What are your games about?

[Vladim]

There's a quote I've been thinking about lately-it's a point about fantasy writing, but I think it can apply to games, or any created work really.

 

"(...) But of course if one sets out to address "adults" (mentally adult people anyway), they will not be pleased, excited or moved unless the whole, or the incidents, seem to be about something worth considering, more e.g. than mere danger and escape: there must be some relevance to the "human situation" (of all periods)."

 

(From Tolkien's letters)

 

I must admit that I often find myself in the category of those people who will not be excited or moved unless there is some relevance to the "human situation". In a sense, I find that many games are not really about anything, so it's hard to make them engaging.

Has anyone tried to work such themes into their narratives? What themes did you choose, and how did it go? I'm just curious to read others' experiences and viewpoints.

[cailano]

The plotline of my latest game goes like this: A group of creatures from a ruined keep have been raiding a local village and kidnapping its citizens. An angry mob of villagers has come to the keep to exact retribution and rescue anyone they can.

That's the entire plot. The scenario is a series of puzzles the players must figure out, acting through their characters. Their characters were generated via an online app and presented to the players as stat blocks. Just a few 3D6 rolls and a randomly determined race and profession, such as "Corn Farmer" and "Haberdasher." They had only meager equipment.

The players have been very creative in fleshing out those stat blocks. Their characters now have personalities and their own motivations. One player decided that her character was a mother, and her son was one of the kidnapped villagers. That's awesome! The game isn't really "about" that, but it was a great addition to the scenario. Other players have added motivations for their characters.

So, is there a human element there? I think so. It's a rescue mission. The players are facing deadly peril to save their friends and neighbors. That's primal stuff.

The PCs have already found a few of their fellow villagers and sent them home to safety. Some of those characters have paid for that effort with their lives. Why do they press on? Each of them has their reasons. I didn't need to hand them out; the players handed them to me. I love that.

The plot isn't complex, and there aren't any themes other than what the players bring with them, but the game is still fun. Why?

• It's challenging. The scenario is a death trap, and the players knew that going in. The players are smart and try to deal with things as best they can, but death can come swiftly, and tension is high.
• There are some good mysteries and reveals. Why are the monsters in the keep? What are they doing with the kidnapped villagers? Why are some of the monsters wearing the missing villager's clothing? Are they the villagers, only transformed somehow? There are also a lot of more minor mysteries within the location, a few of which the PCs have just decided to ignore because answering those questions seemed too dangerous. That's fine! It's their game, and they can learn or not learn as much backstory as they want.
• The game is highly interactive. Every location has things to investigate and explore. Many of the rewards they've found have come from that exploration and some additional dangers. Clues abound. Clues about the backstory, clues about how to solve various puzzles in the game, the location of secrets... GMs should leave a lot of clues lying around, in my opinion.

Okay, so what about the campaign? We've discussed this particular scenario, but is there a larger story?

Not really. The campaign is about whatever they decide to do next. Any PC that survives the first scenario will be fundamentally changed by their experiences and in a very different situation than they started in.

 

 

 

[Butchern]

5 hours ago, Vladim said:

Has anyone tried to work such themes into their narratives? What themes did you choose, and how did it go? I'm just curious to read others' experiences and viewpoints.

I wouldn't bother with most of that in a PbP game. I try to keep my occasional PbP game about 1) reaching an achievable end as quickly as possible, 2) posting as frequently as I can, and 3) giving the players a chance to interact with the rules and roll dice. That's about the best you can hope for in a PbP game.

In my table-top games with my all-grown-ups group, we take our personal demons out for a walk. Gotta get them some exercise or they get real cranky. 😄 It is mostly not for the faint of heart. We stick with all the themes of modern life—love and loss, abuse and suffering, family and children, anxiety and fear, etc. and then we usually dump horror on it, turn the horror up to 11, and add some sort of simple mystery to survive (and we usually, in fact, do not survive). The horrible ending is the catharsis.

[Vladim]

22 hours ago, cailano said:

The players have been very creative in fleshing out those stat blocks. Their characters now have personalities and their own motivations. 

That's rather nice actually, when players bring their own themes and questions they want to explore through RP at the table.

18 hours ago, Butchern said:

In my table-top games with my all-grown-ups group, we take our personal demons out for a walk.

That sounds like tons of fun to me, personally. It's a shame that there's not many games like that in PbP (though it would presuppose a good/mature group).

[Actana]

My ideal game is about characters. It's always the characters who are forefront. Beyond that, it depends a lot on the game. So it's a bit hard to say what my games are about, asides from the struggles and conflicts that people bring into their lives. There are certainly themes I enjoy, like the sins of the father, aftermaths of big events, and sweeping societal change through revolutionary figures. But too much depends on the game I am running, and some games are better for some things and some worse for others.

