Aug

23

What I’ve learned from a fictional idiot. (or, Why Misery Bubblegum is an Awesome Game)

Telling Stories Together

Who likes watching The Office? I really like watching The Office. Admittedly, this last season has been a bit of a let-down, but it sits next to 30 Rock as being one of my favourite comedies around.

For those who don’t watch it obsessively, let me fill you in: it’s about a boring office that does uninspiring sales work. It’s led by a boss named Michael Scott.

Michael Scott is a catastrophically incompetent manager, in that he is silly, rambunctious, takes everything personally, falls in love with employees, and never seems to do any work. But also, he’s weirdly personable, and for this reason manages to make incredible sales, and for this reason is necessary to the company. So, he definitely has redeeming qualities, but is seen in the office as a loose cannon and an inept dork.

Throughout the series, he gets involved with several women. And here’s the thing: they’re all hot and successful. None of these relationships go very well, but it’s undeniable: Michael is attractive to hot, successful women. And furthermore, when he’s in a relationship, he proves himself to be loyal and interested in solving people’s problems – traits that caused him problems in the office, but that make him shine in these new circumstances.

In the office, Michael is a circus-gone-haywire. In the dating world, however, he’s got this allure. And when his friends need him, he’s there. So, here’s what I’ve remembered, while watching The Office: divorced from context and circumstance, characters become radically different. And here’s what else I’ve remembered: characters contain multitudes.

Michael is made interesting by his contradictions – that he could be so bad a manager, and still have the most effective branch in the company; that he could be so annoying, and yet attract such fine ladies. His refusing to let things go is a fault in the office, but translates to loyalty and attentiveness in relationships. Michael contains multitudes. His contradictions make him more interesting. That he is a different person in different contexts is what makes him feel human.

Too often, in my writing and in story games that I play, I am concerned with communicating the singular essence of a character, the fundamental truth of their personality. That’s a failing. It’d be like trying to sustain life by only breathing in, and never out.  Whatever time I spend building up that image of a character, I should spend time undermining it in turn. In the end, I should be looking at a character as variable and contradictory as myself, or someone I love and live with.

Which brings me to Misery Bubblegum, a game by Tony Lower-Bausch. It’s a roleplaying game that uses special cards. You create a character by “clicking” together two cards that you’re dealt at random, like Roguish Hustler or Vain Dreamer. The game plays out in 60-90 minutes, telling the story of some anime high school drama. It’s fast and fun!

The best part is Tony’s advice for playing multiple episodes. Keep the same characters, but deal the cards randomly again. So, Mitso might be a Roguish Hustler in the first episode, and a Cowardly Champion in the next. That’s fine! that’s more than fine, that’s amazing! Characters contain multitudes, remember? Mitso was a cocky play-by-his-own-rules dude, but now that people are looking up to him, he’s shirking his duties and looking for a way out.

Misery Bubblegum does something mid-episode that brings home this concept as well. Things happen through the playing of cards. These cards include: Afraid, Need For: Love, Lonely, Brave, etc. Emotionally charged things that imply a lot about your character. And you draw them at random, and are expected to say these things about your character if you want to win conflicts.

And when Tony first explained the idea to me, I was a little leery. So, just because I draw an Afraid card, I need to have my character be afraid? In play, though, it shone. Because every character had moments of fear, moments of bravery, moments of love and moments of loneliness. And when those things contradicted one another, they only served to make the character more interesting. These simple characters became rich.

I’ve started re-watching Buffy. Any guesses what makes it such an awesome show?

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Jul

04

Simple, Single-Purpose Elegance

Design Diary / Telling Stories Together

I hate Facebook.

There’s lots of reasons to hate it, but I hate it for the reason that it is obtuse and sprawling. The worst part is that I used to love it. And back then, when we were starry-eyed for one another, I swear that it was a different creature altogether. I swear that it changed, more than I did.

This is going to get around to talking about story games in a minute, but give me time to bitch about Facebook first, okay? See, Facebook is now a mess of Walls, status updates, pages, groups, events, apps, social network games, ads, albums, chat windows and boxes. I have a hard time looking at a Facebook page and establishing a clear vision of what it’s supposed to do.

Facebook used to have a vision, right? College students and alumni could sign up with a college email, and then they’d be able to find their friends, write on walls, and view people’s pictures. It was a time magnet for people wanting to creep the hundreds of photos that their ex Courtney has up. Excellent. A simple and elegant social site. Now, it has traded in that vision for extra tools. It’s become a big, sprawling box of tools, something unwieldy.

