311vas - How To Start A Gamers Guild

A Call to Arms! or

How to Start a Gamers Guild & Why Bother Jim Vassilakos ([email protected]) - http://members.aol.com/jimvassila While doing a little net-surfing this past week, I came across an interesting link to an Interactive Fiction Archive (www.ifarchive.org). For those who don’t know about Interactive Fiction (IF for short), it’s basically computer roleplaying. IF games (hereafter called IFGs) are text-based rather than graphics-based which is what is more common these days. The basic idea is that you type in simple commands, telling the computer what you want to do, and the computer acts as the gamemaster, telling you what happens as a result of your actions. Hence, IFGs are essentially command & response computer text adventures. Nice idea. But as we all know, computers typically make terrible gamemasters. For one thing, there is no way for the player to “venture forth” in a direction that the programmer never anticipated (as players are so wont to do in tabletop RPGs). Likewise, the interaction is extremely limited. The computer typically spits out some flowery verbiage worthy of any seasoned gamemaster, but then you have to figure out what to do next. If you can’t figure out what the programmer expected you to do, you end up bumping your head against a virtual wall, the computer saying things like “you can’t do that” or “I don’t understand that verb”. Then, of course, you finally figure out what the programmer wanted you to do, and you are assaulted by yet another flowery string of verbiage, basically taking you to the next stage of the adventure. For those of you who remember the old version of “Zork”, you know what I’m talking about. The user basically wanders around and explores the virtual environment which the programmer created. Objects can be picked up and used to solve problems, and there may even be the possibility for interaction with various programmed NPCs. I can’t help but imagine that IFGs probably led to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), these being multi-user versions of the old IFGs, incorporating many of the same commands and assumptions.

Both MUDs and IFGs enjoyed their hey-day during the 80s, the same period that AD&D was exploding in popularity, and similarities of early MUDs to D&D make me wonder if perhaps there was some sort of cross-fertilization going on between RPGs, IFGs, and MUDs. If that’s the case, is it possible that our hobby of tabletop RPGs has merely been a niche gateway for the larger and still growing hobby of computer gaming? In short, should we be hearing a sucking sound? In pondering this question, it’s important for us to consider what these IFGs and MUDs are really about. They’re about stories. The program user wants to participate in a story, and he’s using the computer as the medium. But that’s silly! Tabletop RPGs had already been invented by the time IF was first expanding. Why game with a computer when you can game with real, live people? I can’t help but imagine what might have happened if tabletop roleplaying had managed to incorporate or retain the IF crowd, rather than losing them to the rush of modern computer gaming, which is all too often more about graphics and glitz than substance and story? The question, of course, is why did people migrate from RPGs to IFGs & MUDs or from roleplaying to graphical computer games, and likewise, why didn’t more of those in the computer genres not reach for the dice and become tabletop roleplayers? In a way, this is an elitist question to even be asking. After all, I’m making the assumption that once you go black, you never go back, and while that in fact might be the case, this probably isn’t. After all, each gaming genre has its own pros and cons. But before we identify those, let’s first look at the big picture.

Games that Tell Stories

General Public

Board Games War Games LARPs

Modern Computer Games

CCGs Tabletop RPGs

IFGs

MUDs

Arguably, all of these games tell stories in one form or another. In two of the most popular boardgames, Monopoly and Clue, there is a form of story being told, granted it’s being told in a very structured and limited way. Likewise with wargaming; anytime two armies meet in battle, there is a story: you’ve got conflict, you’ve got the protagonist (yourself) and the antagonist (the other guy), and through the mechanics of the game, a resolution is reached... hence, you’ve got a story. Likewise with CCGs, LARPs, IFGs, MUDs, and modern (graphical) computer games which have picked up the tradition in their own peculiar way. All of these games tell stories, yet each of them does it in a unique way. Many of you have tried a number of these genres of gaming, and it is my perception that most gamers are constantly floating between these genres like so many rats in a bizarre maze. But where is this flow occurring, and why is it occurring? I have drawn arrows to symbolize what I view as the major traffic corridors, but these are just a wild guesses and are probably wholly erroneous. I myself came to RPGs from the general public without passing through wargaming, and I would think that there is probably two-way traffic between each bubble shown. The truth is that I have no idea where the main avenues exist or in which direction they are flowing. If I had some marketing data, I might be able to paint a clearer picture, but as it stands, all I’ve got are my personal perceptions, plus a small database of gamers in my area (hardly a sample representative of the nation, much less the world). Lacking any hard data, the obvious question may be to simply identify the likely reasons for flow, but for that we have to look at the pros and cons of each segment.

