buzz said:
Give something like Everway to a group of nothing but newbies and you'll see a lot of head-scratching. Give them something like the Basic Set (a focused version of a complex game that provide clear goals for gameplay), and you give birth to a hobby.
Not really, no. Give Everway to neophyte *gamers* and they won't know what to do. Give Everway to people who have little to no experience with RPGs and the chief problem will be you, the GM, messing with their heads by trying to fit their experience into traditional gaming instead of just playing Everway. An ex of mine has actually run the game quite successfully at a summer camp program using this "non-gamerish" gaming idea.
The fact of the matter is that a sizeable chunk of gaming these days is rules light.
"But eyebeams, this is so outrageous and wrong, and contradicted by market data X!"
Newp. It's just that once it frames itself in a certain way, RPG players start ignoring it as "real" roleplaying.
These days, lost and lots and lots of people roleplay by post with no rules whatsoever. This is probably the majority of non-MMO online gaming right now. People play games where they fill the shoes of characters in Harry Potter or the X-Men and abide by GM moderation to unravel problems that simple conversation can't solve. They have lots of arguments, but they also have large, thriving communities.
The irksome thing for me as a game designer is that they don't need what I'm selling. They game by custom more than rule. It's like trying to sell crutches to competitive sprinters.
Past that, we have MMOs and ther computer games, which are strategically complex but put much of the tedium under the hood. Yes, the social sphere is different. The highs of dramatic interaction might be lacking. But one of the hidden principles of successful game design is in this ditty:
1) Most people run crappier games than they admit.
2) Their games tend to be crappy in the areas they stress the most.
3) This happens because of a combination of micromanagement and social dysfunction.
In truth, few people harvest the social potential of gaming -- they socialize in spite of the game. They use it as a pretext to socialize and this is what takes up a good chunk of the 4 hours/20 minutes equation.
It is possible -- easy even -- to design a game that teaches people how to maximize in-game social activity and integrate it with the rules and narrative. There are well-known principles that get used in dramatic arts all the time.
But that game would never sell, because in the end it would recommend a form of gaming that would either not be counted as gaming at all or would be absorbed by groups that aren't "official" games but are having plenty of fun nonetheless.
Incidentally, this is not just an indication that gamers suck or anything. The same dynamic is at work when people get together to play a game of casual soccer.
