Deceit and DramaSystem

Commenter Carl, over at my See P. XX intro to DramaSystem, asks about the role deceit plays in the game. Is there a mechanism to ensure that characters who are deceived act accordingly?

It depends on whether the interaction is procedural or dramatic. In the first instance, it occurs in pursuit of a pragmatic goal, free of emotional content, with a minor, GM-run character we don’t much care about. In this case you can con the character and he’ll act as if conned.

In general deceit occurs in DramaSystem because the core interactions mimic drama in fiction, which in turn is a condensed version of the way we behave toward one another in real life. One person seeks an emotional payoff from another, and in the process may choose to lie, dissemble, or hoodwink. If you’re playing a dramatic scene, you can make the choice to act as if the character is deceived, or not. Unlike Skulduggery / Dying Earth, the system does not force you to be fooled. This is because the character who acts on false information belongs more to the melodrama than the drama. Drama is about choices; deceit robs characters of true choices. Deceived characters work in drama when they are, perhaps subconsciously, choosing to be lied to. When Lear buys Regan and Goneril’s flattery and rejects Cordelia’s frankness, he is, on one level, fooled. But really he’s allowing himself to be gulled, because he’s petitioning them for ego gratification and wants to get it. In the DramaSystem version of this scene, Lear’s player decides to act as if fooled—he isn’t required to do it by a die roll.

If deception belongs to melodrama, its equivalent in drama is self-deception.

A Shout-Out (With Errata)

The gang at the Pulp Gamer podcast tackle Mutant City Blues, GUMSHOE and much more in episode 192. Jason dropped the linked, explicable super powers of the default game setting in favor of the Marvel universe’s jam-packed cavalcade of weirdness, and still got the premise to work.

As I point you to the episode, I do have to pipe up with a small correction. There’s a touch of mis-speaking in the segment, giving the impression that you have to pay investigative points to get core clues in GUMSHOE. Readers familiar with the game already know that investigative point spends only occur to get cool but tangential information or other tangible benefits. Core clues are always available without a spend, fulfilling the game’s purpose of eliminating investigative logjams.

The Birds: Black Hipster

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Embracing Blow-Off Day

If discipline is the writer’s best friend in any field, it is as crucial in the neo-pulp realm of gaming and genre fiction as a shotgun is during a zombie apocalypse. To make a living on a modest word rate, you can’t let time tick by while you wait for inspiration to strike. You have to sit your butt in the chair and make it happen. If that requires rituals, routines or caffeine to get your brain activity jumpstarted, so be it.

That’s true almost every day. But I’ve found one circumstance where the brain’s demand for a blow-off day must be honored. At the midpoint in any novel, I invariably find that the creative engine goes completely AWOL for a day. I can’t predict exactly when that day will come, except that it will be somewhere around the middle of the first draft. The outlined scene might seem perfectly right and ready to be laid down in prose. I might be riding on the best possible night’s sleep, be in a positive place in my exercise regimen, and otherwise as physically ready as I get. But still the usual uphill battle to get down the first couple of hundred words never leaves the mire. The slogging just gets worse.

I used to try to power through, annoyed by my sudden failure of discipline. Now I realize that the sustained concentration required for a novel demands this rest stop. I have embraced blow-off day. Recognizing it when it comes, and giving my brain the day off, is as much part of the craft and discipline as any other part of the process.

A single-author roleplaying game, like Ashen Stars, is certainly longer than a genre-sized novel. But it entails enough task-switching to keep the creative wheels greased without calling a one-day strike. The starship combat chapter requires different muscles than the GM advice chapter, while the scenario represents yet another change of pace. A long fiction work draws from the same well, day after day.

My blow-off day on my current, unannounced novel came on Friday. I saw that it was coming and headed downtown to check out the delightful new Aki Kaurismaki movie, Le Havre. When I got back to the manuscript on Monday I had my flow back. Also, I saw a great scene that ought to have gone before the one that was stopping me short.

You can’t go lateral as an excuse not to work. But sometimes, in order to work, you have to go lateral.

Grimm Tidings

Where Mutant City Blues nerdtropes the police procedural by mashing it up with the superhero genre, the new NBC series Grimm does the same thing with a dose of urban fantasy. In the premise-establishing first episode, police detective Nick Burckhardt discovers that he’s a hereditary fighter of evil creatures obliquely referenced in fairy tales. With his partner Hank Griffin and acerbic new wolfman pal Eddie Monroe, he investigates mysteries involving his ancestral foes.

In GUMSHOE terms, Nick clearly has a bespoke investigative ability called Grimm Sight, a sort of supernatural version of Bullshit Detector that allows him to detect people who are disguised supernatural beings, but only when they’re under stress.

