[Inglese] L'Albero Genealogico dei GDR Indie

[Moreno Roncucci]

Sta cercando qualcos'altro nell'archivio di The Forge, quando ho incontrato un vecchio post di Ron Edwards (questo: http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=24288.msg237147;topicseen#msg237147  ) in cui traccia un vero e proprio "albero genealogico" di tutto un gruppo di giochi che porta a Cani nella Vigna, probabilmente lo "stato dell'arte" al momento in quella famiglia.

Non sono cose nuove, Ron le aveva scritte anche altrove, ma in questo post sono espresse in maniera particolarmente sintetica, così ho pensato di riportare qui il brano. (anche per contribuire a dare un po' di "visione storica" di un certo tipo di design).

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There is a very specific series of influences in RPG design that are founded on that exact observation. It goes like this:

1. Ron decides GMing Champions and Cyberpunk  like he did won't achieve the experience he and his friends want; they know those results do appear intermittently but can't figure out why they aren't consistent.

2. Ron reads and/or plays Over the Edge, Zero, Prince Valiant, Castle Falkenstein, and The Whispering Vault; he throws out all of his Cyberpunk-like rules for Sorcerer and re-writes it from scratch. (some time passes; Sorcerer gets sold and played and stuff)

3. Matt Snyder decides that Werewolf: The Apocalypse needs to be shot in the head with a silver bullet yet struggles with an elaborate game design intended to "heal" it and/or Mage; but then he reads Sorcerer and The Pool and busts out the alpha version of Dust Devils right here at the Forge. Ron and some friends play the bejeezus out of it.

4. Ron then busts out Trollbabe specifically based on the lessons learned from playing Dust Devils. Legends of Alyria (which was inspired in part by Sorcerer & Sword), and his own The Sorcerer's Soul, including some techniques about scene and conflict construction (no one except maybe Jared had ever written a game formalizing any of that beyond vague-ass GM fiat; PTA did not yet exist). A whole bunch of people play the bejeezus out of Trollbabe.

5. Vincent Baker, dizzy with rage after years of White Wolf and Ars Magica, convinced he'd burned his bridges with role-playing via writing kill puppies for satan, reads Sorcerer, The Sorcerer's Soul, and Dust Devils, then busts out Dogs in the Vineyard.

This is only one of the little paths one might find upon looking at who played what, who discussed what, who entered the community when, and who wrote what, but it's an important one. We all know scenes and conflicts must occur, we all know that the SIS must be verbally constructed including outcomes, and we all know that conflicts may be thought of in terms of internal driving external and vice versa, in a twisting, escalating-commitment way.

That particular path "chooses" certain techniques and combinations of techniques regarding those issues. The results, for this "path," look like this:

i) Extreme Fortune-in-the-exact-Middle resolution rules, with a range of scale that includes rather short-term actions

ii) A certain degree of reversibility in stated actions and efforts inside the resolution system, which produces the effect that no one ever really knows how things will turn out when a conflict starts

iii) Conflicts must arise organically; there is no rules-driven "what must be achieved" or "missions," even if the characters think they're in such situations

iv) Similarly to (iii), there is absolutely no external structure at all beyond a given character's story (see v next), i.e., no "chapters" or stages of play as a whole; even so-called scenarios are not required to be solved or beaten or completed or anything like that

v) Characters' behavioral mechanics do not limit actions or attitudes, but actions may carry heavy consequences upon oneself or upon one's helpers or both; those consequences are perfectly capable of ending a player-character's story; similarly judgment of a given character is often explicit and may involve injustice or justice in the eyes of the real people involved

vi) Narration, by whoever is designated to do it (or deliberately left open in that sense as in Sorcerer), is tightly constrained in terms of a specific conflict, but extremely wide-open in terms of how it happens, and that particular openness often sets up new conflicts and new opportunities at all scales

vii) Character creation sets up nigh-unspeakable levels of hair-trigger tension, not among different characters so much as among that specific character's options, at all times

viii) During play, the ability to start and stop scenes is centralized to one person, but within a scene, the ability to start conflicts is 100% equal among everyone; in practice, conflicts are begun all the time, by anyone, any time within scenes

xi) No single person has any disproportionate authority whatsoever about the outcomes of conflicts; the rules for resolution and narration are simply applied at all times and any given person abides by his or her role as dictated by those rules

Playing in this fashion is often explosive and cathartic, interspersed with long and very understandable rising action; it is associated with an approach toward Social Contract that Meg Baker calls "I Will Not Abandon You," which to many people looks like "I'll Look at Your Guts if You Look at Mine," and it often feels extremely in-the-moment, to the extent that people feel like their characters' actions were the only thing they could possibly have done.

