In my review of Grey Ranks, I expressed my feeling that the game was capable of creating, in players, the kind of emotional response we associate with art of power; that playing the game can be a worthwhile and important experience, but that this kind of experience cannot reasonably be classifed as "fun." My phrasing was "fuck fun." Coincidentally -- or perhaps not coincidentally, since I believe Gijsbers is attempting to get at something similar -- the rules to his game Vampires says that it "transcends fun." (Gijsbers also created Fate, The Baron, and Stalin's Story).
And yes, playing this game can be a powerful emotional experience -- in a very different way from Gray Ranks. And in a way that makes this game an important one from a game design perspective, an exploration of a part of design space no one else has addressed -- and perhaps, one that, hereafter, no one needs to address again.
The basic set-up is this: Each player is a vampire. The power of vampires (expressed as "blood dice") are spent during conflicts with other vampires. Power is gained from human women whose blood you suck. The game is played in alternate conflict scenes and intimacy scenes -- the first dealing with conflicts among vampires, the second with vampires getting what they need from women.
During an intimacy scene, the vampire who is involved with this woman must decide whether he is using her pain, despair, or self-loathing to manipulate her into providing him with blood. A scene is then roleplayed out. At the end of the scene, the other players vote, stating a number between 0 and 5; the number of blood dice received by the vampire is the average vote. Here's what votes mean, per the rules:
- I like my lover to act like that.
- I would not like my lover to act like that, but could easily forgive him or her if he or she did.
- That was pretty evil, but still within my comfort zone.
- That was terrible. This roleplaying experience is reaching the borders of my comfort zone.
- That was really bad. I feel uncomfortable playing this game.
- I had not expected to hear something that disturbing in the context of this game.
In other words, Vampires is playing the game that all game designers play: It provides in-game incentives for players to behave in the fashion the game designer wishes to encourage, in order to achieve the designer's objectives in terms of player experience. Typically, the designer's objectives are along the lines of "having fun" and "continuing to pay a monthly subscription." Gijsbers's objectives -- well, I won't detail them (he has written an essay explaining them, which you should read only if you do not intend to play this thing), but clearly a statement about gender relations is involved.
Students of games will be familiar with Huizinga's conception of "the magic circle," the notion that when a game begins, the players tacitly agree to behave, while playing, as if the outcome of the game matters to them, but that in fact everything within the game is also expected to have no real-world impact, that once the game is over no ill-will should be retained, that the magic circle creates a safe place within which to play.
Vampires is interesting precisely because it challenges the magic circle directly. It asks the question of how safe it makes gameplay, and how far you can press that notion of consequencelessness.
Rules, rules, rules
Well, I read the game rules and the essay, and it certainly made me think a bit. (Spoilers ahead...)
I believe that with every game there is an implicit social contract: The players promise to play the rules, and the designer promises to provide an experience which is somehow "valuable". (Fun, interesting, engaging, thought-provoking, whatever.) In other words: IF you follow the rules, THEN you get a valuable experience. Vampires attempts to question "the nature of roleplaying", but it ends up as an attempt to undermine this social contract; the experience is intended to be so unpalatable that the players reject the rules. My question is, is this really necessary? If you want to get players to realize that the "rules" are not a tyranny, and things only happen in roleplaying games because the players agree to them--okay, that's fine. But THIS is so heavy-handed; it's like an attack on the nature of games itself. It strikes me as throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In his essay he says "Responsibility cannot be transferred to the rules", but I don't wholly agree, because as I said the designer has a role in the social contract. All we have to judge the game by are the rules provided. The designer says he wants emergent behavior of breaking the rules, but there really isn't anything in the rules that would lead to that outcome--besides pushing really hard to make the "intended" experience as awful as possible. Not only that--If the players do indeed rebel, will they feel some sort of rush of triumph at doing what's right...OR will they simply feel like they're not playing the game the way it was intended? "You're doing it wrong, that's not how the rules say to do it!"
