Dialect Actual Play: A Linguistics Lesson in the Form of a Game

Four of us sat down to play Dialect: A Game About Language and How it Dies by Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyaliouglu. It was a rich experience, and one that has great potential for teachers looking to give their students insights into how language develops in response to a changing world. 

Overview

Dialect is a GM-less game “for three to five players in three to four hours.” During play, the group chooses from a prewritten set of Backdrops (though there are instructions of how to write your own). You then  build the setting and characters and progress through a sequence of three rounds (which the game calls Ages). The game has custom cards to drive the play forward, and in the course of play, you write down new developments on 3x5 index cards and put those on the table. We used a module of the game on Roll20, which took a little bit of getting used to, but it did its job of facilitating online play.

The game is about an isolated community and how its language changes over time. Each player takes on a character role as prompted by an archetype card, and the group then creates new words (usually derived from preexisting words) that encapsulate the changing concerns of the community. The rules are clear and laid out logically. A group of new players (as we were) can learn the game at the table by working through the rulebook. It is clear that the game went through an extensive playtesting and development period, and there is an evident effort to base the game on a genuine understanding of linguistics.

Our Experience

A game focussed specifically on language development—that’s certainly a unique focus—and Dialect delivers on its core goal. We had a great time thinking about the card prompts and then repurposing, recombining, or otherwise creating words and then using them in the course of framed scenes. It was satisfying to see how we built up the “language tableau” and continued to weave our new words into our dialogue. There were some great dramatic moments, and many of the words were charged with emotional significance as a result of the game play. 

So I’d strongly recommend the game, but there are caveats and questions in order.

The Factor of Time in Games

To begin, we fully doubled the advertised time estimate, completing the game in four 2-hour sessions—and it didn’t feel like we were being slow. I’m sure you could complete the game in four hours . . . but only IF at least one person came to the table fully versed in the game rules and IF that person was pushing the play forward. 

Certainly from a marketing or a convention-play standpoint, it is nice to say you have a game that can be picked up on the spot and played in a single session—and it’s triply nice to say that the game will deliver a significant experience. After completing our 8+ hours of play, however, I don’t think any of us would opt for the one-session route if we had a choice.

Maybe it’s a result of my middle-aged brain, but if a game is asking me to build a world and create a character, I’m inclined to turn that into a “Session Zero” unto itself and then allow the players time to reflect on the setting before diving full-force into game play. In our first session, we did the “Creating the Isolation” tasks and played our first scene to introduce the basic mechanics. When we returned one week later, we were all primed and ready to enter into the scenes with richer and more thoughtful ideas. In each subsequent session we played out an Age, ending with a sense of the major change that would be ushering us into the next Age during the following week’s session.

Since we live so intimately within time, it’s often hard to think about how it's always shaping our perceptions and experiences. It would be worthwhile for game rulebooks and players to have more explicit conversations about pacing and other facets of our chronosphere (scheduling, duration of play, out-of-session conversations about the game, etc.). When I first played RPGs in high school, we usually had a long once-a-week session (usually around 5 hours on a Friday night), but since we all went to the same school, there were regular brief conversations about our characters and plans during the week. This kind of approach meant that play was ongoing in a very natural, organic manner. 

By contrast, today, play sessions are shorter, and, since most of the people I play with are not even in the same state, conversations between sessions are more sparse and sporadic. While I much prefer regular weekly sessions for a game, it is often the case that I am playing a game where we have 2 or 3 week pauses between sessions. In addition, the playing of games online changes the nature of pacing in ways both explicit and subtle. All of these time factors change the way I have approached and experienced games at the table.

During our game of Dialect, we were quite aware of how our deliberate and segmented game play was giving us a different experience than the default one-shot mode assumed by the rulebook. Our conversations, deliberations, and scenes were longer, and we had more time to add details and developments to our stories. Yes, we had to spend a few minutes at the start of each session summarizing the previous week--that’s one item that you don’t have to do in a one shot. But this task was made efficient by Roll20, which saved our virtual tabletop and thus kept our new words, characters, and aspects readily available. If I were to try a one-shot of Dialect, I would need to have one eye steadily on the clock to make sure things were moving forward apace. This might actually sharpen some emotions: For example, the feeling of instability foreshadowed by the transition to the final Age in Dialect would hit me with more force and urgency. But the more rapid pace would take away from other aspects. For example, most of our scenes involved all four players in community conversations (Our characters' AI minds loved working in a network!), and a tighter schedule would have necessitated sacrificing some of those for short two-player dialogues or monologues.

A Game About How Language . . . Evolves

Dialect’s subtitle announces that this is a game “about language and how it dies.” 

I’m totally on board with the first part of the subtitle: The core element of play involves inventing or refashioning words in accordance with the prompts of the custom cards. This dimension of the game is clear, engaging, and even poignant. 

For example, during the first Age, I got the prompt to create a word for a “Special Occasion.” We were working with the “Sing the Earth Electric” backdrop, which specified that we were a community of robots who had been left on Earth after the humans had departed and never returned. After tapping into some data banks, we opted to organize ourselves according to the model of early agrarian communities, which meant we were planting and harvesting, except we (being robots and all) had no actual need for the food crops. We knew that agrarian communities had a special celebration to mark the harvest, so we imagined that our ceremony involved taking the ultimately unnecessary grains and fruits of the field and ritually throwing them into the wasteland. We thus came up with the word “spread” to describe this impractical ritual and then applied “spread” to any occasion or event that we saw as holding special significance. 

I’m admittedly confused by the second part of the subtitle which presents the idea that this game examines how a language dies. The prewritten backdrops of Dialect clearly telegraph that, at the end of the game, the community (or “Isolation”) will be extinguished. Of course, when you arrive at a point where you say that a community has died, you could force a tautology or circular argument that says, “Since the language is, by definition, part of a community, when a community dies, its language has died with it.” That conclusion is certainly tragic, but it doesn’t make a particularly interesting or insightful point about language transformation.

In the actual game play, you are constantly inventing new words and creating new meanings for old words that you alter and refashion. Your community may experience catastrophes and it may be forced into making painful decisions. These somber changes are mirrored and recorded in your community’s language. But that is not the same as saying that the language itself is dying. If you are doing your job as players, you discover that language is becoming even more rich and nuanced because it is learning how to encapsulate deeply felt experiences of mourning and loss. 

