I suppose I need to clarify some things about my Boxing Day post concerning role-playing and the search for a 'holy grail.' Really I am looking at this from a GM and EFL teacher's point of view, as I have been mostly a GM these past 5 years or so, playing with my students pretty much on a weekly bases.

Dungeons and Dragons is a very fun and interesting game; it has been off and on a very important part of my life,  and will always be a part of what I bring to the gaming table whenever I play or run a fantasy game. If there is no set setting, for me it is understood in my mind to be the Forgotten Realms. This is the default, and it is what my students expect.

So in terms of structure versus agency this has usually been very clear with my students; they are used to having absolutely no control over what is put in front of them in school (believe it or not this is school for them, the school of D&D) and so GM Fiat is what they come to expect, and perhaps what they are most comfortable with, and it is  what they get most of the time in D&D (be it 3.5, 4E or Pathfinder). But this is really a reaction to what the coastal wizard has turned the game into: "Rules Bloat."  I don't think that the GM really has a lot of control in fact in D&D today, because the game has grown into a very rules heavy system. I often felt that my hands were tied in situations, especially in 4E,  where "there isn't a rule for that." Now a good GM will just push on forward and make a judgement call. He will improvise, and that's fine it doesn't break the system--GM Fiat. And of course this is why we have D&D Next.

The ultimate result of all this is that it has encouraged my players to remain very passive. Their 'agency' is limited to hack and slash (and min/maxing their character at character creation). What I really want to do is turn them into more active imaginative players. And perhaps this is my mistake.

Fate Core didn't really accomplish that because the social contract is so alien to them. The idea of building a game from ground up, however interesting it seemed to them to be at first, proved to be impossible. This is largely because they are constantly looking for 'the correct answer' whenever I ask them a question (a result of growing up in a test worshiping society).  And here there are no correct answers. Agency in FATE is tied directly to the 'table authority,' a very democratic system of rules interpretation which again was too progressive for my students to grasp.

And so in Dungeon World we have a system that is in fact rules heavy, it's just that the rules are geared toward GM Fiat. That sounds strange when we see GM Fiat as really a breaking of rules. GM Fiat appears in rules heavy games, games that try to think of a rule for every situation such as tying a knot or rigging a sail and it pops out its ugly head when there isn't a rule for the current situation. Dungeon World is rules heavy in the sense that rules are very important, it's just that the rules are primarily there to drive the story forward, not to merely test for success or failure as we see in other systems (d20 for example) but also to create complications (success at a cost such as we also see in FATE core).  

In DW the game is driven forward mechanically with what are called moves. There are some moves that are pretty straight forward like 'hack and slash' (roll+STR , 10+ deal damage, 7-9 deal damage but monster gets to attack you, 6- fail and trigger a monster move or GM move), but in most cases the GM decides what move applies from context by selecting from a list of general, GM, and dungeon moves he has at his disposal. 

Now this may seem that the characters don't have much say but this is deceptive. Moves are only triggered by what the character describes, thus giving the players a lot of control where the story is going. And many of the moves require the players to make a choice, or ask a question. The emphasis is always on the 'fiction' so the player aren't supposed to say, "I attack the monster with hack and slash". The player needs to describe what he is doing. It could be, "I stab the gnoll with my rapier screaming, "die canine scum!" and the GM could say  "Ok, that sounds like a 'hack and slash' move, roll+str. However the GM could also say that the gnoll has a halberd (reach) and that in order to get close enough to him you need to avoid that by dashing forward making the player roll a 'defy danger' move first. So for the purpose of getting the students to be more active and less passive DW works great, and perhaps more importantly in my old age,  doesn't require us to always look up rules.

Dungeon World may not be for everyone. It does require to GM to become creative with GM moves, especially ones based on player failure. And power-gamers/munchkins/min-maxers don't like the lack of customization at character creation. But for my students it has allowed to come out of their shells a bit and participate in building an imaginative fantasy world.

December 26th, Boxing Day

The Holy Grail in Corn Wood

I have always been on the lookout for a roleplaying game that would allow me to tell a compelling fantasy story and also gave the players the opportunity to tell a story of their own. Dungeons and Dragons can provide a compelling story if the GM is good, and the players are on the same page with him. I have only been in a few games where that was achieved, and mainly due to our passive acceptance to whatever the GM put in front of us--This is because in D&D railroading is the name of the game.

