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I got into roleplaying because I don’t like competition or anything that smacks of confrontation. Hence I don’t like a GM that puts me in dramatic situations. It’s part of being depressive, every second of my life I have a knife to my throat, demanding answers, so when I play I basically like everything I do to be the right thing.

As you’ll see by looking at the above-linked posts, Steve sees this clash as flowing from a distinction between diagesis and exegesis.

I’d point out an additional versus, that of the dramatic and the iconic hero. Many roleplaying games seem to take place within the tradition of escapist genre fiction—that is, the territory of the iconic hero. Yet the iconic hero, though popular, is seen as unworthy of literary analysis. Because of this we lack the vocabulary to discuss, evaluate and improve stories created in this mode. Principles derived from the more respectable dramatic stories get pressed into service. They are applied to iconic hero stories, often with unfortunate results.

Iconic heroes, if you look at the source material, aren’t necessarily under constant emotional pressure or internal conflict. Something interesting is always happening to them, but typically it occurs in the procedural arena of external challenges and jeopardies. They are allowed to maintain their emotional dominance, and to change the world through that dominance. Dr. No, as analyzed in Hamlet’s Hit Points, reinforces that point monomaniacally. Bond is, in more contemporary screenwriter parlance “protected” as a hero, to preserve the escapist thrill of our identification with him. In their installment of the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast the writers of the recent Star Trek revival discuss their need to protect both Spock and Kirk, even though the plot of the reboot movie puts them at odds with one another.

Both dramatic and iconic stories can make for engaging roleplaying. Unexamined expectations about which set of rules is in play may however lead to a surprise triggering of the boundary issues Steve describes.

This e-version of the book comes as a bundle of files formatted for different reading experiences. One is the layout as it appears in print, with beat diagrams appearing as a ribbon across each two-page spread. Another is presented for the page at a time reading most PDF users will be doing on a tablet or laptop screen, with the diagram for each beat appearing alongside its explanatory paragraph. Also part of the bundle is an extended spread that shows you the whole diagram of each of the three analyzed narratives (Hamlet, the movie version of Dr. No, and Casablanca.) This map appears only in the electronic versions.

Gameplaywright hopes to produce e-versions for other popular formats, like the Kindle and EPUB, and is exploring options in that regard. I’ll keep you apprised on that front.

Hamlet’s Hit Points sold out, at both IPR and Adventure Retail. In fact you could argue that it sold out plus, as additional copies were pulled from elsewhere to feed the second signing.

Skulduggery came within a few copies of selling out.

You sure couldn’t tell that the US economy is stuck in the throes of a particularly nasty job downturn by looking at the activity level at the Gen Con exhibit hall. Pelgrane had a record year by a huge margin. Others did similarly well.

Every year seems to get crazier. I certainly have less time to trawl the hall for the new cool thing, or to engage in friendly chat with colleagues during exhibit hall hours. Those who want to get their new cool thing into my hands must now go out of their way to make sure that happens.

Yep, gaming must be dying all right. Same as it’s ever been.

I’d like to thank the Evil Hat crew for presenting me with the Dresden Files RPG. Why, I remember when Evil Hat was but a single digest-sized indie RPG with a killer concept, delivered on bended knee by a fresh-faced, green-haired young whippersnapper (gashing open his bended knee in the process.) Now, thanks to the ambition and wherewithal of Fred Hicks and the stalwart legion he has gathered around him, it is the mammoth two-volume gorgeousness that will surely put my suitcase over American Airlines’ weight limit. Huge kudos, one and all. I credit the aforementioned blood ritual.

Gen Con, as always, presents a chance to bask in a collective love of gaming. You can lose track of that when our engagement with one another is filtered through the inherent negativity bias of Internet discourse. Gen Con always leaves me grateful for the fellowship of colleagues, friends, and gaming acquaintances. And most of all, the game fans and geek culturati who make my work and career possible. Thanks to all the readers of this blog who popped by to say hi. I’ll use this four-day hit of positive energy to propel me through many tough days of writing and designing until next year rolls around. Gen Con is creative fuel to get stored for the winter.

Till next time. Here’s hoping we all make our tight connections…

In my mind, Saturday was going to be a day of mostly being at the Pelgrane stand and/or booth. In reality it was a day of my mostly not being there, as I got pulled away to meetings, event times extended, and so on. Apologies if you came by and couldn’t find me. In my mind, Sunday is going to be a day of mostly…

The last few copies of Hamlet’s Hit Points reserved for the signing slipped inexorably away during that event. If you rush to the IPR booth immediately when the hall opens you might get the last two signed copies. There may also be a few still at the Adventure Retail (Atlas/SJ Games/Cthulhu Corner) complex.

The Pathfinder fiction panel went well. More about that next week, when I’ll tell you a bit about the novel I’m writing for the fine folks at Paizo.

