ars ludi

Tomorrow the new edition of D&D is coming out. At first it’s going to seem very different from what you’ve played before, and in some ways it will be, but in more ways it will be the same. Compared to Third Edition D&D it may be a brave new world, a revolution even, but both together only make up a small slice of what’s possible in gaming.

There are, it turns out, a lot of different games out there and a lot of different ways to play — some radically different. If you want to be a better gamer, you owe it to yourself to try something new.

I’m not saying you should abandon your favorite game or change what you usually play, but trying different systems can open up the way you think about the games you already play. Playing a completely different game can make you _better_ at that game you played for years. Your gamecraft is a muscle: stretch it.

Rockin’, you say, let’s do it! But there’s a catch: gamers play to have fun. You might be fearless and pick up a radical indie game only to discover that it’s so different from what your group is used to that the session is a total disaster, which will just make them (and you) less likely to ever want to experiment again. The world is full of stories of gaming groups who tried a different thing just once, confidently declared it crap, and then retreated to the safe and the known.

Nobody wants that. So in the interest of successful gaming, here are some games I think a group that had only played “traditional” games like D&D could pick up and enjoy right off the bat. You’ll be able to try something new with maximum fun and minimal risk. Consider this your Indie Exploration Kit — it worked for me, it can work for you too.

AGON

Glory-seeking heroes in mythic Greece. Slay monsters, complete quests and win contests to earn fame and the favor of the gods. The system is easy to pick up but has a solid feel. Combat uses a clever positioning system that’s simplified and abstract but rewards smart tactics and teamwork. You get dice for things you use (spear, shield, etc) and then literally place them in your left or right hand to show whether you are using them for attack or defense — very intuitive, very fun.

What’s different about it? The heroes are all on the same side, cooperating to complete the quest, but they’re also competing because each of them wants to be the best: the most famous, the most glorious, the most renowned hero. You can start off playing completely straight but sooner or later heroes will start vying for glory, bargaining for Oaths to win important contests, and generally wishing _they_ were the one who slew the harpy and earned the king’s gratitude. Eventually the interaction between the heroes becomes almost more interesting than the challenges they’re facing. Sure the heroes are going to slay the boar, but who’s going to get the credit? And what will you give another hero to be that guy?

Agon also lets players ease into narrative control. You start off just rolling the die for the appropriate ability (my Hunt die if I’m stalking a wild boar) but if you need to bump it up you can describe how you bring in another ability to help — a player wants to bring in his Athletics to help with the hunt, so he says how the boar is outpacing the hunters but because of his fleet-footedness he can keep up. Another player could bring in Cunning by describing how he cleverly finds a shortcut to head off the beast.

What should you watch out for? Fate is the lifespan of the hero, but it can also be spent for short-term advantage. Because there’s no immediate downside, new players may think it’s too easy to burn Fate to solve problems before they understand the balance.

In A Wicked Age

Conan-esque game of heroes, schemers, dark gods and forbidden rituals. In A Wicked Age is a bit more of a stretch than Agon: mechanically it’s very easy to pick up, but it puts the players characters in direct opposition rather than cooperating. A single game session is usually a whole story arc, with lots of characters meeting their fates — In A Wicked Age is not about becoming attached to your character, it’s about playing that character to the fullest and fulfilling their destiny for better or worse. Want to be the villainous sorcerer ruining the other players’ lives and then get destroyed by your own demon servants when your power spirals out of control? You can play that whole rise and fall in three hours.

What’s different about it? One of the golden innovations of In A Wicked Age is the oracle, a random adventure seed you draw to create the game. The oracle gives a vague description of who’s in the story, then it’s up to the players to decide which of those people they want to play and how all those characters are at cross-purposes (take a look at a sample oracle online — a particular game would only use the set under one of the headings e.g. God-kings of War).

The beauty is that a game of In A Wicked Age takes literally zero prep: you sit down, draw the cards, and start making characters. Five minutes ago your whole group was tired after work and not sure they wanted to game: then the oracle is drawn and everyone is talking at once, throwing out ideas how the characters could connect. It’s a creativity booster rocket. It can also be a refreshing challenge: would you normally choose to play a virgin sacrifice? Maybe not, but it’s in the oracle and since it’s basically a one-shot, give it a try. You’ll find yourself coming up with plots you never would have thought of before as you try to integrate all the elements the oracle gives you.

