Friendly stalkers might have seen me muttering recently about virtual tabletops, as I seem to be going through another of my phases where I think about getting back into regular roleplaying – as in face to face, dice-rolling, character sheet-checking roleplaying. Old-school, in other words.
(Notice I said ‘think’, because these ideas rarely go anywhere. What I’ve discovered over the last few years is that for me, roleplaying as a hobby isn’t about the roleplaying anymore – it’s about the socialising, and that means my requirements for a gaming group have gotten tougher. To put it bluntly, I have to like people before I can enjoy roleplaying with them. Sounds obvious, I know, but I tend to forget that my best roleplaying memories were generally with people I knew as friends first and roleplayers second; it’s easy to delude myself into thinking that the activity will make me like someone, and that doesn’t happen.)
(Having said that, I’ve got some pretty fun memories of playing games with total strangers, as that seems to bring out the sociopathic side of my personality. Thinking about it, it’s surprising I’m not the world’s biggest online griefer.)
Anyway; this actually isn’t a precursor to me boring you with my roleplaying memories. Some random searches later brought me to a whole host of roleplaying blogs (because of course being supreme geeks, roleplayers are all over the web) and led me to an interesting phenomenon: the resurrection of old-school roleplaying. I mean real old-school. I mean… original Dungeons & Dragons.
Not the ‘red box’ edition of D&D. Not even first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which is pretty much where my memories of roleplaying begin. I’m talking about guys who want to play with the original ruleset, exactly as it was back in 1974. And who were obviously guided by the spirit of Gygax when they came up with the name Swords & Wizardry.
They’re not the only game in town, either. Apparently if your taste is a bit more ‘new school’ then you can play a ‘retro-clone’ of the 1978 ruleset in OSRIC (Old School Reference & Index Compilation!), or even recreate those red box days of 1981 with the cunningly referential Labyrinth Lord.
Understand that none of these games are strict reprints of the original material; instead, under Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game License, they’re a sort of… reimagining? Retelling? Swords & Wizardry describes itself as a ‘newly written description’ of the original rules, almost as if they’ve been told to scribes down through the years and now just written down, or perhaps swapped around campfires.
If you’ve got any experience of the original golden oldies though, like I have, then you might be wondering just why these things exist. I mean, we’ve had Advanced Dungeon & Dragons 2nd Edition, then 3rd, then 3.5 and even 4th last year – although somehow they lost the ‘Advanced’ along the way. I mean, isn’t this sort of like ignoring World of Warcraft’s existence, and recreating Colossal Cave Adventure, claiming it’s more fun to play?
Well yes, and no. The comparison is spurious of course, because any roleplaying game trades in one thing; imagination, which doesn’t ‘improve’ with 3D graphics or an 80-level cap. In fact, the argument goes, your imagination tends to atrophy when you’re shown more and asked to imagine less. That’s basically where the fans behind these games are coming from. Just as modern games have added graphical complexity, modern RPGs have added rules complexity – partially because gamers asked for it, and partially because it means more books can be filled with rules, and then sold.
The idea behind this ‘old school movement’ seems simple enough; get back to basics, where the rules are just a helping hand to let your imagination run riot. When the rules don’t cover something, you make it up. Whether that’s a summation of the ‘true spirit’ of original style roleplaying is for a more learned blog than this to cover, but suffice to say, it’s appealing to a lot of people.
I find all of this fascinating, partially because the idea that people are still clinging to The Rules while playing RPGs seems unbelievable to me. I do feel sort of smug saying this, but I never really got beyond the (apparently) old-school idea that the rules are just there for when you want them, and should be ignored when you don’t. Even when I was 15 I was gravitating towards systems that were rules-lite (Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Marvel Superheroes) after struggling with others that were rules-heavy (Champions, Rolemaster).
Perhaps those who’ve been faithful to Dungeons & Dragons all these years have felt that their faith demanded an adherence to The Rules, whatever they may be, and some of them are finally ‘seeing the light’. (Born again roleplayers?) They seem to be kind of late coming to the party, though; even my casual interest in the pen-and-paper industry over the last few years has shown me that the trend is towards less rules and more storytelling, although that itself seems to be a bone of contention for some.
