Fiasco, Etc.

I recently played Fiasco with the Monday night Doomslakers. It was my first experience with GMless RPGs. Overall, I had a lot of fun. But that was mainly because that's my crew and we always have fun. So what about the game itself?

To be specific, we played a Cthulhu-esque version or playset.

I am not sure how I feel about the game. I hesitate to criticize it because I don't believe I "get it" yet. Favorably, I can say it is brilliant and interesting. Perhaps if I'd read the rules completely I'd have a more robust comprehension. But who can be bothered to do that?

I was confused about how the game is supposed to proceed. I believe this is because my gaming history is almost 100% based in "traditional" (the cool kids say "trad") gaming, so I'm expecting loose RP until things heat up, then some kind of turn order with a person in charge. But GMless games, of course, aren't like that. They have a story structure strictly imposed by the game's rules. Because that's how you generate an actual story... otherwise it's a series of random follies that you can later describe as a story.

I confess I prefer the latter. It's my bag.

But since I've only dipped my toes in GMless and/or story gaming (we're playing My Life With Master now) I am reluctant to offer real criticisms of any of these games. It's not you, it's me, baby.

ASIDE: It is not lost on me that I was involved in early story games development and contributed a modest entry to their history with The Pool and The Questing Beast. But as I've said many times in the intervening years I really never played my games much. Just a handful of times, really. For example, the Monday night group has been meeting every week for over 5 years and we've never played either of my old games, nor have I even suggested or desired to do so. And my games are still structured as GM/Player, with fairly simple narrative tools. To this day in almost every game design I brainstorm there is something akin to the Monologue of Victory from The Pool. I do love that concept and I think it's quite nice in play. But maybe... maybe that's the full extent of my interest in leaning toward ye olde "N" in the G/N/S framework (which, as I understand it, is way out of favor these days... sort of like promoting Lamarckism at university after 1900 - the internet moves fast).

ASIDE 2: Hah! The Questing Beast (TQB) has one star rating in each star category except 1-star! I suppose I should be grateful for that. But it's still funny how people will get a free game and then give it a low rating... like there's not enough salt in the soup at the soup kitchen, ya beggars. lol

That Which Harsheth My Mellow: No GM

This is a mini-rant and an internal discussion happening in my brain. You are invited to join, respond, disagree, whatever. I may be wrong. I may be crazy. It's ok.

What I think of when I hear "GMless".

No GM? Are You Fucking Kidding Me?

I mean, who the fuck is supposed to stock the god damn dungeon? It's not gonna stock itself.

I have spent the last 6 or 7 years of my RPG life deeply involved in the OSR* as a creator of games, adventures, game zines, and as an artist contributing to a slew of OSR and other RPG products. But my first foray into any sort of organized RPG scene was at The Forge in 2000 where RPGs were being discussed as serious art. Pretentious? Sometimes. Opaque? Very. Important? Definitely.

I was enamored with the indie-RPGs movement and I contributed one idea to it that resonated. That was The Pool, and a subsequent follow-up called The Questing Beast.

That movement lead to the questioning of every assumption about gaming. One of those assumptions was the role of a GM or the need for a Game Master at all. And that lead to RPGs without GMs. Now, the idea of fucking around with the GM role was not new. Ars Magica had a rotating GM concept (which I suppose could be ignored). I would argue that Amber Diceless (gods! diceless!) also fucked with the GM's role a bit because it encouraged so much creative participation from players. After that, The Pool was certainly a game that blurred the lines between the role of GM and the role of Player. From my memory, Universalis** was the first RPG that actually went into the deep end of the pool (pun!) and basically removed that line.

I ducked out of the scene by maybe 2002 or 2003. I was doing this zine called Random Order Comics and Games and my interest in creating/talking about games was waning. This wasn't because I was losing interest in games, but because I realized I am not a game theory guy. When it comes to gaming, I like drawing skulls and rolling crits. I don't enjoy dissecting and critiquing and reinventing. I enjoy making shit up and sometimes - sometimes - I make up something actually good. Other people are much better at the "jibber jabber what make with them talkie words"*** than me.

Fast forward. I do some webcomics. I get into D&D again and DCC RPG. I make Black Pudding. I start sideways-looking at story games stuff - a scene I had been a part of so long ago. Things had progressed since my departure. I noticed in some discussions, particularly on the Twitters, how the idea of a game with a GM was becoming antiquated, gauche, and crude. "I don't play any game with a GM" is a phrase you can definitely find in multiple and frequent conversations.

