What I'm thinking, part 2

VI.

So the hidden context behind the last post is that I just had a weird and overwhelming creative experience.

I've been watching a lot of Joel Haver on YouTube and, for a week or two, I felt really inspired to make a movie. My obsessive thought patterns, which for a few years now have not shut up about RPGs, shifted to movie-making instead.

I paid for some video lessons on how to film with an iPhone, I bought a phone tripod, I bought some cheap lavalier mics, I started filming something with my friend and...

Something in my stomach turned. I absolutely hated being on camera. I quickly stopped filming, went into a weird depressive funk for a day or two and almost right away I was back to thinking about RPGs.

I'm still not really sure what it means. I still have to talk to my therapist about it! But I feel like, for a brief moment, I was ready to open up to something new... And then the rug was pulled out from under me.

VII.

The game starts and ends with a problem. There is no combat system. These are the aspects of matrix games that, in the last post, I was thinking of applying to traditional RPGs with a GM and a party of PCs.

But the question remains: why not just play a matrix game? What does the GM-and-PCs structure do for the game that's worth preserving?

It seems to me like the GM/player split brings two things: a sense of exploration, because the players can discover things the GM knew ahead of time, and immersion, because the players can really dive into the moment-to-moment experiences of their character.

But does every scenario need exploration and immersion? If you had asked me a month ago, I might have told you that immersion is always a good thing, but now I'm not so sure. Isn't part of the point of art to step outside ourselves? Isn't there something valuable about the objective gaze of the camera?

It seems like whether I want to use the GM/player split will come down to what sort of scenario I want to design.

VIII.

...So what sort of scenario do I want to design?

I said in the last post that I'm getting tired of dungeons because they feel too samey. But now it's occuring to me that, under the framework of start and end with a problem, no combat system, I could design a conversation game about anything.

The thing about the O/NSR school of RPG design is that it teaches you to design game rules that can support a wide variety of adventure scenarios. It splits game design from level design. And then people complain that there are too many rulesets and not enough adventures!

It's a bit of a cliché to bring up Lady Blackbird to talk about games built around just one scenario, but I've been looking at it again for the first time in a while and it's starting to really speak to me. And some 2400 modules are built around just one scenario, too.

So, I'm thinking I might try to make some scenario-first games and see what happens, with the guiding principles start and end with a problem, no combat system in mind.

IX.

Am I basically just drifting in the direction of being a story gamer instead of an NSR/OSR type? I’m not sure yet. A lot of this stuff about how combat sucks and immersion is unimportant seems to be pointing me in that direction, though. No Dice, No Masters is something else I’ve been looking at, and it feels somehow in the same general vein as matrix games.

Again, at the bottom, what am I in this hobby for? I want to make art with my friends and anyone I find interesting as quickly and easily as possible.

The O/NSR seemed good for that at first because I wouldn’t have to teach my friends complex rules and I could get them into a game nice and fast, but do I really only want to make art with my friends that's about dungeoncrawling? And wouldn't it be nice if they had more of a say in what happens in the game?

X.

I haven't figured out a lot of things in my life. A lot of jobs make me stressed and miserable. I'm working in a part-time job that I can manage okay, but I'm still living with my mom and I don't really see a way "out" into a better job where I could afford to live with my girlfriend.

Everybody says not to try to make your tabletop hobby into your job, but it's one of the only things I seem to have figured out how to do without stressing myself out. So of course I harbor some hope that I can figure out how to make this into a job.

But if that's what I want to do then I recognize I'm making terrible business decisions. I haven't designed any adventures for Ruins & Rogues and now I'm thinking of moving on to designing smaller, weirder games that I have no idea if anyone will want to support.

And none of that is to mention the creeping fear I have in the back of my head: what if, maybe, I don't want to commit myself to making RPGs? What if I end up wanting to make different kinds of art? What if the brief period I spent wanting to make a movie is the "real me" and now that's something I'm suppressing?

Thanks for reading something this personal and complicated. I think my head is just in knots and I needed to write it all out to start untying them.

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