Aug 21 2008
An Idea about a game
Now, how to begin this…how to start? Hmmm. How about with something current; My gaming group and 4th Edition.
A little history, if you’ll allow me, might help to illuminate the motivation behind the post. Simply put, I’ve been playing RPGs (Role Playing Games) since the late 1970’s. Dungeons and Dragons is my game of choice, and that’s a long long time to spend with a hobby. Long enough to become pretty well acquainted. I get the game. I mean, I “get it”. Or at least, I thought I did.
When I was a much younger person I played this game with joyful abandonment. It was a fantastical imagination vehicle. And boy oh boy, did I ever have one hell of an imagination to take for a ride. Zero to one hundred in nothing flat. But the one thing that I have begun to realize is that the game was a lot less “structured”, and therefore the canvas was much more broad. (I hope you’ll forgive me here, I’m going to use an artistic analogy, I am a pixel pusher after all.) The paints I used were drawn from everything I had read, watched or dreamed; A Frankenstein movie, Robert Heinlein, R.E. Howard, JRR Tolkein, etc. I was all over the place, but that was a “natural” place to be as a kid. Creativity ‘has no bounds.
Today though I find the game has gone through a metamorphosis. The palette has been constrained and maybe, just maybe, age has taken away some of those “paints”. What I’d like to talk about though is the palette. And by that I mean the game itself. Now there have been plenty of folks out there who’ve ruminated at length on the differences between the many versions of the Dungeons and Dragons game. Plenty of smart folks who have lots of time in the driver’s seat (Jeff Reints, James M. at Grognardia, Scott at Wilderlands OD&D, Ben Robbins at Ars Ludi…and many many others) have gone into detail on the history of the game and the changes in mechanics. I’m much more ephemeral than that.
The group that I’m currently playing with (regularly…Unfortunately, NOT the Longmont boys. 
) is utilizing the new 4th edition rules. Our dungeon master is a fan of these rules and knows them very very well. As they stand, the rules are not necessarily bad per se, rather they’re obsessive. I’ll have to admit, they’ve gone away from third edition and its myriad skill, feats, attacks of opportunities, and prestige class rules. Some will claim that this was the pinnacle of game rules. I’m not inclined to necessarily disagree, that’s a personal choice. But it’s become clear that it’s not MY preference.
There are now rules upon rules for all sorts of eventualities. This is the canvas upon which you paint when you play the game. And there’s an inverse proportion; The more detailed the rules, the smaller the canvas or palette. It’s sad really, I often wish that the game I had started with had been extended alongside the current evolutions so that some of my contemporaries could have experienced the type of game I’m talking about.
But that’s not the case. We play 4e because it’s the flavor du jour, and frankly it was fun, in the beginning. I’m already starting to weary of it though. It’s more about concrete mechanics and much less about the imagination that fuels it. It’s about tactics in battle and the relationships between abilities and powers. In fact it’s ALL about battle now…the spaces in between are blurring for me, and those are the things I used to greatly enjoy.
Some might claim that it’s the DM and players that make the game. This is true, to some extent. I’m obliged to think that an “additive” set of rules is a whole lot less constraining and easier to “build” upon than a subtractive model. In other words, it’s easier to add a house rule or let the DM judge when something’s found lacking than it is to take an existing rule and bend it to your will. An example might be as follows: Last night, while playing, we were trying to collect some info about a bandit lord while in a seedy tavern. One of the guys approaches a patron and asks a few questions…The DM says “they know nothing”. Another likely candidate is approached and the player says “blah blah blah” (literal translation) and rolls his dice. This just put me off. I know that it’s a player thing…a deficiency if you will. But it’s resultant of something larger.
The rules have hobbled the creativity that used to be implicit in rgp gaming. I mean, that was the thing, imagination. That was the difference between war games and role playing games. That canvas that used to stretch to infinity has been cut down to the size of a postage stamp, and god forbid if something that doesn’t “fit” on that canvas should appear. It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten how to play “pretend”. Phbbbt…not for me.
So here I am. I’m not a huge fan of 4e. But I don’t hate it either. It’s just not what I’m looking for. What AM I looking for? Something a bit more free-form and, for lack of a better term, old school. I’ve got this idea for a game that I’d love to run. It’s a hodge podge of ideas at the moment. But here’s the gist:
- Based on many of the the same premises as Ben’s West Marches game, but with fewer participants.
- Infused with that “pulp” feel. (shades of R.E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, etc.)
- Able to encompas a bunch of different tropes. (Horror e.g. H.P. Lovecraft, Planetary fantasy e.g. E.R. Burroughs, etc.)
- It’s about the game… NOT necessarily about the “story”. (i.e. it’s written by the players, not by the DM ahead of time.)
- Utilizes a more lenient set of rules. (I’m opting towards Castles and Crusades due to my recent experience with it.)
- I can squeeze in some of the older material. (old JG stuff like Caverns of Thracia, some of James Mishler’s AGP material, older TSR stuff like The Lost City, Isle of Dread, Keep on the Borderland, In Search of the Unknown, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, etc.)
- Draws from material read from multiple blogs (most of them have been listed above)
Like I said earlier, this idea that I’ve got is a rather ill-formed, nebulous jumble of concepts and is in some serious need of tailoring. But it’s a start. One of my biggest constraints at this time though is finding a group of guys that might be willing to play in a game like this. A few of the guys in our current group would be willing, but overall it’s not something that would likely happen in the foreseeable future. Ach and alas.
So, if you have any kind of illuminating comments, please, lay them on me. I’m all ears. I’d love to hear any ideas, concepts, current campaigns being run in the same spirit, etc. Give me a shout. I know I’m not well entrenched in this niche yet but I’d love to tap into the massive well of talent that’s just floating around out there.