Tales from the Rocket House
Before I start, let me say that rules and mechanics are great, and I always use them for campaign/chronicle play. I usually even use them for one-shots (though, to be fair, a lot of the one-shots I run are partially used to test new rules). This is part of the reason a “common language system” (see Tales from the Rocket House columns 1-4) can be helpful: to allow for an easy transition between campaigns and one-shots among a given group of players.
That said, there have been a lot of times when I’ve enjoyed playing with neither dice nor a mechanical system in place. It started years ago with a Streetfighter: the RPG (from White Wolf) one-shot game I was GM-ng. I had an idea for a story that had an action-movie scale to it – not too deep or complex, but certainly following the basic pattern of rising action and resolution. I also knew that, given the time available, we’d only be able to get through a couple of scenes when using the standard mechanics (I’d played the game enough to know how long a fight took, and how much it felt like a strategy game, rather than an RPG). I had three players, and we all trusted each other, so I declared that we’d do this systemless. It worked very well; we got through the story in a satisfying way, and everyone had fun. So I “stored” the idea away for later use.
During my undergraduate years, I used this a lot, in part because of time constraints, and in part because it was fun. Whenever I went home and gamed with my friends from high school, we often played systemlessly (I know that’s not a word), because if we spent half of our time setting things up with the system and rolling up or point-costing characters, we wouldn’t have enough time to finish the game satisfactorily.
At Tulane, I did this one time when everyone sort of wanted to roleplay, but we didn’t have a quorum available for our regularly scheduled campaign. It was a relatively new experience for that group of players, but they were, of course, great, and it turned out well. In that scenario, I had two pages of notes I’d written long before: one page for the players, containing the basic parameters of the scenario and brief descriptions of four characters, corresponding each to one of the four classical elements. The GM’s page had more about the scenario, and similarly brief descriptions of the bad guys. Again, it went off without a hitch, and everyone had fun.
Over time, I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t for diceless, systemless play. For the sake of clarity and flair, I’ve distilled that into my “Seven Paths for Systemless Roleplay.”
Path One: Fine but Few
First, you have to have a small, close-knit group. Three players plus the GM is the most I ever did, and I’d be pretty nervous about adding many more than that. The GM will have no dice nor mechanics to lean on, so he needs to be able to keep the players and characters in mind at all times. Everybody has to trust everybody else. No exceptions, period. This will not work without trust. It helps if you’re already friends and have already gamed together, but however the trust is established, it must be there.
Path Two: The Heart of the Story
The PCs must be the stars of the drama. Though the GM needs to have story elements available to push the pace, the PC’s have to be the stars. This is their story – this must be their story, or they will not have fun. It is all too easy in a systemless game for the GM to “tell a story” and leave the players with supporting or minor roles. This must be avoided at all costs. Any “mentor” NPCs must be weaker than the PC’s, or otherwise unable to do what must be done. At no point should the PCs be watching two NPC’s doing something, unless the PCs’ mission at that point is surveillance (and even then, keep it to a minimum).
This really is a narrative style of gaming, and is essentially set up like a movie. I’ve never run a campaign systemless, and I don’t know that I could. In my experience, it works better with a definite beginning, end, and middle, done up in a relatively short amount of time, and narrated in real-time.
Path Three: Every One a Special Snowflake
The player characters must be distinctive. The GM needs to be able to easily keep them separate from each other in his head. Thus, the four elements were good “hooks” on which to hang characters. The familiar Street Fighter 2 characters were, too. In one game, the characters were roughly based on the players themselves, as if they’d been turned into vampires. We knew each other’s personalities well, and each PC got slightly different vampire powers (agility/strength, incredible toughness, speed/claws) in addition to the basic physical upgrades and weaknesses. The more differences, the better – appearance, abilities, personality . . . draw them all larger than life. You don’t have much time to get this across, and subtlety may not work.
Path Four: The Path of Partial Success
Players hate to “whiff,” and while it’s acceptable (but annoying) if the dice mandate it, “whiffing” (having their actions completely fail) should not happen in a systemless game unless they are facing something so incredibly beyond them that they have to find another way around (for example, they try to kill the 50-foot tall Sphinx with a sword instead of riddling it). The players’ actions should always have some impact, but you can’t let them instantly solve the problem, because that makes the game boring.
As GM, you should take into account the various approaches to characters here. I had one player who loved to have his characters invent odd gadgets, such as home made silencers, propane-powered flame maces (to use against vampires) and so on. The key is to have them work, and do so in a flashy/cool way, but not have them work so well that they, by themselves, overwhelm the opposition. Perhaps the PC could fight his way into a superior position first, and then activate the flame mace, which could be the “final blow” against a major opponent. But just firing up the mace at the start would give the enemy time to come up with a counter plan, and thus, it would only be a partial success. It would give an advantage, but not an overwhelming one.
Sometimes you have to “rig” situations so that partial success is possible. If facing an enemy in combat, it’s better to have an enemy and her entourage, so the PCs’ attacks can take out the henchmen, disarm or wound the enemy, gain positional advantage, etc. There should be a buildup to victory. Further, the players should have to think at least a little to win cleanly. “The Rule of Partial Success” applies to the enemies as well – if they whiff, the players will not see them as credible, and the tension and enjoyment of the game will be reduced.
Path Five: It’s Just a Flesh Wound
Related to “The Path of Partial Success” is this: the important characters should be able to absorb some damage in combat, if there is to be much combat at all. Whether this is wuxia-style mortality handwaving (“it’s just a flesh wound”), vampiric regeneration, or Highlander-style immortality, if there is to be significant fighting in the game, you’ll need to make sure none of the important characters are fragile.
Path Six: Alacrity! Celerity! Rapidity!
The pace must be fast! Things should happen to the player characters that force the players to make decisions and take action. In a systemless game, you really do have to say “Ninjas jump in through the windows!” if the PC’s sit there wondering what to do for more than a minute or two. It helps if they have an NPC guide (who, of course, cannot be as cool or powerful as they are, because this kind of thing could really lead to the GM telling a story and the players sitting there, annoyed) who can nudge them in the right direction when things get slow.
Path Seven: “The Rule of Cool,” and Then Some
“The Rule of Cool” really applies in systemless gaming. As GM, don’t be afraid to kill important NPCs, if it increases the power of the scene (but don’t torture your players – this isn’t a great medium for dark angst), but first and foremost, set things up so the players get to be the cool ones. Encourage over-the-top descriptions by creating situations in which those descriptions can naturally occur. For example, facing a vampire lord and having to jump over the side of a building to escape her wrath, after throwing homemade napalm in her face to distract her. Each player described his landing differently – the quick one with the claws grabbed at the side of the building, slowing his descent. The agile one hit a parked car in a breakfall tumble, bouncing off and landing on his feet. The car crumpled, and its alarm shook the night. The ultra-tough one just said “boom” and went right through the concrete, then crawled out of the huge hole he’d made, unhurt.
Final Thoughts
The longer I live, the more I find that the more restraints are written into a game system (whether to restrain players during character creation through scarcity of character power, or to restrain players and GM from abusing the rules during play), the more the players push against those restraints, creating more, rather than less problems. By removing all such restraints and relying on open communication (as I’ve done in the Subjective Character Creation Process I talked about in columns five and eight), a sense of trust can be established or strengthened among the players and GM.
Plus, a systemless one-shot can make for a fun and memorable gaming experience. What have you got to lose?
