Category: Many Ways To Play

For the first experiment I’ve decided to see how far I can push the game towards the Objective-Based end of the spectrum. To do this we’ll be playing the Alien RPG from Free League Publishing. At the time of writing we haven’t started to play, but you’ll be able to see house rules and in-game updates here.

The main idea behind this game is to present the players with an overall objective, in this case to escape from the planet they’ve found themselves stranded on. There is a limited list of survivors. As player-characters die new ones can quickly be created.

In keeping with an Objective-Based game it will matter less who the characters are, and more what they can do. I suspect those with the medic or colonial marine careers are going to be in great demand.

Can the players achieve the objective before they run out of characters? In true Alien fashion, this allows for a more deadly game. Looking back at the movies there are rarely many survivors.

This game also has the advantage that if a player cannot make it to a session we can just assume their character is helping to protect the survivors.

So how does this fit in with the other variables I mentioned in Reflections 1?

Who should do the work? In this case all of the set up is down to the gamemaster, but there is something for the players to do too. At the start of each session a player is chosen. When the episode is over they must write a short character journal explaining what happened. This is to help any players who were absent keep up on the overall story.

Active and reactive players. The players have an end goal that they are working towards, they will have to actively pursue that, but they will be reacting to anything that the gamemaster throws at them in the meantime. There will be mini-objectives on the way to completing the main objective. Maybe the survivors are running out of food, or there is an imminent problem with a piece of technology. It will be down to the players deciding which issue needs to be dealt with first. This means the players will be responsible for deciding the focus of the next session.

Adversarial and collaborative relationships. The gamemaster is in no way out to, ‘beat’ the players, but this is Alien so everyone should expect character death to be a part of the game. In fact, only having a limited number of survivors should add to the feeling of pressure. The gamemaster shouldn’t pull any punches when it comes to how lethal the game can be, but their aim is not to defeat the players.

Player character resolution. Any character involved in a session will earn experience points, but I still expect their general resolution to be pretty low. I don’t see much room for character progression in the deadly world of Alien. As mentioned above, what a character can do is going to be much more important than who they are.

I’ll post more when we’ve played a few sessions and can see how things are progressing.

Since I wrote the introduction to this series I’ve had a few more thoughts that I wanted to share. Hopefully these new ideas will give me more to track as I experiment with different games, and a few more levers I can pull to adjust how those games go. When I write about my experiments I’ll try and cover as many of these points as possible so we can see how they affected the outcome.

If you read the introduction, you’ll be familiar with my theory that games exist along a spectrum between what I’m referring to as Objective-Based and Narrative-Based. I’m not insisting that this is the only way to look at things, and the points below should show there are many different elements that can be taken into account.

But first, I feel the need to express exactly what I’m trying to achieve by running these experiments, so here goes:

• To explore different ways of playing.
• To be a better gamemaster.
• To provide my players with different experiences.
• To learn how to tailor an experience to a group and give them a game that suits their style.

Before discussing these points I think it bears repeating that there is no ‘correct’ way to do any of this, each is just a valid as another.

Who should do the work?

Obviously a role playing game is a lot of work, but who should be doing that work? The typical image of a gamemaster is one of a person slaving away so the players can arrive and have a good time playing through what has been meticulously prepared.

This may work fine at the Objective-Based end of things, and is perfect for a single session dungeon bash, but I’m not convinced it’s what is required on the Narrative-Based side. Though it may be what the players want, I’m not convinced it’s what they need. It takes any incentive to be engaged with the game away from them.

I think gamemasters should be wary of taking too much work away from the players. If they put in just a little work they are far more likely to be invested in the outcome.

Players may not want to spend hours preparing in the way that gamemasters do, but I think taking a little time thinking about their character and the world may help with the next point…

Active and reactive players.

Many players react to what is in front of them rather than taking the initiative to follow their character’s desires or needs. There could be many reasons for this.

Maybe they’ve never been given the freedom to do this in previous games. Or maybe it’s never been pointed out to them that this kind of behaviour is allowed. I believe it should be encouraged. This can also be a problem with published adventures (and maybe any game on the Objective-Based side of things) as there is an obvious endpoint.

The character’s desire to do their own thing doesn’t fit in with published adventures, and is a consequence of the way they are designed. They are a one-size-fits-all product written by a someone who doesn’t know your party and so must be generic enough to accomodate any group.

