A Statement of Beliefs
A spectre is haunting roleplaying gaming – the spectre of edition wars and intolerance.
It’s up to us to throw off all this flaming and trolling and engage in true and open discussion with good humor and intelligence, though not without a healthy amount of snark. We are the NeoGrognard!
The NeoGrognard asserts that roleplaying games truly develop when we learn from the past while experimenting toward the future. The NeoGrognard believes that Dungeons & Dragons started a revolution in gaming, and that revolution continues today. You can’t bring back 1976, 1983, 1989, or 2001. Its assumptions continued on, were arbitrarily discarded, or became antiquated. Looking back at these assumptions, we should identify the first, mine the second, and mock the third.
An abbreviated display of NeoGrognard evolution. Key evolutionary links such as Grognardus Dietwentius and Grognardus Masqueradus are not shown, nor is the secondary link, Gronardus Thac0is.
The NeoGrognard rejects both the terms table-top and pen and pencil RPGs. They are obsolete; they no longer describe the hobby. Worse still, some backward thinkers use it in an attempt to constrain the design of RPGs. They would shunt RPGs into a ghetto of form; mere receptacles of genre matter. The NeoGrognards calls them RPGs, simply and concisely. They are the first. They deserve the title without any form of prefix or suffix or outlandish mash-up.
We don’t think it is essential for RPGs to come in books or boxes. They do deserve the best interface for the players. Books and boxes have served us well for a long time, and for good reason, but the future presents interesting alternatives and those alternatives should be explored. Many will fall by the wayside, but the best interfaces will endure.
We believe that RPGs have two main characteristics. First, and foremost they have a gamemaster, a referee, a Storyteller, a Dungeon Master, whatever title a corporate entity gives them. That person presents the story, sometimes crafting it, plays the NPCs, and adjudicates the action by means of a rules system or subsystem.
Second, RPGs involve a group of people getting together to play them. Often around a tabletop, but the tabletop can be either actual or virtual. The rules are only methods of adjudication agreed upon by the group, and thus subject to particular tastes and consensus. The tools one uses to narrate a RPG are not intrinsically kewl or heretical. The goal is simply to have fun crafting stories and beating the crap out of monsters and evil doers.
You may scoff at the ideals of the NeoGrognard, but you still have a part to play in the revolution. Argument is crucial to the process. Logical debate and humorous rhetoric towards the conflict of ideas is the crucible of the NeoGrognard movement. Flaming? Trolling? These things are chaff, and deserving only of threshing. Get your kicks or have your need for attention fulfilled elsewhere. There are plenty of other places to do this. It is the internet after all.
End of transmission. MTF.
So RPGs without a singular GM aren’t RPGs?
I hereby challenge this assumption!
It is so challenged.
I think you have placed limits on the assumption. I can say in order for it to be orange juice, it must be the product of an orange. That does not mean it has to come from one orange. We could say that in order for it to be orange juice it must be the products of oranges, but that does not mean it has to come from multiple oranges. It can come from one. We could say that orange juice comes from oranges or an orange, but that is overly cumbersome for our purposes, and we gain little from the “precision”.
There is nothing in the assumption that does not allow for multiple GMs in the same game, or layers of GMs in a body (like some tournaments have.) In other worlds, an RPG must have a GM, it doesn’t lose its status because it has multiple of an essential contributor.
Or in American parlance, nah nah, nah nah, nah.
I was actually thinking of RPGs that have no GM, but was also covering the multiple-GMs angle. There are some excellent RPGs that have no GM.
(It would be most correct to say that orange juice must be the product of oranges, as “oranges” in such a structure is the singular categorical, even if it is homographous with the particular plural form.)
For purposes of the games I’m discussing here, I don’t consider a game with no GM an RPG. I know there has been some experimenting with it here and there, but I do believe that having a GM is essential to RPGs. Sometimes a DM is replaced by programming, either computer, or a matrix of “if-thens” that lead to text, or even dice generated results, but those are something else entirely.
One of the greatest features on an RPG is the ability for a DM to change and cater the game to the actions and whims of the rest of the players. Without this, I think you are playing a lesser game.
Oh good god, if that’s what you think of when I say, “no GM”, then no wonder you consider a GM essential!
I’m not talking about the Mythic GM Emulator. No, this is what I’m talking about:
Fiasco
Polaris
A Penny For My Thoughts
Lady Blackbird
Archipelago
shock: social science fiction
Microscope (under development here)
Breaking the Ice
Universalis
Ribbon Drive
These games are awesome, and roleplaying is definitely what happens during play. With these just off the top of my head, perhaps you can see now why I just assumed it wouldn’t be a controversial challenge! I actually delivered that first comment tongue-in-cheek because I thought everyone knew that GMless games have long since abandoned “paper AIs” as unworkable and moved the state of their art forward.
Well, to be honest I’ve not even heard of these games. But I’ll look into them. I’m intrigued by their idea and I’m excited to examine their structure. At the same time, I don’t think they are the RPGs I’ll be focusing on very much, and as far as the revolution goes, right now I would consider these very minor players at best. I must admit that I love DMing more than I like playing RPGs. I think it is the group dynamic and the roll of DM as chief narrator that makes RPGs interesting. Anything else is a matrix of if-thens (as general as they may be) creating a pre-determined cloud of possibilities. A human GM may be that in essence too, but I think the cloud of possibilities will tend to be more vast (some may say capricious) and adaptable.
I love being a GM myself, so I understand. There is something wonderful about letting the players loose in my sandbox or scenario and seeing how things go, orchestrating everything around them.
What’s interesting about these games is that they manage to generate unpredictable yet guided play without any “if-then” predetermination and without a central authority. They have a lot in common with the techniques of improve theatre in that regard. The “how” is fascinating from a systems perspective and from a group dynamics perspective, too.
The one in that list of greatest pedigree is Polaris, but the most accessible is either Microscope (for players new to RPGs in general) or Universalis (for experienced RPG players). All of them are challenging to wrap one’s head around when coming from games that have the usual GM/player split, but I find that experience as a GM helps a lot in playing them—everyone in a GMless game is in a creative role akin to what the GM normally does. Players without GM experience often stumble when they learn they too have to make stuff up in these games, because they just don’t have the experience creating anything but characters.
[...] We’re also keeping a close eye on Neogrognard – they seem to have a good idea of what they want to see in the hobby and the industry, and are looking to embrace and expand all our definitions of what it means to be a part of it. [...]
Good stuff! Can’t wait to see what comes up here.