Fiction Masquerading as Game(?)

In conversation not too long ago, I was hashing out some fairly strong feelings about how a lot (a lot) of published RP materials are essentially novels in a strange format. Or even huge serials. And in certain respects, I really dig seeing that. It hits a button for me like reading collected comics or watching whole seasons of TV over the course of a week on DVD. Those who haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica really ought to drop on the collected first season. I’ll just wait here to collect your thanks.

But the avowed purpose of such media is that it be the basis of roleplay, which is a very different enjoyment mode than one gets out of concentrated passive entertainment. I think there’s a fundamental issue with large gaming supliments, which is that they’re ultimately something for the GM to relate to players. Basically it’s a script for Illusionist play, which is really rough.

Honestly, sometimes the intent seems to be that everyone will read these 300 page tomes about the World of Hoobajoob, and we’ll all have this huge and rich shared canon to riff off of. Eh? My experience is that I can barely get a group of players to read the actual part of the rulesbook that refers to character creation. I’ve become the Master Explainer, and that means that as GM, I become the conduit for the Canon World. Which leads to a certain amount of very frank “this is how it is” type discussion, which can be very awkward, especially when it relates largely to a conflict that the characters are presented with Right Now. Concrete example: say the characters are in the midst of the Royal Reception when the envoy of the Empress of Glass arives wearing all white and completely unspeaking. Well, there might be dozens of pages in the Encyclopedia of Hoobajoob regarding the Empress, her envoys, the significance of white, and the current socio-political structure relating her to the Royal Court. But if I need to take a break to explain all that, why not just have the guy run in and proclaim that the Empress is pissed off?

So, yeah, part of the frustration is the fact that without the setup of the referants, there’s no real point. The other side of the coin is the Plot Immunity that designers see fit to impose on GMs. Both Pinnacle and FASA pulled this crap, and I believe White Wolf has played the same game for a long time. Technically Unknown Armies is pretty rife with it, but Atlas left things loose enough that it wasn’t all that important. Essentially the threat is “if you in any way alter the paths of these characters, you might as well not buy the next few supliments” which is sort of annoying.

On the other hand, I know people who love the setting. Or a setting from, say, a series of TV shows, or children’s novels, or whatever. And there’s this urge to play “in that setting.” And I can’t say that I myself am entirely immune to the allure. Predictably, I kinda think that Galactica would make an awesome RPG premise, setting included.

Which leads me to wonder, is there a way to present a setting that isn’t onerous to roleplay in? Basically, you need to solve a few problems.

• How do you get the players to read and absorb the information?
• How do you avoid deprotagonizing the characters by writing this awesome setting?
• What kind of elements facilitate interesting play, and what are just stoking your own pen?

I think that The Burning Wheel and The Shadow of Yesterday have something really interesting going on, by putting all of the setting details in the character lists. After that, I’m still in the thinking phase.