My understanding of the game is no doubt influenced by the backdrop that we chose. In “Sing the Earth Electric,” we played robots directed to terraform Earth for a human population that, it turns out, was never going to return. When we were moving to the Second Age, we chose a fork that had us invaded by a group of strange, non-organic, non-human creatures who proceeded to take over the world. We responded by abandoning our agrarian ways and turning our attention to investigating and communicating with the aliens. (I found it droll and entertaining that our core concerns of farming and terraforming were both ultimately useless from a practical standpoint.) 

We considered taking an aggressive stance toward the aliens, but opted instead to seek out a mutual understanding. At the game’s close, we were outnumbered by the aliens, who then offered us a chance to leave with them, and most of us opted to venture onward. So yes, we moved away from our terraforming and farming roots, and this was impacting our language, but those aspects were in turn replaced by different ones that reinvigorated our vocabulary.

We were aware that the game seemed to want us to veer towards tragedy. But we kept playing the game in a more deadpan, stoic spirit--not because we had explicitly decided upon this, but simply because that’s where our play led us (we were robots, after all). At the end of the game, one of our company was left on Earth (due to the fact that he was essentially a giant, stationary radio tower) while the rest of us were zooming away with the aliens to an unknown future. So yes, our community was irreversibly transformed, as was its language, but we were off creating new words and meanings to define our new state of being and relationship with the aliens. We also had a dawning sense that the aliens were starting to incorporate aspects of our language into their vocabulary.

Dialectical Post Script

Lest I be misunderstood, Dialect is a valuable game to play and to study. The writing is crisp, and game procedures are streamlined. Designers and dedicated players will find much to admire and to inspire within the rulebook.

My most immediate plans are to modify components of the game for play in the English classroom. Dialect has the ability to give players an experience of how language changes in order to capture new understandings of ourselves and our world. It also provides insights into how a community’s language is an intrinsic part of its identity. Students can learn about these ideas by reading works of literature or listening to a lecture. But in Dialect, they have an opportunity briefly to live these ideas firsthand. 

Expect further updates on my journey with Dialect. Needless to say, I will have to figure out how to scale the game for classes of 15-20 students and (back to the chronosphere) how to fit it into the time frame of the school schedule.

Ludoverse Lab: Improvisational Play with The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by James Wallis and Cheat Your Own Adventure by Shane Mclean, with the Pompey Crew Design Team

For this session of the Ludoverse Lab, we went after more lighthearted fare. Cheat Your Own Adventure and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen are prep-less and GM-less games which challenge the players to think on their feet. Absurdity and inanity follows.

You can see the video recording of our session by clicking here.

I’ve lightly edited the video with headings used throughout to assist you in seeing how the gameplay develops. The video ends with some brief discussion about the games in education and the possible tweaks we would use to make sure all the students are involved in the mix.

Of special note is the contributions of Mikel Matthews, a drama and English teacher who also has deep experience in the improv acting arena. He gives us some useful instruction at the 59:00 mark as well as towards the end of the session during our debrief. Teachers who are interested in teaching role-playing and improvisational skills would be wise to take a look at what he has to say.

Cheat Your Own Adventure is freely available as a 2-page pdf on the internet. The basic idea is simple: One player starts a narrative about an adventurer using the second person (“you”) and takes the tale to a branch. The other players then propose options for the protagonist, and the narrative then passes to the player whose option is selected. The end result is a collaborative tale, and the players naturally fall into the idea of coming up with options that are attractive either because they are intriguing or because they will lead to hilarity.

It quickly becomes apparent in this game that the destination is less important than the journey. From the get-go, we swerve down paths that have little to do with the sorcerer Zalkir (whose name appeared in the title of our adventure) and more to do with introducing zany side characters and detours. When the narrative branches, the players at the table are challenged to come up with new directions for the tale. There were occasions when a player had come up with a good idea yet found someone introducing their idea before they could put theirs on the table, so we had to keep on our toes. It was also sometimes challenging to keep all the options in mind: You will see me constantly taking notes as an aid.

CYOA is a solid warm-up game that will inevitably lead to a lighthearted good time. It also has great flexibility in terms of the types of stories it can tell. For example, one might use the framework to tell the story of a press secretary who has to handle various gaffes and missteps of a President whom they serve. That would activate a great pun in the abbreviated title of the game—COYA. There are also clear possibilities of taking the narrative to more serious or dramatic destinations.

Baron Munchausen is a more refined game. Players challenge each other to tell tales, with the goal being to make your story more extraordinary than the others. The game really cooks when you use the challenge mechanic, which allows you to interrupt another player’s tale and ask them to explain or justify some detail.

The game has a curious competitive aspect, and one can consider strategy, but the rivalry side of the game is ultimately simply more veneer that exists to generate additional outrageous fiction. For example, if you challenge other players, your purse will surely dwindle, which seems like a bad thing. But in the final round of voting, you are giving your purse to the other player whose story you deem to be the most extraordinary. That means that having a small purse leading up to the end is actually a boon in disguise, since you will ultimately be passing fewer coins to a rival. Wallis has worked out a brilliant betting mechanic that rewards deep study: It valuable lessons into how an apparent strategic-competitive component can encourage the alert player to lean into the tactics and, in so doing, reinforce the underlying goal of the game.

One element that adds to the humor to Baron Munchausen is the atmosphere of false 18th-century propriety that the game encourages. Players are instructed to give themselves bogus honorific titles, and challenges are delivered with an affected politesse. The rule book is a delight to read and puts you in the right spirit. At some point in the future, I’d love to drill into the stylistic approaches of different rpg authors. There is great variety out there. If you wanted two writers worthy of close study who exist at opposite ends of the spectrum, I’d suggest comparing Ben Robbins to James Wallis. I admire both of them immensely, but for opposed reasons: Robbins is a master of clear, cogent precision, while Wallis is capable of delivering lush hilarity.

I’m gearing up to play Our Last Best Hope by Mark Diaz Truman, and I’m then going to set up a few more laboratory experiments for the summer. Announcements about those sessions will appear in the coming weeks, and as always, I’ll be looking for players to join me at the table.

Ludoverse Lab: Follow by Ben Robbins

For our most recent experiment in the Ludoverse Lab, I decided to play with fire.

