DEFINITIONS GAME: A set of repeatable physical actions that allow players to resolve key issues of a story. Players must be able to learn the steps of play by either reading them, having them told to them, seeing them done or by doing them. Games, thus are mechanical and about narrowly defined topics. STORY: A series of distinct elements that when put together in a certain order tell a tale. Different elements, put together in different ways tell very different stories. And if the elements are not put together correctly they tell no story at all and do not entertain. CONNECTIONS AND DIVERGENCE Games and stories are both about human events. Games try to model events by using mechanical rules that describe the key actions of the setting. Stories ignore the overt rules of games and instead focus on putting actions together is a series in such a way as it tells a tale. Games are open ended (open to a variety of outcomes) while stories are always the same each time they are told. It would seem that games can tell stories, but this is not usually what happens. Games are not stories! One can have the best rules, a wonderful set of characters and an interesting setting and frequently no story will emerge from it. Why? Game rules tell players how to resolve very specific situations. Even radically flexible rules like Matrix Games just tell people how to resolve situations. They do not tell players what situations need to be resolved and what order they need to be resolved in. Stories have an order to them that exceeds being a stream of unrelated actions. Murder mysteries require that someone be murdered, that clues be found and that a suspect be arrested and put on trial if caught. If Sherlock ignores the body and spends all his time courting the new widow, then it is a love story not a mystery. Of course it could be a love story mystery, but only if someone is looking for clues. Stories require that events unfold in specific order. If the order is muddled up by too many unrelated details (like a corpse appearing at the beginning of a love story) the story fails to entertain. The ultimate sin. While a well spun tale, filled with just the right amount of build up and action not only entertains but also inspires gamers to game it. Wargames have long drawn inspiration from war movies. Well favored films have had their battle sequences played and replayed in beautiful miniature detail for fifty years. Such limited games work well. But whenever games try to go beyond narrowly defined scenes they usually fall flat. Role play games in particular look like they can handle larger stories. After all, aren't the players just like actors? Well...no, they aren't. Actors have a script. A script that writers have honed down to just the most important elements. Unless the players are expert ad lib story tellers, role playing doesn't stand a chance of telling a good story. Game rules are all about very discreet actions. Many only cover combat and character creation. This is not enough to tell a story. A great referee or great players make a story happen by filling in the blanks left by the rules. In effect they force a story into being by sheer will power. It's hard work, but a thing of beauty when it happens. CAN STORIES AND GAMES BE PULLED CLOSER TOGETHER? If stories require certain actions to happen to tell a tale, then this suggests that there are "rules" to telling a stories. They are not rules like game rules. Instead they are much more open ended. More like suggestions that holy writ. One approach to getting a handle on "story rules" is what Matrix Games do. Each game is about one type of story. For instance, "Dark Portals" is about teenagers and horror. The "story rules" are part of the matrix of the game. At the beginning of each game the referee tells the players the usual actions required to tell a horror story. This education step is important because contrary to some people's belief most people do not know how to tell a story. In fact most people don't realize how hard it is to write a clear sentence, let alone a paragraph! So telling them what they need to do helps players like a cheat sheet helps a test taker. The only difference is that this cheat sheet is legal. Horror games involve a period of finding out what the horror is and then branch into stopping it (or helping it, depending on how twisted you are). Murder mysteries have similar steps, ending with an arrest and trial. Spy games are totally different, and focus on recruiting agents, building a spy network and then stealing secrets. Future articles will explore the steps of each type of story and spell them out for you. The exact rules used to resolve conflicts brought about by the players acting on these story outlines don't seem to be critical. Any good set of rules can be used. The key is that the referee know when to stop using the rules and allow the players to create the next step in their story. This is a problem for a lot of referees. RPGs especially give referees a lot of power. It takes a subtle hand to know when to give in to the players and when to reign them in. Matrix Games work a little better at this because the power rests more in the players hands rather than the referee's. RPGs give one person the power to be a "game master" while Matrix Games only make the person a referee. Board, miniatures and card games by and large lack the flexibility to do real story telling. Where they manage it, they do so by becoming defacto role play games. AFTERWARD Stories and game rules are tied together but they are separate. Game rules are about modeling situations. They have trouble seeing beyond the parameters of their mechanical steps. Stories on the other hand must be lose and open ended. They turn on sudden twists, unpredictability. But they do conform to rough outlines. These outlines are the key for bringing story and rules together because they can be used to educate players in what it takes to tell many different types of story. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #3 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Chris Engle. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com