Its an RPG about a bar. How does it work?
One rule: This is where everybody knows your name.
Necessary creed:
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name.
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All people in this bar are vat grown clones. What does is it even mean to find happiness and love when everyone is functionally identical? Is it a biological or social imperative that we crave the acceptance of the clone patrons of this place?
ReplyDeleteHow do we play it, Eric Farmer ?
ReplyDeleteYou have one stat: inebriation. It starts at 0. As you do things, you get more and more worried about being a social outsider and need to imbibe more to be able to succeed at tasks.
ReplyDeleteChuubo's, pastoral setting, no drift needed.
ReplyDeleteI think Tony's got it folks.
ReplyDeleteAs I consider the "television" I consume -- about bars, families running burger joints, romantic telenovels, people in minimum security prison or clones protecting their families -- most of it isn't about Furiosa running from Immortal Joe.
Most of it is about families, whether created or natural born, enjoying being around each other. Maybe having problems -- with the local shrink, millionaire landlord, or school counselor -- but usually not fighting against a vile hard holder who treats the protagonists like objects. At least not obviously, and that's not really the point of contention.
So, how come our games are so dissimilar from other media?
[ I'll be asleep in an hour or so, but I'll read when I get up. Be kind. ]
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ReplyDeleteI'm on session 8 of a Ryuutama campaign, and before that we played Epyllion. Both are full of chosen family rhetoric, and gentle stories about helping the community in often small ways.
I've run about 9 games of Golden Sky Story.
My MonsterHearts seasons were filled with very well-meaning sisters, brothers, fathers, and mothers.
The Fall of Magic game we're currently playing feels like a mildly stressful road trip. It's mostly light details and family shadows.
We played a few games of Itras By that were straight out of Roald Dahl.
The only horror game I've ever run had MLP, and it's messages of friendship, at its core.
Games are interactive. Maybe they start from a similar desire to story-tell, but the activity is much more two-way than any TV show. You have to listen, process, create, speak - generally engage with others. TV requires no such thing.
ReplyDeleteKelley Vanda Those sound delightful!
ReplyDeleteOf those, the ones I've played are Monster Hearts and Fall of Magic. When I've played MH, the teens have been dysfunctional and horrible to each other. FoM, oddly, often the same.
One of the nicer game events was playing as your husband on our starship.
Todd Sprang Sure ... and that means what to genre conventions?
ReplyDeleteI guess I misunderstood the question. I think one difference is the amount of effort. Creating a 22-minute sitcom takes a shitload of creative effort, compared to playing in a game, which can theoretically be run completely impromptu. Perhaps it's the difference between what you can do off-the-cuff vs what you can do with a bunch of time. Also, I think TV is supposed to be more relatable and broadly appealing, so more settings are homes and bars, not fantasy realms. TV probably also has social intent, Mr Cleaver.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it boils down to goals. TV tries to entertain with scripted comedy and drama. Games entertain through creative unplanned interaction.
I think the activity vs passivity can't be overstated though either. Gamers want fun, engaging interaction. TV never tries to provide this.
Hard to articulate why Cheers RPG would be boring, but it almost surely would be. Maybe for the same reasons shows-gone-RPG typically suck?
I bet you could run a Cheers show with DramaSystem and it would be fun
ReplyDeleteI suck at gaming, so don't listen to me. Maybe Cheers RPG would be a good time. Just gimme retro-clones and I'm happy.
ReplyDeleteSave vs Potion or else you pass out in your own vomit in the bathroom.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought it wouldn't be fun
ReplyDeleteTodd Sprang You don't suck at gaming! And retro clones don't suck, either.
ReplyDelete[ For a whole lot of reasons, mostly dealing with internet drama, I strive not to say anything negative about OSR games. Or at least, if I'm going to do it, to do it intentionally and directed. That's not what this is about. ]
There's a whole world of weirder games unlike anything we know, though! And playing those sounds mind expanding.
William Nichols I tend to think of those sorts of games a bit more like "art" than anything else, but that's stepping into similar internet drama. I don't mean to try to define what makes a game a game.
ReplyDeleteTrue dat. Probably the most fun I had in any RPG in the past 12 months was at GaryCon playing an indie Weird West RPG with head-to-head tables (kinda cowboys vs Indians). Never would have thought I'd dig a Western, and had doubts about table v table, but it fucking rocked and I went "woo-woo-woo-woo" when we attacked.
ReplyDeleteWhich, coincidentally, is basically the basis for a shitload of TV & film, so... IDK.
ReplyDeleteAlso, let's not forget Prime Time Adventures.
ReplyDeleteI've heard of tables that do everything from HBO-esque 70's nostalgia drama to Superhero family fluff.
Part of gaming has, for a long time, been vicarious achievement. One demonstrates not merely presence and participation, but excellence.
ReplyDeleteMaking a space for that in the way you tell stories means considering what it means to excel. Old-style gaming had a very clear model of conflict against overwhelming odds. Excellence consisted of overcoming those odds with style.
Many indie games have gotten away from that type of story-line: Monsterhearts is not, directly, about overcoming an adversary ... unless you accept that the adversary is yourself. So while there's still conflict, the measure of how one excels in it is a very different aesthetic ... consciously more performative than goal-seeking.
The thing about stories like Cheers is that they are neither goal-seeking nor performative in the sense we're used to. Now George Wendt turned in many stellar performances as Norm ... but that kind of nuanced projection of a weary, conflicted man just existing is not the sort of performance we're aimed at applauding. And, to be honest, a Cheers game that tried to reward such performative acts would probably fail to engage.
I don't have good labels (yet) for what it is that games like Chuubo's encourage ... perhaps it is a vision of friends getting together to game without the urge to establish their own excellence?
Kelley Vanda PTA is a fantastic idea for how to do games like this. I don't have it internalized well enough to be sure, but that seems like the right direction.
ReplyDeleteProblem with PTA is that scenes need to culminate in a conflict. It sounds to me like you'd be looking for more color/character scenes.
ReplyDeleteIn a really old Judd Karlman post about PTA he suggests that if you have more than one scene that ends without conflict, the game starts to fall flat.
Tony Lower-Basch Similarly, many larps are not, at all, about overcoming obstacles. Tribunal, The Forgotten, etc are more about the lived experience. This is often done for sad things; I wonder if there's a space for it in happier things?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Next time you bring Chubbo's, I'mma gonna try real hard to play in it.
ReplyDeleteThis is slightly further afield, but Joanna W (possibly with Graham?) has a delightful unfinished game called The Tavern that's about the patrons and employees of a tavern. The rules encourage you to aggressively cut scenes before they come to a conflict, and it is fabulous.
ReplyDelete