I had already talked to players who blanched at the notion of bringing viral material into a game. The reasons for their reticence are easily understood. The coronavirus pandemic has touched everyone on multiple levels. The topic goes deep and hits on sensitive nerves. For many, the idea of playing with something so close to home is not what they are after in a tabletop gaming experience. They are understandably looking for games to give them some respite, consolation, and social connection in this bleak time.

I, however, am especially drawn to tabletop roleplaying games that will go hard after vital topics, and it strikes me that this medium has deep resources for probing into very real human situations. As a teacher, I’m interested in how we might use games in education to prompt our students (and ourselves) to reflect on our world, to consider how others might view situations differently, and to explore alternate “real-world” outcomes in a fictional space.

So, I gathered together three other intrepid, like-minded souls, and we played Ben Robbins’ Follow using the playset called “The Cure.” I recorded our session and edited it. You can access it by clicking here. [One note: I took out much of the character creation section to keep the length more reasonable and to cut to the chase.]

The players include a middle school science teacher, a high school math teacher, a college American literature professor, and me (a high school English teacher). It was a special joy for me to have in the mix a former colleague whom I hadn’t seen in years.

I find the opening of our session intriguing: You will see some anxious body language and nervous hesitations as we consider whether to take a more indirect route through some fictive distancing—by, for example, dealing with an epidemic in a futuristic or historical setting. Ultimately, we left the idea of dealing with a zombie infection or a medieval plague for another day and opted to set our game in the here and now. The coronavirus was directly in the crosshairs, and we played characters living in a small city in upstate New York which was starting to grapple with an outbreak among teachers at the local elementary school.

The idea of Follow is that the players take on roles of characters in a “Fellowship,” a group which is united by a common crisis or mission. It is clear from the playset of “The Cure” that Robbins was initially imagining a hospital, research facility, or laboratory as a setting. Our group expanded this setting so that it encompassed people across a city, and you will note that we had to tweak and mold the playset to fit our conception. Our characters included a prominent local business owner, a member of the city council, a hospital security, a dispirited pharmacy assistant, and others. The result is that we had a varied mix of “takes” on the infection, and we remained true to providing a fiction that focused on ordinary people navigating an unexpected crisis with wide-ranging personal and social impacts. In Follow, each player controls a major character and a minor character, and the major characters are involved in some personal entanglements: The major character sitting to you left has something which your major character wants, but which is being withheld. Given the more broad city setting for our Fellowship, we were able to leverage some of these tensions, while others were relatively unexplored. A more contained, pressure-cooker environment—such as, for example, a single hospital—might have afforded us more opportunities to bring more of those conflicted connections into focus.

As will be the custom with the Ludoverse Lab, the session ends with a roundtable debrief. These comments begin with reflections on our actual play experience and the game, and then we spiral outward to talk about possibilities for the classroom. Many of the points raised merit further exploration. For example, Lali considers whether a middle school setting would require a more indirect, less immediately realistic approach. We were also considering whether the game, which ideally involves 3-5 players, could be played (perhaps with modifications) in a classroom context.

Related to this question is Chana’s curiosity about how to approach role-playing with students, most of whom are new to the activity. I have some advice to offer in the recording. If one has the luxury of time, for example, one can work to build up to role-playing through experiences and assignments given early in the year. I have had 9th grade students play the game Microscope initially without the “Scene” component, but I end the game with a writing assignment which takes students through the nuts and bolts of constructing an effective, dramatic scene between characters. With that assignment under their belts, students are more equipped to step towards more freeform, improvised role-playing situations later in the year.

This consideration has led me to the perhaps obvious realization that the GM-less environment can make things more difficult for less experienced role-players. A GM can ask players questions (such as “What does that look like?” or “What is it about Mr. X that most annoys your character?”) and push them to flesh out role-playing situations. In GM-less games with younger students, I have sometimes adopted a pseudo-GM role to prompt the students to think more deeply about their role-playing.

Ultimately, what I need is to develop a “Role-Playing 101” lesson which would pull together many of the insights and techniques I’ve picked up through my years of role-playing. This is another area where the classroom is manifestly different from the organic hobby group. When my friends and I first took up role-playing games in my high school years, none of us knew what we were doing, so we just worked it out over many months of trial and error. In the classroom, a more targeted and efficient approach is required. I will have to add “Role-Playing 101” to my list of summer projects.

I will end by reiterating my invitation to educators. If you are reading this and want to participate in an upcoming Ludoverse Lab, let me know and I’ll happily reserve a seat at the virtual table.

Ludoverse Lab: The Pool by James V. West, Part 2

We wrapped up our sessions with The Pool with three returning players and one new addition. To watch the video of our session (with post-game debrief, click here.

We were able to get a taste of how the game’s advancement system works. In brief, after playing a session, the players get an additional 15 words that they can add to their character descriptions (or, if they want, they can bank those words to deploy them later). They also get 9 points in their “pool” which they can use in turn to add points to their bonus traits. As with all matters, the approach is streamlined and elegant.

This week, we were joined by Linnea, who is the creative director of a video game design company living in Sweden. It didn’t take long to get her up and running with the game. The fact that everything is grounded in those character descriptions made it easy for her to get quickly oriented.

This is, to say the least, a group that attacks the game from an array of perspectives. You have a college undergraduate majoring in English and psychology, a college professor specializing in philosophy and ethics, a high school government teacher, and me (a high school English teacher).

I decided this week to “go Memento” on the players by starting things off with the scene that would chronologically END our narrative and then work our way backward in time. The streamlined system of The Pool hummed with this approach. The trick is for the GM to begin by describing a scene that is happening in medias res and to weave in abundant specific details from the previous session and the character descriptions. But the special sauce is to leave things open. You don’t have to explain everything that’s going on: That’s for the game play to determine. You can also allow the players to insert the characters into the scene as they see fit.

I could explain things, but really the better course of action is to direct you to 6:45 of the video. There, you’ll see me framing things up and letting the mayhem rip. Role-playing games are best experienced from the players’ side, but even as an observer, you will quickly pick up on the energy and creativity that The Pool and this kind of hard scene framing generate. With one session under the belt, the players quickly lean into their character traits, and the resolution system works hand-in-hand with the weaving of the narrative tapestry.

As a GM, I felt like my main role was to keep the spotlight moving around. After establishing the crazy setting, my job is quite easy and loads of fun. I add a detail to the scene, ask one character what they are going to do, resolve a conflict, and then move onto another character. The elegant system gives the players just enough to work with, and the swinginess of the dice rolls adds to the fun.

