Role-Playing Avant Garde

From Tab Wiki

I began thinking about this a while back in relation to a comparison of LARPs to the Theater of the Oppressed; also during a debating on an online forum concerning the idea of role-playing games as a form of performance folk art.

In role-playing games there seem to be a number of assumptions about the structure of the game itself. As I see it, these assumptions fall into three different categories: structure assumptions, mechanic assumptions and content assumptions. So that everyone knows what these three catgories are, let me name a few example assumptions in each category:

Structure Assumptions

• The game is ran by a single person (the GM) that remains consistent.
• The game has distinguishable begin and end times for sessions.
• The game has a consistent set of players.

Mechanic Assumptions

• Characters have numerical scores that distinguish their capabilities.
• The game proceeds in rounds in which players take turns.
• There exists a random element that helps determine success and failure.

Content Assumptions

• Each player has a single character.
• Each player's character remains consistent.
• The game's story takes place within an amount of time that can be in-game measured day-to-day.
• The players' characters are associated with one another (form a "party").

Several published role-playing games have been released that challenge a few of these assumptions. For example, Amber Diceless does not contain a random element in determining success and failure. Ars Magica features a "troupe-style" role-playing setup wherein each player has multiple player-characters, some player-characters are not exclusively played by the same player and the GM may not even be consistent. King Arthur Pendragon takes place over a course of time measured with years in-game and a player's character can and does change over the course of play. Both Fate and Exalted Second Edition have alternate combat structures than the classical "round". Finally, Wraith: The Oblivion challenged the assumption of one player per character, by having multiple players play different aspects of the same character.

Outlining these assumptions, I have some ideas for potentially workable role-playing game structures that do not rely on all of these assumptions. They are:

The Generations Campaign

Imagine a campaign set in Carolingian Frankia or some similar feudal setting. The player characters are all petty nobility (probably viscounts or barons), each with their own fief. The campaign takes place over the course of years, with players taking on new characters with each generation as the old one ages and dies. Players can ally together to fight off the barbarian encursions from the east when they occur, decide whether to support the king or try to dispose of him during times of bad leadership (such as the reign of Charles the Fat), gather resources and set their fief policies and squabble among themselves. During scenes involving only a subset of fiefs, players can take on the role of knights or other lesser nobles involved with the topic of the scene. Randomness rather than deliberate choices in character creation and advancement may actually benefit this setup, as it distances players from thinking of their noble as the "one main" character they control. If generation changes somehow occur at set intervals, having a random draw of who players the heir to what fief could also add to this.

The World Campaign

This game tells the story of a whole setting rather than the story of a single group of people. Each major event in the setting's history may have a story arc wherein the players make a party of characters and are involved in a storyline that affects the outcome of the event. Consequently, story srcs that happen chronologically earlier in-game can have direct or indirect effects on later story arcs. Characters may not even be on the same side between different story arcs, as one arc might tell of the forces of evil's quest to awaken the sleeping death beast, while the next story arc might tell of the survivors of the death beast's destruction throwing off the oppressors (the descenents of the forces of evil) that moved in to take over after the death beast's rage.

The Threaded Story Campaign

This campaign challenges the assumption that other than the GM, all players are on equal footing in a session. In it one character is the feature character each session and the story follows primarily that character, while the other players play characters in the primary character's life for that session. Each player will have their own primary character and each session the story of a different primary character is told, with the other players playing a character in that character's life. The stories of the different character may even weave in and out and effect each other, potentially with shared secondary characters between them. This set up allows for more flexibility in campaign plot, although it requires players who are willing to wait their turn to get a session spot light (although they can still affect things and pursue goals as a secondary character).

The Cyclical Reset Campaign

In this short campaign some cosmic being is playing with the universe or something. Each player makes a character and plays that character at the beginning of the campaign. The story follows some plot arc for a session or so. Then things are reset. Players swap characters and the campaign starts over from the beginning. Things happen differently, of course, because different players have different characters. Somehow over the course of the campaign, the character learn that they're stuck in a loop that keeps being reset and may somehow find a way to alter things or send messages between resets. A skill or ability to "remember" through deja vu what happened in previous resets would also be an interesting addition to the campaign. Eventually characters may free themselves from the reset. For inspiration for this campaign, see the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Cause and Effect. Or the movie Groundhog's Day!