Hello folks,

I was talking to a friend of mine about indie RPGs the other day. (Both of us were quite keen on them for a while, but have recently lost a lot of patience with them.) He made an interesting point I thought I'd share here.

What he said was that indie RPGs tend to buy into the idea of game designer as auteur. This isn't a new idea - look at the high regard the likes of Gygax and Jackson are held in - but it reaches its peak with the indie RPG movement, where pretty much every game is written by a single individual, free of all editorial oversight.

This has interesting effects - for example, indie RPGs tend to limit the GMs' power, but they don't really do it in a way which dramatically increase the players' power. In most indie RPGs - aside from stuff like Polaris, where it's debatable that they're even RPGs since the "PCs" and "NPCs" are a shared commodity - the GM's powers are constrained by the rulebook, but the players are equally constrained (if not more so), and the GM still has far more leeway in terms of inventing NPCs and situations and so forth.

There is, in fact, a certain kind of indie RPG - Dogs In the Vineyard, My Life With Master, and the Mountain Witch are good examples - where the individual with the greatest freedom is, in fact, the game designer. If you play them by the book, you *have* to run a game about solving problems in pseudoMormon communities or serving a mad scientist, and you *have* to buy into the game designer's ideas about how that sort of situation goes. Compare with D&D, or Traveller, or heck, even Vampire, where you can play a 100% by-the-book game and still come up with stories and games and puzzles and adventures which the game designers *never even imagined were possible*. I've got to the point where I view the DitV school of indie games to be not so much complete RPGs so much as reusable modules with a system attached.

Now, we can all cite games where the power is in the hands of the GM. Vampire and similar games take this to an extreme - these are games designed to assume that the GM is a brilliant auteur with a wonderful story to tell, and that the players need to be heavily constrained so that they don't derail the story, and give the GM the tools he needs to do that. (I played in an improvised Vampire: the Masquerade pick-up game on Saturday - it was loads of fun, because we junked storytelling and ran around shooting people,  but we did notice that character generation is designed to ensure that PCs will be as mediocre as possible.) The indie designers have been trying to get the pendulum to swing back towards the players, but I suspect what they've actually done is aligned it towards the game designers instead.

Quote from: WarthurThe indie designers have been trying to get the pendulum to swing back towards the players, but I suspect what they've actually done is aligned it towards the game designers instead.

I ... don't get what you're saying.  The game designer isn't playing.  How can he have more or less freedom at the table?  He's not even at the table.  He's (presumably) off somewhere enjoying the swanky lifestyle that comes with RPG publishing success ("But we'd still eat Kraft Mac and Cheese, right?"  "Yeah, but we'd buy really fancy ketchup ... DIJON ketchup!")

Quote from: TonyLBI ... don't get what you're saying.  The game designer isn't playing.  How can he have more or less freedom at the table?  He's not even at the table.  He's (presumably) off somewhere enjoying the swanky lifestyle that comes with RPG publishing success ("But we'd still eat Kraft Mac and Cheese, right?"  "Yeah, but we'd buy really fancy ketchup ... DIJON ketchup!")

what he is saying is that as a result of the effort to make the players have more power, designers have forced their way of playing on  the GM and players alike. In the end you endup with a gaming session as envisioned by the desinger not your gaming group.

Ahhhhh ... okay.  Sort of strange rhetoric for it.  I don't get that it's forced, unless you're actually sending thugs to rough people up if they don't play your game.  

I do think that some indie games are more focussed on getting everyone to play one particular type of game than on providing a toolkit that people can use to construct any type of game they want.  If we had two big guys named Bruno and Macky forcing people to play (for instance) MLwM then yeah, I'd say that's taking away power from everyone involved.  I just don't get how that still applies when people have chosen the game deliberately as the one they want to play.

I'm sure everyone here knows my feelings on this. I won't bother reiterating them.

-clash

Quote from: TonyLBAhhhhh ... okay.  Sort of strange rhetoric for it.  I don't get that it's forced, unless you're actually sending thugs to rough people up if they don't play your game.  

I do think that some indie games are more focussed on getting everyone to play one particular type of game than on providing a toolkit that people can use to construct any type of game they want.  If we had two big guys named Bruno and Macky forcing people to play (for instance) MLwM then yeah, I'd say that's taking away power from everyone involved.  I just don't get how that still applies when people have chosen the game deliberately as the one they want to play.

well, "forced" part is that if you don't play exactly the sort of game the designer had in mind, the game won't work.

I'm not saying this is right or wrong because I do like some indie games but I can see his point.

Which is why they aren't as popular as games that can be played in the GM/players individual fashions.

Tony,

I think Clash stated pretty damn clearly what he meant when he said they are more akin to Modules with attached Systems then complete Games.

