Wraith: The Oblivion?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Nolan,
A lot of what you're saying speaks directly to me. The thread So, about that Wraith game goes over some ground that you'll find familiar, I think.
I wanted to address your more general question, which I think is pretty important. How should your prep and general group prep relate to the game book? I hope I can articulate this well enough ...
I think that you would do well to start, as you pretty much already have, with the idea that the book itself will not help anyone understand why to play this game, at the creative and social level. Like so many other RPGs, it presents a circle: you role-play in order to play this game, and you play this game in order to role-play. Once caught in that circle, the only thing to do is to obsess about some aspect of the SIS (system, character, setting, et cetera) and the functional Big Model in action can't really occur.
The good news is that you can arrive at a reason yourself. I don't necessarily mean a Creative Agenda, although what I'm talking about includes it or leads in that direction. What I mean is a little more general: take what is inspiring about the source material (and here I mean the game books as well as other media or myth), and really distill what you like and want into the core of inspiration for the group. In other words, make it your own, collectively.
This is what was meant, as I see it, by the phrase "Your Glorantha may vary" in the publication of HeroQuest, although of course it was perverted into a meaningless justification for bullshit in many discussions. The idea is that the setting and situations and other features of your game are necessarily going to be a group creation, not a slavish representation of already-printed matter from book to table. To "play Wraith" is not to act out what the book holds; it's to take and master the book as an inspiration and engine for what you all will do, whatever that may be.
Does that make sense? I may be merely repeating what you already know and do. However, as long as we're talking about World of Darkness in particular, of whatever stripe or edition, it seems to me that the culture tends to veer very strongly in the direction of saying "it" is in the books, whatever "it" may be, and we play in order to find or arrive at that "it." I think that shifting to the point of view I'm trying to describe will result in a wholly different approach to prep on everyone's part, and also in a sense of adventure.
Instead of "Gee, 'it' is so cool, I hope we can role-play well enough to be/feel 'it,'" the goal is "Here we go, making our 'it' from this fantastic inspiration, and there is nothing stopping us from discovering our own 'it' in full."
Best, Ron
masqueradeball:
I guess my solution to these problems is strange, and I feel like I can't really help other people understand it as a technique. I'm just really good at improvising. I can say, here's a world, make characters, put in what you want... and as soon as things begin I see dozens of threads and how to make them into something more. It really does work for me, and I think it creates... what, definitely not Nar, but good Sim with Nar-like qualities (um, and don't read into that last bit too much... I know that's not really how CA works, its just a short hand for, Sim where thematic exploration is part of the SIS but where the emphasis is on something else... namely character exploration). Really a lot of my play has been fun in the past, so I think its (mostly) functional. What I'm trying to do with theory is break it down into components and learn more about what I'm doing when running games so that they come out better than just good... whats an analogy?...
Anyway, with the Wraith game I'm sort of leash training my group. For a while now I've been trying to encourage everyone I play with to be more interested in the game and to feel that giving input is both their prerogative and responsibility. What I mean is feeling its OK to "break the fourth wall" so to speak, for the sake of the game. In general we want Actor stance, in character knowledge, etc... to be a focus, but I think theres a point where those things break down and become nothing short of a mere pig-headed-ness. I should definitely start some actual play posts of the last long term D&D campaign I played in to illustrate this better.
What I mean by the whole "leash training" thing, is that the focus of this game, which I think I've really stressed with the players, is collaboration on all fronts. Every player's gonna have a say in making each other players characters, making the setting, deciding outcome, and I really hope to put the emphasis on that process... the outcome past this point is less important, in as much as I think everyone will have fun with the collaboration in and of itself.
So, to more directly answer your question, I think our group has found are why with Wraith, or at least I hope so. Why #1 is the exploration of character using the Wraith source material as a support network for that exploration, why #2 is to try to exercise our collaborative muscles and get out of what I feel are bad habits. Also, if everyone plays this way and decides that it stinks and that its not for them, then, thats fine with me... I just want to try it out.
And a final word. Right now I'm working on the Beta for a game that I have to up in the next three or so months. Its really about providing everything that a game like Wraith doesn't, primarily, a structure with which to generate stories... thats what I feel Wraith lacks. They're saying: here's all this inspiration, here's all these systems, but nothing in there will make a story or lead to the making of one in and of itself, and thats the problem.
Story, I guess, might have been a bad word choice (thinking of your critique of the word in relation to RPGs from GNS and Other Matters) but its the best I could come up with at the moment. What I mean, more precisely, is game content. D&D, for instance, tells you how to generate game content, but definitely not story in the way most people would recognize the term.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page