In some ways this is a massive exercise in nostalgia, but then there’s really nothing wrong with that. Just as I still cling to my original favourites (and have been interested to see ‘remakes’ of those games, too), so ‘old school roleplayers’ want to get back to what excited them about roleplaying in the very first instance; imagination run riot, and rules be damned.
POSTSCRIPT: I found a very workable description of what ‘old school D&D’ should ‘feel’ like back in the Grognardia archives, which is worth reading in light of this. I’ll admit, it makes me pine for something, although I’m not too sure what.
#1 by Shadowe at March 6th, 2009
See, I’m a bit weird when it comes to Rules-heavy vs. Rules-light. Having trawled my way through a variety of systems, ranging from the relatively simple (Original Dungeons & Dragons old-red-box) to the insanely complex (Rolemaster). And there are very few that I haven’t enjoyed.
To my mind it’s all about the thinking behind a particular game – what I’m looking for as I play it – that matters far more.
With D&D I’m looking for traditional Sword & Sorcery, dragons, heroic endeavours, epic battles against weird and wonderful creatures. D&D is sort of my default setting for RPGs.
If I want realism, accurate adjudication of every aspect of existence, then I’ll edge towards Rolemaster. Sometimes I like that level of depth to the rules. More often than not, I don’t. I actually prefer ICEs Spacemaster system (based on Rolemaster), because that level of depth works a lot better in a Science Fiction game. Load me up a Plasmatic Repeator and watch ‘em burn.
I suppose I’m a D&D fan, at heart. It was my first RPG, and has shaped my habits. I go out of my way to buy the books, even when I’m uncertain about them.
D&D (Red, Blue, Green, Black and Gold boxes)
AD&D 1st Edition (all of the orange-spined books)
AD&D 2nd Edition (near-as-damn-it all of the rulebooks)
D&D 3E (all of the rulebooks)
D&D 3.5E (all of the rulebooks)
D&D 4E (all of the rulebooks released to date)
I’ve seen the game change from “why does my character not know how to fish?” all the way through “my character can fish but he can’t do ANYTHING else”, up to “my character can fish, hunt, and live off the land” and now to “umm, where’s the skill that tells me if I know how to fish?”
The 3.5 ruleset represents, to me, the pinacle of sophistication (I use the term advisedly) for the D&D ruleset. It emphasises absolutely *nothing* except, perhaps, that “the right magic item lets you do anything you want”. Skills are as important as swords. You can “defeat” almost anything using the Diplomacy skill, earn XP for it… and then go back and do the same again in a later game session! Its one downside is that because the rules are so comprehensive, covering a daunting plethora of situations, it is possible that storytelling can slip. Which is quite the reverse of White Wolf’s Storyteller System, where dice rolls are rarer than 14th Generation Vampire.
But I *like* a system where I can have a player say “I’m going to use Diplomacy on the Ambassador to persuade him to X” and I can ask then ask them to RP it out with me, throwing in side-points and tid-bits to the other players, using the conversation generated to determine bonuses and penalties to the dice roll. Awesome fun.
Now, though, we have 4th Ed D&D. I’m *still* undecided on it. Mostly because I’ve not yet had any situations crop up in my regular weekly game where skills become important. But the whole game seems skewed toward “I can do Y in combat! I am teh awesome! U R n000B!!One!!1″. They couldn’t have done a better job of turning an MMO into a tabletop game if they’d spent 10 more years doing it, but I don’t know if it satisfies my “well, the rules *allow* for this situation, so let’s RP it out and see what happens when the dice fall” itch.
I guess I’m saying that I need structure. I need rules that are either so simple they cover every possibility imaginable with only a few guidlines, or complex enough to let you use them to *enhance* the roleplaying side of the game. Rules should never be a straightjacket, which they can be in systems like Rolemaster. Rules should never stop you choosing what your character can do. They should be there to let the GM adjudicate what you *want* your character to do.
