thread: 2011-06-13 : A roleplaying game has two centers
On 2011-06-20, Vincent wrote:
Waah! Every time I try to write more and answer your excellent questions, I hit up against another tangled problem. This idea is proving to be a lot of trouble for me.
So I'm going to just try to lay a bit more foundation first, talk about a couple of non-roleplaying game examples.
You know the card game Hearts? What we're here to do is: play hands to find out who gets 100 points first, and they're the loser, and then whoever has the fewest points, they're the winner, and you get points by taking tricks with hearts or the queen of spades in them. What we're doing right now is: sometimes shuffling and dealing, sometimes leading with a card, sometimes following with a card, sometimes taking the trick.
Hearts' gameplay spills out from the interaction of those two things. Which card do you choose to lead with? Which card do you choose to follow with? These are decisions you make right this minute, but you make them by constantly considering what we're here to do.
Now, you know the card game Spades? Moment to moment, it's almost exactly the same game, but what we're here to do is entirely different. In Spades, we're here to find out who has the high score at the end, yes, but that person's the winner not the loser, and instead of getting points by taking tricks, you get points by predicting how many tricks you'll take and then taking that many tricks in fact.
Spades' gameplay, then, is very different from Hearts'. While the moment-to-moment mechanisms are the same, the choices you make while you're enacting them are based on a whole nother set of concerns.
So, Will! Good question. Being aligned with the game as a GM means playing the game to do what the game's designed to do, overall. Being aligned with Hearts means playing moment to moment trying not to get points; being aligned with Spades means playing moment to moment trying to take as many tricks as you predicted you'd take.
What would it mean to be aligned with Hearts' what we're here to do but not with its what we're doing right now? Would that just mean not playing by the rules? Like, following a spade with a heart, even though you have a spade in your hand? If you're trying to minimize your points, and you're breaking the moment-to-moment rules to do it, then yes, you're out of alignment with the game. You're cheating!
In Apocalypse World, as GM, what you're here to do is: make Apocalypse World seem real, make the characters' lives not boring, and play to find out what happens. If instead you're playing to tell a story you've already layed out in prep, for instance, or if you're trying to make the characters' lives safe, obviously you're out of alignment with Apocalypse World.
What you do right now is: say what the rules demand, say what your prep demands, say what the principles demand, and say what honesty demands. Can you be out of alignment with Apocalypse World here, moment-to-moment, but in alignment with it at the larger timeframe? You're here to find out what happens, but you don't say what honesty demands, for instance? Maybe! I'm having trouble thinking about it. Anybody have any leads?
