Interesting exercise someone did, word-clouds of PHB and DMG (words show in the cloud in size relation to frequency they come up)

PHB:
http://www.apartment167.com/otherimages/dnd_phb_wordle.png

DMG:
http://www.apartment167.com/otherimages/dnd_dmg_wordle.png

 (done using http://wordle.net/ which is a very cool little toy)

Theory from the Closet has interviewed Mike Mearls of WOTC.

It's an interesting background on several elements of 4e.

Design moved away from "simulation" to favour gamist combat and conflict fun and narrative fun in story.

Regarding story, D&D is for Players who want to experience story rather than tell story.

Contrast In a Wicked Age where Players can make story as opposed to receive it and "choose branches" (but Players are not going to experience the same gamist challenge of terrain and shift kobolds).

Mearls admits there is a divide between people who want a story but expect GM to be in charge of it and be entertainer, and people who want to create story as well.  D&D is for the former.

D&D is intended for the DM to be the "dancing monkey".  Which is a very gratifying role but also a tiring one.

An interesting observation that Keep on the Shadowfell also provides a "shared experience" for D&D players many have not had for a couple of editions.

http://theoryfromthecloset.com/

I recently started thinking about table-top RPG’s that are heavily "crunch" with "what you win shows on your character sheet" - what some see as verging on being boardgames - in light of the Steve Jackson Illuminati game. 

I think this was triggered by the conjunction of seeing a copy of the original 1982 version while tidying my ‘drawer of games’ and having just picked up some of Paizo’s "magic item cards".

NPC relationships and "story outcomes", "plot points" can be seen as cards - "flavour text" over top of a mechanical effect. 

If you rescue the princess from the dragon, all characters involved gain a special "Favour of Princess" card. In a typical D&D game this is left as a description and not mechanized. However, nothing prevents "Favour of Princess" from being directly translated into "+2 on social roles with members of court, once a month make a social skill check to gain useful information or contact" with added text of "you may stake this card on a roll to replace it with "Suitor of Princess" but if you lose then card is forfeit. "Suitor of Princess" has its own (better) set of benefits and can be staked on "Betrothed to Princess", then "Prince by Marriage", then "Royal Consort" etc. Each of these can be translated into mechanical benefits or additional action options just like a feat or class ability.

These "Story and Narrative" outcomes can be considered like onto Magic the Gathering Cards, a title, image and flavour content (how they are roleplayed), actual rules text (the item’s mechanical aspect).

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Does equating narrative outcomes and achievements to the same sort of modifiers and abilities granted by magic items or class advancement permit a clearer reason to pursue these outcomes and a balanced mechanical approach to quantifying them to keep game balance, or does it tarnish them with grubby crunch?

Off hand, at a gamist table where crunch and character sheet improvements rule, putting this interpration on narrative outcomes seems acceptable and unifies them with the rest of play.

At a narrative table where rules are more a way to generate a shared fiction that is interesting, this step seems only an added complication.  The favour of the princess is its own reward in play.

Where I answered another’s blog and first expressed the idea:

http://willowrants.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/fluff-crunch-why-gamism

If you want an idea of Illuminati, see:

http://www.sjgames.com/illuminati/img/illuminati_rules.pdf

http://rycanada.livejournal.com 

Game systems or supplements with name lists (to facilitate picking a suitable name), short "what every [person like you] knows" or roleplaying guides help on this front.

(2) Be Descriptive and Play With Colour

Colour in the fiction means not letting mechanics displace the fiction they imagine. More narrative games move away from "a selection of specific tactical" moves that are reduced to rote actions and requiring scripting actions creatively. There is still an art there to including detail in narration.

(3) Act an Interesting Character

Playing a believable character is half of creating a "story" in play, something interesting to watch.   Interesting isn't a scottish accent or a limp, it's flaws, conflicts and issues to resolve.  Just like in a story.

The GM is not the only one who can create a mystery or a conflict. Why is your character scared of goblins? What is your compulsion with that particular weapon type about? Where does that 10% of your income constantly vanish? Will you keep faith with your current god or convert to the heretic sect?

A believable character reveals more of themselves, faces important choices and is sometimes redefined or changed by these choices. This is interesting to watch. This means playing in an "actor stance" sufficiently that others see a "a character" instead of a "a pawn". In creating an interesting character you create a character with mysteries to solve, with conflicts, whose resolution of those conflicts is interesting to watch.