And that is why I wrote this rant. Because it touches a raw nerve. I'm absolutely in favor of expansion, progress, change, and evolution (good, bad, ugly). I am absolutely not in favor of snooty fucking snoots snooting down on shit they consider to be passe or trite or, heaven's to fuckin' Betsy, regressive. Donald Trump is regressive. The 700 Club is regressive. Steven Seagal is regressive. An RPG arranged with a GM and Player setup is not regressive. Neither is a guitar amp, a mechanical pencil, or a coffee bean grinder.

In short: we can do both/and.

Now, I don't want to sound like an asshole who doesn't want people to express their views. By all means, if you seriously do not like GM games and don't want to play them then that's perfectly fine. I'm not complaining about you. It's only when you take that a step further and say that GM games are repressive or they represent a toxic hierarchy that I have to call your bullshit. Such games can be toxic in the same way a Twitter discussion can be toxic. But they are not inherently so and I wouldn't even accept the claim that they are more likely to be so. (You mean a table of co-game runners can't be toxic shits?)

The thing is, I've never played a 100% GMless RPG. I'd like to try one, just haven't. But I have written and ran games and played in games where the line between the GM and the Players was a little blurry. And that's a lot of fun for me. These days I always include some kind of line-blurring in my game designs. GOZR, the project I'm currently "working" on, includes mechanics that are akin to The Pool in that they allow Players to have some input/agency toward facts about the game world. I love that shit.

But most of the time when I play or run a game I just want a traditional GM/Player setup. Most of the time.

FOOTNOTES

*OSR =
Old School Rennaissance
Old School Revival
Old School Roleplaying
Oh Shit Run
Etc.

Practically speaking, the OSR manifests as games and game products that are largely or completely compatible with older versions of D&D. People will argue about this fact, but that's what you see with boots on the ground. The higher philosophy of OSR is often stated as a gaming movement that seeks to emulate the feel of older games. And you will see OSR described as any playing of, love of, or riffing on any older games.

Also, by "deeply involved" I mean I've mostly been creating stuff within an OSR framework. I haven't been involved very much socially and since the OSR has a strong social element (as does gaming in general) I didn't want to suggest I've been neck-deep in Reddit threads or hanging out at the most popular OSR watering holes. I have not. I was very active on G+, but mostly posting my own content and commenting here and there. I do my thing, some people like it.

**Memory lane. I was approached to do the art for Universalis but at the time I was in a funk or something and I didn't want to draw for someone else. So I put the creators in touch with my friend David Hedgecock, an exceptional artist, and the rest is history.

***I have an obsession with footnotes. Comic books taught me this. Anyway, that's a quote from Squidbillies.

Striding Warrior

This is art for my upcoming RPG, Sand in the Bone (formerly called Dead Wizards*).

I decided to lean pretty hard into the "sand" part of "sand and sorcery" on this project. I even re-tooled the setting map to eliminate some non-sandy environments as I found them to be utterly superfluous to the tone. I have this habit when I do setting maps to try to include all kinds of environments... like people will be disappointed if they can't do snowy north adventures in my sand and sorcery game.

This RPG will have an original system. It is not specifically OSR. It is not based on D&D. It also includes elements more akin to my old game The Pool. Specifically there is a risk element with a meta-game mechanic. And yet it is still a traditional RPG in the sense that there is a Judge and Players and they are separated at the table by a barb-wire wall of doom. I kid.

Sometime in the near future I will ask bribe my Monday Doomslakers friends to play this thing.

*If I can get some momentum on this I might do a supplement for the game using the Dead Wizards title. Hey... I can dream, can't I? Don't crush my dreams.

The Pool's First Notes

I wrote The Pool sometime in mid-2001. My memory has always been that I just hammered it out one night in a couple of hours. And that's true, in terms of the writing of the actual document. But I must have been thinking about the idea for a while prior to that.

Here's a pic of a note I had in an old sketchbook. The entry just before this was dated 06-19-01 and this entry seems to suggest that I hadn't actually written the game yet, but I clearly had most of the mechanics in my head.

What's most interesting to me is that bit about the GM having a secret pool of dice you can gamble from "in the dark". That isn't part of the game so it must be something I briefly considered and then dropped. I wonder how the game would play with that bit included?

Story and Games

I've been listening to the most excellent podcast Fear of a Black Dragon. Kind of on a bender with it. I started with the first one I could find in the feed and just let it autoplay over the last week when I'm driving or whatever.

