Tinytalk Episode 023: Books on Games

Intro: Tinytalk episode 23. In this episode: Things We Think about Games and Play Unsafe

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Welcome to Tinytalk, a podcast about MUSHes and other text-based virtual worlds. I'm your host, Javelin. This episode I want to talk about a couple of books I've read recently that have a lot to say to roleplayers, including MUSH roleplayers. But first, a little user feedback from the episode 22, Tales of a Fourth Grade Something:

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Thanks for the call.

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If you read community.pennmush.org, you'll know that I recently posted a link to Raph Koster's "Laws of Online World Design" page, which lists a whole bunch of maxims and observations about building and running muds that are often wry and thought-provoking. In a similar vein, I've recently read two interesting books, both available for purchase from Indie Press Revolution, both of which focus on designing and playing games, especially roleplaying games.

The first is Things we think about games by Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball, published by Gameplaywright Press. The book consists of 127 thoughts by the authors and other contributors, and two essays, "7 lessons learned from World of Warcraft" and "5 elements". Most of the contributors are people who are familiar names in the world of indie roleplaying, like Fred Hicks, Ken Hite, and others.

What kind of thoughts are we talking about here? Let me give you a few examples. Number 15: "If a video game isn't fun early on, it probably isn't going to be fun later on.". Number 95: "From the most important to the least important, these are the critical factors that will determine whether you will enjoy playing a given game: (a) whether you're in a mindset to enjoy playing a game; (b) whether you enjoy the company of the people you're playing with; (c) whether the game design is any good. Corollary: It's much better to play an RPG with a good gamemaster than to play a good RPG with a bad gamemaster". Number 127: "Design for good players". Most of these also includes a paragraph or two explaining or expanding on the idea. The "5 elements" essay, by S. John Ross, discusses the power of cliché, combat, fellowship, anarchy, and enigma.

As you can see, the thoughts here are broad, and pithy, and often apply to games in general – board games, tabletop roleplaying games, video games. You're not likely to agree with all of them, or find them all equally insightful, but there are a lot of good ideas here than could change the way you run a MUSH or a tinyplot.

Think about how you'd apply the three examples I gave earlier to the design of a tinyplot, for example. First idea: if it's not fun early on, it probably won't be fun later. Okay, so you need to make sure the plot is engaging and fun and interesting enough from the start to get players involved. Second idea: who you're playing with is more important than the mechanics. So you need to make sure that players get plenty of interaction and support and can push the plot forward when they've got a flow established. The reward is that they get to keep playing together. It also suggests that if you're running a plot over days, weeks, or months, it'd be great to arrange it so that people are playing when they're in the mindset to enjoy it, and not to assume that they will be in that mindset every minute of every day. (As an aside, there's a fair amount of interest in the design of "casual" or "passive" gaming – visit pmog.com for an expanding online example). Third idea: design for good players. That means that your goal in running the plot is to spend as much of your time supporting the good players as possible, and trying to stay out of their way.

Things we think about games is currently available from Indie Press Revolution or Amazon.com for $20

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The second book is Play Unsafe: How to work less, play harder, and add stories to your game by Graham Walmsley, self-published. In short, this is a book about how to apply the techniques of improvisational theater, particularly those developed by Keith Johnstone, to being a roleplayer or a GM. It's organized in 5 chapters: "Play", "Build", "Status", "Tell stories", and "Work together". Each features provocative, and often counterintuitive advice for how to do great roleplaying or storytelling in the moment. For example, one piece of advice in the "Play" chapter is "Be obvious". By thinking about what the next obvious event or result would be, and doing that, you'll have a very good chance of carrying the story forward in a satisfying way; moreover, what's obvious to you may well look brilliant to the other players. The "Build" chapter focuses on how to build on other players' actions, rather than block them, which will be familiar to anyone who's done improv or been taught the "Yes, let's…" technique – for example, anyone who was at Elvira's 2007 improv workshop on M*U*S*H.

The "Status" chapter discuss how stories arise out of status differences between characters, and talks about how to play high and low status characters, with a particular focus on tabletop roleplaying. I found this the weakest chapter in terms of content, even for tabletop roleplay, and there's a lot more than could be developed on this topic for the MUSH environment.

"Tell stories", on the other hand, has great advice for RP admins running tinyplots – it has practical suggestions about how to make plots lively without extensive preplanning – which often leads to either GM frustration when the plans aren't followed or player frustration when the GM railroads them into following the plans.

The final chapter, "Work together", speaks to the goal of cooperative storytelling, helping other players shine, and generally focusing on the group experience rather than one's character's individual advancement.

Play unsafe is currently available from Indie Press Revolution for $9 as a PDF, $18 as a printed book, or $22 for both. Because the book is much less professionally produced and laid out than Things we think about games, the PDF is probably a better value for most MUSH players and admin who are interested in these ideas – and a MUSH, a faction, or a plot involving players who have read this book and are trying out these techniques seems like it would be a very exciting and rewarding endeavor.

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And that's it for now. Music for this episode of tinytalk comes from Stidiek, from the "Feelms" album, and jamendo.com.

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