What do I like? What do I dislike? The answer to both questions might be "limits on my characters." In this, our final installment of Matt Talks About Roleplaying At Greater Length Than Anyone Really Wanted, we examine one of my greatest Likes and quite probably my single biggest Dislike...
LIKE: LANGUAGES
Two years ago I was running a D&D game for some teenagers. Most of them had little or no roleplaying experience, so I gave them some props to help with character creation. One was a notecard with around 9 different language options on it. The official D&D language options are boring, so it was a list of languages I made up along with notes like "The language of a rival nation" or "Obscure click-language known only to scholars." Nothing special there - except that they got sooo into it. Forget the decisions about race and class; these new players' imaginations were fired by the choice between speaking Rivan or Jajanya. And of course, most of them took the obscure click-language.
Languages are a fast, entertaining way to customize a character. They provide an interesting choice -- should you be practical or quirky? They also cause you to ask: where has your character gone and who have they known? When I make a 350-point Champions character, those 2 points I invest in Spanish or Arabic have as much to do with defining him as the 60 points I put into Energy Blast.
Languages also let the GM define a world very quickly. How many cultures are there? Are they related in some way? How prominent or obscure are they? Take 5 languages and come up with a sentence for each, explaining who speaks it and why. You've got the foundation of a world right there. Language lists are one of the best setting-generation tools out there.
DISLIKE: CLASSES
Don't tell me how to play my character.
Don't tell me that there are only 8 ways to be, and that I have to pick one for all time. Don't tell me that characters are interchangeable units. Don't tell me that your game defines people by how well they fit an arbitratry role. Don't slap me with limits on how I can play.
Character classes are a barrier to fun and a prison for imagination. I have never seen a game that was improved by them. Aside from hanging out with my friends, I think PCs are the very best thing about roleplaying. My character is an expression of my interests; it tells the GM what kinds of things I want to do. Give me options. Don't give me classes - they're a straightjacket. Classes are a way of saying There Is One Right Way To Play. And there isn't. So get rid of them.
I've practiced what I preach here. My various abortive Cyberpunk games have been class-free. I created a pretty effective class-free version of D&D 4E. I didn't do the same with my 3.5 stuff, but I did create new classes with great abandon, so that players would have more freedom to play what they wanted to play. For what it's worth, I created a new core class that Monte Cook put in his "Year's Best d20." It's called the yogi, it's rooted in Hindu mythology (and my desire for a Constitution-based character), and it's pretty good. I think I know a few things about how to make classes work.
But it's better to not have classes at all.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Mattifesto?
Hark, it's the penultimate entry in what one person has dubbed the Mattifesto. Nothing too dramatic here -- the symmetry-loving part of me wishes that these somehow aligned, but really they're just the second-to-last entries on the piece of paper I'm looking at.
LIKE: THE SOCIAL ASPECT
I like pretending, I like exploring, I like world-building. But that's not why I roleplay. I do it because I like hanging out with my friends. The social aspect of roleplaying is the most important thing to me. Spending time together, laughing at the same old inside jokes, trying to separate Jason from the popcorn bowl - that's what it's all about. Some people watch football together or go to bars together. When my friends are gathered, I like to roleplay. As a GM, I run a pretty loose table. Out-of-character conversation and interaction isn't a problem to me, unless it's actually drowning out the events at hand.
One odd side effect of this is that I don't particularly enjoy conventions. Playing games with strangers isn't a lot of fun for me, since there isn't much of a basis for interaction. You're all just trapped at the table together, manipulating a ruleset until the time slot expires. Yawn.
DISLIKE: SLOW COMBAT
If I wanted a tactical minis game, I'd play Warhammer 40K. I don't and I'm not. Don't slow combat down to a crawl so that everyone can consider all the ramifications of every possible +2 modifier. DO STUFF AND MOVE ON.
This doesn't entirely square with my longstanding passionate affair with the Hero System. However, most of my other favorite RPGs (Star Wars, Castle Falkenstein, Cyberpunk, 7th Sea) have very quick combat systems. Real combat moves fast. So should roleplaying combat. Otherwise, you've got a recurrence of the split-the-party problem, where one person's doing stuff and everyone else is sitting around, waiting for a chance for their character to do cool things.
...if I were to tie this all together, I could point out that the Social Aspect can be used to fill the holes caused by Slow Combat. But I'm not that compulsive.
