I hear the term "gonzo" used in games, a lot. The RPG Pundit, +Kasimir Urbanski, posted something about this a while back, but I actually started this post in December 2014, because I fucking hate how (many) people use this term.
1. Break from strict genre boundaries (i.e., you've got chocolate-lasers in my peanut butter fantasy!) in ways that (a) demonstrate that the line between genres was there and (b) draw into question the value of the distinction(s) between them.
2. Weirdness, zaniness, whimsy--The carnivalesque elements are coming in loud and clear. This weirdness is not just comic, though. It can also be horrific or spectacular. It is a break from the mundane, and one that highlights the joys and dangers of that departure.
3. Let's do something awesome! I mean this in the sense that we want to WIN. We want to win with STYLE. We have a set of rules and game mechanics that allow even a zero-level schlub or 1st level character to do things they should not be able to.
4. There are other trace elements in the game, from other places--e.g. the cultural aesthetics of the 70s and 80s, whether from music or literature or comics or cartoons or whatever.
5. Gonzo means that something unexpected not only CAN happen, but is relatively COMMONPLACE. "Whoa, man, a halfling on a dinosaur with deathray arms..."
"Yep, must be Thursday."
5. Gonzo can contain some degree of adolescent (male) fantasy, and some of that means things like boobs & cheesecake, indiscriminate slaughter, murder-hoboism, and the like. This does not need to be the case, but often is. When it is, some people enjoy it, and it can be fun. Some people don't, and may find it "problematic."
6. Gonzo means different things to different people. The word can be taken as prejorative--indicating that something is silly. This is the thing that pisses me off the most. I don't mind being serious about gaming, and playing serious games. I also refuse to draw a line between "serious" and "gonzo." These are not mutually exclusive terms.
7. It can even be a reference to the absurdist tradition of H. S. Thompson, and beat luminaries like W. S. Burroughs, R. Crumb, the Freak Brothers, and things like that. This is, perhaps, the overlooked element. Breaking with "straight" reality is a political gesture in a limited way. "I refuse to engage with your straight reality. I reject the premise that this game must be played in a particular way. Look! I got a fuckin' laser pistol!" This can also lead projects to projects like 's Narcosa, or 's Red and Pleasant Land, among others. It finds "the normal" wanting, and invents something else.
8. Too much gonzo upsets some people, even people who like gonzo stuff. Sometimes people just need a break from it. Alternately, they can also need a break from grim-darkness. I know that's part of the reason I found the move from Dark Heresy to DCC so refreshing. It was like waking up from a disturbing dream to find out that there's a party going on, and I can smile and laugh again.
9. Gonzo draws from a variety of traditions, aesthetically, and some of those traditions aren't even meant to be silly. For example, GWAR demonstrates that heavy metal, as a genre, can be self-aware that it's pretty damned silly. Slayer, on the other hand, does not demonstrate this self-awareness in its aesthetic. That doesn't mean that it's not also silly. Nor does that mean I don't like them both. Hell, as I've blogged on several occasions, Redd Kross is a great bubblegum band. Bubblegum music is both aesthetically simple and predictable (sometimes even shitty) and absolutely awesomely fun (to me). Another example of silly fun: The Dickies. They also are a really decent band (to me).
10. Just because something is weird, or just because it departs from genre in jarring ways, doesn't necessarily indicate that something is gonzo. DCC RPG can be played deadly seriously. Part of the distinction (to me) is that the outcome matters. Death Frost Doom, for example, has a lot of stuff that could be read as "gonzo," in that it takes a bunch of metal tropes and inserts them prominently into its adventure milieu. The fact that those trope-y, stereotypical elements (brutal metal, zombies, crazy, reclusive dude, etc.) are there, that's not enough to make it gonzo. Because it matters what happens. You can end the world. You probably will. There's not reason why DCC RPG (as many have suggested) cannot support SERIOUSNESS. The issue is that what happens, matters, and has serious in-world implications, even if it is silly or gonzo in some senses.
11. Gonzo is about embracing the chaos. Weird shit will happen. The world doesn't simply exist as you would have it. You will be challenged. Your tastes and experience will be challenged. It may make you uncomfortable, and push you out of your "comfort zone." I often listen to music that I don't necessarily like, but am interested in experiencing, and seeing where it can take me. Some of Zappa's stuff, for example, is hard to listen to. I do it anyway, because I want to feel what my brain does as an result of listening to it. There are so many other examples of music, film, art, and so forth. It doesn't need to make you feel good. You don't have to "like" it. It doesn't have to gratify you. It may make you sad, or grossed-out, or it might alienate you. This is one element of what I consider "gonzo" that often gets overlooked: It can change you by pushing your limits. I don't mean this in any particularly serious way, but I do mean it. Having our expectations challenged is a part of human growth and development.
There. I turned it up to 11 things about gonzo.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Follow-up from Yesterday's Game Prep Post
After posting my (intentionally) inflammatory post, yesterday, +Adam Muszkiewicz and I had a delightful exchange of ideas. I don't full agree with everything he says, but we are not as far apart as my original post might have made it seem. Also, a clarification. It should be noted (as Adam did) that his original post was directed at hex-crawl gaming, a different issue than (or a specific sub-issue of) game preparation in general. My take was, to be sure, based on ignoring that very true fact.
Adam also agreed to let me post the full exchange. I will do so, and a small rejoinder to his last comment. I left the rest of you guys who commented out, because you just don't matter. Suck it! (I kid, I kid).
And a quick detour, because that's how we roll.
Now, just a quick reply to the last serious comment Adam made:
My point: Sometimes I find that specific details that I think are cool become the resource material that provides the resulting aesthetic that will then be used to generate other details. Then, some of those details recur to the aesthetic frame and change it in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. I work back and forth between them--not always, but pretty regularly.