#2 by Rockjaw at March 7th, 2009
About time you showed up. Probably took you the whole week to write the comment, mind.
Sounds to me like you’re basically saying, “I don’t care what kind of rules I use; I just use whatever is right for the kind of game I want to run.”
I sort of feel the same way, although I think in my past I’ve found that my best game experiences have ultimately transcended the rules – not in a ‘shining light, rising up into the clouds’ sense, but more that the rules fall away, and all you’re left with (the memory, anyway) is the experience of the game.
So really, the rules don’t matter that much. It’s more your personal attitude towards the rules – ie, are you going to let the rules define your game, or not. Also, I think it has something to do with your tolerance for, well, reading rules in general.
I mean, you’ve got a lot of D&D rulebooks there, fanboy, and I’m going to assume they’re not just being used as paperweights; so obviously you’re happy to sit and read rulebooks. I have to force myself to do it, as they generally bore the crap out of me. Hence my preference for rules-light games; I can read ‘em quick and then get ready to run quicker.
As an aside, my favourite rulebooks – and sourcebooks I guess – managed to pack the ‘feel’ of the game into the writing. Ones that come off as dry and dull never worked for me.
Bottom line, for me: I hate to read a lot of rules, and I don’t like to feel like I’m ‘bound’ to them (and inevitably I do feel like that, so I end up flipping through rulebooks during play a lot) so I prefer rules-light games which I can keep in my head easily.
Second, it’s now obvious to me after reflection that I’m looking at these sites and reading about gaming because I want to recapture that feeling – not of the rules, or of a ‘well run game’ but that magic combination of socialising and storytelling that only roleplaying can provide.
#3 by Shadowe at March 8th, 2009
I may be slow, but when i figure out what I want to say, I say it
The thing about roleplaying is that absolutely *no one*, in the history of the hobby, *ever*, has said “Damn, do you remember that time I rolled to hit that dragon? Whew, good times, hey?”
People *do*, though, say “Remember when our party was going through those caves – what were they, again? – and we stumbled across that troll? Damn near cacked myself. Bloody lucky we had the bard along. He was funny, wasn’t he? Robert always managed to make me chuckle whenever Thandar the Magnificent started rambling on and on about how this was ‘just like the tale of Berenor the Bold, who slew a thousand trolls, single-handedly saving the kingdom’. Oh, and do you remember when we were all waiting for him to say something after we killed that dragon, and he looked at us blankly? Haven’t laughed so hard in years.”
Okay, that was a long-winded example, but the point is, you’re basically right. The game system is less important than the people you’re playing with, and the memories are almost always of things that are *completely* unrelated to the game-system being used.
I have a stupid memory for retention of data – while it’s mostly gone, now, I used to be able to practically recite the AD&D 2E ruleset from memory. And the things I couldn’t remember, I could tell you which page of which rulebook it was in. I enjoy reading rules. Not because they’re rules, as such, but because they give me an insight into what the game-designer is trying to achieve with them. And the more rules you have access to, the easier that becomes.
I actually read the rules much less than I used to. Partly because modern game-systems are vastly more intuitive than they used to be, and it’s possible to know almost everything you need to know with only a few bits committed to memory. Also partly because I want to know more about the world I’m playing in than I do about how much a character can lift above their head. I can always look that bit up, but being able to describe the world takes a lot more.
My favourite D&D books have always been those that impart the flavour of the game-world, rather than those that give me the rules to play with. For some funny reason, though, while I can write prose, I can’t write “in-game descriptions” very well. I’ve never been able to write a descriptive paragraph without personalising it.
Case in point: If I wanted to write a description of, say, King’s Row (to use somewhere that I suspect most people who’ll be bothered to read this will recognise) for my own notes in a tabletop RP game, it would be something like – Slum, factories, litter on streets.
