Game Mechanics Affecting Story | Roundtable

Tonight on the Round Table, there's always a way to do what you want to do. You just have to figure it out and that figuring it out is part of the fun of playing. Matthew Colville, who has decades of experience in writing both video and tabletop games. I stare at you nutcracker and I say fire upon your soul as I slap you across the face. Ivan Van Norman, a tabletop and RPG game designer who wrestles with the sprawling narrative of forever verse. I am excited when my players are excited. When they do something, I'm sitting there and I'm just like, oh yeah! And Jasmine Boulard, host of the innovative RPG show The Out Crowd. Perfect because it's not the no but, it's not the yes and it's the yes but. I have a composition notebook with Lisa Frank stickers all over it. That's amazing. And it says GM's rule on it. I have a... In Sharpie. It's beautiful. That's high tech. Index cards. Always professional. I love my index cards. One for passing notes and two just because I basically make myself... You are amazing. Thank you. I make all my notes and kind of like stack them up so that when after the show is done I just take them and I just absorb them all. What was our subject? It was about game mechanics and how they shape the story and vice versa. Are they a means to an end? Or are they a process that allows you to like... I don't know. Further the storytelling. Do you have opinions on that either of you? My favorite parts about role play and role playing games is the stories and the interactions and I'm one of those GM's that if you sell it to me I won't make you roll for it. Oh sure. Yeah. We did that with 7C recently and that's one of the reasons I love 7C is that it rewards flamboyant storytelling and it does it in the mechanics. It gives you bonus dice. Sometimes you'll even earn what they call their kind of bennies or their hero points. If you sell it then go for it. Yeah. And with our system that we used over at Hyper you could also get plot points and you could literally spend them like plot point and become the GM for a moment. I remember this is going to be a obscure reference. There was a game called Torg from West End Games. It's not so crazy games. It's not important what it's about but it got a lot of juice when it came out because there were cards and players could get a card that allowed them to tell the GM, no that's not what happens. Right. But having a game mechanic that gives the players, but the thing a mechanic like that does is it lets the players know this is possible. They didn't know it was possible before until they saw the mechanic and as a good GM you always want to be able to say no you don't even draw that amazing. But knowing that the players go wait I can take over that gives them power that they didn't realize they had before. And not only just take over but like stop asking and start telling. Yeah. Can I do this? Can I do this? Yes. Why are you asking me? Why are you asking me? Go. Exactly. Exactly. You tell me what the glory that you're going to provide to this story is in the game. They made a game in the 90's called the Baron Munchausen RPG. Baron Munchausen. Which is very like that kind of like. That was a great movie. Yeah. And they made an RPG, I mean Baron Munchausen is a German folk character. Is it even really an RPG? I don't know. It's more like those one page things. It's a past the ball story telling game where somebody will say to you, Baron how did you get out when the queen of the moon had you captured and was going to cut your head out? How did you get out of that? Yeah. And this is the first time you've ever heard of that. And now you have to explain to us how Baron Munchausen made it out of that. Baron Munchausen is amazing because it's a pub tale. It's a pub tale that you all tell each other. That sounds awesome. And you just carry the story with you. That's where mechanics in a weird way because there's basically no mechanics. Correct. And it is a dreads like that. It's a glorified ghost story. The rules are just a tool for tension. And that tower, have you done know about dread? You're basically telling a ghost story. You take a Jenga tower, which they call the Tower of Doom. And as each player does things, instead of rolling the dice, they pull from the tower. And if at any time the player is pulling from the tower and the tower falls, that character either goes insane, they're dead, they're just out of the game. And then you stack the tower back up, you pull blocks, and then you keep going. So the tower is purely a metaphor. Yes. You are the tension in the story. Yes. That's awesome. That's beautiful. Have you ever felt like more structure is sometimes good for newer arpears? Because sometimes you throw them in this playground and they sit there and they'll stare at you like, how do we, how, how do, because they don't know what to do. They're like, well, I don't know what my tools are. And my brand, I'm like, everything here is your tool. And you can use anything in this beautiful playground. I guess that kind of gets into the more you prep and the more you hit using that term railroad because it's such a dirty word in the dating world. I think that the negative, I think that there are some negative connotations with row-roading, but I think that is the best way to get people into Dungeons and Dragons. And my opinion into pen and paper, I've gotten people playing it and it's like, I call it my gateway drug with Mysemistix. That is essentially a D&D campaign, right? You're reading from a book except