Another example. I wrote an adventure called "Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God," where I wrote the entire adventure from song titles by the band High on Fire.* One of the songs used was "Frosthammer." The existence of the artifact known as the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker was a detail that I used to resolve other things that occurred in that adventure. The significant detail is, for me, one of the things that helps me to develop a coherent aesthetic. That said, I understand that it also can work the other way, and has done so for me, as well.
*Note that this way of generating the adventure was based on using song titles for designing specific encounters, and part of developing the adventure, as such, involved me discovering a specific aesthetic framework based on those encounters. So, detail to aesthetic. That said, the method for generating my encounters might be seen as, itself, an aesthetic. I do not agree that the method is, in itself, an aesthetic, because it lacks content associated with aesthetic frames. I could have used REO Speedwagon to do the same thing. The method would be exactly the same, but the result would have been completely different (one would hope).
Another thing: I like having details in my adventures, even if they don't get explored by the PCs. Here's why. If you've ever played a CRPG like, say, Morrowind, and been frustrated by doors you can't open, or objects you can't manipulate, or NPCs you can't interact with, it creates a sense of futility, for me. It gets to feeling "railroady." Prepping a single location, like Bob the Butcher's shop, and thinking about what kinds of things he has there, and how that that implies what sort of neighborhood it's in, and how that affects the kind of customers he attracts, and what kinds of problems he has, etc., etc. All of those little things give me a better picture of the larger world around Bob. He becomes real and, as a result, the whole world becomes more real. The aesthetic springs from the details of the place just as much as the place is birthed from an aesthetic preference. Good fiction is like that, too: An "insignificant" detail can become the thing that makes the story meaningful for a particular reader. (and yes, I realize that I'm conceding Adam's point that this is something that is "significant" because a PC actually encounters it at the table, for this example). The larger point, though, is that the detail may not get encountered, at all, but it may help me (as a GM) understand the larger aesthetic and produce things that are encountered.
Adam also agreed to let me post the full exchange. I will do so, and a small rejoinder to his last comment. I left the rest of you guys who commented out, because you just don't matter. Suck it! (I kid, I kid).
Reply
Reply
Edit
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Edit
And a quick detour, because that's how we roll.
Reply
Now, just a quick reply to the last serious comment Adam made:
I feel like aesthetic coming from specifics rather than becoming the rubric by which to determine what the specifics are is putting the cart before the horse. How can you just come up with these specifics if you don't know where you're drawing your inspiration from for those specifics beforeyou figure out what the specifics are?I think this is the main place where Adam and I part ways in our conception of game prep. I don't see this as an either/or thing. My details usually inform my aesthetic. I get caught up in them as a New Cool Thing (thanks, ADD!) and forget for a moment the overarching theme, at least in part. So, for example, in my thinking about elves (teaser for the upcoming issue of the Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad zine), I started with the iron susceptibility of the DCC elf class and asked, "Why isn't this used?" Then I thought about what it meant, on the level of the specific things that might happen to an elf character if iron susceptibility was taken to a logical conclusion (i.e., like heavy metal poisoning). What would the details of specific NPCs' lives be like if that were a thing, in Ur-Hadad? It would depend on who you were. So, thinking about the details of NPCs I'd like to use for that sort of thing got me thinking about what a society where this was an issue might be like (more of an meta-aesthetic thing). That got me to thinking about conflict in that society based on class divisions, technologies that might be utilized to help the problem, specific game-based effects on player characters and the like. I even started thinking about a detail like a faction leader who resents that a lower-class elf is doomed to horrible death, and becomes a terrorist. Cool details I may never actually use in a game, but which inform the overall feel of the game, and how I might present it to my players.
My point: Sometimes I find that specific details that I think are cool become the resource material that provides the resulting aesthetic that will then be used to generate other details. Then, some of those details recur to the aesthetic frame and change it in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. I work back and forth between them--not always, but pretty regularly.
Another example. I wrote an adventure called "Mysterious Temple of the Serpent God," where I wrote the entire adventure from song titles by the band High on Fire.* One of the songs used was "Frosthammer." The existence of the artifact known as the Frosthammer of Graki Deathstalker was a detail that I used to resolve other things that occurred in that adventure. The significant detail is, for me, one of the things that helps me to develop a coherent aesthetic. That said, I understand that it also can work the other way, and has done so for me, as well.
*Note that this way of generating the adventure was based on using song titles for designing specific encounters, and part of developing the adventure, as such, involved me discovering a specific aesthetic framework based on those encounters. So, detail to aesthetic. That said, the method for generating my encounters might be seen as, itself, an aesthetic. I do not agree that the method is, in itself, an aesthetic, because it lacks content associated with aesthetic frames. I could have used REO Speedwagon to do the same thing. The method would be exactly the same, but the result would have been completely different (one would hope).
Another thing: I like having details in my adventures, even if they don't get explored by the PCs. Here's why. If you've ever played a CRPG like, say, Morrowind, and been frustrated by doors you can't open, or objects you can't manipulate, or NPCs you can't interact with, it creates a sense of futility, for me. It gets to feeling "railroady." Prepping a single location, like Bob the Butcher's shop, and thinking about what kinds of things he has there, and how that that implies what sort of neighborhood it's in, and how that affects the kind of customers he attracts, and what kinds of problems he has, etc., etc. All of those little things give me a better picture of the larger world around Bob. He becomes real and, as a result, the whole world becomes more real. The aesthetic springs from the details of the place just as much as the place is birthed from an aesthetic preference. Good fiction is like that, too: An "insignificant" detail can become the thing that makes the story meaningful for a particular reader. (and yes, I realize that I'm conceding Adam's point that this is something that is "significant" because a PC actually encounters it at the table, for this example). The larger point, though, is that the detail may not get encountered, at all, but it may help me (as a GM) understand the larger aesthetic and produce things that are encountered.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Preparation and the Origins of "The Game"
It's been far too long since I posted, and I have little excuse beyond a lack of coherent and useful thoughts, or maybe it's just a lack of belief that I have anything useful and original to say to you guys. I think maybe I need to set that attitude aside and just have some thoughts about gaming, period. I'll try harder.
