How to Run a Game (Part 9) - Clarifying the Shared Imagination Space

 The term "Roleplaying Games" is made up of three overlapping terms.

Role

   the function assumed or part played by a person or thing in a particular situation.

Play

    activities that appear to be freely sought and pursued solely for the sake of individual or group enjoyment

An activity can be characterized as play, or described as playful, to the degree that it contains the characteristics listed here: Play is activity that is (1) self-chosen and self-directed; (2) intrinsically motivated; (3) guided by mental rules; (4) imaginative; and (5) conducted in an active, alert, but relatively non-stressed frame of mind. 

Game

    1.

an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.

    2.

a complete episode or period of play, ending in a final result.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

In combination, it thus seems pretty obvious that a roleplaying game is an imaginative and self-chosen pastime that is governed by a set of rules. The fundamental activity in this sort of game is the portrayal of character roles following a set of mental rules that may involve educational, simulational, or psychological factors. It's a pretty clinical way of saying that a tabletop RPG is a group of people pretending to be characters in a shared world, governed by a set of rules. It basically fits the general premise described so far in the series... but then again, that's what language should do. It should describe the concepts it's trying to convey.

In some ways that definition of roleplaying games covers a variety of things that aren't regularly considered RPGs, including stuff like Live Action RPGs (LARPs) and single-player journaling games. Both expect a player to enter some kind of liminal space separate from the mundane world, where players can engage in their escapism, they just don't play in the same way as a typical tabletop game. I could run entirely different series on those game formats (and might do so in future).

I mentioned in an earlier post that the sweet spot for a tabletop game is about 4-6 players... the advantage here is that the story doesn't rely on the imagination of a single person to maintain momentum. The disadvantage is that those people might not be imagining the same things at the same time... and that leads us to the title of this post in the sequence.

Ensuring everyone is imagining the same things during a session is one of the key functions for the person running the game. I've seen too many disputes over the years simply because different players have imagined a scene in different ways...

"I'm attacking the bandits from the left."

"There's cover to the right."

"Oh, then I'm attacking from the right to get the sneak attack bonus."

"You need to move over to the right, and that will leave you exposed to a ranged attack from the bandits."

"But I was always on the right."

....and suddenly the game bogs down into a debate about positioning and minutiae.

I like a game to flow, getting caught up in the fiddly details just disrupts the story, and slows down events for players who are waiting for their turn. If things keep running at a fast pace, there isn't enough time to overanalyse the situation. The catch is that if you make things flow too fast, players might not understand what is happening, and any decisions they make with regard to the imaginary world shared by the group start losing context and relevance. It's another way of deprotagonising members of the group, and that leads to a new range of issues and problems. Like many things, there's a balance here, and it will take some practice to learn how much detail is enough, and how much is too much. What might be considered not enough detail for some players might be too much for others.

Someone who uses a lot of actor stance might not care about the physicality of the environment, but they'll respond to descriptions about social cues and body language. If you're running a game with this type of player, and you feel comfortable doing it, you might physically act out the scenes. This verges on multi-forming, free-forming, and LARP, but it can really get the vibe of the game focused.

Someone who uses a lot of director stance might prefer a vague quantum state of unobserved fluctuation at the start of a scene. A player like this may get more interest from being able to place their own props and set design in the imaginary space if they roll dice well (perhaps a good roll reflects the presence of something that wasn't there, but the player may now add something into the scene that justifies their positive result). As we observe and learn more about the scene, it becomes more rigid, and later actions can make use of the features that have been added as the scene progresses.

Someone who uses a lot of pawn stance might struggle with the idea of embodying themselves within an avatar in the game world. They may need more physical and visual cues like maps, miniatures, rulers, and templates as tools to access the same imaginary spaces that other players are imagining internally.     

(Yes, a lot of this is 50c psychology, and might not reflect what's happening at all. I'm just making observations and theorising)

The general idea here follows the improvisational theatre technique of "Yes, and..."

Once a player (or the narrator) adds something to the shared imaginary world, no one else should be able to say "No, get rid of that, I don't like it". Instead they have to accept that this element is now a part of the scene, but the group may not know everything about it. Another player might recontextualise the addition to the scene, and this can add new depth and interest to the events.

"It's a dark dead-end alleyway with a flickering neon light that sporadically leaves pitch darkness or sends shadows across the pavement. The oozing creature of tentacles and amorphous flesh lashes out in the far corner "

"I carefully approach it, trying to avoid it sensing me. [THE DICE ROLL WELL] It looks like that dumpster on the side of the alleyway is providing me with good cover."

"True. [THE MONSTER ROLLS BADLY]. And the smells coming from the dumpster are pretty much stopping anyone from smelling anything in the area as well."

"Last time we attacked one of these, bullets just sank into it, and when Carlos hit it with the baseball bat, it just splashed acid all over him. I'm going to throw a molotov cocktail into the dumpster, and then we'll push the dumpster into the creature to see what happens."

"OK."

"[DICE ROLL BADLY] You've got the flaming bottle into the dumpster, but you hear a splash. The flame has gone out due to whatever bad-smelling liquid is in there."

...and so on.

Piece by piece the scene is built up, and everyone knows the important bits of information that will help them continue to make strategic decisions. I guess the key here is to not overwhelm players with too much detail up front, let them discover and explore the world to find things that are specifically relevant to them and what they're trying to achieve. Anything else tends to just be distraction.