Over the course of the first two episodes, we’ve also seen the following abilities provide additional insight, or act as core clues bringing on new scenes:

Nick: Cop Talk, Forensic Psychology, Inspiration, Reassurance

Hank: Anthropology, Data Retrieval, Evidence Collection, Research

Eddie: Occult Studies

In the case of Hank’s Anthropology, we see the classic justification for a needed ability that seems outside the character conception. Down-to-earth cop Hank, after identifying an exotic tribal artifact, explains to his partner that his second wife was an anthropologist.

After two episodes, it’s hard to guess if the series will make good on its early potential as a fun blend of recognizable formulas. I am however looking forward to seeing what else is on these guys’ character sheets.

Hateful

Sarah Darkmagic brings to gamerdom an ongoing discussion highlighting the ambient level of misogynistic rage women encounter when they make themselves known on the Internet.

It would be nice to believe that the sense of community we feel at gaming events, and the hobby’s aura of relative innocence, protect us from having to deal with predators, creeps and abusers. Really the surprise is that we don’t have it worse. Gaming, providing as it does a structured form of personal interaction, has always offered a haven to folks flummoxed by social demands others take for granted. They certainly aren’t the only gaming constituency. Most graduate from this phase, sometimes with the help of a lot of d20s, and move on with their lives.

But among the socially marginalized, there is a smaller slice still who are that way for a reason—because they’re so emotionally stunted, frustrated and consumed with bitterness that they can only reach out by lashing out. We can’t be welcoming to the shy and gloriously eccentric without also drawing in a certain percentage of the truly messed-up.

Hate mail is nothing new, but the net lends verbal assault a global audience and one-touch convenience. My assumption is that this hate impulse is more or less the same, no matter who’s being targeted. The hate junkie types the most vicious stuff he can think of. When it’s a man going after a woman, the language of sexual menace is only too readily at hand. Does it matter that some of these losers are moved to hate by their inability to connect with women in real life, while others some conduct their harassment in a calculating and impersonal way?

It would, I guess, if this were a problem solvable through exhortation, peer pressure, or other forms of social suasion. But hate junkies have already exempted themselves from the social grid, or have never managed to get onto it in the first place. I imagine that a surprising number are closet cases: able to show apparent empathy in their day-to-day dealings, but turning into covert, touch-typing Mr. Hydes with the blinds drawn and the computer booted up.

Misogynistic harassment, like other outflows of hate addiction, is the vengeance of the emotionally marginalized. We can speak up to offer solidarity and support to those subjected to it. I just wish that awareness campaigns, formal or otherwise, stood a chance of getting through to those who spew the stuff.

The Birds: Community

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Essential Elements of a Player Character

A question over the transom from blog reader The Cosmic Goose:

When you sit down to create a new character, be it for a story or game, what aspects do you consider core to that character’s persona? Its emotional and spiritual, so to speak: the place from which the character moves, that influences their choices and decision making process? Background is certainly a part of this, but I find that its almost an afterthought. Background tells you why the character is the way he is, but not the more basic question of what or who he is. This is all from a gaming perspective, of course.

As the truism goes, Cosmic, character is action. We experience a character through what he does and, to a lesser extent (in forms that allow for interior monologue) thinks.

So to create an interesting gaming character you have to have some sense, broadly speaking, of what he is going to do. This is why it is so crucial for an RPG to come with a built-in default activity: exploring the spaceways, rectifying paradoxes in the timeline, solving eldritch mysteries, or killing monsters and taking their stuff. If your GM hasn’t clarified what your character will be doing, find out before you create him.

(An older school of roleplaying would have it that the willingness to undermine the game’s core activity represents true dedication to characterization. This “my character wouldn’t do that” syndrome came about for a particular set of historical reasons I may talk about later, but by now has clearly established itself as dysfunctional.)

So, knowing what your character is going to do, find as compelling, unique and urgent a reason to have him do that as you can. In certain GUMSHOE games, this is hardcoded into the character creation system as the character’s Drive, allowing you to grab a core motivation off the shelf. For other games you'll need to create one.

Then work outward from there, developing the backstory that adds detail and perhaps an origin to the Drive. Everything from his appearance to his gear to his special powers can arise out of this.

This covers you for the procedural narratives that are roleplaying’s bread and butter. For dramatic characters, stay tuned for my upcoming DramaSystem, as seen in its debut game, Hillfolk.

Dragonmeet 2011

With less than a month to go before London’s ever-delightful Dragonmeet convention, I am behooved to confirm that I will once more be in attendance. Thanks to the beneficence of Pelgrane Press and its magic spreadsheet, not only I but my esteemed colleague Kenneth Hite will once more descend, Oyster Cards in hand, on one of our favorite cities, to regale attendees with our wit, charm, and signatures. Those of you who’d held off making plans pending this news can now breathe easy and see us there. Amid all the other lovely folks and fun games, of course.

Dragonmeet takes place on Nov 26^th, unfolding once again in the slightly chill bosom of Kensington Town Hall.

