The strangeness of Fate

I'm now a few sessions into a Fate game. It's a fantasy game, with magic and elves and all that jazz. Even though those parts makes me grounded in the familiar tropes, the rest of the game still makes me reel sometimes. I think Fate is probably the most different game I've played.

Different than what? I hear you ask. Well, most things. First off, it's very loosey goosey as far at delimiting what is turned into game mechanics. Aspects, the core of the system, can be something looking like a class, a part of the character psychology or a relationship. I guess most people have heard about that part. That part I think I've got down pat by now.

Now, how you use those Aspects and Skills, that is where it gets weird. At least it's what trip me up. In Fate you have those aforementioned loosey goosey crunchy bits, which really gets in your face when you use them. The thing is, I'm used to have the game mechanic be some kind of binary system. Do I succeed at this or that? Fairly simple, you do or you don't. In Fate you have specific actions you take. You might Attack, Defend, Overcome or Create Advantage. That to me feels strange.

I'm used to expressing what I want to achieve, getting some feedback from the GM of what I need to roll and then get some kind of adjudication of what that means, cooperatively sometimes. Contrast that with Fate, where you can do all those actions mentioned before with almost all abilities, and they make narrative and tactical sense! That last bit is interesting.

I don't know how often I've read or heard that Fate is one of those narrative modern "story games" or whatnot. In my experience it's not. Fate is in your face crunchiness and the most tactical game I've so far played. Even when you do things that are "pure roleplaying" or "story" in that they are driven by your character's foibles or relationship, it's still tactical thinking. You set up an Advantage so you can then invoke it, or activate a negative Aspect so you can get more Fate points to then boost your next skill roll which might be a, say,  social Attack. That seriously trips me up. Interesting, but odd.

Emergent Story - in multiple ways

I was listening to an episode of the The Walking Eye podcast recently. It sometimes has moments of pure brilliance, and I was hoping to catch some of those. Someone mentioned some "Forgespeak", which made me want to write this post. I've tried three times to make this to the point and less rambling. God knows if I succeeded!

Have you heard the phrases Story Before/Story Now/Story After? That was the "Forgespeak" which I triggered on. Basically, those words are all about how and when the "story" appear in the game. Naturally there are strong opinions attached to all those positions. I will just pontificate on the idea of story and when it happens, kind of with those positions as a starting point. We are talking rpg theory here, so nobody just blogs. We pontificate.

It's interesting how "story" became such a loaded term. Personally I blame the metaplot heavy days when White Wolfe reigned. Others were also quite into it, but it seems like the WoD gamers adapted it fully. The Story Before concept relates to that, with the GM showing up with a story in her head before even the game starts. I have actually played in a few con games like that, and they were not all bad. But, more often than not, I don't enjoy that.

But, the other cases of emerging story is more interesting. I'm not entirely sure why the Story After case are considered a sign of "dysfunctional play", but I'll roll with it and consider some cases of emerging stories.

I like to play games where actions of the players affect the world, and small pebbles tossed in the pond by the GM creates big ripples, just because one player or so decides to surf the waves created. That is one quite fun type of emergent story. On the other hand, being thrust into a situation where you have knobs to twiddle and dials to turn is also fun. It seems like some people only likes stories to emerge when they step outside the game system. Others seem to think real story only emerges when the knobs of the game mechanics drives that action. I'm kind of amazed that those two positions are sometimes defended so strongly against each other, when they in my mind is quite similar.

Famously, some people have claimed that the fact that D&D have most detailed rules for combat does not mean the game is about combat, quite the contrary! In that case, story emerges when the rules are not involved.

Other games have rules for social combat, or some kind of game currency you can use in interpersonal interactions, or maybe a set up where the setting and the roles of the characters are creating conflicts to be resolved by the players. I'm actually not sure why especially this latter kind of game so often are scorned by people interested in gaming they "old ways". Sometimes I think it's just a case of narrow vision, thinking D&D is the end all, be all of gaming. At other times it might be that stubborn resistance against "having anyone tell me what my character likes or not". While I can understand the idea of that argument, most people I've encountered arguing like that have also been close minded individuals who came across as jerks in general. Maybe that have coloured my opinion of that argument.

How about this situation? Your character is fighting lizardmen, and overwhelmed decides that as the last man standing, discretion is the better part of valour. From now on that player might decides to always have his character scowl and mutter when lizardmen show up as antagonists. Maybe the character even develops a slight phobia of lizards. That is all emergent story for that character, totally without being based on any rules forcing that to happen.

Compare that to some hippie game where the dungeon crawl is about the mental degeneration of those who crawl underground. Maybe in that game you have a psychological profile, and as you fail some game checks and the numbers decrease, your character get afflicted by some predetermined effect. This is also emergent story for that character. But, in this case it's mandated by the rules.