I’d again point out how the failures end up inciting more creativity from both the players and the GM. This week, we see the players sometimes failing and opting to deliver a Monologue of Defeat instead of grabbing another die for their pool. And they are also much more quick and eager to take the reins when they are delivering their Monologues of Victory.

I was also happy to see characters volunteering dice from their pools to help their companions. One stipulation I made is that they had to explain what their character was doing to offer assistance within the fiction, and this became another way of moving the spotlight around and of enhancing the descriptive richness of the narrative.

If you have never tried running a role-playing game in reverse order, I urge you to try it out. The approach will allow your session to take off from the opening moment, and it will also challenge the creative thought process of your players. It also forces the mind to think about narrative organization in a more intense and deliberate manner. When you start to step back in time, everyone at the table has to think about how they are going to get the new scene to END where the previously played scene BEGAN. This gives the players and GM a focused objective to chew on as they consider their decisions since they need the action to move toward a determinate end point (which is also a beginning point).

We end the session with some reflections on the game and our experiences. The Pool remains a vibrant gem in 2020, and I encourage educators to study it. Weighing in at only 4-pages, it is like the superfruit of rpgs. I don’t think you could find a game that provides more bang in such a small package. You will find it readily adaptable to varied classroom contexts, and if you are looking for an easy way to introduce a group to role-playing games, The Pool is a perfect place to dive in.

Sorcerer and Sword: The Sodden Lands of Snia Mer, The Final Session

After eight sessions, we brought an end to our mini-campaign using Ron Edwards’ Sorcerer and Sword supplement.  You can access the video by clicking here. 

I’ve now run two games of Sorcerer, and in both cases it took a full 7-8 sessions to bring the kickers to a satisfactory resolution. The players for this series literally ranged around the globe: I’m in central Florida, Rod is in Texas, and Aybars is in Istanbul. To state the obvious, scheduling was a challenge, and it’s a testament to our commitment that we pulled this off.

I have some more sessions recorded, and we’ll see if I have the time to get those edited. This session, however, provides much food for thought, so rather than wait, I’m releasing it now.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I tend to run games that operate on a slow burn, and despite the fact that our session builds to a dramatic crescendo, there are signs of that deliberate style in ample evidence here. Some players will balk at my approach, but I like the way all of this developed in our game. In terms of why the slow burn occurs, I can put my finger on a number of sources.

First, I’m not making it easy on the players. I regularly introduce situations or scenes where you will see the players mulling over their options . . .  and I let them linger in their uncertainty. You’ll see a number of examples in this session.

At the start, for instance, the two Sorcerers have to decide whether to drug their friend (Zeki) who is experiencing an intense withdrawal, or to leave him behind to complete the process. You’ll see them working over that question, until Nagimo (played by Rod) opts for a low-dose drug option, only to have Balder (played by Aybars) rescue the situation by creatively coming up with a creative placebo option (aided by a successful roll of the dice).

And, towards the end of the session, you’ll see the duo encountering a number of fraught situations where they are thoughtfully debating what the best course of action might be: Do we sneak into the compound of the necromancer (named The Prime Herald) or do we take a more direct approach and ask for an audience? Do we try to contact the powerful demon named The Chryxen Butterfly, and if so, what should that timing be? Afterward, should Balder risk a binding with that demon, realizing that, by doing so, he will be initiated into the necromantic arts? The dilemmas come streaming down, and one consequence is that the game sometimes veers into anguished debates over tactics and morality instead of pulse-pounding action.

This session features a number of Humanity rolls. I love the way Balder/Aybars comes to a gradual realization that necromancy is nasty business . . . and there’s even a spot where he tries to justify (mostly to himself) dabbling in this very dark and wicked art (see the sequence starting at 1:14:00). Aybars is in fine form as he works through the ethics, and eventually he arrives at that favorite refuge of morally ambiguous decisions (at 1:18:00): “I have no other choice. . . I’m too deep in this!”

Sorcery and accompanying Humanity rolls are firing on all cylinders as things come to a close. At the 48:30 mark, Balder decides to contact the Chryxen Butterfly, and he uses a wonderfully described blood ritual along with some group sorcery to build up a sizable pool of dice to pull off the Contact. This again takes time (about 15 minutes of game play, some of which is edited out), but it builds up to some memorable rolls and some dramatic and satisfying outcomes.

During planning, I had determined that the Chryxen Butterfly was in a rebellious state with respect to his “current” master, The Prime Herald, though this fact was not known to the players. With the successful Contact roll and some nice role-playing on the part of the Sorcerers, the demon breaks free of The Prime Herald, and Balder then attempts to Bind the demon, In the fiction, this involves a gruesome and excruciating moments as the object demon fuses itself onto Balder’s skull. Normally, the sequence goes Contact ⇒ Summon ⇒ Bind. But since this was a case of an unbound, rebellious demon, we rolled the successes from the Contact directly into the Binding roll. There didn't seem to be any need to Summon a demon who was already there.

Balder ends up losing one of his Humanity checks, which was clearly making Aybars nervous. The session then ends with Nagimo and Balder trying to get the Chryxen Butterfly to reverse the soul entrapment afflicting Nagimo’s friend Zeki (start around 1:30:00). Eventually, the demon comes around to the idea, but notes that this type of reversal draws on necromantic forces--meaning, of course, that a human life is required. The two creatively decide to offer up the life of a former nemesis (the giant named Baseer) whom they knew to be at the complex. So the dark designs set in motion just continued to cascade!

The reversal of the soul entrapment was a puzzle for me: On the one hand it required a human sacrifice, which clearly risked a Humanity loss. But at the same time, the effect was one that was beneficent, restoring a human life (Zeki) to wholeness. In the end, I ordered Aybars/Balder to make two Humanity checks: One to see if he lost a point of Humanity for mercilessly sacrificing the giant Baseer; the other to see if he gained a point of Humanity for restoring Zeki’s soul. He succeeded in both rolls, meaning he ultimately gained a point of Humanity.

With that, the kickers were wrapped up. Nagimo had not only found his friend Zeki, but managed to have him healed. And Balder had achieved his drive for power . . . though I wonder how long it will take for him to wither in corruption like the previous Prime Herald.