Great show. I love the hosts' enthusiasm and their non-OSR approach to OSR adventures. They clearly appreciate a good old fashioned dungeon romp, but they are not locked into the bog standard, quasi-cultish devotion to a rose-colored-glasses version of 1970s-style gaming. They are quick to dismiss things they don't find useful at the table and introduce ideas that are often treated as anathema to OSR. Y'know... very very bad things that come from nasty story games circles.

I love it. Fuck gaming purity. Gimme the good stuff. I'm the guy who does Black Pudding, which is just about as OSR a thing as I'm capable of producing. It's got motherfuckin' descending armor class for pete's sake. Don't question my street cred.

But I'm also a guy who created a proto-story game before that term was coined. And it had legs and it is still played and talked about today, god damn 20 years later (holy shit). So clearly I have a soft spot for styles of play that aren't purely about exploration, combat, and acquisition of treasure.

And yet... and yet I still approach story game elements at arm's reach. There is a reason that after 20 years I still never play or even think about The Pool, unless someone brings it up. I clearly have play style preferences that aren't in alignment with the meta-fiction elements that are the hallmarks of story games. For example, I still cringe when I think about GM-less games. I think it's because I almost invariably approach gaming as exploration and for the exploration to be meaningful I feel like the fiction world needs to be grounded in one place or one person's imagination - modified by the choices of others, of course. But not driven by an equally shared creation of the fiction.

Or so.

The Pool vs. The Questing Beast

Ron Edwards has another Pool-related post up, with a video. I love reading Ron's insights into the game. I try to remember my thoughts at the time I wrote TQB and why I made the changes I did, but I fail to remember. This is because I tend to do everything more-or-less while inspiration strikes and very often if I think too long about it I just won't do it.

Anyway, if you want to understand The Pool and The Questing Beast, go check out his post. Read the comment section for a clear explanation of how the games work.

The Questing Beast RPG Revisited

Ron Edwards of Adept Press recently played my old game The Questing Beast at IndieCON and made this video talking about it.

The main thrust of the video is that Ron was concerned about the mechanical difference between the games. Primarily, that The Pool gives players a choice whether to take narrative control where TQB doesn't offer that choice. I designed TQB to be a little more "controlled" than The Pool in the sense that I wanted it to feel complete as a system. I wanted everything to be very clear and well structured. The Pool has clarity as well, but is far more open-ended as to how things can emerge from play. At least in a sense, that is.

Anyway, it's been a very long time since I thought about these games but I'm happy that they still get some traction here-and-there.

You can get The Pool and The Questing Beast for free.

The Pool - Videos and Thoughts

I wrote an RPG called The Pool back in 2001 or so when I was a regular at The Forge. Ron Edwards promoted the game through discussion because it was among the only games at the time that explicitly explored what I would call shared narrative control. That is, an RPG in which the GM and the players both have some authorship of the game's shared creative space. The Pool allows for this by controlling the creative powers. That is, it has rules for who gets to author and when they get to do it.

Anyway, the game has enjoyed a lot of discussion over the years and I'm proud to have created it. I'm glad that it might have influenced other designers to create even more impressive games. Because frankly, nobody creates anything new. I certainly don't. I'm the guy who assimilates ideas over time. I hear or see something that leaves an impression and it eventually shows up in something I create. The more impressed I am by the thing, the more obvious it is that I'm channeling it. That's why people often comment that my art reminds them of Vaughn Bode or Richard Corben.

Anyway, here's a video of Ron Edwards talking about The Pool to a class inMilan. Strange, but true. And very cool!

Also, here's Ivan talking The Pool as well.

And the game itself got a tiny facelift recently from my friend MattHildebrand who put it into a printer friendly digest PDF.

I'm working on a new game. For the past few years I've focused 100% of my efforts on doing OSR material, which I dearly love. But in January I had a bit of a break from it as an OSR project I was working on kind of fell apart in my head. Possibly this was more related to my mother's health problems and less to gaming. But still, it caused me to step back and start looking at all my junk. Which caused me to flit back and forth between projects. And now I'm at this place creatively where I have an old, potent idea I'd like to explore for a time. It isn't OSR. It's also not a story game. But it does have elements of both those modes of play. Again, this is just me doing what I like to do and not thinking too much about it.

Hell, I don't even want to say what it is because tomorrow I might abandon it. I'll say that it grew out of working on an updated Rabbits &Rangers, but it is not R&R. More later.