The title of this episode and the sentiment that spawned it match how I felt about the indie rpg scene back in the day.
One annoying and arrogant sentiment I read was how the published rules should contain everything needed to the run the game with a particular disdain toward Rule Zero, but then they published rules few could figure out how to run properly.
Similar to Roger’s question about how to run FATE Aspects, I have read rules where I couldn’t figure out what the at-table experience was supposed to be. With Aspects as well as PtbA games, I find the interface between roleplaying my character and the invocation of the game rules very clutchy. More simulation-minded rules are smoother in this regard which is why I gravitate toward them, I think. I also struggle with procedural games (Ryuutama and Whispering Vault come to mind) where the rules want you to go through these proscribed steps, but I can’t see how it ends up being anything other than soulless die rolling and checking for results rather than a opportunity for fun.
I should say for the sake of argument that I have seen plenty of FATE games where people clearly do get the idea of how aspects work: it’s just an idea that doesn’t fit my mind, or those of my immediate gaming groups. I think this may be because of reliance on dramatic conventions: I’m used to thinking “what can I, the character, do about this”, and “coincidentally my old buddy is tending the bar and can give me some information about the place” is not something the character can do.
The more I think like an author/editor (“what could happen to this character”), the further I get from what I think of (as always, not saying anyone doing differently is wrong) as role-playing.
If you’ve ever driven a manual transmission and it doesn’t go smoothy from one gear to the other, sticking and grinding and jerking uncomfortably. That’s what I mean by clutchy.
Michael, you really ought to read “The Rats in the Walls” again (it’s not long) because the horror has nothing to do with the narrator’s supposed “Irish” ancestry – nor indeed with his Ancient British ancestry (which was what HPL was actually referencing with that bit of pseudo-Cymric) nor indeed his English or Romano-British ancestry, both also in the text.
However, on the subject of anti-Irish prejudice, a teacher asked my class at school if any of us had Irish heritage, and when I put my hand up the teacher said he was sorry for me because, in his view, the Irish were worthless layabouts. So that was the not untypical attitude in Britain in the late ‘60s. (To be worthy of my ancestors I did get my own back on him, but that’s another story.)
There’s always “Medusa’s Coil”, in which our hero’s sanity is broken forever by the discovery that his (grand?)mother, whom he already knew was a witch and necromancer, was also black.
I think it depends on the tropes and mechanics built into the character - meaning system stuff. If ANYONE can invent an old buddy who is the bartender, then I think I see what you’re getting at. But I’m happy with systems like Dr Who, which are “spend a story point for the bartender to be your old buddy – and the GM can veto”. And I’m quite happy with talents/feats which are baked into the character ‘class’ or template.
Such as in Haunted West, one of my players was the Gambler, and took the “Partner in every saloon” ability. Make a dice roll and if successful you’ve run into a friend, ex lover, rival, or whatever.
Oh, no question about it, HPL did have racist views. I don’t know what he thought about the Irish, my point was that “The Rats in the Walls” has nothing to do with that. The narrator regresses back through his past lives, speaking first Middle English, then Latin, then a variant of Celtic to stand for the lingo of the Ancient Britons, and finally to pre-human gibberish.
I have never heard “Taffy Was A Welshman, Taffy Was A Thief” but that’s perhaps because I don’t sound Welsh, I live outside Wales and most people don’t know the origin of my name.
I did however get told whilst searching for digs in the 1970s “We don’t take theatricals.”
And having rapidly re-read THE RATS IN THE WALLS I must confess the passage I remember isn’t in it.
It is entirely possible that I have recalled another work of Lovecraft’s in which an American proud of his descent from English gentry discovers the horrendous and Celtic truth.
Or it is possible that I am remembering a later pastiche of HPL.
Perhaps people should not take my words on anything as being accurate except by accident.
Lovecraft is more ambivalent about otherness than his detractors (and pastichers, if that’s a word) would suggest. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, for instance. But, his prose style being what it was, I’d hesitate to encourage anyone to read a piece as long as that.
For me, the most interesting thing about roleplaying is (or used to be) that it is not authorial, and the events of the “story” arise simply by players reacting as their characters. It is where fiction would like to get to, according to some writers, if only analysis and tropes could be got rid of. But roleplaying has taken a different path now, as often striving to create something like an episodic TV show (an “ugh” from me btw) as an imaginary other life.
That is essentially my big disagreement with the Robin D. Laws school of game design. He sees the elements that lead to enjoyable linear fiction as likely to lead to more enjoyable RPGs too; I can enjoy them as a side effect of good RPGs if they are emergent properties, but I find the process of deliberstely inserting them innately destructive to other enjoyable parts of the game.
Or to over-simplify, he wants an RPG to be like a great film, I want it to be like an RPG.
In certain circles with certain designers and certain games, yes. But I don’t think the vast majority of roleplaying (and let’s be honest, that means D&D and D&D-like games) is taking a story-forward approach. Following the rise of Critical Role and similar forms of performative roleplaying, this may have skewed some people’s emphasis, but I still think it’s in the minority.
My problem with folks who want RPGs to be like great films is that films are scripted and edited to within an inch of their lives. That’s what makes them great - all the naff bits and contradictory bits and ‘that makes no sense’ bits have been removed.
I had hoped that the The Princess Bride RPG would revive broader interest in Fudge, but sadly it went out of print and even was withdrawn from PDF sale not long after it was published (the owner of the company that published it having to sell the company due to ill health, and the new owners having no interest in maintaining the license or publishing RPGs).
It can be a bit of both. There can be very cinematic elements in an RPG but I agree it cannot be a film. I have started games by describing the “opening shot” and I certainly use some cinematic inspiration.
I also think it is hard enough to define what actually makes a great film without expecting an RPG to be one.