Monthly Archives: June 2011

Second Data Point: Rules Mastery

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Car trouble this morning kept me away from the KB, so apologies for the late post. Today, we’re going back to compiling the list of GM metrics.

So rules mastery is a little bit contentious as a datapoint, but I think it’s an important one because it’s not really about rules mastery so much as it’s about how rules knowledge and handling impacts the game. That idea is probably easier to show than explain, so the rating basically breaks down as follows.

0 – Applied rules incorrectly or spent extensive time on reference or rules arguments.
1 – Rules reference* was required but did not impede the game
2 – Rules were correctly applied without reference.

* Reference defined as having to look outside the elements in play to get information. Referencing a character sheet or GM’s screen (at least a good one) is not reference, but checking a book or website would be.

Laid out that way, I’ll speak right to the obvious problem – this seems to suggest that ad hoc rulings and houserules are bad, because they elicit a lower score. That is, of course, utter bullshit. Ruling on the fly is something that you usually do to make a game more awesome, and it seems odd to penalize that.

The thing to highlight is that this is not a penalty, it’s a measure of friction. If the game is demanding a lot of rulings then it might still be a lot of fun (based on how awesomely you make those ruling) but it’s possible that there might be some disconnect betweent he game you want to run and the game you want to be using, and this reflects that. Both of the 0 behaviors are reflective of such a disconnect.

So what about house rules? For purposes of this test, house rules _are_ rules. They’re the rules your using to run the game, and so long as everyone knows what they are, they don’t count as avoiding the rules. That last is a bit of a hurdle for the GM who keeps everything in her head, but if a 0 score is enough to encourage that GM to share her thinking with players, then it’s good incentive.

Now, to reveal my own misgiving, I’m uncertain about the inclusion of rules arguments in this, and may ultimately remove it. While rules arguments may reveal a disconnect with the rules, I think it’s more likely they’re reflective of a social problem, one that is only tangentially related to the rules.

Bottom line though is that this is a measure of how much the application of rules (which is different than the actuality of the rules) impacts play. It definitely has a bias towards games with easier rules mastery (that is, light games), but since the yardstick is the impact on play, not the size of the rules, it’s not as big a gap as all that. Curiously, this also biases towards good design – a well designed character sheet reduces the need for reference, and can potential bump up the score of a game as a result. It’s a secondary effect, but a kind of interesting on.

Detour into Collectablity

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Stepping away form the GM metrics thing today due to a topic that came up on twitter and demanded more than 140 characters.

The idea of a collectable RPG has been with us pretty much since the initial success of Magic: the Gathering. The idea of producing an RPG with a similar sales model – collectable elements, variable rarity, repeat sales – has always held an appeal, but has never really materialized. This is probably just as well, since I’m not sure the CCG model holds up well for RPGs, but the model is not the idea.

Lately, I’ve been starting to see collectability show up in RPGs from an entirely different angle, and it’s kind of intriguing. I trace it back to Fiasco, which is not itself collectable, but which created the model that allowed it. Fiasco uses “playsets” as part of its model, and while the book comes with a number of playsets (and the forthcoming Fiasco Companion will have more) there have been many more playsets released on the internet. As rules material, these are more truly “modules” than published adventures which use the same term. They an be seamlessly swapped in and out, added or removed, all without changing the game.

When Apocalypse World came out, it followed a similar model with its “playbooks,” each of which was basically a character class. As with playbooks, the core book came with several, more were released, and they could be seamlessly swapped in and out. Simple enough, except for one simple change: friction.

Playbooks and playsets tend to be pdfs, which means that distribution is easy – all it takes is someone putting them up for public consumption. The AW playbooks were never distributed that way. There is no central reference for them, nor place you can download them. They’ve been distributed under distinct circumstances (such as parts of promotional bundle) and, unless you actively follow the game online, it’s hard to even know these are out there.

But they’re not just thrown down a black hole. Instead, the expectation is that they will be freely swapped and shared from person to person. The files are still easily moved around, but the lack of central reference means that their distribution needs to be at least somewhat personal. That is to say, they’re collectable, traded and swapped in a manner more reminiscent of bootleg tapes than CCGs.

This is an interesting model, and its strengths and weaknesses both tie to how well it pays off for the fan. Once a fan knows about these things, he needs to dig around to find out more (which is rewarding in and of itself), get his hands on one or more of them (rewarding for cachet) then share them (rewarding for being able to help). In short, there’s a huge emotional payout for putting in the work (and, of course, keeping the game in mind). Certainly, some will be alienated by this – it takes time and effort to engage in this kind of viral marketing – but in a fashion similar to ARGs, the enthusiasm of those who buy in tends to offset any losses.

