What is Stance Theory? Part2

Heya,

In our last episode, I ran down the four main roleplaying stances and gave a brief description of each. In this installment (much shorter than the first), I’ll describe how designers can use Stance Theory when making their games.

Here’s the big thing you need to take away from Stance Theory: all it does is to say who can say what when and how much credibility what they say has. Let me unpack that.

First, is “who can say what?” All the stances except Director Stance state that the player may only make statements about a character. It does not have to be “their” character. It can be any character or all the characters or a whole group of characters. Actor, Pawn, and Author are all character-centric. Director is the only stance that permits a player to make statements about non-character things such as furniture, location, geography, foliage, the weather, and so on and so forth.

Second is “when can they say it?” Each stance has certain conditions that have to be met in order for a person’s spoken words to be added to the fiction. If you want to speak in Actor Stance, you must be acting within the motivations of your character and take in-game causality into account. If you’re not in a position to do that, then you can’t use Actor Stance until you are.

Third is “how much credibility do they have?” A person who is expected to be acting in Pawn Stance cannot suddenly narrate in an open treasure chest in the middle of the room. A person expected to be engaging in Actor Stance cannot suddenly disregard the sensibility of the Setting and past fiction just to gain a tactical advantage. Stances set up expectations that assist people in communication during roleplay.

And that’s sort of how this all relates to design. Remember, that Stance Theory is meant to be used as a tool to describe play. When we design a game, we sort of turn that on its head. Stance theory becomes a way to prescribe play. A game designer helps make the decisions about when each stance can or should be used. But instead of using that terminology (it would just go over everyone’s head), the rules you create give the players guidelines for setting up permissions and expectations of how the game should be played.

The rules imbue the participants with different levels of access or “permissions” to enter fiction into the Shared Imagined Space. In a game like InSpectres, everyone is given permission to use Director Stance powers at will. The expectation then is that the players will add clues, NPCs, locations, or whatever to the game’s fiction as they play just like the GM. Conversely, in a game like AD&D, only the DM is given permission to use Director Stance while players are ostensibly instructed to remain in Actor Stance as much as possible using their characters’ Alignments as a guide. (Granted, AD&D’s texts are horribly unclear on this at times, but go with me on this) The expectations then are the players act with within the bounds of the fictional world using only their characters abilities, knowledge, and motives while the DM gets to control everything else.

As a game designer, it is your job to write the rules so that the players know their roles and know how to play. Understanding Stance Theory provides you with a foundation of knowledge you can draw upon as you write those rules. It can help you to communicate your vision of how play should unfold through the permissions of your rules and the expectations of the players.

As you write your game, you should be cognizant of who can say what and when they can say it. And not only should YOU as the designer be aware of it, anyone who picks up your game and reads it should be aware of it. Setting up permissions and expectations is not something that should be shrouded in the text for the players to discover as they play. It’s not emergent. It should explicit and upfront.

Now, like I said, don’t use Stance terminology in your game! Don’t write, “Now the GM has Directorial Powers but the players should maintain Author Stance except in the following instances…” That would be horrible! Even people who enjoy RPG theory don’t want to read stuff like that in a game. Instead, write something like, “The GM is the one who introduces new places and items, but it is up to the players to decide how they and their characters want to react to them…”

Knowing the how the different stances work gives designers an insight into how communication during play works. Armed with that knowledge, you will be in a better position to write the rules of your game. Just remember, all of the fancy Stance labels and theory talk are just window dressing. The real meat of the matter is setting permissions and expectations for communication during play. I.E.: Who gets to say what, when do they get to say it, and who cares if they do?

Peace,

-Troy

PS: As you design and playtest your game, don’t believe for a minute that if you set the permissions and expectations that players should always speak in Actor Stance that the players will always do that. They won’t, and it’s okay. Groups will move in and out of stances as the individual situations call. That’s part of playing the game. But, there should be a default position (read: permission and expectation) for each participant explicitly stated in the rules. This way, when people aren’t sure what to do next or what they should be doing at all, the rules are there to guide them. Lapses in Stance are often used to solve a social problem, not a system problem.

What is RPG Crossroads?

Heya,

A while back I mentioned the The Neighborhood. Since that time, the website has gone through a number of very beneficial changes. Do you have an RPG company? What about a Podcast or YouTube channel? If you answered yes to any of those questions, there’s a place for you at the renamed RPG Crossroads.

RPG Crossroads is a place where I’m trying to bring together all the great, creative minds that are doing work with roleplaying games. There’s forums just for publishers to talk about their games and where their fans can ask questions and post suggestions. There are forums for podcasters to talk about their shows, promote their sites, post upcoming shows, and discuss issues facing podcasting on the Internet. Already, there’s some great conversations going on there. There’s also a forum for people who want to talk about theory or heavy issues like race and sex in RPGs.

If you want a place to meet a broad cross-section of gamers, RPG Crossroads is design exactly for that. I hope to see you there!

Peace,

-Troy

What is TITB4B and Why’s it Bad?

Heya,

Let’s start with a history review. A long time ago in a land that now seems so very far away, a man named Gary Gygax published a game named Dungeons and Dragons (1974). It was the first commercial RPG in the modern sense. What this game did was to compile rules for games that people were already playing based on another type of game: miniatures wargaming.

So let me explain what I mean in that last sentence. It’s very important. Dungeons and Dragons was NOT inventing a game. It was describing a game people were already playing. DnD did not create roleplaying, it simply catalogued roleplaying. Even more, roleplaying at the time was not what we tend to think of it today. It was much more like a miniatures war game where the object was to simulate dungeon combat, slaying a dragon, or an encounter between armed foes. The authors just assumed anyone who played the game would have this sort of background knowledge on wargaming and that explanatory text would be redundant (and more expensive to print). Therefore, it did not PRE-scribe play, it only DE-scribed play.

1975 saw the release of Boot Hill, a Western themed RPG. Props go to them for being original with their setting right off the bat. It was non-fantasy, leveless, and made the player-characters the focal point of the design, but the game was heavily geared towards the showdown and accurately simulating a gun fight. The game even touted itself as based on western miniatures. So the same basic assumptions were made- people playing Boot Hill knew how to play miniatures and just needed some extra rules for “roleplaying.”

Also, Tunnels and Trolls was released that year. It was the first in a long line of “Lord of the Rings except not because we can’t get the license” game. It did many of the things that D&D did, but it also held over the mass combat rules of miniatures and tried to be as realistic as it could be.

What DnD and these other games that were like it did accomplish in the 70’s was to make hundreds and then thousands of more people aware of what was going on. That awareness turned into participation. That participation turned into creation. But as time rolled on, the way people played these games started to change. Suddenly, people who had no background in miniature wargaming were picking up D&D, T&T, and Boot Hill and trying to play it based on their background in writing, storytelling, boardgames, make-believe, acting, imrpov, or whatever else. The core market for early RPGs suddenly expanded to whole new demographics.

DnD and these other RPGs were later supplemented by magazines such as TSR’s Dragon and RPGA’s Polyhedron published adventure modules meant to be used in a tournament format at conventions. For some people, the object of playing became to win. For others, it became a place to create stories in the English 101 sense where you have protagonists, rising action, climax, and theme. For others, it meant being true to the vision of whatever gaming background or literary background they came to the table with.

By the late 70’s it was clear that people were using RPGs to do all sorts of things that the texts did not support. In fact, it could be argued that from the very get-go, the texts did not support the play since they weren’t inventing anything, but simply describing pre-existing behaviors.

The results were threefold. The first effect was that the game texts at hand were all incomplete. They didn’t tell you how to play or what to do, they just had a bunch of text that provided resources people already familiar with how to play could use to supplement their gaming. For people who heard about this game and picked up trying to figure out how to play it, there was nothing to really grab on to. Instead, the players had to improvise and make up a lot of stuff and ignore a lot of other stuff. Imagine trying to play D&D 3.5 if the only book you had was Castle Ravenloft. That’s about what it was like. You had people all over the country playing the same title without playing the same game (make sense?). Thus, a tradition was established in RPG publishing where communicating exactly what was expected during play and providing rules that supported that play was a non-essential thing. It really didn’t matter, the thinking went, just so long as you provided really evocative tools for the players. They’ll figure it out eventually, publishers supposed.

The second effect was when publishers figured out that there were large segments of the audience who weren’t playing the game like they had envisioned, they changed their texts to try to suit everyone. A game like Bushido (1979), for instance, tried to downplay the role of miniatures-style combat and stress the importance of the people at the table and what things like honor, duty, and heroism really meant to them. But at the same time, they included plenty of combat rules, magic, and ways to introduce supernatural monsters into play even though the game wasn’t really even about that stuff. They figured that if they didn’t have it, no one would want to buy the game. This was only exacerbated in the 1980’s where we saw an explosion of RPGs trying to cater to everyone and everything all at the same time.

The third effect was that social conflict amongst the players became the norm. The tales of dysfunctional groups, incoherence, and arguments over what was the “right way” to play a game are well documented, and I don’t need to go into them here. Tournaments and conventions (especially GenCon) brought people from all over together in one place. This was great, in that ideas could be exchanged, but at the same time it brought people into conflict because they weren’t interpreting the vague rules and guidelines the same way. This problem increased in the 1990’s when GenCon, Origins, and DragonCon really started taking off. Then the Internet hit and everyone started talking to each other. This talking often consisted of a lot of arguing and belittling people for not playing “right” or whatever.

During this time, derogatory words entered the lexicon that labeled people and play styles who went against the grain. Powergamer, Grandstander, Munchkin, Rules Lawyer, Monty Hall GM, Wussy, Hack ‘n Slash, Blast ‘n Burn, artsy-fartsy-story-telling-wannabes, and turtling were enshrined as the proper way to refer to non-conformist players in dozens of advice books such as the AD&D 2e Guide to Creative Campaigning (1993).

So what was the end result? Well, people did try to come up with solutions. First was the so called, “Rule Zero.” Basically, that rule stated, “any rule you don’t like, get rid of it.” Other variations include, “Make up rules if something happens that this book doesn’t account for,” “Not everything that happens during play can be accounted for in the rules, so improvise as needed,” “It’s the GM’s call” or even worse, “The GM is God!” Sometimes they’d dress it up as much as they could such as in the AD&D1e DMG: "It is the spirit of the game not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rulebook on you if it goes against the obvious intent of the game." Thus, game texts continued to be vague and lack focus on making rules that actually worked and actually told people how to play.

The other solution that was widely practiced was more insidious and brings us closer to the original point of this entry. During the 90’s when the first Goth wave hit, White Wolf ditched games like Ars Magica and switched to the World of Darkness titles like Vampire: The Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension. In these books, they presented the idea that the GM just needs to write out a plotline that the characters follow, using the rules only when necessary. Thus, a lot of the conflict in a group would be solved and everyone could have a nice story at the end to be proud of. The catch was, in order to get this to work right, the GM had to force the players into following the story. Since human being tend to be individualists (especially in America), this was a real problem. So instead, these games encouraged GMs to do this covertly, i.e. behind the veil. Play became based on deception and manipulation. The better a GM could hide how he was making all the choices for the players, the better a GM he/she was said to be. The problem is, all this subversive manipulation is just not a recipe for long-term success.

To communicate this style of gaming without totally turning everyone off from the get-go, a phrase was developed and presented in game texts as the proper way to play. It goes something like this, “The GM writes the story and the players decide what the characters do.”

Now, if you’ve been playing RPGs for a long time, that phrase probably makes sense to you. If you haven’t played many RPGs, that sentence probably makes absolutely no sense at all. If it does make sense, read it again. I’ll break it down.

The GM writes the story. The players decide what the characters do. If you have one, you can’t have the other. If the GM has written the story, the decisions of the characters must already be known. If the players decide what the characters are going to do, the GM could not possibly have written out the story since none of the characters had taken any actions prior to play. Those two sentences are totally and utterly incompatible. Yet that phrase, or a variation of it, is presented in numerous roleplaying texts across the spectrum as the way things are supposed to be done during roleplaying. That, right there, is “The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.” TITB4B. Also, sometimes called “illusionism” or “railroading.”

So why is this bad?

Well, let’s look at what TITB4B causes. First, the GM has to force the players to do something. Not only that, he has to do in covert ways, basically conning them to go along with his plan without ever communicating that plan in a truthful and upfront way. That’s certainly not a sound foundational basis for a functional social group. And, as a result, it didn’t solve the problem it was trying to solve.

If the players became bored with the GM’s story, they would often try to veer off course. This caused conflict with the GM because his well thought-out and beautiful stories were being ruined by people daring to express their free will. Not only that, the GM would be caught totally off-guard and unprepared to deal with these new developments. Consequences included heated arguments, long and boring pauses in play while the GM figured out what to do, sessions cut short so the GM could prep for what was going on (usually, just more machinations to get the characters back to the original plot), or some players being left out of the game completely while those who did choose to follow the GM’s premade plans were rewarded with screen time. This can and often does lead to other social and in-game conflicts amongst the participants. Most bad experiences with RPGs can be tied to this phenomena right here.

So what can be done about TITB4B?

There have been some failed attempts to fix this. GUMSHOE (2007) for example touted itself as solving this problem for mystery games by having not only a Fortune based mechanic for clue finding but also a Karma based resolution. “Although it came up in playtest, I confess to being a little surprised by the idea that The Esoterrorists, by creating a mechanism to ensure that PCs in investigative games always get all the clues they need to start piecing the mystery together, encourages railroading. The GUMSHOE system doesn’t in fact change the inherent structure of investigative games at all. They are no more or less linear in GUMSHOE, on a structural level, than in a traditional procedural campaign using the roll-to-get-a-clue model,” wrote Robin Laws on his blog.

I have to admit I was a little surprised that he was a little surprised that his game received the same criticism previous mystery games had received since GUMSHOE does nothing to “change the inherent structure of investigative games.” I wondered it Mr. Laws had played Inspectres (2002)- a game that does change the inherent structure of mystery games and makes them non-linear, but in the comments section of his entry, he reveals that he had not.

The old paradigm was still alive: the GM writes the story (in this case a mystery) and the players play along finding the pre-arranged clues and breadcrumbs left by the GM. The fact that they could spend points to get the clues instead of whiffing endlessly on their rolls did, as Robin states, nothing to change heavy-handed, GM-centric nature of play despite being presented as a game that liberated the players from the traditional travails associated with mystery games.

However, there are several viable solutions to TITB4B. As with many things, it seems, in RPG theory, there are names for them: Trailblazing, Participationism, and Bass Play/Sandbox Play. I’ll get to these in another article which, I have a feeling, will be more pertinent to design. For now, the main thing that I hope people come away with from this article is that “the GM makes the story and the players decide what the characters do” is a nonsensical statement that should be avoided in gaming texts.

Peace,

-Troy

What is The Neighborhood?

Heya,

The Neighborhod is a new website dedicated to linking all the disperate parts of the indie-rpg movement into one place for mutual benefit. There are several key parts of this site:

1. Forums- The Forge once hosted forums for many different independent gaming companies. Now that it's in its winter stage, those forums are being phased out. I wanted to give those companies a place to go. The Neighborhood is that place.

2. News/Reviews/Editorials- Story Games, The Ogre Cave, Planet Story Games, and RPGnet have some great content, but not everyone is aware of it. I pulled in feeds from all four of these sites at The Neighborhood. I want to help promote those sites as well as add some convenience for Neighborhood users. You can keep up on all the happenings with just a few simple clicks at the Neighborhood, then when you find something you like, you're whisked off directly to the topic that interests you. It saves a lot of time and makes surveying these gaming sites a lot easier. .

3. Radio/TV- There are some terrific RPG podcasts and YouTube Channels out there. I've collected many of their feeds at the Neighborhood. I want to promote these multi-media resources and give Neighborhood users more reasons to come and interact with the publishers. I hope the Radio and TV pages will be mutually beneficial. There's probably a lot on these two pages you don't know about.

4. Links- These are a collection of publisher websites, store sites, and forums/resources for RPG players and publishers. These are really useful for finding companies and products.

If you get a chance, take a stroll through The Neighborhood. If you're a creator-owned RPG publisher, drop me a line in the Forums there and we'll get you set up with a forum all your own.

Peace,

-Troy

Is there a New Blasted Sands Available?

Heya,

Why, yes there is! For those not aware, way back in 2006-almost four years ago to the day-I posted a RTF file of a campaign setting to use as an object lesson for my thoughts on Setting. I recently re-read that file and was appalled. The amazing thing is, I get a notice in my email about once a month that someone has downloaded that file! To me, that’s amazing.

So, obviously, there is some demand for it. What I’ve done is totally reworked most of it, cleaned it up, and tried to eliminate the typos (although I’m sure there’s still a ton). It is over twice as large as it was and full of more Color and detail. At last, I have a file I can be at least a little more proud of. If you’ve downloaded the first version or are looking for a Dark Sun-inspired setting in which to play, may I introduce:

Blasted Sands (Revised Edition) at box.net
Blasted Sands (Revised Edition) at Scribd

I hope those who downloaded the older version will check this one out too. And for those who have never read my Blasted Sands setting, I hope that it inspires you. All feedback is very welcomed.

Peace,

-Troy

What Is/Was The Forge All About?

What was the Forge about? Why did it exist?

First, read this:

http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/12/

And this:

http://indie-rpgs.com/articles/13/

Then, read these:

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17809.0

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17810.0

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=17811.0

Then, read all of that:

http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=9782.0

Finally, read this:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forge/index.php?topic=30635.0

Then you will know.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Stance Theory? Part1

Heya,

Today I’m taking on another older topic- Stance Theory. This is part 1 of a two part article. In this one, I’m basically just going to define and describe Stance Theory. In the second part, I’ll try to explain how it might be useful. But honestly I think for the most part, we have left this behind as game designers. None-the-less, I am endeavoring to bring up the old ideas (old in this case meaning from the late 90’s and early 2000’s) so that fresh eyes can look at them, dissect them, and bring forth new ideas.

When it comes to Stance Theory, first and foremost, you must understand that it is describing play, not design. I think that all too often, people talk past each other when it comes to RPG theory because one person is thinking “play” and the other is thinking “design.” Play should inform design, of course, but they are not the same thing.

So what is it anyway? Well, Stance Theory is a way of describing how players (including the GM) affect the in-game events, setting, and characters (aka The Shared Imagined Space). There are four Stances that have been identified. The Provisional Glossary defines them as such:

Actor Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have. This stance does not necessarily include identifying with the character and feeling what he or she "feels," nor does it require in-character dialogue.

Author Stance: The person playing a character determines the character's decisions and actions based on the person's priorities, independently of the character’s knowledge and perceptions. Author Stance may or may not include a retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.

Pawn Stance: A subset of Author Stance which lacks the retroactive "motivation" of the character to perform the actions.

Director Stance: The person playing a character determines aspects of the environment relative to the character in some fashion, entirely separately from the character's knowledge or ability to influence events. Therefore the player has not only determined the character's actions, but the context, timing, and spatial circumstances of those actions, or even features of the world separate from the characters.

Okay, that’s nice. But let’s break them down some.

Director Stance is sometimes treated as synonymous with players narrating in-game events, or worse, people think that’s the only thing Director Stance does. Director Stance *can* do those things, but players using Director Stance don’t *have* to. A player can say, “There’s some brush next to the wall, my character hides there and is unseen.” That’s Director Stance. He could also say, “Gunther looks left, then right, and finally above to make sure he isn’t being watched. He carefully creeps over to a thick patch of shrubbery next to the castle wall in the dim twilight of the evening. None of the guards atop the wall were looking in his direction.” Both are examples of Director Stance.

In Director’s Stance, the player is not regarding what the character is thinking or feeling or what the character has the power to change in the Shared Imagined Space. The Player is capable of changing the environment and circumstances around the character. If the player wants a guard on top of the wall and he is operating in Director’s Stance, he can put a guard there. If he wants bushes, there are bushes. But that’s the player’s desires, not the character’s. Those two may coincide, but that’s entirely beside the point. In Director Stance, the player is disregarding character motivation.

A player operating in Director’s Stance can basically manipulate anything in the imaginary game world. It can be characters, objects, places, the weather, or whatever. Nothing is off-limits; the power is quite broad. Additionally, the Director Stance player can base these changes off of in-game considerations or meta-game (stuff outside the imaginary world) considerations WITH OR WITHOUT offering in-game justifications for these changes. In other words, what he’s doing doesn’t necessarily have to make “sense” in the imaginary world, it just has to be acceptable at the Social Contract level. Think about the space alien scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” That doesn’t make any sense in the imaginary world of that movie, but it is acceptable given the nature of the crew who made that film.

Pawn Stance is sometimes seen as the default stance for Gamists. This is one thing I hardly have to spend any time on. If you’ve ever watched people play D&D using the alignment system, you’ve probably seen Gamists operating in a stance other than Pawn. Pawn Stance *can* be used by Gamists, but doesn’t *have* to be. In Pawn Stance, the player is limiting him/herself to just deciding what the character does without any special relationship to the character. It’s just a game piece in this context. The typical GM use of Palace Guards and Barmaids or other static characters is often Pawn Stance in traditional fantasy roleplay.

Author Stance is the hardest one for me to fully grasp. It seems to lie somewhere past Actor Stance but before Director Stance. It’s sort of in the middle, lacking the buy-in that Actor demands and the power that Director gives. When in Author Stance, the player is making decisions just for a character- not for the environment, circumstances, or non-character items in the imaginary game world. That’s the biggest difference from Director’s Stance: The Author cannot affect anything except a character.

Second, a player engaging in Author Stance makes his or her decisions about a character based on the meta-game. In-game/in-character motivations and conditions can be (but don't have to be) ignored at the player's choice under Author Stance. However, that doesn’t mean a player using Author Stance can go willy-nilly all over the place, making decisions for a character as he or she pleases. These decisions must make sense in-game. So, even though the player is using knowledge from outside the imaginary world as the basis for decision making, he/she must justify those decisions using logical fiction inside the Shared Imagined Space. This is another break with Director Stance. The spaceship from the Monty Python example above can only happen under Author Stance if it had been previously established that aliens existed in the Setting and were watching over the main character.

Last, but not least, is Actor Stance. It’s been my experience that Actor Stance is occasionally and wrongly associated with Simulationist Play. As if, Actor Stance was the only “right way” to play using the Simulationist Creative Agenda. It is also sometimes treated as the same thing as talking in-character or “Immersion.” But Actor Stance is SO much more.

First, Actor Stance does not care what Creative Agenda you are using. In fact, none of the stances do. One can use Actor stance as the situation demands. Second, Actor Stance prioritizes the character much more than Director and Author Stance do. Decisions made using Actor Stance are made in accordance with what the character’s motivations are AND take into consideration in-game knowledge, conditions, and events. The player is not manipulating the scenery or objects in the imaginary world, just the character from the character’s own perspective.

It is in Actor’s Stance that motivation is brought to the forefront. Actor’s Stance pursues this motivation and tries to carry it out. This is where character knowledge and player knowledge are split, and meta-game considerations are disregarded. It requires the player buy into the character as a living, breathing, free-thinking individual. The character is not a game pieces or a means to an end, but it becomes the focus of attention. Actor Stance is the expression of an intimate relationship between the real life player and the imaginary person that is being portrayed by that player. GMs often play significant NPCs (for lack of a better term) this way. That’s the most common example I can think of.

Some people define Immersion by saying it’s engaging in Actor’s Stance as often and as much as possible. I don’t really have a good definition for Immersion. A lot of talk about has gone on over the years. I don’t think Actor’s Stance is a handy synonym for it, but you should be aware that some (not all) people think of it that way.

Over the years, several problems associated with Stance Theory have arisen.

One common error that was made in the early days of hashing out Stance Theory was that it related only to “your” character. It doesn’t. It relates to any character. You can be an Author, Actor, Pawn, or Director anyone’s character or characters. The emphasis is not on the character, but on the player- i.e. what stance the player is taking toward the fiction being created in the imaginary world. Some people mistake Stance Theory as character-centric. It isn't. It's player-centric.

Another error that was made was that Stance Theory didn’t apply to GMs, or that all GMs were, necessarily, by default operating in Director Stance. This is, of course, totally untrue and can be observed in actual play. Any time the GM operates the NPCs (for lack of a better term) based solely on that NPC’s knowledge- and not his (The GM’s) knowledge- that GM is operating in Actor Stance. This happens all the time and is usually seamless during play.

Third, some believe that all roleplaying is stance. Meaning, that everything said at the table comes from one of the four stances. That’s not true. When talking about Stance Theory, we are talking about character actions and the way the imaginary world reacts to the characters, nothing else. The damage from a sword thrust is not stance. The death of a character is not stance. The effects of drowning are not stance. A majority of the things said at the table are said from a stance but not everything. When examining a piece of roleplaying for stance, look for player decisions, character decisions, and changes in the imaginary world. Don't get hung up on mechanics.

Finally, the last common mistake I want to highlight is the assumption that people do or at least should maintain a consistent stance throughout play. As if idealized play is when everyone is operating in Actor Stance or in Director Stance. This is rubbish. Players are constantly moving from one stance to another as the needs of the situation arise, and I can see no benefit (or at least, very little) from rigidly maintaining only a single stance. I’ve played in campaigns where the Social Contract strictly enforced Actor Stance (talking in character, using only character knowledge, following the character’s alignment to a T). Anyone who broke Actor Stance was immediately penalized socially if not mechanically. Play devolved into a game of “Gotchya!” and those sorts of campaigns never lasted long for me.

Well, that’s all for Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll delve into how this is relevant to RPG design (Hint: it’s really not so much anymore). Until then, take care of each other.

Peace,

-Troy

Is Publishing Really That Painful?

Heya,

The answer is yes. Over and over on podcasts and forums, you can see experienced independant RPG publishers talking about how painful the process of publishing really is. This post in an anecdote.

I was midway through my first series of DL-Quarterly. I had sent the PDF files of "Standoff!" to my printer, RapidPOD. RapidPOD was local for me. It is headquartered in Brandenburgh Kentucky, which is only a few minutes drive from where I live. I want to help the entreprenuers in my state, so I decided to work with them. The first two books, Cutthroat and Hierarchy came back fine. Shipping seemed a little slow, but I was ahead of my deadlines which made everything work out okay.

The PDF for Standoff! was a little complicated. I had very narrow margins, the book cover was mainly a big red rectangle, and I used some pretty wierd fonts. It wasn't anything a print on demand printer couldn't handle, though.

I submitted my book in April, expecing to get it back in June at the latest- plenty of time to get it before GenCon. I got a confirmation email when I uploaded the file to their site, and I thought everything was cool. I was just starting on my Master's degree and the end of the school year was coming up, so I was focussed on creating my final exams and finalizing my students' grades. You know, teacher stuff.

Anyway, June rolls by before I know it. I give the printer a call, and it turns out my file has been lost. So I upload it again, somewhat worried about getting to GenCon this year with my games. A couple more weeks pass, and I call again. RapidPod was going through some sort of management change and it might be a while before I got my books, but I was assured they'd arrive prior to GenCon which was toward the middle of August that year.

August comes. I get a box on my porch. I now what it is, and I'm relieved. I take it inside and open it up with my wife to find that all of the books are horribly miscut. The covers are nearly diagonal. Words are chopped off on half the pages and a bunch of the icons didn't print. I call up RapidPod (now Vixen Printing) and complain. They offer to resend my order, but state that from now on I'd have to order a minimum of 100 books. I was irate.

I didn't go to GenCon that year. My books arrived four weeks later. I switched printers for The Holmes and Watson Committee and finished up the first series for DL Quarterly. Then I just shut the whole thing down. The experience really turned me off from publishing for a long time. I know many have had to go through the same thing.

Don't go into this thinking it's easy. I'm proud of the work I did with Divine Legacy and my earlier work with Twilight Press. In the end, it was all worth it. I'd do it all over again without a second though. But that doesn't mean it wasn't painful. It was.

Peace,

-Troy

When Do I Abandon A Game?

Heya,

Let's deal with a heavy topic today: abandoning an RPG design. Abandoning a game can mean different things for different people. I know some designers that never commit to a design unless they know how and when they will finish it. In fact, they don't even begin designing a "game" until they have spent months designing potential mechanics and/or examining the themes they might want to consider for their design. They almost never quit on a project. Those kinds of people are rare.

I'm more in the second group. I'm willing to bet most people are. Right now, I have a Word document with over 85 sketched-out RPGs. What I mean by sketched-out is: the rudiments of Chargen, Resolution, Setting, and Advancement are planned out. There's a title and a targeted demographic. But of those 85+, I've only ever brought 1 to print: The Holmes and Watson Committee. Many designers probably have similar stories. There's a ton of games they've sketched out, written about, outlined, and dreamt of, but ultimately let it go for whatever reason. Sometimes, before the games really got off the ground.

But I want to talk about abandoning a game that is further down the line in development. This is a game where the designer has spent hours and hours writing it down. Spent hours and hours playtesting it. Spent hours and hours talking about it to friends, players, and Internet junkies. Maybe he has even published an Ashcan. This is a game that is well developed and has seen functional play at some level, BUT (and it's a big BUT) isn't achieving the kind of sustained, fun, and effectual play the designer wants.

Actually, most games that get published end up in that situation at some point. Playtesting will hum along fine, but there will be something missing or there will be some part of the mechanics that don't seem to work the right way. At this point, one of three things will happen. First, the designer will solve the problem. Perhaps he'll get some help form online forums or a blog. Perhaps one of the players will suggest a change that works out. Perhaps it will come in his sleep. Hey, it happens. However it comes, a solution presents itself and the designer jumps on it and development continues on its merry way.

Second, the designer will just publish it anyway. This is not all that desireable and is frequently the reason why the first edition of a game is quickly followed by a second.

The third eventuality is the most painful. The game is abandoned. It dies. But how does a designer make the choice to leave it and move on? It's an intensely personal thing and the designer has to take a hard look at himself in the process.

