Go read What is Fictional on Victor’s Gaming Philosopher. Good stuff.

For just $120, your 672-page copy of Monte Cook’s Ptolus can be yours. Order soon, and you can get a nice 32-page Player’s Handbook — five copies of it in fact — so your players will not be killed by this monstrosity of a book.

What the fuck? Who in their right mind would shell out over one hundred bucks for six hundred pages of a setting? Oh, but it’s cross-referenced! It’s got color illustrations! Yes, and it can kill babies.

But wait, there’s more. This book? This tome? This monstrosity of an abomination of game design? It includes no rules. This works with D&D 3.5, folks. It requires the GM and Player’s Guides (which are what, $35 a piece or something?). So yes, this complete game can be yours for the low-low price of two hundred dollars. And then you have to read nearly a thousand pages of material in order to play it.

Here’s what boggles my mind: if the entire thing can be condensed into a 32-page Player’s Handbook, why isn’t that the product?

Rebecca Meyer
Slightly confused but absolutely determined Dog from Bridal Falls

Rebecca was brought up by a good, Faithful family in Bridal Falls, horse ranchers who lived a comfortable life supplying travellers moving through the center of the Faith. She had a supportive, loving childhood free of hunger or extreme want, but as she became a woman it became clear to her that something was off. Rebecca was courted but received suitors cooly and without real interest. As the weight of expectations mounted, she began to realize that she was not attracted to men. She turned to the Faith. Doctrine told her that love between women is not virtuous (but is not a sin) while sex between women is a sin. Unmarried women are expected to accept the courtship of men and eventually marry, which is a loveless prospect for Rebecca.

Living in Bridal Falls, Rebecca saw Dogs come in green and untrained and go out into the world sure and steady, and also outside the rules of courtship and the strictures of small communities. She came to see the Order Set Apart as her only escape route, inspiring in her a sort of desperate dedication that, combined with her searches through scripture, was recognized by her Steward as potential to be a Dog. Finally on the path to the only viable option she sees, Rebecca plans to be a Dog the rest of her life, understanding that said life will probably be short.

She comes from a Complicated Community background.

Acuity 4D6
Heart 3D6
Body 3D6
Will 5D6

Pragmatic 2D8
Patient 2D6
Broke Horses With Father 2D6 (I swear I didn’t copy that from the book!)
Knows Her Scripture 1D6
Self-Sacrifice 1D6

The Order Set Apart: 2D10
Abigail Tomson (the girl who wanted Rebecca to stay): 3d4
Joseph Meyer (Father): 2D6
Free Dice: 1D4 1D6 2D8

Gun: 1D6+1D4
Coat: 2D6 (patterned strips of blue, grey, and white; across the back are pictured the Four Brides; Abigail did the chestpiece)
Prudence (Horse): 2d8

I am jumping up and fucking down looking forward to playing Dogs on Saturday — I mean, I’m sitting at work, but I’m jumping on the inside.

I demand from Brand an “After-Action Report” on his soon-to-be published India supplement that has a funky Indian name I’ve forgotten. You mentioned in passing the difficulties of game balance so important to d20, and translating Eastern material to what is an often unconsciously Western RPG structure.

I know you’ve got your back to the wall with other deadlines, so I thought I’d throw another item on the pile. That, and you haven’t updated Yuthie’s Dice in like, forever.

When I play World of Warcraft, my favorite aspect is the continual discovery of new content — I love exploring new areas and delving into new quests and dungeons and instances. Now, because of the way that WoW is structured with an Alliance and a Horde game running side-by-side, my favorite characters are the two ‘in the lead’ on both sides: my highest-level Horde character and my highest-level Alliance character. My other characters in the game, which are following after the ‘leaders,’ are better constructed, with intentional design goals in mind, get more focused RP, are members of guilds, and so forth. In almost every metric, they are ‘better’ characters. But my original guys, the ones who will discover something new and interesting over the next hill, are the ones that still appeal to me the most.

It occured to me today as I was reading some hate-thread about Illusionism that that sense of discovery that I like so much in WoW is perhaps the thing that so many gamers are constantly trying to replicate. They remember those heady first days of gaming where they didn’t know the system back and forth, didn’t know how many hit points that dragon had, but they ran in and fought the dragon without knowing what was going to happen and hey, they slew the dragon and took all his gold! They were scared and excited and curious and vindicated. That sort of play experience is difficult — perhaps impossible — to acheive again once you understand the inner workings of the system and setting. You can’t have that measure of suspense and uncertainty when the game you are playing is a universe of certainties.