are difficulties with finding other like-minded players. I think that put together, these are the main factors which have kept the hobby from growing faster than it might have otherwise, and in thinking about all this versus what other gaming segments have accomplished, I can’t help but come away with the impression that a great opportunity was missed for tabletop roleplaying to really take off and become an accepted, mainstream form of recreation. The question, of course, is what did we do wrong, and how do we correct it? In order to answer that, let’s look a bit more closely at the key problems:

1. Lack of Ease for Beginners

As we all know, RPG rule systems started out as rather simplistic constructions, and of course that’s when the hobby was experiencing its highest percentage growth. Before too long, however, rule mechanics became increasingly clumsy as RPG designers scrambled to cover every conceivable game situation. In some cases, we saw the tacking on of various addenda to already well-established systems. In other cases, we saw full scale overhaul. With increasing complexity, some of the major players in the industry realized the need for an introductory-level game. However, I don’t think it was until relatively recently that they hit the mark. I know a lot of people here have complained about D&D3e, and to be honest, I’m a bit of a homebrewer, unwilling to update my campaign tools to fit the new system. Nonetheless, I have to appreciate the facts. My girlfriend, a complete newbie if there ever was one, played both systems, and she was decidedly in favor of the new one. In looking at the way in which it is Arguable Attributes of Gaming Genres streamlined, I have to agree, they definitely made it easier for beginners. I think the industry in general has Ease for Freedom of Personal Ease w/ reached a consensus that simpler is, Beginners Action Investment Finding indeed, better. Granted, there are still Participants those who prefer RollMaster (or is it called RuleMaster?), but I think the Board Games High Low Low High general feeling is that if you’re going to Wargames Moderate Moderate Moderate Low bog us down with a lot of rulebooks, at Tabletop RPGs Low High High Low least keep them streamlined along a CCGs Moderate Moderate Low Moderate basic set of mechanics so that we don’t LARPs High Moderate High Low have to learn a whole bunch of special IFGs High Moderate Moderate N/A case rules in order to play the game. MUDs High Moderate High High Computer Games High Moderate Moderate N/A 2. RPGs Require High Personal

Time Investment Tabletop RPGs are unique, of course, in the sense that they provide the highest degree of freedom of action, and I think this is what has attracted me to the hobby and kept my interest. IFGs try to paint the illusion of this freedom, but ultimately they can’t compete on the same level. In fact, I don’t think any form of gaming can compete on the same level, at least if your focus is really on story-telling rather than pure hack & slash. However, our hobby is not terribly easy for beginners to take up, personal investment (especially for the GM) in terms of time & preparation is likewise pretty high, and finally there

Of course, this is sort of a double-edged sword. For many folks, creating elaborate adventures is a large part of the fun. However, gamers as whole have, I think, realized that there is a certain degree of drudgery which ought to be dispensed with. To this end, a great many people on the internet have written programs to speed the process of adventure preparation. I think it is a tragedy that good software wasn’t released sooner. And it should come as somewhat of an embarrassment to industry management that much of the best software out there today is still being programmed by the hobbyists themselves.

Why is that? I can’t think of a single good reason. Any game that is worth the expense of professional publishing is also worth the investment in software for character generation, encounter generation, and combat resolution. If a design team hasn’t gone to the trouble of creating these as part of a game’s design process, then perhaps the game isn’t yet ready for publication (I’m hereby ducking for cover -).

3. Difficulty in Finding Like-Minded Players I think that quite a bit of attention has already been paid to the previous two problems. As the most obvious example, D&D3e seems to have been designed with newbies more than long-time players in mind. Likewise, the Player’s Handbook included a character generator, a welcome first in the history of D&D’s PHBs. However, I think the problem with finding like-minded players is really key, and unfortunately, it seems to have been largely ignored, possibly due to the sheer immensity of the problem. It has always been assumed that players would find each other through their own social networks, or perhaps, if all else failed, by placing ads in local gaming shops. Granted, TSR did establish the RPGA some years ago, perhaps with the notion of addressing this very issue, however, I don’t think it’s done enough to connect players. Certainly, it hasn’t done everything it could have done. Part of the problem may be that game designers are so immersed in the industry that they probably can’t remember a time that players were scare. They go to conventions and run demos of the latest thing. They may work in an office which is entirely populated by hardcore gamers. But what’s important for them to realize is that the rest of the gaming public doesn’t share in this potentially enviable situation. What the rest of the gaming public contends with is the fact that RPGs have become a fractured genre, and the nerd image inherent to the entire subculture hasn’t helped attract newbies. In fact, fracture may not even be the right term. In a large sense, what I’m referring to is the highly controversial idea that Ryan Dancey was advocating, that there are too many games and too many RPGers who are fixated on just one or a handful to the exclusion of all others, hence making it all too difficult for RPGers to find others who share their peculiar niche. However, I’d go even further than this, and state that there are different types of RPG campaigns. Broadly, you have your hack & slash games, which in my opinion seem to represent a large percentage, probably because RPGs did, after all, descend from wargames. Then you have your beer & pretzel affairs, where anything goes so long as its silly enough. There are, likewise, games which are purely an excuse for socialization, where catching up with everyone is of prime importance and gaming takes a back seat. Then you have your serious games, which may involve a commandment for everyone to “stay in character” at all times or risk their character blurting out during some highly sensitive negotiations, “Yo, where’s the can, I gotta take a leak!” Given the fact that there are so many different RPGs and so many different types of RPGing, it stands to reason that the task of finding like-minded players could present a challenge. This, I think, is a major reason why RPGs are not more popular than they are among gamers in general, and I think we’ve really missed the boat in terms of addressing this

