"Modern New Age Mythic Game": RPG design by formula

[eyebeams]

"The "overly-socialized" thing for nobilis was meant to refer (I presume, since i'm not actually the author of that particular description, though I agree with most of it) to the fact that in almost all of these modern new age mythic games the players are pigeonholed into these clubs/clans/associations, which in turn are part of some bigger mega-association even though most of these smaller associations don't like each other, all in a bizzare hierarchical pyramid scheme, supposedly justified by arguing the hierarchy exists to fight the other uber-guys that are opposed to your uber-guys."

I must call my local MP and accuse him of being cliched, then, since I work for an organization which is asociated with ministries on two different levels that are at odds, and part of multiple bonds and rivalries.

I think what offends about these games more is that rugged individualist types don't like being reminded that that pretense is essentially a sham.

"The real reason, out of game, is that these hierarchies (along with the uber-uber-guys who run them) serve to hamstring and restrict all of the uber-pc's uber-powers. This allows you to have a game where the pcs are superbeings with godlike powers, but can't really use them or they'll have to face the terrible wrath of the uber-godlike superiors in his hierarchy, letting the DM, and ultimately the designers of the splatbooks and metaplot, free to railroad the pcs from one "storytelling adventure" to the next."

Actually, in Nobilis, you create the personality of your boss. He may not care what you do or may be extremely controlling. The players determine that. It's part of the character creation system.

Hell, that doesn't even apply to all of the WoD games. In Mage, the hierarchy actively ignored your characters and eventually imploded by itself. In Hunter you are under no obligation to do what the Mesengers tell you. In Werewolf, the highest positions of effective authority can be held by PCs. In Demon, you have no bosses; they're trapped in the Abyss.

If what you're really doing i saying any game with a setting-specific social hierarchy counts, I wonder where your trolls of the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Mystara are. I'd say FR's bosses are considerably more intrusive than Vampire's in terms of assumed style of play.

However, the fact is that antagonism is what makes RPGs work. I suppose you could make a game that had a toolkit for building antagonistic social relationships, but such things end to bore prospective users. I myself designed a colour-coded book system for collabortive setting creation along these lines. It's part of my personal arsenal of GMing toys, since it would never be worth the money t hammer it into saleable text.

"And yes, the combat example includes a jet with missles; that's just an example of the classic multiple-personality these games suffer from."

This is rich: Because the game isn't consistent with your accusations, there must be something wrong with it -- except for places it is, which means there's something wrong with it.

Let me know when Nobilis has stopped beating its wife.

Anyway, Nobilis hs lots of stuff, including a fair mount of humour and parody. It puts task resolution and style in the players' hands, so they take it in the direction they prefer. These outcomes were one of the things RSB and Bruce Baugh wanted when they worked on the game.

Successful games tend t prescribe but not mandate a particular play style, because actual gaming groups change their play style all the time. It's one reason why Vampire has been so successful, through and past the couple of years the goth subculture was actually trendy. Neither I nor White Wolf particularly care to make people game a certain way. You can talk about the virtues of a play style, but mechanics "encouraging" people to do this and that is just consolation for weak-minded players. Smart players play the game in the style they prefer.

"So, in your last paragraph you do actually acknowledge that there are formulas in some RPG genres.. care to mention what you think they are?"

White Wolf is conscious about its formula: splats, factions and so forth. Mainstream D&D settings are obligated to support the options in the PHB, which means there has to be a power that empowered paladins, alignment, a justifiction for kung fu monks, undead and so on (like drow; the Realms, Greyhawk and Eberron all have drow). Eberron shows that the formula is pretty flexible, just as Exalted shows that White Wolf's formula is also pretty flexible.

 

[GMSkarka]

Remember, kids....in gamerspeak, "pretentious" means "makes me feel like it somehow threatens or invalidates the play style I prefer."

 

[barsoomcore]

And "boring" means, "written so as to provide no intellectual content or entertainment." Which that article most certainly was.

Yawn.

I mean, talk about your easy targets -- gee, calling White Wolf games pretentious? That sure took thought. That's really cutting-edge comedy, there. Sort of like calling Microsoft big.

 

[eyebeams]

At the same time, though, BC, we do get certain kinds of games because folks buy them. We got games like Immortal and Legacy because people bought Vampire, and we got umpteen D&D clones/mods because people bought D&D. Naked mercantilism aside, when a game gets popular enough it becomes a framework that some of its player base uses to look at gaming in general. Part of the problem with a lot of the D20 material a while back (and a lot of stuff on .pdf now) is that it's selling to folks who've decided on their cliches. They want a world with factions and paladins and magic monks of a certain kind.

When we change that equation *and* provide a link to what's familiar we get successful games. Arcana Unearthed succeeded because even though it changed a lot of the PHB assumptions, you could still mentally work your way to AU from D&D without too much effort. Similarly, folks could get into Exalted for the same reason.