LIKE: THE SOCIAL ASPECT
I like pretending, I like exploring, I like world-building. But that's not why I roleplay. I do it because I like hanging out with my friends. The social aspect of roleplaying is the most important thing to me. Spending time together, laughing at the same old inside jokes, trying to separate Jason from the popcorn bowl - that's what it's all about. Some people watch football together or go to bars together. When my friends are gathered, I like to roleplay. As a GM, I run a pretty loose table. Out-of-character conversation and interaction isn't a problem to me, unless it's actually drowning out the events at hand.
One odd side effect of this is that I don't particularly enjoy conventions. Playing games with strangers isn't a lot of fun for me, since there isn't much of a basis for interaction. You're all just trapped at the table together, manipulating a ruleset until the time slot expires. Yawn.
DISLIKE: SLOW COMBAT
If I wanted a tactical minis game, I'd play Warhammer 40K. I don't and I'm not. Don't slow combat down to a crawl so that everyone can consider all the ramifications of every possible +2 modifier. DO STUFF AND MOVE ON.
This doesn't entirely square with my longstanding passionate affair with the Hero System. However, most of my other favorite RPGs (Star Wars, Castle Falkenstein, Cyberpunk, 7th Sea) have very quick combat systems. Real combat moves fast. So should roleplaying combat. Otherwise, you've got a recurrence of the split-the-party problem, where one person's doing stuff and everyone else is sitting around, waiting for a chance for their character to do cool things.
...if I were to tie this all together, I could point out that the Social Aspect can be used to fill the holes caused by Slow Combat. But I'm not that compulsive.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
According to Chris Sims, Iron Man once fought Frankenstein
After reading these, it shouldn't be a surprise that my current project is making a superhero setting that works like a hexcrawl/sandbox. If I get really ambitious (I won't), the plan is to design it for a version of Champions that's been boiled down to a Castle Falkenstein-like level of detail. Ah, grafting unlike things together... DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN HAD THE RIGHT IDEA.
LIKE: PLAYER-DRIVEN PLOTS
I have the most fun when the players, not the GM, are deciding what the session will be about. The best games I've ever been in are the ones where players seized control of the action and the GM's job was just to keep things rolling.
When I'm roleplaying, I want the game to be about my character. This is my big chance to be some cool fictional person and have cool fictional adventures. I enjoy the acting/pretending part of RPGs more than anything. So I want that to be the center of the action - my characters Want To Do Certain Things. I'm probably more interested in these Certain Things than I am in the GM's plans. If I want to form my own breakaway thieves' guild, let me work on that. I'll be happier as a player, and you'll have more material to work with.
Same goes for the other side of the screen. As a GM, I consider it my players' job to figure out what happens next. I'm mostly there to provide background and throw in complications. The best campaigns I've run have been ones where the players were pushing to reach certain goals - my task wasn't to set those goals, but to make the pursuit interesting. Perhaps the PCs are sword-and-sorcery rogues who find that the dead monarch's missing daughter has secretly joined their carnival. They get to decide what to do about it - it's not my job as GM. And if they decide to restore her to the throne despite the long odds, all I have to do is keep tossing out challenges and opportunities. Adventures are more fun when the players are in control of the overall narrative direction.
Roleplaying is more fun when the players want to do certain things, and when the GM's main priority is advancing (or complicating) their ability to do those things.
DISLIKE: THE STAR TREK MODEL
On Star Trek, the stories follow a pattern. The spaceship is directed to enter a new area by offstage bosses. This new area has a weird environment, culture, or inhabitant. Said weirdness causes problems for the crew. The crew figures out a way to resolve the weirdness. Status quo is restored, the spaceship moves on, little or no long-term change occurs to characters or setting.
Man, that's boring.
The Star Trek model is little more than a series of mobile puzzle-solvings. The characters don't really grow or change. The setting isn't consistent, and it's not explored in any depth. It's just a series of short stories told by the GM. I can get that from, y'know, a short story collection. I prefer games where the characters are based in a defined area, with recurring NPCs and ongoing subplots, offering chances for them to change who/what they are as the players see fit. I like change. I like consequences. I don't like going from one arbitrary location to the next with a cast of stereotypes and broad caricatures.
My favorite Trek was Deep Space 9, which puts me outside the mainstream of that particular fandom. And I liked Babylon 5 even better. Make of that what you will.
