(… with plentiful side-trips into Bob’s erstwhile gaming life)
For some reason the Indie RPG movement has entirely failed to grab me. I’ve been trying to work out why that should be — the products sold are simple, usually elegant, often evocative, and yet they don’t make me shout “It Must Be MINE.”
It comes to this: my impression is that the Indie RPG is trying to sell or provoke an experience. Maybe it’s the experience of fairy tales or pulp adventure, as in The Zantabulous Zorceror of Zo or Spirit of the Century. I like those two. Or maybe the intention is to challenge personal assumptions about games and about life, and to make the player feel something new, maybe even really uncomfortable. I don’t fit there. That’s not the kind of exploration I want to do in my recreation. (Maybe I’m just shallow. I can accept that.) There’s also the indie deconstruction of the role of the game master. I just don’t get that one at all.
(Let me quickly sketch out my background: I’ve played a lot of games, and read more during a period where I was trying to read/collect those games regarded as the best of their kind. I also was a reviewer for a while, and snarfed up swag at a good rate. So I saw those, too.)
My gaming life was an exercise in a) hanging out with friends b) creating fictional encounters that sometimes c) worked themselves into a satisfying narrative. Some of us liked to play “deep in-character”; others didn’t. Our characters were seldom on an epic quest or exploration — our play was much more episodic, with our characters just trying to make things better for others and ourselves (usually) one session at a time. (For myself, my characters would often find solutions that could turn out bad for them, sometimes fatally so. It’s the self-sacrificial part of my nature, there.)
Did we have fun? Heck yeah. Did we have moving, deep experiences? Yes, sometimes. I can think of two or three times I cried during a game; I can easily recall the two exultant occasions where I actually thought and spoke as fast as I wished I could (or some people seem to believe I can). But they weren’t the objective, they were a side effect of the moment.
But I don’t quite fit old school either. I like a certain amount of fairness to be engineered into a game, as long as it doesn’t become a club or a straightjacket. I admire minis and detailed maps, but my life doesn’t really afford me the time or focus for that kind of work.
Some bits of old school do fit me well: “rulings, not rules.” (People who knew me in my FASA Trek/GURPS Fiend days just dropped over from shock. Hey, sometimes it takes me a while, but I learn. Call it the deep exposure to other games in my research and review period.) I love rules, I think well-designed rules are an art unto themselves. But the best designed rules provide easily-grasped core principles that give the GM leeway to improvise consistently, fairly, and quickly. I’m also really comfortable with letting die rolls determine my character’s behavior, rather than me, because … it’s a game. It’s not an acting exercise. Sometimes I just don’t want to think about how this fictional person would realistically respond to a situation. Shallow again? Maybe. (The acting is occasionally fun and surprising, though.)
So where am I? Somewhere in the middle, I suppose, neither obsessed with play balance or universality nor dedicated to free will (or free dice will). I suppose EZFudge is my personal manifesto of what I like in a game, with solid and clear, if abstract, rules and plenty of wiggle-room for creativity and imagination.