Anyway, it's time to dust off the keyboard and put down a few words about something I read today.
My good friend +Adam Muszkiewicz, over at Dispatches from Kickassistan has written a thing about dynamic game preparation and aesthetics. Making a slight dig at +Donn Stroud, he said:
I am one of those people, like Donn, who is somewhat fixated on preparation. I like to know the places I'm talking about at the table, as a GM. I like to have an idea who the factions are that inhabit these places. I like to know about some of the specific people who live in these places, and how they look, act, and think. I like to have some sense of how these places, things, and people might interact with the characters who encounter them. I like to know how the world in which the game takes place actually functions. I think this is something that Adam can appreciate. What he fails to recognize is that my method (extensive prep) leads to the same outcome as his method (intensive prep), and is necessary, not because I'm trying to write my long-awaited novel, but because that's how my brain works. The landscape for the game requires that my mind be engaged in some very specific ways, otherwise the inspiration must be drawn from elsewhere, and I simply don't have the depth of particular kinds of experience (in gaming, especially) that he does.
Where Adam and I differ is in terms of methodology, but even then I don't think we're so far apart. Adam preps, too, but it is possible that he doesn't recognize what he's doing as preparation, because it doesn't resemble what I do; and the level of detail I put into the sort of prep that I do may seem like more than it is, for someone who doesn't approach it this way. Let me give you an example.
Lately, when I have the time and inclination, I've been drawing a map of the city of Magyaru. The Magyaru in my mind has seven levels, rising from the sea and up the side of a great mountain. So far, I've mapped approximately on third of the lowest level, called Harbortown. There are roads and neighborhoods and buildings. I've probably drawn a couple hundred buildings. I plan to map the rest of it, as well, in time. Here's the thing. I'm doing this a prep for gaming, but not in the sense that I know what's in every building, or the name of every street, or even that I have specific ideas about how "The Game" is going to unfold; rather, it is preparation of my mind to be fertile in responding to what my players do at the table. I know a few of the people in this place (significant NPCs), the sorts of things they do, and what currently concerns them. I also have some ideas about the organization of the city into districts, and (to a very limited extent) neighborhoods. I also have some ideas about what's happening on larger scales, cultural and social.
For example, the design of the city means that there are open sewers on every level below the highest. They drain from east to west, into the river that marks the city's western boundary. Such a feature as an open sewer is, to put it bluntly, a shitty thing to have in your neighborhood. So, the neighborhoods along the length of such features are, necessarily, the worst of their kind, at least for the district. In the higher, more desirable districts, it's better than in the lower ones. In fact, the richest of the residents of Magyaru might have ways to abate the stench from the open sewers on their levels (e.g., hordes of slaves dumping quick lime into the canals). Not an ideal situation, but certainly better than those bastards down in Harbortown. This is a simple matter of political economy, but knowing this fact provides the city itself with a logic. It establishes it's flavor, its aesthetic. Here's a few ideas that spring from knowing this.
Sure, these are pretty easy things to know about any city, in general, but by prepping in the way that I do, I know why and how they are that way, in particular, for this city. For me, as a GM, it makes my understanding of the city coherent in a way that not having that prep in place could not. As a result, I could, right now, this very instant, take a group of players and start playing a game. Based on who they are, and what their abilities are, I can present them with a range of options (adventure hooks), and away they go. Sure, I might have some idea about what is "supposed to happen," but it really doesn't matter if that thing happens. I know enough about this place and its people and institutions that I can "wing it." They players can introduce things into the picture through their actions and questions. If, for example, I need a merchant or a tavern, something like that, I can make one up or I can simply ask, "What's the tavern called? Who runs it? What kind of place is it?" Then, it becomes canon. I get to use it in other games.
So, it's not so much that I'm writing my novel, as Adam said (and I don't really think that was more than a playful jab at Donn, mind you), but that I'm working in my chosen profession. I was trained first as a sociologist, and then as a rhetorician. What unites my work in these fields is my interest in cultural production, change, and the like. So, on a micro level, I am interested in the lived experiences of specific human beings and how various aesthetics, social orders, relationships, etc., are made meaningful by and/or to them. Largely, this is about social orders and the semiological systems that accompany them. On a macro level, I am concerned with political economy, writ large, and how that political economy interacts with various sociocultural phenomena in particular social spaces. That is, I'm interested in how the Big Picture affects specific elements of the Little Picture.
I don't talk about that stuff at the table. More likely, if one of the players has a question about where they might find the notorious pirate queen, Red Varza, I would point them in the direction of The Groin, a district in Harbortown. It's called that because it lies between two large avenues (The Avenue of the Emperors and the Avenue of the Merchants), and these divide Harbortown. The Groin is a free-for-all kind of place serving both the Imperial presence in West Harbortown and the commercial-industrial presence in East Harbortown, and lies between the "legs" of the avenues (hence, the name). In addition, because of all of the trade entering Magyaru's harbor, from distant Ur-Hadad and places beyond, there is a strong maritime, transient population of merchant sailors, Imperial crews, smugglers, pirates, and so forth. This makes it a dynamic place, and (often) a violent and dangerous one. This means that there are those in the district who work very hard to establish and maintain criminal and commercial enterprises, to build, control, and destroy those enterprises, just to make a simple living, and so forth: a host of competing interests. However, those interests are knowable and have a logic to them, because I know the lay of the land, some things about its people and its visitors, and so forth. My growing map of Harbortown makes that possible for me to do, on the fly, because it's just Stuff That I Know about that place. That thinking is partly My Story, but more largely my understanding about such places, and how they ought to be, in a more flexible, logical sense.