(4)  Be A Good Audience

Roleplaying is a shared creative exercise. Everyone is everyone else’s audience ~ and as in a theatre not having side chats or directing their attention elsewhere. Being audience to someone is easier and more fun when they are following the other principles (e.g., not slowing down to read rules and being entertaining in narrating their actions).

Systems that resolve actions quickly, keeping up the pace of events, reduce the temptation for attention to stray. I find D&D at high level creates more temptation for people to be checking email on their laptops and otherwise straying attention.

Systems that don’t silo each player’s ability to influence the game within a strict turn sequence, instead creating more possibility of affecting or being affected continuously have the effect of forcing attention. 4^th Edition D&D is saying it too will try to meet both of these standards (faster play and effects not limited to turns).

(5) Support Other Players

Really this means collaborative play.  Collaborative play means supporting each other’s characterizations, being "additive" and not "negational" with others's contributions. It doesn’t mean avoiding rivalry or even conflict, but keeping it within a consistent fiction. The character more intelligent that yours is more intelligent. The rogue is not as smart as the wizard and the wizard keeps falling for your rogue’s charming patter.

(6) Help Author Story Out of Play

Playing an "author" stance at times means there is no "just playing my character". Instead there is authoring the character that makes play interesting and fun and moves story forward.

For example, when your character seems to lack a reason to "be on this adventure", create new backstory that explains why it makes perfect sense.  An urban PC needs a reason to go on a wilderness mission against the giants, so the Player gives the PC one: "The Coldmire Giants! I hate those guys ~ they destroyed the village my family was originally from, you know, that’s why we ended up poor in the city and I became a th... rogue. You might think as a city boy going off into the wild mountains would be out of character for me but it’s the most natural thing in world for me to go on an adventure against them!  Now that I think of it, I wonder if the village treasure is still hidden where we buried it before we fled?" 

So what am I suggesting it means to be a good player, beyond Show Up On Time and Know Rules Relevant to Your Character? Six things strike me about watching people play as adding to my enjoyment as a GM or Player. Thus meaning, "they’re a good player".

Not everyone is great at all these things nor can be expected to do them all every session, but they are what makes someone good to have at a table. The violations and opposites of these are what create problems.

(1) Colour Inside the Lines (e.g., play character appropriate to genre and past events, no Samurai named Ted shows up in a feudal European milieu)

(2) Be Descriptive and Play With Colour (e.g., speak in character when it fits, add descriptive details to mechanical actions, "struck howling in rage" rather than Power Attack for 5).

(3) Act an Interesting Character (not a pawn, create "a believable, interesting character" not just "a set of statistics in a game", reveal new things about character, play moments of change or crisis in character)

(4) Be A Good Audience (don’t need to be reminded what’s going on, what happened, who’s who, support others’ play with your attention).

(5) Support Other Players (e.g., don’t step on their fun, respect their "colouring", allow the themes they are interested in to be explored)

(6) Help Author Story out of Play (e.g., author character to fit into the narrative and drive it forward, play into the conflicts and issues that create story and adventure).

Thinking about each of these, it strikes me that different game designs facilitate some of these "good play" elements more than traditional games but in ways that teach these as general skills.

For example, knowing the rules relevant to your character is easier in game systems where "it’s all on your character sheet" or that have "lower handling time" rules (rules you don’t have to refer to as often in play).

In Part III, I'll explain a bit more about what I mean by each of these categories. 

"Dance Monkey, Dance" is the lovely expression Ryan Stoughton (see link below) has for the style of game that leans too heavily on Game Master (GM) as entertainer and does not see Players contributing more than just playing their character.

Traditional rules and play styles teach Players to arrive to play expecting to explore an adventure the GM has devised to be interesting and challenging. The GM is to present this in an enjoyable fashion, using the techniques of a good story teller.

In a D&D game, the GM (DM) follows the Dungeon Master’s Guide advice to be imaginative in describing combat and other actions. The Player’s Handbook does not contain similar advice to Players and so Players are not doing anything wrong when they just say what they do under the rules. Compare DMG page 17 to PHB page 5 (it’s the lower left corner).

A good GM describes a monster as "shrieking in anger at the injury you have just done it, and lashing out in blind fury" when power attacking, whereas a Player says "I power attack for 5". The GM states, "the dark-clad sorcerer speaks words of arcane power and the air hums with energy being gathered before lightning strikes from his fingertips towards you", whereas the Player says "I cast lightning bolt".

