Flammable Penguins Blog The internet home of Claire Blackshaw

Eternal Struggle

I have been struggling with this concept ever since I was eight. Narrative vs Ludology. By Narrative I mean story-telling and Ludology I mean pure game play.

Introduction

You see when I was around six my brother took me through my first roleplaying games and shortly afterwards I tried to run my own game of Dungeons & Dragons box-set. My epic story never left the village and bells were rung, chickens chased and silliness ensued. I played endless choose your own adventure books but non of those tales stick in my mind like other stories I read.

You see from a very young age I always had two ambitions, to perform and play. I've always wanted to make games since typing in code into C64 out of magazines. I've always been a story teller, directing my first public play when I was eight (it never went ahead but we rehearsed filthy rhymes, "She whipped her pistol from her knickers."). I started programming for the first time (for real, not copying) when I was eight in C.

So this struggle between playing and telling has always been present. Now I should say meta-narrative or player narrative is fully compatible. The conflict comes in delivering a story with that game. So back to the key point role-playing.

It's been my passion always as it seems to combine both my loves and be social. South African role-playing at cons is much more story based than the conventions I have seen in the UK.

Role-playing Solution

Now excluding the dungeon crawl and roll-playing, those are without real depth. There are two major forms in South Africa. Campaigns and Convention Modules. Unlike US & UK cons the South African modules have pretty strict conventions. Between 4-7 players, almost always 6. All rules and required elements must be included in the module. The player characters are pre-written. The GM only see's the module an hour before the game. The module is run simultaneously in one slot.

The campaign however is much looser but much more complex. Over the years I've learned the secret to a good campaign is to play with the players. Don't write over-arching plots instead make everything character base and weave it around the players actions.

This means you can deal with themes and even setup scenarios but you must ultimately cater to the players and adapt.

Now in a module you have a story and script which you need to stick to. A bit of variation is required. The great modules are spoken about for years, like good films. Also because of the simultaneous play throughs story, plot twist and grand tales have more impact. Some flexibility and deviation but ultimately you tell the story. This is mainly achieved by having pre-written characters which have motivations written. The main ingredient is good players and a gm.

So a South African module seems to be closest to my solution.

Digital Divide

Okay we have two main problems in the digital world. Most game players are uncooperative bastards and we don't have the social backbone to remove their awfulness. Put a few people in a room to discuss a thing and they will be civilised. Put those people in a chat room with pure anonymity and they are awful.

The next problem is a good GM has a very useful toolbox.

1. Advanced decision making with social context
2. Content generation on the fly
3. Multiple detailed player input channels
4. Library of social knowledge, experience, dictionaries and research

Okay the first item means we need an AI or system which emulates it which is still years out of our reach. Though not more than twenty.

Content generation, we have some good work in this area but the main problem is method. When using the written and spoken word a sentence can make a vast landscape and a thing does not exists till mentioned. This is used more times than you would think. Unfortunately on an AV display all things must be defined before it can be display. We cannot materialise a door into a wall if the player has already seen that wall.

A digital player only inputs conscious input through a controller. Conscious input is meaningless when measured against the VAST amounts of information you can read in their unconscious signals. The best moments come from exploiting this input. In a digital world we would need a microphone and camera to watch the player (Natal I'm looking at you) but also read and interpret extremely advanced tiny motions. The main advantage here is if we get more advanced we can measure heart-rate, biometrics and brain signals. So for the moment we are behind the curve but in the future??

Finally the library of knowledge. Well that problem is easily solved. We could plug all games into a vaster database than any human could learn in a lifetime. The trick is to get a computer to comprehend the vast amount of data. See the first point.

Conclusion

I do plan to write more on this based more firmly in what is achievable today. For the moment however you see where my eyes are looking and what my motivations are.

Massive Narratives pt 3

Hi all, before you ask I don't know how many parts this series will have. I have a rough outline of what I want to work through but nothing solid. Once it's all done I do plan to compile it into a more structured article.