Perhaps I’m weird, but I want everything in the world to have a clear and immediate purpose, to have a clear and immediate big picture. I don’t care if it’s important or not, I just want it to know what it is.

And now, I want to take a moment and share with you some of my favourite stuff on the internet, and unpack why it’s my favourite.

Twitter
Twitter is the perfect example of what I wish Facebook was comfortable being: a site with a clear role. A simple, single-purpose elegance. Twitter is a place where you can talk to yourself about what you’re doing, name-drop the people you’re hanging out with, and watch other people do the same. It’s like a perpetual, narcissistic chatroom. You can reply and retweet, follow people and whatever. Or not. You can just spit out little 140-character tidbits about what you are doing on your day off.

Now, Twitter is constantly adding new features, just like Facebook. So, how are they different? First of all, Twitter’s features are unobtuse and unobtrusive. Some (hashtags, @replies, new search options) are an increase in functionality without an increase in visible stuff. Others (lists, retweet button) are quiet & available, obvious in their purpose. In all cases, Twitter’s features increase functionality without detracting from core elegance, and reinforce what Twitter is supposed to be about: dropping little updates, and watching your friends do the same.

750Words
I’m absolutely in love with this site right now. It’s a beautiful middle-ground between Livejournal and Nanowrimo and Twitter. Here’s how it works: you log onto a private journal. Along the top of the page, there’s a very-sleek simple calendar showing you which days this month you’ve written and which you’ve missed. On the bottom of the page, there’s a word counter. Write until you have 750 words or more.

It’s inspired by an exercise called morning pages, wherein a writer starts their day by writing three pages. Usually journals and untidy thoughts. So, a really simple purpose. What does 750 Words bring to the table? Well, first of all, the main journaling page is simple and tidy. There are no distractions in your virtual workspace. The calendar along the top (just a series of thirty checkboxes, with completed days filled in) is a powerful, powerful motivator – seeing a skipped box isn’t fun, and there’s a drive to fill today’s. The real-time word count along the bottom is another powerful motivator. So, the main workspace is motivating and uncluttered, a perfect environment in which to write. It’s also accessible from anywhere, a bonus over real-world journals that you need to lug around with you if you want them handy.

But here’s the cool bit! Once you’ve hit your goal, click the little word count link. It takes you to an analysis page, which breaks down your words-per-minute, total time, number of distractions and total words written. It graphs that in comparison to your record best. And then it analyzes your post and tells you about your mood, your writing topics, and your common words. It’s not always right, but it’s a fun feature. FINALLY! You can earn badges for writing a certain number of days in a row (badges at 1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 100).

So, there are all these features. But, here’s the cool thing: they don’t cloud the site’s functionality. They support the core vision (daily writing and self analysis). The badges motivate, the analysis tools invite you to take a look at what you’re writing. Everything about the site supports its core vision, and every feature is unobtrusive and purposeful.

Canabalt
Perhaps the best video game I’ve ever played. Canabalt follows a man in a tuxedo, only a couple pixels tall, as he makes a “daring escape” from a crumbling city. He runs along rooftops automatically, and you click your one button to make him jump. Jump from rooftop to rooftop!

The game is super, super slick. Great music, great graphics, great pacing. And it’s simple: your only control is jump. He’ll run progressively faster and faster, and the only way to slow him down is to crash into some obstacles (there are crates and garbage cans scattered across these roofs). Some buildings are covered in cracks, and start collapsing the moment you land on them. Sometimes, you need to jump through a “window” and run through a building. Finally, there are two types of bombs: little ones, that land on top of a building and that you shouldn’t hit; big ones, that obliterate a building upon contact, that you need to jump on top of to make it through the level. There’s a “tweet your score” button, and you can tweet how many meters you ran before falling. That’s it. On the ipod version, you have two different soundtrack options.

So,
This all relates to story games and game design. You can already see how, right?

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Jun

27

What are story games? And why?

Telling Stories Together

Let this post act as a primer, for anyone who’s interested in story games. Too few people know what story games are. There is a huge wealth of amazing, creative, social people in the world. People I’d love to play games and tell stories with.

This post is an attempt to paint a picture for those people. If you’re one of them, welcome. Here’s this thing I do:

Stories are vital. They’re the reasons our hearts beat. They’re how we make sense of emotions, and fortunes, and the days of our lives. When we don’t take time to honor and cherish stories, we fall back upon only the necessary ones. The ones that help us cope, that reinforce our pre-made choices. We fall back upon the belabored and uncontested stories.

When we step outside of ourselves, and seek stories out on purpose, we hit a great diversity. There are things we hate, and love, and things that change us. We change some things in return. Exploring a story can fill us with awe. It can also be tiring.