problem in a courageous and timely manner. Of course, Dancey’s way of addressing the problem was to raise production standards and lower copyright barriers such that low-budget, competing RPGs would never get picked up by distributors. His general hope was that more RPGers would end up playing D&D3e and its various D20 offshoots. While I understand the idea, I don’t think this is proper the solution. I think the proper solution is, quite simply, to make it substantially easier for RPGers to hook-up with other likeminded RPGers. But how do we do this?

Finding Like-Minded Gamers If you’re like me, you’ve encountered at least one point in your life where you wanted to do some gaming, but there was nobody around who shared your interest in RPGs. Maybe you’re at this point right now. So far, I’ve encountered this situation twice. The first time was when I just got into college. I was a new freshman, and I knew absolutely nobody, and those people I did come to meet in the dorm were serious boozers, not gamers. Needless to say, when in such a joyous situation, one finds gamers purely by chance. Unless, that is, you wear one of those “I’m a gamer” stickers on your forehead. Pencil falls off desk in the middle of a lecture, “Oops, failed my dex. I say, everyone... I failed my dex!” Okay, so that would be a bit extreme, but there are varying degrees, and just as stoners can spot one another from across campus, gamers also have an unusual knack for spotting other gamers. It can be something as innocuous as a comment about the cafeteria food (“Is this jello or green slime?”) or as blatant as an open dice bag (“Okay... let’s see if I can make my saving throw versus poison. No! I don’t think I’ll be eating here today!”). As I’ve said somewhere before, I personally tend toward the closet when it comes to gaming. I guess the main reason is that I didn’t want to have to explain it to people. The secondary reason, of course, is that I didn’t need anyone thinking that I was any more strange than was already perfectly obvious. And, of course, there were the usual stereotypes one much contend with. You know what I’m talking about, so I don’t think I need to expound upon this at any length. In short, finding a group of gamers in college required a bit of luck, and as it turned out, I was fortunate. I think it was in a speech class I was taking either my freshman or sophomore year. Somehow I met up with a group of guys and began running one of those multiyear campaigns. It was great, and it probably kept me from falling out of gaming entirely. By the time I was starting the MBA program, I knew enough gamers on campus to start a guild. As I indicated back in my introductory zine of issue #297, it was about 10% effort and 90% luck. In short, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it just so happened that everything worked splendidly, and I realized then that creating a gamers guild is probably the easiest, most personally satisfying thing you can do for this hobby. It requires no more effort than preparing a decent campaign, yet the rewards far outweigh the demands.

I graduated two years later, and entrusted the guild to someone who I thought would carry it on. In fact, he ended up turning it into a LARP-society which survived for several years after I’d left. Not exactly what I would have done, but it was gratifying to know that it was still alive and thriving in its own bizarre way. Of course, once I left college, many of my friends also began heading off to find their place in the world. True, some stayed on for PhDs, and a few turned into the proverbial career-students, but over several years, it was pretty obvious that everyone was slowly and almost methodically disappearing. Martin went to Palm Springs to become a college instructor. Eric went to Washington and was soon working at amazon.com. Matt had long since gone back to Pennsylvania. Kenton went to Berkeley to study law. Ross went to Tennessee and joined the army. Brian went to silicon valley to make his fortune. No gamers, of course, meant no games, so it wasn’t too long before I went on the prowl. I even stooped to placing an ad in one of the local gaming shops. No luck. Finally, somewhere in the dim recesses of my skull, lightning struck. Why not create another gamers guild, but instead of focusing it solely on a single university, give it a wider range. Let it be a guild for the entire community. And so that’s how the Inland Empire Gamers Guild (IEGG) of Southern California was born. A lot of people from across the country have written me since, many of them somewhat irked that there are no gamers out where they live, and this got me to thinking that perhaps some of you reading this now are in the very same predicament. Perhaps A&E is your primary gaming fix. If so, then this article is really for you, because the fact is, unless you live in a small mid-western town or on an island the size of my apartment, there are probably more gamers out there than you realize. Ah... but how to find them? Well, you’re in luck, because I’m going to share with you the secrets of how to do it. None of this is particularly hard. None of it is going to put you out a great deal of money. And trust me... the rewards will become very obvious to you in a few months when you see what you’ve accomplished.

