Ahhh, this takes me back:

Without taking too much attention away from the last two posts (which need your attention), I’m just dropping this in to say that this was the title that introduced me to periodic and optional text-driven storytelling in the midst of other, more action-centric gameplay. It’s as good a trick today as it was back then — allow the player to dip into the story to whatever degree suits her, rather than making her wait around for mandatory exposition (ahem, Assassin’s Creed). Some players buzzed through all that monitor text in Bionic Commando and some read it all, then tried to design cool bionic-arm rules for D&D. (You can guess what kind of player I was.) Here’s to Bionic Commando second edition.

This World of Warcraft player is attempting to get Noor, his pacifistic gnome, through the game without killing anything. This is a crazily fascinating experiment, to be sure, and a demonstration of the gameplay flexibility inherent in an MMO like WoW. The player’s rationale — that his zombie priest and gnome rogue are pacifists — is narratively compelling, and he has an interesting bit of backstory for the undead priest, but is the restriction of game behavior, by itself, roleplaying?¹ If I restrict my actions in Settlers of Catan, am I roleplaying?

Where’s the boundary for you? Is any voluntary nerfing potentially roleplaying? Does it count only if I have a colorful bit of characterization to support it? Does characterization that benefits a toon or his player not count as roleplaying because it contributes to success? These are loaded questions, yes, but I ask them because I hope they’ll go off and hit something.

I put it to you: Is this roleplaying?

^{1.This isn’t to say that Noor’s player doesn’t roleplay his character beyond his pacifism. I don’t know if he does or not. This question isn’t about him but about all players. If I simply choose to make a Hunter character but avoid using ranged weapons… am I roleplaying?}

This post about second acts continues a discussion of dramatic structure in games. The introductory post in this series is called I, II, III, and the post about first acts is First Act, Ask Questions Later.

What do we know about second acts?

They’re the meat of the thing, the span when the main business of the story gets done. Act two is the middle, running half or more of the overall length in minutes or pages or whatever. If we’re talking about films, the second act is when the chief dramatic question gets answered, in the negative or affirmative. (If we’re talking about plays or novels, that may be true, too, but let someone else decide.)

I’m going to keep arguing that what goes for drama in general also goes for RPGs (tabletop RPGs, anyway). They’re more like stories than games, even for your narrativists and simulationists. So let’s turn back to card games and board games.

There are two critical lessons narrative media have for us as game designers.

// Read on to find out what I think they are…

It started as a simple fantasy-RPG play experiment: Could I mash-up a bunch of genre references, a handful of game accessories, an undercooked experimental game mechanic, and a few weekday hours into some kind of crazy, bawdy crime story?

It turned into a collaborative storytelling farce, well balanced (quite by chance) as a device for facilitating unreliable narrators in an otherwise old-school fantasy-RPG adventure romp.

Here’s what we did:

// Click to continue reading

This post about first acts continues a discussion of dramatic structure in games. The introductory post in this series is called I, II, III.

In my last post, I targeted my discussion of division into acts pretty specifically to the orbit of acts around a dramatic question. That is, that the first act asks one, the second act answers it, and the third act riffs on it at a greater level of magnitude.

But while working on this post and thinking it through over the course of a couple of different drafts, it’s become clear how problematic it is to cling too tenaciously to the specifics of dramatic structure as it’s done in other media.

That said, relating a three-act structure to the asking/answering/re-mixing of a dramatic question is hella useful in RPGs, both traditional or computer-based. Among games, they’re most like traditional stories. But frankly, it’s only so worthwhile for me to continue bloviating about it, because it’s an obvious point, and because Matt Colville already commented the lion’s share of what needs to be said on the subject.

// Continue reading, about first acts in board and card games…