Dividing Narrative from Game: Pulling the “G” out of RPG.
As I peruse the sites and read more and more on RPG design, I begin to see the fundamental flaw. I am not a gamer, I am a storyteller. When it comes to system mechanics, I am not interested in making combat fun or easily devised combat scenarios and traps. I am not interested in any of those things. I am interested in what makes a story compelling. I want to know what drives characters to succeed.
In Doryn, in the far northern wastes, a young boy felt a great rumbling and watched as the earth before him seemed to split apart. He might have screamed but no sound was heard save the scraping of ice and the thundering of stone. His life could have ended there. In this moment he could have fallen into the depths of the earth and disappeared from the life and the world forever. His existence would have been nothing but a speck of momentary text on a site that no one reads.
When the earth stopped shaking and everything fell silent once again, the boy was still there, though. His name is Devid Kindas and as he is no longer afraid. He has stared into the face of the abyss and he is ready. He in not more than nine years of age, but he is ready.
Now I ask….ready for what? Who is Devid? I can tell you. I will tell you eventually. I will explain how his life melds into the lives of others and how it may come to shape the Northern Lands. This is story. I can’t tell you stats, he is bright, articulate, distant, and exceptionally aware. He is still a child, though. He loves to play tag or to be dragged on the ice by his father or their dogs.
Last year, the older boys in his village captured a live arctic fen (think a large reindeer-esque type of creature) and Devid is still proud that he was the only one brave enough to ride the sled they tied to it. It actually pulled him for several hundred feet before turning on him and trying to trample him. Here, again, he barely survived and he’ll always carry a curved scar on his left should where the fen’s hooves caught him.
This is part of Devid’s story. In a few more minutes, I could give you his father, his mother (in a panic right now), and a younger sibling.
This is story. We write stories. We share stories. We do not create games that can be won or object that are worth value. There is no gear, no item worth it, we create characters and worlds and that is more than enough.
