Role-Playing Games, Part III

This post is very difficult for me to write, because it’s impossible to set up the context enough for anyone but me and my son to fully grasp.

Really, ya had ta be there.

But I can’t NOT share it. Partly because I set it up so well with the earlier posts on Role-Playing Games (part I here, and part II here), but also because it filled my soul with so much joy. So, I’m going to do my best, in spite of it all.

First, I believe that it is my God-given responsibility to raise my family in righteousness. It is my job to help all of my children learn to understand that their life choices now will impact their lives later, and the lives of those around them. It’s my job to help them learn to make choices that will lead to happiness and joy, as opposed to selfishness and bitterness. Ultimately, within my beliefs, it’s my responsibility to teach them things that will lead them to Eternal Life and Exaltation. This is a very difficult task, and one where I have not always, or even not very often, felt success.

So, as you read in these posts, as my sons started to bug me to play Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games, and as we reworked the game to satisfy my issues, I looked at it at first as a simply opportunity to have some fun and do some family bonding. Some guys take their sons fishing and hunting. In our house, we roll d20s.

Very quickly, however, I realized that I had the opportunity, as the gamemaster, to shape the flow of the stories to be able to teach my kids eternal truths about the nature of good and evil, and how to realize which side you’re on. I saw how I could show that choices have consequences, both good and bad. Standing up for what they believe in, even in the fiction of a game, is important.

This last adventure, over the course of the last few months, was particularly steeped in religious and spiritual imagery. They were grappling with issues of selfishness and darkness vs light and service.

I could spend pages describing the story as the characters chased across the land, even through dimensional travel in search of powerful artifacts known as the “Dona Creatori” (The Gifts of the Creator). The party, in a final climactic battle, entrapped the demon that had come to corrupt and control the high priests of the major church of the land.

At that point, Brendon’s character was faced with a choice. He was in a position to take over. He could easily keep running the church and bask in all the wealth and power that would bring him. Or, he could step back and allow the uncorrupted lower priests to step up and lead the church into a new era of righteousness.

He ended up choosing the latter option, and we wrapped up the loose ends of the adventure and “closed the book”, so to speak.

Today, we were talking about that decision, and he was explaining to me how his character (who started out conflicted and even a bit of a bad guy) ended up choosing the right. He told me about his thoughts through the sessions that had led up to that conflict and as he had interacted with the ghostly Champions of the Creator that helped the party find the Dona. He told me that he had wanted his character to be worthy of the donum, as the Champion had said (again, to really “get” this, you would have either had to be there, or I would have to write the novel).

As he was telling me all of this, I thought to myself: THIS is why we play RPGs as a family. Such a powerful time for both of us to learn, by doing, by living vicariously through our character sheets and our dice. We learn, we grow, and we grow together.

My heart swelled up, and I almost cried as he was telling me. Two years after beginning to make The Hero’s Tale, we arrive at this point. THIS is why I game. THIS is me, being a father.

I guess sometimes, I do get to get it right.





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Mark's Other Blog Posts: name post, name post,

Role Playing Games, part II

Or

How We Fix the Problems, I Hope


So, many years ago my kids began to play games with me. They started with video games, and then began to include tabletop games, like Pokemon CCG, and Yu-Gi-Oh. That was about the same time that I was getting involved in Magic, the Gathering, too.

Soon after, they began asking if they could play Dungeons and Dragons. I was very nervous for all of the reasons that I spelled out in the last post. It really has the potential to teach impressionalble children the wrong concepts. On the other hand, it can also teach teamwork and goodness. It can enhance creative thinking and problem solving.

In that sense, role-playing games are very much like life. What you get out of it depends very much on what you put into it. I definitely didn't want them to be playing under a GM that didn't understand this, or the nature of consequences for acts and choices. But then, did I really want to be the GM for a system where I had so many fundamental problems?

Years went by, and every so often, my kids would remind me how much they wanted to try it out. Sometimes I'd flat out turn them down, other times I would put them off. I looked at the newer edition rule books, and found that, even though there had been some changes, most of my core issues with the game were still in place.

I had some stock responses, like how I didn't have time to make up an adventure, or how we didn't have enough money to buy the books, or any of a number of excuses.