As you can tell from this account, Balder had the spotlight in this session. Nagimo in fact had contemplated whether he even needed to travel to the Prime Herald to bring things to a satisfactory (or at least liveable) conclusion. Had the two Sorcerers decided on a secretive operation when they landed , then Nagimo’s superior physical abilities would no doubt have come into play. Thinking about the sessions as a whole, I believe Nagimo commanded a number of key spotlight moments throughout. Still, given that we knew this was driving towards a concluding moment, I would have liked to have found some way to give Rod more of a closing aria. It may be some consolation that Nagimo clearly has more potential as an enduring character in an ongoing saga.

We have a short session debrief at the end, which will provide some insights from Rod and Aybars. I invite them or anyone else interested to offer additional commentary here. We decided to set the game aside, though as I noted to them, it still lies ready in the dock, and I look forward to continuing to develop the setting if others are interested in trudging through the sodden lands of Snia Mer.

I’m itching to take another dive into Sorcerer. Given the frightening COVID-19 pandemic, I’m mulling over Jared Sorenson’s Schism (which is aptly subtitled “A Virulent Setting for Sorcerer”) as a timely supplement in these dark days.

Introducing the Ludoverse Lab: The Pool by James V. West

I’m excited to introduce the inaugural “broadcast” of the Ludoverse Lab.

The core purpose of this project is to experiment with innovative role-playing games with an eye towards education. Beneath that general goal are nested a constellation of exciting possibilities:

• I hope this series contributes to the general conversation about gamification and game-based learning in the classroom.
• I’m openly inviting other educators—regardless of prior experience—to join in either as participants or as observer-commentators.
• I’d like to hone my own skills as a “role-playing gamer” and a teacher through these experiments, and I hope those who join me are similarly sharpened. I would argue that much of the rpg skill set is transferable to teaching.
• I want to analyze game systems and actual play from multiple perspectives.
• Finally, I want this experience to be fun and generally enriching for all involved.

A few comments about this opening experiment in the Ludoverse Lab.

We are playing James V. West’s The Pool, which came out in 2001. Though many today are unfamiliar with the title, one would be hard-pressed to find a game that has exerted more influence with such a short set of rules.

And the influence continues. It is now so deeply ingrained in the DNA of today’s role-playing games that I suspect some designers use its ideas without even realizing the progeny. Just last week, I was introduced to Alien: The Role-Playing Game, and the impact of The Pool was there, though unstated.  In under four pages, West managed to crystallize a number of key ideas about character-based narratives, conflict resolution, player-facing authority, intentional dialogue at the table . . . . I could go on, but so much of what I would say has been more masterfully handled by Ron Edwards in his essay “Understanding The Pool.” I highly recommend that you go there for a deep dive into the game from both a historical and an analytical perspective. You can also look at an earlier piece I wrote for Ludoverse last year.

The Pool does not define a setting or a genre, so, as a GM, it is critical to focus the players by providing them with a skeleton setting. Appropriately enough, I opted for a fictitious modern-day educational institution, which I named Palmer Eldritch High School (credits to Philip K Dick) set in the Appalachian foothills of western Virginia. I provided these additional details to let the tone sink in:

• Mascot: The Luna Moths
• Motto: “Dreaming of tomorrow.”
• School Colors: Blood Orange and Reddish Green (the latter being one of the so-called “impossible colors”)

Our players consisted of a university philosophy professor, a high school government teacher, and an undergraduate student interested in education and psychology. So I had a good mix of disciplines and levels of education represented.

I won’t bog you down with details of the game play itself. The video has been edited, and I’m impressed by the tightness and creativity that the group brought to the table. I invite you to watch it by clicking this link.

I did introduce a few twists to the rules, some of which are derived from the so-called anti-Pool variants. Here’s a summary of the changes which I provided to the group in advance:

1. Character creation. Before the first session, write a 50-word character sketch, following the rules of The Pool. The 50 words should detail your characters' talents, profession, quirks, weaknesses, skills, personality traits, special objects, a signature item, relationships, etc.—anything you imagine as being important or interesting to play with in the game. This sketch provides the traits for the player's character sheet, and the 50 word limit is firm--so you have to be efficient!

Give your character a name and a “kicker” or goal. These are for free--they don’t count towards the 50-word limit. The kicker or goal should be something that sets your character in motion: It should be something specific and concrete. Examples of kickers: Your character enters the parking lot and finds that her new car has been sabotaged (tires slashed, sugar water in the gas tank, etc.). Or your character hopes to gain a college scholarship by leading the basketball team to the district championship.

2. Traits and Bonuses. Follow the rules of The Pool. In brief, you pull traits from your character sketch. You may list a trait with no bonus attached (leaving it available for later advancement). You start with 15 points. To assign a Bonus, spend dice from your starting Pool. The cost is the Bonus times itself. Thus, a +2 would cost 4 dice and a +3 would cost 9 dice and so on. It is very important to leave some dice in your Pool--at least 3 or 4.

3. Casting the Dice. Follow the rules of The Pool with these important modifications:
On a successful roll (i.e. at least one of your dice came up a “1”), you LOSE any dice you gambled from your pool, but you GAIN a Monologue of Victory! Rolling multiple 1s will add to the impact of your success.

On a loss (i.e you rolled no 1s) you get your gambled pool dice back, and you get a choice. You may either ADD an additional die to your pool or you may GAIN a Monologue of Defeat [Note: The Monologue of Defeat must stay true to the fact that you failed your dice roll.]
Other players may contribute dice from their pools to your effort if they can explain how their character is contributing to the action in the fiction. The total number of pool dice gambled cannot exceed 9.

4. Success and Failure. These follow the basic rules of The Pool save the reversal regarding the loss and gain of pool dice (see above). Note the stipulation that multiple 1s magnify the degree of success. Note also that the GM may interpret a failure as a short term success but accompanied by nasty side effects. For example, you fail your roll to climb over the fence. The GM might allow your character to make it over, but notes that your character lands hard on the other side and thinks they might have sprained their ankle. Oh . . . and there’s a guard dog that heard them when they crashed to the ground.

5. Continuing the Story. These follow the rules of The Pool, but you may deduct any previous points invested in a trait to raise that trait. In other words, a +3 costs 9 points. But if that trait is currently at a +2, you have already spent 4 points to get the trait to that level. So now it will only cost you 5 additional points to raise it to a +3. Note also the rule that you may add or increase bonuses to traits at any point.

