The Role of Play
I DMed a game of D&D yesterday for the first time since summer 2005 (and the first time DMing for more than two people since...2003?). Ah, the good times of party combat, insane but hilarious characters, house rules and Kit's Gimpy Magic (tm). I didn't bring in any episodes of "Judo With Kit," so the players should definitely count themselves lucky to have escaped the most broken way for me to feel like I'm playing instead of DMing.
In any case, it was a lot of fun, the players seemed to enjoy it as long as they weren't finding themselves mired in the boredom of indecision that happens sometimes when the campaign is not immediately linear, and (regardless of that last part) the story flowed really well (especially considering that it was a traditional Kit campaign and thus about 85% improvised).
I remember now why I loved playing this game in Atlanta every weekend (even though I often fell asleep when...well, when finding myself mired in the boredom of indecision that happens sometimes when the campaign is not immediately linear ... and anyway, most of that was due to my '00-01 nocturnalism). I also really want to start playing again. Not DMing; playing. Running the game is fun, but there's definitely a lot to be said for being able to contribute to the game without someone saying, "Oh, now you're just leading us."
Oddly, I'm feeling a great deal more desire to play D&D than I am to do improv. Of course, as I've always said, D&D is verbal improv, but perhaps I can now qualify that: D&D is verbal, open-book improv. Really, pen-and-paper RPGs are the equivalent of standing onstage with:
*notes about every scene you've done so far
*a full character history of yourself and your scene partner
*an overarching plotline that allows off-topic happenings
*carte blanche to do transaction scenes and transitions
*set rules of probability (dice) that give you successes and failures without argument
*special abilities that everybody just sees in their heads without your explaining them
*someone whose sole purpose is to scene-paint and heighten, and who is infinitely capable and willing to do so
Would it make an interesting show? Only for people who know the rules well enough to understand what you were talking about. That's why tournaments at Sci-Fi/Comic Conventions have huge audiences, but you won't see people playing straight D&D on stage at an improv theater (exception that proves the rule: Bryan Cohen). It's the same reason you won't see people playing chess on stage but you'll see huge crowds watching tournaments: The game, from an outsider's point of view, is deathly boring. Once you're involved (or are in on the 'joke'), it pulls you in.
One of my friends in Atlanta, Andy, hated(/s) role-playing games. He thought they were nerdy and pathetic and a waste of time. Then I managed to convince him to play in a random one-shot I was running on the spur of the moment. The incentive: I let him be basically whatever he wanted to be. So, in the spirit of his personality, he chose to be a psionic who happened to be a 600-lb male-prison-rapist. And he had a lot of fun. The rest of the players were annoyed at his character, but they also enjoyed the game.
Because the character itself doesn't matter.
What matters is what the DM and the player do with the character. During the game, he used a power to make him go faster so he would easily overtake his enemy... except that he weighed 600 lb, and the power was really only good for 500 lb. So he lost control and veered wildly downhill, turning the scene hugely cinematic and more than a little hilarious.
In fact, stuff like that was a major reason he got so into the campaign. In fact, he was one of the three people working the hardest to move through the plot -- investigating the mystery, solving puzzles, talking to NPCs... and he was a 600-lb male-prison-rapist.
Yesterday, Ethan played a character, and he's been completely anti-D&D since I've known him. But he's in love, and his girlfriend wanted to play... QED. Knowing what I know about motivation, I let him be a Luck Dragon (a pseudodragon with levels of warlock), and even tailored the character specifically so that he had interesting facets built in (single-target fire breath at will, a ring of shrinking, blahblahblah).
The result: he had a good time because he took the character and ran with it. He saw the opportunities it presented and used them. He made it slightly ADD (ad&d?), used 'Diplomacy' like he was a character on Arrested Development, and somehow managed to befriend an Efreeti (i.e. an evil genie). The other characters were frustrated to distraction by him, and yet they had fun.
Because 1) it isn't real, and so no action in game literally screws up anything Real, and 2) it's more fun to watch a show or read a book when the characters are amusing and quirky. There's a reason so many books have a Ron Weasley or a Rincewind or a Tigger or a Loki. There's a reason so many movies have an R2D2 or a Gimli or a Wayans brother. People like to read/watch interesting people.
Same thing with D&D.