You can also set up a game as a conscious reaction to its cousins, but you really need to work hard to get it right. Runequest succeeded (it was written explicitly to kick over some of the assumptions in D&D) partly because there weren't many other games around and partly because it was comprehensive in scope. Nowadays, though, the market is crowded and you'd better have a genuinely new idea for it to get noticed -- and even then it might get noticed on the net and not sell for beans.

 

[Nisarg]

I think what offends about these games more is that rugged individualist types don't like being reminded that that pretense is essentially a sham.

I think it has nothing to do with that. Rather it has to do with the fact that these "organizations" are an obvious pretense to supplant "character classes" or a contrived means to restrict and limits a party's options in order to suit the game designers.

I mean, the fact that you are working in a restrictive beaurocracy in real life is fine and good, but it hardly makes for good gaming.

If what you're really doing i saying any game with a setting-specific social hierarchy counts, I wonder where your trolls of the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance and Mystara are. I'd say FR's bosses are considerably more intrusive than Vampire's in terms of assumed style of play.

Oh, I have my issues with some of the social hierarchies of the aforementioned settings too. Although really what's more restrictive in the FR setting (and to a much lesser extent in the others) is the ubiquitousness of powerful NPCs that serve as deus ex machina to thwart the player's independence.
However, the crucial difference is that even in the Realms, a DM can basically ignore those uber-pcs if he wishes, and a player can choose not to be a Purple dragon or a member of the Red Wizards of Thay; and if he does choose to be a part of these groups (or in, say, Star Wars chooses to be a Jedi or part of the Republic military) it is because of his choice, not out of a railroading of his options. Whereas in the Modern New Age Myth RPG you are basically railroaded into it as the premise of the game, and this can only be changed by the DM with a great deal of re-engineering of the setting, and by the player not at all (unless he wants to actively try to derail the campaign).

"So, in your last paragraph you do actually acknowledge that there are formulas in some RPG genres.. care to mention what you think they are?"

White Wolf is conscious about its formula: splats, factions and so forth. Mainstream D&D settings are obligated to support the options in the PHB, which means there has to be a power that empowered paladins, alignment, a justifiction for kung fu monks, undead and so on (like drow; the Realms, Greyhawk and Eberron all have drow). Eberron shows that the formula is pretty flexible, just as Exalted shows that White Wolf's formula is also pretty flexible.

Yes, I agree about the WW formula, its more or less what the article in my first post on this thread described, a formula WW follows to the letter but one that other companies have and still do imitate.

The D&D setting formula is another one I agree with you about, and one I wish was broken more often; the fact that every setting feels it MUST have monks (or worse, that older settings feel they HAVE TO re-engineer themselves to include sorcerers) just because they're in the PHB is frustrating to me.
However, this is still only formulaic of D&D. I would think there's also a formula for most fantasy settings in general these days, that could be classified by someone who's willing to bother.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

Remember, kids....in gamerspeak, "pretentious" means "makes me feel like it somehow threatens or invalidates the play style I prefer."

In your gamerspeak perhaps; in mine it means "games that make themselves out to be more intelligent, artistic, or original then they really are".

Nisarg

 

[eyebeams]

"I think it has nothing to do with that. Rather it has to do with the fact that these "organizations" are an obvious pretense to supplant "character classes" or a contrived means to restrict and limits a party's options in order to suit the game designers."

Some are; some aren't. In Mage, Traditions provide a free Sphere dot -- that's about it. Exalted's Solar Castes seem like character classes until you realize that you can choose more favoured skills to taste and are not compelled to choose your Caste skills over them. Vampire does have a character class structure in some ways, but not in others. Disciplines do not assume a backing set of aptitudes.

In any event, this sort of whining reminds me of what I've come to call the Network Fallacy. It's this:

* My game setting includes other people's games or possible games.*

It doesn't. RPGs have no obligation to allow for every possible variation on character types becase you're afraid somebody out there might be copying you. Thus, whining about stereotypcal Brujah punks and whatnot is inane outside of a LARP network because as far as your game is concerned, those characters do not exist.

This is nonetheless irrelevant to what you were talking about in the first place, which was about things like the Camarilla and the Hunter.net list, which are not like classes in any way, shape or form, and were the actual target of your complaints when you started. Plus, of course, Nobilis doesn't have any of this stuff. Players choose what they are a Power of. They can choose a philosophy, but it hs no game effect, and they choose whether or not their Imperator (boss) cares, along with pretty much everything lese about their Imperator.

"I mean, the fact that you are working in a restrictive beaurocracy in real life is fine and good, but it hardly makes for good gaming."