6. At Death’s Door. Should circumstances require it, we will follow the rules of The Pool.

There are many instructive elements of our game that deserve particular note:

After sending them the skeleton setting, I gave the players the 50-word character sketch as a pre-game homework assignment, and this included the requirement providing me with a “kicker” or goal. Some might prefer to accomplish these tasks through a conversation at the table, but my mind likes to chew over what the players are signalling me in advance of the opening session. I’m better able to weave their kickers and traits into the opening scenes when I have the time to reflect. The value of this strategy is apparent in the scenes we work through.

Also deserving of study are the moments of victory and failure that occur throughout the session.

With my variant, when a player achieves success on a roll, they get a Monologue of Victory. You will see the players initially surprised by the narrative power that this gives them, but once they wrap their head around the concept, it sparks tremendous creativity and enthusiasm. They realize that they can, within reasonable limits, dictate where the fiction goes, and they obviously are jazzed that they were able to throw something back at me, the GM, which I would run with.

The moments of failure are also instructive. The players hesitated to use my “Monologue of Defeat” variant in favor of adding a die to their pool. But even so, the failures resulted in some creative and unpredictable swerves in the narrative. As a GM (and as a teacher), it is important to view failures as opportunities to move things forward in creative and exciting ways. This doesn’t mean treating failures as though they are successes. But it does mean considering failures as swerves that might lead the story into new, unplanned paths. In retrospect, sometimes these trails can lead to some of the most memorable and fulfilling moments of the session.

One notable highlight is how the players are quickly leaning into their traits and abilities. This perhaps is not surprising given the fact that all of these elements derive from the character sketches that they players wrote. Designers, GMs, and players should take note of the psychological investment (and improved game play) that this type of character creation element generates.

The video ends with some of our reflections on how The Pool might be put to use in the classroom. I’ll have more to say about this in a later post, and I invite anyone interested to offer their thoughts.

The group was enthusiastic about this inaugural experiment, so we will be moving on to a second session with the game. So expect a second installment of the Ludoverse Lab as we take another dive into The Pool.

And if you want to join in on an upcoming lab, drop me a note. I’m looking forward to taking others on the ride.

Teaching Role-Playing Games, Part 3: The Debrief

I’ve wrapped up my unit on tabletop role-playing games, so I’ve been taking stock and reflecting on our triumphs and our struggles.

For those coming new to this discussion, I’d suggest taking a quick look at Parts 1 and 2. The brief synopsis is that I took a three-week period of my AP English Language and Composition class and segmented it into the following:

1. a few days to introduce tabletop role-playing games as a form of ergodic literature and medium of communication;
2. a few days for students to decide upon a role-playing game, read the rules, create characters, and prepare to play;
3. a full week of class devoted to playing the selected games;
4. a few days to hear presentations and to write actual play analyses.

In each of my four sections, I had 3-4 gaming tables running simultaneously, with each table playing a different game over the course of a week. As previously noted, few students had ever experienced a tabletop role-playing game before. Not surprisingly, even with generous time allotted in the previous week to read rulebooks, discuss mechanics, and generate characters, the students were challenged when they launched into game play. I was circulating constantly during the class period, but, since there was only one of me, that meant groups often had to spend some time figuring things out for themselves while I was running the circuit. 

RPG Rulebooks and Critical Reading

This brings me to one of the many values of the rpg unit: There is a special form of reading entailed in synthesizing a rulebook and implementing it at the table. This type of reading is not one that students have had much exposure to, yet it provides vital training. An rpg rulebook is analogous to a manual or how-to guide, but, for many reasons, the level of complexity is multiplied. The social dynamic at the rpg table is fluid and unpredictable. Apart from understanding the basic mechanics of a game system, one has to interpret results within the fiction. Situations emerge which rules may not have fully anticipated. One could go on.

Many of my students found that their critical reading skills were initially coming up short. They misinterpreted key mechanics; they overlooked a crucial bit of text; they had disagreements as to the meaning of a sentence in the rulebook. One of the great payoffs of the rpg is that I was often not the one pointing out the students’ errant ways. Instead, the game itself made things apparent to the students. A question came up at the table, and it was clear that the rulebook held the answer. Students needed to reread and evaluate sections of the book that they had not adequately synthesized. Some of my time with students inevitably involved closely reading sections of the books with them to puzzle out vital instructions. Students quickly realized that these games were serious about procedures, mechanics, and admonitions. 

Games as Punishing Teachers

And there was another way in which games themselves chided lax players. In more traditional rpgs where there is a risk of player characters encountering harm, imprecise reading or inattention to situations can have deadly results. The most dramatic instance of this lesson occurred with one group playing Legendary Lives. The game ended up in a dramatic Total Party Kill when the characters went up against the boss monster (in this case, a powerful necromancer). When I sat down with the students to assess the game afterwards, I asked them about that tragic final scene. Had their characters tried to use some of their key abilities? Did they consider more strategic approaches? Could they have accomplished their goal without a direct assault? 

As we processed things, lightbulbs were popping. It dawned on the students that there were a host of abilities which had lain fallow because they had not read the rulebook with a sufficiently analytical eye. In addition, they had taken a more simple and blunt approach to the situation at the table instead of opting for more nuanced tactics. When the group delivered its actual play report on the game, they demonstrated a lucid understanding of the mechanics and rich resources, and it was evident that much of their insight was a result of the war wounds inflicted by the game.

The Fun of Self-Imposed Challenges

I was impressed by the students who stepped up to take on the GM roles, and I offered them footholds. In the case of Legendary Lives (a fantasy heartbreaker from the 90’s) and Swords and Wizardry (a reskinned version of the original Dungeons and Dragons), I showed the GMs some prewritten scenarios to help with the preparation. And in the case of the groups running Inspectres (a comic horror game of paranormal investigation) and Sorcerer, I suggested setting the game in Central Florida and using actual locations around town. Finally, in the case of The Princes’ Kingdom, I had the fledgling GM start by adapting the example provided in the rulebook for the first adventure.

Some of the groups opted to play GM-Less games: The Quiet Year, Shooting the Moon, and  Follow. For these groups, one of the major hurdles involved framing scenes and latching onto the role-playing. Some scaffolding work and demonstrations on my part helped them. 

I also stressed to students the fun of making things hard on themselves. A Quiet Year, for example, directs the players to grab contempt tokens in situations where they don’t feel like their opinions are respected or when a decision is made which cuts against what they believe to be the best course. Those groups which consciously worked to employ this mechanic ended up with more dramatic and satisfying narratives. This involved players deciding to start up more edgy, controversial projects, and it involved other players being willing to demonstrate their displeasure.