I personally think the latter way has one advantage. When those knobs and dials are in place, things will happen. If I have to hope for some lucky combination of situation, character and place it will be harder for me as a player to make that happen. It's basically a tool to make it likelier to happen. I think that sometimes the Story Now people have taken that position to be better, since you have tools. I know for a fact that even if I buy a really fancy hammer and saw, I still wont turn into a great carpenter. On the other hand, I still like to have great tools around. Tools I don't have can't help, or hinder. I think that is why I like those games which include more than basic combat, and leaves the rest to the group.

That being said, one thing I really don't get is why so many hippie game designers think that emotional relationships are the only good source of conflict and drama? Do we have to turn all our games into sappy soaps in order to have engaging games? I don't think so. It makes me think of a game I was once in, where we played in a setting developed by our GM. He is a great world builder so just the glimpses we had gotten of the bigger world made me want to go out and explore all that! Imagine my despair when it turned out that we had all been grounded in the village, banned from leaving and exploring the woods and wilds around. This was supposed to be a social game, using the rules for the Buffy RPG. Buffy happens to be a TV series I despise as a sappy soap. Maybe I came to the game from a wrong angle, but it sure didn't work for me.

What I wanted to say with that paragraph was just that the environment can be just a rich source of emerging story as people can. Sometimes I think the dungeon dwellers and the hippie gamers both wants emergent story, but forgets that point, in different ways. Both exploration of time and space as well as interpersonal relationships can create story. Having tools for that in the game system makes for great games when you uses them to hot rod one killer story, or for shiny gears that can lie dormant but admired as decoration as you blaze through the emergent story on wheels you just imagined into being all by yourself without tools.

Yeah, there you have me, creating some group hug of a messy metaphor. Whatever. Here, take a cloth and wipe of some of that grease and oil and go out and game. However.

Story games, really?

I feel like I have to rant a bit. I realize most people have no interest in the details of how things became like they are, but I hate it when people don't bother to find out.

Why the rage? I heard somewhere someone lamenting the fact that these days "indie games" is just a distribution label, and say nothing of the game. That person also seemed to like the term "story game".

You know why indie game is a distribution label? It has nothing to do with the subject of the game! Read what it say on the tin. Indie means independent. The Forge was started in order to talk about self publication, and creator owned properties. It was all about independent game publication. It has nothing to do with subject matter. Why would it? Look at the name again. Indie.

My second hang up then. You know why the story game community of that name was set up? It was because some people wanted to talk about things Ron Edwards had decided he did not want at The Forge. So, "story games" like they talk about there, are games that people want to talk about in a way Rod Edwards didn't want at his web forum. There, a really solid definition of game content and subject matter. Or not. No, it's not a distribution label.

Story games. Sheesh.

I think you could just as well call it hippie games, like they call non-traditional games at the Happy Jacks RPG podcast. A fun term, meaning nothing. Except of course, that games talked about at the Story Games community are all about long haired individuals with flowers in their hair. Naturally.

Sadly I realize it's damn hard to talk about these things, and I have used those term myself. But, I knew the history.

Why do I even get upset about these things?

What are the strength of a table top rpg anyway?

I was pondering the ways people approach their rpg sessions lately. One brain child of that was my previous post about Rifts. Now I have been thinking about that roleplaying aspect again, and more specifically the immersion some of us crave.

For some they see the game session as an opportunity to wind down, kill some orks and hang out with their friends. Yet others play it as they would chess or a game of bridge, they sit down with some strangers, maybe in a game store, and try to manipulate they rules and procedures in order to grow and develop their in game persona. There are more than one way to approach a rpg session.

Like you might know by now, I love the old school games with their relaxed attitude and how they are first and foremost games. But, I also like the new school games, the story games which focus on enforcing themes and crunchy parts for things like relationships.

It's not unheard of the latter to focus on more emotionally engaging subjects and themes. A game of that school might actually be intended to emotionally engage and challenge not only the character, but also the player. I find that interesting, in more than one sense.

When you sit down to play a game with strangers in a game store, you might prefer a game which lets you sit in your comfort zone. You do stuff which anyone can understand and follow along, without getting their panties in a twist.

Compare that to a game of Rifts, playing Coalition soldiers. For some that is just as abstract as playing chess. You gain XP by wasting the opposition, fair deal. For some others it might make them sit up straight and wonder what it means to play racist bigots with guns.

A few years ago I could see and hear how gamers I used to play D&D with now talked about how they had a "raid" or a "run" to attend with their guild in World of Warcraft. They had been hooked and online gaming took time out from planning a face to face session with friends. Personally I thought it was nuts!

Now, consider that WoW probably does that part of "playing an abstract logical game of chess with strangers" part quite well, what is left for the table top?

Maybe, just maybe, those games which plays best with friends, or at least with people who might like to get somewhat emotionally engaged, is what is uniquely well done by a table top rpg?

Could it be, that when immersion is key, is where these peculiar games really shine? I have a very varied view of the would be thespians at the table, but I do think going that extra step while engaging the game is what WoW will not let you do. For good, or bad...