The other ‘holy grail’ that I have been looking for is a combat system that doesn’t slow down the game to the point where a 1 minute (in game) fight scene takes us 5 hours to resolve, but at the same time provides an exciting experience with both ups and downs leading eventually to a climactic conclusion.

Savage Worlds came pretty close to helping find this grail, and it is a very good system for ‘pulpy’ games, especially ones in a more modern setting. And savage worlds is brilliant in how it lets the players manage all of the friendly NPCs, treating them as pets of a sort and doing all of their dice rolling,  freeing up the GM to just focus on the villains. However it still uses a combat system that does slow down game play a bit; a tactical system that is still largely the players vs. the GM, although it is much faster than Dungeons and Dragons. Furthermore, the bennie mechanic, which allows a player to re-roll failed dice, or absorb damage seems to make the characters a bit too powerful. The grail is still out there somewhere.

Fate Core gets us a little closer, and it looks like a wonderful storytelling system, however it has one obstacle that really makes that grail elusive; its aspect system. Getting one’s head around making, invoking, and compelling aspects is not an easy task, and really requires a lot of work on the part of the players and GMs alike. I do really like the system, and think with the correct group, and a bit more experience with using aspects and learning the ‘fate point economy,’ it could be very fun to play. But it is not the grail, more likely it’s one of the 3 or 4 Holy Nails.

Perhaps the grail  might be what is described here:

http://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/

I have played two rather brief sessions of Dungeon World with my students this past week, one of them on Christmas day, and have found it to be very interesting. The most interesting bit perhaps was that combat played pretty much the same as non combat in terms of speed and roleplaying style. There was of course more action when fighting, but it all went pretty smoothly, and this without the use of a map or fixed initiative order.

Play progressed as follows:

When the party first entered the village of Corn Wood the halfling rogue was accosted by a little girl, seemingly fascinated by the short man’s attire. The thief hit the girl when she pulled at his cloak, and this caused some of the villagers to come over and see what was going on--it looked like there was going to be a fight and the party was going to be run out of town. The wizard intervened and made a promise that he would keep the halfling in his place. The villagers reluctantly let them proceed to the inn, however with the caveat  that a  chaperone named Alfred accompany them. At the inn they met Tracy the innkeeper’s daughter who was strangely happy to see them, and tried to portray the image of a happy little village. This went against the party’s experience with the suspicious villagers out on the street. The wizard bought Alfred an ale, which the thief poisoned  with Goldenroot, this resulted in Alfred befriending the wizard. He happily informed the party that things were not going well in the village, and that some strange things were happening out at a ranch nearby, and that torches had been seen in the old abandoned Red Wizard’s Keep on the other side of the Green Woods. He also mentioned the recent  disappearance of the village elder’s daughter.

That night the group followed Tracy, now dressed in rust-red cultists robes out to the ranch where they discovered a group of cultists performing some ritual around a bonfire. The characters overcame the group of cultists  pretty quickly, however 3 imps were summoned, one of them running off to the village and the other two attacking the party. This is where we ended session 1, which we did in about 3 hours including some character creation.

Session two, the Christmas session,  started  with the summoning of the imps, and they proved to be very difficult to handle. We started this rather informally over dinner and grabbed the character sheets and dice when the players started telling me what they wanted to do next in detail.

The paladin was poisoned in the previous fight with the cultists and became paralyzed. The Wizard lost his magic missile spell in a catastrophic failed casting, his only real combat ability and the druid was mostly babysitting the young hysterical girl that was kidnapped, and about to be sacrificed, but he finally calmed her down and left her to change into a large owl that picked up one of the imps and dropped it onto the house, where it crashed through the roof. The second imp teleported the wizard into the basement where he was placed into a cage--which turned out to be only an illusion crafted by Tracy. The thief and druid left the paladin out by the bonfire, the girl by the fence, and searched throughout the house for the wizard.  They encountered the imp on the second floor, and dispatched him pretty quickly (he was hurt from the fall). Tracy left with the second imp out a secret tunnel when the wizard discovered his cage wasn’t real. The encounter ended when the thief and the druid fought and defeated a grotesque dire boar (which almost killed the thief), the result of bizarre experimentations in black magic, in the basement. Tracy escaped to the Green Woods with one of the imps. Meanwhile the third imp was creating mischief somewhere near the village, and the to-be-sacrificed-village-elder’s-daughter was nowhere to be found.

