Derek Henderson's article in NUGGET 78 includes a wonderful example of how an MG can be included ad hoc into a role play like game to solve difficulties not covered by the standard rules. In Derek's case, and certain "Mad Ned" had been annoying the commander of a pirate band of a "Treasure Island" game. The frustrated commander levels his pistol and tells the referee that he shoots Ned down! Combat rules clearly cover this possibility. A target is a target as far as shooting tables are concerned. Also it is not completely out of a pirates personality to shoot someone who bothered him, but even 50, brother pirates seldom shot their own men in the middle of a battle with the authorities. In short the rules writer never considered the possibility of such an action. So what should the results be? No MG is in use in Derek's game until Mad Ned Chimes in "I make a heartfelt appeal to Jake resulting in him firing high, because we were old shipmates together for ten years, our fathers were friends, and I once saved his life off the Horn." The argument is made even better by Ned's use of a strong pirate accent and a play acted delivery. The referee decides that Ned will get to roll. He succeeds in his roll and lives! Derek's example is very similar to what steve Lortz has done in his miniatures games. The situations that are problematic are role play encounters. The MG just provides a quick structured way to incorporate role playing without getting too far away from the primary purpose of the game - the miniatures battle. If MGs handle RPG functions like this in miniatures games, how might they be used in role play campaigns? FRICTION IN RPGS The machine model of analyzing games suggests that games process information much like a hay bailer processes straw. There are mechanical activities often called "game mechanisms" that alter, store, and retrieve, information about critical events. Role Play Games often have the following mechanisms: 1. character creation, 2. a skirmish level combat system, 3. a magic system, 4. a character growth system, and 5. a playacting dialogue approach to most other interactions. These mechanisms work fine for resolving situations involving very few people. But when the referee has to run more than two or three non player characters, or there are more than 6 players, the flow of play slows down in a big way. The game is encountering "friction" which prevents it from moving faster. Consider the following examples... The adventure is just beginning. The players go into a store. They spend the next two hours of game time role playing out haggling over prices. They have only two or three hours remaining to play the game. The magicians of the party want to research a spell. They go into a magic shop/library and spend an hour and a half role playing out interviewing the shop keeper. This is extraneous to the adventure. The bulk of the party (who are non spell casters) become bored stiff. The campaign involves the players establishing intimate relations with a community of peasants. The players are introduced to the community leaders who either a. accept them without question as their leaders and protectors or b. treat the players rudely and do not accept them. Either way, the players are expected to act out loyalty to these people despite the fact that they lack any real ties to them. The campaign is set in a pseudo medieval world, with a king and lords. There are detailed political arraignments and alliances. Nothing changes as the game goes on, despite the players battles with the "Great Dark One" (who ever he is). The referee gets frustrated and burned out when the players, who consider it their greatest pleasure to resist and destroy the referee's scenario, do just that. They turn away from all the signals of adventure and then complain that the referee is just "making it up as he goes along!" Friction abounds in RPGs. Skilled referees are able to side step some of the snags but others jump up to confound even the most skilled actor. This arises because the most central game mechanism of RPGs is that the referee/game master solely responsibly for making the game happen. This over adequate mandate is too much for most of it. In therapy we call this kind of behavior "dysfunctional." Try as one might, one person can not know everything and please everyone. The real challenge of RPG refing is how to spread out the responsibility for running the game while maintaining the sense of discovery that comes from seeing the story unfold before you. MATRIX GAMES AS AN ANSWER There are a lot of RPG referees out there who really like running games because of the ego trip that brings. They do not like to allow any of the players to have any say in making the world work. They want to control their world completely. Some times they will allow sub referees to aid them. But more often these are games to avoid unless the ref is exceptionally skilled. For the rest of us MGs offer a better solution. Consider what MGs do. Each player who makes an argument is having a say in controlling what happens next in the world. The referee is equal with the players in responsibility in making things happen. Wow! Think about what that could do to the flow of a campaign. The referee could still plan pre scripted adventures as before, but the players could resolve these by matrix arguments. They could also alter the scenario by arguments as well. Lord, the players could create the jumping off point into an adventure that could be more fun than the one the referee planned! This would