I've found myself in a funny position. A roll-playing game that I am a big fan of is at this point effectively defunct. It was/is a superhero game using the D20 system (for those who are not gamers, this means nothing. Don't worry bout it). It was a little home-built system done up by a guy in Minnesota and sold on-line in the form of a PDF file. But he is no longer able to maintain the system, fix problems, upgrade, etc. So, a bunch of the fans (who were all on a discussion group) decided to take the guts of the system and rebuild it into a mostly similar but also very much 'tweeked' version of basically the same system (we can do this, legally, because of the Open Gaming License that Wizards of the Coast, the people who now own D&D, brought in several years ago. Plus, the designer has given us the go-ahead, so going ahead we are).
As you all probably already gathered, I'm fascinated by how genre and medium shape narratives. Moving the same story from, for example, novel to film always requires significant changes to the story itself because the two media are so different. For many years now I've run roll-playing games, and what's fascinating there is that, despite working from a fairly standard genre (Tolkienesque sword and sorcery) designing a game and writing a story are two very, very different things.
You see, in a story you don't have to worry about little things like 'rules' and 'fairness.' You can shape a narrative that relies on random events, last minute deus ex machina plot devices, and all kinds of entrances and exits of character. Not so in an RPG. They have to be balanced. They have to be fair. They have to follow the rules. Not only that, but when writing a game you're really only creating the outline for a improvised narrative. Your players will write the story along with you, blurring the line between artist and audience, storyteller and listener. The author function is shared all but equally among all involved. The game master (GM) is the setting and the impetous for plot, certainly. He or she has a great deal of control. However, players are the protagonists. They're the heroes. They ought to be the driving force of the game. The decision makers. They have almost all the agency. Part of the challenge of designing a good game is making sure you provide motivation for the players, because otherwise literally nothing happens.
Now, that's designing an individual story or adventure. Designing the system of rules that governs that story is a whole other thing entirely, and just as involved with genre. See, most of the RPGs out there are specific to a genre. D&D is fantasy. Cyberpunk is gritty science-fiction. There are games set in the Old West. There are sports games. There are space operas. There is Wuxia (Chinese fantasy). There is just about anything you care to play, if you look hard enough. The game we're working on (called "Pheonix" for now) is based on comic-book superheroes.
We find ourselves in a funny position. We have to design a system that is 'generic' in both sense of the word. On the one hand, it has to fit any game setting (from the ridiculous to the grim), but on the other, it must emulate superhero comics as we know them. We have to create something that will give the GMs a way to fool (suspend the disbelief of) players into thinking that they're experiencing a comic-book fantasy first hand, but those GMs must also design their games on principles quite different from those stories (for the reasons I outlined above). In a sense, we're designing the 'theory' behind the game. We're creating a rigid system of methodology of storytelling. We're creating the rules that both storyteller and audience must live by if they want to experience these narratives.
I'll have more concrete thoughts on this project as I go, and I'll have more thoughts on the implications of RPGs to modern theory, as well. Friends of mine have argued that RPGs are a living example of the death of the author because the 'readers' (players) are actually in charge despite feeling like they're subject to the whims of the 'author' (GM). I'm not sure if I buy this (I'm certain I don't buy Barthes' "Death of the Author," so that's no doubt related). However, since I was about eight years old, the player/GM relationship has been second-nature not me. I've never quite thought of it as author and reader because, hey, it's just not the same and insisting on that metaphorical representation would only cloud the issue. However, it might just be the case that RPGs could function as the perfect metaphor for the actual behaviour of artist and audience in fiction.
More thoughts on this subject as they occur.
Posted by orion at August 7, 2004 2:45 PM