It's my favorite way to role-play.

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Poi, già che ci sono, segnalo questo thread in cui Jonathan Walton chiede ai vari autori di elencare le varie influenze sui loro giochi, per il suo "Relationship map project" (che alla fine realizzerà, ma il diagramma finale è così complesso da essere quasi incomprensibile). Cito chi ha influenzato chi, secondo i loro stessi autori:

------------------ Clinton R. Nixon:

For The Shadow of Yesterday: (il precursore del Solar System)
D&D 3rd Edition
Sorcerer
The Riddle of Steel
Orkworld
Hero Wars
(I know I left Fudge off, but it wasn't a major influence, really.) 

---------------- Ron Edwards:

Sorcerer
Maelstrom / Story Engine
Cyberpunk
Zero
Over the Edge
The Fantasy Trip

Elfs
Dungeons & Dragons
Paranoia

Trollbabe
Everway
Prince Valiant
Dust Devils
The Dying Earth
Hero Wars

It Was a Mutual Decision
Bacchanal
Breaking the Ice

Spione
Primetime Adventures
Universalis
Accordion (solitaire card game)
Legends of Allyria

-------------------- Vincent Baker

Otherkind (May 2002, draft)
Tim Denee's Our Frustration (nee Punk)
Paul Czege's The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
Ron Edwards' Elfs
Ars Magica
Zak Arntson's Metal Opera
Jared Sorensen's InSpectres

In a Wicked Age (to be published)  <----scrive questo elenco nel 2007)
Ron Edwards' Sorcerer, especially Sorcerer & Sword
Ron Edwards' Trollbabe
Matt Wilson's Primetime Adventures
The Dying Earth rpg
My own Cheap & Cheesy Fantasy Game

Hungry, Desperate & Alone (Jan 2002, draft)
Scott Knipe's Lapdogs

kill puppies for satan (Jan 2002)
- Ars Magica (2nd - 4th ed)
- Vampire: the Masquerade (1st ed)
- Mage: the Ascension (1st ed)
- Oblivion's Edge

Dogs in the Vineyard (Aug 2004)
- Sorcerer
- Trollbabe
- Dust Devils
- Legends of Alyria
- Universalis
- The Riddle of Steel

Poison'd (Aug 2007)
- The Mountain Witch
- My Life with Master
- InSpectres
- Sorcerer
- Trollbabe
- Steal Away Jordan

------------------ Matthjis Holter:

Archipelago
- Dirty Secrets
- Until we Sink
- Earthsea (unfinished draft)
- Prime Time Adventures
- (Keith Johnstone, but you want games, right?)

Zombieporno
- Downtown (unpublished draft)
- Contenders
- Dogs in the Vineyard
- My Life with Master
- Alien Porn (unfinished draft)

--------------- Jason Morningstar

The Roach:
Prime Time Adventures
The Mountain Witch
Breaking the Ice
Polaris

Grey Ranks:
Carry: A Game About War
Spione
In A Wicked Age
The Prince's Kingdom
Polaris
(Mountain Witch should be here, too)

---------------  Paul Czege:

My Life With Master:
Puppetland
The Pool
Hungry, Desperate and Alone
(and the one I always forget, and that should probably be cited in the book) Le Mon Mouri

Bacchanal: For a long time I thought the game came almost entirely from the 2005 Game Chef's "no character sheet" requirement and "wine" ingredient. But upon reflection, Bacchanal was influenced by Once Upon A Time, and Dark Cults.

The World, the Flesh, and The Devil was influenced by James V. West's Sigil, and The Pool.

--------------------- Matt Snyder:

Dust Devils
Sorcerer
The Pool
The World, The Flesh, and the Devil has to be in there, too.
I forget what else.

Nine Worlds
The Riddle of Steel
Mage: the Ascension
Nobilis
Probably Ars Magica in there somewhere.
Oh! Everway, definitely

44: A Game of Automatic Horror
Lacuna
octaNe
My Life With Master
Jovian Chronicles
Prime Time Adventures
Conspiracy of Shadows

------------- Seth Ben-Ezra:

Legends of Alyria
Amber Diceless
Final Fantasy VII (computer game)
Thief: The Dark Project (computer game)
Everway
Sorcerer
Theatrix

Dirty Secrets
Spione
Polaris
Ia Ia Philes
Universalis

--------------------- Malcolm Craig:

Cold City
Call of Cthulhu (5th edition, again)
Dogs In The Vineyard
Dust Devils
The Mountain Witch
Sorcerer
Unknown Armies

-------------------- Evil Hat (Fred Hicks)

Spirit of the Century (though I expand this to contain Fate as well)
   -- Fate influences: Fudge, Risus, Over the Edge, Seventh Sea, Amber, Feng Shui
   -- SOTC specific influences:  Adventure!
   -- Note: Lenny Balsera (Landon Darkwood) may have a game or two to add to this list.