certainly tweak the pride/ego of the All Father type of referees. The referee would be discovering the adventure as much as the players. This would require giving up his previous god like power and responsibility, kind of like accepting a demotion from god to demi-god status. It would also require referees to think on their feet more and be ready and willing to go with the flow of events that the players are creating even though it may not be where he first thought the game would go. A good referee should be able to do this. Others might have a little difficulty moving to this position. ­ All MGs seem to require a mental shift in how the players think about the games they are playing. Rigid thinking does not adapt well in an MG game environment. Rigid thinking is like strong trees in the face of hurricanes. They get blown over. Flexibly trees bend and grow. MGs allow the players are referee to interact in a more equal dialogue about making critical events happen. This seems to me to be closer to the old theory that RPGs are a form of mutual story telling. My experience tells me that referees that use this theory already share power with the players, and quickly find roles for MGs in their games. Rigid referees, or players, get angry and confused by "anding" in MGs, and are not likely to use them now. Maybe in a few years, after they have played in a few matrix aided games. HOW DO MGs BEAT FRICTION? Primarily MGs create a very easy and structured way to for the referee to get out of having to make ALL of the decisions in the game. He is able to tap into the creativity of the players in scenario creation, political events, etc. " MGs allow players to make arguments about any kind of event they want. Yet argument resolution remains easy no matter what is being resolved. This frees the referee from having to create new rules to resolve new situations that arise. In the past referees were in the position of having to create whole new games as their primary game was played. MGs are a critical event resolution mechanism that can be selectively "plugged in" to whatever situation requires them. So if a referee is of the more rigid type, he might find that an MG can be plugged in to help him run political events in between games, and run his regular game sessions normally. other referees might use MGs more widely. No matter how widely they are applied, MGs involve all the players in the game. Power to control even part of a game world gives players a stake in the world that is often lacking in many RPGs. The fighters know why they want to defend a city, "It because I've used up five matrix arguments establishing political alliances there. I've worked too hard to make those contacts to give them up without a fight!" MGs due to their simplicity, can resolve time consuming but important activities like buying supplies and researching magic, that are not fun to role play, without all the fuss. Fighters, who might other wise be bored while mages do research, can be usefully employed making annoying counter arguments why their uppity friends spells don't work out quite as well as they expect. The friendly rivalry this allows, can be used to structure and control the tensions within a group of players that are always present. The referee can take on the role of devil's advocate. He who u~kes all the counter arguments against the players plans. He no longer has total power to prohibit an action, so instead he gets to "play" the game with the players. The referee can also redirect the players energies using judo like counter arguments. The result of this is that the ref no longer has to butt heads with the players over complex rules. He can instead engage them in a battle of competing arguments. EXAMPLES OF ACTUAL MATRIX AIDED RPGs Chris Blair once ran a matrix aided RPG. The game was different from the games I run since Chris and I have some very differences of opinion on a few things. The game was a standard D+D type game. Lots of orcs, goblins, elves and obnoxious dwarves. Chris created a map of the land, a couple of dungeons and a list of key people in the political structure. The players rolled up standard AD+D characters. We were told that all of the AD+D rules would apply. So we would be playing to gain experience, and treasure. We were a party of beginning adventurers from "the Town." Once we were out fitted we decided to go on an adventure. D1 is a dungeon near the town. It looked safe and close, so we started walking north-west. Chris had mentioned his plan to use an HG to back up his game but had not spelled out how it would play out. I assumed he would use the political matrix cards that I've been using to run my games. Wrong! Chris set out his own rules. Which were... 1. Players can NEVER alter the rules of the game! (so the combat tables are unchangeable) 2. No matrix cards will be used. Hake up your arguments based on what you know about typical D+D worlds. (We wrote our arguments down on index cards using the standard Action, Result, 3 Reasons formate.) 3. The referee can kick out ANY argument he wants, without needing a reason!!! 4. The referee will tell you when you can make an argument and what it should be about. Though, players can ask if they can make an argument in a tight spot. 5. After each role play session each player (present or not) got one argument that could be used to advance his character (either by gaining a skill, learning a spell, making a social contact, stealing an item, running a business or farm or just about anything we wanted to do that was legal in the AD+D rules.) Chris reserved the right to counter argue against any arguments we made. 6. The players were then required to make one or two political arguments to advance the positions of the various political factions. (Towns folk, lord of the castle, treacherous merchants, the church, peasants, orcs, evil ones, etc). 