Games are vital. They are playful, and engaging. They give us a chance to succeed, but also the freedom not to fret over our success. If you don’t win at a game, your life is still OK afterwards. When something takes the form of a game, it becomes instantly lighter and more playful.

So, marrying these two things, that’s a pretty obvious first step, right?

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May

23

Piracy Ain’t Easy (but it comes with time)

Telling Stories Together

I bought a fiddle a year ago, and spent about a year neglecting it. It’s only recently that I’ve redoubled my interest and effort, and have begun to practice several times a week. I’m taking my first lesson tomorrow, which I’m really excited about.

I have been teaching myself, thus far, out of a book. I think it’s called Fiddle For Beginners. A few months ago I bought two song books as well: Essential Rock (containing Brown Eyed Girl, Low Rider, White Wedding, Freebird, and a bunch of other random rock songs), and the soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.

It’s the Pirates of the Caribbean book that I’ve been focusing on today. Specifically, One Last Shot. Very specifically, the section around :32-:52 (which is where the fiddle part essentially starts, in this book). I spent ten minutes listening to the song on Youtube before starting to play, and periodically took a moment to replay that section to see if it was still “sounding right” in my head.

I can’t play that fast while learning a song, obviously. I’m not very good yet, and so things come together very slowly. But this song seems pretty simple, and most of it is played on the A string (where I’m currently most comfortable), so I think I’ll be able to pull it off sooner or later.

When learning new things, or practicing new skills, or composing/creating new works… I always hit a wall. There’s a point where things always look futile to me, and it’s often fairly early on. It’s that point where the investment & dedication required keeps growing, and the results have slowed to a crawl. Its that point where the gap between your expectations and your results are widening, and seem like they’ll only keep widening the harder you work.

When trying to learn a song, it specifically translates to “this doesn’t sound anything like the real song”, and it seems like the harder you work the more you “lose” the right tune. And I spent about twenty minutes getting more and more frustrated by my inability to make a few eight notes and quarter notes resemble the way I knew they were supposed to come out.

Wall perhaps isn’t the best description, because you can’t just get around it and keep going. Rather, it’s a valley. The Valley of Dwindling Rewards. It takes a lot to climb out of that godforsaken valley, and the hardest part is trusting yourself. But, I managed to climb my way out of the valley with One Last Shot.

And the funny thing is… when you get out of that valley, up onto that mountaintop… even the simplest rewards feel huge. I’m rejoicing that what I am playing sounds remotely like the song, because that’s leaps and bounds ahead of where I was five minutes ago. Every few minutes, it sounds better. I get closer to the right timing, hitting the notes more cleanly, feeling proud about it.

With most projects, especially creative ones, you get less confident before you get more. My experience with writing poetry is that I am always ready to tear up the page, moments before I write something that feels true and beautiful and right. With storytelling, with performing, you’re always trembling with doubt moments before applause.

So, I wanted to share that success. That voyage into and out of the Valley of Dwindling Rewards. Back into the realm of joy and excitement.

Oh, and tangentially related: I bought a banjo. I can pretty definitively say that this song was what tipped a decision that I’ve been hemming and hawing over for a while.

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Sep

16

This Particular Darkness.

Telling Stories Together

“I got a hundred years of down home running through my blood.”
-Alabama

Let’s pretend, for a second, that every type/genre of music can be reduced to a question about life, the universe and intentionality. For the moment, we’ll just treat this as a game, an exercise. I think rap music could be paraphrased as “How do we emerge from hardship?” You see a lot of songs about enduring and surviving (Talib Kweli’s Gotta Get By, Eminem’s Lose Yourself), a lot of songs about conflict, and then an explosion of songs about having made it. Maybe it’s more complicated than a single question, but certainly the culture of rap music could be well described in a few short questions: “how do we deal with hardship?”, “how do we overcome hardship?”, “what will we do with our power, once we gain it?” These questions are ultra-prevalent in rap, but to try to ground the body of pop music, or indie rock, in them would be a difficult exercise.

Ask me four years ago what I listened to, and I would have answered: punk. I might have then added “ska and indie rock”, but my answer was that I was a firm proponent of punk. Let’s give the unifying-question treatment to punk. “Are you willing to fight back?” “Who is to blame?” “How should we die?” Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’ve recently rejected the importance of those questions. I don’t see fighting a system as the best way to affect a system, and I don’t see confrontation as the best means for deep-rooted change. Thus, “Are you willing to fight back?” is like asking “Are you willing to break the hammer on the screw?” for me. I don’t see blame as a necessary or useful component of problem solving or conflict resolution, so “Who is to blame?” is problematic and unhelpful to me. And finally, I’ve moved away from the hometown I despised, and in doing so abandoned a lot of the fatalism that I carried with me, leaving the “How should we die?” question one that could only be answered prematurely and rashly.

