There aren't many RPGs like New Style games. There are 5 New Style releases by Hogshead, and so far I have read 3 of them, finding them all original, inventive and in some cases very funny. New Style RPGs are just that - a new style of gaming. Most gamers are very limited in how they play, and New Style challenges these preconceived boundaries, shaking up the complacent and cleverly creating new gaming dynamics and thinking about gaming.
Who'd have thought gaming was so difficult? So complex? Political!? Well, everything is, isn't it? even fun. What you do for entertainment is the same as what you do to earn money - it defines your time, defines you and illustrates your own character in a way you might not even ponder upon.
De Profundis is the first New Style game I read about, then read. The basic concept is simple and delightful. The players send letters to each other about their normal everyday lives - but with a twist. There is something not right about the normal and mundane. Perhaps you are the center of some political conspiracy, or someone (or thing) is stalking you? Perhaps yet worse, reality is breaking down, you are going insane, or something alien is breaking through into your world. Writing these letters is as simple as sounding paranoid and fearful - the world you live in is full of suggestion and innuendo if you look for it.
The game is a way of playing with fantasy and reality, fact and fiction. You use the events of your own life, past, present or future, to invent a strange correspondance between the players. There is no GM, no rules, no dice, etc., you are engaged in a mutual exchange, using your own life as a basis through which to explore a fantasy cosmology (just choose one), your own fears, anxieties and imaginings.
Che recently added a new twist to the idea, and instead of writing letters and e-mails to another player, she set up a blog exploring the line between her own strange experiences and fantasy explanations for it. De Profoundis follows a trend in escapism and play, whereby the game and "real life" are blurred into an indistinguishable unity. Recent forays into multi-media gaming are part of this blurring, and can provide an intense form of escapism and fun. XXXXXXXXXXXx Of course, there are those who seem alarmed by such developments XXXXXXXXXXXX. But these concerns are mere knee-jerk reactions, probably based on self-preservation (after all, the RPG industry has an interest in not being demonised), or lack of information (after all, how many people out of the thousands that play these games loose touch with consensus reality? how many gamers go on crazed rampages? how many of these rampages can be verifiably and directly attributed to these games?) or just a worthless attempt at generating debate.
Pantheon contains 5 games based on a set of rules which are a brilliant and fun development on the "round robin" form of story-telling. Each player takes turns to add a sentence to a story based on one of the many premises in the book, developing it so as to win points which are assigned according to certain plots developments in line with the genre being played. Each of the 5 games is a particular genre (like crime thriller or teenage slasher-flick), some with ready-made archetypal characters and all with a scoring system.
The scoring system story development is more complicated than this, becuase players stugle against each other to control the plot so as to win, but the game is also very simple and sets up a challenging, competative dynamic which pushes the plot into convolutions and developments which are extremely entertaining. The rules are just a few pages long, but are detailed, elegant and very playable. Games only take an hour or so to play, they are great fun, and a game freely available based on this idea can be found here.
Violence is Hogsheads most contraversial release, not just because of its expletive riddled text and adult subject matter (tit and clit torture, addictive drugs, ultra-violence). The really contraversial and most interesting aspect of this book is the way it operates on several levels at once. Violence is a critique of gaming (and the gaming industry), a satire, a lampoon and an actual game you can play all at once. Primarily, Violence challenges the unreflective gamer (surely the majority of gamers) to examine why they enjoy fantasizing about violence, sexual assault (or "softer" titilations like scantily-clad female warriors), destruction and generally mayhem in their games. The "horror" genre of games specialises in these diversions, and so do most computer games, but very few of them consider what is actually being played out. But even the most popular, high-fantasy RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons does not explore what is really happening in most of its games - the slaying of sentient, intelligent creatures, otherwise presented as mere monsters, as tokens for personal advancement.
So it sounds like a lot of moralising. It's all just a game isn't it? Well it would be, if fact and fiction were so simply divided, if our fantasy life and entertainments didn't impact on us significantly. If the death and abuses played out by gamers have a meaning and value as part of a complex plot and sophisticated character interaction, then arguably such games are akin to the gory art-works that fill many galleries. Play can be an art-form. But if games are nothing but a visceral vent, are those involved engaged in stupidly reinforcing certain kinds of prejudice and ignorance? Are they brutalising and desensitising themselves as they imagine new sensations and pretend power? Or is it all useful catharsis and fun? This reminds me of the pornography debate.
I don't take seriously the calls for banning RPGs that some idiotic American groups make, nor do I think gamers are doing anything different to those people who watch TV crime-dramas, explosive action movies at the multiplex, or bay and howl in sports crowds. But its good that Violence offers these challenges. I don't think anyone else has done so in this way, and certainly not in such an entertaining way. Despite all of these serious concerns, Violence is extremely funny. The blood-soaked chain-saw weilding psychos in the art-work, the constant profanity and blackest satirical humour, even the rules of the game are all over the top. I laughed a lot. Violence above all, is very funny.
Links to Other Games
- Insects of God - free RPG
- Hogshead Games Publish New Style Games
- Fantasy Flight Games Publish Blue Planet
- 7th Circle Publish Kult
- Chaosium Publish Call of Cthulhu