A big HoP sized apology to all of the Von Show fans. We totally forgot to post this on Saturday, so please to be enjoying episode five today.
Before we begin: I am not actually as fat as my slouchy couch and the ruddy camera make me appear to be in this video. I am slightly potbellied, all right?
Rah rah, script after the cut, you know how it is.
Loquacious had some words to say to me about the first Von Show, and those words went a bit like this:
"You talked a lot about the segments in the hobby, and the evolution of RPGs, but in my opinion missed the essence of why people play them and what makes them work. I think it boils down to chemistry and purpose. An RPG has never been about system or tone for me - it's always been about - am I comfortable with this "party", do I like the music, does it have a good beat." I guess to me, when you specifically talk about divisions and their arguements, it's easier to be pissy, rather than 'look at all this cool shit'."
And you know, it's a fair cop. I spend a lot of time thinking about systems and stories and themes and principles. I have a tendency to look for problems in things, aspects of the experience that aren't working and how to fix them. THAT means that I tend to focus overmuch on what can go wrong and what can be fixed about it, and concentrate on that at the expense of thinking about the good stuff, lest I kill it with overanalysis. It's sort of what I do for a living and I can't help but turn that mindset onto games.
The thing is that there are also things that I don't know how to analyse, and this is how I managed to miss - if not THE point, definitely A point - in that how-is-RPG-formed thing from the beginning. I managed to barely hint at the synthesis of all those things that make up an RPG and only barely served the fourth pillar that holds up the roof, the actual social experience of playing the game. This is because I'm an antisocial wanker and spend more time thinking about games than playing them.
You seem surprised by this intelligence - but it's true! Anyway, what I want to do this week is turn our gaze onto the social aspect of RPGs. Or try to. Even getting a handle on it is proving surprisingly hard for me... but I'm going to start by talking about RPG Club and that eighteenth level paladin people keep wanting to tell you about.
There is a reason that 'let me tell you about my character' stories fall flat. They are the ultimate in 'you should have been there' storytelling. They fall flat because the people who weren't in that group, weren't watching every die roll and hanging on every word, who needed your paladin to survive because she's the only one who can turn undead or has any healing spells left, who hadn't spent seven weeks hunting the lich-lord Bhak'gamon the Almost Indestructible across land and sea and were just about sick of his lichly business and now finally had him cornered... those people who weren't there for all of that lack any of the social context that made the story so exciting in the first place.
There's a story in the game and there's a story in the game session. In my current game, one PC can't interact with one NPC without the whole group breaking down into hysterics because they're 'booooyfrieeeennnnnds', someone's dicerolling app hates all life and Hark's PC's especially, someone else's character is scared of priests after the curious case of the monk in the night-time... there's a lot of shared experiences and in-jokes there that I guarantee will not be anything like as fun to anyone who wasn't there. You might be slightly curious, you may nod and clench your teeth around your pipe and go "yes, that was mildly amusing", but it won't mean to you what it means to me. And because the in-game story is saturated in all these shared experiences and in-jokes and self-congratulatory back-slapping after you've just about dispatched Bhak'ghamon and only a couple of you died and it was totally worth it... because what happens in the game is so entangled with what happens in the session, I guarantee that the story of that time your character did that thing will fall flat. What happens in the game is made interesting by what happens in the session.
And. That's. Awesome.
It's one thing to hear about this dry little genre story that's not terribly interested, but it's another thing to have steered those characters through the story and know that everything they accomplished was done because you thought of how to make them do it and were just jammy enough to make it work. AND it's yet another thing to know that you did all that while the barbarian was mocking you shamelessly because you couldn't manage to roll sixes on two dice, the rogue was throwing you crisps every time you achieved something, like a seal who's been taught to clap its flippers for treats, and that you won a tenner off the wizard who'd bet you that your stupid plan was never going to work.
A good RPG - a good game, rather than a good system - is like a party, only it's a party where you feel like you've achieved something because you've made this awesome story happen and you've been clever and lucky and achieved things and you've beaten this game that was trying to kill your little imaginary dude stone dead. That's why I play 'em. That's why I think they're worth playing. And I can't prove it by telling you how great it was - you just won't get it. You weren't there.
That's the best I've got, Lo. I hope it's okay, even if I had to talk about a problem to get there.
Anyway, I'm on the road for a couple of weeks, seeing people and playing games and generally doing the festive thing, so I don't know if I can record anything. The next two Saturdays are Christmas Day and New Year's Eve and I'd really, really hope you have better things than do on holiday days than come on here and listen to all this dribble, so... I'll see you in 2012. Dunno what we'll be talking about yet. It'll be a marvellous adventure...
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