Punk’s burning questions are no longer burning. They sit as nice signposts to remind me of my adolescence, but my mind has turned to new ones: “Where do we find beauty?” “How shall we live?” “Where do we go from here?” “What can we learn from the past as we explore new ground?”

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Sep

11

How To Resolve Intense, Interpersonal Situations in Ribbon Drive

Promotion / Telling Stories Together

Graham Walmsley recently hosted a game of Ribbon Drive and his group encountered an interesting situation – two characters were locked in intense struggle, and the players didn’t know how to resolve this tense situation. To really zoom in on the issue, although either of them could have just decided what happened, they wanted the game to support them by providing some kind of structure (whether concrete resolution, flags, choices or else). A game should indeed do this for its players. Ribbon Drive gives you those tools, but they aren’t very obvious. This how to post will explain what those tools are and how to use them, in the context of resolving intense, interpersonal situations between characters.

Specifically, Steve posted the following situation:
I played Rashid. My character’s futures were “I hope I find someone” and “I’m never going back”. Rashid was on the run from the gang from whom he’d stolen drugs. Basically he was an asshole, causing Jenni to clip a jackknifed lorry.

In the scene with the crash, Rashid pinned Jenni’s foot on the gas pedal. It was a good moment of tension but it didn’t have any clear method of resolution.

I think part of the problem might have been that there wasn’t any clear way of resolving issues between the travellers. They didn’t seem like obstacles. I mean, could I have made Jenni not leave the band by using my drugs trait to keep her happy? That didn’t seem right either.

The first thing to keep in mind is that Ribbon Drive differs from many games that you’ve played, in that it is not a game that cares very much about what happens. That sounds like a big statement, and indeed it is. What do I mean by it? Well, this: the system doesn’t offer “conflict resolution” tools, because even in the midst of the conflict, it has different priorities. Two of those priorities are music and Futures, and I’m going to unpack how to turn to them in such a situation:

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Aug

25

Plugging in Scenes and System

Telling Stories Together

I swore that I would never do this. That I would never make a story games theory post.

But this feels different, and somehow allowable. I’m going to explore some theory, tie it directly into play techniques, and offer some diagnoses of play. This post aims to explore the idea of sockets, why we should pay attention to them during scene framing, and how game systems should support us in engaging sockets and framing scenes.

I’ve created a new category to place this post in: Practical Theory. If the conversation goes well, there might be additional Practical Theory posts in the future. If the conversation crashes and burns, I’ll destroy the category. Alright, enough preamble.

Term: Sockets

We engage stories, and especially story games, in different ways. Some of us latch onto the characters involved in the fiction, and their decisions and viewpoints are paramount. For others, the story and the plot are most important. For others, the descriptions of setting and surrounding are most important. Some of us care most about the other people at the table, and the social element of play. These different modalities of engagement are known as sockets: they’re how we “plug into” the game and our enjoyment of it. To quote directly from Mo (linked in the last sentence), sockets are where people “give and take their focus and energy to and from“.

Term: Aggressive Scene Framing

To quote, scene framing is “the technique of skimming through time in the game to a particular time and place of interest. ” Scene framing is when you cut from the previous scene and move into a new scene, establishing details of setting and situation that unfold and develop through play. Aggressive scene framing is when your use of scene framing is intentional, purposeful and focused – framing to moments of high engagement and involvement (in other worlds, moments that demand immediate and meaningful participation). Note that I intentionally avoided saying “frame to the moment of conflict”, and I’ll talk about why in a minute.

Drive Toward Meaningful Engagement (Sockets & Scene Framing)

It’s a common misconception that the way you do aggressive scene framing well is to frame to the moment of pregnant conflict, that you open with an opposed situation that must be diffused. I’m going to take a step back from this idea and offer a suggestion: scene framing should work to engage our sockets in a meaningful way, skipping that which doesn’t satisfy our engagement and energy. In other words, if we all have Conflict/Plot/Choice sockets, then and only then is it appropriate to frame to moments of intense conflict. If we all have Setting/Aesthetic sockets, then we should be framing with interesting and evocative images, and use scene framing to move us to those images.