How to Create a Gamers Guild Step 1: Get my Program I recently wrote a program to help disseminate membership information for the IEGG. You can use this program to help make your job as guild organizer a lot easier. You can find it at:

http://www.geocities.com/jimvassila/guild.htm This is an MS-DOS freeware, but it’ll also run under Windows as well as most DOS emulators. You use the arrow keys (rather than a mouse) to navigate. “Enter” selects items. “Q” quits whatever menu you’re in and goes back to the previous one. Check it out, and email me with any questions.

Step 2: The Questionnaire The guild.zip archive that contains the program also contains a file called ques.doc which is a questionnaire in MS-Word format. You need to edit this, basically putting in your own guild name and contact info in place of what’s already there.

Step 3: Footwork After you print out the questionnaire, you need to drop off copies on the gaming shops in your area. If you’re like me, you’ll then snooze on this for about a year or so, so don’t be like me. Pay those shops regular visits. Most shop owners will be happy to help. If they have any brains whatsoever, they will intuitively realize that anything you can do to help the hobby grow and prosper in your area will help put money into their pockets. Just be clear that what you’re doing, you’re doing free of charge. Occasionally you may meet a shop owner here and there who just doesn’t get it. Here is some strict advice: always be polite and easy-going regardless of what happens. And have a good sense of humor. Wise astrophysicist once say the two most abundant resources in this universe are hydrogen and stupidity, so if you don’t have a sense of humor, you ain’t gonna have fun.

Step 4: Entering the Data Enter the data from the questionnaires into this program. Churn out hardcopies (guild.rtf) from the file management menu and get those back to the gaming shops. (Make sure you keep the physical addresses of your members outside of this software... that’s definitely not for public distribution!)

Step 5: Use the Internet Create an Internet mailing list for your guild as well as a homepage and an online questionnaire (you can even copy the one I made at http://www.geocities.com/jimvassila/q.htm). Make sure you put a copy of the membership list (possibly with a copy of this program so people can search it) on the homepage for immediate download.

Step 6: Stick with it! This is easy stuff, but it’s also long-term. It doesn’t require a great deal of effort, but you can’t just get tired and quit, and you certainly shouldn’t quit just because you’ve found a few gamers. “But why bother? Once I have a gaming group, why should I keep working on the guild?” Mainly because it’s for the good of the hobby. People have talked for years about getting more people into gaming. I think the real key is keeping people from falling out, and the best way to do that is to make it easy for them to find other gamers who share their same niche. That’s what gamers guilds are all about. Look at it this way... gaming has given you a lot of enjoyment over the years, right? Well, now it’s time to give something back. So get out there and Just do it!

Inland Empire Gamers Guild / New Member Questionnaire Name: Phone: (Note: Your phone number will be distributed to all guild members, so if that bugs you, leave this blank)

Date of Birth

Email: Homepage:

______ / ______ / ______

Address: (Note: Your mailing address will be held confidential. We need this to send you flyers and stuff unless you’ve listed an email address. Please at least include your city of residence & zipcode for the membership list even if you don’t want us to have your full address.)

What percentage of your gaming is: Tabletop roleplaying?

%

Live-action roleplaying?

%

Computer/online gaming?

%

Wargaming?

%

Collectable card games?

%

Other:

%

Favorite Games: 1.

2.

3.

4.

Are you setting up or running an RPG campaign and looking for players?

Y / N

If yes, what game is it for? How often does it meet? Are you looking to enter into an existing RPG campaign?

Y / N

How often could you show up? What percentage of the time do you play vs referee?

Player ______%

/ Ref ______%

Would you be interested in contributing work to an amateur gaming magazine? Do you draw/sketch, and would you be willing to contribute your artwork? Would you be interested in running games at a local gaming convention?

Y / N Y / N Y / N

Comments/Ideas: (please continue on back of page)

Please return to store manager, or mail to “PO Box 30036, San Bdno, CA 92413-0036”, or email [email protected] for an e-copy of this questionnaire. You can also fill it out online at http://www.geocities.com/jimvassila/iegg.htm where you’ll find links to these guild resources: http://www.egroups.com/group/iegg http://pub8.ezboard.com/biegg.html http://iegguild.tripod.com

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