thread: 2006-02-14 : The Perils
On 2006-02-15, Paul wrote:
Our group, consisting of myself, Matt "Kayfabe" Gwinn, Scott "Charnel Gods" Knipe, my friend Tom, and my wife Danielle, remains quite burned out by two years of too much playtesting of experimental games, both our own designs and those of others. We did three or four sessions of playtesting a game early last year that I've since shelved. We did one session of playtesting Matt Gwinn's Purgatory, which he's shelved. Then we did two sessions of playtesting Empire of Satanis. The previous year, Tom ran an EPICS superhero game. I think it went two sessions. And then several months later I gave EPICS another shot and ran a fantasy game, which went either two or three sessions. Not one of these games played out to completion, because the rules were flawed as social architectures. Darrick didn't do much with our feedback on Empire of Satanis, and maybe lacks an actual play framework for achieving his design goals. J. Scott Pittman was unresponsive to feedback on EPICS, and almost certainly lacks an actual play framework for achieving his design goals. So we burn out from over-consuming a deadly brew of repeated lack of thematic closure, personal creative setbacks, and rebuffed contributions within the design community. Blech.
So my attempted solution in December and January was an effort to reconnect with our gaming roots, by playing a traditional town-to-dungeon scenario with Michael T. Desing's Mythweaver rules. And in an unexpected way, it sort-of worked. Not by being successful. It only went two sessions. But by being a traditional style failure. Yes, I'd bastardized it with Clinton's Sweet20 experience rules, and with scene framing and relationship map techniques. Sue me, I couldn't help it. But damn if it didn't still fail for the reassuringly traditional reasons gamist games fail for narrativists. We saw from Matt's first scene how deadly combat could be. Which started me out the gate more than a little scared of the game. And as per usual, after just a few scenes we were liking the characters and stories and wanting to see them achieve closure, rather than abrupt and capricious endings via turns of the dice. But our dramatic sensibilites also had us not wanting to dick around in town until we figured out some logically consistent explanation for the characters heading off to the dungeon. So I was really tempted to frame everyone right to it and worry about constructing a retroactive explanation later, via flashbacks. Except if we were doing gamism right, rather than drifting narrativist, the players would all have spent time over-preparing, and a couple of sessions on activities that earned experience points, maybe trying to convince a local spellcaster to go along on the mission, and maybe time out in the hills hunting goblins to sell their scalps for buying better armor. Not spending time on this not-so-dramatic stuff would make the characters more vulnerable in the dungeon. Of course, better armor would be no guarantee. So I didn't quite know what to do. Pace gameplay to minimize capricious disappointment, or pace dramatically and hope for the best? Or (cough) start rolling behind a screen?
We ended up just not playing a third session.
But it was a good failure. When you play a great indie game (like Bacchanal, which was a great experience for us last year), it's nigh impossible to keep from measuring your subsequent design and playtesting efforts against it. And so you're disappointed. And you get burned out. I hoped Mythweaver, being a nice, lean game, and an indie descendent of a refined gamist tradition, rather than something experimental, would serve to rebuild our foundation for fun. And I was wrong about that. But unexpectedly, in failing to meet our needs it gave us a more realistic perspective on where we're at creatively. And I'm pretty grateful for that.
But yeah, I wish I had more satisfying advice to offer. I don't. The Mythweaver experience was a help, but we remain precariously on the edge of burnout, right where we've been for many many months. So I definitely feel your pain. And if somone has a solid prescription, I'd love to hear it.
This makes SF go "" lacks an actual play framework for achieving his design goals"?"
I'm intrigued, but I don't fully understand what you mean by this. "Darrick literally cannot imagine a hypothetical session of play that meets his expectations for the game"? Must be misunderstanding you...