If I then convert that into an in-game description for players, it becomes “The smoggy air of this slum-town contrasts greatly with the crisp cleanliness of Atlas Park. Criminal gangs roam the streets in vastly greater numbers, preying on factory workers, bag-ladies and junkies. It seems almost as if the city council has given up trying to tidy the place – knocked over rubbish bins line entire streets where wayward teenagers have toppled them on their way to find the next bit of fun.”
But I can’t write something that would look good in a guide-book, which is what a “world-description” needs, and which is why I’ve never written a “world book” for anything.
Anyway, back to roleplaying memories: One of my own abiding remembrances of this type is best summed up with a single phrase. I was at Uni, it was the weekly RP meet, on a Sunday morning. I can’t for the life of me remember what system we were using, but it was a semi-cyberpunkesque setting, with nasty monsters thrown in for good measure. The phrase, which sounds far dodgier than the cause for it, was “Six-foot, golden, and coming soon!” I still chuckle whenever I think of it, even though I’ve completely forgotten *why* it was said.
It’s not what you play, or how well the game is played, or anything of the sort – it’s who you’re playing with. Good friends, having fun, beer, pizza, banter and puns. At the end of the day, that’s what roleplaying is about.
I could waffle on for hours about the amount of fun in crafting a character, setting a scene, watching the pieces of the puzzle slowly become clear to the players as they wend their way through my intricately designed plot… but *none* of that even remotely comes close to:
Me, as Orcus, Demon Prince of Undead: WHO DARES DISTURB ME?!
Jim, decidedly not in character: I’m sorry, there’s no one available to take your call at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep. BEEP!
#4 by Rockjaw at March 9th, 2009
Ha ha. Phrases, yes indeed. “Horse sniffing” is one that comes to mind. A fantasy game I played in had the GM suggest a guard was ‘sniffing around’ our horses, which suddenly became the guard sniffing the horses, which led to drugs allegations, which led to hilarity all round.
Of course the problem with most if not all roleplaying stories is that generally, “You had to be there”. Which is fascinating really. Why is that?
#5 by Dr Toerag at March 9th, 2009
I remember a lot of stories, and miss the chance for more. It’s depressing that people left the city and even the country! I WANT MY YOUTH BACK, I WASN’T FINISHED WITH IT!
#6 by Shadowe at March 9th, 2009
“You had to be there”… now that’s an interesting one. You see, I can have a good chuckle over “horse sniffing”, because I can imagine *perfectly* how such a situation could crop up in a game. I doubt I laugh as much as you did when it happened, but I can appreciate the humour and, knowing my own players, imagine how it would pan out in one of my own games.
I don’t think anyone other than a roleplayer would be able to see it, though. To those so-called ‘normal people’, it would undoubtedly elicit a slightly nervous smile, a nod that plainly says “men in white coats: get some. NOW!”, and a feeble laugh. At best. But I think every roleplayer who’s ever really enjoyed a game will have at least one, and probably dozens, of silly memories like that where something that happened In Character has spilled over into shared amusement Out Of Character. But if the prospect of shared storytelling doesn’t float yer boat, it’s doubtful that you’d be able to appreciate the humour.
Anyway, taking the more general form of your question, it’s quite simple – roleplayers are cliquish. There’s a distinct “us and them” mentality. While we’re almost always very welcoming of new people to our hobby, to outsiders looking in it must seem very peculiar. There are in-jokes, as there are with almost every sort of social group, but a large number of people struggle to comprehend the concept of a “game” where you’re not competing with anyone. Where there’s no “winner” except in the amorphous concept of “if your character is still alive, you’re winning”. Where the whole point of the game is to just hang out with friends and enjoy each others’ company while telling a *story*. Okay, a story with rules, but… bwuh?!
That’s what sets RPGs apart from every other type of game out there. Sure, I can have a group of friends round to my house and we can play… Trivial Pursuits. Someone (or at least someones) will win. Which means that someone(s) will lose. People tend to be very competitive, and I doubt there’s anyone who doesn’t feel some level of satisfaction at winning something like that.