7. Wild arguments were okay since this was a fantasy game. This sounded like a lot of rules but after looking at it for a moment none of the players had any real questions. So we kept going north-west and had our "adventure." Only once in that first game did Chris use a matrix argument. We had surprised a party of orcs and Chris asked me to make an argument about what their reaction was. I argued that we scared them, so they routed away from us. Chris counter argued that they stood and fought "Because they have friends near by." Chris ruled that both arguments were "normal" (ie we had to roll 3 or less to be successful). The dice Gods were against me and I lost the roll in the first round. That started the fight. As the other players were merrily hacking the orcs down, I thought "They have friends near by." ooops! Chris noticed me catching on and smiled as he sprung his trap. The "friends" were a couple of Ogres who came up on our rear! It was a bloody fight but we won, Chris smiling all the time. The whole ambush was completely avoidable, if only we-had listened to what Chris had said. He foreshadowed the whole thing to us in his argument! The damnedest thing was that if we had won our argument we would not have been ambushed at all. Chris later told us that he was using the matrix argument to decide if the Ogres would react or not. I doffed my hat to him for this masterful use of MGs. When the game ended we all made our personal arguments. I was running a magic user - Craven of Willowby (COW for short ­ soon expanded to COWard by my fellow adventurers). I decided that having a powerful teacher would be a good move for my guy so I argued that I gave a costly gift to the court wizard and gained his favor. Since I didn't ask him for anything in this argument (beyond his friendship/toadying priveledges) Chris ruled it a strong argument, which I won. The other players tried other plans. One enrolled in night school to learn how to be a better fighter. Another started a weight lifting project to increase his strength. Another argued that he found a magic lamp! At first Chris was going to veto this one out of hand, but he thought better of it and ruled it very weak (roll a 1 on 1d6 to succeed). It failed. Chris later told me that if it had succeeded, then he would have based an adventure around that lamp, or had the djinn of the lamp be nasty and evil -- not the wish giving type! Next the players made political arguments about world events. Chris wrote down the successful arguments in his "History of the World" book. In this first turn, we caused 1. the orcs to raid the village, 2. the evil merchants to establish contact with the evil magic users to the south-east, and 3. for the peasants to have a bumper harvest. None of these events effected the party in the least, but since we had done the work of making the arguments that saved Chris from having to create and keep track of all these extraneous events. The game ran for several months and became a big hit with all. I enjoyed how Chris interwove matrix arguments into the role play sessions. After that first game several of us paid close attention to what he actually said in his arguments. Soon he started taking our perspective into account in coming up with reason. For instance, He would hint that their "might by friends by" when resolving another fight rout situation. It kept us guessing and gave Chris a new way to give use information without just handing it to us on a platter. One player was more interested in the political side of the game. He always made two arguments for the evil magic users. He succeeded in rallying a big orc army in the south-east. This caused other factions to respond. Some of the arguments even had direct impacts on we player characters. The lord of the castle offered a cash bounty on orc scalps, which we were able to take great advantage of. We also had to avoid being drafted by the city watch! A lot of my personal arguments were directed towards improving my relationship with my master - Ulric. As I went along I made arguments that had me doing greater and greater services for him. Chris used a number of these services as gateways to adventures for role play sessions. Since each service required more power than the last, I maneuvered Ulric into giving me a thing "so that I may better serve you!" Eventually he even let me be his chief bottle washer (the closest I ever got to being an apprentice). Other player had equally interesting characters grow. One player started a trading company, that earned him a handsome income. It also brought us into conflict with the evil (read that monopolistic) merchants -- and a couple of caravan adventures. The weight lifter did raise his strength, while the fighter not only learned how to fight, but also how to be a knight! The most important thing about the adventure was that all of us players were quickly committed to the game. We cared about what happened in the world because we made it happen. Chris was able to focus his energies on the game and ignore all the extraneous campaign information that is the bane of so many referees. Back to Experimental Games Group # 22 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com