On the other hand, my actual games tend to be about herding chicken, fighting stuff, and shenanigans.

[Suzuki Stumpy]

1 hour ago, Actana said:

On the other hand, my actual games tend to be about herding chicken, fighting stuff, and shenanigans.

Good games must always be all about shenanigans.

[Jedaii]

"Good versus Evil".

It's the theme that people love. They must love it because it sells everywhere. Think of the last "blockbuster" movie that didn't include the fight between good and evil? I'll go out on a limb and proclaim that there has never been a TTRPG module that didn't include some kind of good vs. evil storyline 😆

Then you can flip it around: Good vs. Good and Evil vs. Evil or Good vs. Evil when the Good Guys are really the Really Evil Guys, ect.

[DarkisNotEvil]

One of the most common themes I like to employ is hidden relationships, specifically connecting two or more things that don't seem linked at first. Spooky action at a distance, if you will. Secret lineages fall into this category, as does Chekov's Gun, when a tool showed early becomes unexpectedly vital.

This also ties into a major paired tool a lot of writers use to create conflict, specifically "the lie/the truth". Characters often begin character arcs believing a specific lie about themselves or the world that is challenged by the world, and are confronted by the truth during their journey.

The problem I see when it comes to this specific convention is that most writers have the truth in mind but struggle to convince me that their characters have a good reason to believe their lie. Social issues often get rolled under the bus for this, where the protagonist is taught some horrible convention and then corrected by the narrative. 

The solution I provide is that the lie works best when two things aren't obviously connected to each other but become connected with more information. Meeting a guy that calls himself "Bobby-O", for example, doesn't immediately communicate the same thing an ID tag labeled "Robert R. Otto" might.

[Malkavian Grin]

The best stories are the ones where characters feel involved. Player-driven stories are typically the most powerful, because they make us feel something. Their choices should have an impact on the story, for better or worse. Their strengths, and weaknesses, should be what drive stories forward. 

Even a normal dungeon romp without any setup can have some meaning to a character, if you give them some. (BTW I was that villager mentioned above with the son.)

[hakootoko]

I see similar themes in the games I run for my old friends, and in the games one of them runs for us. We want to be Good, to Save from Evil, and to Overcome Evil (I love caps!). So there has to be Evil to oppose.

We also like hidden history that the characters and players find out as the game advances. This can reveal powerful people, sometimes ambiguously allies or enemies, and we have to deal with the moral choices they cause. Recently we had a 30,000 year old AI flip out and destroy an inhabited planet using the most powerful weapon known to the ancients. We had to choose between putting her on trial or retaining an allied nation. The GM was willing to work with the fallout of either choice.

 

But I never see games which touch on the 'human condition' in the way literature does. They're not focused on internal monologues, feelings, and suffering. Even family relationships are either ignored or used against the PCs. And they can't indirectly address modern social and political problems here without falling afoul of the 'Worldly Talk' rule.

 

[DarkisNotEvil]

5 hours ago, hakootoko said:

But I never see games which touch on the 'human condition' in the way literature does. They're not focused on internal monologues, feelings, and suffering. Even family relationships are either ignored or used against the PCs. And they can't indirectly address modern social and political problems here without falling afoul of the 'Worldly Talk' rule.

I have a bit of a bone to pick with this topic in general, so please don't mind if I get a little wound up because you mentioned this: The human condition is not (or should not be) Worldly Talk.

I struggle myself to untie certain political or social behavior from a compelling personal motivation, because those structures are very important to how people think and behave, even when it's unconscious. It's true that fighting on behalf of a monarch may say something about the nature of monarchy, but it doesn't need to dictate anything about a particular existing culture. Pendragon doesn't need to be about social classes or ideological differences when it can be about personal courage in the face of danger and the difficulty in remaining true to one's oaths and character when it's difficult. The former is political, the latter is universal. And the human condition is universal.

There are certain topics involving WT that I agree can be handled through play but should be handled elsewhere if possible. I know I don't vent my personal demons here (they'd eat/soil on everything like ill-behaved dogs), but I do so elsewhere and I think I'm better for walking through them.

Edited April 3, 2023 by DarkisNotEvil (see edit history)

[yxanthymir]

If I could my ideal game would be a very complex murder mystery with political intrigue or a really complex multilayered dungeon full of traps and puzzles, but I really lack the time to do so and also I don't think it would play very well in PBP.