But – and this is an interesting point – the shared satisfaction of playing a Pub Quiz machine is far “nicer”, if you’ll excuse the emotive term. Get a crowd of half-a-dozen friends around one and you’ll have a good time, and everyone will be supportive of each other, trying to help achieve success. That’s probably the closest most “normal” people get to the sense of satisfaction that RPers feel every time they play a game.
So, at the end of the day “they” don’t understand the hobby. “They” don’t get why it’s fun. And because of that “they” stand about as much chance of finding stories about it entertaining as I do of getting worked up by a football match that doesn’t have the England team playing in it. Which is demonstrably nil.
“We”, on the other hand, know the “truth”. That competition is for Sunday League Footie, not Friday Night beer ‘n’ pizza. That if you know someone well enough to trust their character with the “life” of your own, then you can trust them with anything. Roleplaying is not and never has been about “I win”. It’s always been, and hopefully always will be, about “we had fun”, regardless of how well the *characters* did.
#7 by Zortel at March 10th, 2009
I’ve only done a bit of ‘proper’ tabletop gaming, face to face, pen and pape rand so forth. 4 sessions of Fading Suns, 3 of Deadlands, and that’s about it. I’ve done D&D 4E, Mutants and Masterminds, BESM, Paranoia and Dying Earth online, and Deadlands over Webcam. While it was fun, and I have some fond memories (Consecrated dynamite in Deadlands, FFM’s cursed dice rolls that resulted in him losing me my shocksword in Fading Suns by getting it wedged in a zombie that promptly ran off, and him fluffing his first gatling pistol roll and firing the barrel at someone in Deadlands), I typically prefer doing things over IRC.
I think i find it more immersive, that I don’t have to be shy about speaking either (Which usually takes me imbuing alcohol) and there’s a clear IC/OOC divide, so you can make OOC jokes in one window while keeping the IC seperate.
Of course, it’s not without its issues. Games can run slow, out of combat it can be a bit ‘do I do this in case someone else wants to’ while waiting for replies, and it’s always nice to have the game books in physical proximity rather than PDFs. See the new Penny Arcade comic for that.
I suppose it may be because of how I got into RPing, via online games such as CoH. It feels more natural to write in an IRC window than be sitting around a table with Shadowe and saying “Liberty Belle swoops down from the sky, slowing down to right herself with her cape billowing behind her before clinging to the sides of her body as she lands. “Good evening.” She nods to her gathered teammates.”
It helps with the imagination for me, I don’t have to worry about mispronouncing or stuttering or having my odd accent intefereing with what I am trying to get across, and while I would love to do the whole pizzas, snacks, drinks and gaming thing, my own mental blocks and lack of opportunities nearby mean I am sated to play online.
Now, board and card games on the other hand, I love. Munchkin, Chez Geek, Gloom, War on Terror, Arkham Horror, Citadel, Settlers of Catan (Anyone got wood for sheep?) and some other cool ones that don’t come to mind.
I also find that I can’t DM to save my life. Storytelling, I can do. Numbers, I can crunch. When it comes to the wedding night of those two concepts though, they just can’t get it on.
(Doesn’t stop me collecting books though. BESM, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, FUZION, M&M, D&D and a few others.)
#8 by Gangrel at March 10th, 2009
I am a rules light/heavy person (i think that goes for *most* of the posters here… although I do tend to prefer the White Wolf/Shadowrun system of “XP != leveling up”.
Still cant get over why i wasnt banned from the Roleplay Student Nationals in 2001, when i threatened to throw the GM out of the window if he didnt stop the cheesy movie/TV references….
Of course, the category i was put in was “Random” so it could have been ANY system out there… even home brewed. Ended up playing A Zebra in a Boob tube for one day >.>
1d6, 5 stats, 5 health levels… who needs more *shrugs* I could have done it with less, and the rolls were *not* all that often (unlike the AD&D sessions where the combat then was VERY slow…. bloody rules monkeys)
And yes, i *do* have good memories from roleplaying sessions (including Live Roleplaying sessions as well)… strangely enough, there is *only* one occurance of when i remember it due to a dice roll, and that was because it was so rediculous.