On a side note Game Horizon is tomorrow. Hope to see some of you there, I will shoot a few tweets up as the event progresses. Don't be surprised if nothing is posted on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Problem: Past, present or future

LARP games tend to be held once or twice a month, big Meets are normally annual or bi-annual. The times of different games in a region tend not to sync up. This provides advantages and disadvantages.

Down Time

The advantage is primarily an activity called down-time. This allows the ST running the game to take a breather and construct stories and props for the next session. This reflection time is crucial and often the quality can be measured by the amount of work that happens in down-time. Rushing it at the last minute really shows.

The players also use this time to perform out of session activities. Things like training, issuing orders to their minions, or going on little side quests or missions. The advantage of the training is the player says I spend the next three weeks training such and such skill. Because the event is triggered and they don't have to invest time into it this removes the grind.

Side quests, activities and conflicts play out by email, on forums or face to face with a ST (much like a typical table top role-playing game). This serves two main functions: Danger and Involvement. The danger element is because LARPs involve live action they need to be safe. So drug busts, car chases and combat related activities can't be done "live". Its also very expensive to mock-up these activities "live".

The second function Involvement is important. It allows the ST to give some personal time to the player. Re-enforcing there sense of self importance and giving their character some time to grow and expand.

Another minor advantage is being able to create news reports, and the like reporting misinformation and pieces. It's a nice tactic as it re-enforces a sense of the world and builds immersion by credit taking. A player will see a report about a gas explosion blowing up part of the docks and a few dock workers dying, a player will smugly remark that actually it was a fight with the were-wolves and he had to use a rocket propelled grenade.

EVE Online handles downtime really well. The skill training system means your character is doing something while your at work or doing other things. It removes some of the grind and minimizes the advantages of obsessive play time.

Time Slip

The main problem with down time and time differences is an element I like to dub time-slip. The games are happening at different times but may be happening at the same game-time.

ST dance an elaborate dance to stop players hopping in a car and driving to the next city and wreaking havoc, or even just picking up the phone and calling someone in a different region. This problem is also present in MMOs as the player is not always online.

The solution in most LARPs I've played is an in-game limiter. In vampire its decorum and politics factor which keeps mingling down. In a Seven Seas LARP it was a technology limit, pirates don't have cell-phones. These are all workable solutions but they are negative solution removing an element from the game. In a Cyberpunk LARP, with three different roleplaying groups all in the same universe I really ran into the time-slip problem.

The world by its nature is inter-connected. So you can't really give valid in-game reasons for no-contact. So what we did was a notification system. If a player was getting involved in another game they would get a text. If they responded in 15min with general orders or a text to say they would run over then fine. If not we would play them by proxy. The absent player was giving a minor stat boost, to compensate for lack of direct player control.

Most MMOs 'ignore' time slip by having player's vanish. I think this is cheating in a small way. I know some player's feel cheated by things happening when they are offline hence why we offset matters in-game by boosting offline characters stats. There are many opportunities to solidify the game world however by making sure parts of it don't vanish when your offline.

A direct attack on an offline player should be avoided if they safely logged out. What about the player's assets, allies, safe-houses. Having these things vulnerable adds an element of realism to matters. The concept of offline being totally safe is nice for casual players but removes the risk. It's a tricky area of discussion, and is driven largely by taste.

Sorry guy's I cant make the game

Real life happens, and it should always take first priority. There are times when a player can't make a LARP session. This is understandable and needs to be worked around.

If some notice is received then some additional down time actions can be given to the player. Most time big events can be supported by leg-work. If a player can't make a session do a little bit of extra down-time with them and their success or failure can influence the big event. Whether it be supplying, intelligence, counter-intelligence, or even commando activities. They are then involved in the big event even though they missed it.

I've found this tactic to be VERY successful, yes it only works when you get a bit of notice, which is not always the case but most times it's a solution. One thing I despise about MMO's is a friend saying, "sorry I can't I have a raid". Well what if that person could do a legwork mission to help out and get some reward/feedback from the big event.

Not only does this solve the time issue but it makes the event feel more grand and some people enjoy legwork more than the big event.

Next time on Flammable Penguins...
Problem: Didn't I just kill you? (Reality in a Persistent world)

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