All RPGs have limits. In the sense of speculative physics, those are the edges of play. That's where the rules, the structure, or the very concepts of the game break down. One of the typical ways to manage this is to ad hoc and extend the game to better fit the new territory. Managing a guild or a kingdom in D&D or getting into space in Call of Cthulhu are literally walking outside of the territory of those games. Tinkering is one solution, putting together a strategy mini-game or yanking some spacecraft rules from another game.
But tinkering has its limits, the most notable being that you are still stuck with the original game, as it becomes increasingly ill-suited. And this problem only magnifies when the themes are what has changed, for example, many systems are good at combat, and a few are good at romance, but it is nigh impossible to find one that can handle both. So what do you do when your warriors are venturing into a romantic story? The simplest solution is to switch games.
From a game design perspective this sort of transition opens a rich avenue of game design, designing multiple RPGs (and even other types of games) to be played together. A challenging idea, it opens many questions. In what order are the games to be played? How should they link together? And what will be the common design threads running between them?
Common Threads
To keep things simple, I'll only be talking about sequential game design for this article. Next month I'll talk about some other ways to link RPG designs, but designing RPGs to be played in a specific order is a compelling topic on its own. In that vein, the first question you face in designing a sequence of games is to determine what the underlying thread will be. Like most design goals this thread will manifest differently depending on each design process, but it will the foundation that lets the games become more than juxtaposition, to really drive play from one to the next.
Another way to look at the common thread is to find what won't change from game to game, in spite of changes in settings and mechanics. These are the elements which players should depend upon, and ultimately be most engaged by. There are many options, but the simplest three are events of play, the characters associated with the players, and the thematic content of the games. Each of these gives a great flexibility, because by choosing a common thread, each RPG in the sequence can be design to explore it in a entirely new way.
Keeping the Events
One of the simplest approaches to sequentially designing games is to unify them with the world in which they occur. For example, the first game in a series could be exploring an island continent, focusing on collaborative setting creation, discovery, and the motives of the financiers back home. The second could be a bloody revolution a century later, contrasting the ideas of honor, sacrifice, and martial prowess. The third could be a political debate game based on building the new government, occurring during the very revolution fought in the prior game. And the last game could be a historical investigation a century or more afterwards with intrigue linking back to the events over the earlier games.
Designing each of these games means focusing on the specific requirements of the game. Fun and tactical combat in the game two doesn't mean you should have rules in game three for much other than the occasional duel of honor. Likewise, the types of characters and themes in each of these games will require separate support. A generic system might be able to accommodate that, but it will also make each game blander and less capable of being what it could be.
In addition to planning out each step in the sequence, it is also important to start plotting out the connections between them, especially from a setting perspective. Each game will impact the rest, through the manifestation of in-game events. These might simply be of historical note, affecting the situations in play, but not affecting the mechanics. Or, you find that mechanical outcomes reflect later on. For example, the fourth game could have you playing the descendants of the politicians or revolutionaries, in which case the mechanical outcomes when those games ended could be the first step to creating your investigator.
Keeping the Characters
On the face of things, it seems that any sequence of RPGs where you retain principle characters is better suited to a single RPG applying different facets. However, whether this is the case depends largely on how distinctive the different parts of the sequence should be. Many RPGs handle a particular kind of character change well, for example power growth or descent into madness. So in building a character centered sequence of RPGs, the key is to isolate the distinct way the characters will change over each game.
Consider a sequence of games where the characters start out with the classic heroic coming of age, then must deal with politics and romance as established heroes, and finally in their twilight confront their own inner monsters and seek some sort of peace. And then, perhaps a fourth game where the characters are reincarnated, in a new world, brought together by kismet. The common thread of the characters drives this sort of sequence, but the changes in each part deserve their own system and context, to be truly manifest.
The linking between these games must also be handled carefully. In almost all situations there will be strong mechanical links from game to game. The need to age, reincarnate, or otherwise transition the characters almost requires a mechanical process of translation. But at each step, some aspects will become magnified, while others will be minimized or even removed altogether. For example in transitioning a character from the second stage to the third will mean removing many of the possessions and influence, and instead the virtues and vices of the political character will become the central aspect of the re-envisoned character.
Keeping the Theme
More difficult than the other types of RPG sequences, thematic sequences build on the ideas of previous games to view them in new lights and situations. In many cases, such a sequence will only be a series of games sharing a theme, without any strong link. Even though, the power of ideas is such that that link can be enough to show us a new perspective as we reflect on the differences between the RPGs.
Consider the juxtaposition of a RPG about losing your humanity, and one about finally becoming human. How about three games about romantic life, one about budding romance, another about vicious endings, and the last about the trials of partnership? These sorts of combinations can produce deeper meaning than any one game, by letting each game focus on its own thing, but letting the collection of them prevent a the focus from becoming myopic. However, if we want to make the games more deeply linked, we can reflect that by how they connect.
While thematic mechanics may be useful as a link, such as crawling back up as far as you fell in the previous game, the most effective link is to maintain motifs, especially allowing player created motifs to migrate from game to game. Motifs are recurring elements of the story, that give our pattern hungry minds something to latch onto and help associate the themes we encounter in the game. Perhaps it is the color red, elephants, or the words from an old song, they can all give us a handle on less concrete things. By ensuring that these motifs can trail through the games, the themes will link even more closely, while the with the perspectives and conflicts encountered being see as parts of the whole.
Weaving the Line
The common threads of events, characters, and themes need not be held distinct. Indeed, another entire possibility is to link each game differently, perhaps one link is the theme of honor, while the next retains the characters in a world unlike the previous one, while the third occurs elsewhere and elsewhen in the same world. At each step the games take some aspect of their predecessors and allow the players to encounter it anew. And from here it is only a small step to moving beyond the linear, but that is a topic for next month.
Next Month: Off the Line