A good GM creates challenging situations and plots which are both dramatic and credible in terms of cause and effect and NPC motivations. A good Player designs an effective Player Character (PC) and plays them well as part of a "team".

According to the D&D rules as written, no one is doing anything wrong when they play this way.  The GM "plays to entertain and ensure enjoyment of Players". The Players "play their characters".

Hopefully just getting this far, a reader sees that there is something wrong. That there is room to improve play. Quite apart from issues of distributed authority and railroads vs sandboxes, there are issues of responsibility for play and what is practical in the amount of effort each participant invests.

The thing that strikes me most as a GM, is that the GM who controls multiple characters they do not spend as much time contemplating is to describe each of these imaginatively whereas the Player who controls one character just decides how they act and communicate actions as skills checks and combat actions.

Really, every principle of fairness, equal time, creating fertile ground for play that applies to a GM also applies to a Player. Most "bad Player" actions violate what would be expected of a GM (e.g., infamous "just playing my character" excuses for stepping on others’ fun). A GM never has a random super monster come along and kill all the PC’s and declare "just playing what sometimes happens in a realistically imagined fantasy world".

Everyone is entitled to enjoy a session (be entertained) and thus everyone should contribute to the enjoyment/entertainment and not step on it. You contribute by being interesting to watch play, by setting up someone else to be interesting, by creating mysteries and surprises, by offering a solution to what seemed to be a deadlock between preferences at the table.

Continued in Part II

 Links

http://rycanada.livejournal.com

Another discussion of the issue

http://www.treasuretables.org/2006/08/one-of-the-most-important-sentences-in-gaming

One way in which the genre or theme of a roleplaying campaign is communicated is both the apparent "lay of the land" and the frequency and direction in which variations from "what is apparent" happen.

Most stories have some revelation, some twist, sometimes the conversion of a character from being one thing to another is the whole point of the story.  However the frequency and nature of such differences between "appearance" and "what is revealed to be true" seem to vary between genres.

In a dark gothic horror style, things are darker than they seem.  In the D&D Ravenloft setting or a Hammer horror movie, people are werewolves and vampires, the dupes and servants of such, cultists and murderers, or cowed into silence.  The very evil seeming entity usually is very evil, the neutral seeming are often evil too, the good are also at times evil or so badly misguided they may as well be.  The monstrous are sometimes tragically not evil or are even good though they are doomed to be seen so only too late or never.

So Dark Gothic Horror means from apparent to reality is:

> Evil is Evil
> Monstrous sometimes misunderstood until too late.
> Neutral sometimes Evil, at least by ignorance or acquiesence
> Good sometimes Evil, by ignorance or corruption

In a Swashbuckling Arabian or Robin Hood adventures type of game, bandits and thieves may have hearts of gold and be surprisingly honourable, disgraced princes in disguise.  The evil vizier really is evil, as are his key henchmen, monsters are usually monstrous but sometimes also misunderstood and can be befriended/redeemed, but otherwise many other foes who are encounters are really not that bad.   The great and good may also in truth be not as powerful or wise as they seem (thus needing heroes to bail them out), but are seldom secretly wicked.  The powerfully good people are the djinni or good wizard in disguise as a commoner.  So it is too in the Wizard of Oz and some faerie tale style stories.

So Swashbuckling Arabian Adventure means:

> Evil usually Evil
> Foes often not Evil
> Monstrous usually Evil but sometimes just misunderstood Good folk
> Good sometimes not competent (the reason heroes are needed), and if they are competent are often in disguise/hidden

Consider a Western, though there are a wide variety of them.  Usually, though the good guys are good (though perhaps with a dark chapter in the past, something often linking them to a foe), the bad guys are bad, some of them much worse than just bad (the psychotic member of the gang) and others not completely bad.  A rare "good guy" is a traitor, and the rare bad guy will reform.  This is true of the Crime Drama as well where instead of sheriff it's detective and instead of bandits it's criminal gang.  In both there is the subgenre with the antihero who is the reformed bandit/vigilante or slightly dirty hero.

So, a Western sees:

> Good usually Good (sometimes with dark chapter in past)
> Bad usually Bad with variations from true Evil to sympathetic.
> Neutral usually neither.

The point of this?

As I think about my next campaign and finding a tone for it that play should support, these appearances and deviations from them are part of what I'm thinking I should be used.   Players should heed the same guidelines to support tone.