Gamehacks Contest 1: D&D;

Over at rpgtalk, Matt Wilson pondered the validity of a Heartbreaker Contest to which Paul Czege suggested a houseruling contest. While Paul was looking to fix "bad" games, I'm more curious about people hacking games to do something different than what it currently does, in a way that they personally like. So, let's start with the D&D.;

Gamehacks Contest- D&D;

Goal:

Gamehack any edition of D&D; with a new set of rules which change any one, or more, of the following:

- Changes Creative Agenda
- Changes tactical emphasis of play
- Changes how players can input
- Produces methods to improvise opposition

Email the details in 2 pages or less, (font not smaller than 10 point, smarty-pants).

You only get 2 pages, so elegance is key!

What's the prize?

Um, recognition! I'll put up the 3 coolest gamehacks and explain why I think they're awesome from a design standpoint. Basically, this is a combination of design exercise for anyone who's interested AND a not-so-cleverly disguised "sell me" contest for D&D.;

Conditions:

- Don't send me anything someone else has already done (Sweet20, True20, Castles & Crusades)
- Don't tell me, "Play D&D; using Exalted!" or other fanboy mashups.
- You CAN send OLD houserules you made, even if they're from back in the 70's!
- Don't waste time with Classes, Spells, Skills, or Feats, unless you're completely revamping them with something else. You know, so you don't waste my time & yours.

Deadline:

Midnight, May 30th (Memorial Day baby).

PDF Printing, the smart way

1. Look around either colleges or business areas.
2. Avoid major copy chains, such as Kinko's, etc. Look for the smaller, local run copy shops.
3. Ask and find out if they will let you print straight to the copiers. Laser prints often cost several times what it takes to print through a copy machine.

So, instead of paying 35 cents a page, I paid 7 cents a page. If I wanted to be even cheaper, I could have printed everything landscape style, with two pages to a side, 4 pages to each sheet.

End result- 120 pages printed, for less than $9.

The Old School Kick

Not too long ago, Ben had a very deep post on the role of D&D; to our hobby and said this:

What this essay is meant as is a call for us, as RPG designers, to take a look at our relationship with D&D; and realize that, to some degree, that is our relationship with our own games. What’s your game’s relationship to D&D;? What does it celebrate, what does it elaborate, what does it change?

And, of course, just recently rpg.net dropped buckets of praise for Mazes & Minotaurs, Paul Elliot's homage to the old school mentality. We can also see the old school draw in Castles & Crusades, Hackmaster, Donjon, etc.

Why do folks keep coming back to D&D;? I suspect the draw is this: For the satisfied- they never left. For the unsatisfied, I think it's a need to fulfill whatever they had HOPED D&D; was going to do. From that, we've gotten everything from shelves of heartbreakers all the way to things like Shadow of Yesterday and the Riddle of Steel.

So what is this hope? Well, everyone's experience in common, D&D; was the first game to say, "It's ok to imagine! It's ok to day dream! It's ok to make up things that don't exist, and never will, because it's fun!" It's ok to make meaningful stuff for yourself because you want to.

It just happens that there are many ways to imagine, and many things people consider meaningful. The promise is universal, if not the method.

I look forward to seeing what happens as more people recognize that.

Ah, there's the problem

I haven't watched Black.White yet, but by all accounts, Bruno sounds exactly like what I don't want to see when someone tries to roleplay another (ethnicity/gender). Because all he's doing is playing his own stereotyped view.

Policy Change

Comments are now moderated, which means they go by me before posting. This isn't because of some random wacky troll, or anything like that. It's mostly because I like really focused discussion, and, well, that's why I made this blog in the first place. (There's also at least 5 forums in english that have pretty good discussion going on right now... who knows how many in other languages!)

If you totally need feedback from me, just send me your email addy and I'll hit you back.

When it all falls down

And, of course, the common form of Dysfunctional Play...



There are several factors that come together to make this a common form of play and a recurring model in the hobby.

Social

Socially, a big part of this model is the classic Geek Social Fallacies, which are naturally codependant and non-communicative practices. "We HAVE to stick together" is not unlike the rationalization of people staying in abusive relationships.

And, like an abusive relationship, you also have lots of conditional love/friendship being thrown around, shame of being ostracized, and rationalization.

Check out that bottom block upon which it all balances- that's exactly the social behaviors of abuse and manipulation.

By Design?

It seems pretty crazy that anything so extreme can come out of a hobby, of all things. But what leads to it being a common experience is that we actually have game manuals which explicitly encourage these techniques.

- "Punish the character to 'teach' the player
- "GM is God"
- "Cheating/fudging is ok as long as you don't get caught"
- "Meta is bad"
- "Don't let the players get control"

Etc. All of these either involve weird power games, anti-communication, passive aggressive behavior instead of open discussion, deception, and a lot of things you wouldn't say, want to deal with from a boss at work, or in any other kind of relationship.

And, the biggest red flag, the ever present "Problem Players" sections. Notice that most books encourage strange combinations of either punishment or accomodation, but always make "Let's just not play together" the last option. The fact that problem players is a common feature of game texts, or even play, says something is terribly wrong. It's as if every book on marriage contained a section on how to treat broken ribs (from spousal abuse)...

Can you imagine that? If relationship books had advice saying, "Lie", "Talking is bad", "Cheating is ok as long as you don't get caught?", "Hit someone to make them obey", "Breaking up is worse than suffering", etc.?

Those would be textbooks for abuse.

It's not just that a bunch of people accidentally made mistakes- it's that there's plenty of encouragement, expectation, and explicit techniques to keep the mistakes going. That's what keeps the dysfunction a common experience in our hobby.

Ron's 3 Principles are especially relevant here.

(Diagram revised in light of comments)

For comparison

Most Incoherent Design suffers from trying to leave the goals of play open for the group to create, WHILE also providing zero tools for the group to coordinate and create them. Hence, the land of Ball.

You wouldn't build a structure without checking out the foundation, or figuring out what kind of weights or stresses the top of the building might put on the bottom, would you?

And if you did, would you be surprised if many attempts resulted in a building falling down?



Commonly, "expertise" here is not measured by the ability to consistantly produce standing structures of fun play, but to keep a group together to KEEP trying, and produce flashes of fun play by sheer luck and tenacity ("Even a broken clock is right twice a day").

When a group randomly collects who happen to have similar enough techniques and goals to consistantly produce functional play, it is almost as if it were a miracle from heaven- instead of a lucky moment in the absence of basic communication tools.