The Gaming Outpost

Welcome to the second installment of I.M.O. After having done my best to tackle heroics last time round I will take a closer look at the second major style of play, culture games. While everyone will immediately know what I mean when I refer to heroic games the same is not necessarily true for culture games. To lift the fog I will give a detailed definition of what exactly I am rambling about below. A quick and not entirely precise analogy between the two (IMO) major styles of play is that heroic games are the “game” part of “roleplaying game” and culture games the “roleplaying” bit.

This analogy is obviously grossly inaccurate, but it does carry the spirit of things. The distinguishing feature of culture games is that the players in these games seek to realistically portray a character, usually in a completely alien setting. As such culture games tend to largely ignore such concerns as drama, power-gaming and, above all, unrealistic heroics. Instead they focus on the lifelike portrayal of the game world and the characters that inhabit it. Under these parameters roleplaying becomes far more important than numbers and beating adventures. Culture games are far more interested in simulating reality than they are in imitating fiction.

You may be asking yourself why I consider culture games a major style of gaming. Well, there are two reasons. First, culture games are, in their “pure” form, diametrically opposite to “pure” heroic games. Second, virtually all games have elements of culture gaming embedded in them. Elements that are often either taken for granted or downplayed (when most games refer to roleplaying they mean exactly the same thing that I mean when I talk about culture gaming). Another question that may have popped into your mind by now is: Why play culture games? Reality is boring! Again I can cite two answers. I would agree that, in many cases, mundane reality is boring and not fun to roleplay in, but luckily roleplaying games have never been limited to our version of reality. The World of Darkness, Tekumél, mythic Europe, Glorantha, Barsaive all can be used as reality for culture games. And virtually all of these places are interesting indeed. Also culture games exemplify the explorative side of RPGs. When using this style one can fully revel in the wonder of discovering what it might be like to live in a strange land as a strange person. True, this is about as far from the gamist perspective as one can get, but that’s the point.

Playing a culture game requires a mind set quite different from the one required for heroic games. While players and game masters will, as always, look at things from divergent angles, one vital point holds true for both of them: Culture games only work if everyone playing cooperates and actually makes an effort. No matter how much a game master would like to play a culture game, if only one player does not cooperate the entire effort is most likely doomed.

Players must, this is absolutely vital to all culture games, before beginning play familiarize with that part of the game world that their character is aware of. Not only must they know the geographical and political make up of the character’s homeland, they must also understand the culture in which their character grew up. When the game begins players should be willing to play their character’s personality and cultural mindset to the best of their ability. Even, perhaps especially, when these contradict their own or hinder the character. A character who hails from a pacifist culture will be hesitant to kill, even if he would be better off without this hesitation. A character who grew up without encountering violence will generally scream and curl into a ball as soon as the bullets start flying, no matter how stupid doing so may be. People in the real world constantly make “stupid” (from the gamist point of view) mistakes of this kind, culture game characters should be no different. To sum things up the fixation of players on simply playing their character should be rather absolute. Things like solving an adventure, winning, power gaming, stat improvement and the like should be ignored to the best of the player’s ability.

When creating characters for a culture game all the players should cooperate. In a culture game the rag tag parties of heroic gaming are utterly inappropriate. Such groups would dissolve within hours if the characters were to be played realistically. Thus the players should work together to build a firm connection between their characters. Maybe they are a family, maybe an agency, a terrorist cell, members of a secret society, a group of real-good buddies (with lots of background and well-developed emotional ties) or anything along those lines. No matter what venue the players choose, they should always create characters that will be able to do interesting things. Playing a farmer in a medieval culture game is generally not a good idea (“What do you do today?”, “I toil on the field. The same thing I did yesterday. Again.”). Playing a king and his advisors on the other hand can be quite interesting. IMO you should not be afraid to create vastly powerful or influential characters. In fact, these will often be the only ones that make culture gaming truly interesting. Some sample character archetypes might include:

• Powerful circles of magicians.
• Leaders of world religions.
• Captains of industry.
• Leaders of secret societies.
• Kings and their cronies.
• Leaders of a revolution.
• Explorers of worldwide renown.

All of the samples above are, admittedly, a tad bit extreme, but I see no reason to shy away from. Roleplaying is truly limitless, IMO we should treat it accordingly. And in culture games game-balance and the like can be completely ignored anyway, also IMHO, of course. Still all of the archetypes above can easily be toned down (barons instead of kings and so on).

Beyond creating characters that have a reason to stay together each individual player should be certain to fully flesh out her character’s personality. Vibrant, realistic characters that truly could be a product of the culture they grew up in are the motor of culture games. As a final note it is generally safe to ignore character generation rules when creating a character for a culture game. Realism and interesting characters, even if they completely bust the system, are far more important than slavish adherence to the rules.

Culture games force many responsibilities onto the game master. First and foremost a game master of a culture game must be intimately familiar with the entire game world. Or at least with that part that he wishes to set his game in (an area which just might be as small as a town). While it is certainly possible to improvise a few aspects of the world here and there this should not be the rule. It is far to easy to ensnare oneself in a web of inconsistencies. This in depth knowledge is important because the game master should portray the world and its inhabitants as realistically as possible. If the game master starts describing the setting according to the conventions of fiction he can be virtually certain that his players will soon follow his lead. This also means that the difficulty levels of the problems encountered by the characters should be assigned according to the needs of realism, not drama. This means that many things that are hard in heroic roleplaying games (killing someone, sneaking into some complex, committing crimes and the like) will become ridiculously easy while other things (gaining vast power, saving the world, defeating someone in single combat and the like) will become incredibly difficult. IMO there is no reason to worry about this. It will certainly make for a radically changed style of play, but it will not take the fun out of roleplaying. One thing that should be remembered in this context is to enforce the consequences of the character’s actions. It might be easy to shoot somebody, but avoiding persecution afterwards will be another matter entirely.

The game master will probably choose the world that the game will be set in. He should fully use the potential of this choice. IMO two main concerns should guide game masters in selecting a world. First, a world should be used that the game master has plenty of information on. Most modern roleplaying games provide enough information to go on, but older ones may only give little or badly written information. Also I would avoid internally inconsistent worlds, those that, when viewed in their own reality paradigm, simply would fall apart. IMHO the Forgotten Realms and Underground for example simply will not work for a culture game as they include unrealistic elements. This does not mean automatically that these are bad worlds, it simply implies that they cannot be used for culture games. The second criteria should be dynamism. If a world is static playing a culture game in it will be as boring as playing a blue collar worker in the real world (while I know little about the game I have heard that this is the problem with Tekumél). Instead the chosen world should be a busy, ever changing place that keeps the players on their feet and interested. Worlds on the brink of huge changes, such as Glorantha or Aberrant, are best. Almost any game world can be used for culture games with minimum fuss. It is usually enough to ensure that every NPC acts according to that world’s paradigm.

Finally those who wish to master a culture game should, IMO, avoid using the standard adventure schematic used in most games. Instead of forcing the characters along pre-scripted plots game masters should, IMO, allow them to fluidly interact with the game world, going down whatever paths they choose. I will describe methods for doing this in a future column.

What? You still don’t want to play culture games? Hardly surprising, they really aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. But worry not. You did not read this column in vain. For in the next installment of I.M.O. I will show how I think different styles of plays can be mixed to provide fun for the entire family.

Tribute where tribute is due: I ripped the term “culture game” from Paul Mason, editor of the spectacularly intelligent Imazine. Do yourself a favor and check it out at www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurge.