The Clock Radio Stereo Theory Of Roleplaying Game Design

Please bear with me, this is another 'Grand Experiment' post for my
Blog and it may not work right. Supposedly Blogger will let me publish
via email, so I thought I would give it a try.

Recently, when involved in discussions with other folks on other
blogs, livejournals and here at home I began to lay out a theory of
mine in roleplaying game design.

"Roleplaying Games and Clock Radio Stereo systems have a lot in common."

A Clock Radio Stereo is a nifty little modern device that many people
have in their home next to their bed. It records the passing of time
with little digital numbers, can be set to sound an alarm at one or
more times. It also has a radio tuner and can turn the radio on
instead of the alarm. It also has either a tape or CD player built in,
which it can play music over, or which can used instead of playing the
alarm or the radio.

It is an evolutionary device. It began, historically, as an Alarm
Clock. Later on some engineer added the radio. And some time later it
was redesigned and the stereo device was added on.

Roleplaying games are also evolutionary things in a similar vein.
Let's look at <B>D&D</B>. It began as a War Game, a pure Gamist
construct, and then was soon evolved by folks into a combination of
War Game and to some extent a Simulationist Tool. Later
Narrative/Story Elements were added to it to make it into the
roleplaying game that it is known as.

The problem is that D&D suffers from it's roots. Yes, it does
all three things and has elements of all three in place. But it
doesn't do Stimulationist or Narrative/Story elements of playing style
nearly as well as it does Gamist.

A Clock radio stereo is similar in that it is generally a damn good
clock. It keeps time well, has a battery backup in case the power goes
out, lets you adjust the time as needed and may even adjust itself for
things like Daylight Savings Time.

As a Radio it leaves something to be desired. The Antenna will never
be as good as that on a standalone radio receiver/tuner, because it
has to be compressed into a small space (often not even sticking out
visibly or being extendable from the case). This means it picks up
less stations and may in some cases be FM only rather than AM and FM
(or the rarely found Shortwave band that used to be common years ago
on many higher quality radios).

As a Stereo it also leaves something to be desired, because it lacks
large quality speakers with high end Woofer and Tweeter capability and
often no decent base output to it at all.

The clock radio stereo is good for the person on a budget, the person
who doesn't have the time to invest in getting seperate quality
components to do the three tasks that it does, doesn't have the space
to work with that such would need or who just wants to use it now and
then and doesn't need to play CDs or listen to the radio too often.
It's also fine for the person who's ear is not as discerning to the
sound qualities and doesn't need a large range of radio stations to be
received. And it still tells time fine and gets them up in the
morning.

Many other game systems, besides D&D can also be seen this
metaphoric way, in different ways.

GURPS, for example, is a Skill Based Realistic Simulationist
System with Functional Game elements that can be used for Narrative
Tales that are willing to include a high probability of protagonist
death. The recently published "Powers" supplement lets you use it for
Science Fiction, Horror and some concepts of Fantasy and Superhero
Play. But these are add ons. Like the Clock radio Stereo, it will not
work as well for Superhero as a system specifically designed for
Superheroic Campaigns specifically, and it does Cinematic style poorly
when compared to a game specifically designed for such.

Makes perfect sense, since Powers were an add on. It was a Combat and
Skill system game that had later Story elements and then powers added
onto it. Even the Fantasy System, also skill heavy, has some balance
problems, because it wasn't really part of the initial concept but was
one step down in design.

Hero, for another example, is a Power Based Cinematic Genre
Emulation with well tuned game elements. It began as "Champions" a Superhero System. It can be used for Narrative
Tales, but it is not what the system is good at. It's good at comic
book style play and highly emphasizes the mechanical gamist end of
things in design. It has a skill system, but such is not nearly as
well balanced or flexible or extensive as it's power system. It does
powers well, skills poorly and has only limited support for the story
end of things.

Makes perfect sense, since the earliest versions of the game had no
skill system. The skill system was added on much later in the process,
and has been modified a number of times, but never quite balanced
against the power structure. It's why a Batman like character, without
much in the way of powers but a lot of skills and gear, can be more
expensive to construct than a Spiderman or The Hulk.

Basically one can go thru each game system out there that's been
published and realize quickly that each was built with a certain root
concept, and that a lot of the rest that was added later. They often
also have the problem of not being balanced or meshing well because
they were not made by the original person or people that conceived the
base elements of the game.

So, oftentimes, you spend a lot of time as a gamer either putting up
with a game that fails to fill in depth one or more elements that you
are looking for in a game.

Or you spend your time hunting around for a game that fits the
elements that you consider most important. Or you try to redesign an
existing game on some levels so it does something you want better. Or
you become a game designer and design games to fit the niches of
interest that you have that you can't find the right combination of
parts to work with.

And maybe you find or redesign or make one that does what you want it
to do in a way that fits you. And then you need to go and find like
minded folks that want the same thing.

What's the point to all this? Well I wanted to better explain
that analogy I was using, as I'll come back to it in the future in
some of my writing. And thru it I hopefully have explained a bit of
myself and how I see things.

I'm one of those folks who came to the conclusion that I would only
find design satisfaction in a game if I designed it myself. That said,
I've only recently come back to design after taking a few years off
and using other people's systems and settings and seeing if I could
compromise certain game aspects for myself as a GM, or simply sit back
and ignore some elements of myself that were complaining about some
aspects of design in commercial systems. Or find someone else had
designed what I wanted.

So maybe this gives you folks a bit of a peak into what I'm about when
it comes to Roleplaying Games. Lets you look under the hood and see a
bit of the quest I'm on. Feel free to think I'm tilting at
windmills... but be warned I can be as caustic and feisty as Cyrano.
Feel free to run away and not read what I write if that sort of thing
scares you, bores you or annoys you.