Finally, this last year, I could see that they weren't going to give up, and I could see that, at age 16, I wasn't going to be able to deny my oldest for very much longer. I also had been more active in game design, having worked through some years on Seeker's Quest Scripture Card Game.

Finally, I decided that I would make an RPG system that would deal with my fears and issues, and allow us to have a great time bonding and playing. So, last July, I wrote out a few quick pages of rules and tables and got started.

The rules themselves have undergone significant revisions already, and the core keeps getting more and more balanced. The adventure we've been playing has continued to grow and develop. We've had times where we've had to stop and rework the characters to reset the game balance, and there have been times when we've suddenly thought of great new ideas of things to add. There is still much to do.

But it has been a wonderful bonding experience with me and my children, and we'll continue to work on it.

Here's how we've dealt with the four issues:

The Focus on Fighting over Story and Character

First, from the very beginning, we began creating the characters by inventing their back story. Who is this? Where is he/she from? Why is he/she adventuring? What motivates him/her? What does he/she want to be when "grown up"? Then, rather than randomly rolling numbers for attributes, the players used a point system to develop the attributes and skills that fleshed out that backstory.

Secondly, I approached the entire adventuring process from the perspective of a story line. As the Game Master, I used the backstories of the newly formed characters to create the world and the opening situation. Then, as the characters began exploring this world, they encountered adversaries and others that made sense within that world. I constantly asked myself, "Why?" Why would these monsters be there? What is this Non-Player Character trying to accomplish?

Story became a very integral part of the game from the first session, and it grew from there.

The System for Magic, Spells, and Dieties

In order to fix the fundamental difficulties I had with magic, I had to abstract the system. We came up with five different kinds of "Powers" (I didn't even want to call it "magic"), and some basic abilities within each one. Each player that had powers had a certain number of "Will Points" that he/she could use in a day. The player would then be faced with a situation, and would think of an action within that type of power that might solve it. He/she would describe the action, and I, as the GM, would tell the player how many WP it would cost to do that. The points would be subtracted, and the dice rolled.

This made it so that the source of the power was vague, even inconsequential. There was no detailed incantations or "eyes of newt" to be thrown into bubbling cauldrons. The character simply willed it to happen, and if the die roll was successful, it happened.

The Alignment System

It was my son that suggested something that would end up fixing the idea of good or evil characters. He didn't even know it at the time. As we were creating the first character sheets, he said, "You should have a 'luck' attribute." I thought about that, and decided on "Karma Points". As the players did good and helpful things for each other and the NPC's in the world, they would gain KP. If they did horrible things, not only would the NPC's get upset and possibly attack or capture the characters, but they could be docked KP. The KP's could be used to artificially alter a critical die roll that failed.

As a result, the players began to conciously do things that would gain them Karma and avoid being bad guys.

The Overall Complexity and Inflexibility

Games have a tendency, over time to become more and more complex. That's the nature of game design. It's kind of an "opposite entropy". You encounter a problematic situation in the game design, and you fix it by adding some rules. That's OK, that makes it so you can get back to playing. But then, those new rules bring up other situations that beg for more rules, and more rules, etc...

I'm working to keep this game simple with guidelines for Game Mastering. This does mean that the GM has to really take charge, but it also frees him/her up for making the story happen instead of twiddling about looking up and administering the rules. He/she simply decides what's reasonable within a framework and goes with it.

It has been challenging to find the internal balances in those guidelines. There have been a couple of times when the system has essentially broken down, and we've had to rework the characters to keep them from being too powerful. In those circumstances, we've had to struggle with being responsible game designers while we like playing powerful characters!

In the process, however, we've really bonded as a family, and I haven't had the problems come up like I had feared. It really has been great fun.

Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Mark's Other Blog Posts: name post, name post,

Role Playing Games, Part I

Please forgive my self-indulgence.  These next two blog entries are about as geeky and nerdy as can be. It's all about my history as both a gamer and as a member of the Church. It's also a setup for some things to come.

Way back in the day, when I was a teenager, a friend of mine introduced me to this cool new game he had just bought called "Dungeons and Dragons".  We were thrilled, and both started playing regularly. As a game, it was a totally new paradigm. It was based in your imagination. You pretended to be characters in a party of mideaval fantasy adventurers, and you fought and wizarded your way through dungeons, killing monsters and collecting loot.