Don't Rest Your Head:
   -- Dead Inside, Lacuna, Call of Cthulhu   <-----  (fa un po' ridere che non ci metta Sorcerer per i kicker...)

-------------------- Jared Sorensen:

octaNe: Over the Edge (simple characters in a wacky world), Feng Shui (Asian pulp action RPG begets the American pulp action RPG)
InSpectres: Ghostbusters (duh), Paranoia (dramatic irony, bickering players), Call of Cthulhu ("What if CoC games past the first didn't end up sucking?")
Lacuna Part I.: Whispering Vault (("surreal dreamscapes that don't suck")
Darkpages: Sorcerer (what's the price of power? amoral PCs), Vampire: the Masquerade (DP is my World of Darkness)

----------------- Nathan Paoletta

For carry, the primary influences were Dogs in the Vineyard (escalation of conflict, stakes setting), My Life With Master (endgame, laser-focused design), Unsung (serious take on people at war), Sorcerer & Sword (basing a game off of literature) and Primetime Adventures (fan mail, character issues).

----------------- Joe Prince

Contenders
My Life with Master
Piledrivers & Powerbombs

Piledrivers & Powerbombs
Contenders
My Life with Master

(insomma,  Piledrivers & Powerbombs e Contenders sono hack di My Life With Master, si era capito...   )

--------------------- Ben Lehamn

Polaris
Sorcerer
Legends of Alyria
My Life With Master
Adventures in Improvised Ars Magica
Amber Diceless

Bliss Stage
Angel Gear (this can be considered the same system as Tenra Bansho, in case that comes up)
My Life With Master
Breaking the Ice
Otherkind
Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.

The Drifter's Escape:
Polaris
Trollbabe
Dust Devils

---------------------- John Harper

Agon
- Rune
- Savage Worlds
- The Shadow of Yesterday
- Argonauts
- Dungeons & Dragons

--------------------- Ralph Mazza:

Universalis:
Alyria
The Pool

------------------------ Meguey Baker:

1001 Nights:
Universalis - aim to reward certain aspects strongly
PrimeTimeAdventures - share story creation
Ars Magica - troupe-style play, shared GM stuff
Otherkind - divvy dice between things

---------------------- Matt Wilson:

Primetime Adventures, probably mostly these three:
Dust Devils
Universalis
Trollbabe

------------ Joshua A.C. Newman

Shock: is a longer list because I was thinking about it and had absorbed more stuff by the time it was done:
 

• Cyberpunk
• Paranoia
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Nine Worlds
• Polaris
• Prime Time Adventures
• The Shadow of Yesterday
• Snap
• Trollbabe

((questa è una lista ottenuta combinando insieme le informazioni di 3 thread in tre forum diversi, molti giochi e autori li ho lasciati fuori per brevità)

[Moreno Roncucci]

Qualcuno riesce a tirar fuori un diagramma leggibile da tutta questa massa di relazioni?

[Mattia Bulgarelli]

(insomma,  Piledrivers & Powerbombs e Contenders sono hack di My Life With Master, si era capito...   )

Mhhh... Io non sarei così drastico.

Ne riprendono alcune meccaniche-chiave, tipo il fatto di aver punteggi che crescono e che scatenano i finali, ma introducono alcune cosette tutte loro.

[Iacopo Frigerio]

Carino... Aggiungo i pubblicati italiani
 
----------------- Davide Losito
Elar
On stage
Mage the ascension
Primetime adventures
Trollbabe 1a edizione
(Dopo la revisione) Cold City
 

----------------- Iacopo Frigerio
RavenDeath
Psirun
Eschaton
Primetime Adventures
Kingsburg (gioco da tavolo)
 
 
sul commento di Prince, direi che concordo con Mattia...

[Mattia Bulgarelli]

sul commento di Prince, direi che concordo con Mattia...

Specifico: lo possiamo considerare "hack" nella stessa misura in cui CnV è "un hack" di Trollbabe. ^_-

[Moreno Roncucci]

(insomma,  Piledrivers & Powerbombs e Contenders sono hack di My Life With Master, si era capito...   )

Mhhh... Io non sarei così drastico.

