Keep It Tight

Random thoughts on gaming:

Games are, boiled down to their most basic level, devices designed to create and release tension in a satisfying manner.   If a game does not create tension, then it cannot release tension in any manner, satisfying or unsatisfying.  A game that does not create tension will be generally regarded as boring and/or stupid.  This is generally why, after you've reached a certain age/stage of intellectual development, you no longer play tic tac toe. 

Similarly, if you've ever played a challenging video game,  you'll understand the overwhelming temptation of using cheat codes.  Some cheat codes can actually help the game experience (there is no reason, for example, why I should have to do a bunch of stupid, arbitrary, pointless quests before I can put Captain America in his correct costume; the cheat code that unlocks all the costumes just lets me play the game the way I want to play it from the beginning).   Those that make your character invincible, however, quickly become tiresome.  If your character can walk through walls, destroy any opposition by pushing a particular code, and cannot be hurt by anything in the game, you're going to find that game tedious pretty quickly. 

As a side note, the major problem with cheat codes is, once you've learned them, you cannot unlearn them.  Now, on modern gaming platforms where cheat codes require elaborate, very specific manipulation of extremely complex controllers, this is okay... if you decide you really want to play ULTIMATE ALLIANCE with the costumes locked, then you just don't spend five minutes putting in a ten-twiddle sequence.  But with old school videogames like DOOM, once you learn that toggling on the map and then typing in 'johnwu' gives you complete indestructibility, it becomes really hard not to do that whenever you find yourself up to your ass in necromantically reanimated demons.  But if you do this every time you get in a jam, again, the game is not fun.  You need to get killed forty or fifty times in that one cul de sac, and experience that truly unbelievable level of frustration, in order to get any sense of accomplishment and enjoyment out of finally managing to get the crucial combination of (a) the exactly precise save point you need before triggering the trap and (b) harvesting enough ammo and healing potions prior to getting to that point to get through the onslaught. 

All of these observations apply absolutely in a roleplaying game.  If a roleplaying game does not generate tension, it will not be fun or enjoyable.  That is the very first prerequisite.  No matter what else a roleplaying game does, it must generate tension among its players.  Otherwise, they won't enjoy playing it. 

Now, roleplaying games have a unique challenge in doing this, because a roleplaying game is not supposed to be competitive... by which I mean, there is really no way to 'win' or 'lose' a roleplaying game.  In standard, competitive games, tension is produced by the normal human desire to achieve success at whatever arbitrary goal the game has set... usually but not always, being the first player to get your game piece from point A to point B while legitimately satisfying all the game's requirements.

But in a roleplaying game, there is no point A or point B or point C.  Yes, there are scenarios in which there are things that one wants to accomplish, presumably... kill the monster, outwit the trap, get the treasure -- rinse and repeat, ad infinitum nauseum.  But you don't 'win' when you get the treasure, and you don't lose when the monster kills you.  If the monster kills you, you roll up a new character and use that character to try to defeat the trap and get the treasure.  Roleplaying games, like life, just go on.

So the Game Master of a roleplaying game needs to generate tension, in an environment where his or her players really cannot win or lose.  How do you do that? 

You have to make your players invest their emotions in your game. 

If your players don't give a shit about their character or the game setting, it's going to be hard to get them to invest emotionally in your game.  If they don't invest emotionally in your game, you will find it difficult or impossible to generate tension.   Now, even when you have a boring game, GMs can usually rely on two age old stand bys to get their players interested in the game:  greed and bloodlust.  But even these will only take you so far, because the underlying truth is, none of it is real.   People get sated with virtual treasure and magic items, and imaginary viscera, really quickly.  If you're going to go this route, you have to keep amping it up.  Your players may start out snorting chests of gold coins and class I swords and maybe hacking the hand off an orc or two, but pretty soon, they'll be skin popping magic jewels and flaming axes and gruesomely described impalements (with accompanying lovingly detailed sketches in a notebook by that one inevitable guy in the group who can draw) and before you know it, they're mainlining godlike magical armor and enchanted wildebeestes and entire villages are being put to the sword. 

And then everyone gets bored and that one guy in the group that nobody really likes says "I wanna run Shadow-Quest where everybody is a member of a Japanese vampire ninja clan!" and everybody is like "Okay, whatever". 

How do you get people to care about your game setting and their character?  Well, originality will help; if your game setting is just another fourth rate Xerox of Middle Earth with the serial numbers sawed off and everybody gets to play a drow because Drzzt is just so bitchin then you've put yourself in a bad position. 

On the other hand, if you're  a serious Tolkien scholar and you have actually sat down and drawn up real, detailed maps of Middle Earth from the actual source material and you want to GM a faithfully nuanced, accurate version of Middle Earth set at some point, say, a thousand years before Bilbo found the One Ring... you might find some people who would care about that.  

Similarly, eschew generic and/or interchangeable characters.  The characters for YOUR game should be characters that cannot be played in any other game.  If you have players who have 12th level paladins from 'the other D&D game I play in on Thursdays" and they want to play those characters in YOUR game, it should not be possible for them to do so.  It's not that you shouldn't allow it, it should simply be impossible for them to plug characters from other games into your setting.  If you have an original, detailed setting that people will find interesting, then it will generate original, detailed characters that cannot be played in any other setting. 

Probably the most important thing that a GM can do to ensure their game generates sufficient tension, though, is also the most unpopular thing a GM can do:  you have to limit what characters can do. 

Players hate this.  They want their characters to (a) always be the center of attention while (b) never being defeated, stymied, or frustrated by anyone or anything.  They want to always be able to resolve any situation in their favor, to never be surprised, to never have anything bad happen to them, and especially, to never ever ever have anything occur that makes them or their character look stupid, foolish, inept, or incompetent.

Less thoughtful gamers will simply want huge stats, awesome weapons, and bitchin' magical items that let them kill anything that gets in their way.

More thoughtful gamers will want information.  By which I mean, they will want mechanisms and devices and processes that their character can access which will cause the GM to tell them stuff.  Secret stuff, that nobody else but the GM knows.  Instead of flaming swords and disintegration wands and winged helmets, they want scrying crystals and danger sense and telepathy. 

Because here's the deal:  if you know who the mysterious villain is, if you know which of the NPCs is a traitor, is you know who's scheming to stab you in the back, if you know where all the traps and secret passages are, then nothing will ever happen that makes you feel like an idiot for not figuring it out beforehand.  And nobody wants to feel like an idiot.

But if you know all that stuff, then your game will fail to generate tension.  And even if only one of the characters in your game knows all that stuff, pretty quickly, everyone else who is playing will realize that, hey, this guy always has the inside scoop, so let's listen to him.  And then, again... no tension. 

Boring game.

The key to successful ongoing drama is, make your audience want something... and then, DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM.

With roleplaying games, you don't have to make people want invincible, infallible characters... everybody already does. 

But you must make sure that under no circumstances do you ever allow them to actually HAVE invincible or infallible characters. 

If you do, it is the death of your campaign.