intfiction.org

Whoopsie. I didn't expect so lively a discussion, otherwise I wouldn't have used the term "Indie RPG" so indiscriminately.
Yeah, Indie (self-pubished) != Indie (Forgite) != Indie (pre-Forge stuff) != Indie (LARP/Jeepform) != Indie (story-games) != the next person's Indie... those distinctions don't even operate on the same level, so let's try and recan this particular can of worms, shall we?


I'm with you here, except for the combat/skill-ckeck stuff. I'm ususally the only one really bothering about rules; detailed resolution systems are a waste of time with my crew. But I still like to have a single person in charge of tone, setting consistency etc. I'll always listen to suggestions and I'll ususally hand out authority in spades, but when nobody else takes charge, I do.

Our longest Indie campaign was one and a half years long, we started with FATE 2 and switched to The Puddle somewhere down the road. We are currently playing Lady Blackbird while trying to figure out if we should play The Shadow of Yesterday or Dogs in the Vineyard next.

Well, it's not like there's much else going on to discuss, honestly

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

Heh. Seems you're right. OK, here's one for you: The first bunch of Indie RPGs I discovered were the likes of HeroQuest, FATE and PDQ. I was impressed that you could express a character with a few well-chosen phrases and descriptors. I could easily convert all of the characters I had ever played to those systems!

So, for that time I had the following equation in my head: Indie = freeform traits. But I I'd already seen that some time before... Yup, that was Risus. So... Risus = freeform traits = Indie?

(OTOH, I can think of several reasons why this assumption is wrong. But I'm curious how you'd put it.)

Sure ... the older version of Fate that I have, back when it was still a Fudge derivative, mentions Risus once and me twice ... Chad's Monkey Ninja Pirate Robot (a PDQ game, as I recall) cites Risus in a "special thanks," and so on. In the places where indie games are made, folks often mention Risus fondly, and me ... with variable levels of fondness

So, the way I'd put it is "Some indie games do nod to Risus as a notable ancestor, and that's very groovy of them."

But player-designed/designated skills/traits/classes/what-have-you were a feature of many regular-industry RPGs in the 80s (either in core rules or in some well-known magazine variants, depending), so that's an idea that had already been bought and sold multiple times in regular RPG retail outlets; nothing indie or independent about it, intrinsically.

Where Risus really gets in trouble is the to-the-victor part of the combat rules. Victory in combat has no mechanically-mandated result ... the opponent doesn't necessary fall unconscious or die, rather, the victor chooses what happens (with GM consent). So, a swashbuckly guy is free to be 100% pacifistic with his sword ... he can "beat" people by dropping their belts around their ankles, leaving them humiliated and rubbing rosary beads, whatever the GM agrees fits the method and the mood and so on.

So, some people point to Risus as some kind of mile-marker on the road to "narrative control" being handed to the player, which, as a concept, is something a lot of indie games are into. All I can do is point out that the intent is otherwise: that there is no "narrative" to "control" (by the player or the GM) and that it's just Risus acknowledging its own abstract nature and (this part is deliberate) letting heroes be swashbuckly and stylish and creative without being walking abbatoirs.

On this point (and one or two others), Risus may have accidentally innovated (and if so, I forgive it). If one thing helped inspire another, well, that's just back to polite nods.

Risus is independent. It exists, and for that matter sometimes pays the rent, without any dependence on the traditional three-tier RPG retail industry (where I toiled for a decade). But as I've said before, "independent" doesn't equal "indie" anymore than "fan" equals "fanatic." Once a word breaks off on its own, its off on its own, gathering connotations. The connotations I see attached to "indie" belong nowhere near Risus, a traditional RPG with strong 1980s-gaming-style roots and intentions.

(And celebrating its 20th Anniversary next year with an all-new, less-bloat edition!)
(Plus: Google up "Risus Kickstarter" and throw money, plz and thx).

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

Thrown!

Also, I've just re-read Risus and yes, that's definitely what I'd use for a trad game. I just can't be bothered with involved rules anymore... Looking forward to the adventure!