Sure, you can change and adapt a module until it doesn't represent what you originally bought, but at some point you have to ask why you bothered to buy the damn thing in the first place if that's the case.  Sure, no one sends around Guido and Nunzio to break a few legs if you do, but its still pretty heavy handed 'forcing' people to play the game the Designer wants... at least compared to more traditional games.

I guess I just see it differently in a context where there are many such games available.

If I buy a hamburger, I'm not being forced to eat savory ground beef.  Yes, once I've bought that hamburger and started eating it I'm in for a certain experience.  But I chose the burger.  I coulda chosen an all-you-can-eat buffet if I wanted to have more choices after my initial choice of meal.

Is this analogy going anywhere, or does it only make sense in my head? :sweatdrop:

Tony,

The word "force" didn't pop up in my article, so let's steer away from there.

As far as "making the people at the table play the game they envisage", obviously indie game designers can't do this any more than mainstream designers can. What they can do is design a game such that if you want to play a game which isn't about (in the case of My Life With Master) being the minion of a horrible overlord, you have to seriously re-engineer the rules if you're going to get anywhere. If you play Dogs In the Vineyard completely by the book, you pretty much have to run a game about wandering from town to town solving problems. Conversely, I can take my beloved D&D Rules Cyclopedia and run a 100% by the book game which doesn't involve a single dungeon crawl.

Now, if you want to play a game about being a minion of a horrible overlord one week, then My Life With Master is your man. But that's an awfully specific sort of thing to want to play. More likely, when games night swings around your preferences are going to be somewhat more vague. "I want to play a game with lots of fighting and stunts" or "I'm in the mood for something slow and political" or "I'd like to play an investigative game where we hunt clues and solve mysteries". Broader, non-indie games tend to satisfy those sort of niches. Indie games seem to be aimed at a very, very particular experience. As such, while it's great if you have a table full of people willing to play MLwM, it's always going to be easier to find people to play a broader game.

Quote from: WarthurWhat they can do is design a game such that if you want to play a game which isn't about (in the case of My Life With Master) being the minion of a horrible overlord, you have to seriously re-engineer the rules if you're going to get anywhere.

Very true.

Quote from: WarthurBroader, non-indie games tend to satisfy those sort of niches. Indie games seem to be aimed at a very, very particular experience.

Some indie games, yes.  Also very true.

I still don't get what this has to do with the game designer having more power or freedom than the players.

Quote from: TonyLBI guess I just see it differently in a context where there are many such games available.

If I buy a hamburger, I'm not being forced to eat savory ground beef.  Yes, once I've bought that hamburger and started eating it I'm in for a certain experience.  But I chose the burger.  I coulda chosen an all-you-can-eat buffet if I wanted to have more choices after my initial choice of meal.

Is this analogy going anywhere, or does it only make sense in my head? :sweatdrop:

Your analogy is wrong. Bonus points for the smiley, though.

Try this:

Say you buy a coffee machine. This machine lets you make all kinds of coffee: espresso, cappuccino, latte, whatever you fancy. Hell, you can even make coffee recipes that the manufacturer didn't think of!

Now, suppose there's another coffee machine. This one lets you make coffee too, but only if you use a specific brand (Illy) and make a very specific recipe (say, espresso with Balinese cinnamon).

Sure, both machines make coffee (*) and sure, the second one might make the greatest espresso with Balinese cinnamon ever, but what if I want a good ol' cappuccino? Hell, what if I want to add some cream to my espresso with Balinese cinnamon? Not only you cannot do that with the second machine, but its User's Manual says only a fool would do that. To all purposes, I'm drinking the coffee that the manufacturer wants me to drink, not the one I want.

That'd be a better analogy.

(*) For the purpose of this analogy, I'm going to sidestep the question of whether some indie games are RPGs at all or not. :hehe:

Quote from: JongWKTo all purposes, I'm drinking the coffee that the manufacturer wants me to drink, not the one I want.

Okay.  But you bought the Balinese espresso machine, right?  In fact, you probably bought it and some other coffee-makers, and chose to pull the specialized one out of the closet today.  If you just want coffee then why are you pulling out the Sharper Image catalog gizmo?

Quote from: TonyLBOkay.  But you bought the Balinese espresso machine, right?  In fact, you probably bought it and some other coffee-makers, and chose to pull the specialized one out of the closet today.  If you just want coffee then why are you pulling out the Sharper Image catalog gizmo?

See, there's the problem: why on Earth would I want to buy a Balinese espresso machine?

Quote from: JongWKSee, there's the problem: why on Earth would I want to buy a Balinese espresso machine?

Hey, if you don't want to then that's cool.  But that's a different thing entirely from saying that the designers of Balinese espresso machines are hoarding the power and freedom that should be in the hands of the coffee brewer.  Agreed?