Thursday, May 26, 2005

More New Role-Playing

In case you missed it, this is a follow on to yesterday's post. Reading it first might help.

Brief summary of the state so far :

Problem One : RPGs encourage "several main characters involved in conflict with outside forces" whereas much of the rest of fiction is based on "several main characters involved in conflict between them".

Problem Two : Players often can't make scheduled games because of other commitments.

Proposal One : Make choosing and completing goals central to character creation and experience. Goals are how you get cool skills. (With the intent that many goals should be the source of conflict between players.)

Proposal Two : Choose a setting that imposes a hard, real-time limit on games. In this case, I'm going for a dimensional rift that spits the PCs back out after a fixed amount of time.

And in case it helps :

Definition One : Skill : Anything that allows the PC/player to influence the NPC/game world/GM, whether for good or bad.

On to the new stuff...

Problem Three : GMs must be active participants in the creation of game worlds, players need not be.

AKA GMs need to work too hard. There's a couple of issues here. Firstly, if I have to do all the work of creating a storyline, interesting characters, twists and turns, setbacks and reversals, and all the players do is wander through the plot rolling dice and being entertained, what do I get out of it? Sure, being creative is fun in and of itself, but frankly there's more rewarding outlets for solo creativity than an RPG. The great strength of role-playing is that it is a group activity. Think about your favourite sessions - how many of them were great because a player or five were actively being imaginative? I'll guess most, if not all.

Secondly, who the hell has the time? As we get older, we get busy, and a complex campaign needs player input to be logistically possible. (This is one of the reasons I primarily run Gloranthan games - years of exposure mean that I know the setting well enough that I can run a vast range of games with little or no prep work.)

So Proposal Three : What's beyond the rift is another dimension. The rift doesn't always lead to the same place (although it can revert to an earlier area). The basic area is pretty formless, but can be shaped by intelligent minds. (Doing so is a skill, probably several.) Some areas the players will visit have already been shaped by other minds (see below), some not. To create a basis for scenarios, the dimension will contain macguffins that are desireable in this world, and the PCs will make allies and enemies on the far side, which will provide additional scenarios.

Proposal Four : The GM will typically play one NPC. Entities beyond the rift fall into three classes : Humans, Non-Humans, and Minions. The UN thinks it has found a unique rift. It is wrong. There are others, some more stable. They are controlled by private individuals, corporations, or single governments. These provide the Human opponents. Non-Humans are natives of the other dimension, typically much stronger than Humans, and with motives that are suitably alien. Minions, on the other hand, are to an extent unreal. They exist as extensions of the major NPC. Some are literally formed from the stuff of the other dimension. (And if the PCs can learn how...) Others have a real existence, but are followers/mooks.

Once again, comments very welcome!

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