Fantasy Heartbreaker, by Russell Bailey

I was thinking about my own early introduction to the tabletop RPG -  I learned and played with guys who were already into it.  They learned from guys who were already into it.  I’ve never played with anybody who learned how to do it from the “How To Roleplay” section in the front of the book.

I’ve read dozens of these sections, and all the usual metaphors – cops and robbers with rules etc.  But I’d already grokked it by the time I was reading them because I’d had it explained to me and demonstrated during actual play – I came by my intuitive knowledge of roleplaying  by receiving it from more experienced players.  The lore of roleplaying passed down, from geek to geek, stretching all the way back to the Founding Fantasists.  I’m not saying that nobody bootstrapped themselves into a full-functioning tabletop player by only reading the ‘How To’ section, I’m just saying I never met that guy, and never met anybody who’s met that guy.  Every player I know learned how to do it from friends, older brothers, uncles, or – for the lucky second-generation geeks – from parents.

I’ve written a few of these ‘how-to’ sections myself, and they always feel like boilerplate hash I’m obligated to put at the beginning, and I tend to write them (and the rest of my games) with the assumption that the people reading them will already have the essential mindset down – they’ll already know what roleplaying is and how it feels to do it.  That they’re already ‘one of us’.

But a recent project has really got me considering making the ‘how-to’ aspect of the game genuinely useful.

How to make a game which serves as a gateway for total newbs who have no conceptual framework for the ‘playing pretend with rules’ thing, for the shared storytelling, the improv acting, the immersion in character, the exploration of the shared imaginary world via the avatar of my guy.  Yet, also not making a game which is irritatingly basic and obvious for gamers already in the fold.  How to make a game that gently eases new players into roleplaying without any pressure, yet allows experienced gamers to enjoy it with whatever level of commitment to the experience they’re used to making?

This suggests a game which can be played on different levels, with the most basic mechanically-intensive one being essentially roleplaying-free.  A board game or low-crunch wargame as a possible model.  Enough fiddly bits, collectibles, and strategy to encourage commitment and investment of time.   A sense of ownership over your playing pieces (all the things your guy is made from).  A sense of continuity, as you use the same playing pieces (your guy) from session to session.   A board which is mostly imaginary, but has some presence on the table.   Basically, an engaging game with some depth and personalization – build your guy, name him, track changes to his fortunes and stats.

Then, the ‘role’ layer stacked on top of this, and linked to it – strategic advantage down in the ‘game’ level for adding some improvisational color to your guy’s actions – speaking in character, adding descriptions to actions, engaging in the scenarios by providing motivations for your guy to be involved or to take certain actions instead of others.

Then, the ‘story’ layer which provides the tactical scenario for play (goals, prizes, challenges, threats etc) and can be elaborated upon to create a narrative context for the game-resolved actions and the role-played embellishments.

The gentle trick would be designing the game in such a way that players would come to roleplaying without even realizing what they were doing – the roleplaying zeitgeist emerging spontaneously from their experience of play, at a pace set by their inclination to delve into (or take advantage of) the ‘role’ and ‘story’ layers, with naray a “how to roleplay” section to be found anywhere in the game.

And having conceptualized this stuff, and knowing my own biases (and all the things I take for granted about how to roleplay) can I write that game?

-B

Russell has given me the keys to the car, and I should really drive more carefully, and not mess with the radio so much.

Ben here.

I’m not so proud that I won’t admit to wallowing in adolescent power fantasy.  When I was 13 or so, we moved half-way through the school year from Georgia to Oklahoma, and I didn’t know anybody and didn’t really fit in.  At the time, I was a nascent genre geek (Doctor Who, Robotech, Voltron, Blakes 7, Tripods, Star Wars, Star Trek etc), but not yet a gamer.  A chance glance over the seat in the bus to see the magazine another kid was looking through hooked me in, and my destiny determined then and there.

My own copy of Dragon lead me to order a catalogue for a game shop that shipped things – please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery.  God, what an age.  Paper catalogues,  checks in the mail, and the waiting and waiting.  My first game was Champions but it was years before I actually figured out how to play it.  Trying to learn to play a tabletop rpg (especially one as mechanically involved as Champs) without the guidance of a more experienced player proved more than I could manage.  I wonder how often this was the case – and if my gaming lineage could be traced back to the Founding Fathers if you could follow the chain of players and groups.

I eventually found a group, and they were playing Palladium Fantasy.

Pal has a lot of critics, and I’ve had some things to say about them myself, but I’ve probably spent more money on Palladium books over the years than any other company’s output.

As a kid, their stuff was perfect because every book was full of new toys.  New guys you could play with morebigger powerz and skills and gear and guns and and and.  Toys.  Gewgaws  with cool pictures and lots of exclamation marks in the descriptions.  When I read shit like “Absolutely destroys EVERYTHING!!!!!” in a weapon description, I probably got a boner.  I was transitioning away from actual toys (and caught some grief for clinging to my Legos for so long), and Palladium stepped up and gave me toys I could play with all the time, in my brain.  In class, the margins of my notebooks were full of crude sketches of all the badass shit my guy would have in the games I would never actually get to play.

What was I talking about?

The first character I loved, right.  He was a troll assassin in a Palladium Fantasy game.  I looked through the book, and picked a guy with the best dice for rolling Physical Strength, and the class with the best damage-dealing potential out of the starting gate.  I armed him with the biggest pole-arm weapon in the game because it did the most damage.  Not exactly a ninja, but in a strictly literal sense, he made a very good assassin – if you paid him to kill somebody, he was well equiped to do it.

This was especially true because I cheated like a bastard when rolling him up.  What are the odds of rolling all 6′s on that P.S. roll?  If allowed to roll up my character before the game, while observed only by my shriveled superego, 100%.

So that was my first “my guy” – the character I really got into, really projected my imagination through as an avatar in the shared fantasy.  An artefact of my duplicity, inspired by my insecurities, and equipped to be everything I wasn’t in the real world – powerful, ferocious, immoral, and aggressive.

I’ve not forgotten what Skar the Manslayer taught me – there’s fun in escapism, there’s fun in power-fantasy, and there’s fun in toys and gewgaws.  Even when I’m operating in indie auteur design poser mode, I try and remember those things.

-B