there is no GM. And it's the easiest way to fool people who are like, oh, I would, I'd never play that pen and paper stuff into playing it from Mysemistix because they're like, I love this. This is great. There's more to this. And it's like there's this game called Mouse Guard. You may or may not be able to play a mouse with like an acorn shield. How adorable is that? I ended up being, I found myself in the position of being like a fourth edition D&D evangelist because I'm one of the few people that liked it. And so that surprises people. One of the things I noticed was that when you make a character in fourth edition, the first thing that happens is you get a bunch of powers. And that meant, and I've introduced dozens of people to D&D, hundreds probably now. And it was a huge difference between normal every day, any RPG where like, I don't really know what I can do. What are my options? And fourth edition is like, here are your options. And that made it, it empowered the players early on. But then the other thing I noticed going forward was it also ended up with many situations where the players felt like if this doesn't solve the problem, then they got frustrated. Right. I always loved 3-5. 3-5? Well, it was, in a weird way, that one was the opposite of how fourth did it. It was a sandbox. It gave you so many different choices. And it's just the ability to kind of get into it, which is why one people loved it because all the mechanics of D&D, and I mean mechanics like people who like to go into the engine and like play with everything in engineering. Break it. And that was what they loved. When I was running 3-5, I took this stuff super seriously and I would spend like an hour and a half with a chart for you. You weren't there for this adventure and you don't get that experience. This is divided by five. You're like an accountant. And it didn't even think about it. Didn't even think, didn't even at the time, it just seemed like that was perfectly reasonable. And it was an incredibly intense mathematical experience. That actually soured my first experience ever with pen and paper. Was it not? I had an ex who played. Obviously, now he's an ex and I'll tell you why. I decided. I'm going to play Dungeons and Dragons. And at the time I'd been playing World of Warcraft and I was like, this is it. And I purchased the books. It was the Book of Vile Darkness. Oh yeah. And this is my as you face. So I was like, cancer mage, that is me. I'm going to be a cancer mage. And I go, and this is like your stereotypical like they meet once a month and they play for like 10 hours. Oh wow. Yeah, like this is one of those groups. I get in. I'm so excited. I've painted my miniature and I figured out the game. And immediately they're like, well, you're chaotic evil. So you can't really roll with us. And I'm like, really? And they're like, yeah, you can't play with us. I'm like a bunch of greasy nerds. I immediately turned it into like a sex thing. I'm like, it's because I'm a girl. And this is your little boys club. And I got really upset about it. I may have flipped a table. But the funny thing is they hadn't, they weren't coming at you on a gender issue. They were coming in because you were a cancer mage. They were like, well, you must be evil. You must be evil. You should have taken all that hate as like a cancer mage and like turned it into like the character. Well, they were higher level than me. And everything had to be by the rules. And as a GM now, I'm just going to say this. If a little brown girl walked into my basement like, I'm excited to play D&D. I would never be like, we're going to kill you because you're only level one and you're evil. Because what you want is you want more people to play. Yes. Right. And I remember when I started, this is like 1985. Like, there was no, there was not yet this stigma of everyone I knew was playing in high school, like a cool people were playing because it was still a relatively new thing. And if someone said, what is that you're doing, you wouldn't try to explain it to them. You would just say, here's a character she'd sit down and play. Right. Right. I would have just like, like explored why you wanted to play the cancer mage, explored like the concept of who you wanted to do into it and try to incorporate that. And if the character needed to be like four levels higher for you to be able to play in the group, even if it's just for that one session, well, then fuck it. Right? Like, you know, just make them four levels higher. Yeah. Like who cares? In hindsight, it wasn't a great character. I was basically like a bootleg cat woman who had been resuscitated by play grats. I'm curious. So you get the book of Vile Darkness, were you thinking, this is what D&D is? Oh, yeah. Was there a culture clash when you discovered, oh wait, this is just this one kind of like offshoot over here in the park. Yeah, I was really disappointed. Right, because if you're like, this is awesome. Yeah. Really, it's like knights and gandals and stuff like that. The first session I went to, I was really disappointed. I'm not going to lie. If you guys want to hear about this train wreck, let me tell you. So I decided I'm going to play D&D. And I went to the store and I got like, I don't even think I picked up a player's handbook. I'm pretty sure I just Googled how to play. So I grabbed the book of Vile Darkness, I make my character head over, and there's like a dude wearing a barbarian hat with horns and they're all like, you know, barred Thor. And I'm like, oh God, like what is this crap? I was so