On Socially Focused Gaming

Hello,

It's great to see you here, on the shore. The sun's sinking and the night's rushing in. If you're new to these parts, I'm Grim. I talk a bit too much about too many things, everything from comics, roleplaying, politics and even philosophy. I love history; I'm a nerd, though I fear I'm becoming that terrible thing, a nerd who's bored of a lot of the familiar nerd things.  

This piece is a follow-up to a previous piece, in which I expressed discontent with the general gaming model of "jobs" - clearing out ruins, fetching MacGuffins from dangerous places, hunting down monsters and so on. Missions that PCs perform and then slip away into the night. One reason I dislike this model of gaming is that it can easily turn towards a hard-edged, cynical, and violent tone. Worse, it can do so without there being any real consequences. The last piece (here) focused on Vampire: the Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse because for a long time they were my favourite games. I mentioned how much of the hobby is built on the idea of the "cool fight" and on a reflexive level of power equalling importance because the game design is based on a continual ladder of growth until the PCs become gods. I know that that's what a lot of people play for and, you know, that's fine if it floats your boat. I just don't feel like it's right for me anymore. 

As I said before, I've spent a long time wandering, trying to find the "perfect" game, or a set of games that embrace different genres and feel just right. I'm only just starting to realise that that's a fool's errand and that I probably need to reassess what it is I'm actually looking for. Or, more to the point, the sort of experience I want to present to my players. 

I've always been more motivated by mysteries and intrigues (though I've learned to my cost that including lots of intrigue can ruin a game really fast if you're not careful) than by combat. I think that, quite apart from not liking violence, I enjoy these stories because they involve people, emotions, and agendas. It isn't a case of simply "clearing the hex" as S John Ross puts it in his Big List of RPG Plots. Instead, the voices of other characters are important. The dungeon the characters have to pass through is often a social one, with longer-lasting consequences if they offend someone important. 

As a result, many of the plots I tend to run are murder investigations or involve counter-espionage; for example, in Vampire I might run something with Camarilla agents trying to intercept Sabbat spies. That means involving communities, people who know the characters and can be reliable sources and supports for the heroes. Returning to Vampire and Werewolf, Elysium and Septs serve as exemplars for the ideal, being story generators and existing in such a way that they drive drama. More than that, they're grounding influences, providing societies that have rules and customs for the PCs to follow. This feature of World of Darkness games now feels more important to me than ever before, because they provide an enforceable social framework that can drive roleplaying. They mean that when something goes awry, there are consequences for actions. This adds meaning and weight to characters' actions in a way that playing on a lawless frontier doesn't. 

Returning to the issue of violence, I'm also really conscious that adventuring parties are often composed of "murder hobos", loners who travel the land without connection or community, and that simply feels weightless to me. My interest in community and, increasingly, memory means that the idea of running off into the night (never overly appealing) leaves me cold as the grave these days. While I don't dismiss all fighting, I increasingly want character interaction to dominate the sessions rather than spending several hours sorting out a battle. 

In many ways, as I write this, I feel like all I'm doing is defining the problem, but in doing so I'm finding the answers I want. Drawing from what I've written, strong themes of community and consequence, character and development are not so much suggesting themselves as waving big damn placards and shouting "over here!". More than that, at the risk of sounding like a pseud, I want to use these games to explore some deeper questions, like the importance of memory or the limits of peace. My current game of Vaesen is very much built around a question of British identity, and also allows me to scratch my conspiracy itch. That deeper level is what keeps me interested in many ways, as well as, ironically, returning me to the World of Darkness games that were so formative in keeping me in the hobby. 

I'm sure this will be a topic I return to, probably repeatedly. My next challenge will probably be to start working out how to get these elements into games, and integrate them into play.