Ne riprendono alcune meccaniche-chiave, tipo il fatto di aver punteggi che crescono e che scatenano i finali, ma introducono alcune cosette tutte loro.

Se un Hack non aggiungesse nulla di nuovo, sarebbe un supplemento...   

[edit: aggiunta seria perchè la battuta potrebbe ancora essere equivocabile:  si dice che un gioo è un hack di un altro quando c'è una precisa e diretta ispirazione, ancor più se è unica, come nel caso dei giochi di Prince.  Al punto di NON segnalare altre influenze: sono giochi ottenuti pensando di fare un gioco "simile a LMVCP ma che tratti di pugili / wrestler ". Non si sa poi dove il design e il playtest ti può portare distante dal modello originale - qui addirittura si è passati da un gioco con un "Padrone" ad un GMless - ma è il processo: partire dal gioco e adattarlo a qualcos'altro, invece che partire da un altro tipo di ispirazione (un setting, un tipo di esperienza, o anche la fusione di più giochi) ]
 

[Mattia Bulgarelli]

Ecco, quella cosa lì e tutti d'accordo. ^_^

[Ron Edwards]

Five or six years ago, I sketched a diagram of the games produced by the independent, Forge-centered design community up to that point.

I have not made it available on the internet until now because I know it will be read badly by a lot of people. It's based only on certain variables that interested me, and yet I'm sure people will read it as being about every imaginable aspect of every game, toward the end of producing some kind of definitive taxonomy, which it is not. Also, the arrows don't necessarily mean direct inspiration or experience with the earlier games, and I'm sure some author or another will say "But I never played game X!" as an intended refutation of their game being at the end of an arrow from game X.

But Moreno has asked for it, and it seems to me that the Italian GCG discussion community is pretty rational, so you can find it here (direct PDF link). Please be careful to read the notes as well. If someone wants to translate it into Italian, please feel free. I ask that you do not post all over the blogs and other discussion pages with links to it. I don't want this to be some huge secret, but I'd like the discussion to be centered here. I also have an ulterior motive for talking about it at GCG in particular, as I'll make clear in a moment.

The rest of my points assume that you've looked at the document. I can't over-emphasize that the branches that I've drawn are very limited and do not create separatist categories for game design. Lots of design variables "jump" around the branches: e.g. Dust Devils narration-rules are Pool-inspired and then hop back into the Primetime Adventures narration rules; Polaris demonics and much other content are Sorcerer-inspired. My Life with Master's fictional content is definitely not typical of the right-hand branch, but its turn structure and endgame are very strong components of that side (stemming from Soap and Extreme Vengeance), both of which feature heavily in games branching from it as well. It might be considered its own full branch growing from both sides of the games under the dotted line (drawing on Sorcerer for its left-hand side), but the games derived from it do belong on the right, I think. That point leads into a related one: that as a strictly historical document, it's not intended to become a categorization tool for further work; nothing dictates that the historical associations need to be preserved.

As I see it, the diagram's value lies in capturing at least some of the relationships and diversity among the independent games of the Forge's most productive era, right at the moment when a surge of newcomers arrived and perceived the games more-or-less as a unit. Until that point, people did not really think in terms of "Forge games," and the games in the diagram reflect that: some of them were made entirely outside of the Forge, then revised upon contact with it (e.g. The Riddle of Steel, The Burning Wheel, Orbit). Others were designed privately after much contact with Forge discussion (The Pool, My Life with Master, Trollbabe, Polaris) and still others were designed through intensive discussion at the Forge itself (Dust Devils, Legends of Alyria, Universalis). The Iron Game Chef was not yet generating literally dozens upon dozens of designs in a short period. Perhaps most significantly, the discussion community had not yet become the primary marketing community yet, as it quickly did in 2006-2007.

I did revise the diagram in 2009 or so, adding games to see what had happened to the categories, but I have apparently lost that file. As I remember, the left-hand side saw a lot of additions to existing boxes and the right-hand side developed a more sophisticated and interesting set of branches, but more importantly, so many games had appeared by then which drew upon the available techniques across the whole diagram (in my case, Spione), that there wasn't much point in trying to preserve the structure after the 2006 mark.

As Moreno mentioned and as my first post to GCG expresses, I think the Italian indie/new-wave discussion community would benefit from more familiarity with many of the games, especially in this historical context.

Specifically, the games that I think would matter most include Orkworld, The Riddle of Steel, Hero Wars (or probably later version, HeroQuest), as well as the literally criminal omissions of Matt Snyder's games, Dust Devils and Nine Worlds. I regret that Violence Future isn't available, to my knowledge. Certainly The Pool (for which I hope my recent essay is helpful essay), Universalis obviously, and perhaps Fastlane.

