This discontinuity in arguments about RPGs fascinates me: miniatures-based situations get in the way of RP and narrative, apparently, while games encouraging players to draw frequent maps and diagrams do not. What is it about molded plastic figures or the precision of measured spaces that clogs the gears of narrative?

I ask as someone who did not use miniatures in any RPG capacity until D&D3.x and has found plenty of fuel and clarity for both narrative and roleplay in games with and without miniatures. Why is a map okay until we set miniatures on it?

This isn’t about the unfair treatment of professionals who dare to voice unconventional ideas. We won’t discuss here the specifics of ugly incidents making the rounds online lately. Comments that stray into that turf will be deleted. This post is about what it’s about: considering a compelling and somewhat riling idea. If, by considering it this way, I seem to be endorsing this notion, then good. I am.

The Mass Effect 3 demo convinced me to preorder the game. It was largely the multiplayer component that convinced me not to wait a month or two to buy the thing, when I’d have time to play the thing in a dedicated sprint. The multiplayer demo is a lot of fun with three or four cohorts facing down Cerberus thugs together on alien worlds. The equipment packs, delivering randomized bonuses won with in-game loot, represent a terrific little device, combining the joy of random treasure tables with the alluring mystery and surprise of trading-card booster packs. I like it more than I expected to and don’t want two months to be leveling up my Infiltrators, Soldiers, and Engineers with my friends. Good job, demo.

Meanwhile, the single-player demo did one thing well above all—one thing in particular that convinced me this was the Mass Effect campaign I’ve been looking forward to most of all: it let me diminish the role of the intricate combat dynamics in favor of the unfolding story. With one little menu choice at the beginning of the game, ME3 gave me the option to choose which single-player experience I wanted, selecting between Action, Role-Play, and Story. I chose Story. When the finished game comes to my home, I’ll choose Story again.

It’s not that I don’t like ME3′s shooter action—I’m really excited about the story-light multiplayer element—it’s that I don’t want my ability to take in the tale of this climactic installment to depend on how good my shooter skills are from day to day. Sometimes I play games to study them, sometimes to overcome them, sometimes just to browse them. I’m a game tourist, as we say, in a lot of ways.

If I could skip combat encounters in some games, I would. I’d skip the jet-skis-and-explosive-barrels section of the first Uncharted every time. I’d skip over certain boss battles in various games, just to see what else the developer has in store in the game’s level design. I’ve been slow to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution because I dread the boss battles I’ve heard about and fret that I’ll get hung up on a spec-testing shooter puzzle when what I really want to do is see how my other decisions play out over the course of the game.

So, when it comes to the idea of video games with skippable combat scenes, I am in favor of the option. Not every game should implement that option and I have a pretty broad definition of “skippable,” personally, but I think it’s fine for games to have this tool in their kit. I’d finish a lot more games if I could accept a measure of defeat and progress rather than quietly, hopefully shelving games and then never getting around to finishing them.

In this post at Rock, Paper, Shotgun—“Escape! Escape! Embracing Skippable Combat”—John Walker makes his case for optional combat in video games.

Here’s mine.

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This post has been sitting unfinished in the drafts folder for years, waiting for a breakthrough to finish it. You are that breakthrough.

You know that overused moment in film and television where someone levels a gun on someone else and issues an ultimatum? “Do what I say or I pull the trigger,” she says. “Talk or die,” goes the gunman. That sort of thing?

Does that decision arise in your roleplaying-game play? How about the variation where two serious people brandishing guns face off at gunpoint? How does your campaign (not necessarily your game mechanics) handle that?

This is fun stuff. It’s about designing a situation and not an outcome. It’s a pared down, high-stakes decision point. Would your character rather die than do this thing?

One important feature of this situation is clear: this is not a part of combat. This may be a statement, by the players or their characters, that they want to resolve the situation, that they want the stakes to be high (or are at least willing to accept high stakes), and that they want a single dramatic choice to reign, rather than a chaotic battle.

It is a pretty clear decision point, and potentially a classic impasse. One participant says “Do X or die” and the other says “Do Y or die.” It’s a dilemma.

Except, of course, the actual circumstance is often much more complicated, and that complication is essential to making the decision interesting. An actual “Do X or die” situation is simple and tense, but can be terribly un-fun—the target’s decision may hardly be decision at all. Is “take this forced action or stop playing” a good dramatic choice? No. So, “Do X or die” is actually “Do X or accept a risk of death,” which is more interesting, but also muddier, more complicated, and less predictable.

That muddy, complicated, unpredictable option might be more interesting, but those factors may also make it less desirable for the gunman, who must find the option more interesting than (and at least as easy to understand as) regular combat, or else the gunman’s player is unlikely to exercise that option.

