I think that some sort of multidimensional model might be needed. I've read a number of indie games of the sort that the Forge community favor; with nearly all of them, my reaction has been, "I can't imagine why I would ever want to play that." I stopped designing homebrew games over a decade ago and have worked with (and indeed written for) published mainstream non-D&D systems. And yet my campaigns are miles away from "kill the monster, grab the treasure, level up, and repeat." For one thing, my modal new player is not a boy in his teens but a woman in her thirties; my play style emphasizes, on one hand, elaborate world building and the expectation that characters will be built specifically to fit the world; on the other hand, lots of emphasis on motivation, dialogue, and character interaction; on the third hand, avoidance of published adventures, especially those with linear plots, in favor of "bespoke" scenarios built around player characters' abilities, motives, and histories and with outcomes contingent on players' choices.
It seems to me that what I'm doing differs from what a lot of Forge games do in that it retains and indeed heightens the distinctive role of the GM, while using that role not to offer standardized mass entertainment but (in a modest way) creative art. I've taken to describing my attitude toward RPGs as "auteurist," to borrow a term from film. Whereas the modal Forge approach seems to minimize the role of the GM, making all of the players equals, and having some of the structure that conventionally comes from the GM built into the published system, so that when you agree to play, say, Dogs in the Vineyard you have already agreed to an extremely specific thematic focus and to a set of rules that facilitate that one theme at the expense of other possible themes.
The standard gaming social contract seems to be that you start out with a group of players who initially agree that they're going to game together; agree in choosing a GM to run the campaign; and then delegate decision-making power to the GM—who acts sort of as a Hobbesian sovereign. In contrast, the Forgeite model seems to start with a group of players who agree they're going to game together; adopt a game system; and under that game system, play as equals, making all decisions collectively—more a Rousseauean "general will" model. But my approach is based on the GM, as entrepreneur, coming up with a campaign premise, seeking players for that specific campaign, and getting their explicit agreement to the campaign when they agree to play in it. On the one hand, it gives the GM more power to make creative decisions; on the other hand, it gives the GM no security of being able to run any given campaign, because the player population does not exist in advance, but must be created by having both an attractive premise and a reputation for delivering good play. In a sense, I suppose this is more like Spooner's disavowal of constitutional "social contracts" in favor of explicit contracts between specific people for specific purposes—and while I don't believe anarchism works for legal systems, I find it satisfactory for most other activities.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-09-07 01:27 pm (UTC)It seems to me that what I'm doing differs from what a lot of Forge games do in that it retains and indeed heightens the distinctive role of the GM, while using that role not to offer standardized mass entertainment but (in a modest way) creative art. I've taken to describing my attitude toward RPGs as "auteurist," to borrow a term from film. Whereas the modal Forge approach seems to minimize the role of the GM, making all of the players equals, and having some of the structure that conventionally comes from the GM built into the published system, so that when you agree to play, say, Dogs in the Vineyard you have already agreed to an extremely specific thematic focus and to a set of rules that facilitate that one theme at the expense of other possible themes.
The standard gaming social contract seems to be that you start out with a group of players who initially agree that they're going to game together; agree in choosing a GM to run the campaign; and then delegate decision-making power to the GM—who acts sort of as a Hobbesian sovereign. In contrast, the Forgeite model seems to start with a group of players who agree they're going to game together; adopt a game system; and under that game system, play as equals, making all decisions collectively—more a Rousseauean "general will" model. But my approach is based on the GM, as entrepreneur, coming up with a campaign premise, seeking players for that specific campaign, and getting their explicit agreement to the campaign when they agree to play in it. On the one hand, it gives the GM more power to make creative decisions; on the other hand, it gives the GM no security of being able to run any given campaign, because the player population does not exist in advance, but must be created by having both an attractive premise and a reputation for delivering good play. In a sense, I suppose this is more like Spooner's disavowal of constitutional "social contracts" in favor of explicit contracts between specific people for specific purposes—and while I don't believe anarchism works for legal systems, I find it satisfactory for most other activities.