Now for why I am saying any of this. What exactly do I perceive as possibly missing for the Italian community represented in this forum? As many of you know, I am not famous for tact. So I will say it in the way that I think it. My question is, are Italian role-players wimps, or in cruder English terms, pussies? My answer is, "Maybe, yes!" - but let me clarify. I certainly do not think this is due to personal inclination or to a limitation in creative ambition or ability. I think it's a matter of understanding the available tools at a visceral, emotional level. I will try to explain.

When we were developing the games just over the dotted lines in the diagrams, we did not think in terms of perfect, pure, or packaged items which would provide a neat and well-molded product of play. We were thinking in terms of personal rebellion and making a given system that could be pushed as far as it could in the service of a given emotional need during play. In fact, pushed past the fictional applications of which we, the designers, were currently capable ourselves.

Therefore a game was like a door, or as I like to say, a set of musical instruments. If I designed X, just how far could it be employed? If I invent the electric guitar, that's not because I am Jimi Hendrix. Jimi Hendrix is another person, who showed what the electric guitar could do. The goal was to design in ways that might be discovered and developed into such explosive and inspiring experiences through others' play. I see that as very different from many of the so-called story games of today, in which the goal of play is to experience the designer's vision, as carefully packaged and explained for the user. I see them as Rock-and-Roll Hero toys - the music is already written and indeed, already performed.

Specifically, the Italian community did not experience and develop the thematic savagery at the root of the left-hand branch, distilled into pure form in Sorcerer. By thematic savagery, I mean being willing to discover that your character is or isn't a good or successful character, and for that to have its own meaning. Effectively, to discover through play whether your intended or initially-conceived Batman is actually the Joker, or whether your very heroic and wonderful protagonist has instead, through play, become the dead or destroyed counter-example to the theme which emerged. It is clear to me that this desire and ability does exist among Italian players. That's why my compliments to the players at my Sorcerer game at INC were not empty. I was convinced that they were, in fact, able to play this game, even if they had only barely seen a little bit of what it could do at that session. I had seen that they were willing to find out. But I am not at all convinced that people in this community collectively realize that this kind of "breakout" play is even possible, or that games like Sorcerer (or Dogs in the Vineyard) exist primarily for this purpose.

On the right-hand branch, this community did not experience and develop the freewheeling openness of Universalis and The Pool. If the creative freedom of Primetime Adventures seems outstandingly broad to you, for instance, then it's valuable to learn that it is actually a reduction and specification of the vastly wilder and wider freedom of those two games. After playing Universalis and The Pool a lot, playing Primetime Adventures allows channelling and shaping that same energetic freedom in productive ways - but if the first thing you encounter is Primetime Adventures, those forces may not have been "released" among you and your group, resulting in a much more imitative version of play, tamely reproducing the content of television shows instead of literally creating a new kind of television via playing the game. It's also valuable to realize that The Pool is not a game which permits the wild and free creation of back-story among every member of the play-group, whereas Universalis is, and I think it's essential to understand what creative freedom can produce within each game's very different constraints for this issue

So ... is it possible for someone who perceives 3:16 as a "story game" to access its potential for raw and vicious political satire? Is it possible to GM The Rustbelt without realizing that your role is to brutalize and destroy the player-characters, because their very survival is solely the players' responsibility? Is it possible to play Dogs in the Vineyard without realizing that its "mission" context is effectively a lie, and that these characters may turn out to be the very worst people in the story? I think it's possible for the occasional individual person or group to come upon these insights by chance or happy accident in terms of specific personalities.

I apologize for any insulting or patronizing content of this post. As I say, I've presented it as it appears in my mind, and not as a public-relations project. I want to stress that I have in fact seen enormous potential among many of the groups and sessions that I've seen at INC '10 and '11, for exactly the things I'm talking about. My goal here is to show how that potential might find available tools, and I hope that you will find the diagram at least interesting.

Best, Ron

[Ron Edwards]

Since my diagram is NOT based on direct influences from each designer's point of view, but instead based on particular variables which interested me personally, I want to present this as well: Jonathan Walton's tree of RPG influences using networking software, which IS based on designers' accounts of what influenced them.

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/indie-roleplaying-game-design-influe-3/versions/5

Use the "relationship" option to visualize the diagram, then you can play with it by moving "around in" the diagram. I think it's very illuminating as well.

Best, Ron

[Davide Losito - ( Khana )]

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/new/network-diagram/indie-roleplaying-game-design-influe-3/1
this?