Designers are under development as much as their games are. I don't care if this is your first RPG or your thirtieth. Each game teaches you something about roleplaying and something about yourself. Publishing a game is a grueling, grueling process. Designers aren't joking when they say that. It's a personal expression of creativity, determination, and heart. The process changes you- usually for the best. And that's the important part: The Process Changes You.

When we start designing games, we have a certain skill set. Most of the first games we design are a lot like the games we enjoyed growing up. That's a good thing. But after the first one, our skill sets change, we add some new ones, and the next time around, the game is quite different from the last. Our taste, vision, and perspective change. This is a continual evolution for as long as the designer designs.

The decision to abandon a game comes when you aren't willing or you aren't able to change to suit the needs of the design. If you get to a point in your design where you are totally at a loss, where designing the game doesn't even make sense to you anymore, where you aren't willing to give up what you currently believe and currently enjoy to get it finished, it's time to leave the game behind. It can be painful because you know that the design is right there, just out of reach. But the skill set you currently possess is lacking to complete it, and there's no reconciling that.

It happens to the best of designers. Three high profile designs I can think of are Robots and Rapiers by Ralph Maza, Acts of Evil by Paul Czege, and Dragon Killer by Vincent Baker. Ralph, Paul, and Vincent know how to make games, but they got to a point in the designs of these games where they just couldn't take them any further. They had to abandon them and move on to other things. I don't presume for a moment to know what that meant to them personally. I'm sure it was difficult to some degree. But they made the choice, and as a result we have games like Apocalypse World and Blood Red Sands. So abandoning a game is not a bad thing. If it happens, it happens because it's a necessary thing.

So is that the end? No. Just because you abandon a game doesn't mean it's gone forever. Take the three examples from above. I spoke to Ralph about Robots and Rapiers about a year ago. He's filed the game away and plans to start over with it and publish it one day in the future. Vincent is returning to work on Dragon Killer after taking several years off. He learned a lot from publishing Apocalypse World and now feels he's ready to tackle the design problems for his former game. Paul has opened up Acts of Evil for anyone to develop. So it's very possible that someone, some day could publish a finished version of the game.

If you get to a point where your design requires something of you that you can't or don't want to give it, then it's okay to put it away and leave it behind. Maybe some day you'll be able to return to it. Maybe you won't. But if you chose to leave it behind, leave it behind. Abandon it. Don't let it hang over you. Move on to something else- it doesn't even have to be RPG design.

It's okay to abandon a game. And if making RPGs is really your passion, a new design that better matches your skills and interests will be just around the corner.

Peace,

-Troy

What is DFK?

Heya,

First in my retroactivist articles is DKF. DFK stands for "Drama, Fortune, Karma." In itself, that probably doesn't mean much. It was, to the best of my knowledge, originally cointed by Johnathan Tweet around 1995. The exact usage has changed some since Johnathan invented it for his game Everway. However, it was very instructional at the time and formed the basis for a lot of innovation in the years to come.

Drama, Fortune, and Karma refer to the three major types of resolution systems typically used in RPG design. Think of them as the Genuses in the Family of Resolution Systems. Each Genus has multiple species that are radically different from each other and impossible to recount in any detail here in this blog post. Each Genus has its own characteristics that help the players decide what happens and how.

What is Drama Resolution?

The Provisional Glossary defines Drama as: "Resolving imaginary events based on stated outcomes without reference to numerical values or (in some cases) statements that have been previously established (e.g. written on a character sheet)."

A definition is a good place to start but not really complete enough for understanding. Drama resolution systems are about forcing human-to-human negotiation and contact during play. In fact, negotiation becomes the centerpiece of any climactic situation, conflict of interest, or crisis. The players are expected to actively and verbally extend ideas for action within the game to advance the plot. The players must interact with each other.

This is usually accomplished through several, rather formulaic, methods. I really want to examine all the different ways these different resolution systems tackle resolving tasks and/or conflicts in their own isolated articles, so I'm just briefly going to describe what can go on during Drama Resolution here.

Most of the tinkering with Drama Resolution systems goes on in the area of assent. Just because a player states something happens, doesn't automatically make it so. Sometimes the group as a whole has to agree, sometimes just the GM, sometimes it's another player with whom the first player was interacting. It can be something as simple as Player A stating he leaps down the firepoll and Player B saying, "Okay, that's fine." Or it can require the use of currencies where Player A has to offer X number of tokens in the pot, then if anyone trumps his tokens with more tokens, that player gains narration rights unless someone trumps him and so on. Or the rules could require Player A to give all the other plays a certain number of his XP points in order to earn the right to narrate the action. However it works, the end result is that one (or more) players decides and then verbally describes how the situation resolves to the rest of the group.

What is Fortune Resolution?

This is the resolution system most of us are familiar with. The Provisional Glossary defines it as, "A method of resolution employing unpredictable non-behavioral elements, usually based on physical objects such as dice, cards, or similar."

Again, the definition is okay to start with, but needs to be unpacked some more. Let's get the obvious and boring out of the way first. Fortune mechanics can use any sort of randomizer like dice, spinners, cards, chicken bones, coins, or whatever to achieve some type of result. The key is, the result is unknown before the resolution system is put into action. There should be some mystery (i.e. unpredictability) to how the conflict, task, crisis, or action will be resolved. If there isn't, it might be Karma Resolution instead. But I think most everybody already knew that.

The key is the "non-behavioral" elements. The randomizer or whatever must be apart from the players. It can be something that they interact with, but must be something that acts or thinks impartially and independantly of the players' desires. There can be PLENTY of shenanegans that alter the result before or after the randomizer is used. In fact, those are often the most fun parts of the Fortune resolution system. But the randomizer must still remain an independant negotiator apart from the players themselves. It's almost the "invisible extra guy" at the table that mediates conflicts of interest.

There are a lot of abreviations associated with Fortune mechanics. You've probably seen things like FatB, FatE, FitM, FitMw/T or something along those lines. I'll give you a quick run-down of what they stand for but hold off on really going into detail about them until I can do an article just dedicated to Fortune Resolution.


FatB: Fortune at the Beginning

FatE: Fortune at the End

FitM: Fortune in the Middle

FitMw/T: Fortune in the Middle with Teeth

These types or "Species" of resolution systems also exist for Drama and Karma, but they aren't talked about very much. The terms above were developed by many authors over the years and discussed at length at the Forge. All this ties into IIEE, and I'll get into them more at a later date.
The thing that makes Fortune mechanics unique from the other is that it allows players to advance the action without necessarily interacting with anyone else. A roll of the die can decide if one charcter hits another and kills him, if one character successfully disarms a trap, or if the charasmatic rake woos the slutty bardmaid all without any input from the players other than the controler of the character. Fortune doesn't have to work that way, but it can work that way. Some see this as the key feature of the Genus; others see it as a drawback.

What is Karma Resolution?

Karma resolution is, "Resolution based on comparison of Effectiveness values alone." That's a very brief definition compared to Drama and Fortune. The reason is somewhat obvious- Karma is the simplest of the three. The character has a value, the conflict/task/situation has another value, and if the character's is higher, he or she succeeds.

The key feature of this method of resolution is who sets the values. Like Drama, this value is often arrived at using negotiaton among the participants. Often, it takes at least two people to make this thing work. The person playing the protagonist can't also play the opposition or the contests of the game fall flat and no one has any fun. Therefore there must be a GM or some other player/arbiter who chooses a target number for the conflict, scene, task, etc. How that number is chosen can be dealt with in a myriad of ways. The rules may suggest default values. The number could be arrived at using group consensus. It could be the result of various mathematical calculations.

Karma can seem somewhat rigid at times. Values can be strictly defined, and players can feel stymied by the fact that they can't do things at certain times. But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Karma Resolution is. Karma is there to inspire you to achieve greatness. Your character may not be able to scale that mountain right now, so go on some quests, build up your strength and your allies and THEN come back and see if you make it to the summit to see the Guru. Karma can be used to put more emphasis on the journey of a character instead of the destination. That's a little trite, but that's been my experience.

So is this Still Relevant to Design?

I think it certainly is. Fortune is the most developed of the three resolution systems. I think designers who want to break some new ground could really do some cool innovations with Drama and Karma. Aside from that, knowing what types of resolution systems are out there makes you a better designer. Each game calls for a different set of skills, or at the very least, a refinement of the skills you already have. You need a large toolkit to maximize your skills. DFK is one of the tools. Get to know it well, and your designs will improve.

Peace,

-Troy

So What's the Future of SD?

Heya,


What's the future here? That's a very interesting question. I'll tell ya where I've been for the last few months. I'm a Gamist at heart. That doesn't mean that's the only type of roleplaying I like, but I am what I am. And honestly, to get my Gamist itch scratched the best, I've found that Magic: The Gathering does better than any RPG I've played. Ew, the enemy, I know, but I love that game. I'm fairly decent at it too. I've won a few tournaments here and there, earned a few rewards from WotC's player's network. Overall, I've had a great time with it.


However, Magic requires more money and more time than RPGs. I think it was originally intended to take less of both, but that's just not the case. With a wonderful wife getting her Master's degree and a beautiful baby daughter added to my life, I just don't have time to be heavy into Magic anymore.


But writing about RPGs is a whole 'nother matter. I've been looking over the anthologies of Socratic Design, and I've found that some of the best articles I did examined the basic principals of RPG design and play. I meant this blog to be an introductory resource for RPG theory and design, and when I've focussed on that, things have turned out best.


So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going back over the early days of RPG design theory on the 'net and the indie rpg movement in general. Over the next few months, I'm going to the best of my limited ability examine some things that were discussed, disected, and diseminated years ago that we sort of take for granted now. RPG design has come a long way in the last 10 years, but I feel that designers new to the scene have missed out on a lot of the discussion. The foundational stuff like areas of exploration and resolution systems have been so integrated into people's thinking that they just don't come up on message boards anymore. With the Winter of the Forge recently announced, I feel it is an appropriate time.