upset. Well, if we're talking about how game mechanics influence storytelling, that is 100% that. You had this one example, magic items from the book of Vile Darkness, all these crazy prestige classes, and that 100% colored your notion of who not only your character was, in other words, these weren't options. This was it. Also what the game could be. And when you walk in, you're like, okay, well, this is actually a lot less interesting. They were boring. Sure, yeah. And that's why they tried to kill me because they're boring people. Screw those guys. Yeah, I can feel all the shade. Yeah, look, I get to hang out with these awesome people now, and they're probably still eating Cheetos. It's always, it's, it is always often about the people that you play with. Now to be fair, they always, they have their own process, and we were just talking about safe spaces too. Like a table's always a safe space, even if they were not kind to you. Okay. Ivan, you're so much of a better person than I am. I don't know, I've just seen a lot of people who have been burnt from, from in a similar way to what you put up with, and probably even countered a whole lot. I mean, look, we're lucky that we're in a position now where I think this is, I feel like this is the beginning of the turning of the tide. Right. Where for the past 40 years, more people were bouncing off of D&D than playing it exactly because of the experiences. But now, I think more people understand if they end up at a table like that, they're like, well, this is stupid. I know there are better tables out there than this. Yes. I know there are better tables out there. And that's the, and that's the joy of like the fact that we're now in a place where there's more options is that if you don't like what's here, there's, there is someone out there, no matter what you want to do, who is totally in with your jam and is going to celebrate you for what you bring to the table and wants to incorporate you, even if it's not right in front of you. It is out there. You just need to be patient and go and find it. Yeah. Don't like, don't make the mistake of thinking these people are the game. Do you think that because of the advent and all of these RPG shows that people feel pressured, that their first campaign has to be perfect because they're watching these shows that are so great? Yeah. And no one watches Titanic and then grabs a video camera and it's like, I'm going to make Titanic, you know, and kind of go crazy or nobody goes to like the Louvre and sees a sculpture and then picks up a marble and it's like, I'm going to do David, but anyone can play a role playing game. Sure. I've got a lot of people commenting on my YouTube videos saying I watched Critical Role and thought I could never do that. Of course you would. Of course you would think that. If you watch Critical Role, you're going to think, holy crap, D&D is this thing. Unobtainable. Exactly. And so eventually, and I told people in the videos, I said, eventually I will stream one of my games and you will see that I am just like you. We're just a bunch of bumbling idiots. We're just a bunch of nerds are going to play. Just tumbling through it. Yeah. And we streamed and people were like, holy crap, you and your friends are just like me and my friends. I can do this. And I'm like, absolutely you can. One of my favorite experiences is when we were running the Pugmire game and it was still in beta. The roles weren't even done, dude. Like games are not even finished. But we did a stream of generating NPCs and like it was just a spreadsheet and it was just like a crowdsourcing medium in which I felt like everybody got to feel like they had a hand in the creative process and they got to make something. And mine is more about showing you what's going on behind the scenes. And it really started to frustrate me when people in chat, at first they would see my notes and they would watch and you could see them talking about, did you see what he just did? This person said this and he completely flipped it around. And he threw that out and made something up. And then when it got to people, yeah, I was like, oh, this is great. I'm glad we're doing this. But then it got to the point where people were watching for the story. They weren't seeing the behind the scenes anymore. And that's one of the reasons we stopped. But that notion of like seeing what the DM is doing behind the screen. There's so many other role-playing opportunities out there. And every week there's something like next, like in a couple weeks, we're playing a game called Puppet Land. It's a craft-made world in which everybody is puppets in a puppet land and there was a human who was the maker. And it's funny because that game is very much, it gives you a story in which to kind of work with. But tying it back to our topic, the mechanics are very much centered around you have to tell it like you're telling a story. You know, you know, Sir Francis with the elaborate bow tie walked into the room and saw the nutcracker sitting upon the table. And that's what the DM would say. But then the nutcracker character would go, I stare at you nutcracker and I say, fire upon your soul as I slap you across the face. And instead of doing the I statement, it is the third person statement. So everyone's telling it like it's a like it's a single narrative. So it's a little bit like that past the ball. Right. That's kind of cool. And it's wonderful because you're essentially all telling a story together. Were you your first DM? I was my first DM. Did someone run for