Forking The Culture: Making "New Model Colony" Pt. 5

Following from , today I bring it all together.

Tabletop RPGs derive their power as a medium by taking the wargaming medium, scaling the playing piece down to a single destructable figure, and them imposing a persona filter that guarantees asymmetry in ability while retaining the key components of wargaming: imperfect intelligence, finite resources, and clear objectives to pursue using them complete with win and lose conditions.

This means that tabletop RPGs, as a medium, are a medium of practical problem-solving and it is this aspect that the "game" part reveals itself as the cornerstorne upon which every other aspect of the medium rests; the degree to which this is weakened is directly proportional to the degree that is ceases to deliver the promised experience of play to the audience.

That it is also a medium of virtual life-experience is secondary to it being a medium of practical problem-solving; it's right there in the grammar of the label. (And it is not surprising that the decline in English competency over the last generation or so coincides with the confusion on what RPGs are to most familiar with the term at all.)

Tabletop RPGs are a medium of active participation. It is the Game Master who reacts, not the players. All that the Game Master needs to do is to provide the information that their character ought to possess, and then let the players process that information before prompting them for a course of action.

The problem is that the current establishment (i.e. Wizards of the Coast, and their fellow travelers at Paizo et. al.) deliberately invert this on the basis of using storytelling, not wargaming, as the basis for the game's play paradigm. Storytelling is passive consumption; wargaming is active participation. Players that succeed playing New Model Colony accept that they are the ones responsible for their success, and therefore their satisfaction, at the table because they see this medium being one that relies on players being active agents and go for it.

So let me summarize how New Model Colony goes.

• Players show up, get the Executive Summary--premise, initial conditions--and take 5-10 minutes rolling their first characters. Remember, this is strict 3d6-in-order, everyone is Mannish, and you have only four class choices: Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief. You can fit this on a 3x5 index card; a sheet out of a notepad or notebook is fine.
• Start play. No need for characters to know each other before this point. Players find some work that needs doing and go do it. Treasure recovered, problems solved, leveling up begins- if they survived. Begin the fundamental feedback loop.
• Successful characters begin attracting henchmen, sometimes sortieing solo with henchmen in tow, going further out until they reach Name Level and begin staking out territory for their stronghold. Upon completion, they enter the Domain Game and go into semi-retired status; reroll or play the henchmen until they're promoted to full status by equaling the master's level.
• Dead characters stay dead unless and until acted upon in some manner to return them to play. (Hence "roguelike".)
• Time proceeds even away from the table; this is how players unable to make it can stay in the campaign while handling real-life responsibilities. Bob's Fighter is making a magic sword? He'll be busy for a while working at that forge, during which that Fighter can't be played. Bob's wife is going to give birth again during this time, so him being away from the table is fine.
• Players push back the frontier, civilizing the lands they tame and settle, expanding the Colony's domain as a direct result of play. New playable character options are the direct result of previous characters' efforts in contacting new peoples, learning new abilities, etc.
• New characters, and players, come into the campaign and the cycle begins anew.

That's a campaign; it's literally the living of a fictional historical era as it happens. That's why it's not a story; there is no end, no theme, no narrative. Just people making the most of their circumstances, some failing and some flourishing, and no one knows which is which until after the fact. That's "let the dice fall where they may", being scrupulously disinterested in the players' characters outcome, and just arbitrating things as they come- and D&D is not the only game where this is the best practice. All proper RPGs are like this, even if the specifics vary -often wildly.

Next week I'll delve into this some more to show what I mean by example.