So Bankuei of Deep in the Game recently posted about the Roadmap to Play he sees in RPGs. In his terminology, all games are roadmaps to Fun, and some games are good maps that get you there, and other games are not good maps and don’t.
I agree with the latter half but not the former half. That is, some games are good maps and take you to Fun, and other games aren’t good maps and don’t — but the reason that some games aren’t good roadmaps is because they’re not roadmaps at all. It’s like trying to use a granny smith apple to tell you how to get to Nova Scotia — and then decrying that the apple is a ‘bad map’. Most of the Forge games are roadmap games, because with their eye on making Actual Play hit a Creative Agenda with precision, they are highly didactic, highly focused, and rather explicit. This is great — it makes really good maps — but not all games need to be maps.
This ties into what Ben was saying in Brand’s blog Yog Shoggoth’s Dice, in the Intensity and People You Don’t Play With thread. Perhaps we have a little too strong of an emphasis on focus, to the point where the insistence on focus is turning into a predilection for intensity — and not all games need to be hardcore Agenda X with the volume knob turned to 11. (It occurs to me this is much like my perpetual pet peeve where people conflate precision and accuracy, but that’s tangential.)
There is another scheme from which to design a game, not the roadmap but the toolbox. Examples are GURPS, Universalis, HERO, and their ilk. These games basically present the players with long lists of options and lets them do whatever they like with them. There are always house rules and “drift” in these games; in fact it’s necessary in order to play them, but this is okay because that’s part of playing the game. These games don’t tell you what to make with the tools and materials they give you; they let you do whatever you like with them. Play in these games does not begin when the adventure or campaign begins, it begins when the GM and/or players sit down and start making the adventure and characters. In GURPS, with which I have the most familiarity, you can sit down and make vehicles purely for the enjoyment of making vehicles — who needs to actually roleplay driving around in them?
Toolbox games are more flexible than roadmap games, but also less structured, with fewer guarantees that your actual play will hit your desired agenda. It’s much more up to the GM and players to take the tools and build what they want, rather than follow directions to get where they want. Perhaps the game-as-published does not have rules that explicitly support Aspect X that you want to focus on; it’s your job to make Aspect X important to your game, either in-game with character decisions and how you narrate, or by making house rules that highlight the things that are important to you. A lot of people dislike toolbox games because they are ‘bland’ and I think it’s this that they are complaining about — these games do not provide any color (or setting or situation or character), just system.
This sort of game appeals to a certain kind of player, who wants to do things his own way. They don’t want to follow a map; they want to build something of their own. GURPSfolk, at least the guys on GURPSnet, are usually highly (and weirdly) creative people who take GURPS off into horizons that other people wouldn’t have ever thought of. They play games that have just as much focus on interpersonal relationships or spiritualism as any other game, often creating new game stats and rules to support what they want. That said, the type of player that the toolbox appeals to is not the mainstream player, and this approach does not have the broad-based appeal or instant-gratification that a roadmap game can offer.
A week or so ago I was musing on what gaming offers the player that the player wants, and I think this is one of the things that RPGs can offer, but that RPGs don’t necessarily have to offer — the DIY Fun Offer. This is the sort of game that can advertise ‘Imagine Incredible Worlds!’ and ‘Play Any Character You Like!’ on the back cover — and can do so legitimately. Dogs in the Vinyard and Sorcerer can’t (and wouldn’t want to) — they offer something different, something more specific, precise, and focused.
Neither approach is wrong, both have their advantages and disadvantages, but the distinction is, I think, and important one, because the game products offer players different kinds of play experiences. This is not a distinction about Actual Play; this is a distinction about Game Design and the products that a game company or indie developer create. When sitting down to design, this is an important question to ask oneself: are you trying to write up a guided tour, or are you handing the players the keys?