Enthusiastick Blog

The preference in the indie gaming community seems to be for play sessions that consist of a series of short, punchy scenes. Scenes are meant to be to the point, a goal which is often accomplished by having them revolve around a particular conflict. Such scenes are framed to drive conflict, and therefore drive the story; once a scene’s key conflict is resolved, it generally ends shortly thereafter.

This is fine, I guess. It works really well for games like Primetime Adventures. But it isn’t always what I want.

Done incorrectly it can cause a game to become choppy. There have been times around the table where I’ve felt that the scene was over just as I was really getting into character. I’m spoiled by boffer-LARPing I guess, where I have the opportunity to immerse myself in the persona of a particular character for whole days at a time.

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I actually enjoy roleplaying for it’s own sake. It’s good if a game can manage to stay on task, to prevent a session from being totally aimless. But one of the things I miss from my days in traditional gaming is the freedom to stretch my legs. I don’t necessarily want every scene to be long and discursive, but I think it would be good if that was at least supported.

My vision for my currently untitled Gnostic Allegory game, for example, is going to require scenes of exposition and also the joyful wankery that is in-character philosophical conversations. If it’s going to conform to my current vision, those things will be vital.

The trouble as I see it is this: I know that a system can support short, punchy and pointed scenes. I’ve seen some good examples of it, and have a fairly good grasp of several effective methods for pushing that type of play. But is there any way to push more rambling and digressive scenes using the system? Should that even be a design goal? Or will trying to create rules that do that just derail any game they’re part of?