What should you watch out for? As the book says, you want strong conflicts of interest between player characters. Everyone should start the game with a clear idea of why some or preferably most of the other characters at the table are in their way. If you make characters with no conflicts or flinch at pushing the other players you won’t have as good of a game.

When I said “traditional” games before, what exactly did I mean?

Lots of roleplaying games are based on the same core concept: the players control their characters, and the GM controls everything else. That’s a “traditional” game, because that’s where D&D started and the tradition most games still follow. Many indie games mess with this assumption, giving players narrative control, the ability to set scenes and decide the pacing of the game, or even eliminating the GM entirely.

It shouldn’t be surprising than that one of the best indicators of the ability to hit the ground running in non-traditional games is GM’ing experience. To run good games GMs have to be able to constantly improvise, play random characters at the drop of a hat, make up and describe common and outlandish locations, and all the while keep their eye on what is dramatic and what is interesting as the plot unfolds — the same skills you need to _play_ many indie games.

The games I recommended above don’t require those mad skills (which is why they’re a good starting point), but the next indie games — the ones you play after you’re hooked on trying brave new things — those ones will.

Special thanks to the folks at the Story Games forums for providing input for this post. In the end I decided to stick with the games I had had personal success with in my own group, but Spirit of the Century earns an honorable mention as a recommendation from lots of the people who responded.

There are two conflicting urges in every GM, forces that boil like seething dragons twisting in the blood (and so on):

1) the urge to tell the players a story, impress them with your craft, be in control of the game

2) the urge to have the players do stuff, take control, be independent and make decisions that shape and drive the game

These are the yin and yang of GMing. They are competing forces and in some ways total opposites.

The tricky bit is to be a good GM you have to allow both to exist in harmony. Suppress one or the other and you’ve got trouble.

I’ve said it a million times (well maybe not here, but talk to me sometime and you’ll get an earful): going into a game thinking you are telling a story or wanting to impress your players is bad. It leads to bad things, like a lecture circuit instead of a game.

But I’m lying, or at least oversimplifying. If you didn’t have that urge to impress the players, to hit them with a story that knocks their socks off, you probably wouldn’t have scheduled a game in the first place. You might not be GMing at all. When it’s two hours before game time and you’re kind of wishing you could just cancel the game because you aren’t sure it’s not going to suck (double-negative police, stay alert) believing you have a game planned that will impress the players is what will get you over the hump, because you don’t know what the players are going to do. You don’t know what spontaneous spark of genius they’re going to bring to the game — and neither do they because they haven’t seen the game yet. It’s the future, it’s a mystery. So the only thing you, the GM, can solidly wrap your hopes around is the game you have on paper. Is it any wonder lots of GMs have the storytelling urge? It’s the thing that gets you to the table, the thing that drives scheduling the game. It makes you prepare a game, which is a good first step, so long as you have the fortitude to abandon that preparation during the game if necessary.

So while I dump on storytelling as a dead end or a terrible, terrible addiction, the storytelling urge is valuable so long as it does not overwhelm. It has to be balanced by the desire to draw the players out, make them forge their own destinies and make their own action (in a cave, on Brontitall). This isn’t the dark side of the Force vs the light side, one good one bad — this is yin & yang, opposites that should be kept in balance.

Even if it’s just that burst of enthusiasm you put into making the captured goblin have a funny voice and an interesting personality, that’s your storytelling / impress them urge being put to good use.

From the GM’s point of view, storytelling is the active yang force and wanting the players to make independent decisions is the passive yin force. But you know what? The players have the same conflicting urges: their active yang is to take control and do stuff or impress others, their passive yin is to sit back and let you tell them a story. They need balance too, towards the GM and even towards other players. Sometimes they need to talk, and sometimes they need to listen. Being a passive audience can be a terrible temptation, particularly if your GM (or other players) is a good storyteller.

It was the urge to get my players to “do stuff” that led to experiments like West Marches, Promised Land, and obliquely Run Club. I was (I think) too good at preparing games that were fun and exciting even if the players did nothing special. I unwittingly trained them to be passive by bringing too much fun, providing too much entertainment. Extreme measures were called for. Instead of just poking the players periodically and saying “hey, what do you do?” I needed to change the dynamic by changing the rules of the game.