It's far less restrictive than the vast majority of white collar jobs. But in the real world, away from hanging out online and pretending to be a self-supporting autonomous pretty snowflake on the Internet, the fact of the matter is that social ties and their attendant politics premeate most societies and have a real daily effect on people. That their analogs should exist in a supernatural world is not only obvious, but idiotic to ignore. Actually, scratch that; it's less idiotic than pretentious, in its real definition, since it ultimately demands that designers and play groups cater to the implausibly arrogant projections of players into their pretend people by urging folks to toss out a prime source of antagonism so that folks don't have tp go through any effort to assert themselves. That's where you go over the line from "empowering the protagonists," to "babysitting a Mary Sue-fest."

 

[Nisarg]

In any event, this sort of whining reminds me of what I've come to call the Network Fallacy. It's this:

* My game setting includes other people's games or possible games.*

It doesn't. RPGs have no obligation to allow for every possible variation on character types becase you're afraid somebody out there might be copying you. Thus, whining about stereotypcal Brujah punks and whatnot is inane outside of a LARP network because as far as your game is concerned, those characters do not exist.

to a certain extent, you are correct. Certainly if a DM wished to he could re-engineer these games from the bottom-up to remove all of the setting-gerrymandering that forces the players into corners. However, at a certain point doing so means you aren't really playing the original RPG anymore.
Also, from a practical perspective, doing so means that you might as well just be playing a different game.

This is nonetheless irrelevant to what you were talking about in the first place, which was about things like the Camarilla and the Hunter.net list, which are not like classes in any way, shape or form, and were the actual target of your complaints when you started. Plus, of course, Nobilis doesn't have any of this stuff. Players choose what they are a Power of. They can choose a philosophy, but it hs no game effect, and they choose whether or not their Imperator (boss) cares, along with pretty much everything lese about their Imperator.

There's still the whole angelic hierarchy and Lord Entropy and all the rest; and the players are caught in a situation where they still have to create artificial ties to each other that justifies their presence in a group.
To a certain extent, this is no different than a D&D game having a Rogue, a half-elf wizard, a drow cleric and a lizardman barbarian; and using the flimsy "you're all an adventuring party who decide to work together after meeting in a tavern" set-up. This is exactly the sort of thing fans of games like nobilis generally decry about those unartistic "roll-playing" games.

It's far less restrictive than the vast majority of white collar jobs. But in the real world, away from hanging out online and pretending to be a self-supporting autonomous pretty snowflake on the Internet, the fact of the matter is that social ties and their attendant politics premeate most societies and have a real daily effect on people.

The beef isn't with players having to be a part of a social structure; any game with the slightest degree of simulation will have that: you are part of a kingdom, or starfleet, or a jedi order, or what have you.
The issue is with contrived social groups in game, based not on a desire to simulate real social conditions but to railroad players into contrived co-operation and capacity for independent action. Be it a flimsy hierarchy that forces neo-punk vampires and aristocratic executive vampires to work together; or a setting that is contrived to make every player's action accountable to ultra-powerful superiors who make real accomplishments all but impossible, or a game where you have to create an artificial link between the god of Wrath and the god of Tea-time; all for the sake of being able to sell more splatbooks or push a writer-directed metaplot, or to make an arbitrary structure where beings of incredible power can actually do very little with that power to really change the world or their destiny.

For a highly viable alternative, consider Amber, where PCs are godlike beings on a similar scale to Nobilis (and a considerably higher scale than most White Wolf games), where they are part of a social structure (the Amberite family), and do have vastly-more-powerful superiors (the elder Amberites), but have the independence of action that allows them to create or dissolve alliances at will, and dare to actually use their power to overcome each other or these uber-elders, as they see fit to attempt. All without losing an iota of playability or potential for adventure; on the contrary, making it a far more playable game than either Nobilis or anything White Wolf has put out. It dares to actually give the PCs great power they can USE, and the freedom to work with or against the social system without a guaranteed death warrant hanging over their head in the form of a contrived deus ex machina hamstringing all their power.

Nisarg

 

[GMSkarka]

In your gamerspeak perhaps; in mine it means "games that make themselves out to be more intelligent, artistic, or original then they really are".

In your opinion.


One of these days, I'm going to write an essay, studying the tendency among gamers to attack anything that they perceive as elevating itself above the norm. It's my belief that generally speaking, this is a residual effect of gamers as a social class having being bullied in their pasts--anything that they feel sets itself "above" them is somehow threatening, harkening back to the days when they were oppressed. It's kinda sad, really.

 

[Nisarg]

In your opinion.


One of these days, I'm going to write an essay, studying the tendency among gamers to attack anything that they perceive as elevating itself above the norm. It's my belief that generally speaking, this is a residual effect of gamers as a social class having being bullied in their pasts--anything that they feel sets itself "above" them is somehow threatening, harkening back to the days when they were oppressed. It's kinda sad, really.

My response to this, since you posted it to two different threads, is here

Nisarg