This lesson was one that carried over to the GM games. Good stories involve conflicts and challenges, and if you are effortlessly successful throughout a game, it won’t take long for the game to become predictably boring. In introducing the unit to the students, I had stressed the elements of emergence and creativity, and for most students, those ideas stuck like super glue. In watching them play and in hearing them speak about their games, an ever-present theme was the thrill of experiencing unexpected turns. Even the GMs were quick to latch onto the idea that it was exciting to let go of any predetermined ideas about where the narratives would take them.

With different games running throughout the day, I was exhausted when the school day ended. I had thought of taking a more focused route and requiring all students to play the same game during the week. This certainly would have made my job easier, and it would have allowed me to work through hurdles more efficiently and smoothly. But that’s not what a 21st century teacher needs to do. Much was gained when students had to deal with glitches and the challenges at the table, and taking stock of their frustrations and mistakes required them to solve most of the puzzles on their own.

Time Management

The games ran at different speeds, and this is one area which I will be more prepared next year. Groups playing The Quiet Year were off and running while those playing Sorcerer and Legendary Lives were immersed in character creation. Generally, those playing GM-less games had finished before the last day of play, so I gave them a choice of either running another round of the same game or taking a look at a new one. Meanwhile, some groups playing the GM games had to find provisional stopping places at the end of the week and were wishing that they had more time to continue. 

I don’t know that there is a tidy solution for those latter groups . . . save to let them know that nothing is stopping them from continuing to play! But next year, I’m going to offer some of the GM-less games in bundled pairs with the idea that those groups will try to complete two games and then compare them.

Going Deep

I was pleased with the depth of play involved. Players encountered situations in the games which required teamwork and self-sacrifice. They became alert to the way that decisions impacted the direction of the narrative and influenced the behavior of other characters. They were making discoveries about the dynamic inner workings of genres and settings. And there were cases where weighty moral decisions were debated.

Special mention goes to Sorcerer. I had mulled over whether to offer the game at all. Ron Edwards specifically categorizes his game as R-rated, “not because there are pictures with nipples on them or taboo vocabulary, but because it can lead to stories that are not nice.” I was intrigued that two groups opted for the game—despite, or maybe because of, my warnings that the game was serious when it titled itself “An Intense Roleplaying Game.” But those groups were committed and ended up playing games that took the game’s core trait of Humanity to heart. 

In their debriefing, one Sorcerer group talked about the value of using the safety mechanic of lines and veils when the GM was trying to stress the true violence suffered by a victim of assault. And I overheard the player of the other Sorcerer group making an agonizing decision of whether to have his character venture out from a safe shelter because he knew that, if he did so, his humanity would be at risk. This confirmed to me that those groups had latched onto the spirit of the game. At the end of the week, those students were bubbling with memories of the fraught bargains they had made with their demons.

Which reminds me . . . safety was directly discussed at the start of the unit, with the concept of lines and veils taking center stage. While most games did not enter danger zones, the Sorcerer games did, and since lines and veils were already on the table, those groups had the resources to play hard because everyone knew that there were tools in place to ensure that the games remained safe.

The Wrap Up

After devoting a full week to actual play, the groups followed up with presentations where they introduced the games to the class. Without prompting, most latched onto the idea that actual demonstrations of mechanics, scene framings, and role-playing would be key. For example, a group playing Legendary Lives set up a situation where characters from the game might be trying to persuade me to change a test day. This, of course, involved rolling the dice, and interpreting that result according to the game’s resolution chart. The group playing The Princes’ Kingdom pulled out one of the conflicts of their game and replayed it in front of class using the “call and raise” dice mechanic.

Groups went on to analyze the games in terms of actual play. They discussed areas of challenge and tension—the ways they struggled with mechanics, the social dynamic of the players, aspects of play that were engaging and those that were less so. 

The final assignment was a targeted individual written report. One stipulation was that the group members had to be sure that they were covering their game without retreading territory. But groups had great leeway in choosing how they wanted to cut up their pie and what topics to explore. Some of the students went into a nuts-and-bolts analysis of “system matters,” some investigated aspects of the social dynamic at their table, and still others talked about how their game fit into the English curriculum. 

To provide a couple examples, here were some of my suggestions for the reports:

RPGs and SEL. Role-playing games are unique in their ability to nurture self-awareness, self-control, interpersonal skills, responsible decision making, and social awareness. These are all qualities that are sometimes grouped under the umbrella of “social and emotional learning” (SEL). Many teachers see SEL as a key (but often overlooked) field of education.  Discuss your game in terms of these qualities. You might consider both the content of your game as well as the experience at the table.

Emergence and Collaboration. To what extent did the game result in a collaborative experience? What were the different roles that the players adopted at the table? To what extent did the fiction emerge organically or spontaneously at the table? Were there moments when you were surprised by a turn of events in the game? If so, what were they? What led to those moments?

Reading the Sitch

There’s no question that I will teach this unit next year, but there will be changes in store. In the midst of the unit, I was exposed to MASKS: A New Generation, for example, which gives me a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse game ideal for the high school setting. And I have a better handle on how I can more effectively advice novice gamers about specific mechanics and strategies. 

I’m eager to hear reactions to this work-in-progress. I feel like I’m venturing into a largely unexplored frontier. With their focus on creating fiction and developing narratives, tabletop role-playing games clearly belong in the realm of English, but it’s a medium that is not being taught, so we are blazing new trails. If anyone wants to contribute or join me in the venture, I invite you to enter into the conversation.

Teaching Role-Playing Games, Part 2: The Game Plan

Robin Laws has appropriately called the tabletop role-playing game a “hidden art” because its heart and soul are only revealed through the dynamic experience at the table. It was evident to me from the start that the core of my unit on TTRPGs had to involve a sequence of classroom sessions dedicated to intensive actual play.

Of course, this poses a problem for the classroom. Most TTRPGs are designed for intimate groups. For me, a GM and a party of five players seems like a overfull house, and I can’t imagine running one of those early Dungeons and Dragons modules: I’m looking at Against the Giants where the introduction suggests a party of nine players as ideal (and an average experience level of nine). For the purposes of this teaching unit, I need all the students to be actively immersed, and that means dividing them up into small groups, each of which will run their respectively chosen games simultaneously.