LIKE: PLAYER-DRIVEN PLOTS
I have the most fun when the players, not the GM, are deciding what the session will be about. The best games I've ever been in are the ones where players seized control of the action and the GM's job was just to keep things rolling.
When I'm roleplaying, I want the game to be about my character. This is my big chance to be some cool fictional person and have cool fictional adventures. I enjoy the acting/pretending part of RPGs more than anything. So I want that to be the center of the action - my characters Want To Do Certain Things. I'm probably more interested in these Certain Things than I am in the GM's plans. If I want to form my own breakaway thieves' guild, let me work on that. I'll be happier as a player, and you'll have more material to work with.
Same goes for the other side of the screen. As a GM, I consider it my players' job to figure out what happens next. I'm mostly there to provide background and throw in complications. The best campaigns I've run have been ones where the players were pushing to reach certain goals - my task wasn't to set those goals, but to make the pursuit interesting. Perhaps the PCs are sword-and-sorcery rogues who find that the dead monarch's missing daughter has secretly joined their carnival. They get to decide what to do about it - it's not my job as GM. And if they decide to restore her to the throne despite the long odds, all I have to do is keep tossing out challenges and opportunities. Adventures are more fun when the players are in control of the overall narrative direction.
Roleplaying is more fun when the players want to do certain things, and when the GM's main priority is advancing (or complicating) their ability to do those things.
DISLIKE: THE STAR TREK MODEL
On Star Trek, the stories follow a pattern. The spaceship is directed to enter a new area by offstage bosses. This new area has a weird environment, culture, or inhabitant. Said weirdness causes problems for the crew. The crew figures out a way to resolve the weirdness. Status quo is restored, the spaceship moves on, little or no long-term change occurs to characters or setting.
Man, that's boring.
The Star Trek model is little more than a series of mobile puzzle-solvings. The characters don't really grow or change. The setting isn't consistent, and it's not explored in any depth. It's just a series of short stories told by the GM. I can get that from, y'know, a short story collection. I prefer games where the characters are based in a defined area, with recurring NPCs and ongoing subplots, offering chances for them to change who/what they are as the players see fit. I like change. I like consequences. I don't like going from one arbitrary location to the next with a cast of stereotypes and broad caricatures.
My favorite Trek was Deep Space 9, which puts me outside the mainstream of that particular fandom. And I liked Babylon 5 even better. Make of that what you will.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Today we metagame it
LIKE: THREE-PLAYER GROUPS
For me, three players is the sweet spot. With three players, everyone will get a large share of spotlight time. They'll get to play the game their way. They'll get to tell more of their story.
Also, in a three-player game, everyone is important. Each character will have a lot to do (assuming 1 character/player), since there aren't a lot of other people they can turn to for support. At the same time, it's not hard to challenge a three-player group, since they probably can't cover all the necessary bases every session. They'll have to improvise, generalize, and/or turn to NPCs for assistance. Everyone gets to be a lot more resourceful in a three-player game. I enjoy that from both sides of the screen.
DISLIKE: THE WEEKLY GAME
This one puts me pretty solidly outside the mainstream, I know. But as they say in Lake Wobegon, sumus quod sumus - we are who we are. And I'm someone who doesn't enjoy it when my roleplaying is an appointment. As a GM, I can't guarantee that I'll have a good idea every week. More likely, I'll just get burned out by the pressure of prepping that much material. As a player, I can't guarantee that I'll show up that often. This isn't a new development - even before I was an old person with job and spouse and kids, I rarely committed to a recurring game.
Scheduling your roleplaying that rigorously, to me, takes some of the fun out of it. Now it's not something we do because we're in the mood - we do it because it's an obligation. We have to play, whether we feel like it or not. I'd rather only play when I feel like it. And it's rare that I'll want to play once a week.
I did run a weekly game for about a year. It was a good time, too. That was entirely because of the people I played with - close friends all, and we knew that this was a limited opportunity because of jobs and weddings and stuff. If we tried to make it a permanent thing, I think we'd have driven each other crazy.
For me, three players is the sweet spot. With three players, everyone will get a large share of spotlight time. They'll get to play the game their way. They'll get to tell more of their story.