...Holy mother of moly, I've crammed quite a panoply of geekdom into this journal, haven't I? Oh well, I'll write it off as a metaphoric life lesson, and leave it at that. See? There was a reason to read that stuff.
.
In any case, it was a lot of fun, the players seemed to enjoy it as long as they weren't finding themselves mired in the boredom of indecision that happens sometimes when the campaign is not immediately linear, and (regardless of that last part) the story flowed really well (especially considering that it was a traditional Kit campaign and thus about 85% improvised).
I remember now why I loved playing this game in Atlanta every weekend (even though I often fell asleep when...well, when finding myself mired in the boredom of indecision that happens sometimes when the campaign is not immediately linear ... and anyway, most of that was due to my '00-01 nocturnalism). I also really want to start playing again. Not DMing; playing. Running the game is fun, but there's definitely a lot to be said for being able to contribute to the game without someone saying, "Oh, now you're just leading us."
Oddly, I'm feeling a great deal more desire to play D&D than I am to do improv. Of course, as I've always said, D&D is verbal improv, but perhaps I can now qualify that: D&D is verbal, open-book improv. Really, pen-and-paper RPGs are the equivalent of standing onstage with:
*notes about every scene you've done so far
*a full character history of yourself and your scene partner
*an overarching plotline that allows off-topic happenings
*carte blanche to do transaction scenes and transitions
*set rules of probability (dice) that give you successes and failures without argument
*special abilities that everybody just sees in their heads without your explaining them
*someone whose sole purpose is to scene-paint and heighten, and who is infinitely capable and willing to do so
Would it make an interesting show? Only for people who know the rules well enough to understand what you were talking about. That's why tournaments at Sci-Fi/Comic Conventions have huge audiences, but you won't see people playing straight D&D on stage at an improv theater (exception that proves the rule: Bryan Cohen). It's the same reason you won't see people playing chess on stage but you'll see huge crowds watching tournaments: The game, from an outsider's point of view, is deathly boring. Once you're involved (or are in on the 'joke'), it pulls you in.
One of my friends in Atlanta, Andy, hated(/s) role-playing games. He thought they were nerdy and pathetic and a waste of time. Then I managed to convince him to play in a random one-shot I was running on the spur of the moment. The incentive: I let him be basically whatever he wanted to be. So, in the spirit of his personality, he chose to be a psionic who happened to be a 600-lb male-prison-rapist. And he had a lot of fun. The rest of the players were annoyed at his character, but they also enjoyed the game.
Because the character itself doesn't matter.
What matters is what the DM and the player do with the character. During the game, he used a power to make him go faster so he would easily overtake his enemy... except that he weighed 600 lb, and the power was really only good for 500 lb. So he lost control and veered wildly downhill, turning the scene hugely cinematic and more than a little hilarious.
In fact, stuff like that was a major reason he got so into the campaign. In fact, he was one of the three people working the hardest to move through the plot -- investigating the mystery, solving puzzles, talking to NPCs... and he was a 600-lb male-prison-rapist.
Yesterday, Ethan played a character, and he's been completely anti-D&D since I've known him. But he's in love, and his girlfriend wanted to play... QED. Knowing what I know about motivation, I let him be a Luck Dragon (a pseudodragon with levels of warlock), and even tailored the character specifically so that he had interesting facets built in (single-target fire breath at will, a ring of shrinking, blahblahblah).
The result: he had a good time because he took the character and ran with it. He saw the opportunities it presented and used them. He made it slightly ADD (ad&d?), used 'Diplomacy' like he was a character on Arrested Development, and somehow managed to befriend an Efreeti (i.e. an evil genie). The other characters were frustrated to distraction by him, and yet they had fun.
Because 1) it isn't real, and so no action in game literally screws up anything Real, and 2) it's more fun to watch a show or read a book when the characters are amusing and quirky. There's a reason so many books have a Ron Weasley or a Rincewind or a Tigger or a Loki. There's a reason so many movies have an R2D2 or a Gimli or a Wayans brother. People like to read/watch interesting people.
Same thing with D&D.
...Holy mother of moly, I've crammed quite a panoply of geekdom into this journal, haven't I? Oh well, I'll write it off as a metaphoric life lesson, and leave it at that. See? There was a reason to read that stuff.
.