Basically, imagine this conversation:
Players: "We followed the rules but the experience was pointless and awful!"
Designer: "Well, you weren't supposed to FOLLOW the rules!"
Well, the game was dated 2005, so I'd wager someone has made this argument already.
If you want to challenge the magic circle, there are surely subtler ways to do it. Train, for example, sounded like a much better take on the subject...
I can't help but wonder if
I can't help but wonder if it's supposed to be an attack not on the magic circle, but on the notion of treating games as popcorn that once the games over, you forget about instantly. But in attacking the magic circle, it's throwing the baby out with the...oh wait, I'm in paralel with John there already.
And in terms of "Responsibility cannot be transferred to the rules", it seems to be a reflection of roleplay culture that when it's good, its the game, when its bad, it's the GM.
It's odd, looking at how often the GM is blamed - sometimes I think I could write an RPG that tells a GM he can punch the players in the face and no one would blame me at all when someone eventually does - they'd just blame that evil, vile GM. Just thinking of it gives me this eerie feeling of being a pupeteer as designer, writing rules without responsiblity. Da powa! Da powa!!!
Huge spoilers ahead Hi
Huge spoilers ahead
Hi John,
The designer says he wants emergent behavior of breaking the rules, but there really isn't anything in the rules that would lead to that outcome--besides pushing really hard to make the "intended" experience as awful as possible.
I suppose the paradox is apparent: if there were something in the rules that led to the outcome of breaking the rules, the outcome would (to that extent) not be breaking the rules, but following the rules. No game can strive for its own abandonment--precisely in so far as abandonment is a possibility within the game, it is no longer abandonment.
But I would say that there is something in the game that at least suggests this outcome, even if it doesn't lead to it. It is the analogy between the fiction and the play situation; an analogy where the vampires stand to their victims as the game stands to the players. Nothing in the game forces the player to realise this; and if he does, nothing in the realisation forces the player to rebel; but the potential insight is there, and it certainly suggests rebellion.
In a sense, the game is trying to give you the experience of rebellion--which is a hard if not impossible experience to engineer, because an authorised rebellion is no longer a rebellion.
In his essay he says "Responsibility cannot be transferred to the rules", but I don't wholly agree, because as I said the designer has a role in the social contract. All we have to judge the game by are the rules provided.
I don't really understand this. I did not write that responsibility cannot be transferred to the designer; I wrote that it cannot be transferred to the rules. The fact that I, as the designer, have a certain responsibility (because of an implicit social contract, if you wish) does not confer any responsibility on the rules (how could the rules be responsible for anything?).
Now if my responsibility is to give you the possibility of having an interesting experience, it certainly does not follow that I am granting authority to the written rules of the game I produced. On the contrary, I, the designer, am trying to give you the experience to rejecting the authority of the rules on moral grounds. I and the rules are at odds. Your assumption that I grant authority to the rules is mistaken; but if you did not have this assumption, the game could not give you the experience it was intended to deliver.
All of which is certainly a bit paradoxical, but you can expect no less from something that is "like an attack on the nature of games itself". (Maybe it is?)
Not only that--If the players do indeed rebel, will they feel some sort of rush of triumph at doing what's right...OR will they simply feel like they're not playing the game the way it was intended?
A very good question. I simply don't know--in order to find out, you'd have to find players who would take the game so seriously that they'll play it beyond the point where it becomes unbearable, but not so seriously that they continue to play the game beyond the point where it becomes unbearable.
I would like to find out, but I feel that actively promoting people to play this game would be breaking my social contract because I really don't know whether they would have an interesting experience playing it, or just an awful experience. If it doesn't, I would judge the game to be a failure as a game (though perhaps still a success as an essay).
So I am very much in sympathy with your doubts concerning the final quality of the game as game, and you won't hear me saying "Play This Thing!". :) Perhaps reading it as an essay and discussing it is the more valuable way of using it.