I have similar thought processes with regard to factions in the city, and external relations with outlying districts and the natives peoples of this land. I write a lot of this stuff on index cards, color-coded by function (NPCs, places, factions, etc.), and (eventually) put them in Scrivener. The players, of course, in the guise of their characters, affect those people and factions, in ways small and large. I often incorporate, for example, new NPCs and places, and generally locate them where they seem "logically" to belong. Many of these new elements come out of game play. I write them down, they get put into the files, and they become "real" in some sense. These specifics don't, however, tend to change what is generally true of Magyaru, in the sense that shit doesn't change for most people, but can change very radically for very particular people, sometimes, with a little luck (good or bad). The world, as it is, continues to be very much how it is. Also, and this is where I think I must disagree with Adam, it's not because I already know The Story. This is not a novel. It is a real place where the game takes place. What happens at the table is important. It has consequences. It does not, however, change what the place is about or what kind of place it is. Maybe later, those consequences will become longterm facts of the place, but that's not resolved in the short term.
For example, I have group of PCs hunting for Red Varza (notorious pirate queen) who is rumored to have pirated a missing treasure ship, which had been bound for Ur-Hadad before it went missing. Red Varza is an NPC who I came up with for a specific purpose: I needed pirates, so I named one. That one eventually because a woman, because why not. She became embroiled in this plot (with some local criminals AND a second group of PCs) to pirate the ship. The Imperial treasure ship was significant because some PCs had magicked a standing stone into gold, and the (22 tons of) gold was appropriated by the Imperials to be sent back to Ur-Hadad. These PCs wanted to get "their" gold back (Dammit!). Also, in the background, the native peoples are outraged by the desecration of their sacred henge, and have begun burning colonial villages; colonial troops have been sent to suppress them. Those last couple of True Things are because of specific actions of some PCs in my game world, and arose as a result of the logical (and unintended) consequences of their actions. But those outcomes are based on the way I prep the world. In my mind, it's a real place (Yes, I know it's not really real.), with real people. They have motivations, too, just as real as those of the PCs. The place where they live has a culture and a social order. Nobody gets to escape that, but they often try to. Occasionally some may rise or fall, but the Way of Things doesn't change.
The place I've described has been used for (at this point) six different groups of players, face to face, on G+ hangouts, at conventions, and even in the classroom. Every single thing that happened in those games, if it affected The World in some significant way, made it's way into my campaign. Each group's actions have the possibility of affecting the world, and other groups who play there. An example: The ongoing hunt for Red Varza is (put bluntly) one group of PCs hunting another group of PCs. It's entirely possible they might kill each other at some point. I can't write that shit, but I can prepare for it.
A final note: I think Adam preps just as diligently as I do. He may not recognize it as such. But when I hear him talk about Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, or Jack Kirby, or first edition Warhammer Fantasy, or that game I've never played, or that comic book I've never heard of, or any of the many, many wonderful things he discusses on a regular basis (and brings to his gaming tables), what I hear is him saying is, "This is how I prepare for my game." He doesn't go in naked. He's be preparing and training for this for decades. He remembers all this stuff, and he can pull it out as needed. He's a genius in this regard; I am trying to learn some of those chops. I don't have that experience. I've only been back in gaming since 2006, after being absent from it since about 1983. I do have other experience, though, and that experience drives my methods for game prep.
What's different between his method and mine has to do with inclination and training. I am inclined toward a systematic approach, because I need that to think things through. I also tend to forget the things that don't make sense in the system, or that don't get included in it, so I have to have a way to include them. I also am trained to think about societies and cultures as systems, and to have theories about how they function. I've read extensively in social and cultural theory, media studies, etc., and I include what I've learned in my game world. I've done a lot of writing, too, from technical writing to fiction and poetry. That's also a part of my "prep." What I don't do, though, is think of this as My Story, with the PCs simply along for the ride. I've tried that, and the games are terrible when I do so. I don't have fun, and the players don't have fun. Taking the next step, though, to establish My World, provides a much different experience, and one (I think) very similar to what Adam is going for.
Bottom line: In game prep, I think we're going to the same place. I just take a different path to get there.
Anyway, it's time to dust off the keyboard and put down a few words about something I read today.
My good friend +Adam Muszkiewicz, over at Dispatches from Kickassistan has written a thing about dynamic game preparation and aesthetics. Making a slight dig at +Donn Stroud, he said:
I know there are DMs out there who do all this prep -- like, insane amounts of prep, right +Donn Stroud? -- and who seem to enjoy this sort of shit more than actually gaming. That's cool, whatever, write your novel. It won't help you at the table. And the table is where the game is, nowhere else.When he posted the blog, he also observed that it might be bullshit. It is, of a kind. He's also voiced similar thoughts to me, and in a recent Drink, Spin, Run podcast, with guest +Harley Stroh. Here's why this is bullshit.
I am one of those people, like Donn, who is somewhat fixated on preparation. I like to know the places I'm talking about at the table, as a GM. I like to have an idea who the factions are that inhabit these places. I like to know about some of the specific people who live in these places, and how they look, act, and think. I like to have some sense of how these places, things, and people might interact with the characters who encounter them. I like to know how the world in which the game takes place actually functions. I think this is something that Adam can appreciate. What he fails to recognize is that my method (extensive prep) leads to the same outcome as his method (intensive prep), and is necessary, not because I'm trying to write my long-awaited novel, but because that's how my brain works. The landscape for the game requires that my mind be engaged in some very specific ways, otherwise the inspiration must be drawn from elsewhere, and I simply don't have the depth of particular kinds of experience (in gaming, especially) that he does.
Where Adam and I differ is in terms of methodology, but even then I don't think we're so far apart. Adam preps, too, but it is possible that he doesn't recognize what he's doing as preparation, because it doesn't resemble what I do; and the level of detail I put into the sort of prep that I do may seem like more than it is, for someone who doesn't approach it this way. Let me give you an example.
Lately, when I have the time and inclination, I've been drawing a map of the city of Magyaru. The Magyaru in my mind has seven levels, rising from the sea and up the side of a great mountain. So far, I've mapped approximately on third of the lowest level, called Harbortown. There are roads and neighborhoods and buildings. I've probably drawn a couple hundred buildings. I plan to map the rest of it, as well, in time. Here's the thing. I'm doing this a prep for gaming, but not in the sense that I know what's in every building, or the name of every street, or even that I have specific ideas about how "The Game" is going to unfold; rather, it is preparation of my mind to be fertile in responding to what my players do at the table. I know a few of the people in this place (significant NPCs), the sorts of things they do, and what currently concerns them. I also have some ideas about the organization of the city into districts, and (to a very limited extent) neighborhoods. I also have some ideas about what's happening on larger scales, cultural and social.