Players want play time. Forget about treasure, XP, or hero points: the only reward that really counts is getting to play. Would you sit out a game to get more XP? Would you play for half as long if you could get twice as much treasure? Maybe if some trade of less game now = better game later. Otherwise, not likely.

In your game there are X players, and since everyone really shouldn’t talk at once, each player is getting about 1/Xth of the playtime. Some players get more, some get less, but basically the more players there are the less time each player is going to get to actually do things in-game.

A ha, you say, that means that giving a particular player more play time is a reward! Basically yes. A player who gets more time in the spotlight is getting to play more. It’s warm and cozy in the spotlight. But it can also get hot.

Let’s say you create a game that really focuses on a particular character. Fred’s playing a priest and you plan a whole session with the party visiting the church fathers, dealing with internal church politics, and so on. All priest politics, all day long. Even if the other players are into the plot and love the idea, it means a lot of play time for Fred. He will be involved in a lot of the scenes, because he’s the party’s link to the action. He should be happy, right?

The problem is that the game hinges on Fred. If he doesn’t play his priest well and provide a good window into the situation, the game falls apart. The other players are sitting around waiting for Fred to talk to people and move the plot. That’s a lot of pressure on one player.

…

Every game session players get to choose how involved they want to be. If they are in the mood, they can leap in and roleplay. If they are feeling mellow, they can usually sit back and let the party carry them along. People have good days, and people have bad days, and sometimes folks are just too tired or in the wrong mood to make a big effort.

The spotlight character doesn’t get that choice. The game stops with everyone’s attention square on that lucky player (”your wife confesses she’s having an affair with Dracula! What do you say?”). If he doesn’t step up, the game grinds to a halt, or at least limps along.

Sometimes the spotlight turns on even when you didn’t expect it. The game might not be specifically about one character (”Look, it’s Fred’s long-lost brother!”) but it might still be a situation that clearly calls on one character to step up and roleplay. When you bump into a bunch of xenophobic elves, the elf in the party is probably the one who has to do the talking. If one character is the self-styled Egyptian scholar, they’re naturally the party’s “what’s up with that mummy?” resource.

Yes these are situations the player should be welcoming, since they are situations that (probably) give the character a chance to showcase the traits the player choose, the traits the player wants to play. But maybe not today.

So what do you do? Be aware of when you are setting up spotlight situations and putting the burden of the game on one player. Always be ready to give a player an out if you have to. You can challenge your players to roleplay, but in the end you have to let them choose the level of their involvement in any game session.

Yes, it follows that giving a player less play time is a punishment. Invite someone to the game and then have them sit for four hours waiting to join in. Do you think your game is so interesting that the player is happy just to sit and listen? Think again.

So a Second AI, independent of the adversary AIs, could make a whole new species of better video games. Good. But it also tells us something about tabletop gaming, and that's that the GM is really wearing two hats, or to use a better metaphor, playing the game with two hands.

With the left hand, the GM controls the adversaries, the things in the game world that oppose the player characters. The left hand has to be ruthless, or more specifically, honest to the motivations of the enemies regardless of how bad it will be for the player characters. The tiger pounces and tries to eat its prey. The tiger doesn't hang back just because the nearest player character is badly wounded and could be killed.

With the right hand, the GM controls the allies, the things in the game world that are generally sympathetic to the players. Just like the adversaries, the right hand has to be honest to the allies' own motivations and knowledge. Most allies won't just fling themselves to their death to help the player characters.

Above both sits the Brain, the actual GM. The GM is on no one's side except the game itself. The goal is a good game, which does not just mean the players win. A good game may mean the players do well, other times it may mean the players have a really hard time or get wiped out. The GM might up the ante if the players are having too easy a time, because that improves the game. The GM says “hmmm, a few more ogres would make this fight more interesting,” and once they show up the left hand takes command and sends them crashing into the heroes. The left hand didn't add the ogres, the GM did.

A GM that fails to make the distinction between steering the creatures in the game world and moderating the game itself may:

a) fail to present a credible threat (having the monsters pull back when the heroes are in danger to avoid killing them)

b) play from the point-of-view of the enemy too much (grumbling when they are defeated too easily or enjoying their victories too much when they smash the heroes), or

c) have NPCs make decisions based on information they should not have (not bothering to use powers that the heroes are immune to)

In computer terms, the GM's left hand and right hand are traditional AIs, controlling creatures in the world, but the GM also serves as the Second AI, watching over the game as a whole.