So here’s what I did. I selected a group of 12 tabletop role-playing games for the students to choose from. I put the games on a Google slide presentation with a piece of art (usually a cover) and the game’s “elevator pitch.” All are games I admire, but it’s a diverse set. Some are GM-less, some are traditional high fantasy fare, some are comic, and others are dead serious. You can view the slide show here. Here are the titles:

• The Quiet Year by Avery Adler
• Follow by Ben Robbins
• Sorcerer by Ron Edwards
• My Life with Master by Paul Czege
• Legendary Lives by Joe Williams and Kathleen Williams
• Swords and Wizardry by Matt Finch
• Lady Blackbird by John Harper
• Shooting the Moon by Emily Care Boss
• Inspectres by Jared Sorenson
• Puppetland by John Scott Tynes
• The Pool by James V. West
• The Princes’ Kingdom by Clinton R. Nixon

In class, I presented the lineup quickly, with just a few comments. For example, I let them know that Ron Edwards’ Sorcerer means it when it says it is an intense role-playing game. I told them that Puppetland is very fun, but that it requires some committed improvisation from its players. I mentioned the genre of each, and noted that The Pool and Follow are incredibly flexible in allowing the players to choose a setting.

I shared the link to the Google slides and told the students to mull things over for a couple days. Then, at the start of class two days later, I had each student write down their top three choices on a 3x5 card, after which I sifted through the desires to organize them into games they were interested in playing. When I figured out the groups, I determined which chosen games were neither freely available nor covered under a creative commons license, and I contacted those creators to let them know what my plans were and to ask if I could make the rules available to students on my school’s secured classroom management platform.

Some notable developments: Two groups in separate sections chose Sorcerer. Two other groups chose Legendary Lives. The Quiet Year was the most popular choice. I’m most excited to see the end product of one of my sections where I will have the following four games in action: Follow, The Quiet Year, Swords and Wizardry, and Legendary Lives. Those actual play reports should allow for some probing examination with two GM-less games on display alongside a D&D reskin and a dazzling fantasy heartbreaker.

Virtually none of my students have played a tabletop role-playing game, so, to give them a sense of what the activity looks like, I had them watch a short clip from “D and Diesel” on Youtube. This is a segment where Vin Diesel joins some of the members of Critical Role to play through a brief scenario. I told students in advance that the video was a slick production that would not match our own upcoming experiences. But it did allow me to illustrate the kinds of conversations that can occur and to walk through the respective roles of the GM and the players in the TTRPG enterprise.

This coming week (shortened due to Winter Break) will be devoted to intensive preparation. Students will read the rulebooks, gather supplies, copy character sheets, create quick reference lists, and acquaint themselves with game mechanics. By Friday, they will be into world building and character creation so that they can hit the ground running at the start of next week, which will be completely devoted to game play.

On my end, I will be active in class, working between the groups to troubleshoot, to help clarify, and to demonstrate the game systems. I’ll also be flagging parts of the games which I suspect will challenge them.

I will also be preparing them for the analytical task to follow the week of game play. For that, I’m going to have a discussion of Robin Laws’ “The Hidden Art: Slouching towards a Critical Framework for RPGs,” and I’ll also introduce them to an assignment that requires them to deliver some actual play reports to the class (in both written and oral form).

So that’s the setup. I’ll be back with Part 3 of this series detailing what happened in the classroom.

Sorcerer and Sword: The Sodden Lands of Snia Mer, Session Two

Click here to see the actual play video of session two of my “Sodden Lands of Snia Mer” campaign.

A few comments:

I often consider myself a “slow burn” type—I’m a GM who enjoys the gradual build-ups. But I often worry how this will come across to my players, who might be interested in a more pulse-pounding pacing. As I was editing this video, there are some signs of payoff to my slow burn approach:

The start of the session involves the two sorcerers meeting up on the destroyed village of Tainu. After some Q and A, the two settle in for the night, but Nagimo wakes up to find that his NPC companion has gone missing, and he makes a search, which leads him to his hireling Skintu and a discovery that there is some strange presence on the island. There is plenty of mystery that is mounting here, but it is a slowly rising arc. If you are looking for an actual play session to be the same as a rapid fire, Hollywood movie, you will be disappointed.

But then, leap to half way through the video—to the part carrying the subtitle “Demon Contact.” The other sorcerer, Balder, has joined Nagimo to get to the bottom of what lured Skintu onto the island in the middle of the night, and this leads to a decision to attempt a Contact ritual. The ritual succeeds (at the price of Humanity loss), and there is a suitably creepy exchange between the sorcerers and a “Sentinel Demon” named Asmund.

I notice a number of things clicking in the scene. When the demon calls his refrain, “Come closer,” there is some genuine, unsettled laughter around the table: All of us realized that this was a scene that was dripping with consequence, but we also didn’t know exactly where the fiction was going to break, so this resulted in some pregnant, high-level suspense. The scene also had some duration, and the nervous energy was sustained for the length. This energy wouldn’t have been possible without the slow build. Nor would it have been possible if I had scripted a narrative in advance. Part of what made it all work was the perceived sense that the outcome depended on what the sorcerers were deciding (and upon the outcome of some key dice rolls).

The sorcerers ultimately acceded to caution and opted not to push a confrontation with the demon. I think some GMs might have been disappointed with that direction, but I was delighted. The fact that they didn’t force a conflict with Asmund means that there is a powerful chord of mystery and tension playing in the background. Of course, I would have been happy to play along with other decisions as well, but I’m relishing the rich suspense created by that unresolved encounter.

At the close of the session, the sorcerers run across a hybrid monstrosity—a combination crocodile and bear—and you’ll see us working through the combat mechanics. It was an exciting encounter, though I’m also working hard to keep faithful to the mechanics. Here again, some might fault me for slowing down the pace to get the rules right. But for the fans of the slow burn, there are continued payoffs, such as one roll where Nagimo and the “Beardile” monstrosity match their highest three dice, so Nagimo finally gets a victory on his fourth highest die.

Due to schedules, we skipped this past Friday, but session three is lined up for this week. The sorcerers are landing at the garrison of Muskcross Grange, and it’s quite possible that at least one of the kickers will be resolved. Nagimo has heard that one of his tribe is working at the garrison for the enemy, and he is determined to find out what’s up with that apparent act of double-cross. Will he discover the truth behind his friend? And if so, where will that lead him? I don’t know, but I’m eager to find out.