Example A: The Spelunkers. Imagine a group of D&D players whose primary sockets are Tactical, System and Choice. Good scene framing will meaningfully engage these sockets above others. The GM uses aggressive scene framing by saying, “Alright, your trip back out of the Cavern of Doom is uneventful. When you return to the hamlet you last stayed at, you see several buildings in flames. Two pairs of guards patrol the perimeter of the hamlet, sticking to lit paths. I’ve got a map of the village here. Note that it’ll take a skill roll of 20 to put out a torch from afar, and a skill roll of 15 to sneak up on the guards.” This immediately engages their tactical socket (by asking them to choose the best and most effecient entry point), and their Choice socket (by framing the moment of planning). It would be bad scene framing to fast forward past this point, because it is here that tactics and choice have the highest level of engagement.

Example B: The Crazy Folk. Imagine a group of Don’t Rest Your Head players whose primary sockets are Aesthetic (“not necessarily caring if a narrative is created or if character development makes sense, as long as play creates something beautiful / interesting”) and Character. The GM uses aggressive scene framing by saying, “So, you’ve got the soldiers cornered. Great! With some prodding, they’ll agree to lead you to the Wax King. You are led through rank, disgusting sewer line. Along the walls of the sewer, you start to notice… wax. Hot wax seems to be bubbling out of every possible crack in the wall. One of the soldiers turns to you and asks if you’ve ever met an immortal before.” Note that there is no conflict inherent in this scene, no decision that needs to be made. There is a description/scene that the GM thinks is evocative and interesting, and there is a conversation for the characters to join into. The players are given a chance to narrate their characters’ thoughts and interactions. The GM skipped over negotiations/conflict to get to meaningful engagement – in this case, aesthetic and character.

Term: System

One compelling summary of system: System (including but not limited to ‘the rules’) is defined as the means by which the group agrees to imagined events during play (Lumpley Principle). I’m not going to extrapolate on this idea much: system is the wedding of hard rules (like when you roll dice) and soft procedures (like who has the authority to introduce setting descriptions).

At its best, system makes your participation more meaningful. These next two sections will explore that.

The Right Game Will Support Your Engagement (Sockets & Game System)

One of the reasons that RIFTS is not a good game for me is because the system doesn’t support shifting character priorities, and it doesn’t mechanically reward beautiful or interesting description. I’d be “plugging in” to stuff that is irrelevant to the mechanics/system of the game. When looking to a game, see where and how your sockets are supported and integrated in. If you have a choice socket, ask “does the game make choices meaningful”?

Why does it matter if your sockets are supported by the system? Because sockets are where you put your energy in and expect to get your energy out of. If the system doesn’t support your sockets (and your sockets don’t support the system), then you’re dividing your energy and forced to choose between two reward sets (mechanical/system, and personal).

Example C: The Spelunkers. Having decided to ambush the patrolling guards and slip into the shadows afterwards, this group of D&D players looks to the system. Does their game support and reward making tactically advantageous decisions that are based on system knowledge? If so, their sockets are integrated and supported well by their chosen system. If not, they should probably switch games. In this case, I’d say “yes”.

Example D: The Minions. A group sits down to play My Life With Master. If the players have a strong aesthetic or setting socket, they will be richly supported by the system, which provides lots of meaningful interactions across those sockets. If they have a strong choice or tactical socket, they will be unsupported by the system. Their GM and group might work to provide meaningful engagement of their socket (ie, by engineering the fiction and situation to a place where choice is relevant), but these efforts will be unsupported by system.

The Right Game Will Engage Your Best Material (Scene Framing & System)

This steps away from sockets, and offers something similar to “The Right Game Will Support Your Engagement”.

When you play, you make decisions, create new situations and details and advance the story. This content/material will take creative energy to create, and some of it will be quite amazing. Seeing that material engaged, reincorporated or integrated into an ongoing story/game/plot arc/situation equates to seeing a return on investment.

You can manage that engagement, reincorporation and integration on your own, but it takes a lot of effort. A system is right for you to the degree that it re-integrates your best material easily and meaningfully.

The Disconnects

When there’s a disconnect between sockets & scene framing, you either skip the meaningful engagement or need to wade through unmeaningful content in order to reach it. In the first case, you’ll see decreased trust and people challenging where a scene starts (“no, my character wouldn’t have done that!”). Frustration will likely build over time, as people are being denied key chances to invest and see return on their creative energy. In the second case, you’ll see boredom and mixed participation levels. People may start engaging scenes in inauthentic ways (rushing to conflict, making uncharacteristic decisions, disrespecting genre) in an attempt to move more quickly to what excites them.