Dramatic Poles of the Walking Dead

At first glance, the survival horror cable series “The Walking Dead” would seem clearly procedural, devoted as it is to the efforts of a small band of people to tough out a zombie apocalypse. Certainly, many of its most memorable scenes pit characters against practical problems: finding a missing party member, snagging needed medical supplies, and the ever-popular hiding from undead. To run it in DramaSystem, you’d need to up the lethality level, replacing, for example, the rule that characters only die with their players’ consent.

Despite its emphasis on the procedural, it is also a dramatic show. As the second season gets underway, we can identify the dramatic poles of its key ensemble. You might peg them differently, but here’s what I’m seeing:

Rick: heroism or doubt?

Shane: altruism or selfishness?

Dale: wise old man or old man?

Andrea: survival or suicide?

Rick’s wife Lori has been written as mostly a foil for Rick and, to some extent, Shane. We tend to see her acting as the opposing force telling other characters not to do what they’re considering. Hopefully we’ll see her drawn as more of an individual, with her own clear and consistent poles, as the series progresses.

The redneck bad-ass Daryl at this point appears to be, in DramaSystem terms, a GM-controlled supporting character. His purpose is to provide relief by being an enjoyable rock of confidence, in contrast to Rick’s doubt and Shane’s concealed dark side.

Shane’s poles are turning out to be very familiar in both gaming and fiction. He shares them with Rick Blaine of Casablanca (as seen in Hamlet's Hit Points) and two characters from the in-house Hillfolk series. I expect to see them appear a lot as DramaSystem rolls out to the public.

The Birds: Insulting

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Vampire Disappoints Area Man

At the risk of a pterodactylian reminiscence, I will now look back to an era before the YouTubes, prior to torrenting and VOD and even the humble VHS. (Though not so many years before the latter...)

Like many a monster-loving kid, my main school in cinematic horror was Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. One could hope for the afternoon movies from the Buffalo TV stations to roll around to kaiju flicks or go on a Harryhausen jag, but to learn the cultdom’s deep classics you had to consult its newsprint pages. I remember in particular a still from 1935’s Mark of the Vampire, with Bela Lugosi in Dracula outfit, accompanied by a white-clad, crazy-haired she-vamp. The text breathlessly extolled the rarity of this item, if nothing more. That only enhanced the coolness of the image. It was near impossible to see, so it must be great! And the movie was by Tod Browning, an extra point in its favor.

Flash forward * ahem harummph * years. Mark of the Vampire has been on DVD for a while now, as part of a collection of early horror rarities. I finally catch it on TCM. And you know what’s coming...

...it’s utterly terrible!

To spoiler-alert a 76-year old dud, the first two acts are a charmingly clumsy elaboration on the Dracula structure, with a supremely hammy Lionel Barrymore taking on Van Helsing duties, and a larger-than-previous coven of bloodsuckers preying on our ingenue. Then comes the twist, in which the monstrous doings are revealed as a hoax. Almost all of the characters but one are party to a righteous Scooby Doo-ing, in which a faked vampire infestation provokes a murder suspect to give himself away. Here the rational explanation is way more implausible than the supernatural one.

It’s not the first time I built up an expectation for a work of art that fizzled when confronted with the real thing, but it’s doubtless the longest chronological gap between hope and reality.

Consider this your invitation to share your experiences of building up to a letdown.

NeoExodus Fiction

Speaking of crowdfunding, Louis J. Porter of Louis Porter Jr. Design Inc has enlisted me to write a fiction piece for the NeoExodus setting. The outcome of a Kickstarter campaign to launch LPJ’s fiction line will determine its scope. Full details here.

See P. XX

For a look at how DramaSystem handles scene framing, check out my eponymous column in the brand-new edition of Pelgrane Press’ webzine, See P. XX.

Among other included goodies are Adrian Bott’s look at the upside of failure, Steve Dempsey’s Trail of Cthulhu demo “Ritual Pursuits”, an assortment of Ashen Stars and ToC wallpapers, and a build-it-yourself apocalypse. Check it out!

Crowdfunding and You

Usually a single person’s buying preferences mean little in the grand sweep of a product roll-out. This doesn’t stop us from ascribing our desires to large numbers of other people when we wish an item was priced differently or had some other suite of features.

Crowdfunding changes all that. It allows a single person, by financing a goodly chunk of a project’s expenses, to become a significant portion of its market. Though no one thinks of it in this way, that’s one of the movement’s primary appeals: it ushers you into a realm of statistical significance. For once, your anecdotal data about your own purchasing history is relevant!

Simon Rogers and I are currently mulling the various perks we might offer as we crowdfund Hillfolk, the first DramaSystem game. With that in mind, I thought I’d pick the brains of those of you who have contributed to crowd-funded projects.

