You Don't Need to Use Them All

Two years ago, one of my players, Denis, was thinking about running a game. There was some light pressure from the group for him to give it a shot. He eventually settled on trying to run a Gamma World game, details here and here. 

That game never got off the ground. For Denis, he felt that there was too much pressure to compare to others in the group who have years or even decades of experience running games. 

At the English camp we were teaching at through most of August, several guys were asking Denis and I about our games (some are former players, some just curious about RPGs). Denis mentioned that one of the main reasons why he never got his GW game going because the random encounter tables seemed overwhelming. 

I instantly understood what he meant. Random tables like those in the books require the referee to be familiar with most of the creatures in the book. And with all the mutations in GW, that may make it overwhelming. If you only need to worry about a few monsters you've placed in a dungeon, plus whatever powers your players have for their characters, it's not as overwhelming. If everything in the book is on the table, it's a lot to deal with. 

I told Denis that he should try to run the game, but just drop random encounters. The look of relief on his face was noticeable. I think he had been in the mindset that the game has rules for this, so he needed to use them. But that's not true. 

You don't need to use all the rules to run a fun game. Especially when you're just starting out. I ignored lots of rules when I was just starting out as DM nearly 40 years ago. And the games were fun, and challenging. Once you are comfortable with the basics of the game, and with planning and presenting adventures, the more complex stuff can be added back in.

Break Time

I've taken a break from working on the Flying Swordsmen 2E the past couple of weeks. For one thing, I'm teaching English camps as I do most summer and winter breaks. They're fun, but exhausting. Pay really well, too. So no complaints, but gaming stuff (play or prep) has mostly been on hold. One more week to go. 

I also finally took Tallifer's advice and ordered the POD/PDF combo of King Arthur Pendragon from DriveThru. I'm still waiting on the print book, but during some breaks at camp I've been reading through the PDF. I really like it so far, but I was a big Arthur stan as a kid, so reading all the background information, the descriptions of the sources Stafford relied on and how he used them, and all that has been fun to read. But I haven't gotten into the nuts and bolts of the game aside from the character generation bits so far. I'll likely have more to say on it the more I read. 

And yes, it has already given me a few ideas for how to make FS2E more of a social relationship game, instead of just a kung fu game. 

Everyone is also pestering me to run Star Wars again, including Flynn, who would like me to run a game online so that he can play. I asked the guys about it the other day, and they seem willing to start early on a Sunday morning so that Flynn could join us. But that's for some time after camps. 

Oh, and when I asked the guys, it was a week ago, when Justin ran a game of Mothership. Man, that was a fun game! He's thinking of maybe running a longer campaign. We were all hooked, especially the way the session ended with three of four PCs dead, and the final PC given a cut-scene of the aliens creeping up behind, just like you'd expect at the end of a sci-fi horror film or short story.

Conundrum: Motivators of Play for Cathartic Games

As I continue to work on modifying the Open d6 System for a Wuxia/Tianxia* style game as a revision of Flying Swordsmen, I'm struck by a few thoughts that make me hesitate.

One, which I know I've discussed before in relationship to my Asian-inspired fantasy games, is that of authenticity or at least getting the tone and feel right. Yeah, I'm a White dude, born and raised in the Midwest, but who has lived more than half of my life in East Asia, learning the languages, the cultures, the ways of thinking. Obviously, I don't get it as deeply as someone born and raised here. But I think I do understand it well enough to get a passable game setting. But I still have those nagging thoughts that I'm just making another version of "D&D in Funny Hats" (which was what I was blatantly doing with TS&R Jade). 

The second, which is related, is how to properly set up game systems that will motivate play for this sort of game? While there is an aspect of monster-slaying and treasure-hunting in Tianxia fiction, and a bit of that in Wuxia fiction, the typical D&D trope of slay the monsters and take their stuff, XP points accumulate just doesn't work as well for the sort of game I want to run. Flying Swordsmen has always started out great, but the games peter out pretty quickly because players flounder without simple goals like "go get the treasure." 

The action may be what draws people to the source material (especially the films/TV shows), but it's the character drama that really makes Wuxia interesting.

There's a part of me that thinks the authenticity part is not so important anyway. It's a game. Games are meant to be fun. Catharsis is fulfilling, but it's not always fun. Escapism is nearly always fun. So should I just not worry about it, and make another escapist game with Asian tropes? I could, but I've already done that (and done it well, I think). 

This time, I want to get a game that actually rewards playing not just a cool martial arts mystical warrior, but playing up the rivalries with other students or sects, difficulties with dealing with your sifu who is really good at kung fu but a shit person otherwise, or having to be torn between your duty to society (or family, or the king, or religion, etc.) and your desires for how you want to live your life.

For people equally well-acquainted (or better acquainted) with the Confucian Heritage Cultures (CHCs, as they are sometimes referred to in academics), this won't be a problem. I can present the rules, they will understand the tropes, and be able to work them in easily as they wish. For people not well-acquainted, I'm either going to have to write a cultural treatise on the subject, or else simply find a game mechanic system that will encourage this sort of thing within the rules.

I don't think I am up for the whole treatise thing. It's not my real area of academic endeavor, and it would take a long time and a lot of the people who need it would probably just ignore it, or misinterpret it anyway. So it feels to me, as I sit here today, like it will be a wasted effort. Those who wish to learn this stuff can find all sorts of resources online with just a simple Google search anyway. 

That leaves me with game mechanics. 

What I've got so far, is copying games like White Wolf or PbtA where they have a series of questions for each player to answer at the end of a game session. How did you do this? Can you provide an example of that? Show how you avoided doing this? For each question the players can give that plays to the tropes of the genre or leverages these Confucian relationships, they will get a Character Point. For each example where they break the tropes or go against the social expectations that Wuxia fiction demands.

Of course, then we get into discussions of railroading, metaplots, quantum ogres, and all that sort of thing. I'm not going to get into that right now, but I will say that from my experiences with Star Wars d6, if the players know they are in it for the immersive emulation experience (they want to experience what it's like to be a character in the SW universe), they will put up with more manipulation by the referee than they might otherwise with a more sandboxy D&D game. 

Until I can think of a better mechanic to try to encourage play that is more than just "beat up that guy, take his stuff" in a subtle fashion, I think this is the way to  go.

*Wuxia is very human-focused, Tianxia is more fantastical