In the end though, i feel that dice rolls should only be used *when* they are required, and to keep it down to an absolute minimum… which is always good when you have *smart* roleplayers who know that combat *isnt* always the way forward.
Shame that it seems to be a lost art and people are just willing to role the dice and say “well i passed the diplomacy roll, let me through”… Hell, if the players ROLEPLAYED it, and *then* possibly botched the roll… i would still let it go through, especially if its roleplayed well enough.
Sometimes, the gift of the gab is the way forward D:
#9 by Shadowe at March 11th, 2009
Thanks Gangrel, that pretty much sums up a few points that I was trying to make. I’ll point out now that I think this discussion is going a bit off-track, but it’s an engaging and thought-provoking case-study, so I’m enjoying myself!
I’m not a great believer in “the dice rule all”. I’ll also freely admit that a lot of game systems seem to devolve the games into that, though. It’s very easy for a GM to look at a scenario and say to himself “okay, so, the players need to roll a Search check to find the key to the Gates of Doom”, because that’s what the scenario says… and then all of the players fail the roll. Whoops. Game grinds to a halt. A lot of D&D published adventures fall into this trap, where an item that is *essential* to the plot can be overlooked or missed just because the dice fail to fall favourably for the players. When I design my own adventures, I *never* have a plot-sensitive point derive from a dice roll. Sure, if my players want to roll for it, I’ll let them. But if it’s important to the plot, then they don’t need to. They might have to, oh, break a unique and irreplaceable model-city to find the mystic ring (to use something from a recent game-session), but I didn’t demand any rolls for them to do that, nor any rolls to find what they were looking for.
Combat, sure, that has to have a random element to it, which helps make it exciting – and can lead to entertaining roleplaying opportunities, like one character earning the nickname “Target Practice” (as in “you need some”, because he *just kept missing*) – but outside the nitty-gritty of fist-to-face, while I’ll let the dice *influence* what happens – if the players ask for it – I prefer a more organic and natural process of discovery.
By way of example – Our Heroes have captured Their Nemesis, and are interrogating him. I know what he knows, and I know what he is willing to talk about. The players are free to ask whatever questions they want, and I will respond appropriately. However, partway through, one of the players might ask to make an Intimidation roll to see if they can bully more information out of him. I’ll let them make the roll, and depending on the degree of success will then adjust what Their Nemesis is willing to say. If they roll particularly well, they might get everything. They might also manage the same just by asking the right questions, without rolling. As I see it, rolling the dice can be used as a substitute for long-winded action/reaction descriptions. Sometimes I’ll take something a player has said and call for a roll, because I believe that has a chance to open up additional options, and rather than laying everything on my own judgement, allowing it to be influenced by Character Skill at the task in question is fairer. I’ve had plots utterly derailed because a player asked the right question at the right time to the right person and they had the right skill and the right roll… And that is one of the greatest moments a GM can ever experience. I call it “No plot ever survives contact with the players”. It’s my number one rule for RP. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how much you’ve planned, the instant the players become involved, all bets are off. I’ve become quite good at winging it. I *hate* being tied to a plotline that’s laid out for me. I’d rather watch my players get a sense of acheivement because they made the right choices, than force them into a path that I’ve laid out for them. And improvised GMing is a LOT of fun.
Now, responding to Zortel – I know where you’re coming from. In a live tabletop gaming session, you have to contend with side-conversations, OOC discussion of things in-game, rules reading, and a myriad of other distractions that ALL pull player attention away from IC interactions. In an online game you don’t have that at all.
Given my druthers, I’d never run a combat scene online, though. It’s INSANELY slow and complex. Case in point – my Sunday night Mutants and Masterminds game. 3 combat rounds took 3 hours a few weeks ago. 3 HOURS. In a pen and paper game that would have taken less than 10 minutes. I’m still working on ways to speed it up, but there are limits imposed by the lack of immediacy, and I’m finding it hard to see ways to get it much faster than the last combat I ran… 5 combat rounds in 2 hours. A lot of that is because of the time taken to type things out.