Two great things I've noticed:
The rule for helping characters (only 6es count) is very clever. I might drift that into our Puddle game.
Also, the damage system makes more sense than PDQs. You use it, you lose it. In PDQ, you can lower any trait; which I think is rather wacky.

I'm really looking forward to making it. I've been fortunate to make my living game-writing for a couple of decades now, but there are some things I rarely get to do (or never get to do) and doing a single-evening adventure design without having to worry about where I'm going to sell it is one of those things, so I'm stoked (and the way funding is going, it seems likely that I'll get to do a second, more modestly-funded adventure from the same kickstart ... fingers crossed).

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Games, Fonts, and Font-Toys For Gamers - http://www.cumberlandgames.com

[What went before]
In 1978, my older brother finished grammar school, and received a grant for a year of study in the US. AMong many other things, he wrote home about how cheap and easy it was to get a driver's licence there. In 1979 I I finished grammar school, and got rewarded with a trip to Massachusetts, where a great-aunt of mine lived, whom I had only seen once or twice before in my life - my father had calculated that even with the plane trip. if I got my driver's licence there it would still be cheaper than getting it back home in the Netherlands.

So there I was, in a strange and foreign country, the language of which I only spoke rudimentarily, out of sync with the local time, in a surreal cardboard-like house - I am sure I could have kicked with one try through any of the walls, and I remember wondering how one could ever fix a set of bookshelves to the wall without summoning disaster. My brother had come over to help ease me through the process of getting my driver's licence.

[Playing]
That first night I lay in a sleeping bag in the pitch-dark attic of this strange house, overly tired but fully awake, listening to my brother relating in halting Dutch the wondrous things he had experienced, such as driving a tank and booting computers (by entering the boot program using toggle switches). And the teletype: real interaction, where you could write input and the computer would type output on the same paper chain!

And then he came to the program he had come to love: ADVENT. I listened to him describing the various rooms in the cave, the puzzles and problems, the plant begging for water, the tiny bird, and for me all this became part of the unreal world I had already come to. I actually solved the troll bridge problem then, which had stumped my brother, and I think I also understood who the vague figure waving at one was. No computer in sight, but I think it is hard to get deeper immersed in IF than I was that night.

[Authoring]
Saint Nicholas Eve is arguably the most important feast in the Netherlands. Small gifts are given, accompanied by doggerel that makes good-humoured fun of the receiver. That year, however, instead of writing the customary poem, for my brother I filled an entire copybook with rhymes describing different locations, situations and events, with CYOA choices underneath. A companion text explained how someone else would have to maintain state, in order to decide the outcome of ones choices, because while obviously later effects depended on choices made earlier, my brother was not to know these dependencies, but rather to discover them through playing. Dealing with this one gift took longer than with all the others combined. That was my first piece of IF, again without a computer.

[What came after]
My brother had brought ADVENT on a tape, and it became popular among the CS students of which I became one. I wrote my first authoring system in APL, my second in LISPF3, and countless others in LISPF4, Franz Lisp, Scheme and JavaScript, not counting absolutely minimal ones in Snobol and Prolog. I never finished another more-than-toy piece of IF, though. Seeing merits and drawbacks in the various approaches to specifying an IF world exemplified by TADS, Inform 7 and Adrift, I am currently dabbling with yet another take (programming in Lua, this time).

I find that writing an IF authoring system or IF world emulator is a good way to explore new programming languages or concepts. For instance, my current Lua version sports a bottom-up parser with island-driven search. For short inputs that is much slower than the simple top-down approach, but already at 300-word commands it is faster, and then it goes quickly. So if anyone wants to make a serious successor to Rematch..

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-- Biep.

That's a lovely narrative; thanks for that.





...and that's only 97 words. I think we need a Best 300-Word Command thread.

awesome!

That's a great tale Biep, thanks for sharing. I think a very advanced magic-word game (like a super Suveh Nux) would be a workable game concept for a 300 word command.