Tools and Techniques
In a prior post about risk in RPGs, I concluded by saying we need better tools to help players identify game environments where risk is rewarded, and risk-aversion leads to trouble. Commenter verlaine suggested that we just need better players (and GMs.)
I’d argue that the way we get better players and GMs is by giving them good tools. As in any creative endeavor, we learn by doing, and by being challenged to see our process from different angles. Actors improve their craft by performing various exercises, from sense memory to the never-negate principle of improv. Why shouldn't we do the same?
When people speak fondly of Feng Shui, it’s not so much because of its rules, which are a somewhat streamlined version of the state-of-the-art early 90s RPG. They’re mostly responding to the techniques it introduces: allowing players to add physical details to the scene of a fight, or the set-piece structure for adventure creation. If anything, its rules fail to fully catch up to the implications of its techniques. For example, a second edition of the game, whenever that happens, certainly won’t apply a negative modifier to groovy stunt attempts.
When I check out a new set of gloriously niche-oriented indie rules, I’m not so much interested in the very specific experience they’re attempting to evoke (or, in some cases, all-too-strictly dictate.) I want to see what techniques can be harvested from it to inform the normative RPG style most groups still engage in.
A successful design in my view is one that changes the way people play many of their subsequent games. One commenter on The Esoterrorists gave what he thought was a negative review of the game, saying that he wouldn’t play the game as written, but would import its central clue-acquisition technique to other games. To me, that's not a slam. That’s the utmost in validation.