Many of these concepts are automatic and understood, or at least partially understood. And that's where I feel the loss is. Newbies to the Forge or Story Games Praxis lack familiarity with the foundational conversations that took place seven to ten years ago. The inspiration provided by those conversations rolled out a string of seminal games like Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life with Master, The Mountain Witch, Polaris, Dust Devils, and Prime Time Adventures. I feel like something has been lost since then, and I want to provide a place for those who want to re-explore or re-familiarize themselves with those concepts to do just that.


Let me say in advance, I'm no expert on these. I'm merely relating what other- more brilliant- people have said and how it applies to game design. I'm not going to take any credit for creating these concepts. I'm just bringing them up again after years of dormancy.


Expect to see new articles here soon. They'll be on topics that you likely won't see at the Forge or Story Games anymore. If you're new or maybe lost in RPG design, I hope they will prove useful to you.


Peace,


-Troy

Socratic Design Anthology #5

Heya,

It's been a long time since I've done an Anthology, and I figure it's a good way to end the year. I don't always put my entries in chronological order. I prefer to arrange them more thematically. But first, I always list my previous anthologies for anyone new to Socratic Design. If you want to know what this blog is all about, here it is (please report any dead links):

Socratic Design Anthology #1
Socratic Design Anthology #2
Socratic Design Anthology #3
Socratic Design Anthology #4

Socratic Design Anthology #5:

-What Should I design?
-What Are Some Common Pitfalls?
-Another Pitfall
-What is Resolution?
-What Are Narration Rights?
-Is Character Advancement Necessary?
-What is the Mathematician Syndrome?
-What Do I Do if I Get Stuck?
-Whatever Happened to the Power 19?

Feel free to respond to any of those entries here. There's nothing wrong with replying to an Anthology post :)

Peace,

-Troy

What is the 'Mathematician Syndrome' ?

Heya,

Today I’m talking about a design problem that might be a little more personal rather than something more broad ranging.

What is it?

The Mathematician Syndrome is a term I came up with to describe a problem I sometimes have when designing a game. I envision how a player might play the game, and like it so much, that it becomes the only way to play the game. This issue can be very subtle, and I sometimes don’t realize I’m doing it at first. However, the further and further I get into the design and play, the more apparent it is.

A game is the victim of the Mathematician Syndrome when there is a single line of play or a single method of character creation (chargen) that is clearly optimal. So optimal, in fact, than any player who chooses another line of play or character generation is squeezed out or marginalized during actual play. To try to put it more clearly: The Mathematician Syndrome, in essence, is where the designer’s vision of the game unintentionally causes there to be only one possible way to “solve” the game, and once the game is solved, playing it in any other fashion becomes fruitless and uninteresting.

This design flaw (for my own purposes, I call it a flaw) is, I think, more particular to designs intended to support Gamist or Narrativist-oriented decision making during play, rather than any other creative agenda. I say that mainly because those are the types of games I prefer to write and play. I think that since we Gamists love to figure out the optimal settings for various characters, powers, and so on. It’s in our nature to try to “solve” the mathematics of a game to gain the upper hand. At the same time, though, we find any game that allows for a perfect solution, i.e. a single best way to play, lacking enough of a challenge to keep us interested. Narrativist designers can, at times, fall into the trap of creating a game where there is only one way to address the Premise. If the players don’t take certain actions, make specific decisions at specific times, or use a currency in just a precise way, then the entire point of the game is lost. Players are channeled into playing the game like they were the designer.

How is it applied?

The best way to illustrate this is with an example, I think. I once designed a game called: Lichdom. The game begins with players creating a relationship map, goals, and needs for their character. Characters are on a quest to become liches- this is presupposed. To get there, they have to sacrifice the people and things they hold dear to achieve immortality. However, if they sacrifice too much, the character loses his or her sanity, and the player loses the game (note: I think losing in RPGs is perfectly fine, but that is a topic for another time).

There are plenty of currencies and resources for the players to draw upon. However, after playtesting, it became apparent that there is magical number of relationships that you can sacrifice to gain lichdom without going insane. I think it turned out to be 8 exactly. Six or seven with a few bad rolls were often too few to assure undead-ness and nine or ten put the character at too much risk. Especially if the dice turned on their owner. After several attempts to tweak the currencies, character generation, and reward systems, it turned out that the premise of the game made it all too easy to just figure out the optimum number of resources one had to sacrifice and then drive toward that.

The result was a game that lacked any sort of challenge or mystery. Players knew exactly what they had to do, when they had to do it, and how much it would cost them. It undercut any sense of real “sacrifice” and eliminated any emotional attachment to the shared imagined space. The game felt “dead,” which is almost ironic since it’s about liches. But that wasn’t the feeling I was going for. To fix the problem would require an entire redesign. Which I did. But didn’t solve the problem. *sigh*

Instead, I discovered Mathematician Syndrome Lite. Mathematician Syndrome Lite is when there may be two or three lines of play that are clearly optimal but they do not interfere or compete with one another. I decided that there wasn’t enough conflict in the game and since everyone had the same goal (even the GM really) which was to attain lichdom, gaming the numbers was the only challenge left. So I changed the name of the game to “Liches vs. Paladins.” Players could choose to play a warlock attempting to become a lich OR a knight trying to become a paladin by trying to stop such things. I thought this was great! Players will be actively intriguing against one another, and the GM- if I end up needing one- can just be a referee.

I kept most of the rules for making liches and created similar rules for making a paladin. Since there were two, equal and opposite paths to success, I wasn’t concerned about the math so much. I should have been. I had hoped that the players would be devising ways to thwart each other from gaining resources and achieving goals. For instance, if a warlock needed to sacrifice his apprentice upon an altar, the knight could come and resurrect the lad and turn him into a squire. Or the lich could kidnap a paladin’s squire and sacrifice him for essence. I’m not going to bore you with the details of the game, but that’s sort of how play was envisioned.

It didn’t work out that way. The liches had their own relationships and resources that were separate from the Paladins’. The paladins’ paths to advancement were separate entirely from the liches’. As a result, the players hardly interacted at all until a climactic battle at the end when all characters had reached their highest power ratings. It ended up coming down to the results of a single dice roll. Wow. Sheer luck decides the outcome. I’m sure you can guess that no one really enjoyed it.

Why is it bad?

Despite the fact that there were two optimal choices in the second iteration of the game, the net affect was basically the same. The outcome was pretty much known from the beginning. Players’ decisions were almost entirely made for them by the rules. One just had to figure out the math properly. This made it really unfun. Game play and character generation became rote and stale. We could almost predict a player’s next move. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the two optimum paths never had to cross. They could be played concurrently without balancing each other out. Balance, in this case, meaning “proper support for the type of play you envision for your game.”

Once the proper mathematics of this type of game are discovered, the game is demystified. It’s like, “oh, so that’s how it ends.” This likely limits re-playability, and also runs the risk of de-legitimizing all the player decisions that led up to that point. It wasn’t the role-playing that mattered, it was the calculations in one’s head that made the difference. The interaction among the participants was entirely irrelevant to the game’s outcome. To me, that’s not fun. For a RPG, interaction among the participants is the essence of play- it’s why we do it. A good game will make that the most important feature of play.

Some players find it unfun if a game can be “solved.” In fact, I would venture to say that most do. Mystery, choice, challenge, and significant impact of player decisions are the key to a good roleplaying game, IMHO. The Mathematician Syndrome undercuts all of that.

How can it be avoided?

The best way to avoid the Mathematician Syndrome is playtesting. I know that’s probably the last thing you want to hear. Playtesting is one of the hardest parts of RPG design, but it is also the most necessary. In games with a significant amount of currencies and values, playtesting is the ONLY way to make sure you get the balance right. (see previous definition for balance).
First, I recommend you focus on idealized play, not mechanics. Decide what you want a session of your game to look like. Don’t worry just yet about numbers and equations. Think about actual play. What’s the pacing of your game like? How quickly do you want to move from scene to scene? How quickly should the game reach its climax? Consider those questions before you get really bogged down in the fiddly bits of your game. Once you have an idea of what play would look like around the table, you can go to setting your preliminary numbers. Those numbers- almost certainly- will be revised after your first few sessions of running the game.

Is it Always Bad?

With human beings in the realm of arts and creativity, it’s rare for something to always be bad. So, obviously, the answer is: “No.” If you want to create something, oh, like a one shot game that really packs a punch or makes a statement, then this is not a problem. In fact, it’s probably exactly what you want. There’s nothing wrong with a game that can be “solved” if that’s the exact effect you’re going for. The problem only arises when the Mathematician Syndrome shows up unintentionally in a design. If you want your game to have some longevity or re-playability, then the Mathematician Syndrome most likely is best stamped out if at all possible. Otherwise it can just kill players’ drive to stick with the game.

Peace,

-Troy

What Are Narration Rights?

Heya,

This might be one of the most important issues I ever take up on Socratic Design. I hope I can do it justice. In fact, if I’m not happy with the way this article turns out, I’ll probably do a part 2 later some time.

Defined simply, Narration Rights are the ability to describe what happens during play with the credibility that makes what was described established as fact in the game’s fiction. Okay, so maybe that’s not so simply. Let me try to rephrase. Narration Rights basically dictate who can say what matters when.

Narration Rights pass around quite frequently in all games. There are two main instances when Narration Rights and who has them are important- In-Resolution and Plot-development. Plot development is narration designed to move the characters through parts of the game where there aren’t any conflicts or challenges. Examples might be traveling on a road, describing the interior of a bar, an exposition on the history of a place/item/person, or just general description. I’m not going to talk a lot about this type of narration. Vincent does an excellent job explaining it in his Roleplaying Theory Hardcore article entitled, “Roleplaying’s Fundamental Act.” I highly recommend that article. Usually one person is designated as having Narration Rights when it comes do framing scenes or describing items/locations.

The other type of narration, the in-resolution narration, is more important and interesting to what I’m doing here at Socratic Design. If you haven’t read my post on Resolution systems previously, I recommend it. I’ll be basing a lot of what I say in this article on what I wrote there.

