What If Questions September 26, 2006
Posted by Ian in Methodological, Theory.add a comment
This is a set up for a post that will follow. The connection should be apparent once you see that post. It is also a ‘grappling’ post, one in which I work through some ideas that are not fully polished.
I am not a big one for what-if games, but I have been thinking about a few quite a bit. So, I’m asking myself: what defines a good what if question?
First, an acknowledgment that a what-if question only makes sense against the backdrop of something that already is. Any effort to circumvent the present with a what-if question ends up being a flat exercise in fantasy.
Second, appreciation of the object that inspires the what-if. Don’t define the what-if in opposition to the actual thing that is, but in relationship to it. So, rather than imagine what would have happened if roleplaying games were religious, look at roleplaying in religion. Look at religious theater. Look at roleplaying as its stands now and see if it has anything to offer to that discussion that is not already present.
Third, understand that the real aim of a good what-if question is to inspire people to try a new way of doing things. Paint them a picture of this alternative which shows, as robustly as you can, how things would look if they had been different.
Fourth, appreciate that there is a response to the what-if question that does not require the audience to immediately go about working for its realization. Understand that the what-if inspires, sometimes by making the audience sad it could not have been other than it was.
Which is to say: what-if fantasy can strip the actual of its normative weight, as what must continue to be. It opens up a narrow frontier where the virtual world it opens onto may find partial realization in the actual world.
Eye of the Heart September 18, 2006
Posted by Ian in Methodological, Theory.add a comment
What if we treated a roleplaying game as a way to ‘tune’ or ‘focus’ the heart? What if we treated a roleplaying game as an organ dedicated to the heart, one means of many for seeing the complexity of our human condition, its emotional complexity? What if we saw the components of a roleplaying game as the components of that organ and designed them with the goal of seeing in a certain way.
I am not thinking of roleplaying as propoganda. That seems both tired and uninteresting. I am thinking more of an rpg as a pair of infrared goggles or a microscope, something that could bring before us something real but which we frequently overlook, something that may only be possible to see with the proper tool. Tony Lower-Basch said something like this about Capes when we spoke briefly at Gencon, that it was one thing he discovered Capes could do.
What if we made games to do that? I’m hoping to design 3am as one such eye, one such extension of the heart. Why frame it in this way? Simply put, doing so takes out the emphasis on conflict which drives a lot of assumptions about ‘good games.’
Roleplaying by another name September 18, 2006
Posted by Ian in Applied, Cool Links, Theory.add a comment
So, I’m reading this discussion and thinking that ‘our’ games can offer plenty to this person. She is clearly involved in telling a story, even if that story is primarily of a sexual nature. She, too, clearly wants some sort of definitive substance to her stories.
I’m thinking that the sort of mechanic I have been working out for 3am could have application to a set of rules geared primarily toward freeform experiences like this one. With the right character sheet, with the right sort of narration rules, the token economy could totally regulate this sort of story. It isn’t high on my list of gaming to-do’s, but I think it is so possible.
Think about the kinds of narration–they could be retooled to focus on a story like hers. You rotate the sheet to indicate the kind of narrations you want to be having–this side for lead-in stories, this side for the juicy bits, and so on.
[3am] Principles and Touchstones September 13, 2006
Posted by Ian in [3am] Design Log.add a comment
This is a small but important insight: it is not necessary to choose between principles and touchstones, but to articulate them in a way in which they can work together. It reminds me a little of the early debates over the structures of the eye: “rods,” “no, cones,” “ahh, rods and cones.”
The reason is straightforward enough: playing 3am is a bit like a high-wire act. There is a lot the players will have to do on their own if they don’t want the game to fall flat. So, to maximize their chances of success, I want to guve the most tools possible to operate in that space. Principles help them steer a course–I don’t want to lose them.
The touchstone, too, already has a placed prepared–the yellow jewels. Each other jewel has a principle attached to it, all but the yellow, the representation of the angel’s ‘deep self.’ It could work out very well if each angel had a parable–a small story that they write on a separate sheet of paper and fold up to place on the yellow stone.
Each principle should follow from that parable. The parable is a source of wisdom and each principle is one expression of that wisdom. This sort of thinking also prepares players for the interpretive work that underlies game play elsewhere.
It should be possible for a player to expose their yellow face to the cauldron, but only under the condition that they take on a new parable and abandon their old one. The new parable must be a simplification of a story being told in the game. After that change, the player would also rewrite their principles based on how other players understand the scene. They get to choose one of their principles (the white) but the players to their right and left get to determine the principle for the sides exposed to them.
The eye metaphor isn’t so out of place here–the touchstones and the principles provide the player with a way to see the game as it unfolds, to see opportunities.