It was also the first game I'd ever played where you didn't "win", because you just survived and grew. You could "lose" if you died, but you never really "won". Some of my friends would look at it and say, "how do you win?" because that's usually what people want to know about playing a game.  But in reality, in role-playing games, you win by having a great time making a cool story.

This was at a point very early on in the history of the game. As I grew up playing more and more, later editions of the game became more elaborate and thorough and brought with them more and more extensive rule books.

It was a large part of the reason why my high school and early college grades were so bad. I was more into gaming than I was studying. I was a total geek. The problem was that, unlike today, "geek" was not even close to "cool".

Not only did D&D get in the way of my schooling, but it clashed with my religion as well. As it became more popular, and more well-known, many people handled it badly (iincluding many of the players), and it often got a reputation as something evil, or satanic.

In spite of all this, I often look back at my gaming life and friends and say that it is what helped keep me off drugs. I was with a group where I was accepted, and my need for creativity, weirdness, and exploration was encouraged and valued. Who needs drugs?

Then I went on my mission, and served The Lord for a time. Not long after that, I moved myself out to Utah, and soon after that married life and adulthood (jobs, etc) filled my life with practical reality. There wasn't time to devote to finding a good adventure group and developing stories, dungeons, and adventures.

As I became more and more fully devoted to the Church and the gospel, looked back at my gaming life, and though I had many wonderful memories, there were certain things that nagged at me. These were things that also made me uncomfortable about D&D in particular, and even about role-playing in general.

The Focus on Fighting over Story and Character

All too often, our adventures degenerated into die-rolling slug fests, and the victors would be determined more by the dice than any really creative problem solving. The winner was the biggest, the baddest, and with the most plusses on his/her magic sword.

I had already been playing the game for many years before I had an adventure campaign that was truly based on storytelling. I wish I could say that I was the Game Master for that one, but I have to give props to Rick, who did a fabulous job of setting scenes and encouraging interaction and real character development, not just adding up experience points. That was, sadly, a rare experience.

It's true that this aspect of the game is more related to those playing it, but I also feel that the intracacies and detailed nature of the rules of D&D created a situation where storytelling was de-emphasized. The system also had greater rewards for fighting and conquest.

The System for Magic, Spells, and Dieties

I had three problems with the way Magic was handled in D&D. One was that each type of spellcaster had a list of detailed and unique spells that he/she could choose from. They each did very specific things, and nothing else. It was very clear to everyone playing, from the GM to the newest beginner, what each spell did. This didn't allow for much creativity on the part of the player to create clever solutions to problems and situations.

Another problem I had was the details of the spells as set out in the rules. Each spell could have a verbal, somantic, and/or a physical component, many of which were written out and listed in the rules. This kinda gave me a strange feeling as a member of the Church because it began to look like a magic instruction book to me. In my mind, I could dismiss it as "just a game", but that level of detail bothered me.

A third problem dealt primarily with the Clerical spells. These were the healing and other abilities that were granted to the characters by dieties. This was the internal religion of the game. In order to "charge up" their spell lists, the cleric character had to spend so much time each day meditating or praying to his/her chosen mythological diety. These were derived from all kinds of sources, and in many cases were even evil. Clearly, as a member of the church, having any of the players around me praying to a demon in order to get their spells was a bit disconcerting, even if it was "just in the game".

The Alignment System

Which also leads me to the next issue that troubled me which was the Alignment system. This allowed players to decide if they were going to be, essentially, good guys or bad guys. I can still remember a long, extended campaign adventure that I GM'ed of all evil characters. Eventually, role playing turned to mistrust and infighting, and several real-life friendships (of many years) were almost destroyed in the proces. At that point, I swore to myself that I would never play an evil character, nor to GM for evil characters again.

Part of the problem with the playing of evil or even neutral characters is that the GM is not always prepared to nor interested in implementing consequences for evil behavior. Even though killing people brings the wrath of other people, that can often distract from an existing story line, bog it down, or simply require additional tracking and effort. It's often easier to just let it go. As a result, players can have a great time being dominant and powerful, spreading mayhem and taking whatever they want with very little negative results. With the wrong GM, the game can actually teach that it's exciting and fun to be evil.

