It's funny that this topic should come up today- just yesterday, the Question of the Day on RPGGeek was related- what unlikely friendships have you formed because of gaming.
My Answer – Most of my friendships are from gaming, so I don't consider them unlikely. I'm not one to make friends in other manners- I'm a solitary person by nature. I've always gone to the movies alone, gone traveling alone, and just been alone. The only thing I don't necessarily like to do alone is game. I do game alone- I like solo role-playing as an activity. It helps me a lot with my writing. But this shared interest in gaming is what binds me together with others socially; in environments where gaming isn't a focus, I have a hard time with trivial things like 'small talk'. And of course, you can't conversate on heavier things, so I tend to fade into the background as a means of defense.
My first thought at the prompt of 'Comfort' brought to mind the tendency of some in the hobby to find a system and stick with it, no matter the relative merits of the system. It might even be the first system tried- for some, there is that tendency not to stray from the system. I know that when I first started, I dabbled in several areas- from a start in AD&D 2nd Edition, I moved on to Marvel FASERIP and GURPS, adding Rolemaster once I went to college. I think that's one of the qualities I like about role-playing- the ability to get a different feel just by switching to a different system. Though I still buy and read a lot of systems, thinking about it I've seen a pattern. I'll have one primary system, and adapt everything to that system in order to run it more comfortably. I suppose that's no different than the gamers who stick with a particular system- my loyalties just switch from time to time as my sensibilities change. But, even for that, I still think that I'm more willing to try new things than most.
Since I'm in the midst of creating this campaign world, Dramatic immediately leads me to one of the steps in my process that I've just started- creating Drama in the world. Drama- meaning to me, meaningful excitement. Not a plot. I've made that mistake before, plotting out too much, and wasting a lot of time on things that the players are not interested in. But dramatic hooks that I can play as the players decide that they want to follow them, and find out what they entail with the players.
In my Drama document, I answered these questions in order to detail the dramatic hooks.
What are the major current affairs in the world (good and bad)
Detailing the city-state, I created a general outline of the relations with their neighbors- allies, frenemies, and outright hostilities. Also I gave a general overview of a couple of threads- an unexplored landmass that was recently discovered, a natural disaster that ravaged the southern farms, and forces stretched thin because the government is more concerned with the new area, rather than the plight of the outlying villages, as the food stores in the capital are not affected. Internally, a dissident group has been making waves, and rumors in the streets are that it is a group that was suppressed last year. The government denies this through the news sheets. There are developments of some new and exciting diversion for the rich, and there is supposed to be a large launch party with a celebrity chef serving up new culinary delights.
What are the threats the inhabitants of your world face
For threats, I went a bit more into the specifics of what a war means, and the general paranoia brought on by the cold war. There are natural threats everywhere other than the capital, and the safety of your home is based on what city you live in, and what sort of protections you can afford. But living in larger cities brings the threat of the government itself and its more draconian measures.
What are the everyday struggles of the people in your world
The struggles vary by where a person lives. In the Capital, the struggle is to survive against the draconian and sometimes mercurial rule of law. The lower castes have it worse, as they also struggle for sustenance and basic necessities. The larger hamlets have the same problem, but it varies depending on the ruler of the Satrapy. Villages don't have as much of a problem with the draconian law other than by the intermittent roving patrols that are supposed to protect them, but practically bleed them for the protection. That freedom is tempered by the constant dangers of the wildlife and the storms that wreak havoc to anyone unprotected out in them.
I'll have to go back and edit later, but I think that by focusing on the possibilities rather than the specifics of the plot, I can more ably react to what the players want to do once their characters are in the world.
For all else different in the 1984 Dune movie, I loved the introduction from Princess Irulan. Specifically, I loved the quote, “A beginning is a very delicate time.” That quote states a truism, as the beginning is the time when a think is not set, and is most prone to go in a different manner than you intended. It is the same with an RPG campaign, especially when you're the GM. How do you frame the entry into your world for your players, to get the correct feel across to them? It doesn't matter if you're making things up as you go along, or if you've spent a lot of time building your world, as a GM, you have a certain intention when starting a campaign, and it is for that reason that I think you have to set up your intentions in your players' minds even before they take their first actions in your world.
I think about this because I'm currently working on a world for Fate Core, and thinking back on my other experiences as a GM, and how I might have made the transition easier. I'm working through the world building process, and wondering how best to present it not just to my players, but in the material in case I use it elsewhere. Many products produce a quick start or a primer to the world- and I'm thinking that's the way that I will approach it, answering burning questions that will set the stage for the players.
What is unique about this world?
Why is the world the way it is?
What does it feel like to experience this world?
What are the recurring themes of the world?
Once I answer these questions, I will go into the specifics of the world, but I think if I answer those questions correctly, it should set the stage, and I can add some more specific factoids to the primer document to give the players some idea of what to expect as they start playing their characters.