Have you ever seen this next thing happen? A player says “I’ll go for his gun!” and then, when confronted with the grappling rules, says “Nevermind, I’ll just cooperate.” I have.

The reasons for beginning a standoff, as a player, must include simplicity, I think. Standoffs are staples of thrillers because they are bold, clear dramatizations. One or more characters demand, and one or more characters make defining choices. Simple, effective. If the setup and outcomes of this act are complex in gameplay terms, they are unlikely to be attempted much, if at all. That’s good if you’re trying to avoid them, but less good if you want your campaign to include these moments. (Whether you just like them or you’re trying to include them are touchstones of the genre or for some other reason is, for now, a separate issue.)

When I’ve done this, it’s with the understanding that a level gunshot to the head is not combat. Such a weapon is unlikely to deal 1d8+Dex damage, or whatever, and is more likely to propel the plot forward at muzzle velocity. Either someone ends up dead, and we deal with the consequences, or someone ends up an unlikely survivor (perhaps in a bloody chop-shop or underground hospital or remote monastic sanctuary) and the story is loaded up with revised or renewed stakes and motives.

A couple of other particular, iconic, and dramatic outcomes spring to mind:

• One participant relents and puts down his gun, as instructed. On film, almost never does the remaining gunman then fire anyway. (If he did, he’s a villain.) This is practically a rule—but should it actually be a rule in play? This is, essentially, a decision to forgo combat, at least for now.
• Both participants choose to abandon the standoff and enter combat as usual. (See Face/Off: ”Plan B. Let’s just kill each other.”) This may be an attempt to settle things through dialogue followed by a revelation that neither side is willing to die, right then, to settle things. So we settle it not just with dice but with a sequence of tactical decisions and randomization, possibly with escape hatches and lots of new inputs to consider.
• Everyone shoots, (almost?) everyone dies. Call this the Reservoir Dogs outcome.

How have you handled it? What game has mechanics for this that you’ve appreciated, hacked, or paid homage to?

This post is actually two posts—maybe three—but I’ve chosen not break it up because they’re all entangled in my head so I’m sharing this more or less as it occurred to me, which is honest, at least.

An idea you don’t agree with might come to you in a metaphor. That metaphor is like armor on a bugbear. Striking the metaphor does not harm the bugbear.

Analogies, even weak analogies, can be ablative. Attack them and they may break apart, only sometimes revealing the argument underneath. You then have a chance to combat the argument—but this is where a lot of Internet discourse stops. The forumite writes, “Your analogy is imperfect, ergo your point is mistaken,” but that’s not necessarily true.

Fortunately, Sage LaTorra knows this. He has a good metaphor for how modular, home-altered rules can be relayed and function in the wild and he’s using it to make his position about the next edition of D&D (i.e. “D&D Next”) clearer. I think. (I sometimes disagree with Sage even though he’s a proven, cunning, forward-thinking designer. As if Dungeon World wasn’t evidence enough of that, read this post of his about putting D&D in a lunchbox.)

The metaphor: RPG rules are cookbooks.

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I’ve wanted to do this but never have. Have you done it?

The idea is simple, the execution complex. For each major chapter in your RPG campaign, you use a different game to resolve the action. You hack and modify the games you want to use like crazy, some more than others. What starts as an investigation lead by various governments in a weary, war-torn metropolis leads to the highest tier of society (Cold City). There, in glorious and lavish penthouse ballrooms untouched by the war below, the glitterati dance and drink and dare each other  (via The Dance and the Dawn) to determine who gets whom. That leads to a Fiasco involving miserable spouses, true love, stolen diamonds, and broken hearts that return us to the lowest levels of the city.

Or what about a military campaign that plays out over a century, beginning with complex machinations and paranoia (via Burning Empires) before progressing to the madness of an all-consuming galaxy-wide war (via 3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars) and finally culminating in the least likely soldiers fighting in the bombed-out remains of the last human city (via Grey Ranks).

A great many of these games don’t let many characters out intact, so the traditional notion of following a core cast of PCs on a long literal or figurative journey might not work out. Rather, it might be necessary to tie individual games together with a few standout characters—who are playable only in certain chapters, maybe—or narrative connective tissue like monologues, flashbacks, or just a recurring theme or motif that brings together what would otherwise be a loose anthology.

My gut says this idea would require a lot of cooperation, maybe to the point of demanding certain metagaming choices be made during play, but I think the unique satisfaction from pulling it off would be worth it for the group that finds this compelling. Remember, the game that covers the next chapter wouldn’t have to be preordained. It might be that whoever gets the happiest result of the Fiasco story gets to decide what the next chapter is about, for example, so this wouldn’t have to be a strictly planned experience.

What games might you connect into a campaign if you could?