Hi Callan, And in terms of
Hi Callan,
And in terms of "Responsibility cannot be transferred to the rules", it seems to be a reflection of roleplay culture that when it's good, its the game, when its bad, it's the GM.
I think we are talking at cross-puposes here. I was talking about moral responsibility; you are talking about responsibility for a particular instance of roleplaying being fun or interesting.
I suppose we all agree that when roleplaying is good/fun this is a result of the GM, the players, the rules, and a lot of other things, and that all of these are important. Also, that if it is horrible, any or all of these might be at fault. And obviously, in Vampires it will be the rules that are at fault--so they are certainly responsible in this way! But they do not have any authority, they cannot make the game unfold in a certain way.
(By the way, this game was originally published on The Forge, where I was then active. If there was one thing that everyone on The Forge agreed about, it was that if your roleplaying experience sucked, it was the fault of the rules 90% of the time. There was no danger of my comments on responsibility being misunderstood in that direction.)
Who cast the first stone?
Hello Victor,
You also seem to be blending the idea of moral responsiblity and responsiblity for play being fun/interesting? I'm not sure which your refering to when you refer to horrible play?
I'm thinking you mean at a moral level, but at a technical level I propose rules cannot make a game unfold in a certain way as much as a single rock cannot make several tons of rock roll down a mountain. As in, they both can. They might not. But they can both avalanche.
I think your trying to infer it's the group or individuals in the play group who made the game unfold/avalanche in such a way? Is that right?
More about rules
Hi, Victor. I think we're more or less in agreement on pretty much everything...there are just a couple of points I want to get straight. (Maybe they're points you already realized, but I'd like to write them down for my own sake, if nothing else! This discussion has made me think hard about the subject.)
First, having read Gödel, Escher, Bach, I can't help but think that it is possible to write a set of rules that encourages players to break them. I don't think Vampires manages it...of course, I don't really know how to do it either. Yet. ;)
And secondly, about the social contract. I think perhaps I didn't phrase my sentences very well. (This is a rather slippery subject...) You say "Responsibility cannot be transferred to the rules". I say that as part of the act of playing the game, the players agree to play by the rules. They do so because of the social contract represented by the game; they agree to play by the designer's rules, in exchange for the possibility of an engaging experience. In essence, they give up some of their authority to the rules. (In a completely freeform game the players would have ultimate authority and absolutely anything could happen. In most games the rules constrain the possibilities to "sensible" things, whatever that means for that game; the players are ceding some of their authority.)
When you release Vampires, your entire communication with the players is in the form of the packet of rules. The rules are all we have to judge the game by—that, and the implicit social contract that usually underlies game-playing in our culture. From the players' point of view, of course you as the designer are granting authority to the rules—that's what every designer does. (From your point of view, "[you] and the rules are at odds", sure.)
I think that's all I have on my mind. Like I said, maybe not "new" insights, but I felt I had to get them down "on paper"...
I'm a fan of Gijsber's work.
I'm a fan of Gijsber's work. I also have no interest in ever playing this game. However, I'm glad that I read the rules. I think there's something to be said for a sort of Borgesian/Glass Bead Game writing of rules for possible games, even if the consideration of the potential play is more satisfying than the actual play. Of course, I am an academic, and I spend a lot of time with my eyes firmly fixed on my navel. I can understand how a crowd of people who are more concerned with the practical would be turned off by those sorts of ideas.
On the more practical side, I am again, pleased that I read the rules, but I have something of an objection. I think that the game is hindered by its heavy-handedness, and I think it's a little too blind to things like intersecting oppressions, the potential for agency on the part of the oppressed, etc. On the other hand, it really depends on the audience. Those sorts of concepts are too easily co-opted by people who are interested in furthering systems of oppression, so maybe heavy-handedness was the right approach here. Also, some of that complexity (on the agency side) might emerge, as Gijsbers seems to hope, given his writeup.
Anyway, I digress, and I really just wanted to come out for conceptual games, as this one will likely remain for me, even if that's something that bores everyone else to tears.