In-Resolution Narration Rights can exist at any of the stages in IIEE. In the beginning… Narration Rights for resolution systems were strictly allocated. In most games the non-GM players were given rights to describe what their characters did during the Intent and Initiation phases of resolution while the GM was given the right to describe what happened in the Execution and Effect parts of resolution. For instance, in AD&D you could say that your character was swinging his sword. However, if you fumbled, it was up to the GM to describe why and what the consequences were. In other games, the EE might have been left up to “non-partial” rules and sourcebooks. A good example would be Rolemaster. The players could narrate that their characters were swinging their swords, but upon rolling, the players or GM would consult a weapons table that would describe (in detail) the amount of damage, injuries, bleeding, and consequences of each strike. However, it was never left up to the players in these games to describe what came after the roll. At least not according to the rules.

Games that followed this tradition were molded in the image of Dungeons and Dragons which invented that dichotomy of Narration Rights. The dominance of that method of delineation of narration existed for decades, and really, one could even say that today most mainstream games follow it. This method is also more a feature of Task Resolution systems rather than Conflict Resolution systems, but that’s not absolute.

While giving the GM control of the final two or even the final one step of resolution has been the traditionally accepted method of allotting Narration Rights, I have a significant problem with it. First, it denies the players the ability to really see his/her character through a challenge or conflict. They have to let someone else describe what their character does or suffers. Second, it stymies group creativity when so much of the narration burden is placed on one person’s shoulders. GM burn-out is a real thing and can really poison a group’s social contract. Finally, and most importantly, strict separation of narration rights very easily can neuter the importance of success or failure. Let me explain what I mean.

Let’s take an old standby RPG example- sneaking past some guards. Specifically, let’s say the situation is that the player-character wants to get by the guards to gain entrance to a building. First, let’s take an Actual Play experience I had in a game I played once called Mechwarrior:

Player: I want to sneak past the guard to the door on the other side of the room. (Intent)

GM: That’s fine, modifier is 2. Go ahead (Initiation).

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a success.] (Execution)

GM: You get past that guard, but on the other side of the divider is another guard taking a coffee break. He notices your character, what do you do? (Effect)

In this instance, the GM totally negated the roll by the player. The GM controlled both the setting and the Effects of the rolls, so he wasn’t breaking the rules. He was just simulating the break room for the guards at a military installation. The Player’s ambitions and goals were secondary to the whim of the GM or perhaps the information provided by the adventure module we were using. The roll became meaningless because no matter the outcome, a guard would have discovered the player character. One has to ask, what was the point of rolling, then? It’s a good question.

Let’s review that same situation but instead, the Player has Narration Rights over the Effect of the resolution mechanics.

Player: I want to sneak past the guard to the door on the other side of the room. (Intent)

GM: That’s fine, modifier is 2. Go ahead (Initiation).

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a success.] (Execution) Sweet! My character slips past the guard and makes it through the door to the server room unnoticed. (Effect)

OR, let’s have him fail:

Player: Here I go! [He rolls against his character’s Sneak ability. It’s a failure.] (Execution) Ack! The guard notices me when I bump into a table. (Effect) I draw my taser and try to hit him before he can sound the alarm.

In both of those instances, the player’s actions, rolls, and goals are front and center in play. The GM helps facilitate the action without dictating success or failure. The dice rolls matter. They affect the play in a permanent and meaningful way.

Let’s take another- searching a room a clue in a mystery game. My experience from Call of Cthullu:

Player1: I want to pick the lock on this roll-top desk.

GM: That’s fine, roll for it.

Player1: My skill is 65. [Rolls a 75. Failure]

Player2: I look under in the wastepaper basket for anything useful.

GM: Roll a spot check.

Player 2: [Rolls an 88. Failure] Drat!

Player 3: Let me have a try at the desk. [Skill is 43. Roll is 55. Another failure]

GM: Okay. You fail to get the desk open, but on top of the desk is an open envelope. There’s an old parchment inside and…

In this instance, the GM has negated the effect of a failure. One might not think that this is as bad as the guard example, but really it almost is. There were no consequences for the failures. However, the GM had to make up something to keep the action going. Otherwise the game would have stopped. If the players had the Narration Rights to describe the outcomes and consequences of a failure, the action might not be stymied. For instance, it could turn out this way:

Player1: I want to pick the lock on this roll-top desk.

GM: That’s fine, roll for it.

Player1: Player1: My skill is 65. [Rolls a 75. Failure] Okay, I break the lockpick in the lock and suffer 2 damage but manage to get the thing open. Inside I find documents that link the businessman to the cult we discovered…

That’s not an easy thing to do in a game design. I know this from personal experience. It took me a long time to get the mechanics of The Holmes and Watson Committee right. And then it took my play group a while to get used to them. However, I have found it is much more satisfying for players (and the GM too honestly) if they get to describe what happens to their characters. The action and the fiction of the game center much more around what all the participants want to do rather than preconceived plans by one player.

Even if your game breaks down the Narration Rights to the Player gets to narrate all successes, the GM gets to narrate all failures is better than the GM gets to narrate all Executions and Effects. But even then, I feel that’s not very challenging both as a designer and a player.

Do you HAVE to do it that way? Of course not! Your vision for your game may require a more traditional method of allocating narration rights. But don’t let that be your default position because it’s easier. Challenge yourself and your play group.

Peace,

-Troy

What is Resolution?

Heya,

I’m going to tackle a rather large topic today- Resolution. This is one of the most necessary parts of a RPG and also one of the most thorny. It seems that almost every game has a different one. There’s been some attempts at OGL’s and Creative Commons like D20, The Shadow of Yesterday, and maybe a few others. If they fit for your game, I encourage you to use them. However, from my own experience, I’ve found that independent RPG designers really like to create their own Resolution system.

Resolution is a part of System, but not the whole of it. It is one method that can be used to decide what happens in-game. I’ve divided this entry up into three main parts: IIEE, Task Resolution, and Conflict Resolution. Hopefully by the end of it, you’ll understand Resolution a little bit more and be in a better position to evaluate the resolution system you have in your RPG or need for your RPG.

Generally, most resolution systems follow a particular order of operations called IIEE, or Intent-Initiation-Execution-Effect. You are probably already familiar with these even if you’ve never been exposed to that term before. Sometimes each step in IIEE is very formalized within a game’s mechanics, and other times they’re left up to the players to hash out during play. I’ll give you a brief overview of each term before delving into the two main types of resolution systems.

IIEE

Intent- Intent is all about real-world announcement of what the players want the characters to do in-game. Shooting an arrow, hacking a computer system, talking down two strangers in a gun fight, romancing the femme fatale, are all examples of a character’s intent. As I’m sure you well know, announcing something doesn’t mean it actually happens.

Initiation- At this point the characters have moved into action. This is not to be confused with another game term “initiative.” Some games allow players to roll (or use some other method) to see in what order their characters will act. Sometimes that method precedes the Intent phase of Resolution, sometimes it precedes Initiation. Be careful not to confuse the two. Initiation is where the character is doing something. No more announcements about the particular character who is in action may be made.

Execution- In this phase, the action is completed. We know whether or not the character has succeeded or failed. None of the consequences of that action are dealt with here. This is purely the phase where success, failure, or something in between is decided.

Effect- This is where the ramifications of the action are adjudicated. Damage to one’s hit points are counted, death checks are made, fallout is decided, modifications to areas of the Exploration like Setting, Character, or System are incorporated into the game, and so on. Here is where the tangible changes to the in-game narrative happen.

The important thing, from a design standpoint, is to realize that at each step currencies can be spent, bargaining between players can take place, and modifiers can be added. Typically, games focus just on developing currencies for one area- usually Initiation or Effect. However, there is plenty of design space at each one. Open up the possibilities in your mind as you consider your design. You might decide that only one or two steps should be affected by currency or modifiers in your game. That’s cool. But don’t let that be your default position.

RESOLUTION SYSTEMS

There are two main types of Resolution systems used in modern RPGs I’m going to talk about: task and conflict. For a long time, really, only task resolution existed. I remember the early days of the Indie RPG movement when designers started experimenting with conflict resolution. The wars that had to be fought on billboard forums to establish its legitimacy were vicious. I don’t think that designers who come to RPG creation now-a-days really have a grasp at how hard guys like Ron Edwards, Jared Sorenson, John Wick, and Clinton Nixon had to fight to fend off attacks on what they were doing. See Vincent Baker’s “Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore” if you want to taste a slice of what it was like. Anyway, that’s probably a story for another time. Brief definition of the two: Task Resolution looks at the component actions that must be taken to solve a conflict, while Conflict Resolution tackles the entire conflict in whole often without necessary regard to the minute methods or skills used.

TASK RESOLUTION:

Task resolution is fairly simple. A character is trying to perform some action and the player uses dice, cards, fate points, or some other mechanic/resource to see if it happens. Opposition is usually provided by some static difficulty factor or perhaps environmental obstacles that make performing the action more difficult. Famous games that have employed this type of resolution include Dungeons and Dragons, Rolemaster, Call of Cthullu, GURPS, Star Wars D6, and Palladium.

The arguments over which method to use like roll-under, roll-over, dice pools, fate points, poker cards, d100 vs. d20, taking a twenty, and so on are basically meaningless. Task resolution is about whether or not a character will be able to perform a single act or a series of actions successfully. It doesn’t deal with the player’s goal, long-term consequences of those actions, or anything beyond what’s happening immediately.

Task resolution is really great for “crunchy” games where the point of play is to pit your characters against challenges and see if your strategy as a player can overcome them. Gamists tend to like task resolution because it gives them a chance to step up and show off their strategies, equipment, and skills. It’s not an absolute must-have type thing for Gamists. They can enjoy games with conflict resolution as well, but in my experience, the advantages of using a task resolution system really shine when creating a game about facing physical challenges and obstacles.

Task resolution is also quite good for capturing the “essence” of a Setting or System in order to reinforce that Setting or System. For instance, I played a lot of Mechwarrior RPG back in the 90’s (I am getting so freaking old!). It used task resolution to simulate the decisions a mech pilot has to make during combat. Why I was fighting my opponent in the mech or my character’s long-term goals were irrelevant to the mechanics. It was all about reinforcing the sense of decision making under pressure. That’s not engrossment or immersion as some may be tempted to call it. The task resolution system was implemented to strictly reinforce the expectation that the goal of play was to experience (as best as possible) what it would be like to be a mech pilot.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:

Conflict resolution on the other hand takes a look at a bigger picture. Rather than concern itself with a blow-by-blow account of what happens like task resolution does, it instead focuses on character or player intent. Some of the better-known games that have used this form of resolution include Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Universalis, The Shadow of Yesterday, Polaris, and Spirit of the Century. There are two main methods I’ve seen for handling conflict resolution: setting stakes and stating intentions.