I’ve had little chance to check out the new hotness, except for cases where folks take the initiative and thrust their fine products into my hands. And what fine products they are:

Ren Faire, by Michelle Nephew (Atlas Games) uses the transparent sleeve cards you’ll remember form Gloom to create a geek-culture card game fusion of Cranium and paper dolls. Assemble outfits for your Renaissance Faire visitor, slowly accumulating your outfit of pseudo-Medieval garb. To earn your costume pieces, you have to get up and perform.

Rumors that Michelle’s follow-up, Measure the Sphinx!, will be ready for next year’s show may be completely invented.

Tim C. Koppang’s Mars Colony, found at the Design Matters booth, is a tiny package of great ambition. In this two player game, the attempts of a colonial governor to right the many crises besetting a troubled Martian settlement provide a framework for the participants’ feelings about government and personal failure. The game brings the author’s interior life to the game table in a way few others have attempted.

And finally, there’s that indie-cutting edge game from those scrappy authority-defiers at Margaret Weis productions, Smallville. Yes, major mass media entertainment property meets vanguard storymaking at the intersection of lovely production values. Like many others I find this obscuring of the boundaries between the mainstream and the underground bracingly exciting. The essential peg of its game play is the relationship map. Cleverly the graphic design leaves these maps as hand-scrawled items you could actually create on the fly, resisting the urge to pretty them up, robbing them of their accessibility. Congratulations to Cam Banks, Josh Roby and team.

Gotta run! See you in the hall!

Trade at the Pelgrane stand has been brisk. Trail of Cthulhu has proven itself to be an evergreen title. The Esoterrorists, original pioneer of the GUMSHOE line, continues to surprise us by picking up a steady stream of new buyers. The new game for the show, Skulduggery, has been enthusiastically received as a pitch but has been lagging behind other titles when it comes time to the forking over of cash. I’m hoping that since it’s a new thing the folks nodding their heads as we describe its betray-o-rific fun will return to pick it up during their final buying frenzies.

Graham Walmsley products have also been moving steadily. He’s produced a special run in chapbook-format of his notoriously bleak, Purist style Trail of Cthulhu scenarios, usually available from Pelgrane only in PDF. Each one is uniquely spattered with a disturbing, hardened liquid. (Okay, it’s nail polish.) Also passing into many hands has been his drawing room mystery digest-format game, A Taste For Murder. You have to love the premise: halfway through the game, the players decide whose portrayal has been the most obnoxious. That player’s character is then murdered; for the second half she plays the detective who arrives on the scene to identify the killer.

Outside the Pelgrane bailiwick, I’ve been blown away by the positive response to Hamlet’s Hit Points. Signings can be scary for any author, facing the fear of a lonely sit at a desolate table. Instead I was able to inscribe a steady stream of copies and chat with their new owners. This book was by no means a sure thing, and I feel extraordinarily blessed to see it find a receptive audience.

With meetings, interviews and booth duty I’ve had no chance to trawl for the new hotness. Thankfully Gregor Hutton swung by to show me Remember Tomorrow, his new digest format near-future game. Players struggle to achieve conflicting personal goals in a Gibsonesque world of mirror shades and AK-47s.

Gregor also pressed into my hands Hell 4 Leather, Joe Prince’s contribution to the menu-sized game craze pioneered by Jared Sorensen. This glossy, handsomely graphic triple-folded sheet contains an entire game of biker gang mayhem, powered by a tarot card resolution system.

Both Remember Tomorrow and Hell 4 Leather can be located at the Design Matters booth.

This year Indianapolis has gone above and beyond its usual hot Midwestern weather into brain-melting territory. It won’t get quite as bad as yesterday for the rest of the show but isn’t planning to cool down much, either. As a result the vast array of air-conditioners we all depend on will be working overtime. Expect a rash of dry throats. By the end of the day we’ll all be sounding like Elaine Stritch.

Now it’s off to the show floor. See you at the Hamlet’s Hit Points signing at the IPR booth at 1, or through most of the rest of the day at the Pelgrane booth.

We’ll examine the field’s traditional approach to narrative and the historical reasons for it. Then we’ll explore the central thesis of the book, the role of narrative technique in continually modulating audience emotional responses between hope and fear. From there I’ll review the basic beat types, and then talk about ways to understand existing narratives using beat analysis, and how to use the HHP toolkit to sharpen your games, as GM or player. Once we’ve covered that, I’ll throw to questions and discussion. In the unlikely event that a roomful of gamers runs out of stuff to talk about, I have an interactive/improv exercise in my back pocket as a live illustration of beat analysis in action.

I understand that plans are afoot to record audio of the event. If the tech gremlins so will it, I hope that we’ll be able to make that available later for those unable to attend.

The seminar takes place in the Marriott seminar area (check on-site signage for room assignment) on Friday, from 10 am to 11 am.