For example, the design of the city means that there are open sewers on every level below the highest. They drain from east to west, into the river that marks the city's western boundary. Such a feature as an open sewer is, to put it bluntly, a shitty thing to have in your neighborhood. So, the neighborhoods along the length of such features are, necessarily, the worst of their kind, at least for the district. In the higher, more desirable districts, it's better than in the lower ones. In fact, the richest of the residents of Magyaru might have ways to abate the stench from the open sewers on their levels (e.g., hordes of slaves dumping quick lime into the canals). Not an ideal situation, but certainly better than those bastards down in Harbortown. This is a simple matter of political economy, but knowing this fact provides the city itself with a logic. It establishes it's flavor, its aesthetic. Here's a few ideas that spring from knowing this.
- There are striking class differences in this city.
- The very lay of the land underlines and accentuates these differences.
- Those with more can use their money and influence to abate some of the worst things about the places where they live.
- People obsess about those differences, so they (particularly the most prosperous) pay close attention to social comparisons with their nearest peers. This causes resentment and jealousy among them, and provides one of the many ways they mark (in a social sense) their place in their society.
Sure, these are pretty easy things to know about any city, in general, but by prepping in the way that I do, I know why and how they are that way, in particular, for this city. For me, as a GM, it makes my understanding of the city coherent in a way that not having that prep in place could not. As a result, I could, right now, this very instant, take a group of players and start playing a game. Based on who they are, and what their abilities are, I can present them with a range of options (adventure hooks), and away they go. Sure, I might have some idea about what is "supposed to happen," but it really doesn't matter if that thing happens. I know enough about this place and its people and institutions that I can "wing it." They players can introduce things into the picture through their actions and questions. If, for example, I need a merchant or a tavern, something like that, I can make one up or I can simply ask, "What's the tavern called? Who runs it? What kind of place is it?" Then, it becomes canon. I get to use it in other games.
So, it's not so much that I'm writing my novel, as Adam said (and I don't really think that was more than a playful jab at Donn, mind you), but that I'm working in my chosen profession. I was trained first as a sociologist, and then as a rhetorician. What unites my work in these fields is my interest in cultural production, change, and the like. So, on a micro level, I am interested in the lived experiences of specific human beings and how various aesthetics, social orders, relationships, etc., are made meaningful by and/or to them. Largely, this is about social orders and the semiological systems that accompany them. On a macro level, I am concerned with political economy, writ large, and how that political economy interacts with various sociocultural phenomena in particular social spaces. That is, I'm interested in how the Big Picture affects specific elements of the Little Picture.
I don't talk about that stuff at the table. More likely, if one of the players has a question about where they might find the notorious pirate queen, Red Varza, I would point them in the direction of The Groin, a district in Harbortown. It's called that because it lies between two large avenues (The Avenue of the Emperors and the Avenue of the Merchants), and these divide Harbortown. The Groin is a free-for-all kind of place serving both the Imperial presence in West Harbortown and the commercial-industrial presence in East Harbortown, and lies between the "legs" of the avenues (hence, the name). In addition, because of all of the trade entering Magyaru's harbor, from distant Ur-Hadad and places beyond, there is a strong maritime, transient population of merchant sailors, Imperial crews, smugglers, pirates, and so forth. This makes it a dynamic place, and (often) a violent and dangerous one. This means that there are those in the district who work very hard to establish and maintain criminal and commercial enterprises, to build, control, and destroy those enterprises, just to make a simple living, and so forth: a host of competing interests. However, those interests are knowable and have a logic to them, because I know the lay of the land, some things about its people and its visitors, and so forth. My growing map of Harbortown makes that possible for me to do, on the fly, because it's just Stuff That I Know about that place. That thinking is partly My Story, but more largely my understanding about such places, and how they ought to be, in a more flexible, logical sense.
I have similar thought processes with regard to factions in the city, and external relations with outlying districts and the natives peoples of this land. I write a lot of this stuff on index cards, color-coded by function (NPCs, places, factions, etc.), and (eventually) put them in Scrivener. The players, of course, in the guise of their characters, affect those people and factions, in ways small and large. I often incorporate, for example, new NPCs and places, and generally locate them where they seem "logically" to belong. Many of these new elements come out of game play. I write them down, they get put into the files, and they become "real" in some sense. These specifics don't, however, tend to change what is generally true of Magyaru, in the sense that shit doesn't change for most people, but can change very radically for very particular people, sometimes, with a little luck (good or bad). The world, as it is, continues to be very much how it is. Also, and this is where I think I must disagree with Adam, it's not because I already know The Story. This is not a novel. It is a real place where the game takes place. What happens at the table is important. It has consequences. It does not, however, change what the place is about or what kind of place it is. Maybe later, those consequences will become longterm facts of the place, but that's not resolved in the short term.
For example, I have group of PCs hunting for Red Varza (notorious pirate queen) who is rumored to have pirated a missing treasure ship, which had been bound for Ur-Hadad before it went missing. Red Varza is an NPC who I came up with for a specific purpose: I needed pirates, so I named one. That one eventually because a woman, because why not. She became embroiled in this plot (with some local criminals AND a second group of PCs) to pirate the ship. The Imperial treasure ship was significant because some PCs had magicked a standing stone into gold, and the (22 tons of) gold was appropriated by the Imperials to be sent back to Ur-Hadad. These PCs wanted to get "their" gold back (Dammit!). Also, in the background, the native peoples are outraged by the desecration of their sacred henge, and have begun burning colonial villages; colonial troops have been sent to suppress them. Those last couple of True Things are because of specific actions of some PCs in my game world, and arose as a result of the logical (and unintended) consequences of their actions. But those outcomes are based on the way I prep the world. In my mind, it's a real place (Yes, I know it's not really real.), with real people. They have motivations, too, just as real as those of the PCs. The place where they live has a culture and a social order. Nobody gets to escape that, but they often try to. Occasionally some may rise or fall, but the Way of Things doesn't change.
