The other day someone called in and described the kind of Otherworld-immersed play that Daniel Jones and I have been discussing over the past few years, “improvisational theatre”. The contention was that without rules visible at the table, the “game” part of RPG was missing from the player’s minds and therefore it would be like improv theatre.
This assertion jarred with me and felt very much like a misunderstanding.
Theatre implies a passive audience. Roleplaying games have an audience who are also the participants. More than that, however, although I know that improv has some loose “rules” that everybody knows, what it lacks is any kind of random element which can change the outcome of the story.
I believe that improv theatre is – and I could be wrong here – focused on the characters and their interactions. The setting is mere backdrop and rarely impacts the emergence of the story in a direct sense. This is also different than with a roleplaying game focused on Otherworld-immersion where the world is at the heart of things.
Mostly, however, I reject the idea that just because the rules are not mechanically visible to the players this removes the game altogether from the player’s experience. On the contrary, the players must intuit the “rules of the game” from the (hopefully) consistent experience of the world’s reactions to their choices.
The GM is the arbiter of the rules. The rules are out of sight so that the players can focus on being someone else – on roleplaying their character – within the context of the fantastic world. Instead of being jarred out of the character frame into the the rules frame every few minutes, they can remain Otherworld-immersed.
But the game is still being played. Rules are in use. Dice are being rolled. It is the GM who can “see the Matrix” while the players can see the secondary world through their character’s senses. It’s much more akin to the make-believe we enjoyed as children but with rules running the simulation.
Of course, in all of this it’s worth saying that I have no problem with Improv Theatre. I just prefer roleplaying games to theatre, improv or otherwise. If you are part of an improv troupe, well, more power to you. I’ll be over here rolling some dice.
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
Why does a ‘role playing’ game need a ‘random element’ that can ‘change the course of the game’? I realize that ‘game’ sort of implies some kind of ‘risk of reversal of fortune’ in order to function, but do we really need dice and ‘chance’ to produce the tension that ‘reversal of fortune’ provides?
Everyone assumes we know what we’re doing when we’re ‘gaming’. But do we, really?
Commodity gaming and ‘tournament play’ completely destroyed the imaginative and improvisational aspect of the early – primordial – Folk Role Playing Game.
In the 1970s, the game was 90% ‘What do you want to do?’ and 10% character sheet. Now things are completely reversed.
Why not let the players do what they want to do constrained only by the ‘physics’ of the game-world as held in the mind of the ‘game master’?
Primordial RPGing was a ‘high trust’ endeavor because – at first at least -the only person who had ‘the rules’ was the game master. We just felt our way long the ‘physics’ of the game world and – eventually – we learned how to make use of our character sheets to optimize our play. The game was, frankly, less interesting once that happened.
A GM should be able to walk into a room full of eager ‘gamers’ and say ‘What do you want to do?’ without the slightest preface of scene or situation and proceed from there with no obvious infrastructure.
RPG’s are games about a polylog between ‘the players’ and ‘the game master’.
The ‘improvisation’ and ‘rules’ (rulings) and ‘the world’ can simply arise from these exchanges without a lot of mediation resulting in very satisfying ‘role playing game’ (or ‘imaginative social event’).
The addition of ‘reversal of fortune’ (or ‘failure to perform’) is a choice that can (and really should) arise from exchange of information (and feeling) between ‘the game master’ and ‘the players’.
‘What do you want to do?’ also includes whether the players want to include ‘reversal of fortune’ mechanics into the shard imaginative game world.
Will players just want to ‘win’ indefinitely? Or will they look for ways to introduce some obstacle or unintended consequence in order to ‘spice’ up the game of their own accord?
Maybe this works because, after asking ‘What would you like to do?’ and getting an answer, the next question is ‘How are you doing that?’.
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I agree… although, I still think the roll of the dice is enjoyable because it gives a touch of the impartial to the adjudication when the GM and the players don’t fully know the answer to the question of, “does that work?” Even Arneson used dice, it seems.
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I can see how ‘random adjudication’ of ‘game events’ can add something to a game, but, like everything, there’s a trade-off. If it really matters whether the character succeeds – in the player is really invested in the outcome – what sense does it make to allow a ‘disappointing’ result. Random adjudication should never determine the outcome of character action unless the player agrees to it.
An RPG is more like a seance than a ‘game’. You’re conjuring the ‘spirit’ of a ‘game world’. As the GM, you can assemble the components of a game-world and still not know when those components might come into view of the characters (and players). I write down quick ideas for game phenomenon on blank playing cards and if it need a ‘game event’, I shuffle through them until I seem something that I think would be fun to insert.
I’ve done this and had the players just basically ignore what I’d offered. 😐
What I like about using blank cards instead of random tables is that you can easily shuffle in previous phenomenon whose reappearance gives structure and ‘verisimilitude’ to the game world without having to rely on a scripted environment.
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Thank you for sharing your perspective. An RPS is an interesting concept.
On the question of whether a disappointing result makes sense, it makes sense to me in relation to the meaning that arises from failure. A game that I always win has less value because it is too easy. I prefer the roleplaying game where losing, where facing disappointments and setbacks, is a part of the experience. But then my preferences are different from many other gamer’s preferences.
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