Round-table 3: Drifting the Rules
Kevin sits down with Ryan Macklin, John Wick, and Eddy Webb to discuss the pros and cons of drifting the rules in RPG’s. It’s a good discussion, and fair warning, the last 10 minutes or so are actually a tangent on the realities of being an internet microcelebrity, and how people act vastly differently to said celebrities when they meet them in person rather than how they talk about them on internet forums. Still a pretty interesting conversation, but if you’re here just to hear about drifting, you might wanna skip the last 10 minutes.
Relevant Links
- Ryan Macklin
- John Wick
- Eddy Webb
- AEG
- White Wolf
- “Dick Fingers“
- Game Design is Mind Control
- Hoyle
- Star Wars Live Action Adventures
- Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
- Mods
- Race for the Galaxy
- Gloom
- Apocalypse World
- Mage
- Camarilla Fan Club
- FATE
- Houses of the Blooded
- GURPS
- Wilderness of Mirrors
- The Farm
- Champions
- The Wheel of Time
- Chuck Wendig
- Dudes of Legend
- Pendragon
- Spirit of the Century
- Mage Noir
- Russel Bailey
- D&D Encounters
- Thirty
- Joseph Campbell
- GDC
- Montsegur 1244
- Burning Wheel (what, you thought we’d get through an entire episode without mentioning it?)
- Eddy’s Camarilla LARP Theory
- Will Hindmarch
- 7th Sea
- RPG.net Thread about writers tone getting in the way
Crunchy Bits!
- Intro and Outro music by
Podcast: |
Tags: 7th Sea, AEG, Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Camarilla Fan Club, Champions, Chuck Wendig, D&D Encounters, Dudes of Legend, Eddy Webb, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, FATE, GDC, Gloom, GURPS, Houses of the Blooded, Hoyle, Jared Sorensen, John Wick, Joseph Campbell, Kevin, LARP, Luke Crane, Mage, Mage Noir, Mods, Montsegur 1244, Pendragon, Race for the Galaxy, RPG.net, Russel Bailey, Ryan Macklin, Spirit of the Century, Star Wars, The Camarilla, The Farm, The Wheel of Time, Thirty, White Wolf, Wilderness of Mirrors, Will Hindmarch
[…] listened to The Walking Eye’s round table with Eddy Webb, John Wick and Ryan “motherfucking” M…. I liked it. It is a show about hacking RPG’s, a topic near and dear to my […]
The bit that got my attention was drifting vs. shitty drifting, and learning from shitty drifting. That was the moment when I wanted to be able to talk back to my mp3 player.
Shitty drifting is potentially great because mistakes are how learning happens. But we can all learn faster if we don’t all have to repeat the same mistakes. If I can learn about a tempting hack of the game, and why it didn’t work, I can go learn something else about the game by making a different mistake.
What do game designers think about directly addressing the bits of their games that seem to invite ill-advised hacks, the “Money-on-Free-Parking” bits?
It seems to me that there are at least 4 possibilities.
Scenario 1. No hacking advice. Result, lots of redundant shitty drifting.
Scenario 2. No hacking advice, but explicit permission. Result, maybe a little more redundant shitty drifting.
Scenario 3. “Don’t hack my game, you’ll just screw it up.” Result, lots of sullen, redundant shitty drifting, and less willingness to talk about it, thus less learning.
Scenario 3a. “If you’re going to hack this, hack it here and here. If you hack it there or there, you’ll just screw it up.” Result, about the same as 2, maybe a little more productive.
Scenario 4. “You might be tempted to try changing this mechanic. We tried that too, and the result we got didn’t work very well. We think it’s because the mechanics of the game work like so. These changes things has following effects, some of which different, and some of which are just bad. Maybe you can figure out a way around those problems, or perhaps you want to mess with these bits instead.” Result, more interesting mistakes, more learning, maybe some better drifts.
How hopelessly Utopian do you think Scenario 4 is?
😉
This entire conversation copyright 1992 by JDCorley.
😉 Cool show.
My favorite chess variant is Fischer 960.
http://www.chessvariants.com/diffsetup.dir/fischer.html
Alden, I think Apocalypse World does something between your 3a and 4. Vincent shows you where and how to hack the game, but begins this by going through an example houserule which he then shows to be ineffective or pointless. He doesn’t go in depth into it, but it’s there. Plus the forums for AW have a whole subsection dedicated to talking and exploring how parts of the game work and why. Which I think is great, it’s no surprise that there are so many cool AW hacks out there.
JD: Vindicated!
[…] in response to the Walking Eye’s recent episode on rules drifting, we tackle the subject. I won’t say we did it better, but […]
[…] one of their round table discussions. Kevin Weiser of said show wanted to talk with us about “drifting the rules of role-playing games.” From their site: Kevin sits down with Ryan Macklin, John Wick, and Eddy Webb to discuss the […]