The place I've described has been used for (at this point) six different groups of players, face to face, on G+ hangouts, at conventions, and even in the classroom. Every single thing that happened in those games, if it affected The World in some significant way, made it's way into my campaign. Each group's actions have the possibility of affecting the world, and other groups who play there. An example: The ongoing hunt for Red Varza is (put bluntly) one group of PCs hunting another group of PCs. It's entirely possible they might kill each other at some point. I can't write that shit, but I can prepare for it.
A final note: I think Adam preps just as diligently as I do. He may not recognize it as such. But when I hear him talk about Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, or Jack Kirby, or first edition Warhammer Fantasy, or that game I've never played, or that comic book I've never heard of, or any of the many, many wonderful things he discusses on a regular basis (and brings to his gaming tables), what I hear is him saying is, "This is how I prepare for my game." He doesn't go in naked. He's be preparing and training for this for decades. He remembers all this stuff, and he can pull it out as needed. He's a genius in this regard; I am trying to learn some of those chops. I don't have that experience. I've only been back in gaming since 2006, after being absent from it since about 1983. I do have other experience, though, and that experience drives my methods for game prep.
What's different between his method and mine has to do with inclination and training. I am inclined toward a systematic approach, because I need that to think things through. I also tend to forget the things that don't make sense in the system, or that don't get included in it, so I have to have a way to include them. I also am trained to think about societies and cultures as systems, and to have theories about how they function. I've read extensively in social and cultural theory, media studies, etc., and I include what I've learned in my game world. I've done a lot of writing, too, from technical writing to fiction and poetry. That's also a part of my "prep." What I don't do, though, is think of this as My Story, with the PCs simply along for the ride. I've tried that, and the games are terrible when I do so. I don't have fun, and the players don't have fun. Taking the next step, though, to establish My World, provides a much different experience, and one (I think) very similar to what Adam is going for.
Bottom line: In game prep, I think we're going to the same place. I just take a different path to get there.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Differences
Just a short post about a random thought I had after class, yesterday. Pardon the ramble. I'm trying to understand something, here.
As I peruse my Google+ feed, I am struck, quite often, by how differently the people in my circles pursue gaming than how I do. Part of what I find remarkable is that there are a lot of games that just don't grab my interests in the ways they seem to interest others. For some folks, it seems like the best part of gaming is having a deep and complex character, and a system that allows for exploration of that character's identity, relationships other PCs and NPCs, and the like. Some players like to have a lot of narrative control, and enjoy games that allow shared responsibility for how the game narrative unfolds. They really dig working with (not against) the referee, or having no referee at all. Some people enjoy things like LARPing. Some dig card-based deck-building games. Some are boardgame fanatics. The list goes on. Sometimes it's differences in mechanics and sometimes in setting. Sometimes it's about the rewards they get, and how they are received. In short, there are a lot of people who really have a great time with things that I don't really find particularly interesting. That is their Awesome.
There was a time when I might have thought of those differences as reasons to hate or mock those people, or to despise those games and the people who play them. I'm long past that point in my life. I'm glad that people enjoy their games, and I'm happy they've found friends and companions to join them on their journey in life. I watch them from a distance, with abstracted joy for their happiness, but no real connection to it. I revel (intellectually) in the fact of its existence, but care little for the substance, and remain disengaged from their lives and pursuits. I have my own things, and I like them, because they are my Awesome. The existence of these differences, though, causes me to question why I like what I do.
Even with people I game with and am close to, this is a thing. I care little, anymore, for much of the Warhammer ethos. It bores me. I could list a bunch of things I don't really care about, but the only real reason I have for not digging it is that it doesn't have the Awesome, anymore, that speaks to my inner being. Likewise, I am weary of weirdness for the sake of weirdness. I understand that it's easy to get bored for the same old tropes and stories, and to want to push the envelope into new territory. I get that. Nonetheless, it seems more reactionary than revolutionary when the result seems more a commentary on standard fantasy tropes than a departure from them. I'm sure others could look at what I like, and suggest why they don't like it. That's cool. That's right.
Me? I'm pretty boring, I think. My approach to gaming is probably pretty unremarkable, because I'm not bored with old mechanics (though I like to play with new variations on them). I don't mind the old GM-driven RPGs, and am not particularly interested in a lot of the things that newer styles of games pursue. FATE, for example, seems like too much work. I don't care for it, though I understand how others could like it, and I appreciate how it does what it does. I saw someone trashing on steampunk the other day, and I could see where he was coming from, but I hate the idea of doing that instead of, for example, simply driving on by without honking if you don't like it. Nobody cares what you hate, and particularly the people who like that thing. It just seems like picking a fight with some kid you don't know, just to be a dick. I'm not interested in being like that, not anymore.
Here's where I think I may depart from some people. I like the grand scope, the epic tale. I like to see what the same-old-same-old looks like if you take it seriously. Not grimly. Not weirdly. Seriously. I don't mind standard fantasy, but I'd like it to be more... real. More human. I want conflict. I want characters and peoples with motivations that are complex and contradictory. I want war. I want death. I want to kill things and take their stuff, but I also want hope, and life, and to build things worth having. I want every adventure to have an impact on the world, however small. I want my characters to be invested in things, not simply viewing them with ironic detachment, or treating them as disposable. My vision of the Awesome is beautiful and flawed, always in the process of becoming, always breaking and falling into ruin. Death in this world is permanent, and irrevocable, but the world itself goes on and on, and life persists. There is always hope for tomorrow to be better, even if it probably won't be.
