Drama vs. Fun?
It's kinda funny - when my job makes me work all through the night until nearly sunrise, I get very annoyed. But when I do it to myself - meh, it's just what has to be done. But after this weekend, I hope you can understand if I'm a little on the snarky side. I think I'm averaging four hours of sleep a night, which is pretty low even for ME.

Gareth Fouche, creator of the indie RPG Scars of War, posted recently about trying something similar to Frayed Knights' "drama star" system. The reaction was almost universally negative. Even when the system is presented entirely as a "bonus" on top of the regular saved-game system, it's seen as a detriment.

How dare you even consider NOT saving my entire game state! Well, except the bad stuff. I don't care about you forgetting about that.

And it goes back to the whole story versus gameplay thing. Again. A perfectly well-played game makes for a horribly boring story. Who would like hearing about the hero who always wins, always makes the best decisions, never falls for a trick, has no flaws, and rarely even suffers a setback (and then it's always because of things beyond his control)? A guy who is a lantern-jawed, cool hero who - when the chips are down - becomes a lantern-jawed, cool hero. The home basketball team that suffers win after win, until a caring coach figures out how to bring out their best and teach them about teamwork, so they can start... winning some more.

BOR-ING!

That makes for lousy stories. Yet when we play a game, we're out to win. That desire to win makes us unwilling to accept the intermediate defeats and the ups-and-downs that make a good story. So designers force them down our throats with non-interactive cut-scenes, making it clear to us that no, this twist of events that makes things more interesting is NOT in our control, so it's "safe" to accept it and move on....

Now, in practice --- at least so far, and for the imminent-release of the pilot for Frayed Knights, I can't say that my attempt to recruit the player to the storyteller side of things with the Drama Star system has been an unqualified success. I think it has a subtle effect on the game in that direction, which is good enough for me. It's been a pretty divisive topic in theory, yet in practice I don't know if the testers (hey guys, feel free to speak up to confirm or contradict this...) actually found it to be that big of a deal in either direction. I know the system still needs some tweaking, and it will undoubtedly play a much bigger deal in the full release than in the pilot (in practice, currently, you are likely to face the "boss" encounter with only barely three bronze stars - enough to rescue ONE character from incapacitation, but they will have only one hit point left and be likely to drop in the very next round unless the battle is nearly over...)

Maybe I am wimping out and I need to make the drama stars an even greater influence on the game. But as a gamer who tends to devote only "casual" time levels to playing games these days, I really don't want to use golden handcuffs on players to lock them to the game, or to give players with only 20 or 30 minutes to devote to a game per session a crippling limitation.

I remember - as Gareth points out - how frustrating it got in Diablo II trying to find that stupid portal before I quit for the day. It wasn't like you really lost any significant progress by quitting without finding the thing... all the experience points and treasure you gained was yours to keep, even if you ended up repeating a level or two. In fact, from a purely mechanical perspective, it was really a non-issue. But it exerted a powerful force on players... maddeningly frustrating on one level, but also introducing a level of tension that probably improved the game overall on another level.

But here's the big question: It's really about fun, not drama. Dramatic tension can definitely increase the fun... But there is also a point (well, a fuzzy-gray area) where story interferes with the fun. Where playing-the-game - to win - is far more enjoyable then putting up with all those dramatic peaks and valleys. Where do you draw the line?

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:30 AM (Permalink)