Shepherd’s Pie: Fourth Helping

Everybody knows what a link dump is.  Well, almost everybody.  I assure you it’s not a bunch of turds all hooked together and floating in the porcelain pond.  Though I did have Turd Pudding a few weeks ago.  One blog I read calls its weekly link dump post “Applesauce.”  Chuck Wendig’s “Painting With Shotguns” paints a much more gruesome and catchy title.  Pun intended.  Deal with it.  I call mine Shepherd’s Pie.  Everything, all the week’s awesome goodness is thrown in and mixed around.  Sometimes it comes out pretty appetizing and sometimes it just looks like puke on a plate… or on a page, as the case may be. It looks like Wednesday has become the de facto Shepherd’s Pie day.  At least on Wednesdays that I decide it is.  Otherwise, it’s luck of the draw.  I can do it on Saturday if I want.  It’s my place.

And you’re my guests.

Welcome to the 4th helping of Shepherd’s Pie.

I’ll keep it short, sweet, and to the point today. If you love dice, or playing love games with dice, and want to write about a dice-centric topic, Gameplaywright is hosting a Blog Carnival to commemorate the release of The Bones. There’s a lot of discussion going on about the role of “just having fun” in role-playing games.  Will Hindmarch shared an excellent quote from that discussion that really spoke to me.  Here is a link to it, but I am also posting it in its entirety here:

“Because a game is about much more than ‘fun.’ Game play is a meaningful part of our culture. Game play engages a significant part of our personalites. Competition, strategy, puzzle-solving, collaboration, fairness, uncertainty, risk, reward — these are elements of games that make them fun. When we play a game, we enter a special mental space, separate and different from all others in our lives. We agree — explicitly or implicitly — to abide by the rules so that all of the players can engage with the activity in a fair and reasonable manner. Now, ‘fair and reasonable manner’ can mean that I get to shoot you in the face during the game — and you have to leave the field when I do — but once the game is over, there’s no more face-shooting.

Thus in roleplaying games, we engage with a system that challenges us. We use a set of rules that forces us from our comfort zone and encourages us to think and act in a manner we would not otherwise. We play the game. We don’t need the game to have fun. We can have fun anywhere, any time. Rather, we use the game to create unanticipated, unexpected results. We use the game to give everyone at the table a role in play. And we engage with that game as a neutral arbiter, to ensure that play is fair.”

I think this is a key thing to remember.  Balance in gaming, as well as in any other facet of life, is important.  It’s vital.  I’m not talking about game balance.  I’m talking about social/emotional balance.  If you feel you need the game to have “fun” with a particular person/group of people, you should take a step back.  You should be able to have fun playing the game with these people and you should be able to have fun doing other things with them.  Ideally, they should be your friends.  If every gathering you have with them is “gaming only” then why is that?  Whenever you get together, do you only play, or talk about, the game?  Do you get annoyed when people in the group want to do other things or have other interests or commitments?  Do you ignore anything they say that isn’t about the game?  This seems to me to be a balance issue.

A few days ago, I shared an amazing piece by Jesse Burneko.  Well, Jesse’s at it again.  He and Justin Achilli always seem to challenge me and make me think about games and my views on games.  For that, I thank you both profusely.  I have had my fair share of games that have ground to a halt or collapsed.  I think Jesse’s nailed it again when he says that a major contributing factor in this phenomenon is the lack of a clear objective in the game.  He says that most role-playing games (he uses GURPS as an example) are toys.  I prefer to think of them as toolkits or frameworks.  A working game has to be compiled from this framework.  He’s correct when he says that most games cannot be played straight out of the box without a lot of customization from the gamemaster.  Most of the time, the gamemaster writes plot hooks, defines characters, creates of fleshes out a game world, etc.  Rarely does the gamemaster, at least in my experience, set out a clear objective for the game.  And Jesse’s right, “Have fun” is not a clear game objective.  If you read the above link, you know that everyone’s definition of “fun” is different.  One paragraph in particular of Jesse’s article resonated with me, because I have seen it happen at my table several times:

“In our Diaspora game Will, as the GM, was operating under the assumption that the game was fairly episodic in structure. He assumed the object of the game was to deal with a string of sci-fi space encounters as you moved relatively quickly from place to place. I, on the other hand, assumed the object of the game was to pursue my character’s personal goals (my default assumption and preference when the game fails to tell me otherwise). Since we were playing towards two different objectives the game ground to a halt. Will kept considering things done and resolved while I was considering those same situations just the tip of the iceberg.”

I own this situation.  This is my fault.  The only thing that really matters is, “What am I going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

I finally started playing Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption yesterday.  The game is even better than I thought it would be. I’ve been calling it “Grand Theft Horse” for weeks, but let me set the record straight.  This has so much more depth than a Grand Theft Auto game.  There are lots of cut-scenes, clear cut objectives, a ton of story.  John Marston is an engaging character with superb voice acting. &n
bsp;On top of that, the world is huge and beautifully rendered and exists with minimal loading screens.  The graphics are far better than even GTA IV.  This is a beautiful game.  I strongly recommend that you check it out.  I’ll be writing a more thorough review when I get farther into the game.  I’ve played for about 8 hours and have barely scratched the surface.

If you have anything to share about any of these topics, please comment.  I loves me some commentage.  Also, check out the links.  There’s good stuff there.