My assumption is that most people who contribute do so because they want a copy of the product being offered, and want to feel that they’re helping to bring it into existence. According to this thoroughly uncontroversial theory, the most compelling perk would obviously be the book itself, in both a modest and a premium version. Being credited in the book and elsewhere as a funder, I am also assuming, is another key incentive.

Aside from these central pillars of crowdfunding, are there other perks you’ve found particularly enticing? Conversely, what perks arouse your indifference? Are there perks that once inspired you to pledge, but have since paled in your estimation?

I’m not going to shoot you with my comment gun if you’ve put up a project for crowdfunding and have insights to share about the process. However, I am hoping for discussion primarily led by pledgers, past and future.

The Birds: Make Sure

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Toppled Silo

King of Dragon Pass sold as many units in its first six weeks of release as the game’s desktop incarnation did over its entire lifetime. As Sarah Newton pointed out over on the Twitter:

I guess it just shows the difference in reach once you break out of the "silo" into the global app market.

I think that’s exactly right. Moreover, KoDP serves as an exemplar of a shift in marketing eras. Back in the old-timey mists of 1999, computer games were items primarily sold in brick and mortar stores, packaged in largish cardboard boxes full of nothing. These stores ran on a pay for placement basis, renting out prime endcap space to manufacturers. Glossy magazines provided the main avenue of promotion. To snag coverage, you had to fit within one of four sharply delineated categories. King of Dragon Pass, with its mixture of storytelling and resource management, is and was sui generis. In the era of silos, originality turned out not only to be a minus, but a powerful barrier to entry.

Today we have shifted from the silo era to the recommendation era. Computer games are digital files sold through portals for whom a wide assortment of categories and deep stock are competitive advantages. Through social networking, creators can alert core customers for a niche game like KoDP to the portal, and let it do the rest. The portal provides the opportunity to break out of the niche. New players who have never rolled a d20 and have no idea who Greg Stafford is are now discovering the world of Glorantha.

And not all of them are even Scandinavian.

Paparazzo Drift

Like most governments, South Korea keeps more regulations on the books than it can afford to police. Its solution: offer small bounties to private citizens who report commercial infractions. The result: a growing industry of so-called “paparazzi” who, with video cameras in hand, act as freelance inspection officers. (NYT link.)

First, this presents us with a lovely example of linguistic drift. The term paparazzi originates in a work of fiction, the iconic Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita, in which a photographer who hunts local celebrities and gossip figures with his camera is nicknamed Paparazzo—which means buzzing fly. It soon entered the English language, transmuted into a general term for celebrity-stalking photographer. And now it has mutated again, moving to Korea to describe these for-profit regulators.

South Korea’s film industry has been on a roll lately, turning out great genre flicks. How long will it be before this real-life situation, rife with cinematic promise, supplies the premise for a movie—and what genre will it tackle?

Crime drama: A budding regulator winds up over his head when he records the wrong infraction at a mob-owned factory.

Spy thriller: A paparazzi flees North Korean agents when his tape of food stall infractions accidentally captures their activities.

Comedy: The cat and mouse game between a paparazzi and his business owner target turns into an escalating series of reprisals.

Romantic Comedy: An unlikely pair of freelance regulators fall in love when they compete to expose the same dumping scam.

Horror: Terror abounds when a team of young paparazzi discover that the secret hidden of an abandoned factory is something far worse than drums of toxic waste...

The Bit.ly Info Page Is Your Friend

Here’s a plug for a tool I’ve found very useful in calibrating my net presence. If yours includes links, and constitutes an outreach effort of some kind—that is, you care how many people respond to your links by clicking on them—you may find it equally helpful.

We all know the main purpose of link shorteners. Before Twitter embedded its own URL-shrinker in its interface, bit.ly was clearly the leader in the field. I still find it the service to use, because of the metrics it gives you when you create a link while signed into their site. If you add their bookmarklet to your browser, you get a fast way to generate links from pages, which then propagate to Twitter and Facebook. One presumes that Google+ will join the list when its API goes public.

The bookmarklet gives you a handy 140-character editing window and allows you to pick thumbnails for Facebook.

The thing I’m finding really useful about bit.ly is the ability to go to a list of one’s links, in what is called your public timeline, and see how popular each item has been. For each link you can consult an info page that lists other Twitter cites, tells you when clicks occurred, and from what platform.

It was through these info pages that I first saw how effective Google+ was in driving attention, even a few weeks into its launch. Though I’m sometimes surprised by how much (or how little) mileage a given link gets, it provides an ongoing reminder of the sorts of subjects my readers are interested in—or not.

Those who link purely out of self-expression won’t find much to care about here, unless they feel irresistibly drawn to pie charts. But if you link to your own blog or other articles to maintain a profile or get a message out, your bit.ly timeline will assist in fine-tuning your choices.

The Birds: Ultra-Complicated

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