The Overall Complexity and Inflexibility

My final problem was the intricate detail of the rules. At first, it was fun reading through all of the spells and the monster listings (that was a completely bound book, in and of itself - the Monster Manual), in the end it was frustrating because the players could access it as well. If I threw a scene at them with a two Hobgoblins and twelve Orcs, they knew immediately the strengths and weaknesses of their opponents. And, if I did something wrong, or made a judgement call, they were quick to point out that I had done it wrong, and that according to page 212 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, THIS was how it SHOULD have worked.

Ultimately, it was still a great game that I loved playing. But all of these things nagged at me over the years, and I finally decided that it was good that I stopped playing. Besides, I spent some time enjoying miniatures gaming, and then I discovered Magic: the Gathering, so I still was quite the gamer.

I was, however, not prepared for how to answer to the next challenge: My kids!





Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.

Mark's Other Blog Posts: name post, name post,

The Games of Zion - The Armor of God

I know that there are thousands of you out there than hang on my every word here at Mo' Boy, that can't wait for my next keystroke or mouse click, that find my writings so inspirational and powerful that...

...or not.

But, on the other hand, if you're one of two or three people who's been reading Mo' Boy for a while, you'll know of my on-and-off love/hate affair with LDS games.  If not, you can catch up on the discussion of LDS and Mormon themed gaming with these links. 

So, since I'm both into gaming, and am exploring game design, I follow this blog about mormon gamers and game designers. And Mike, the blogger, wrote about a game he's been working on that he's started self-publishing, called "The Armor of God".

It's fun for me, because, since I joined his email discussion group for LDS gamers and designers, I got to help playtest this game last spring.  That was before he got all those seriously cool graphics that make up the cards now (art done by Tony Peters).

The game had a lot of plusses going for it.

• It was a lot of fun.  My 11-year-old son, after playing the "print-n-play" playtest version of it with me, immediately asked to borrow the cards and ran off to his friend's house to play it.
• It learns fast, and it plays fast.
• It includes some intriguing game mechanics that are very different from existing games.  This game, in fact, is unique and doesn't follow the pattern of simply copying an existing famous game and slapping a Mormon "face" on it.
• The theme is something positive and scriptural.  You can't go wrong with that, right?

So, this is my unsolicited endorsement.  Mike doesn't even know I'm writing this, yet.  You can check it out at his blog, and even watch a "how to play video", and you can buy it, if you want to.  It's definitely worth checking out.


Mark has a lifelong testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). Mark also has other sites and blogs, including MarkHansenMusic.com and his Dutch Oven blog.



Mark's Other Blog Posts: Brendon Makes Dutch Oven Baked Ziti, Building Blogger Authority

Chapter and Verse, Revisited

A long time ago, I put together a big long post about LDS games. I expressed my frustration with a lot of the methods that people were using to put LDS games together. They were either basic trivia games, or repackaging an existing successful game model with an LDS face. From time to time, as I've encountered them, I've reviewed some of the LDS games I've encountered here in the pages of Mo'Boy.

And, of course, at one point, I decided to stop just grousing about other people's efforts and put forward my own, and I called it Chapter and Verse. It's a collectible card game based on the scriptures. Each card is a verse of scripture, and you're gathering verses together into chapters to make books. Many verses have a set of special rules, so that most cards allow you to change the play of the game just a little bit.

I hadn't really worked on it very much for the last year or so.

But lately, I've been "resurrecting" it, if you'll pardon the pun. My son and I printed and cut out three full sets of the basic cards (they're prototype, and don't have any fancy graphics), and made some decks just to get back into it and try it out. He kicked my trash, but I didn't mind. I was reminded of two things:

1. First of all, just how much fun this game can be. I really had a blast playing with him. It was fun to work out the decks (even though neither of us really put a lot of effort into it), and it was fun to make combos in play with the cards. This one has this special ability, and so that makes it so I can play this one!
2. Second, there are a few of the abilities that direct one's focus to the scripture on the card itself. Rather than just reading the effect or the topical icon, you have to actually read or interact with the verse on the card. Watching my 11 year old son do that, and engage eagerly with the scriptures like that was fun.

So, I got this idea for a deck, and I think I'll make it tonight before I go to sleep, then maybe we'll try it out tomorrow after school and after work... Hmmmm...

This first set was all made from verses throughout the four standard works. I'm thinking that, over the next months or so, I'll also make a set specific to the Book of Mormon.


MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com