You can see a list of previous blog club posts here.
This post is a continuation of sorts for “Trollsmyth: The Natural Mutations of a Campaign” covered back in week 23 of our blog club. In this one, Natalie discusses the shift from dungeon crawling to social intrigue that occurred in Trollsmyth’s campaign. What I find interesting in this post is that a social game grew organically from dungeoneering game, whereas an onlooker may assume that such a thing would meet natural resistance from the rules.
I am going to break out a few statements from the post and imagine how OSR game traits can encourage social form of play.
Nat mentions that rules receded into the background. By not engaging with the system, it allowed a more freeform style of play. The alternative is players feeling that they need to approach problems in a particular way because their class, attributes, or feat demanded it.
While the game started out as a dungeon, the characters had the opportunity to chat with dungeon denizens. I contrast this with fight D&D where the dungeons aren’t chatty.
Trollsmyth’s dungeons contained critical information that helped establish the setting of the game. As opposed to an info dump.
The lethal stakes of the game world acted as a pressure cooker to forge bonds between characters. As opposed to these relationships being baked into character creation.
Most OSR games likely won’t evolve into social campaigns, but I think its lovely that some do.
Something I’ve been seeing in Mythic Bastionland circles is the importance of the mundane to provide contrast with the mytical. What this has basically meant for my group is that we end up with an A plot and B plot structure, where myths can provide a sort of A plot but it’s all backed by the ‘soap opera’ of the struggles of the various leaders and their relationships.
All that to say, I think that while it may seem somewhat unexpected, I think relationships are a very important part of a well rounded game.
I game with a couple of ace/aro players, so any discussion of romantic relationships would be pretty uncomfortable at my table. There are lots of weird little freaks to talk to, and I’ve had players develop friendships that have them crossing continents to bail an NPC friend out of trouble, but I think going full soap opera would derail things.
I find this kind of post needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt. Doubtless it is true that games like this happen: where the group drifts away from the original premise and from nearly all rule support and manages to engage in shared imaginative fiction in a way that is mutually enjoyable.
However, for every one of these “success stories” there are thousands of tales of groups with inter-personal conflict, people who leave frustrated, etc.
That’s why we had all that pondering about “creative agenda” in the early 2000s. We want games where everyone has fun because we agree about what kind of game we are playing.
So I would be wary about trying to bottle the lightning of Natalie’s blog post just by trying really hard - with the possible exception of you’ve been playing with the same bunch of friends for a long time.
You probably want at a minimum some kind of meta-framework that reminds you to all talk out-of-character about where you want thing to go. And probably then you want to bring in new rules to cover where things have drifted to.
I think I am coming to these posts with some assumptions. Mostly that if the players are leading the game to a new arena of play, that the GM is able to suss out whether the entire party wants this, whether its causing any distress, and is comfortable shutting down and steering away from elements that they themselves don’t want. For me, this is based on trust, past experiences, and party knowledge. No amount of blog hypothesizing will replace essential GMing judgement. So for example there are places I will take a campaign with 3 trusted friends I’ve played with for a decade versus a large party of near strangers I recruited on a discord server. I also see an important distinction between accepting that a campaign is going in a particular direction and the GM steering it there.
I think in analyzing the account given in the post, I was trying not to guide people how to recreate these conditions… more of wondering how or why it happened in the first place. To be honest, I found the post’s inclusion in Marcia B’s list a little baffling. Then again, I am reminded of discussions I’ve heard about how the massively play by post Over/Under back in October and how many of its players that took that game in very unintended social and romantic directions. When given the freedom to it seems like this is a natural desire from some types of role players.
Martin may be right that a lot of games that attempt this may fizzle out, which I find a bit ironic since Nat uses the label “Soap Opera” and in the TV world are basically defined by their longevity, in addition to their rotating casts of characters, and ridiculous twists.
I suspect soap operas are long-lasting NOT because of the trumped up drama – though that’s certainly a strong part of the appeal to soap opera watchers – but because they operate much the same as old school campaigns. That is, the focus is on the setting and the cast can change and all the ridiculous twists happen against the background of the enduring setting. I reckon the drama & angst of the stories don’t explain the longevity, just define the boundaries of the audience.
Most of my traditional adventure games lean heavily into social games, although very distinct from what the author is describing - my games very much become about the relationships PCs have with each other and NPCs, but we never drift into “we never roll dice!”
The games interface largely remains that of a wargame campaign, the reasoning behind the actions just becomes more grounded in social webs and powder kegs.
It’s also worth noting, to add to the “take it with a grain of salt” clarification, that the user is discussing solo gaming, which has so many different concerns and medium specifics than a traditional RPG, imho.