, etc. With business cards, I can do what I couldn't do with index cards… organize them in the pages of a book, where I can see all my notes on a topic in one view.q

What's fun about this is that I can get customized cards… VistaPrint.com runs "secret" specials (sign up for their emails… you'll get about five or ten ads a week, but I just filter them into a folder and go look at the folder when I'm ready to buy something new). The latest special was 250 premium matte-finish cards for FREE, just $5.50 shipping. (Not their usual free cards with the ad on the back.) That's less than buying 250 blank inkjet printer cards at Office Depot. So I can get cards that are blank on one side, and have a nifty design on the other to make them "special." You can even fully customize the art and text… create a to-do checklist form, add your favorite creative saying or a "who, what, when, where, why" kind of creativity reminder. (Just remember that it's something that'll be on the back of every one of your notes!)

Granted, it's more expensive than index cards. But if you wanted blank business cards, you could probably find something cheaper than inkjet printer cards… buy some card stock and get someone affordable to cut them to size for you.

Business cards are too small to completely replace index cards for me… I take Wichita Roleplayers meeting notes that need a little more space, for instance. But for my portable idea repository and being able to organize and lay out little chunks of ideas, I think this would work well.

Podcast, HO!

I've put up another podcast at The Art of Roleplaying.

I've started working on notes for the next episode, and I hope to have that recorded shortly. I'm going to make an effort to get this thing on a schedule and keep it there.

I went looking for new podcasts last week… there are a lot of them in the Goblin Broadcast Network (http://gbncom.com) that look like mine: one episode, six months ago. Podcasting turns out to require a lot more organized effort than blogging, eh?

I need to figure out how to get my feed into GBN. It's not clear at all from their web pages.

All fired up, podcast, etc.

Going to Gorilla Con got me to thinking about all the projects I'd been working on around and since the last Gorilla Con, and that got me to thinking about how little I've accomplished in the last year.

So I've spent a lot of time this past few days thinking about what I want to focus on… part of my problem was that I'd started trying to do too many things, and I ended up doing none of them well.

So I've got three big things that have been on my plate:

The Art of Roleplaying podcast

I podfaded before I even had a podcast. Episode 0 was a test, and it was actually recorded a year before I decided that I had enough to say to fill a podcast. But then when I recorded Episode 1, I got hung up in editing… recording is so different from writing, especially when you're doing it extemporaneously. So I got into editing and found that there were things I'd left out, things I wanted to say differently, etc. I'm afraid that if I scripted, I'd still have some of that problem. The perfectionist in me likes to fine-tune… but when you're down into editing, new content means going back to the mic and editing it in. And I'm not convinced that I can accurately reproduce my sound well enough to merge segments seamlessly. So Episode 1 sat for six months! I didn't realize it'd been so long.

The Wichita Roleplayers and Game Days

Game Day 2 disappointed me, and although it was probably due to my being in the wrong frame of mind, it discouraged me enough to consider throwing in the towel on this local networking thing. Add to that that we decided to discontinue the bi-monthly meetings because so few people were showing up, and I just let the whole thing slide for about eight months or so and didn't do much with it.

My roleplaying publishing business

This one was also kind of still-born… I got started with a clear picture of what I wanted to do, but some things happened to muddy the waters. And the longer I delayed, the muddier things got… RPGNow and DriveThruRPG merged, Spirit of the Century changed the face of the Fudge market, and I got really discouraged with the Fudge community in general. I found that, despite having this Fudge rulebook, and over ten years of Fudge publishing, that Fudge didn't really have the foundation I wanted to publish on top of. This got drowned out in indecision and frustration.

–-

So after some thinking, I decided to pursue the podcast. I've always wanted to do voice work, and I really like listening to roleplaying podcasts, and I think I still have something to say that isn't filled by any of the existing podcasts out there. Hard to believe that when we recorded Episode 0, there were like five roleplaying podcasts, now I can't keep track of them all. So it'll be harder to get established, but I'm going to give it a go.

Of course, I've also been working on some Wichita Roleplayers stuff, trying to plan a Game Day 3, improve the website, put together more get-togethers, etc.

So that makes the real decision the tough one… because the publishing thing requires the most commitment to keep it going, I've decided to leave that on hold for awhile. I'm going to get back to it someday, probably after I get the house sold and I move to cut my commute down from 1.5 hours a day to something more reasonable. But the thing about pushing the publishing to the back burner is that it is liberating… I actually feel more freedom to write whatever I want to work on, so I can get some writing done, instead of feeling that I always need to be working on the project at the top of the publication schedule.

I've finished editing Episode 1 of the podcast. I just need to record a better intro and splice the elements together… you should see another episode Friday night. Then I'll start working on the next one. I don't know if we'll make a every-other-week schedule, but I'm going to give it a try… monthly podcasts seem too darn far apart. I'd rather have a thirty minute podcast every-other-week than an hour-long one once a month. I figure once I get rolling and make room in my schedule, things should be smoother. (I can quit thinking of Friday afternoon as reserved for the business writing and use it for recording, too.)

How to pitch a roleplaying game to potential players

This is a short article I wrote for the WichitaGamers, to help local people recruit players for their games.

When you're trying to recruit people for a roleplaying game, you really need to say more than "It's D&D" or "It's anime run with d10." You need to sell them on the game… even if it's D&D and they've played D&D before, they need to know specifically what your game is about and what kinds of things are going to be happening. There are a lot of different styles of play and types of stories to tell even within the framework of D&D. And if it's not D&D, the need for this is doubled.