The trick is to keep the roles separate. Will it really help your game to imagine that you are using different hands to control different creatures? Try it and see.

Rules should not surprise players. More specifically, if you describe a situation to the players and then describe the rules or modifiers that will apply because of the situation, the players should not go “whaaaa?”

If they are surprised it's either because you specified an odd mechanic (a will save to resist poison) or a really implausible modifier (-6 to hit for using a table leg as an impromptu weapon).

As GM you might think a rule or modifier fits even if the players don't agree. It's bound to happen sometimes because mapping rules to a situation is subjective, more art than science. More importantly it might be a sign that the players are not visualizing the situation the same way you are (you think you're describing the water as storm-tossed, the players are hearing it as choppy but a nice night for a swim).

On the other hand if the same thing uses different rules on two different occasions, it's hard to see how it makes sense no matter who you are. This might just be the result of inconsistency (oops) or you might intentionally be using another rule to get an advantage.

The game world is imaginary. It does not exist except in the minds of the participants. Each person has their own mind and their own imagination, which makes it all the more important to make sure there is a consensus, that you are all operating in the _same_ fictitious world and in agreement about how things work. Consistency makes that easier, inconsistency makes it harder.

To use an example from M&M, the players encounter one machine gun that uses a normal attack roll, and then later they encounter another machine gun that uses an Area attack instead (automatic hit, Reflex save to reduce damage). Conceptually the two machine guns are identical — one is bigger but otherwise the same.

A player sees the second machine gun before it fires and says “a ha, I will dodge to increase my Defense, which will make me harder to hit!” Logical but completely incorrect, because that player doesn't know that the second machine gun uses a rule mechanic that has nothing to do with Defense.

Or to take another example, one supervillain has a lightning bolt that does normal damage and requires a Toughness save, but another character has a lightning bolt that requires a Fortitude save instead, bypassing force fields and anything else granting a Toughness bonus. Advantageous yes, but the person getting hit is unlikely to see it as consistent or fair.

There's a simple fix for this:

The same description should never be modeled with two different rules. If you want to use a different rule, there should be a different description.

In the lightning bolt case, emphasize that the Fortitude attack looks entirely different: it's a throbbing wave of static, not a lightning bolt. Does that seem like a trivial change? It's minor, but not trivial at all. A tiny change like can keep the game feeling consistent, which keeps the players involved.

There is one emotion that GMs down through the ages have struggled to elicit: fear.

You've been there. The GM describes the terrible monster or ominous NPC, and the players know the GM _wants_ them to be afraid, but they just aren't gonna do it. They should be afraid, the thing is logically terrible, but they won't buy in.

Other times the players have apparently the same encounter and immediately yelp “oh sheet!” and have their characters start running for cover. They embrace the fear with glee and gusto.

A lot of GMs think that if they convince the players statistically that the threat can kill them, they will play their characters as being afraid. “He's a 40th lvl dark elf lich necromancer! He can kill you with a word! Tremble in awe!” It's a no go. Certain knowledge that a threat can kill you may elicit a rebellious fearlessness instead — after all only the character dies, not the player.

Here's a different take on the cause and effect of fear:

The players will embrace the idea of being afraid and impressed by a threat when they brought it upon themselves. The players will reject and scoff a threat when it was put upon them arbitrarily, which is to say, by the GM.

If the cunning thief decides to scout the caverns solo, and then bumps smack into a fire breathing dragon, the player knows the foot that was stuck in it was their foot, and the sticking was done by them. They will go “eep” and scurry.

If the same character is just walking down the road, and the GM says “out of nowhere a terrible dragon swoops out of the sky – it's terrifying!” the player is likely to stare at the GM blankly before uttering an “allll-right.”

Partly this is because if the players brought it on themselves, the threat fits a certain cosmic justice. You went into the sunken city, so naturally you woke up the nameless dread. Playing afraid is really just the outgrowth of a choice the players already made, which was to play brave and/or foolhardy, so they enjoy it.

If the threat comes at them because of nothing they did, the players rightly feels like the situation is a little unfair and are not as willing to buy into it. The players feels like the GM is trying to bend their attitude and naturally resist.

So want to scare or impress your players? Make sure they brought the danger on themselves.