Continuing with the theme of what, precisely, we are publishing in roleplaying, today I’m going to suggest one reason I consider extremely powerful for trying new ways of publishing games: adopting new models allows us to publish games that we can’t publish in the current model.
The publishing model that is typically used for roleplaying games acts as a constraint on design in similar ways that games act as constraints on fictional input. The constraints can foster creativity, but in doing so they place limits on creativity. That is, the constraints are powerful tools, but they are artificial ones that sometimes need to be discarded.
Consider Joshua Newman’s Under the Bed as an example. It’s a game that is practically unworkable within the traditional roleplaying publishing model. Sure the rules could call for the player to write down the various traits on their own, but that’s not going to fly with most gamers. And look at Jason Morningstar’s Shab al-Hiri Roach, with its roach cards. Both of these are games that don’t work in that traditional publishing model.
Most board and card games have components that act as short-cuts and reminders more than they act as necessary elements of play. Games with scoring tracks, or fake currency allow you to track important numbers without relying on memory or scribbled notes. Contrast this with roleplaying games in which you are forced to rely on memory or scribbled notes. This limits how complex you can make the game. Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard is a great example of this: there’s a practical cap to how complex a character can get and how long a conflict can go based on how many traits you can track in your head. A character should never get so complex that players might forget whether they have used any given trait in the conflict yet or not. This is fine, but it’s also limiting; there’s nothing wrong with having characters who can be played completely mnemonically, but there’s nothing wrong with having characters that can’t either, as long as you have the tools to make that possible.
The current publishing model for roleplaying games, with its focus on publishing texts and not components, must therefore rely on ‘found’ or ‘common’ components for play. This, in turn, forces an interesting inverse consideration on publishers. Games can be published that require relatively common components (d6s instead of d12s, for instance) in order to target a wider market, but doing so inherently limits the design. In the current indie roleplaying game market, if it requires anything more esoteric than a polyhedral dice set, some glass beads, a deck (or two) of playing cards, a pack of poker chips, or a print-out of a provided PDF file then it’s hard to sell.
I’d love to see some of the ideas that would surface if we weren’t so constrained by our ‘selling books’ publishing model.
Tags: Publishing, Snippet-post
I really like the new shorter posts. I feel like I can keep current with your blog now.
Also, great topic. And dripping with Four Nations :)
Jonathan,
Don’t I just know this has Four Nations all over it. I’d been thinking some about the idea prior to Gen Con, but it was at Gen Con where a lot of this really came together for me.
Thomas