What’s the Most Significant Thing About an RPG?

The obvious, and I suspect universal, answer here is “It should be fun.”

Assuming we can agree on that, when you look at a game’s core rules, what element or elements are most important in leading you to think, “Yeah, this could be a fun game”?

Personally, I’ve always been a core resolution mechanic kind of guy. I look at the baseline mechanic, which tells me what kind of game I’m holding, and then at the other mechanics around it. I also read the “What’s this game about?” section, if there is one, and flip through the whole book to get an overall feel for the game.

Over on ars ludi, though, Ben Robbins points out that the first thing you should look at is the character sheet, not the core mechanic. And you know what? I think he’s absolutely right — there’s a wealth of information in any character sheet, and it sounds like a great shortcut. I plan to give this a shot in a day or two when my copy of the Star Wars RPG: Saga Edition arrives.

So how about — when you pick up an RPG, what signals “fun” to you?

Deliberately Limited Game Lines

Thinking about White Wolf’s relatively recent trend towards limited lines, I started wondering how GMs view this approach. Limited lines are those which have a predetermined (and announced) endpoint, which the publisher sticks to; White Wolf’s first game like this was Orpheus, which was capped at six books. They’ve since carried this approach through with Promethean, Scion and the upcoming Changeling revamp.

On the one hand, limited lines are nice because you know you won’t need to buy a jillion books to have the whole thing. And in theory, the publisher has and executes a tight, planned theme or backstory — rather than milking every corner of the setting or every game mechanic to create more books.

On the other hand, some games benefit from having a multitude of sourcebooks: Would the Forgotten Realms be the same world if there weren’t oodles of books available for GMs? And some gamers (GMs and players alike) enjoy buying into game lines that continue indefinitely.

Where do you fall on this spectrum?

GMing for Kids: Tips Aplenty

In GMing for Kids: An Actual Play Report, I mentioned that I wished there was more comprehensive advice available on this topic. Lots of GMs have kids, and assuming my future kids are interested in gaming, I’ll be curious about this myself before too long.

Katrina Middelburg-Creswell’s Role-Playing Games and Kids lays a great foundation — it’s full of practical tips, and it’s easy to tell that they come from experience.

If you have kids of your own, jump straight to the second half — the first section is about informing parents about gaming, and is more geared towards folks in a classroom or youth group setting (like Katrina’s previous article, Starting and Running a Role-Playing Games Club).

Narrative Devices in Mystery Scenarios

In his latest See Page XX column, Red Herrings and Ticking Clocks, Robin Laws looks at using red herrings and time limits in investigative adventures.

I particularly like his succinct breakdown of the two ways to include red herrings (in advance or on the fly), his point that you often don’t need red herrings at all because your players will often create them on their own and this little gem:

“Whether preplanned or made up as you go along, a red herring should either be extremely interesting in its own right, or so boring that it can be dispensed with quickly.“

Adventure Writing Resources

With Worldwide Adventure Writing Month kicking off yesterday, I figured now would be a good time for a roundup of the various adventure writing tips and tools that have been posted on TT over the years.

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Worldwide Adventure Writing Month Begins Now

Worldwide Adventure Writing Month begins today, June 1st.

31 days.

32 pages.

Support from the WoAdWriMo blog and fellow participants in the discussion forum.

Free hosting for your finished adventures here on TT: WoAdWriMo Adventure Downloads.

Free conversion of your scenarios to ready-to-play-by-post format by the folks at Myth-Weavers.

18 GMs have already committed to writing adventures for this project in our forums, with several more folks in the “Interested, but not sure yet” camp, and the official blog links to the websites of seven participants.

Are you in?

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