Personally I like horror and bleak settings, but as I like to balance things, I like the opposite too, like a wacky and utopia setting. I don't think I enter deeply into any meaningful theme. It is a game after all and the purpose is to have fun, don't matter the setting or the type of the game, not teach or learn a lesson about any matter.

It is the group as a whole that will decide if they wish to pursue a particular theme.

Edited April 4, 2023 by yxanthymir (see edit history)

[hakootoko]

16 hours ago, DarkisNotEvil said:

I have a bit of a bone to pick with this topic in general, so please don't mind if I get a little wound up because you mentioned this: The human condition is not (or should not be) Worldly Talk.

 

I don't mind at all!

I was trying to express three ways that literature touches on the 'human condition', only one of which was in danger of violating site rules.

1) Internal monologues, feelings, and suffering. The problem here is that roleplaying is usually group oriented, and these internal aspects are solitary. It wouldn't give the next person something they could respond to.

2) Family relationships. This could be included, but in my experience it isn't. Even when one or more players have included family members that the GM could use, the GM hasn't. Not that I'm blaming anyone here. You can't make a GM include something, even if you take disadvantage points for it.

3) Social and political problems. This is the part I see as Worldly Talk. I regret that I can't be more specific without violating site rules.

[DarkisNotEvil]

31 minutes ago, hakootoko said:

 

I don't mind at all!

I was trying to express three ways that literature touches on the 'human condition', only one of which was in danger of violating site rules.

1) Internal monologues, feelings, and suffering. The problem here is that roleplaying is usually group oriented, and these internal aspects are solitary. It wouldn't give the next person something they could respond to.

2) Family relationships. This could be included, but in my experience it isn't. Even when one or more players have included family members that the GM could use, the GM hasn't. Not that I'm blaming anyone here. You can't make a GM include something, even if you take disadvantage points for it.

3) Social and political problems. This is the part I see as Worldly Talk. I regret that I can't be more specific without violating site rules.

3 I agree with on principle, 2 I sadly have to agree with (I think DMs do this because it's easier to leave familial baggage and in order to dodge the chance of 3 by accident), 1 I don't totally agree with.

This may just be because I love exporting my character's personal thoughts to the metaphorical page, but knowing internal motivations is useful in expressing intent to the GM at least from my POV. Even if the character is a stone-faced killer, what motivates them will show through their actions. Maybe it's a drab, aimless urge to survive in an apartment brought about by years of fatalistic resignation. Maybe it's all a front to a bottomless pit of terror the character falls into from time to time. Maybe it's a macho attempt to be cool brought about by years of watching icy mercenary protagonists in movies. Knowing why a character is doing something is vital fuel in knowing what will motivate them in the future.

I think people, especially DMs, don't usually engage with that or even #2 because it's not mechanically interesting or beneficial to do so. Put more simply, it's functionally a waste of time: Time spent engaging with your character's estranged daughter is time not spent gouging out the eyes of some demon lord. Holding the character's progeny, friend, or lover hostage is one of the oldest tricks in the book, so old that it's practically dead on arrival unless the player themselves brings it up. It doesn't do anything interesting either mechanically or story-wise because it doesn't change the way the character would act in a situation (kill the bad guy vs. kill the bad guy).

This is probably, ironically, a result of the game's cooperative nature, where you have to be on board with the party's intent at all times or risk being That Guy™. Suppose you, as a DM, did hold a character's linked NPC hostage. The character is now, if they're being consistent to their intent, leveraged against the party, a Bad Thing. That kind of conflict of interest, where a lot of stories shine, is at direct odds with the party's goals. In order to get people to engage with this kind of conflict, you have to both reward it and be open to the consequences, which are usually big problems for traditionally constructed adventures.

Edited April 4, 2023 by DarkisNotEvil (see edit history)

[hakootoko]

I think there are more options than holding NPCs for hostage, and I expect you'll agree. NPCs can be combat allies, adventure hooks, or can be used for character growth in new ways. Even in cases of them being held hostage, it doesn't necessarily mean going against the party PvP-style; it could mean the whole party has to change course because of the hostage.

I'm wary of anything bordering PvP, but I can think of a couple of cases that worked out okay:

A PC (with the easily possessed disadvantage) was possessed and attacked the party. The rest of the party had to subdue her. It worked out fine, even with the player playing her own character against the party. 'Orders from the GM' can avoid some PvP bitterness.

The party was captured, locked in individual cells, and interrogated by the big villain. One PC was let in on certain secret truths and shown that he should really be on the other side. The player agreed, the PC became an NPC on the villain's side, and the player made up a new character. It turned out to be a good power-up for the bad guys as the PCs leveled and developed in ways I hadn't expected.