With the paladin still eating dirt (poisoned and petrified), hungover from drinking too much the night before, and the halfling near death, session two ended. This consisted of about an hour and a half of gameplay.

In terms of mechanics, dungeon worlds is pretty simple. The game consists of ‘moves’ that are triggered when the players describe their character doing certain things--’stabbing the imp with my dagger’ becomes the hack and slash move for example. Most moves consists of the following formulae: 10 or more on a 2d6+modifier = success, 7-9 = success at a cost, and 6 or less is a failure, which means the GM gets to do something interesting, and players grab a point of xp. The paladin getting poisoned, the wizard getting teleported, Alfred having to follow the party around town, the imps getting summoned, the party members losing various items and weapons throughout the fight in addition to hp damage were all results of this mechanic. The players loved the two sessions and didn’t want to stop. They left the last session with the comment that it was more like reading a book then playing a game. I think I have found my grail. Time will tell.

I haven't written anything here for a while. Since 2008 in fact. Well, there have been some changes; Matthew is now 8 years old, and playing on the soccer school team, I am 43 years old going on 60, and perhaps the biggest change is that I am now teaching full time at Shih Hsin University. I have to say that I really do enjoy the job; it's nice having perks such as an office (well desk in an office), a bigger pay check, and probably most importantly, 4 months paid vacation.

The best improvement to my life from working full time at the Uni is that I have become much more organized. This is in no small part thanks to Google docs. I write all of my presentations, documents, and spreadsheets with it now, and would probably be lost without it. I am also in the process of creating a web page for my students.

Yes. All in all it has been a pretty good 5 years.

Eric

I am here with Eric now and he has a few words to say. "What? I don't know. Are you a pig? Are you a handsome boy? That's it."

Interesting.

Mark

     I have arrived safe and sound in California. My flight landed generally on time, at around 8:30 pm, and all went well with luggage, and customs, and immigration. My mother was waiting for me when I came out of the airport, and all seemed great.

     We had to rush back to the high desert because we needed to pick up my father from the Palmdale regional airport at around 10:20. Although we knew we would be late, we still made good time on the freeway, but at around 10:30 we got a voice message on my mom's cell phone. As it turned out, my father's flight to San Francisco had been delayed by several hours because of fires in the region and had caused him to miss his connecting flight to Palmdale. Instead he would be arriving at LAX at around a quarter to 2. Since we were already 3 quarters of the way home we decided to return to Lancaster, where I rested for about half an hour. After that I drove alone back to LAX, making excellent time, and arrived at around 1:15 am. But, again I was in for a surprise; my father had taken an earlier flight. But his luggage was still on the flight that was supposed to arrive at a quarter to 2. Also, he wasn't entirely certain that his luggage got transfered from the Palmdale flight to the LAX one. We waited, and 2 am rolled on by, but no flight, and no luggage. 3 am came and went and still no luggage. We waited until they closed down the luggage carousel, and all the employees had gone home. There were no United personal at the airport to ask about his missing luggage. So we came home, arriving around 4.30 am. Tired, I went to sleep, but only slept about 4 hours.

     This morning I was still very tired, my soul still lagging somewhere over the pacific (souls not being able to keep up with Boeing 777s, according to  William Gibson), and so really didn't do anything. My father attempted to find his lost luggage, but the best he could do was leave a voice message on the lost luggage hot line. Chances are it will stay there unnoticed until way after the presidential elections, but who knows. 

     I finally fell into a deep sleep around 6 pm, and slept soundly until 9. Now I am wide awake at 2.10 am writing this blog. Tomorrow I hope to rejoin the world, and maybe get something to eat. 

Mark

Edit (March 26, 2013): My dad never did get his luggage. 

Jeremy

I am still teaching on this fine Taipei day in May. Two different students, not wanting to be out done by Kevin, have made it clear that they want to post something too. So to begin, we have some comments by Jeremy: "I am Mark's student. I like to play games with Mark because he is very very fun. Also, I like to read Captain Underpants."

They always remember the games, but overlook the teaching. Kids will be kids.

As for Michelle, it looks like she doesn't have anything to say after all. Perhaps I can get her to add something later.

Mark

Kevin

I am teaching Kevin about blogs right now. He is tearing up some paper, and asking me about computer games. He just said "what are you doing?" So, Kevin do you have anything to say to the world? Kevin said, "Teacher Mark is a pig. And he is fat. And he likes to play games. Oh, and he is crazy."

Well, it is good to be loved.

More later.

Mark