Although RPG aren't my mainly activity, I ever had some sort of curiosity for the various kind of those around (in part, becouse I love writing, and RPG are a good writing training).
My thought about how a RPG should be managed stays in a question. We should intend the RPG a game of luck or strategy, or a game of writing?
"Roleplaying" said in fandoms is easy to misinterpreted: while many (like me) thinks is referred to usual RPG games with tables and dices, for other is just "make a OC and tell what he does". They are two differently things.
Classical games like Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and also the narrative like the White Wolf famous games Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: the Apocalypse, are games of luck, if they use dices, or strategy, when diceless, where the player uses tools to improve his/her chances to bend the events to his favour. Even in those games strongly narrative, these mechanisms are present, therefore are still games of strategy.
Actually, is not a negative critic. Dices or other tools allow to introduce a form of randomess that nobody controls, players neither master, and forces anybody to deal with unexpected conseguences, shaking up the game in interesting ways.
Howerer, not anybody have interesting to play at a strategy games, sometimes. And here falls the game of writing.
A game of writing is... just two or more guys that start to write a story togheter and nothing else, everybody takes care of a piece of the story. "No usual rules" like in D&D, tables and character sheet and such.
I had a reasoning under that a writing game works better if has some ruleset anyway, with the difference that instead to define how the game world works (simulation done with dices or other play tools), it should define the role that any writer-player has in the game. What are the limits of the player in what they can tell, what is the role of the "master" if there is a such figure, what is the setting used, if fandom stuff is allowed or not, and other things like that. It should put a common ground for any player.
But also I reasoning that a writing ruleset could help the player to how write better avoiding writing problems like plot holes or missing events. The average writers could miss some details already alone, guess what a group of writers could miss.
This set of rules should point a guideline about how write something.
In Italian we call the "plot" with the term "trama", that means also the weft of textiles; becouse a plot is like a textiles, is composed by thread, that are all story elements like character, events and places, that are weaved togheter with the weft.
So my idea is that a writing ruleset can help to how "knot" the "textile" of the story pointing what the player needs to address during their writing phase, and checking that there aren't holes in the weft.
No much idea how making this for now, but a test is worth.
I did an experiment time ago that involved some sort of ruleset for a narrative RPG game, and while it gave interesting results, I was dissifacted with some aspect that I haven't resolved with the first draft. The system revolved around to create a skill list and fix them with a level number that defined the skill of a character in certain areas; the resolution of puzzles and conflict depended from how was skilled the player to make act his character in a believable way according the skill list and character personality. Fighting were handled in the same way: describing the right strategy and, if sounded good, the master would had written an appropriate result.
All the storyline was spliced in act and scenes. Act are chapters of the story where was planned that a certain part of the main plot happens; scenes are sequences where the players are faced to a situation and called to give their reactions. Fighting turned out interesting, becouse the master (that was I in the test) needs to think different way to make believe the players that the enemies aren't fall with the first assaults. Is the same writing skill involved in adventure tales: the writer has the power to kill everybody anytime, but you *don't* want that this happens with no apparent reason for storytelling sake; you force you character to do some kind of actions. Same the master, that must force the player to do something without making lose of sense the sequence.
Actually I can propose to draw down some kind of character sheet to use like memorandum to how a character behave, what skill has, and what one would like make know to other players. Some stuff could be kept hidden if suit to the game.
This is used more like reference, and should help to remember some details like the appearance, possession, and what others can do.
A second thing should be if organize a play around the master-player scheme, or if more a freeplay without such roles.
Writing ruleset I haven't much, so is something that we can think in second time.
