Sometimes the point is to NOT nuke Atlantis

Well, I have to eat my words about Stoke-Birmingham 0-0. When I first read it, I couldn’t ever imagine playing it. The whole concept of game poems, which it coined the phrase, was one that I questioned.

Thanks to the power of forums, I have now played it. To be sure, playing via forum definitely takes away from immediacy that is clearly a key part of the game poem concept. On the other hand, gathering folks together to play a fifteen minute game is a tough sell and playing via forum definitely helps mitigate that.

And not only am I glad that I finally played Stoke-Birmingham, I would play it again.

https://boardgamegeek.com/article/29978833#29978833

Stoke-Birmingham 0-0 has you simulate being some Stoke supporters who are drinking after a really boring game. The game lasts fifteen minutes when you play it live and one of the most important rules is that you are not to say or do anything interesting. The point of the game is to embrace the banal.

At this point, I have played a variety of narrative games. There is a term that is actually in the rules of Microscope, one of my favorite narrative games, Nuking Atlantis. Microscope has a global scope so the term can be literal in a game. That’s doing something extreme, a story changer that permanently affects things.

And I love doing that or seeing it happen. Well, most of the time. I was in a Fiasco game set in the Wild West where a weaselly gambler at the very end decided that he was secretly a mystic kung fu guy, summoned up a giant golden dragon and flew through a magical portal to join in the battle of Helm’s Deep. (Yes, he had a ton of white dice)

There was something amazing in the audacity of that but that’s not what you play Fiasco for. We will never forget that game but that derailed the game so hard that the proverbial train not only left the tracks but flew straight into the sun. We all agreed we had witnessed some kind of spontaneous magic and we never wanted it to happen again in a game of Fiasco.

Nuking Atlantis can be an exhilarating choice but a key element of Stoke-Birmingham is that it is the non-Nuking Atlantis RPG. The rules explicitly state that you can’t do anything interesting. You are embodying dull people doing dull things. (I wonder what real life Stoke supporters would think of it)

And you know what? That’s a legitimate challenge and trying to no be interesting becomes interesting in its own way. It’s an unusual space to explore, bored sports fans drinking, but as you explore it, you find there is something to explore. Looking back at our game, I felt like we were embracing our inner Raymond Carver and inner Breece D’J Pancake.

Stokes-Birmingham 0-0 was the first game to use the term Game Poem, although I bet you can find earlier games that can retroactively fit the bill. For me, a game poem should ideally try to evoke one specific idea/emotion. It is such a short form that it can only be a snapshot, only has one bullet to fire.

Exploring the banal and the dull seems like an odd place for what became its own RPG form to start. However, by taking us there and showing us how it could be interesting and engaging, Stokes-Birmingham proves how much we can do with game poems.

https://boardgamegeek.com/rpgitem/82361/stoke-birmingham-0-0

My changing philosophy of role playing games

I don't know if it is a shift in my interest in role-playing games or if there is an actual shift in the industry or culture of role-playing games. However, 15 years ago, any game that I would be involved with was at least theoretically a long-term campaign and commitment. Now, there are a lot more games that can be over and done with in one sitting.

I didn't make a Dungeons and Dragons character with the idea that I would only play them for one session. Sure, sometimes that happened because the game fell apart or the character died horribly. But that wasn't the plan. 

But now there are games like Fiasco which tells the whole story in two arcs or games like The Quiet Year or Ribbon Drive or Baron Munchausen that are clearly designed for one session. Even indie games designed for longer play, like Polaris or Apocalypse World, are still designed for a limited number of sessions. 

Some of that comes purely from mechanics. You can get a game of Fiasco rolling in ten, fifteen minutes. On the other hand, you would spend hours just making a character for Role Master. (And then have them die in five minutes due to the critical roll charts. There's a reason I only played Role Master once)

But the mechanics for a short form game wouldn't exist if the demand wasn't there. More importantly, they keep on coming out which means that there is an audience for them. Possibly even a growing audience.

In the boardgames and now in role-playing games, I find that the concept of accessibility is becoming more and more important. When I first got into role-playing games in the 80s, you had to be pretty serious and dedicated because the rules were so complicated and convoluted. Now, there are games that you can pick up and play, even if you don't have years of Dungeons & Dragons under your belt.

Which has led me to another change. At least for me, I would only be playing two or three rule systems at any given time. Often, only one rule system. Games like Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu are life style games. They don't leave a lot of room in your calendar for other systems.

But games like Fiasco or The Name of God are small enough commitments that it's much easier to put a lot of different games. That is definitely a change in how I think about role-playing games.

There is a definite switch from game mastery to game exploration. With more complex systems designed for long term, virtually indefinite play (I knew a D&D campaign that went on for over twenty years on a pretty much weekly basis), you end up doing a lot of research and, by virtue of extended play, practice. In some cases, I've seen it turn into who can use the rules better.

With short forms, it becomes about story exploration. You aren't trying to explore how the nuts and bolts work. You are exploring how narratives work. Sometimes in a comic form and sometimes in a tragic form. And, in my experience, the players are more inclined to collaborate.

I think there is a legitimate shift not just in the design of games but in their philosophy.

Games about physical and emotional distance

One Missed Call is a short form role playing game for two people trust explores physical and emotional distance. Seriously, some of these short form games are one researcher short of a psychological experiment.

(My wife pointed out to me that there is a movie called One Missed Call, which is an adaptation of the Japanese horror movie, with the distinguished rating on Rotten Tomatoes of 0%. Which means  taping two people playing this game would probably garner better ratings.)

In One Missed Call, the players play two people are are far from each other and are either drifting apart or coming together. You sit back to back so you can't see each other and play out phone calls.

At the start of the game, you decide how physically apart you are and each person secretly decides if you are coming together or falling apart. 

You then will phone each other. Note I don't say take turns. Let's be painfully honest, life doesn't act so fairly either. The non-calling player has a choice of answering or not. If they don't, then the other player has a choice of leaving a voicemail or not.

Each player has a list of phrases. Comes with the game, you don't pick them out yourself. They include things like I love you and I'm sorry I couldn't make it. When you say them, you check them off your list. After you have checked all of them off, you can't make any more calls or answer any calls.

After you have three minutes of silence, probably awkward silence, the game ends.

One Missed Call strikes me as the kind of game that I don't really want to play but I think does a good job doing what it sets out to do. On paper, it is about physical distance and physical separation. Of course and obviously, it's about exploring emotional separation.

As with any game like this, the players are going to get as much as they put in the game. The rules freely admit that you might be very casual and flippant with your phrases. And that works too because that's another way of coping with emotional separation.

There are even rules for playing via email or real phones or even the post office. Frankly, I think that might be a good way to make the game real. Perhaps too real.

One Missed Call really reminds me of Slower Than Light from Twenty Four Game Poems by Marc Majcher, which is a collection of very short forms. In Slower Than Light, you were communicating with the other players by passing notes. However, with every turn, everyone grows farther apart. You have to wait more and more turns in order to read a note until, at the end of the game, you leave with one note unread.

While I am not a fan of every game in Twenty Four Game Poems, I do think that Slower Than Light is pretty brilliant. With a very simple mechanic, it does a wonderful job of demonstrating growing distances.

Physical distance and, more importantly, emotional distance are very powerful things. Both One Missed Call and Slower Than Light create a way for people to discuss them.

http://lessthanthreegames.com/onemissedcall/