On the other hand, I’ve despaired in tabletop games when characterisation goes out the window. IC discussion collapses. It stops being about the characters and becomes all about their stats.
I’d like some way to find the comfortable middle-ground. The focus and characterisation that consistently happens in online RP, plus the immediacy and speed of rules resolution of tabletop play. I have some ideas on that, but they’re for a future discussion, and it’s a non-trivial issue to resolve.
#10 by Zortel at March 11th, 2009
Middle ground: Some kind of hybrid between a LAN game and Tabletop session? Wireless router, bunch of laptops, big table. Rolls happen off the table, leaves the window for mainly IC stuff, and chatting for OOC.
#11 by Rockjaw at March 11th, 2009
Well, mostly fuelled by Shadowe’s Epic Posts, this has turned into quite the page…
Zortel, I have this vision of what you’re suggesting – a load of people sitting around their laptops typing furiously and then occasionally ‘LOL’ing at something they just saw on screen. Is that right? Seems kinda odd…
Shadowe, got any experience of these ‘virtual tabletops’ I was looking at? I personally was thinking something like that VoIP software, essentially a conference call…? That’d work surely.
#12 by Zortel at March 11th, 2009
More a bunch of people typing away on their laptops when they need to add some input, chatting away, having some snacks, rolling dice and whatever. A kind of RP lan party. Hey, I didn’t say it was perfect.
Regarding what Shadowe said about the collapse of IC discussion and characterization, I find I have trouble with putting across my IC actions when doing it in meatspace.
#13 by Shadowe at March 12th, 2009
Well, this will either turn into another epic post, or it’ll be short and sweet. Let’s see…
If the option exists for tabletop RP, I will *always* opt for it. While I have despaired about the lack of “pure” RP in those situations, it rarely lacks completely. Yes, things like the pure comedy of Liberty Belle’s cape swooshing dramatically are sometimes lost. I will take that loss in return for being able to talk to my players and actually experience their reaction through a medium other than text. I can talk faster than I can type, so when I have to think of a description on the fly, being able to *say* it rather than type it is a godsend.
Zortel – as a tabletop RPer, you strike me as the type that would be characterised as “The Wallflower”. This is the person who sits quietly, takes their actions and doesn’t seem to be hugely engaged in the game, but if you talk to them afterwards, they can describe the events and action is such phenomenal detail, and with a great deal of passion, that it belies their playing style. I *know* that you have one of the greatest imaginations of anyone I’ve ever RP’d with, and your descriptive style is simply brilliant. I consider it a great shame that someone with your skill and desire to tell interesting and fun stories has difficulty “at the table”, so to speak. I know a bit about the reasons behind that, and it’s understandable. But it’s still a shame.
The text medium of IRC is clearly advantageous to you, and I can clearly see advantages to it, as well, because, and I’ll be brutally honest here, it feels DAMN STUPID saying things like “Richard smiles and winks at the woman behind the bar, leaning over to murmur into her ear ‘Hello, my dear… perhaps you might be able to help me?’”. Of course, the thing is that around a table, you don’t have to. *You* lean forward, wink, and murmur. The description is implicit in your depiction of the actions of your character. I had a situation last night, where I was RPing a drunkard that the PCs were questioning. I leaned on the table, nodded my head as if I was falling asleep, slurred my words and made wobbly hand-gestures. I didn’t have to say that the character was drunk, because the players could *see* that he was. If you have a player who isn’t able or willing to add at least a *tiny* bit of character-acting to their role, it can make the RP fall flat.
And I think I just spotted the bit where virtual-tabletop-gaming falls down, with something like voice-chat available. Quite a bit of tabletop RP is visual. You can clench your fists and scowl. You can drunkenly slouch. You can appear afraid… but having to actually *say* those things detracts from the experience, which is the problem.