you? No, no. You're like, I need to know. I was my first DM. I left such a bad impression on my first players in my first game that like I think about that game so often. You feel bad. You still feel bad. I still feel bad. I wake up in a cold sweat like, no, those children probably hate D&D now. I did. I just, you know, it didn't completely ruin it for some. Thank God. I feel like when I first started playing D&D, there was this feeling of it's the DM versus the players. Oh, sure. Sure. That's a classic style. That's a classic. That adversarial style. All of my, I think my first six games, it felt like he was trying to kill us or he was trying, he was moving against us or he wanted to tell his story. Kind of like what you were saying. And we were trying to tell our stories. Right. And one thing that I feel like Open Legend tackles right in its GM guide is like, don't freaking kill your players. Yeah. Try. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark, not so stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet. This high-flying action-packed adventure will take them across the world fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale, which is good because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Wait. Well, if that's all I can just dispose of you. Wait, what? Ha ha ha! All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog presents the Chaotix case files. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. When the Chaotix are on the case. Of the Regency Era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, versus the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency Era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get podcasts. Behind the scenes, look at the iconic TV shows. We're talking Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, and Chicago Med. Join me each week for an exclusive conversation with the writers, the crew members, and the stars. Voight's doing the right thing for Voight. Check out the One Chicago Podcast from Wolf Entertainment and USG Audio, available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Try to work with your players. Have a child-like excitement. I am excited when my players are excited. Oh, sure. Yeah. I'm just like, I'm sitting there, and I'm just like, oh, yeah, and I'm just as excited as they are. And I always tell my audience, I'm like, if you don't feel that way, you really got to recenter and decide how you're going to GM. And what's important to you? Because you should be excited, just like they are. It's like going back to that old improv style of thinking. It's not a no, it's a yes and. It's not a no, but it's a yes and. And you know, there's always limits, and you should always put limits, because without more conflict, there's no reward. Right? And I think that's another beautiful thing that good DMs do is they balance that conflict versus just giving the players anything they want. There's a difference between doing that. Because you can go too far. If you give the players everything they want, then they don't feel challenged. It's kind of like they're just walking through the situations. Sometimes you have to be mean. There's always a way to do what you want to do. You just have to figure it out, and that figuring it out is part of the fun of playing. So if your players have ambition, if they're trying to get things done, you don't just say no, because that's not how your character works. Or no, because there's no rule that supports that. It's like, no, there's a way to do it, but it may require you having to jump through some other. Sacrifice is the big one. Yeah, because for me. You want to run a game on that table. Well, I realized that the juice for me was when my players would take this magic item that they had randomly gotten, and they're like, well, I guess I'll take that thing. It's not what I wanted, but that, and I was like, look, that's what the table said you get. And then later on, when they take it and come up with some incredibly inventive use for this that gets them out of a jam, and I'm like, I guarantee you, no one who has ever played D&D has ever used that item to do that thing. You're unique. This is a unique experience. And that, to me, had a big impact on the kind of game I was just trying to emulate that. So we talked a lot about story light and the systems. Have you ever had a gameplay experience in which, like the mechanics of their rules actually made the game better for you? Yes. You know? I think I've been. Great. And one of them was vanquished. Okay. Having the Q system and the plot point system, there was never a moment where if I had a plot point, I had to worry about failing a skill check on something I thought I should pass. Got it. I played a techno manser so she could manipulate technology. And you know how like Necromancer's like stitch dead bodies together and create golems? I would stitch technology together and create, yeah, and control it with my mind. And what was great about that system is if there was a moment where I'm going to pull like a Hank Pym or a Tony Stark moment, I could like spend a plot point and just be like, I'm now the GM. And so this is what's going to happen. I'm going to do a backflip off the table. And you're just going to cut through the bullshit and get straight to the point. And I never had to worry about like rolling that fail. And there's times as a GM where you'll see somebody, they'll like describe something really cool and then they'll roll for it and they'll roll a three and you're like, Yeah, that was an amazing