Also, in a three-player game, everyone is important. Each character will have a lot to do (assuming 1 character/player), since there aren't a lot of other people they can turn to for support. At the same time, it's not hard to challenge a three-player group, since they probably can't cover all the necessary bases every session. They'll have to improvise, generalize, and/or turn to NPCs for assistance. Everyone gets to be a lot more resourceful in a three-player game. I enjoy that from both sides of the screen.
DISLIKE: THE WEEKLY GAME
This one puts me pretty solidly outside the mainstream, I know. But as they say in Lake Wobegon, sumus quod sumus - we are who we are. And I'm someone who doesn't enjoy it when my roleplaying is an appointment. As a GM, I can't guarantee that I'll have a good idea every week. More likely, I'll just get burned out by the pressure of prepping that much material. As a player, I can't guarantee that I'll show up that often. This isn't a new development - even before I was an old person with job and spouse and kids, I rarely committed to a recurring game.
Scheduling your roleplaying that rigorously, to me, takes some of the fun out of it. Now it's not something we do because we're in the mood - we do it because it's an obligation. We have to play, whether we feel like it or not. I'd rather only play when I feel like it. And it's rare that I'll want to play once a week.
I did run a weekly game for about a year. It was a good time, too. That was entirely because of the people I played with - close friends all, and we knew that this was a limited opportunity because of jobs and weddings and stuff. If we tried to make it a permanent thing, I think we'd have driven each other crazy.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Never take your eyes off the Aztecs
It's been a while since my last Like/Dislike repost. There are only a few left in the series, so we might as well collect 'em all...
LIKE: RANDOM ELEMENTS
Give me some charts to roll on, and I'm happy for hours. Or, in the internet age, give me a way to generate weird modern-Cthulhu items or maybe some old-school fantasy henchmen and I'll make my own fun.
It's not that I lack for ideas. However, the beauty of randomly generated stuff is that it forces you to consider things that you otherwise wouldn't. Integrating your own tastes/biases with those of an impersonal list can lead to really cool things that you would, by definition, never have thought of on your own. For instance, I don't much like time travel (see below). But when this nifty random Champions character generator gave me a supervillain with Summon - a power I would never, ever use on my own - it sparked all kinds of ideas. So now I have not just a superintelligent apeman from the far future, but I have his time-traveling court and a the outline of a future history and even some thoughts on how medicine will evolve in this setting.
Seriously - randomly generated game elements are awesome. They force you to work with things that you probably wouldn't even have thought of, much less tried. I can't go so someplace like Chaotic Shiny without making a couple of cultures or artifacts. I love fooling around with Hexographer's free map generator. Using random elements is like having access to other GMs' brains. And who wouldn't want a big pile of GM brains around the house?
DISLIKE: TIME/DIMENSION TRAVEL
My superintelligent apeman nothwitstanding, time travel and dimension travel are usually excuses for cheap, lazy storytelling. They're a way to say "what if?" followed quickly by "just kidding!" When used in roleplaying games, in my experience, they're usually used for one of two things, neither of them being very interesting.
First, as an excuse to fight something cool, like dinosaurs or robotic Schwarzeneggers. I'm not opposed to cool fights. It's just that there are other, more creative ways to get them into your game. Saying that a rift opened in time and X stepped out is just weak. You can do better.
Second, as a halfhearted way of exploring what happens if Things Go Wrong. Time/dimension travel plots often boil down to "here's an alternate version of your world, but the bad guys are in charge." You go there, fight some bad guys, maybe fix some stuff - but it's not your world. It doesn't really matter. Even if you screw up, the reality you know isn't in any danger. These plots rob roleplaying of one of its best elements - the ability to show how PC actions have consequences on their surroundings. Not on "some other time's" surroundings, not on "alternate dimension where the Aztecs won our Civil War" surroundings.
LIKE: RANDOM ELEMENTS
Give me some charts to roll on, and I'm happy for hours. Or, in the internet age, give me a way to generate weird modern-Cthulhu items or maybe some old-school fantasy henchmen and I'll make my own fun.
It's not that I lack for ideas. However, the beauty of randomly generated stuff is that it forces you to consider things that you otherwise wouldn't. Integrating your own tastes/biases with those of an impersonal list can lead to really cool things that you would, by definition, never have thought of on your own. For instance, I don't much like time travel (see below). But when this nifty random Champions character generator gave me a supervillain with Summon - a power I would never, ever use on my own - it sparked all kinds of ideas. So now I have not just a superintelligent apeman from the far future, but I have his time-traveling court and a the outline of a future history and even some thoughts on how medicine will evolve in this setting.
