PART ONE – The Thing & Splitting the Party
Since fantasy gaming was the progenitive
genre of roleplaying games, it is no wonder that the fantasy storytelling mode has
come to dominate game mastery across all genres. The DM is the quintessential
storyteller, with the screen as his tome and players as questioning children
listening to the tale unfold, who also take on the parallel imaginary role of
knights around a physical round table questing together for a goal. The
Princess Bride, with its framing device of Peter Falk as a grandfather
narrating to the young boy and improvising on the fly, is a perfect example of
this pattern. The movie even has Rats of Unusual Size, a D&D staple if ever
there was one.
This storytelling mode implicates an open
style of information control and dissemination. The DM’s descriptions are
carefully chosen to allow players to visualize the world but not see it wholly omnipotently.
This supports old school fantasy gaming, where the DM had to describe enough
that players could make informed choices but not see all the dangers and traps
that lay in their path. DMing advice was a staple of early D&D, but has
decreased in later games as the tropes and techniques fossilized and became an
unquestioned and unquestionable modus operandi of roleplaying. This style has
gone unchallenged save for some story games like Fiasco, which succeeds at
breaking the mold of traditional DMing by delegating narrative responsibility
to players, yet sacrifices the demands of certain genres such as horror for a
one-size-fits-all DMing paradigm shift that ignores subtleties of genres.
This open style of information access works
well in fantasy gaming, as well as adventuring scifi sandboxes like Traveler, but
breaks down in other genres of games, especially terror and horror, where it is
precisely the unknown nature of the threat that is the point of the game. In
such genres, information is missing or incomplete, and finding it out or piecing
it together is one of the driving forces of characters in the genre.
As thought exercises, I will take two of my
favorite scary movies, 1982’s The Thing as an example of terror, and 2000’s
Battle Royale for horror, and attempt to see how information dissemination can
be changed from the standard fantasy format to better emulate the genres of
these game settings. In this session I will concentrate on The Thing and save
Battle Royale for next time.
THE THING
There is a The Thing RPG out there, an
unofficial d20 product called Who Goes There?
in homage to the original novel
upon which the story is based. There is also a Phoenix Command adaptation of the material, but which focuses more on tactical simulation and the
grittiness of the scenario
Although both rpgs stat out the monsters, paradoxically
they give no extra DMing advice on a genre that is supposed to be based on
paranoia, mistrust, and existential terror. From a quick read one can tell that
the standard paradigm of ‘tell us a story’ they employ fails to support genre themes
in any satisfying way here.
One could argue that a simple change of
system could make terror more playable, for example from a high hit point
system to a more lethal one like BRP or GURPS. This is probably what motivated
the adaptation to Phoenix Command. Indeed, although it is hard to feel
terrified for the fate of one’s character with d20’s high hit points and lack
of damage effects (see d20 Call of Cthulhu for an example of this systemic
failure to support genre), a change to a lethal system increases mortal terror
but fails to address the problem of open information access in a closed
information genre.
Instead, the incisive criticism of the film
available in Rob Ager’s YouTube videos gives many hints as to what makes the
film work, and thus imply what an rpg would need to emulate it. Ager notes that
the depiction of intelligence and counter-intelligence between the humans and
their alien foe is the main theme of the film, as symbolized by MacReady’s
chess game against a ‘cheating bitch’ computer at the start of the film.
How can we emulate this chess game theme in
an rpg? One way is to emulate the move structure of the game. By breaking the
day into several segments, such as morning, afternoon, and night in which
players must declare their character actions, the DM can control information
and keep actions of his antagonist hidden. This method necessitates that the
traditional ‘roundtable’ environment of the role-playing game would also need
to be overturned, except in Scooby Doo Mystery style games where the characters
largely stay together aside for some chase scenes.
For example, a map of Outpost 31 could be
provided so that players could decide their characters’ location and actions
for a giving time segment. Players would announce intent publically, the DM
would note each PC’s action and location (i.e. “Joe’s character Childs will be
in the radio room trying to fix the damage done this evening, along with Radio.”),
then pair off with each player in turn and resolve each action and possible
encounters/consequences one by one. The DM would then resolve the action and indicate
whether the PC was assimilated by the thing or not (so far as they know), record
any plans they wish to keep from the others, and importantly what their
motivation would be if they were turned into creatures. Perhaps such an
unfamiliar style would require a shift to PBEM (play by Email) or some other
staggered time format, but although players weaned on fantasy gaming might balk
at first, aficionados of terror tales would relish the paranoia of such a paradigm
as well as the power of keeping secrets.
Obviously, this closed information style of
DMing and separated PC action violates the first rule of fantasy gaming – Never
Split the Party! However, since the powerlessness of terror is the antithesis
of the power fantasy of gaming, I feel that such a change in paradigm would be
liberating and satisfying for players and DM alike. In a few fantasy games I played where characters were split, the anxiety of separation was palpable and well worth the hassle of staggered action resolution.
I am currently working on a BRP adaptation
of The Thing, and feel that pairing this closed information DMing paradigm with
a change to a high lethality system would make roleplaying in a world of terror
like The Thing both enjoyable and rewarding.
Next time - BATTLE ROYALE
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