Out with the old (Game design traditions we should let go)

[pemerton]

Right. And the comparison simply doesn't hold. Ensemble television is a bunch of actors paid to wait around until it's their turn to spout lines someone else wrote for them to say. RPGs are not that. They're a bunch of friends sitting around a table entertaining each other, importantly no one's being paid, there are no scripted lines (unless the referee is reading block text or the PCs have catch phrases), and the amount of time spent waiting around should be kept to an absolute minimum.

On its face, this doesn't make sense to me. The amount of time that a player has to think about what their PC is doing, to discuss it with other players, to declare actions, etc doesn't change based on whether, in the fiction, their PC is in the same place as another PC or a different place, or whether their PC has the same goals as another PC.

 

[Ixal]

Alignment in any form has to go first. No semi believable person, let alone culture, can be neatly categorized into one alignment.
At best you can have a collection of tags to decribe someones outlook, but even that is stretching it especially as people are irrational and depending on the topic might have contradicting alignment views.

The next thing are classes. They railroad the development of characters and severly limit what type of characters, and with that what type of games, you can play.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

So I've recently kicked off an urban fantasy game. It's meant to be the pickup game for those times when we can't get everyone together for the main game (a PF game my wife is running.)

The urban fantasy game can, in theory, work as an example of the PCs not being a "party." As a pick up game my intention is that it can go ahead if me and even one other person is up for a game session at any given time.* So in theory what we have is 4 characters any of whom can be doing their own thing or working in combination with any/all of the others in any given session. All depending on player availability. Ideally I'll keep each session to a complete arc, even if I have to make it a mini arc.

To keep track of all the possible arcs I'm keeping a calendar. I'll start each session by telling/reminding the players where this session will fall on the calendar and in relation to the other stories they're involved in.

So far though I'm really having trouble getting the players to, for want of a better term, break ranks. They don't want to play any sessions without everyone there. But it's early days and hopefully as the characters get more development, get their own goals, the players will be keen to follow these up and be more amenable to a non-party party structure and not have to have everyone all together all the time.


*Me? I don't have much of a life, I'm almost always up for a game session. I have made this clear to the other players. 8-p

 

[Lanefan]

I think this is a very D&D (or D&D-inspired/adjacent) thing.

It relates to another aspect of RPGing: how much fiction/story is expected to be got through per three-or-so-hour session of play?

However much makes sense.

Sometimes, that might consist of many different activities done at a low degree of granularity. Other times, it might consist of one combat which carries over into the next session. Other times, it might be a month of downtime and treasury division. Other times, it might be a long in-character chat or argument or pranks or whatever plus two rooms worth of exploration. It's all good.

There's always another session.

D&D seems to generally assume that the answer is less than a three hour film would get through. And less than twelve comics would get through (I'm figuring 15 to 20 minutes to read each comic).

I've become a fan of trying to speed that up.

IMO the thing that always ends up sacrificed on the altar of speed is depth and richness of play and-or immersion into the setting (and-or character). I'd rather sacrifice the speed.

 

[Lanefan]

Imagine an RPG where each PC is a merchant in a bazaar selling a particular kind of goods. They spend all day in close proximity to one another and have similar broad goals, but they are not aligned and certainly not on an adventure. They compete for customers and have to deal with thieves, corrupt city officials and all sorts of calamities and nonsense. Sometimes they can work together to solve a mutual problem and sometimes they undermine one another.

OK for a few sessions maybe, but how in the nine hells am I going to spin that out into a ten-year campaign?

 

[Lanefan]

Because we're friends who enjoy RPGing together? That's always been my main reason.

As I already mentioned, I think Apocalypse World is the poster child for this.

The last time I ran Cthulhu Dark, I told the players I wanted us to play in late-Victorian England. Character creation consists in choosing a name and occupation: one player chose an American journalist visiting England, reporting on imperialism for a left-wing paper; the other chose a butler sent to London on an errand because his master was indisposed. I started with the journalist and introduced a mystery/lead; I then cut to the butler and introduced a different lead; then back to the journalist, where I had a fire start in the apartments he was visiting; and then to the butler, who - as it turned out - was next door to the fire. It didn't take long to intertwine the mystery of imperial dealings in Bohemia and East Africa and the mystery of the indisposed master: the point of intersection was were-hyenas. The two PCs crossed paths more than once, but never actually worked together.

You had a huge built-in advantage here in that it appears you only had two players, meaning jumps back and forth from one to the other could happen pretty fast and each player was active about the same amount of time as not.

What if there had been five players?

 

[Lanefan]

Because it's cool? And because actions of Rob's character will inevitably cause ripples and affect your character?

But if my character doesn't know what Rob's character is doing at the time e.g. my guy's not present in the scene, then I-as-player shouldn't know either. And if my character is present in the scene then in theory I'd be able to jump in and add my bit.

Rob the Gunlugger asks the GM for a gig to earn some quick buck, she smiles and tells him that the local warlord wants to, khm, "persuade" one particular guy to join his gang. The guy in question? Joe the Savvyhead, another PC, who, by the way, keeps YOUR choppers running.

Here, if I'm playing Joe then I-as-player shouldn't know about ANY of this until Rob's PC gets to mine and starts trying to persuade me.

 

[Aldarc]

You had a huge built-in advantage here in that it appears you only had two players, meaning jumps back and forth from one to the other could happen pretty fast and each player was active about the same amount of time as not.

What if there had been five players?

... Then there would have been three more than previously.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I have at best 20 years of gaming left before I dirt nap, and me and my table don't need any changes in the gaming fundamentals to have fun during those coming decades.

As to character advancement, I see it as necessary as we usually play long campaigns. Even though we focus on the roleplaying aspect with very little combat, some kind of advancement is necessary to keep the challenge up for several years, be it levels, skills or gear/money. Or maybe there is some other way to do it without advancement, but it's not something we explicitly need or wish for.

And no, I don't mind being a gaming-conservative boring old fart!

 

[pemerton]

OK for a few sessions maybe, but how in the nine hells am I going to spin that out into a ten-year campaign?

But if my character doesn't know what Rob's character is doing at the time e.g. my guy's not present in the scene, then I-as-player shouldn't know either.

You had a huge built-in advantage here in that it appears you only had two players, meaning jumps back and forth from one to the other could happen pretty fast and each player was active about the same amount of time as not.

What if there had been five players?

So if I wanted to play a campaign that satisfied @Lanefan's normative demands - must run for hundreds of sessions, must not allow players to act on knowledge of in-fiction events where their PCs are not present, must work for five or ten or however many players - then I would not be suggesting possibilities that violate those norms.

But those norms are not essential for RPGing. My personal view is that RPGing is more satisfactory if they are abandoned. Thus, when I've got two players, I will use techniques that work for two players; given that part of what's fun in RPGing is knowing what is happening to your friend's PC, and the players are here to have fun, I will encourage them to pay attention to what is happening to one another's PCs; and if a game will work best over a one, or three, or whatever session arc, then that's how long we'll play it for.