How Not to RPG

Or, are you?

            A long time ago, my ex-wife and I tried to go play a roleplaying game with some friends of hers that I had never met. This was in the days of 3.5 edition D&D, when Wizards of the Coast allowed third party companies to use their basic ruleset as a framework for basically anything they wanted to build, with mixed results (I’m looking at you, Book of Erotic Fantasy…) This particular game used an adaptation of the ruleset that I’m rather fond of to play in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time setting. We met, exchanged pleasantries, and sat down to the game. I’m the person I am, so I had of course built a male channeler, which meant that by my character’s very nature he was going to ultimately be driven mad by his magic and would be shunned and feared by basically anyone we met. The Gamemaster, a likeable enough fellow, had built a story somewhere in the middle of the second or third book, I think (it’s been more than a decade since the game, and I haven’t read any of the books in nearly the same amount of time.)

I noticed right away that he was doing a lot of the things I would call “New Gamemaster Mistakes.” The story was tied into an established fiction storyline that we couldn’t change because it was in the novels. We met the main character of the story mainly so he could show us how cool he was and how not cool we were by comparison. Our characters didn’t have much in the way of agency in his world, and when I tried to take a left turn to do something unexpected I was quickly nudged back onto the railroad tracks.

That said, I wasn’t exactly the ideal player for them, either. When a combat broke out, I immediately fell into the type of high-end, tactical gameplay that my group always used (some of our campaigns have, at times, essentially turned into more of a miniatures wargame than a roleplaying game.) I tried to take advantage of flanking rules, and was met with puzzled looks in exchange. Once I realized the amount of structure and flow that the GM and his wife wanted to impose on the game, I immediately tried to buck it and shake it off. Nobody was arguing and we all had some fun, but it was awkward and we weren’t invited back. For a long time, I thought that the fault lay with him for being a newer GM, reasoning that if they were able to play at my “level” that we would have gotten along just fine. Basically, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

How people have the balls to listen to Posehn, Oswalt, Agee, and co. playing an RPG for their amusement and say "God, L2P newbs" I'll never understand.

Fast forward to today and I’m a little wiser and more experienced, and I can see now the mistakes I made. RPG players are, for the most part, a more accepting lot than gamer community at large, but we still have our issues. The people that play online through Twitch or Youtube could probably tell you about the worst of them, namely the need to explain that the way you’re playing your roleplaying game is somehow wrong, and the way I’m doing it is right. Brian Posehn’s Nerd Poker crew get a lot of this since his players learned to play in 2^nd edition and have essentially kept the skill system from that game in their 4^th and 5^th edition games. They say up front that they don’t play the rules as written in the book, not because it’s better but just because that’s what they know and don’t want to have to learn something different. And yet, you can tell from the occasional mentions on the show that nerds are still emailing them with metaphorical “push-up-the-glasses-and-tell-them-actually-you’re-doing-it-wrong” BS constantly. This idea of Wrongbadfun is weirdly pervasive amongst RPGers, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t still have a twinge of it today, but I’m working on it. I realize now, looking back, that I was just as bad when I went to those people’s Wheel of Time game. So what if I didn’t typically play the same style of game that they did? Why should they have to adapt to what I liked? They wanted to hang out with Rand al’Thor and relive the feelings they got from reading the books, not tactically dismantle an ambush by skillfully maneuvering miniatures around on a map. What right did I have to show up in their house and try to yuck their yum? Truth be told, the player I am today would have been right there with them (but I’d still be trying to set his tent on fire. Rand needs to lighten up.)

This is a lesson I’ve tried to adapt with the game I’m perpetually trying to start with my “not-so-into-RPGs” kids. They’re new to table top gaming, and similarly disinterested in rules crunch. I’ve essentially started from a full-fledged RPG system and, over time, cut it down over every iteration to try and find something that will get out of the way and let them just PLAY. My current effort is using one of the most minimalistic systems I’ve ever seen, a game designed for kids by Monte Cook Games called No Thank You, Evil that only has four stats and resolves everything with a d6 roll. I’m trying to run them through a version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight from the Dragonlance setting, but if it goes somewhere else that’s alright, too. My girls’ characters are an archer who, after we finished character design, ended up blind from a goblin ambush and a dancer who fights with rainbow colored energy whips, a far cry from the much more traditional Tanis Half-Elven and Raistlin Majere for whom the module was originally written. We didn’t get a chance to actually run through the first session before they left for the summer, but when my turn comes around to pick what we’re doing on family Friday night, they’ll be headed for the Inn of the Last Home. Hopefully I’ll be a good enough GM to get out of their way and let them play the game they want, not the one I want them to play.