I think I’ve now hit upon my ideal virtual-tabletopping in-game communication setup: Voice chat for IC talking. IC text channel for descriptions. OOC text channel for general chatter. It’s not perfect, but it eliminates many of the problems. I’m tempted to see if it can actually be achieved, now. The difficulty that I see with it is that the sheer number of “channels” being used could be detrimental.
Rockjaw – if it hasn’t become obvious by now, I have very little experience with virtual tabletops. One that *has* caught my eye is this: http://www.rptools.net
Coupled with VOIP as described above – bearing in mind that there’s NEVER going to be a way to stop OOC chatter spilling into the conference call – I believe it has a lot of promise.
Hmm… mildly epic post.
#14 by Zortel at March 12th, 2009
I think at the next meet up we need to get a simple system, a pub table somewhere, and a couple of drinks in me and see if the resulting lowering of social inhibitions does me any favours.
Though one thing I have noticed about Liberty Belle is that she’s generally more quiet and reserved due to her background and having a secret identity. Partly my fault for making her that way, but at the moment there’s no real interaction with the women beneath the mask, she’s all business, and I always try to take into account that she has the two kids to look after on her own, and the job to hold down. Of course, that does come in handy when I’m feeling completely bleh and not in a gaming mood.
#15 by Shadowe at March 12th, 2009
I recommend Fudge: http://www.fudgerpg.com/fudge.html
It’s simple, but effective.
I fully understand Liberty Belle’s behaviour, because it comes naturally out of who she is and what she’s all about. I find it an interesting dichotomy of characterisation, and I’m mildly frustrated that the other players haven’t taken the time to investigate each others’ characters and start digging into each other as people. I guess I need to actively arrange a “down-time” session or two (in between continuing the plot) to allow that sort of thing to happen.
Not this week, though. I have something interesting (I hope) planned for this week.
#16 by Rockjaw at March 12th, 2009
Are you two having some sort of roleplaying ‘affair’ on my blog?
Been reading a lot more around this subject, and related. Might write a bit more on it before too long. Thanks for the link btw Ben, will investigate that. I still agree with you – face to face is always best – but as always, hard to make it happen.
#17 by Zortel at March 13th, 2009
One virtual tabletopping piece of software I can’t recommend is OpenRPG. The thing crashed, disconnected and was a general pain in the rear with hardly any documentation.
And not at all, Stephen! Just it’s the place where the subject was broached and where we both post to!
#18 by Shadowe at March 13th, 2009
Damn. It seems we’ve been discovered.
Seriously, though, Z is right – this is just the place it got brought up. I’ll admit that considering how extensive some of the posts in this blog entry have become, I’m actually considering starting an RP forum, for discussion of things like this. I probably won’t, because I’m rather lazy, all told, but it’s a thought.
#19 by Rockjaw at March 13th, 2009
I don’t believe either of you.
#20 by Vox Doom at March 13th, 2009
Hey man, just thought I’d see how you were doing and got caught up in this discussion. Do you read Wil Wheaton’s blog at all? he’s been playing D&D 4th Edition with the guys from Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP. They’ve been releasing podcasts of it, it’s really cool to listen to, makes me want to get back into more tabletop RP.
I currently play a hybrid of Call of Cthulhu and White Wolf’s Sorcerer on Thursdays, which is a good fix of geekery but I want to get into D&D again.
I also do live action Cthulhu stuff fairly often, which is pretty fun because there are barely any rules, you just act out as your character would.
Anyways, if you don’t have them, this is a link to Wil’s blog: http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/
This is a link to the D&D Podcast library:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4arch/pod
Enjoy.
#21 by Zortel at March 16th, 2009
Oh, just remembered some software that is useful: http://www.wolflair.com/index.php do a great range of character creation software for PNP games, as well as army buildng software for wargames and some TCG software.
I’ll be picking up Hero Lab with the Mutants and Masterminds pack soon, and it also supports Savage Worlds, D&D 4E, d20, World of Darkness and has an authoring system for your own game systems.