How I'd like to get there, though, is not to have my character figured out from the start. I want to be surprised. I want events to define my character. This is true, also, of my world, as GM. I want the divine randomness of the dice to drive those events. At the same time, I'd like to have a world that, even if I don't know everything about it, has a human(ish) logic. The NPCs and factions have their reasons, and pursue their own interests, even if they seem irrational from the outside. Shit happens as a result of those NPCs and factions bumping up against each other (and the PCs). I like (as a GM) to see the ripples of cause and effect spreading out from what (if static) would be really elegant and simple statements of places, and statuses, and motivations (e.g., standard tropes and narratives). But they are not static. The cause and effect becomes chaos and new orders, and the PCs find themselves trying to impose their feeble wills on things they cannot control, though sometimes they are able, for a while, to find a place of peace and security, and to feel a sense of accomplishment. More than anything, I want to play in a game where what happens, matters. Here's the difference though: It matters because that's how things ended up, where they are now, temporarily, and just not how it all was conceived from the start.
Example: In a class I teach, we are using a fantasy/colonial simulation as the basis of an advanced public speaking course. The students are colonial leaders split into three factions, and have recently been approached by a tribe who wishes their alliance against a hated foe. They investigated the situation. Yesterday, as I stepped to the lectern, I needed a story. So I told them this, making it up as I went.
The tribe to the south lives in an area of foothills and mountains. Though they farm, they are mainly herders. Recent droughts have made them desperate, and their numbers are dwindling (but still formidable). They have a priest-king, and worship death. There is a lot of iconography featuring ravens. They put their dead on exposure platforms, because they believe that otherwise they would become skin-walkers. They believe that the purpose of life is a glorious death, and part of their worship is in killing and conquering. They wish to annihilate utterly their foes to the north. They also believe the colonists are prophesied to make that possible, and desire an alliance to make war on their enemies to the north. [Note: the colony lies between the southern and northern tribe]
The tribe to the north are farmers and fishers. They worship the sun. Their society is peaceful and fecund. They engage in human sacrifice. The sacrifices are chosen through an elaborate set of activities including games, merit calculations, quotas, and other things. The colonists find them all but indecipherable and utterly alien. They believe that their task is to preserve the natural cycle, and that the tribe to the south (which they associate with the sun's foe, the moon) is part of that cycle. They recognize that the rain is sent by the witchcraft of the moon-tribe to blot out the sun. However, the rain also allows for the sun to bring new life to the land, so it is both necessary and desirable that their enemies be allowed to persist. They will only fight a defensive war, and will not ally to take on the southern tribe.
Caught in the middle, the colonists have the choice either to pick a tribe, or to stay out of the conflict. Any choice they make will have consequences, and those will have further consequences. I have no idea what will happen, but I will be sure that the consequences remain consistent with the beliefs and motivations of those involves. New facets of each tribe will emerge in the unfolding of the story, usually logically but sometimes in ways that create new tensions.
I have no idea what will happen next. The class factions will have a series of debates and then they will vote to pursue some course of action. I don't care who wins. I don't care who loses. The world will go on. The choices they make, the choices I make, and the choices ordained by their choices, and the dice, and they all will combine to tell us what happens.
Note: The outcome will also influence what happens in my Lacuna Locurae campaign setting, which is maybe 100 years in the future of the classroom-based scenario/simulation.
My love of this dynamic of randomness and order, and waiting to see what happens next, is why I don't think I could ever abandon the use of dice in gaming. It's also why I LOVE the DCC funnel conception (rather than the more recent "character-concept" or "character-build" conception) of character generation. I don't want special characters. I want special stories and special worlds to help me find characters worth knowing. This is part of the reason I'm so fascinated with +Adam Muszkiewicz's recent brushes with emergent character generation. +Doug Kovacs also does this to some extent. It's also why I think I've grown away from setting that assume happy (or grim) endings as inevitable, and that good and evil (or law and chaos) are somehow mutually exclusive, or easy to differentiate. It's also why I don't feel fettered by resort to standard fantasy (or sci-fi, or horror, or... whatever) tropes and situations. They are only starting points, and they are Made to Be Broken.
What I like in my games is not what everyone else wants, and I'm cool with that (as if it matters what I think about somebody else's fun). I just want it to be Awesome. Individual results may vary.
As I peruse my Google+ feed, I am struck, quite often, by how differently the people in my circles pursue gaming than how I do. Part of what I find remarkable is that there are a lot of games that just don't grab my interests in the ways they seem to interest others. For some folks, it seems like the best part of gaming is having a deep and complex character, and a system that allows for exploration of that character's identity, relationships other PCs and NPCs, and the like. Some players like to have a lot of narrative control, and enjoy games that allow shared responsibility for how the game narrative unfolds. They really dig working with (not against) the referee, or having no referee at all. Some people enjoy things like LARPing. Some dig card-based deck-building games. Some are boardgame fanatics. The list goes on. Sometimes it's differences in mechanics and sometimes in setting. Sometimes it's about the rewards they get, and how they are received. In short, there are a lot of people who really have a great time with things that I don't really find particularly interesting. That is their Awesome.
There was a time when I might have thought of those differences as reasons to hate or mock those people, or to despise those games and the people who play them. I'm long past that point in my life. I'm glad that people enjoy their games, and I'm happy they've found friends and companions to join them on their journey in life. I watch them from a distance, with abstracted joy for their happiness, but no real connection to it. I revel (intellectually) in the fact of its existence, but care little for the substance, and remain disengaged from their lives and pursuits. I have my own things, and I like them, because they are my Awesome. The existence of these differences, though, causes me to question why I like what I do.
Even with people I game with and am close to, this is a thing. I care little, anymore, for much of the Warhammer ethos. It bores me. I could list a bunch of things I don't really care about, but the only real reason I have for not digging it is that it doesn't have the Awesome, anymore, that speaks to my inner being. Likewise, I am weary of weirdness for the sake of weirdness. I understand that it's easy to get bored for the same old tropes and stories, and to want to push the envelope into new territory. I get that. Nonetheless, it seems more reactionary than revolutionary when the result seems more a commentary on standard fantasy tropes than a departure from them. I'm sure others could look at what I like, and suggest why they don't like it. That's cool. That's right.