When there’s a disconnect between sockets & system, players will either pursue their sockets and drift play away from engagement with the mechanics, or they will engage the mechanics with disinterest, seeing little return for their energy. In the first case, you’ll have expectation clash and a deprioritization of system (which might have been the unifying factor of play interests). In the second case, you’ll see unenthusiastic participation.

When there’s a disconnect between scene framing & system, you’ll see great material that fails to become integral to your game, or at the very least, a lack of reincorporation of great material.
This is already 300 words over my self-imposed post limit, so now I’m signing off.

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Aug

20

How To Be Quiet Together

Promotion / Telling Stories Together

So, in the middle of July, I published Ribbon Drive. It’s a game wherein you create stories about road movies.  If you didn’t already know that, click on the “Ribbon Drive” page of this site.

This is the first of a few very specific “how to” posts I’m going to make to support the game. The game is complete as written – these aren’t errata or updates, they’re just further exploration that I invite you to share with me. They’re the fireside conversations with the designer.

Ribbon Drive opens with a difficult task: as a group, listen to a song in silence, while thinking about it. To the uninitiated, that might sound really easy. It’s actually not. I’ve talked about the first reason why in earlier posts: being silent together is a difficult and sometimes uncomfortable thing to do. Many of us aren’t as accustomed to it as we say we are. The second reason why this task is hard is because we’re asked to pull something concrete (an image, a story, a premise for a road trip) out of something abstract. This kind of open-ended interpretation is common in therapy, and poetry, and some literature… but in general we demand concrete and immediately knowable media (simple movies, linear narratives, three-act structure, background information, etc). To ask a group of players to start in the abstract and move to the concrete is actually a big step away from the norm. Finally, it’s difficult because we don’t know if we’re doing it right. The idea is to share and discuss after the song, but to do all of your interpretting and immersing during. There’s a legitimate fear that you’ll misunderstand the song, or that you’ll fail to share what others understood from it.

If I know this is a difficult task, why does the game open with it? First of all,  because it seems like an easy task, and it doesn’t require any immediate sharing or creative production. The buy-in is easy, though the task itself is as big as you can handle it being. Second of all, it sets up some pretty clear expectations of what the game looks for: listening to music, being thoughtful, adapting to the flow. Finally, because it’s interesting to see what we do with already beloved art, and I want to put that at the forefront of the game.

So, how do you make the most of this tricky task? First, keep in mind:

1.) We’re intentionally de-contextualizing something. We’re not going to have Chris Clavin on the road trip with us, so the context that he wrote the song in doesn’t need to matter to us. We can let it matter, but only if we want to. In other words, we have no obligation to interpret what the song was trying to tell us. We can go our own direction with it.

2.) Difference in interpretation is good. If three of us envision a trip through murky Ohio backroads, but one of us sees showgirls livin’ the high life… Suddenly we have a range to choose from. We can play either of those points, or an intermediary. We can combine those things, too: what about a bunch of showgirls, booked for “the tour of their lives”, only to find that it runs through murky backroad Ohio? Or, what about a bunch of rural Ohio girls, deciding to move to Vegas and become showgirls?

3.) Difference in depth is good. Some players are going to read deeper into a song than others – they’ll unpack the imagery, get what it’s really about, tap into the creative gusto behind it. Some won’t. This difference in depth of opinion is good! The deeper interpretations might provide a strong thematic or contextual element, while the simpler interpretations will give us tangible facts about the trip. If someone says, “It’s clearly a song about child abuse and working through your issues”, you shouldn’t be disheartened that all you got was “I think it’s set in Canada,” or “they mention green in the song, so maybe our van is green!” Different depths of interpretation give us different things that  compliment each other.

4.) Every answer is right. As a culmination of the other three: every answer is correct. Simple answers, deep answers… incomplete answers and comprehensive ones. If you hear a song and envision lemon orchards, voice that. If you hear a song and all you come up with is the word “musky”, voice that. In the absolute worst case (ie, your idea gets shot down), it’ll still provide definition through contrast.

So, what are some techniques for sharing this focused silence?

1.) Find a comfortable space. There’s nothing to stop you from laying on the floor, closing your eyes, nodding along, standing up and leaning against the wall… If you aren’t at your utmost comfort in your chair, step out of it. It’ll put you in a deeper state of relaxation and leave you better prepared to take in the song.

2.) Explore images. If a particular line grabs you, try to envision that line in your head. Invent both a narrative and a visual track for the song as it plays out. Don’t force imagery if it’s not coming (be quick to move on), but definitely invite the opportunity.