Setting stakes has fallen out of favor somewhat as the years have gone by. It’s easy to see why. When setting stakes, players will negotiate the outcome of a contest before any dice are rolled (or whatever mechanic is used to see who wins). Each player describes what will happen if they win the contest, and then tradeoffs and qualifications are added as necessary. This continues until all players involved in the contest are satisfied, then they roll (or whatever). Whoever wins gets to narrate what happens and fill in any details that were left out during the stakes setting portion of the resolution.

The potential problem with this type of conflict resolution is that the stakes can get out of hand. “If I win, I get to rule the world!” is what it can degenerate into if one is not careful. This method can sometimes put the “Effect” part of Resolution before the “Initiation” part. That can lead to a great deal of confusion and an anti-climactic (and thus less satisfying) ending for a long, drawn out conflict. A game designer may have to incorporate rules for backing down on stakes and starting over if they get too high for the players to agree on like in Polaris. A strong Social Contract is needed in order to keep things from spiraling too far out of control. A good example of how this is done right can be found in Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard. A good example of how this can be done totally wrong is in my game, Hierarchy.

The other type of conflict resolution- and probably the one much easier to work with as a designer- is stating intentions. For instance, when two players come into conflict, i.e. characters they are playing have opposing goals, each will state his or her character’s intended action. One player might say, “My ranger intends to leap across the table, disarm his foe, and back him into a corner for interrogation.” The GM then might say, “The villain intends to dodge your lunge, grab the jewels, and escape out the second story window.” Players then take their dice and roll (or use cards or whatever) to see whose intentions get to be implemented. The winning player then narrates how it actually happens.

While those two systems may seem similar there is a big difference. Most games are more complex than my simple example between the ranger and the villain. There’s a lot that can happen before, during, and after players roll dice. Lots of currency and resources can be spent to alter the outcome, and unlike with task resolution, partial success can actually mean something here. A partial success for the ranger might be disarming the villain. While a partial success for the villain might be to escape without grabbing the jewels. It’s all up to the narration of the players once the dice are done.

And I think that’s the important facet of conflict resolution, or one of the important facets anyway. With task resolution, the outcomes are dictated by the rules. If you fail your lock picking skill check, the lock stays shut (and often a second attempt is forbidden). You can always add in narration if you want, but it has no way to mechanically affect the success/failure in the game according to the rules. Any effect it does have is decided at the Social Contract level among the players and then implemented into the System (big S) afterwards. With conflict resolution, the players (remember the GM counts as a player too) dictate the outcomes. Getting a bad roll while trying to pick a lock can mean all sorts of things. It could be that the lock is picked, but trapped. It could mean that the character is shot during the process. It could mean that the lock pick is now jammed in the door. These are very simplistic examples, and I hope they don’t make you think that conflict resolution is just task resolution with talking. It isn’t. Conflict resolution decides who gets narration rights to say what did and did not happen in-game, and more importantly, it decides if a character achieves his or her goal.

Conflict Resolution is, I feel, best suited for games that want to emphasize moving the narration and plot along rather than overcoming discrete challenges and physical obstacles. While those two things are certainly part of the conflict in games that employ conflict resolution, the physical movements of the players aren’t as important as the story that’s being told. The throw of the fist, the hurl of an insult, or the smile of a seductress are not seen as wholly different from each other in the way that task resolution might differentiate them. The key is not focusing on individual actions but instead on individual motivations. I hope that’s not too confusing or repetitive.

Let’s wrap this up. First, this is not a matter of scale. If you believe Task Resolution focuses on minute actions, you’re wrong. If you believe Conflict Resolution can’t be used to cover blow-by-blow combat, you’re wrong. The difference between the two methods can be described as “what’s at risk.” Take again the very common RPG motif: picking a lock. You find it in fantasy, sci-fi, westerns, whatever. Genre isn’t important. Let’s add some Color, though. Let’s say the character wants to pick the lock so he can successfully spy on people in the next room. Task Resolution puts the success of picking the lock at risk. Failure in that lone action negates (or potentially negates) any further actions taken to implement the character’s motivation. The roll (or whatever) only decides if the lock can be picked and will likely be modified by the physical construction and intricacy of the lock. That’s all.

Conflict Resolution on the other hand isn’t really concerned about the lock, or rather isn’t really concerned about just the lock. It’s concerned about the character’s motivation- to spy on the other people. The roll (or whatever) won’t be modified just by the lock’s physical properties, but the physical properties of the room, the determination of the “other people” not to be spied on, methods being employed by those who want to stop the character from spying, and so on. The lock is part of it, not the whole of it. What’s at risk (and this is the important part) is whether or not the character learns anything by spying on the other characters i.e. satisfies his motivation.

Is that then assuming he gets past the lock? No. If the results of the roll (or whatever) determine that the character fails to learn anything, it could be because of the lock. Or it could also be because the walls were too thick. It could be because the others were talking low. It could be that the character’s nemesis was hiding in the room and challenged him to a duel before he could eaves drop. It could also be that there was a woman and her baby crying in the other room, or something else more interesting in the room distracted him. The possibilities are limited just by the narration and players’ imaginations. A roll that does not grant the character’s desire is not a failure per se, it is instead an invitation to add complication. For task resolution, a failure means “stop, try something else.”

Task Resolution is exploring the challenge of performing a particular action; Conflict Resolution is exploring the challenge of gaining advantage over other characters.

A RPG necessarily has to have some type of Resolution system. There’s no getting around that because sooner or later, characters will come into conflict. If they don’t, then you really don’t have a narrative of any kind. Sometimes the conflicts are on a grand scale, like fighting for the immortal souls of a town full of people. Other times it’s fairly simple like cracking open a safety deposit box. Either system can, eventually, resolve the conflict. Decide which best suits the type of play you envision for your game and then begin developing in that direction.

Peace,

-Troy

Whatever Happened to the Power 19?

Heya,

I think a good subtitle for this blog entry might be “4 Years = Forever.” Just last week, the Power 19 celebrated its fourth birthday. In human years that’s very little time. In RPG years, that was a metaphorical century ago. Each year the innovation and improvement in RPG design- especially Indie RPG design- is so great, that it almost represents a whole new generation. Each GenCon gives birth to an entirely new and improved breed of game. So it’s not surprising, really, that in the last four years the Power 19 has gone from “new-punk, anti-gaming-establishment design tool” to “old stodgy design crutch that is far too restrictive for modern design forums.”

So how did that happen? Well it may surprise you that, originally, the Power 19 was never meant to be used as a design tool per se. In fact, it was nothing more than a question bank intended to be used by Forge veterans to help newbie designers get started or get past a particular design hurdle.

I want to take you back to where it started: Troy’s Standard Rant #3. I modeled this after Mike Holmes’ Standard Rants which I encourage you to search for and read on the Forge at your earliest convenience. This is where I introduced the Power 19. I spent a ton of time slogging through hundreds of posts by Vincent Baker, Ralph Maza, Mike Holmes, and many others on the Forge. I looked for patterns- questions that came up over and over in design discussions. I collated them, studied them, and then condensed them. The list eventually grew as large as 21. But two of them I felt were rather redundant, and so meshed them with a couple others and bang! The Power 19 popped out. I posted them in my Standard Rant #3 and asked for feedback. I think the discussion in that thread was very good and helpful, and by the end of it I felt I had a pretty solid question bank for Forge veterans to use.

I think the key sentence in that thread is, “Be careful when using these in the Indie-Design forum, however. I don’t recommend asking all 19 questions at once to someone who just posted a brief sketch of their game. I’m pretty sure that would overwhelm them. Instead, walk them through 2-3 questions at a time- especially if they are a new designer. When those questions are resolved to satisfaction, move on to the next few.” That captures the initial intent of the Power 19.

For a brief time, the Power 19 was used as intended. It wasn’t specifically talked about much beyond the RPG Theory forum on the Forge. I never intended it to be; never guessed it would be. However, when I posted it on my blog (following the shut down of the Theory and GNS forums on the Forge) things began to change. I posted Part 1 on January 19, 2006. I wanted to explore the Power 19 some more and talk about the refinements and qualifications that had come up since I first compiled them. Since I knew it would be a lengthy post, Part 2 didn’t come until a week later.

I phrased Part 1 the way I did because I wanted my blog to be about helping new designers. I figured if someone was checking out my blog, A) they had to search pretty hard to find it, and B) if they did search that hard, they must have a game design waiting in the wings that they need help on. Those were probably not safe assumptions. Rather than try to accomplish that through the comments option on my blog post, I wanted the Power 19 to serve as a surrogate “Troy.” So, I encouraged people to take the Power 19 and run their game through it to see if there was any issues they had not addressed. Sort of like a conversation, even though I wasn’t present.

I don’t think people really started doing that until Ron recommended it to Christopher Peterson. This was at the height of the Ronny Award contests (which was probably my happiest time in the RPG design scene). Ron said of Socratic Design, “Just post responses to any of the topics he's posted already, and you'll see your own game design suddenly boom.” This was a couple weeks before I posted the Power 19 there. Everyone was big into the mutualism the Ronnies inspired, and so doubtless many nascent designers read that post and started using Socratic Design as a resource. Even though it preceded the Power 19 on SD, I think it raised awareness about the work I was doing here. When the P19 was posted, it had been-by extension- already legitimized by Ron as acceptable material to use in forum posts.

I think it was with Part 2 when things started to change. By then, three people had used the Power 19 explicitly to talk about their game on the Forge. I could see that the use of the Power 19 was changing before my eyes, so I wrote an entirely different post than I first planned. You can see from the third or fourth sentence that I didn’t care for the way the questions were just listed and then answered. “They don’t ask for specific feedback!” I wrote. I could tell, even then that it would be a problem if people started post the Power 19 and nothing else. In response, Clinton R. Nixon, Ben Lehman, and Tony LB posted three of the finest Power 19’s ever done IMHO. I still enjoy reading Clinton’s to this day.