I am beginning to think that Illusionism is the best bet (or at least the most common attempt) to recapture that heady heart-in-throat sensation. Part of suspense is not being in control, and a large part of Illusionism is giving up control to the GM. Take a look at WoW, which provides that sense of suspense and discovery using Illusionist techniques. While your hero can ostensibly “go wherever you like”, there are two pretty strong forces that prevent you from running willy-nilly across the landscape: the first are mountains that you can’t climb over, and the second are large and deadly monsters that will kill you if you venture in “too high” of an area at too low of a level. The game controls discovery (which is accomplished by moving around) by limiting movement, but it does so in Illusionist ways — the mountains and the monsters are both plausible in-setting elements that nonetheless are there to control player initiative.

Most of the arguments that rail against Illusionism decry the lack of player power, the fact that you are “trapped” in the GM’s story, that players do not create, only respond. While all of those are exactly spot-on, those are not necessarily bad things. There are — as has been proven by many sales and the continuation of the hobby — a whole hell of a lot of people who really like that kind of play. Not everybody wants to be in charge, or be partly in charge, or be responsible for creating things. It’s terribly unamerican to say, but some people (most people) really want someone else to be in charge and want to be given tight guidelines of what they can do. Some people want to experience a story that somebody else is writing. And that is a perfectly acceptable desire. It’s not wrong for people to want that — it’s just problematic when that is forced on people that don’t want it. And hence the hate that Illusionism seems to attract.

If discovery and suspense are what many gamers are after, and Illusionism is one of the best ways to provide that, then why do we hate Illusionism so? Can’t we recognize that there is a very big difference between “creating a world collaboratively so that we can experience it” and “experiencing a world of the GM’s creation”? It’s almost as wide a gulf as exists between the three recognized Creative Agendas. It’s not that Illusionism is “broken” or “square-wheeled” — it’s that it’s attempting to provide a different experience than games that encourage more creative participation — because not everybody wants the onus of that creative participation, even if most us game designers do.

So after going on at the mouth about the subject, and flying off into the heady heights of abstraction, I thought I might come back down to the ground with some concrete examples. My current project, Full Light, Full Steam, offers some rules for the disposition of power around the table, and gives direction (Lumpley calls it credibility) to different players through its game mechanics. It says that players are responsible for their characters, and the Game Master is responsible for everything else — responsible, but able to delegate tasks to other players. It does not have rules on who says what, it does not have rules on who is in charge, it does not have rules on how a specific instance of play works. It’s up to the players* around the table to decide that, and the power to make those decisions is explicitly put in the players’ hands.

While FLFS does not offer rules, it does direct the players to sit down and discuss what they want out of the game before anybody makes characters and before the GM prepares the adventure. It offers some talking points about what people expect from the game; it does advise talking about comfort zones. It outlines a few variants of play including troupe play, multiple GMs, solo play, online play, bluebooking, and the like. There are no rules about how this discussion happens — players don’t take turns adding one statement to the list of game expectations or suchlike — cause call me idealistic, but I assume my players are able to hold a civil conversation with each other. I also assume that players can and will enjoy the “First Session” as the chapter is called. I believe that the First Session, even if no player ever acts in character, is still part of the roleplaying experience — just as the pitch, script-writing, and casting call are as much parts of the moviemaking experience as the filming and acting.

What I’ve got isn’t the same old traditional set-up, but it’s not revolutionary, either. Take another look at your GURPS book sometime and you’ll notice sections on the Antagonist, who is sort of a GM-player hybrid that runs the opposition for the players. You’ll find suggestions for troupe play, and for sharing GM tasks. The primary difference between that game and mine is that GURPS is not explicit (as of 3rd Edition) whereas FLFS will be. Otherwise, the design aesthetic is the same: “Hello! Thanks for buying this book and giving my game a try. You can play it however you like; here are some pieces and tools that you can use to build whatever you can imagine. Have fun!”

* By “players” I mean everyone around the table, including the Game Master.