3.) Use the printed lyrics as a grounding point, but nothing more. If you’re following the rule that says “bring printed lyrics for the first two songs,” then you’ve got a page in front of you which can be helpful in decoding the meaning of the song. Don’t focus on it to the detriment of focusing on the actual song. When first playing this game, I kept my eyes glued to the lyrics, and as a result missed the main activity: open visioning and engaged listening. Use the lyrics to clarify a line, find out where you are in the general structure of the song, or follow along for a few seconds in order to feel “grounded”. Don’t rely on them beyond that. They’ll always be there when the song ends, if need be.

4.) Use everything at your disposal. While this exercise is focused on the song playing, there’s no reason that you can’t look around you for additional inspiration. Watch people’s faces and note their reactions to the song. Look at how the sunlight streams through the blinds, and think about how this image interacts with the song. Note how the song fills the space you’re in – do they clash? do the compliment one another? does it feel like a natural pairing? Feel free to look around you and think about what’s going on in the space you’re in, especially if you’re thinking about how these things interact with the song.

5.) Ground the song in something you know. What does this song remind you of? If this song were to soundtrack a moment of your life, or a larger experience, what would it be? Ground the song in memory and situation, because this will give both the song and your game of Ribbon Drive more traction.

Ribbon Drive opens with a simple yet difficult task. It asks you to open up your mind, work with the abstract, work with already existing art that at least someone at the table loves, and create something meaningful as a result. And, it asks you to start this process in silence. Hopefully this post gives you a bit of an idea what to do with that silence, if you were stuck.

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Aug

10

How to yell a poem & tell a game.

Telling Stories Together

I like poetry. I especially like performance poetry.
But sometimes it feels like we’re playing to format (*) and not to content.

I’ve often gone to poetry slams and seen good poems put down by bad poems that are delivered as per the form’s standard: exactly three minutes, build-and-then-invert-your-message-and-then-crescendo, get jittery as you lead up to your climax, address it to “you” (that never-a-stranger, always-a-stranger audience member that sits inside the spotlight.) When you have 12 poets going up in a row, you have the following happening: an overdose of imagery and impact, leaving the audience desensitized to a soft voice or a subtle line; a culture of confessional one-upmanship, in order to keep the audience’s attention and to distinguish yourself as somehow more than the other poets who’ve come and gone; a shift over the course of the evening from poetic appreciation to frenetic, untargeted energy. And sometimes you lose track of what you’re actually looking for. The result is that you feel cheated by the moment.

Poetry Slams are not an anomaly in this regard. They just seem to have a bit more self-awareness of this condition than do other social art forms. Another place where I’ve seen this rear its head is in story games, in two specific ways. The first is a “push to conflict” mentality. Many games necessitate each and every scene to build up to and resolve a conflict mechanically (popular examples: Primetime Adventures, Shock: Social Science Fiction). The second is a “bring the awesome” mentality, where rocket-mecha jesus is a better addition to the story than a soft-spoken preacher, because it’s MORE AWESOME!!!!!

Sometimes, we deny ourselves the moving experiences we’re looking for, while simultaneously paying lip service to them. I’ve talked to people about their experiences with Dogs in the Vineyard, and many have told me about game sessions where people rushed into conflict with each other, escalated to guns and decimated the first town they walked into, because other people’s excited play reports had informed them that the game was about destroying innocent people. Dogs in the Vineyard is actually about trying to resolve difficult situations, and watching ideologies come face to face with real life. Which sometimes results in the destruction of innocent people. We’ve (for any values of “we” you find useful) established a culture of play that revels in the dramatic reveal over the dramatic tension, the breaking point over the establishing point. We push to conflict, we make it awesome, we bring the pain, we play close to home, we… miss the point. We put characters we don’t know into conflicts that don’t mean anything to us as people. We get lost in the fever of it all.

How do you facilitate better play over bigger play? How do you remove the one-upmanship of poetry/story games/social interactions? How do you keep your focus on the elements you’re actually looking for? Christian talks about games that focus on non-competitive/escalative elements. Jonathan talks about a culture of play that puts fiction first.

I’m going to suggest something: that the issue is a focus on format over content. In the example of slam poetry, people write the 3-minute angry poem that builds-drops-builds-twists-explodes, even if the content doesn’t demand it. In the example of story games, people push to conflict and race to face-stabby play, even if the content doesn’t demand it.

The tricky thing is that I’m not talking about transitioning away from any school of game design (from focused-structure to open design, for example). “Format” doesn’t simply mean “rules”. To suggest that freeform, story jamming or “rules lite systems” will avoid the pitfall of format-over-content is to miss part of the point. Format includes: rules, expected structure, expected pay-off, assumed roles and genre stand-bys. We are eager to affirm that what we’re experiencing conforms to and exceeds our expectations. The trap in this is that we begin to live in our expectations rather than our experiences. And then we begin to create affirmations of our expectations, rather than just focusing on creating our art.