idea. I wish it had worked. I feel like that should have worked. That should really should have worked. But you only rolled a three. There was a game called Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Okay, okay. There are many different editions of it. But it's basically I think the same system they use for Star Wars now. And similar and also Dark Heresy. I loved the die mechanic because it encouraged me to run the kind of game I would not have run otherwise, which was a much more pulp fiction Indiana Jones out of the frying pan into the fire because it's like you roll a dice. It's like, yes, yes, you succeeded, but something horrible happens. Yeah. Successfully jumped from one of these two coaches to the other one while they're barreling down the street. But now you're hanging by your fingernails. That's why. And that reversal of like, yes, that happened, but you're not going to worst place. Yes, but it's perfect because it's not the no, but it's not the yes and it's the yes, but. Yeah, exactly. I like that die mechanic of the good news, bad news thing. And that always made the players feel like they were making progress. And it also made me feel like I was creating tension and I was like, I would not have done this if it wasn't for these dice and this dice mechanic. I agree 100 percent. Edge of the Empire sometimes can feel can be a little crunchy, but then you have these great moments come out of it and it's worth it. So what games are you folks intending to run next? I would love to do a campaign set in like the Mahabharata because I feel like like Indian mythology isn't explored a lot. I feel like anything outside of like European mythology isn't explored a lot. There's a lot of cool. Like Chinese and Japanese mythologies out there with huge pantheon of gods that are like crazy out of this world. And great like story. Yeah, great stories behind them. Great saw this is just like awesome stuff. That's cool. How about you? I want to do a game where I pick three players where I get together with that player individually and we're going to play from first to third or fifth level, just you and me. And you are some kind of regent. You are somebody who is a Duke or a King or a wizard that controls this and then on another night of the week, you and I playing and the three players are in the same world and they're dealing with other NPCs and they you don't realize that the wizard that you're talking to is her. Right. And then you want to build back stories that are like set up by the time we all get together. There'll be two or three or four players who aren't part of that. They're just normal players in a D&D game, but these other players have not only have I played through my back story, but I have a position in this world. I have responsibility. You've done several sessions with each one of these players that like link them together. And they didn't even know because then you're basically building up to one beautiful giant moment where it's like I actually. I love that guy, Richie style. Thank you. Yeah. I live for stuff like that. So I want to run 10 candles. 10 candles is essentially a system that has a physical representation of the story in the form of 10 candles. And what you do is the scenario is always you are the last person of a blank. And the idea is that during each plot point, you snuff out a candle. The idea being that the very last candle is snuffed out and the idea being that you're basically going through and maybe you have people with you and they're getting snuffed out as you're through, but you're going through this terrible alien situation. Did you ever play prey? Oh, the video game. I've heard of the video game. Yeah. The video game prey. And then you know, they're basically just escaping, capturing, moving through, and then that final one, and it's like there's still hope. I would love to end on hope. Some of the best stories are told that way. Oh, sure. Like Rogue One or even Halo Reach. You know how Halo Reach is going to end because you know where Halo One starts. I mean, Titanic, you know how Titanic's going to end. You know how it's going to end. It's a good story. And if it's going well, you know it's going well because the players have forgotten, oh, that's right, everything ends. And that's our jobs as a GM to make sure that we make the journey interesting. Because does the end result ever really matter? It's the journey. Yeah, sure. That's what you hold close. And I love that. It's like fighting fate versus like ending on like a smidgen of hope versus the death of a civilization. Yeah. Yeah. Three totally different approaches that are all wonderful stories that I would subscribe to at any time. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world. Praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s. And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. You saw the edit, but that's not the full story. Devonte Anderson from Love is Blind is finally speaking out. From his relationship with Brittany to productions roll behind the scenes to the moment everyone's been debating the people of color comment. And yes, we asked him everything, including what Netflix didn't show like Brittany meeting his family. A lot was cut and now it's all coming out. No filters, no safe questions. Just the truth. Listen now to the Roxanne and Chantel podcast available where you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was he's great. We love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent decoveny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.