Showing posts with label Diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diplomacy. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

15 games - the list

"So, just name me 15 games you've played. The first ones that pop into your mind"
"Like, any kind of game?"
"Yeah, any kind. You don't even have to have liked them."
"I could probably mention 50 rpgs, just like that."
"But, would it be the first ones to pop into your mind?"
"Well, I don't know. My mind just wanders, sometimes."
"So, just name 15 games, any games. It could be interesting to see how many of those 50 you really could think of, eh?"
"What he heck!"

1. Tunnels & Trolls
2. Dungeons & Dragons
3. Stormbringer
4. World of Synnibarr
5. WHFRP
6. Advanced Squad Leader
7. Diplomacy
8. DBA
9. Call of Cthulhu
10. Zork
11. nethack
12. Grand Prix Legends
13. Junta
14. Hacker
15. Battletech

"That was just a mess!"
"Yeah, not the first ones you would have thought would be on the list, would you?"
"Well, some of them. Why on earth was I thinking of *bleep!* just now?"

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Do you have roleplaying in your game?

You might remember me talking about Diplomacy a while ago as the origins of roleplaying. Once again the question pop up about rules supporting roleplay. Today I read what Roger had to say about D&D being a role playing game or not. Naturally, it made me think of Diplomacy again.

When you look at the rules of diplomacy, they don't tell you to speka in funny voices. Neither do the rules of D&D, or T&T or any other first generation rpg. They are directions to facilitate play of the game by giving room for personal touches, while steering it along some common ground. Roleplaying just happens.

Roleplaying is an emerging quality of play. Those qualities are often the most valuable in a game. Some games have rules for X, which just happens to make most gamers do Y, since it's natural in that context. Sometimes you design for it, sometimes you don't.

I've realized one thing about those games which work really hard to facilitate a certain style of play. They often have a lot of space in them, like places of rest where you can find out what is natural in that context. Even there roleplaying is an emergent quality. Even when you have rules for social interactions and narrative control there's space in the rules. That's the rules that support roleplaying.

At least that's what my tired brain just found fascinating. Tell me about it.
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