We get excited about the promise of good content. We create formats to deliver the best content possible. And then we get lost in the format, to the point where some of our best content gets washed over and disregarded. The questions: How do we keep our expected outcomes from dictating our actual play? How do we appreciate elegance in the face of something easier? How do we keep fiction first, and stay rooted in what we’re actually creating? How do we put content before format?

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Jul

15

Soft Play.

Telling Stories Together

I’m back!

Summer has been going well. Ribbon Drive is nearing publication. My garden is doing fairly well. And I got back from Go Play alright. Go Play helped me realize something about my play preferences – a shift I’ve made in the past two years.

We sometimes talk about this mode of play that is goal-focused, situation-driven, poweful, assertive, emotionally aggressive, testing and meaningful. It’s a subset of Story Now play, and I’ve heard it described as “playing passionately,” “story by the throat,” and the less flattering “face stabby play.” And I used to be all about this. Yeah! Let’s play close to home, and let’s be really INTENSE about it! So there’s this spectrum that runs from easy/safe/light play to demanding/vulnerable/intense play. Basically, “light-hearted play” vs “intense play”.

There’s a second axis that I find doesn’t get much attention. It’s that of quiet/subtle/downbeat play to loud/obvious/gonzo play. Basically, “soft play” versus “thunderous play”.

Most of the time, when “intense play” gets discussed, it’s assumed we’re also talking about “thunderous play.” A lot of newer games support emotional violence, pushing really hard on character/player goals, centralizing conflicts (the phrase “push to conflict” being a common one) and rewarding powerful and tense moments. Stabbing your mother to protect your forbidden love = awesome.

The shift in my play preferences is that I no longer like this combination. I’m cool with combining “light-hearted play” and “thunderous play”. In this combination, there’s a focus on getting the most fun out of a moment of play, of having actions sound cool, and of building upon any and all suggestions (ie, not filtering). This kind of play works well with Dungeons and Dragons or Danger Patrol or Inspectres. Firing your rocket gun while jumping out of a flaming zepplin = awesome.

I’m fine with “light-hearted play” and “soft play”. This kind of play focuses on appreciating little character quirks, working together, figuring out what you want, and having fun.  Breaking the Ice does this really well; the endgame mechanics are: look at the relationship you’ve created. Decide whether or not you want it to last. A thoughtful end to a feelgood game about trying to make something nice work out. Playing out the simple dialogue of two quirky people in a supermarket = awesome. Maybe. Perhaps this cross-section is a straw man – I don’t really know this type of play well at all.

I’m most interested in mixing intense play and soft play.  This is the kind of play where things hit home, but they do so slowly. There’s room for subtlety. There”s also room for abrupt, sudden violence. The difference between this abrupt violence and that of “thunderous play” is that when play is soft, we watch the violence shake itself out. We see repercussions, we follow the downbeats after the action. Play utlizes pregnant pauses, focuses on difficult decisions and transitional moments, and makes us think about what our characters really want.

I’m working on two games right now. Ribbon Drive and Perfect. Ribbon Drive is  a game about everyday people on road trips, learning to let go (and sometimes giving up on their dreams). Perfect is a game about committing crimes in a Victorian Dystopia, and facing the punishment and brainwashing that follows if you get caught. I started working on them both in earnest months ago. Ribbon Drive is ready to print, whereas Perfect has a lot of writing left. Part of the reason is that Ribbon Drive is a simpler game. A bigger part is that Perfect is intense/thunderous, whereas Ribbon Drive is intense/soft; my interests have shifted and its hard to bring them back.

I don’t see a lot of support for intense/soft games. The techniques are less explored – utilizing pauses and silence; mechanically codifying ambiguity or indecision (how would this work?), or even signalling it for that matter; delaying important decisions without escalating them; using character avoidance without it being a form of player blocking; asking hard questions; reincorporation over time; downbeats; de-escalation; backing down (this is explored in some games, like Dogs in the Vineyard, but still fairly virgin territory for most); and compromise.

I’ve seen some games that do this – Breaking the Ice can do intense/soft as well as light-hearted/soft. Roleplaying poems and stuff written by Jackson Tegu are often really meaningful and powerful but also really quiet and introspective. But there’s something of a void still existing. I’m excited to be nearing completion on Ribbon Drive – I think I’ve done a really good job of exploring some techniques for play that’s both intense and quiet. But I’m still searching for other games that do this well.

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