The Role of Play

Episode 5: Game, Story, Play & Meet Your Hosts Part II

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and how we can improve our literacy around games.
In this episode Sean decides to make sure Steve has the chops to opine on games, and goes through his work, from his early contributions to Warhammer to his most recent projects. Steve talks about his endless curiosity and desire to push the boundaries are leading him to see beyond what so much of RPGs have done in the past - because perhaps RPG-like experiences and computer RPGs can simply do those things better, or can do it with less pressure on the GM. Steve talks about his goal of designing to reveal this truth, and design games that remove that pressure.
This also points to the difference between the orthogame - a game simply about following the rules for points - and a playful exercise in shared creativity, which is what a lot of RPGs claim to want to be. Looking at the definition of a game we return again and again to the idea of how games and creative exercises both are engaging us in our thoughts and our reason, and that means adopting a point of view and a entering into a system of value and a language for communicating that value. All games involve a sense of pretend and inhabiting a world, and that is part of their appeal: we play games because they let us become something else.
 

Episode Four: Game Criticism and Getting to Know Your Hosts I

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and how we can improve our literacy around games.Except we're flipping the script this week! This time, Steve's in the interviewer's seat and the discussion's about the nature of game criticism. This is the first part of a "getting to know you" set; the second will be about Steve's long career. What's the point of board games? What's the point of a board game critic? What's the difference between writing about games and making videos about games? Are you collecting games or scavenging games, and what's the difference? Why does Sean keep hating on Brenda Romero's Train? What the heck is "subjective time"? All of these questions and more will be answered in this episode of Role of Play. Two weeks from now, you'll hear more about Steve's design background.
Note: Sean's mention of a "napkin accord" (referring to ad hoc documents that are signed using any material which happens to be at hand) refers to the 1988 Coaster Proclamation. 13 notable signatories at the Nuremberg Toy Fair (e.g. Wolfgang Kramer) refused to sign with companies that wouldn't put the designer's name on the box. Timecode to skip straight to the discussion of the recited essay: 7:36.

Episode 3: The Alternatives to D&D

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and we can improve our literacy around games.
Episodes 1 and 2 looked at the problems and limitations with D&D. This episode we look at what else is out there or what else could be out there. We look at "hybrid"-"RPG-like" games like Gloomhaven and Blood on the Clocktower, and how one removes the need for a gamemaster and the other puts one back in. We talk again about how a game is an artificial structure where we don't actually want to defeat our enemies as much as possible but rather produce a close and exciting battle - which is a kind of narrative. But constructing these things in RPGs is often left to the GM or to finding exactly the right group which makes it fragile, and leaves the design of the game rules doing very little.
The solution D&D created was to create its own subculture where there are standard versions of play, and story is built around that as best as it can be. To date, every roleplaying game (digital ones also) has mostly followed that line. So again we wonder: what else can we do?  

Episode 2: Avatar and Author Play in D&D

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and we can improve our literacy around games.
In Episode 1 we looked at how Dungeons and Dragons was created and the assumptions that have been put on it over time. In this episode we talk further about how the construction of D&D and all roleplaying games since has been around the concept of avatar play, where the player is assumed to be taking on the role of their playing piece, and acting as a combination of their own player skills and the powers of their character, and trying to keep their playing piece alive and unlock powers for it. Even in more narrative RPGs, there remains this sense of survival being key, and power being vital.
This is a fine mode of play, but it is often directly oppositional to the way stories are constructed. It certainly limits the kinds of stories that can be told into a very narrow niche, and forces players into a survival mindset where they are often trying to "get the better of" the story. As a result, this creates a rich vein for comedy, but that comedy points to the fact that there is a mismatch between expectations. And all too often, the person responsible for patching over these cracks is the poor beleaguered GM. 
People are hungry for dungeon crawling adventures but they are also hungry for more storytelling, and it is time we asked the hard questions of what stories RPGs are leaving behind. 

Episode 1: The Case Against D&D

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and we can improve our literacy around games.
This episode Sean asks Steve Dee about the "Lord Fang Problem", which is a topic that reveals the origins of Dungeons and Dragons. Appearing on the market in 1976, the game has come to define the gaming world, the nature of what became roleplaying games and even the whole nature of modern fantasy fiction, having as big an effect on our culture as Star Trek and Star Wars. But D&D was - like most things - not born fully formed from Zeus' head. Instead it was an accretion of random ideas and game mechanics designed primarily for skirmish miniature warfare in holes in the ground.  The subcreation was a chaotic muddling of every subcreation around and the mechanics were built on antagonism.
Which is fine but when D&D is increasingly lauded as the great storytelling engine of our age, we need to actually ask: is it good at that? Is it even average at that? Or is it like using a fridge as a screwdriver, something so poorly designed for the job that it inevitably fails, and leaves its players confused and unmoored - and inevitably driven to make something better fitting for the advertised purpose.
It's time to ask better questions of our games to make games be better. 

Trailer

A brief look at the series we're making!