Me? I'm pretty boring, I think. My approach to gaming is probably pretty unremarkable, because I'm not bored with old mechanics (though I like to play with new variations on them). I don't mind the old GM-driven RPGs, and am not particularly interested in a lot of the things that newer styles of games pursue. FATE, for example, seems like too much work. I don't care for it, though I understand how others could like it, and I appreciate how it does what it does. I saw someone trashing on steampunk the other day, and I could see where he was coming from, but I hate the idea of doing that instead of, for example, simply driving on by without honking if you don't like it. Nobody cares what you hate, and particularly the people who like that thing. It just seems like picking a fight with some kid you don't know, just to be a dick. I'm not interested in being like that, not anymore.
Here's where I think I may depart from some people. I like the grand scope, the epic tale. I like to see what the same-old-same-old looks like if you take it seriously. Not grimly. Not weirdly. Seriously. I don't mind standard fantasy, but I'd like it to be more... real. More human. I want conflict. I want characters and peoples with motivations that are complex and contradictory. I want war. I want death. I want to kill things and take their stuff, but I also want hope, and life, and to build things worth having. I want every adventure to have an impact on the world, however small. I want my characters to be invested in things, not simply viewing them with ironic detachment, or treating them as disposable. My vision of the Awesome is beautiful and flawed, always in the process of becoming, always breaking and falling into ruin. Death in this world is permanent, and irrevocable, but the world itself goes on and on, and life persists. There is always hope for tomorrow to be better, even if it probably won't be.
How I'd like to get there, though, is not to have my character figured out from the start. I want to be surprised. I want events to define my character. This is true, also, of my world, as GM. I want the divine randomness of the dice to drive those events. At the same time, I'd like to have a world that, even if I don't know everything about it, has a human(ish) logic. The NPCs and factions have their reasons, and pursue their own interests, even if they seem irrational from the outside. Shit happens as a result of those NPCs and factions bumping up against each other (and the PCs). I like (as a GM) to see the ripples of cause and effect spreading out from what (if static) would be really elegant and simple statements of places, and statuses, and motivations (e.g., standard tropes and narratives). But they are not static. The cause and effect becomes chaos and new orders, and the PCs find themselves trying to impose their feeble wills on things they cannot control, though sometimes they are able, for a while, to find a place of peace and security, and to feel a sense of accomplishment. More than anything, I want to play in a game where what happens, matters. Here's the difference though: It matters because that's how things ended up, where they are now, temporarily, and just not how it all was conceived from the start.
Example: In a class I teach, we are using a fantasy/colonial simulation as the basis of an advanced public speaking course. The students are colonial leaders split into three factions, and have recently been approached by a tribe who wishes their alliance against a hated foe. They investigated the situation. Yesterday, as I stepped to the lectern, I needed a story. So I told them this, making it up as I went.
The tribe to the south lives in an area of foothills and mountains. Though they farm, they are mainly herders. Recent droughts have made them desperate, and their numbers are dwindling (but still formidable). They have a priest-king, and worship death. There is a lot of iconography featuring ravens. They put their dead on exposure platforms, because they believe that otherwise they would become skin-walkers. They believe that the purpose of life is a glorious death, and part of their worship is in killing and conquering. They wish to annihilate utterly their foes to the north. They also believe the colonists are prophesied to make that possible, and desire an alliance to make war on their enemies to the north. [Note: the colony lies between the southern and northern tribe]
The tribe to the north are farmers and fishers. They worship the sun. Their society is peaceful and fecund. They engage in human sacrifice. The sacrifices are chosen through an elaborate set of activities including games, merit calculations, quotas, and other things. The colonists find them all but indecipherable and utterly alien. They believe that their task is to preserve the natural cycle, and that the tribe to the south (which they associate with the sun's foe, the moon) is part of that cycle. They recognize that the rain is sent by the witchcraft of the moon-tribe to blot out the sun. However, the rain also allows for the sun to bring new life to the land, so it is both necessary and desirable that their enemies be allowed to persist. They will only fight a defensive war, and will not ally to take on the southern tribe.
Caught in the middle, the colonists have the choice either to pick a tribe, or to stay out of the conflict. Any choice they make will have consequences, and those will have further consequences. I have no idea what will happen, but I will be sure that the consequences remain consistent with the beliefs and motivations of those involves. New facets of each tribe will emerge in the unfolding of the story, usually logically but sometimes in ways that create new tensions.
I have no idea what will happen next. The class factions will have a series of debates and then they will vote to pursue some course of action. I don't care who wins. I don't care who loses. The world will go on. The choices they make, the choices I make, and the choices ordained by their choices, and the dice, and they all will combine to tell us what happens.
Note: The outcome will also influence what happens in my Lacuna Locurae campaign setting, which is maybe 100 years in the future of the classroom-based scenario/simulation.
My love of this dynamic of randomness and order, and waiting to see what happens next, is why I don't think I could ever abandon the use of dice in gaming. It's also why I LOVE the DCC funnel conception (rather than the more recent "character-concept" or "character-build" conception) of character generation. I don't want special characters. I want special stories and special worlds to help me find characters worth knowing. This is part of the reason I'm so fascinated with +Adam Muszkiewicz's recent brushes with emergent character generation. +Doug Kovacs also does this to some extent. It's also why I think I've grown away from setting that assume happy (or grim) endings as inevitable, and that good and evil (or law and chaos) are somehow mutually exclusive, or easy to differentiate. It's also why I don't feel fettered by resort to standard fantasy (or sci-fi, or horror, or... whatever) tropes and situations. They are only starting points, and they are Made to Be Broken.
Poison Idea--Made to Be Broken
What I like in my games is not what everyone else wants, and I'm cool with that (as if it matters what I think about somebody else's fun). I just want it to be Awesome. Individual results may vary.
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