One way to think of this is to compare it to inviting your friends to go see a movie that they've never heard of. You know they'll probably like it, but you need to convince them that it's something worth taking a risk on before they'll join you at the theater. So when they ask you, "What's the movie about?" you're obviously going to say, "It's an action-adventure directed by this guy you've never heard of."

No, wait… you're not going to say that! You're going to say, "It's a space opera about a young man who joins a rebellion to fight against the evil galactic empire, and along the way learns that there's more to himself than he imagined. There's lots of blaster fights, space battles, and a duel with light swords!" Or something like that. You might not use the word "opera".

Some hints about what you might say

• At a minimum, write a "back cover blurb" or a "teaser". This is like the description of the game on the back cover of the book. But don't copy the back cover of the book! You want to describe what your specific game is going to be about. You can borrow elements from the game's description, but you need to describe what's going to be happening in your game. You don't need to give away the plot, but you do need to make it detailed enough that players know what to expect.
• One effective teaser, if you have a literary bent, is to write a first-person description of the game from an imaginary player character's point of view. [[http://www.dreamlyrics.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=000668|This teaser]] for a Firefly game is a good example.

• Or write a full "prospectus". A prospectus generally goes beyond the teaser level and gives more concrete details. What the world is like, what kinds of characters are expected, what the subject matter of the adventures will be, etc. It's similar to the teaser, but there's more of everything. A sample prospectus follows at the end of this article.

• If you're putting together a new group from scratch (not trying to add a player or two to an existing game), consider offering more than one game. Develop multiple prospectuses for different games you are interested in running and shop them around and see which one gets the most enthusiastic response. Running a game a whole group is interested in is better than not getting to run anything at all. (Be sure you offer things you are interested in… don't stick yourself with something you don't like!)

Some other ideas

• Give links to the game's official website and important fan sites if it's a game your target audience isn't familiar with. If nobody knows what Fudge is, let them explore it for themselves.

• Provide sample character descriptions. Knowing what kind of characters are expected for the game goes a long way.

• Provide a list of "standard adventure topics" for the game you plan to run. (Not the kinds of things that other people might run, but the kinds of things that you plan to run.)

In short, tell them everything they need to know to say, "Wow, cool… I gotta play in that!" Don't expect the game to sell itself… you have to sell it if you want people to join up.

Sample prospectus

This sample prospectus is brief…

The End of the Line (Serenity Roleplaying Game)

The PCs are smugglers, but not without honor. They're trying to make a living out from under the watchful eye of the Alliance, but they find themselves torn between making a credit and doing the right thing. PCs may be ruthless to their enemies, but they should essentially be good people at heart.

Default adventures: smuggle cargo, fight pirates, rescue helpless women, investigate rumors of lost treasure, avoid capture by Alliance patrols, wheel and deal with the hardcore criminal faction, take on risky jobs you don't want but need the credits from

Assumes knowledge of the Firefly TV series, but no experience with the game system necessary. [link to Serenity RPG site]

The small-con curse has struck

As predicted, I didn't get enough players to make my game. I needed three. I had my wife and one sign-up. By the time game-time rolled around, I'd recruited one more player… but the sign-up didn't show. Turns out he had to leave the con for some reason. It'd have been nice if he'd crossed his name off my list, at least.

I had a few people who expressed interest, but were tied up with something else one way or another. For just a minute, I thought I was going to fill all five seats, and then it all fell apart.

I was balanced between expecting a bust and being hopeful. But I'm still disappointed. I wasn't entirely done prepping the adventure, so I took my printer and laptop and spent part of the con in my hotel room finishing up. Between playing a game that ran until 12:30 AM and not wanting to get around in time for a 9:30 AM slot on Saturday, then not wanting to play the slot before mine on Saturday night, I managed to miss the other games I could have played. (Sunday was a bust for non-Living Greyhawk roleplaying, except for one GURPS game that I didn't realize was on the schedule until I'd already missed it. Another 9:30 game, when I was out at a cozy little cafe having brunch.)

That's probably the highlight of the trip… we ate at local places the whole time, and had a lot of fun soaking in the local dining atmosphere.

Gaming-wise, I about broke even for the amount of gaming last year, which wasn't much. I was hoping to do more this year, but I didn't pursue it hard enough. If you're not in to miniatures, CCGs or Living Greyhawk, pickings are slim.

Could be worse… one guy from Wichita drove down Saturday morning to run a single game on Saturday afternoon and only got one signup. He then had to leave Saturday night, too early to play in my eight-to-midnight game. Sucks driving 2.5 hours one-way to not fill enough seats to play.

What's annoying, is that there was this guy and a GURPS GM that had this same problem… and my wife and I would have played in those games (even if one was 1st edition AD&D) if we'd bothered to get up early enough or weren't avoiding the Saturday afternoon slot. So it's partially my own fault I didn't get to play as much as I wanted, and I feel bad about being the missing player that other GMs needed to make their games.

The curse of the small con

You know what sucks about procrastinating over writing Fudge adventure for a small gaming convention, then busting your butt to get it ready in time? Knowing that only one person is going to sign up for your game.

Podcasters, listen to this man

Thanks to Rob Donoghue for pointing this out…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7KQ4vkiNUk&NR

That's Ira Glass of the This American Life radio program, talking about storytelling. It's in the context of his talking to YouTube viewers about producing video, but I think a lot of roleplaying podcasters can learn something from this.

I have to quote the same thing that Rob does… "Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap." You have to be ruthless about cutting out the crap to get to the gems. I think most roleplaying podcasts could be at least 25-50% shorter and be the better for it.