I play a lot of Play-by-Email, and have played quite a bit of Play-by-Post. One of the advantages of the medium is the ability to divorce the player from the character, since you aren't looking at them while you're playing, but instead focused on the prose. To make it even more immersive (and to keep an idea of the public facing stats) we use custom made banners in our posts. This idea was born from playing a lot of Amber in PbEMs- one of the ideas in Amber are Trumps- cards that depict people that can be used to contact them, and for travel. We always made Trumps to depict the characters, and that evolved into the banners. I find that it adds an element to the game- a couple of examples are below.
There are two types of games- ones that descend from the D&D trope that rest heals all wounds. You go to sleep, wake up, and gain your spells, or a certain number of hit points, or even less believably skill levels and class levels. It just magically happens when you rest for a specified period of time. Others try to model the real world, where you keep up with the time that has passed since you received a wound, and healing takes place as time passes. Or you get experience for succeeding (or failing) a skill and when you get enough of whatever measure you're keeping track of, the skill increases. My initial gaming was in D&D, GURPS, Rolemaster, and Champions, which skewed towards the idea that rest was a needed thing for adventurers to recover any modicum of effectiveness. I remember when we were playing the tomb of desolation modules, and barely escaped into the desert. That trek was made worse by the fact that we'd just used all of our spells getting out of the place, and couldn't regain what we needed to survive because we couldn't really 'rest'. It felt arbitrarily punishing. I now play games that are more narratively driven, and the mechanism to recover from wounds and use of resources is more organic. It's ironic that in the simulationist vs story-game, most story games handle immersion a lot better than the games that have a rule for every little thing.
A trope in gaming is for adventures to be delivered via message. A mysterious courier arrives, looking for the party. The phone rings in the middle of the night. It's so used because it gives an easy way to involve the characters without having to create a lot of background. It's also used as a way out of being written in a corner, i.e. if the PCs can't find the clue you're looking for, finding a more obvious message that leads them to that thread is a lot easier than watching them flail. As with all tropes, unless it's couched in a way that is a bit more original than the device would suggest, it can bring on groans, and sometimes even a resistance to take the lifeline. The trope can be subverted, as in an expected message being counterfeit, which is a good way to use the trope in an unexpected manner. But how can you use the standard trope without it being so easily identified as such? That's a good exercise to dwell upon.
I find myself without inspiration- this prompt fails to arouse any sort of muse in me, even after a day of contemplation. The closest I come to a coherent thought is the stacks fo tokens in one of my first forays into RPGs. I loved the little games that came in the zip lock bags and plastic boxes. Car Wars, Ogre, and many others. But my first one was Starfire. It was what would be termed a 4X game today, filled with cardboard sheets of counters that you moved on a galactic map. My favorite parts of the 4X formula are the Explore and Expand phases. Yes, the Exploit and Exterminate are enjoyable, but building is more fun than destroying to me, and in those types of games, I go on long after I've won, expanding a building as much as I can. This game was no different, but I wanted something more than the game gave me, especially since I was playing alone. I started then, with the stacks of cardboard chits and the paper board expanding the game to the imaginary worlds and what happened when the dice were rolled. Who were those nameless troops dying on the planets, and what happened during the battles. I suppose that was my first foray into RPGs, and my first foray into hacking games.
What does your character want? It's a question that many times is left out, even when an in depth background is created, and even when we give objectives for our characters- sometimes we forget that root question that lies beyond the objective. I'm currently playing four characters in four different campaigns – Kenetsu Phar, 4th level brawler, 1st level rogue in a Pathfinder campaign, Nelson Crowe, 3rd Level Scholar in a Silent Legions campaign, Grayson Kitsch, God of Asymmetrical Warfare and Son of Ares in a Lords of Olympus Campaign, and Valentinian Decimus Merula, former Actor, now Exalt of Pasiap in a Lords of Gossamer and Shadow/Exalted game. Thinking about this question, I realized that I don't know what any of them really want. I have objectives- Crowe wants to master the cursed sword he is the caretaker of, Valentinian wants to secure the world that he is responsible for from outside influence and harm. But those are just goals. For all of the care that I put into each of their backgrounds, I've never looked deeper than that to see what they want at a basic level, and I think that's one of the reasons that I sometimes lose the 'voice' of the character- because I don't truly 'know' them, nor what truly drives them. It's a sobering thought.
Many people look at role-playing games as just a form of entertainment, and dismiss it as a waste of time. I know that they are more than that to me. They enable a dream of becoming known in the industry for my writing. Aspirations of releasing my own work. Practice for honing skills that I use on my job. To interact with a community that is of a like mind and I can talk about subjects that others might think are strange. And they're entertainment. Entertainment that in many cases is my outlet for stress and release of frustrations- to make the problems that I carry easier to bear. Not a waste of time, but something integral to my psyche and mental health. The patience and understanding that I give of things that go wrong in everyday life is made possible by this small measure of escape.