Obviously, there are some community-building benefits to this, but the biggest advantage is one of pure marketing. Forced scarcity is a classic way to increase demand, and this is a great example of it. I’ve been a believer in the commercial advantages of the “rules module” approach in general, but the introduction of scarcity & collectability is really the sharp end of really canny marketing.

A big part of what makes it work is that it needs to be paid for with effort and interest, not cash. Cash is nice, but invested effort guarantees future buyers, which means more cash. It also means you avoid backlash. For comparison, look at WOTC’s cards for Gamma World and other products. The cards themselves follow the CCG model (where some are rarer and more powerful) but WOTC has been bending over backwards to NOT market them in that fashion. And for good reason – the idea of being able to buy a more powerful character doesn’t sit well with most folks. Collectable rules modules get around this in two ways – first, they don’t offer more power, just more options, but second (and perhaps more critically) they don’t require money, they require investment. If there’s a playbook you want and you don’t have, you can get it, you just have to want it enough to hunt it down and initiate a trade (or make a request).

Which is to say, you can’t really complain about it, because if you care enough to complain, why haven’t you just used that effort to get the module?

I underscore that this is brilliant marketing. Consider: it’s not going to be to everyone’s taste. Everything I’ve listed as a benefit is going to be off putting to someone, but that very alienation is an essential element to making those who have invested feel like they’re more on the inside. If we were dealing with just money, this would have nowhere near as potent an effect, but we’re paying with things that carry much more weight (effort & investment) so it’s a force multiplier.

Anyway, I expect to see more of this in the future. Even if it’s not used to market a game, it’s a great way to keep a fan base engaged, so there’s a lot of advantage for a company that has a game that can support this and a willingness to put in the work. Hell, if anything, I expect to start seeing more interesting developments in the metagame that this kind of trading represents.

I would be remiss if I did not mention a game in the pipeline with some of these ideas in mind, Guestbook, a project from David Hill which is also doing something interestingly experimental on kickstarter.

More Nerdiness

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Good discussion yesterday as I pulled out the first concrete question, and it made me realize a few other critical points that merit mention about this approach.

Your Score Is Not Your Fun – The Apgar score is not a direct measure of the child’s health, it’s just in the ballpark. Similarly, this score, whatever it will be, is not a measure of your fun. Just as a kid with a low Apgar score can turn out just fine, you might have a game with a terrible score that totally rocked. You might decide that means the score is meaningless, but to me, I’d look at it as a reason to ask “Well, these things didn’t work, so what _did_ work so well to make it awesome?”

No One Gets a 10 – One other useful datapoint about the Apgar score is that it’s really rare that a child get a 10 (or more accurately, a 10/10). Something is usually off, but that’s expected. The same is going to be true of every game. Someone’s going to be tired or distracted or having some kind of problems. The goal is nto to get a 10, it’s to capture the state of things. The score is not the end point, but a midpoint measurement, and that’s important for the next point.

We’re Not Measuring One Game – The Apgar score is a handy shorthand in the delivery room, but it’s real value is as a datapoint in a much larger dataset. If it’s high, then it’s probably not a big deal, but if it’s low, then what? How do things go for the kid? From a hospital’s perspective, if they want to improve, the score gives them a metric to shoot for, so that more kids with lower scores do better. The same is true of your game. Looking at your games over time and seeing what changes, what correlates with good and bad games, and thinking about that is going to be much more useful than rating one game and drawing big lessons from it. This is especially true if one metric doesn’t seem to apply to your group – if it always comes in low, but you still have fun, then the score is not a criticism, it’s just where your baseline is.

Who’s Responsible for What? – Even though the GM is not solely responsible for everyone’s fun, she would be well served to act as if she was. This is absolutely a personal bias, but I want to lay it out on the table. For the purposes of asking questions, I am assuming the GM is taking responsibility for everything, even though things will often be out of her control. This may seem unreasonable, but I want to point back at the rest of this post. If you end up giving a game a low score because one player was so hungover that it just dragged the whole session down, that’s not your fault, but it still made for a bad session. The low score is not a criticism of the GM, it’s a report of what happened. The hope is that it’s useful data, not a judgement.

Tomorrow, I’ll see about extracting a second yardstick.