At this point, though, I don’t really remember how popularized the Power 19 was. For the rest of January is was still relatively obscure IMO. That changed in February. Ross Winn highlighted the Power 19 in one of his articles entitled Close to the Edit #30: In Search of Heisenburg. There really wasn’t much follow up in the forum over it, but seeing the Power 19 on RPGnet was- I have to admit- gratifying for me and eye opening for many others. From there, the use of them began to really increase.

You could check the First Thoughts forum of the Forge and generally see two or three posts that included them. On Story Games or RPGnet, there would occasionally be a post that either referenced the Power 19 or used them explicitly to talk about a game (Andy eventually asked people to stop posting them on Story Games, I believe). Several people posted them on their blogs. Sadly, some of those blog posts have been lost. I honestly think that those are actually some of the most valuable examples of how the P19 could be used outside the conversation starter context. However, during this time the use of the Power 19 on forums stayed the same. People would often just post the questions and their answers without asking for specific feedback or prefacing their post with any kind of context for the reader. It was becoming cumbersome to read.

I think the first people to really speak out against posted on Story Games. It was in this thread that Shreyas expressed his concerns. Andy Kitkowsky and Jon Walton (for other reasons) jumped in as well. Some in the thread wanted to create another set of questions to answer in forum posts. I was against this at the time since the Power 19 had already showed what a bad idea that was. If ever there was going to be a set of questions or something along those lines to challenge the Power 19, I think it would have happened here. As a result of this thread, I think, the P19 was solidified as some kind of pre-eminent authority on how questionnaire templates for RPG design should look. You can almost see here how any vestiges of the Power 19’s role of being conversation starters in design forums was lost during this thread and instead replaced by the default mindset of “the Power 19 is something to be answered en masse in a public forum.” It was mainly my fault for not reminding people of my original intent with the P19. I was too focused on discouraging another overbearing set of questions being created and the foisted on newbie designers. Back then, I didn’t realize how important that thread would become in defining the role of the Power 19- especially for veterans of the Forge.

If there was a chance to get the Power 19 back to where they should have been, it was right there. But the allure of a template that helped you design a game was too much, I think. Even the person who started the thread to express concerns wrote directly to me in that thread and said, “Please, please put the P19 somewhere permanent, not a blog, but like a proper-style website or a print publication or something, and talk about how you arrived at it and what sort of design thinking it comes from and what it builds. This is stuff that needs to be...what's the word? Needs to be put into that kind of form, set in a story about its strengths and contests, preserved.” I maybe should have done that, but I think it would have made the Power 19 even more ensconced as the de facto method for discussing design.

Several more months passed and the Power 19 had been around about a year and a half. It was helping many designers refine their games, challenge their assumptions, and post their designs on the Forge and other places. Podcasting was becoming a larger and larger part of the Indie RPG scene. Paul Tevis had been doing it for quite some time and had a rather large following. His show opened the gates for many other podcasters to come through. One of those new podcasts (new at the time, that is) was Canon Puncture. They interviewed me in March or April about the Power 19. Looking back on that now, it seems like it was forever ago. I can tell I was really caught up in the excitement of it all, but I can also tell that the Power 19 was having a significant effect on game design. Many designers from all over were using it to help them orient themselves in relation to their design. For that purpose, I think the Power 19 is really good. I look back at this interview very fondly. I was proud of what the Power 19 was accomplishing outside the online forums.

By now the Forge Diaspora was fully matured and the old guard started returning to their cradle so to speak. In May 2007 Andy Kitkowski started a thread under Site Discussion at the Forge entitled, “Practical Things we can individually do to Revitalizing the Forge?” In that thread, Ralph Maza (Valamir) posted, “I suggest that all veteran Forge designers (current regulars or diasporized) post a Power 19 for their current and future designs to First Thoughts. These can then serve as a template, a supply of good examples to help make the Power 19s posted by new designers more useful.”

Actually, this was a really good idea. If long time veterans could find a way to make the Power 19 viable for forum discussion, that would go a long way making them more useful. Also, it would provide a series of models for new designers to look at and get ideas. I was fully behind this. Here are some examples of what people posted at that time:

Christian/Xenopulse’s P19
Ralph’s P19
Northerain’s P19
My P19

I followed this up with a blog post called, “Why should I post my Power 19?” I gave three reasons. I only agree with two of them now that I look back. I have to take issue with what I wrote here, “Phooey! Feedback, even misguided or lackadaisical can be useful to a designer as it help you reinforce and defend your ideas. At worst, the feedback will help you sharpen your edge.” While technically true I suppose, the problem is if such feedback becomes the norm, then the overall quality of the forum begins to decline. Forums like the First Thoughts forum for the Forge are about exploring new designs and helping nascent game designers overcome their hurdles. It’s not about glory-hogging for veteran designers nor about clogging it up with a particular design exercise. The Power 19 posts that came from this era were useful and instructive, in my mind, but they perpetuated the idea that the Power 19 was really the “right way” to talk about a game in First Thoughts.

For the next year use of the Power 19 grew both in online forums and in offline use for designers. It became very prevalent at the Forge. It was during this time, though, that my involvement with RPGs mostly came to a close. There were several reasons. First, my long time playgroup- one that lasted since 1996 finally dispersed. We got old, got careers, and started getting families. The distances between us finally became so great that they could not be overcome for the sake of roleplaying. It is really hard to talk about RPGs if one is not playing RPGs. Second, the games I was designing became more and more like the one that got me into adventure gaming in the first place- Magic: the Gathering. I decided to pick it up again after leaving it in ’99. To my surprise, I discovered I was actually decent at it and have won several tournaments since ’07. The Gamist in me was getting satisfied even though RPGs were no longer a large part of my entertainment. Third, I finished up my Master’s degree but began my National Board Certification for teaching. Thus my education ate even deeper into my free time. Three years running of writing for educational purposes was sapping my will to write for entertainment purposes.

The result was I was no longer able to shepherd designers using the Power 19. I had no problem conversing with people on the First Thoughts forum who posted P19’s, but it is apparent that was not the case for everyone. By 2008, some of the old concerns were resurfacing. Anders Larsen posted a topic in Site Discussion called, “Ideas for how to get better feedback in First Thoughts.” His main complaint was, “Where Power 19 is a good design tool, it is not a very good starting point for a discussion if you are looking for feedback/suggestions on your system. The problem is that Power 19 put a lot of focus on asking about mechanics, but not so much focus on the basic concepts of the game.”

The thread was short, and had Ralph posted a link to a really good thread for getting feedback. There was even some agreement with Anders when Ron said, “I especially agree with you that the Power 19 is a good tool for orienting oneself about a game in design (if that's needed), but is not as useful as a presentation tool.” However, nothing really came of that thread. The use of the Power 19 continued on First Thoughts. One can see from threads at the time from the Forge, Story Games, and RPGnet (I’m not going to bother to link them) that the Power 19 was a very helpful tool for game designers. But its use as a conversation tool was still stuck in the 2006 mode. No serious attempt had been made either to get people to stop using the Power 19 in design forums or develop a methodology for responding to the Power 19. This is partly my fault for not being around anymore, but each person involved with the “indie rpg scene” has the right to walk away at any time. I definitely feel regret that I wasn’t there for many new designers during this period, but I am pretty happy with the life choices I have made since walking away.

Finally, in mid July 2009, Luke Crane lashed out and the use of the Power 19. Though it is apparent he made no attempt to look back at the history of the Power 19 and its use, and despite the fact that his post is rife with misconceptions about the P19, he was right to bring up the topic. At times you could see a page on First Thoughts full of threads where two thirds or more of them had [Power 19] in the title. Most of them had maybe 2-5 responses. Designers just weren’t getting feedback. It was probably a combination of boredom with reading the Power 19 over and over for four years, my long absence, and a general shift in who was participating at the Forge that led up to that post. The Power 19- which had originally been designed to challenge the ideas of traditional game design concepts- had become a traditional game design concept itself. Just as Hit Points or GMs had become sacred cows of RPG design in the 90’s, the Power 19 had become a sacred cow of RPG design on the Forge. Sacred cows are meant to be sacrificed.

Just to speak a little bit about my involvement in that thread: I was not disagreeing with Luke that the Power 19 was horrible for conversation on the First Thoughts forum. I agreed whole heartily with that. I did, however, take issue with what he and Paul were suggesting- the Power 19 is completely worthless. There are four years of threads and personal accounts that state otherwise. Designers of all stripes used it, and to denigrate their designs is the antithesis of what I’ve experienced to be the Forge ethos. I was honestly appalled at some of what I read in that thread. A more reasoned approach was taken by Adam Dray a few days later.

Luke’s thread, though, prompted Ron to post new rules (the old ones had lasted for the first 3 years) for the First Thoughts forum. Specificaly, they addressed the Power 19: “In short, don't post 19 questions and answers. It's too much to read all at once. It puts people off. It's a long, one-way conversation that is too late to interrupt. Tell us what your game is about and who the characters are and what the characters do. That's a good start.”

I really like what Ron wrote in that entire section. I think it’s a good rule for the First Thoughts forum on the Forge, and it is my hope that now the Power 19 can have a chance to get back to what it was intended to be: probing questions to be used as conversation starters for new designers.

Where the Power 19 goes from here is hard to say. No doubt it will still be widely used offline as a good orienting tool and design strategy. I’m positive it will be passed on for years to come, and I’m glad that it has helped so many designers overcome the hurdles of RPG design. I’m proud to have contributed a verse.

I hope that this wasn’t too tedious or boring. I know it’s long. I hope to have something more substantive as far as design goes in the near future. However, I think this article is important in one way. It’s rare to get a look at the history of independent RPGs. Occasionally Ron will post something about it on the Forge, but very rarely. If you’re new to indie design, I hope that this article gives you a peek at a very small facet of that movement over the last four years. I believe it’s good to know where you’ve come from in order to have a good idea of where you’re going. Until next time!

Peace,

-Troy