Some players may feel uncomfortable coming up with content, thinking they will be judged if it’s not good enough. No doubt you can overcome this introducing it little by little over a period of time.

Getting players to be creative could probably take up a whole experiment on its own, and should also form part of the session-zero conversation.

Athough I’ve mentioned that players may be required to do more work towards the Narrative-Based end of the spectrum I’m not suggesting there isn’t work for them to do in Objective-Based games.

Adversarial and collaborative relationships.

This was mentioned in the introduction. My current thinking is that the further towards a Narrative-Based game you get, the less adversarial the relationship between gamemaster and players will be.

I think the adversarial/collaborative split may be more closely tied to the Objective-Based/Narrative-Based spectrum than the active/reactive idea above, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and alter it. Even in a purely Objective-Based game the gamemaster can be a fan of the players whilst putting them through a tough time. I’m not sure how an adversarial Narrative-Based game would work, but it may make for an interesting experiment!

Player character resolution.

What do I mean by character resolution?

The lowest resolution character would be little more than a page full of stats and possibly a name.

A high resolution character would have a full backstory and reasons why they are good (or bad) at various things. They probably have goals, motivations, desires and faults too, along with a list of relationships with both player and non-player characters.

Could the chosen game make a difference here? Some games have a lifepath character creation system where in order to generate a character you must decide on how they became the person they currently are. Others have a series of questions to answer filling in some of their history.

Contrast this with a game that is strictly a point-buy system, there is no need to explain why the character is good at the things they can do, and hence is lower resolution.

Getting the players to adjust the character resolution will only make a difference if they are playing a game that accomodates that level of resolution. There is no point getting a player to create a extrememly high resolution character and dropping them into a single session Objective-Based dungeon bash. Alternatively, if you’re playing a political and social Narrative-Based game you’ll need to know a lot more about the character than how much damage their broadsword can do.

I believe that in a more Narrative-Based game, if the characters have a high enough resolution, the story will generate itself. Then the gamemaster can create equally high resolution villains and see how the story progresses.

I’ve often thought there are as many different ways to play as there are gaming groups. Through a combination of different personalities, who is chosen to be the gamemaster, and the game system, a vector sum is created that embodies the overall play style.

These styles seem to be located along a spectrum from Objective-Based games to Narrative-Based games. I don’t think any game can exist at the extreme ends of the spectrum. No game is purely Objective-Based or Narrative-Based and will always contain some amount of it’s opposite.

Also, I’m not saying one style of play is better than another, they are just different. I’m interested to see if there is anything that can be done to adjust the play style of a particular group and game system to give the players a different experience.

The Objective-Based play style tends to have a lot in common with video games. The story is almost like a game level, with a clear objective and problems to solve, all building up to an end-of-level boss. You are playing to win and are constantly reacting to the challenges presented by the gamemaster. The game can tend towards the adversarial, and the gamemaster holds most of the narrative control. It is the player’s job to overcome what is in front of them. This can be seen most easily in many published adventures, if you skip to the final few pages you can see everything leads to a single, almost inevitable climax.

The Narrative-Based play style tends to have more in common with a novel or play. Each character (player and non-player) has a motivation for a goal they want to accomplish. The story emerges from how these different things interact. Each player has some form of narrative control. The gamemaster is just another player with the exception that they control every character that doesn’t belong to a player. There is no explicit ending that is being pursued and everyone plays to see what happens. Published adventures can fail here. You can set up a situation, but the outcome is driven by the characters. Where the Objective-Based game can be adversarial, the Narrative-Based game is much more collaborative.

The only way a player can directly affect what is happening in the game world is through the character they create.

In an Objective-Based game the players generally leverage the rules to build a strong character with no weaknesses that is capable of mitigating anything negative that comes their way. This makes sense in an adversarial game with a clear objective. Your character needs to be built for the job at hand and must react to anything the gamemaster throws at you.

In a Narrative-Based game the players construct a character with attributes that help insert them into the world. These could be in the form of weaknesses, flaws, desires, or relationships. Your character is created so that the game world can influence them just as much as they can influence the game world.

Put simply, the Objective-Based character is heading towards a destination, whereas the Narrative-Based character is on a journey.

I have a few ideas on ways to push a game along the spectrum from one end to the other. My plan is to investigate each of them in different articles. I also plan to run an experiment on each one to see how successful my ideas have been. I’ll try and include the rules of the experiment, then update my findings in a later article.