Seriously - randomly generated game elements are awesome. They force you to work with things that you probably wouldn't even have thought of, much less tried. I can't go so someplace like Chaotic Shiny without making a couple of cultures or artifacts. I love fooling around with Hexographer's free map generator. Using random elements is like having access to other GMs' brains. And who wouldn't want a big pile of GM brains around the house?
DISLIKE: TIME/DIMENSION TRAVEL
My superintelligent apeman nothwitstanding, time travel and dimension travel are usually excuses for cheap, lazy storytelling. They're a way to say "what if?" followed quickly by "just kidding!" When used in roleplaying games, in my experience, they're usually used for one of two things, neither of them being very interesting.
First, as an excuse to fight something cool, like dinosaurs or robotic Schwarzeneggers. I'm not opposed to cool fights. It's just that there are other, more creative ways to get them into your game. Saying that a rift opened in time and X stepped out is just weak. You can do better.
Second, as a halfhearted way of exploring what happens if Things Go Wrong. Time/dimension travel plots often boil down to "here's an alternate version of your world, but the bad guys are in charge." You go there, fight some bad guys, maybe fix some stuff - but it's not your world. It doesn't really matter. Even if you screw up, the reality you know isn't in any danger. These plots rob roleplaying of one of its best elements - the ability to show how PC actions have consequences on their surroundings. Not on "some other time's" surroundings, not on "alternate dimension where the Aztecs won our Civil War" surroundings.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Does anyone make a d23?
I'm writing a live-action game for a Hallowe'en party. While working on character ideas, I made a short list of motivations that people could have. It might work for fleshing out some random NPCs. Or for your own PC, if that's how you like to work.
- Loves X
- Hates X
- Wants to impress X
- Wants to humiliate X
- Needs money
- Wants to know X's secret
- Wants an Item
- Get rid of Item
- Protect X
- Avoid X
- See that justice is done
- Escape justice
- Frame X
- Exonerate X
- Be acknowledged
- Avoid blame
- Find/discover something
- Conceal/destroy something
- Persuade everyone of X
- Fool everyone about X
- Just do things!
- Just meet people!
- Behave like X
Monday, September 19, 2011
Playing dumb
Speaking of the DCCRPG playtest, I mentioned that I played a wizard. What I didn't mention was that, because the game uses oldest-skool character generation, my wizard had an INT score of 5. So I had the opportunity to be a dumb guy.
The trick is to be memorably stupid without being someone who ruins the fun for everyone else. As always, the most important thing about an RPG is that everyone involved has a good time. So I knew that even though Katada Demonbeard was going to be a man not overburdened with brains, he had to be someone that other people would find entertaining. Stomping loudly into the wrong decisions was just going to be annoying in a one-shot game. Instead, I stomped loudly into the right decisions, but for all the wrong reasons.
Why would we go into the dungeon? Not for the fabled hoard of gems -- what a ridiculous story! But the rumors of an underground lake of molten chocolate, created on the fly and expounded upon with some gusto, kept me going in the same direction as everyone else. Several times, I cast a spell for some ridiculous and ill-conceived reason, but it was (almost) always a spell that helped the party in some way. I had a lot of fun with it, and so did the other folks.
There's a difference between a dumb character and a dumb player. If you're making good decisions as a player, they can be dressed up as bad decisions made by the character.
The trick is to be memorably stupid without being someone who ruins the fun for everyone else. As always, the most important thing about an RPG is that everyone involved has a good time. So I knew that even though Katada Demonbeard was going to be a man not overburdened with brains, he had to be someone that other people would find entertaining. Stomping loudly into the wrong decisions was just going to be annoying in a one-shot game. Instead, I stomped loudly into the right decisions, but for all the wrong reasons.
Why would we go into the dungeon? Not for the fabled hoard of gems -- what a ridiculous story! But the rumors of an underground lake of molten chocolate, created on the fly and expounded upon with some gusto, kept me going in the same direction as everyone else. Several times, I cast a spell for some ridiculous and ill-conceived reason, but it was (almost) always a spell that helped the party in some way. I had a lot of fun with it, and so did the other folks.
There's a difference between a dumb character and a dumb player. If you're making good decisions as a player, they can be dressed up as bad decisions made by the character.
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